All right, I admit it: I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the WB for the obvious reason--SMG, AKA Sub Machine Gun... err, I mean, Sarah Michelle Gellar--after she was featured on the cover of southeast Virginia's Daily Press's TV Guide. "It's not often," a Buffy reviewer opined, "that a TV serial based on a movie is actually better than the movie." But such was the case with Buffy, apparently, as I seemed to be the only sub-30 American male not watching the show. So I gave it a shot.
I entered the series about halfway through the first season. I was impressed! Not only was the writing top-notch, but the show's directors/producers restrained themselves enough to not pander to an adolescent public's more (ahem) carnal interests. The show, like so few at the time, had character and depth. I was a real Dungeons and Dragons nut when I was a kid, and Buffy awoke my fantasy muse like few shows of its kind had. I was hooked. I watched every episode for almost a year.
But then my interest began to wane, and quickly. A series of particularly loathsome episodes pricked my conscience something fierce, and I had to confess to myself that spiritually speaking, this was not a healthy exercise. The concepts of magic, the undead, slaying said undead, and dueling with lethal hand weapons didn't bother me; but regular graphic portrayals of vampires "feeding" on their hapless human prey, along with increasingly ribald sexual and erotic situations forced me to draw the line. Buffy had degenerated from art to pornography.
This was very disappointing, if for no other reason that I now have much less unction to post to the Vampire Slayer Literary Anarchy story. Maybe I'll keep at it; it wouldn't be too hard to guide it in a strongly Christian direction. At any rate, my semi-hormonal fascination with Buffy is at an end, and in my mind, yet another nail has gone into the coffin of the concept of "decent television". /me sighs.
