J: I guess I’ll get things started: First of all, I’m curious to know what things (if any) surprised you during this viewing?
A: I had forgotten how different the quality of the dialogue and acting is at the beginning of the show versus the end. There are a few places where the show is pretty camp; although Buffy always straddles lines of campiness, this campiness was less the kind of playful stuff that comes later in the series and more the kind of stuff that you might expect from an episode of Tales from the Darkside. In the beginning, it seems pretty clear that the show wasn’t sure exactly what it wanted to be stylistically, but as the show goes on, the dialogue, acting, and design blossoms. Except for Buffy’s wardrobe. That pretty much never gets better, but she’s a product of her time.
J: I think the thing that surprised me most was how quickly Joss gets the major players onto the board. You kind of expect that you’ll meet the protagonist(s) in the first episode and that they’ll spend some time acclimating themselves (and the viewer) to the premise of the show but by the time this episode is over you’ve already met Buffy, Willow, Zander, Joyce, Cordelia, Angel, Giles, Darla, and the Master. That’s a whole lot of characters to be introducing in a single 40 minute episode. It didn’t feel forced though. That’s impressive.
M: I guess I had forgotten that even Buffy and Angel’s initial meeting was contentious. She attacks him on their first meeting and then later admits to Giles that she doesn’t like Angel very much (although these interactions were a bit playful). It’s surprising that Whedon was developing consistent characters and relationships in the very first episode. Drawing from J’s comment above, I think it’s interesting that many of the core characters were not only introduced in the first episode but they also started to define their roles and relationships very early on.
A: Favorite parts of the episode?
A: Despite its flaws, there are some moments in the first episode when you can tell there’s some interesting writing, themes, and relationships going on in the show. The opening sequence before the credits is brilliant. In typical Whedon fashion, he inverts gender tropes by having a young blonde girl follow a James Dean-looking guy into a dark, abandoned high school, only to have the beautiful girl (who should be the victim) bare her fangs and kill Mr. Tough Guy.
J. I’d have to agree. A clearly predatory guy, an innocent looking schoolgirl: pretty standard horror fare. Then it gets turned on it’s ear. Right away Joss makes it clear that he has no regard for the traditionally gendered power narrative. I love it. I also really liked Angel’s introduction. If you hadn’t seen all of the upcoming episodes you might assume that their (Buffy and Angel) meeting was some sort of mysterious happenstance. However, we learn later that Angel has been waiting for Buffy’s arrival since he glimpsed her briefly at 14. What seemed innocent is now calculated, a little creepy, and not that different from Zander’s ham-handed attempts. Give Zander inside knowledge and two years to prepare and you probably would’ve had about the same result. Angel may be 200 years old but at this point he’s got the emotional maturity of a 17 year old.
M: My favorite part of the episode has to be the endearing enthusiasm Giles has upon meeting Buffy. Grinning, he offers her an ancient book entitled “Vampyr.” Buffy immediately tries to deny being chosen, setting the stage for her slightly apathetic attitude towards her calling throughout most of the series. Even though she has slayer strength and skill, she just wants to go to the Bronze, hang out with friends, and be accepted throughout her teenage years.
J: On that note, I just read this article, “Did Anyone Ever Explain To You What ‘Secret Identity’ Means?: Race and Displacement in Buffy and Dark Angel” , exploring Buffy’s simultaneous whiteness and “otherness”. It made me think about the all the effort Buffy goes through to deny her essential “otherness”: to be “normal”. Her consistent rejection of the stark reality that she will never have any kind of normal life is, for me, one of the more humanizing and frustrating parts of her character. I look forward to exploring it further.
Favorite quotes:
Buffy: “Mr. Flutie...”
Principal Flutie: “All the kids here are free to call me Bob.”
Buffy: “Bob...”
Principal Flutie: “But they don't.”
