Into Every Generation a Slayer is Born

I grew up watching Buffy. It premiered when I was in fifth grade. I didn't watch right from the beginning, but I did catch up with reruns that summer so that beginning with season 2, I was a devoted watcher. Every week I tuned in, and the next day at school I'd dissect the episode with my friends. It was there for me through middle school and high school, and it's been there for me ever since, whenever I needed it. I can't tell you how many times I've rewatched the series in it's entirety, or my favorite episodes in particular. I can quote nearly all of it, have come up with head canons to fill in all the plot holes, can determine which season a still is from based on Buffy's hair style, and will still happily spend hours dissecting the minutiae with anyone willing.

I learned a lot from Buffy. One of the most important things Buffy taught me is that the world is not simply divided into black and white, good and evil. As the series progresses, Buffy learns that it's not as simple as human good, demon bad. The world is complicated and so is everyone in it, and all you can do is keep trying. That lesson is what has allowed me to continue to love Buffy as the years go by. Even as my perspective of Xander changes, or more information about the horrific conditions on set come out. Even as Whedon rose as a god among fans and then was revealed as mortal after all, I've continued to love this series that has always meant so much to me.

Evan Katz Ross's book helped remind me of these lessons. He interviewed a lot of the cast and crew, and was in the middle of writing this book when the latest allegations against Whedon came out, necessarily changing the course of the book.

There were some glaring omissions from the book. I would have loved to hear from Alyson Hannigan, Eliza Dushku, and David Boreanaz, though I can understand their reticence to go on the record right now. But even without them, Ross is able to shade in a complicated picture of this series that remains so important and groundbreaking. The cracks are starting to show, and I can no longer claim this series is perfect, the way I would have argued back in high school. That doesn't mean I love it any less.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more