I’m back to my usual habit of spending all summer watching all of a particular TV show in order. Actually, it is not really just a summertime thing. I started it the summer I lived alone in Columbus for an internship and I always had a show I was watching all of until I finished How I Met Your Mother, in February. I didn’t pick up another show after that. I guess I actually had things going on for the last five months and didn’t need a show.
Anyways, I recently started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I tired to watch all of it with a girl in college, but we got through about 2 episodes before that fell through. This time I’ve managed to finish off nearly 34 episodes in two and a half weeks. There are some problems with blogging about a show that went off the air 5 years ago. Mostly that anything interesting, like cameos by people who went on to do other things are well documented on imdb and pretty much anyone else who might care about the major plot points already knows them. With that in mind there are still some things that surprised me.
I’ve seen the show before, enough to know that I’m going to most readily identify with Willow. That is at least until she comes into her own in the latter seasons. What surprised me more was how I identified with Jiles, the library/watcher and the relationship story line with another teacher, Jenny Calendar. In fact, I was sort of surprised to see that kind of thing at all. It is somewhat unorthodox for a parental figure in a teen drama to have such an important relationship so early in the show. But they did it well, and made it much more important that it seemed; a hallmark of good story telling.
Although, I know know why I was unaware of the story line. *Spoiler Alert* She dies in episode 217, the first real character that they kill, who stays dead at least. I generally hate shows that kill of real characters. I suppose that is because I like character development driven shows, and it seems silly to waste the capital built into an already beloved character. But one goes into a show like this with an open mind.