and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
Also, hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.
---------------------
Buffy the Vampire Slayer – 1997 – 7 Seasons - WB then UPN Productions USA
Seriously, it’s just crap.
Young teen supernatural drama series about a 16 year old tasked with slaying vampires and other supernatural baddies. She is helped in this by a Watcher (a librarian named Giles who helps her train and provides her with information) and by her two teen friends, Willow and Xander.
This show was 20 years old by the time I saw it, and I looked at it mainly because references to it are everywhere. Although it now seems a bit dated, I can see how it has had an influence on shows that followed.
I watched it from episode one because I like to see things in sequence, and to watch how characters grow or sometimes "correct themselves" at the beginning of a series.
I tried really, really hard to like it because it's so popular and I was beginning to feel my inability to "get" this show made me defective, but... nah.
In what I saw of the first two seasons, the two headmasters were both male, and many of the girls seemed obsessed with impressing boys in a “feminist is a dirty word” kind of way. One lass promises to try and be nice unless it’s that time of the month – the kind of annoying comment that’s ongoing. Ecch.
There’s also something disturbing about the way interaction amongst baddies almost normalises bad behaviour, with consequences reserved solely for when they endanger the "proper" population. I kept waiting to learn either that someone cared about them or that I had permission to not care - that they did not really represent a community everyone else was counting on to self-destruct. It just smacked of the whole U.S. War on Drugs narrative (though I admit had I watched the show in real time I might not have made the connection. And now I can clearly see parallels with other marginalised or demonised groups.)
There were a few – very few – wry smiles to be had, but humour is not a great feature of this show. One character is a singer in a band called Dingoes Ate My Baby, something that’s just offensive rather than amusing.
In episode 01x11 there is a great – perhaps even brilliant – moment when an African American teacher discusses Shylock and the anger of the outcast in American society, but for the most part the show seems exclusively white and mentally bland in its POV. Then I had to wait til 02x11 for the next episode that showed a touch of genius.
Overall, the writing doesn’t seem exceptionally clever despite the potential in parallel storylines; the show only occasionally offers depth beyond the High School / teen dating angst experience. A lot of this High School teen stuff is lost on me but it seems nowhere near as alien or annoying in other series or movies where it’s usually entertaining or at least not irritating. Towards the end of its run, the Buffy series introduced a regular gay character (ahead of its time) but that happens way beyond my limits of endurance.
On balance, it’s not a show I can say I admire for its values. Little about the show touched me emotionally at all.
M rating – The demons are ugly, and weird things happen, for example in one episode the spaghetti served in the school cafeteria turns into snakes, but generally speaking the supernatural violence should not be triggering.
Bingeable? – Not for me. Perhaps I’m just too thick to see why it’s such a hit but couldn’t bring myself to watch to the end of season 2. One and a half seasons was an effort.
No comments:
Post a Comment