The Altogether Ooky
It's a dangerous world out there for young people.
Constantly bombarded by the threats of drugs and
alcohol, violence, sexual predation, and abuse or
neglect from loved ones, a young person's life is a
miasma of confusion and betrayal. You can't count on
your parents because they're never around, or they're
in some kind of alcoholic stupor, or they're too
distracted by their hot new wives to notice you've
cleaned out the liquor cabinet and swiped the keys to
the Jag in a fit of adolescent self-destruction. In
the end, the only people you can trust are your
friends — your good-looking, hair-moussed,
Abercrombie-&-Fitch-wearing, white-boy-rap-listening
friends. Your real family. Sure, they'll occasionally
sleep with your girlfriend, coerce you into cheating
on the big exam, show up drunk at the prom and get you
all suspended from school, and occasionally get you
mixed up with psychotic drug smugglers, but if you
stand by each other, these things will pass quickly, a
series of "very special episodes" in your life.
This is what I have learned about teenagers over the
last ten years from watching television, and now I
regret not having grown up in California.
The stultifying homogeneity of televised product for
teenagers makes me wonder just how the hell Joss
Whedon and David Greenwalt managed to get Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, now in their fifth and
second seasons, respectively, on the tube in the first
place. Vampires, ex-demons, witches, psychic
debutantes, hunky commandos, and Old Navy-wearing
superheroines, they're still healthier characters and
— I'll say it — role models, than the self-absorbed
mutants and bloodsuckers inhabiting Aaron Spelling's
side of Wilshire Boulevard, and at least in Joss
Whedon's California, black people exist.
The enduring appeal of Buffy, the adventures of a
teenaged girl who discovers she is the preordained,
superpowered, serious-butt-kicking Slayer of vampires
and demons, and its spinoff Angel, about a vampire
seeking to reclaim his soul by championing the
helpless, is their keen sense of self-awareness.
Smack-dab in the middle of the WB's weekly schedule,
which would appear to have been programmed by the
readership of Cosmo Girl, these two shows understand
that they're fantasy fodder for teenagers (though
adults are welcome), but rather than subscribe to the
overinflated yet underinformed seriousness that
usually marks such programs — only a juvenile's
concepts of "work" and "sex" would have every
character on Melrose Place working for, renting
from, and/or sleeping with Heather Locklear —
Whedon's shows acknowledge that they're ridiculous and
run with it. Granted, the storylines have occasionally
been heavy, and there was real tragedy in last year's
killing-off of Angel's assistant Doyle in mid-season
(and real guts in keeping him dead), but these are
offset by a persistent self-referential playfulness
that keeps both shows fresh.
Buffy appears to have hit the new season running,
pitting the Slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her
allies against Dracula (Rudolf Martin) himself in the
opening episode. The next episode's villain is the
undead ditz Harmony (Mercedes McNab), to lighten
things up: the best exchange so far has Harmony and
her ex, Spike (James Marsters, as a British-punk
vampire and hands-down this show's best recurring
villain) facing off, wherein she introduces her
"minions" and proclaims herself a threat and Spike
snaps, "What, you've been reading Evil for Dummies?"
After a couple of seasons spent waffling between her
wish for a normal post-adolescent life and her
responsibilities as the chosen protector of humanity,
Buffy has resolved to take her job more seriously.
Xander (Nicholas Brendon), Buffy's hapless would-be
protege, has moved out of his abusive parents'
basement. The Slayer's Watcher (teacher) — and the
father-figure of Buffy's ersatz family — Giles
(Anthony Stewart Head) has bought the local magic
shop, despite Buffy's concern that every one of the
last few owners has been killed at the
hands/claws/fangs of some evil beastie. Anya (Emma
Caulfield), a former demon both elevated and reduced
to humanity, and Xander's girlfriend, continues to
struggle with the concept of human ethics — in the
third episode Xander has been split into two bodies,
to the dismay of everyone except Anya, who views it as
an opportunity to double her pleasure. Best of all, it
would appear that Riley, the former paramilitary
captain of a monster-hunting cabal of mad scientists,
and Buffy's current boyfriend, is on his way out,
realizing that his love for Buffy is not reciprocated.
The show requires Buffy's romantic interest to bear
the burden of token gravitas (her last relationship
was with the vampire Angel, until he "spun off" for
his own series), but Marc Blucas is just leaden in the
part.
Or it may simply be that as much a badass as Riley is,
he is only human, and this crowd tends to jump fences
to find its romances. This is especially evident in
Buffy's subtlest yet most daring storyline, the
blossoming relationship between the neophyte witches
Willow (Alyson Hannigan, a fan favorite) and Tara
(Amber Benson). Joss Whedon, like several of the
producers of the WB's teen-oriented programs, is
interested in raising the visibility of
gay and lesbian teens on television. The Willow-Tara
relationship is a bold move, especially on a network
as relatively new as the WB, with a viewership who are
mostly living — and watching — with their parents.
