In Every Generation There Is One
May. 21st, 2003 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsOne TV show that leaps off the screen and grows too big for even fandom.
A generation ago it was Star Trek, that cheese-filled "Wagon Train In Space." They had no budget, no stars, no special effects, no network support -- and everyone else had no clue what was about to happen.
With nothing else to fall back on, Gene Roddenberry used the only tools he had at his disposal - story and character. His stories were set in the future, but they were all about the society right then and there. Racial prejudice. The difficult choices commanders must make. Social unrest. "We shall not make war... today."
And yet there was fun too; tribbles and androids and Mudd, oh my!
And now, there is... well, as of last night, there was... Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Like Trek before it, Buffy had incredible characters and even more incredible stories - while episodes or story arcs may singly fail, the underlying metaphor was always sound. School is hell. Adulthood can be worse. Some people do want to suck the life out of you. We recognized people we knew, people we were in Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, even Jonathan and Tara and Anya.
Buffy has suffered in seasons of late; the underlying metaphor took several hits, and characters became pompous and self-involved, shaking the teamwork that had always been a key part of Buffy's (and the show's) survival. Yes, it was time for it to go away for a while, have a rest, maybe come back refreshed in a sequel in Joss' capable hands much later.
But first, that finale. Star Trek never had one, and in some ways, that's best. The show just goes away one night, and leaves its storyline in the hands of the faithful fans. That certainly beats the F&#$ YOU! attitude some producers have towards their own creations and those of us who love them. How many shows haven't so much ended as self-destructed? Blake's 7, Highlander, Forever Knight, Sliders, Poltergeist the Legacy, on and on and on... it's as if the producers sat down and said "we want to hurt everyone who loves our show as much as possible. We're going to kill their characters, blow up their settings, and spit on their hopes. Nobody gets to be happy, on or off screen."
And then there are the prematurely murdered series - Alien Nation, Remember WENN, Farscape, Brisco County.... They didn't mean to jerk us around, leaving us on a cliffhanger. It was someone higher up than the producer who did it. But they *did* just the same.
Any fan who says they weren't afraid that the last episode of Buffy would be a painful trainwreck is a liar. But bless Joss, who has managed to give us and ending and a beginning all at once. Buffy's story as The Slayer is over, but the Buffyverse lives on. Sunnydale's demons are slain, but there's another hellmouth in Cleveland. No cliffhanger. No death, despair, and devastation. (Well, okay, devastation. And some death. About average for a Buffy episode, actually. This is, after all, the show that took her to the mall with a rocket launcher.)
It felt good. It felt right. It was a worthy end to a 7-year-ride like few others.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
1996 - 2003
It saved genre TV from mediocrity. A lot.
The Slayer is gone. Long live the Slayers.
Postscript: Buffy may have been shut out of other awards, but the S7 episode "Conversations with Dead People" won the 2003 Hugo for Best Short Form Presentation (their rather clunkily named TV award.)
A generation ago it was Star Trek, that cheese-filled "Wagon Train In Space." They had no budget, no stars, no special effects, no network support -- and everyone else had no clue what was about to happen.
With nothing else to fall back on, Gene Roddenberry used the only tools he had at his disposal - story and character. His stories were set in the future, but they were all about the society right then and there. Racial prejudice. The difficult choices commanders must make. Social unrest. "We shall not make war... today."
And yet there was fun too; tribbles and androids and Mudd, oh my!
And now, there is... well, as of last night, there was... Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Like Trek before it, Buffy had incredible characters and even more incredible stories - while episodes or story arcs may singly fail, the underlying metaphor was always sound. School is hell. Adulthood can be worse. Some people do want to suck the life out of you. We recognized people we knew, people we were in Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, even Jonathan and Tara and Anya.
Buffy has suffered in seasons of late; the underlying metaphor took several hits, and characters became pompous and self-involved, shaking the teamwork that had always been a key part of Buffy's (and the show's) survival. Yes, it was time for it to go away for a while, have a rest, maybe come back refreshed in a sequel in Joss' capable hands much later.
But first, that finale. Star Trek never had one, and in some ways, that's best. The show just goes away one night, and leaves its storyline in the hands of the faithful fans. That certainly beats the F&#$ YOU! attitude some producers have towards their own creations and those of us who love them. How many shows haven't so much ended as self-destructed? Blake's 7, Highlander, Forever Knight, Sliders, Poltergeist the Legacy, on and on and on... it's as if the producers sat down and said "we want to hurt everyone who loves our show as much as possible. We're going to kill their characters, blow up their settings, and spit on their hopes. Nobody gets to be happy, on or off screen."
And then there are the prematurely murdered series - Alien Nation, Remember WENN, Farscape, Brisco County.... They didn't mean to jerk us around, leaving us on a cliffhanger. It was someone higher up than the producer who did it. But they *did* just the same.
Any fan who says they weren't afraid that the last episode of Buffy would be a painful trainwreck is a liar. But bless Joss, who has managed to give us and ending and a beginning all at once. Buffy's story as The Slayer is over, but the Buffyverse lives on. Sunnydale's demons are slain, but there's another hellmouth in Cleveland. No cliffhanger. No death, despair, and devastation. (Well, okay, devastation. And some death. About average for a Buffy episode, actually. This is, after all, the show that took her to the mall with a rocket launcher.)
It felt good. It felt right. It was a worthy end to a 7-year-ride like few others.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
1996 - 2003
It saved genre TV from mediocrity. A lot.
The Slayer is gone. Long live the Slayers.
Postscript: Buffy may have been shut out of other awards, but the S7 episode "Conversations with Dead People" won the 2003 Hugo for Best Short Form Presentation (their rather clunkily named TV award.)