Buffy has always drawn fire from parents' groups
concerning its violence, and two seasons ago the
network chose not to air an episode in which a misfit
student threatens to go on a shooting spree at the
gang's high school, for fear of being seen as
insensitive to the Columbine incident (the episode was
aired last season but with network disclaimers
attached). So it will be interesting to see if Willow
and Tara's romance plays in Peoria, or more
specifically, if Middle America is ready for
interspecies sex but not yet for gay teenagers in relationships.
Whether intentionally or not on the producers' part,
however, Willow has been given two escape routes
should the network lose its nerve, and both are
disturbing. One is the number of last season's
episodes devoted to Willow's despondency over her
breakup with the cynical Oz (Seth Green, now on NBC's
Tucker), so Willow's foray into girl-girl relations
can be explained away as a rebound thing. The other
out is the relative lack of development of Tara as a
character thus far. Introduced as lonely and needy but
powerful, all of which drew her to Willow in the first
place, there is ample setup for Tara to be revealed as
something evil. Here's hoping that neither will be the
case.
Thus far the season's sole sour note is the addition
of Michelle Trachtenberg to the cast as Buffy's
younger sister, Dawn. While bringing her in may be a
cagey acknowledgement of the show's shifting
demographics — Nickelodeon kids with a new bedtime —
TV history tells us that the
introduction of a Cute Kid is a sign that a show is
getting tired. And Trachtenberg is Cute in spades.
Expect many storylines in which Dawn will get in the
way, attempt to emulate Buffy, discover boys, run
away, and be captured by bad guys over and over again.
Given the show's track record for playing with
conventions, there may be hope for Dawn Summers on the
horizon, but as of now she is definitely the
Scrappy-Doo of the Scooby Gang.
On the other hand, the presence of J. August Richards
in the cast of Angel looks very promising. Richards'
character Charles Gunn is a self-appointed street
guardian, a benevolent protector of inner-city
innocents from the depredations of thugs and
gang-bangers. As such, he is Angel's diurnal opposite
number, turning to Our Hero for help against more
otherworldly threats but otherwise his own man.
Richards is an appealing actor, putting as much gusto
into his Angry Black Man as he can, considering his
surroundings — this is a WB show, remember, so Gunn's
'hood is substantially sanitized for the viewers'
protection — and considering that the writers have
saddled him with the utterly whitebread Cordelia
(Charisma Carpenter, another transplant from Buffy),
who has taken it upon herself to soften Gunn's edges.
As there is no indication that Carpenter is going
anywhere, we can only hope that Gunn humanizes the
airheaded, materialistic Cordelia as well. While
Angel exists in the same world as Buffy, its tone
is much darker, often referencing classic film noir,
and Cordelia's bubbly schemer bit tends to distract
more than contribute.
David Boreanaz continues to give a tastefully
understated performance in the show's title role. It's
not easy to muster a good brood — the best Luke Perry
ever managed was James Dean with the trots — but
Boreanaz seems to have polished his pensiveness to
such a degree that his existential angst finally
appears to be about weightier issues than his hair. In
this season's second episode, dubbed "an Angel event"
by the network for some reason, Angel flashes back to
the fifties, when he lived in an Ellroyesque Hollywood
hotel haunted by a demon that creates and feeds on
despair. After the hotel's residents are driven to
attack Angel, he leaves them to the demon's appetites
with such wonderful coldness and disgust, evidence of
the cynicism and despite that endless years in the
shadow of humanity must surely breed, that his
present-day remorse is also believable. Since his
introduction on Buffy I have always had a problem
with the role's "vampire with a soul" business, which
seemed oxymoronic — isn't the lack of a soul the
reason vampires are vampires in the first place? —
and little more than a wouldn't-it-be-cool-if idea,
but Boreanaz is starting to sell me on it. It helps a
lot to have the rest of the cast there, a smaller
family than Buffy's but nonetheless emotional foils
that force Angel to examine their humanity — and his
own — from other than the stunted perspective of the
vampire, the eternal orphan.
It's been said that if you look at all of the various
family units on television over the years, from the
Andersons of Father Knows Best to the Huxtables of
The Cosby Show, the healthiest by far were the
Addams Family. After all, the Addamses communicated,
expressed affection openly, supported each other's
ambitions, defended each other from outside
aggressors, and Mom and Dad definitely had an active
sex life — no twin beds there. The TV families that
exemplify "family values" in the rhetoric of
politicians seem diseased by comparison — no wonder
Kitten became a junkie and Denise married (and
divorced) Lenny Kravitz. The same may be said for
television's one-color spectrum of teenaged
pseudo-families who help each other into and out of
self-created messes, mouthing empty platitudes about
sticking by your friends, bro. Easy enough to do when
you're young, good-looking, and have no real problems.
It's Buffy and Angel and their cronies — brothers and
sisters in arms — who demonstrate real and healthy
group unities when actual stakes are involved. Perhaps
it's the altogether ooky that just brings out the best
in people.
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