Buffy The Vampire Slayer

This, my friends, is going to be an historic column. Not because it’s my 15th installment of SyFriday since re-introducing this weekly feature a few months back, but because I am going to fully define (hopefully for the last time) a term that I concocted a couple years back that explains one the major dilemmas facing the new "Battlestar Galactica."

It is my hope that this column will sit in the archives of our site, and at some point in the future, will have a reader stumble across it trying to find out where this term came from, and will then write a Wikipedia entry describing it, so that I never, ever have to explain it again.

Not that I don’t like to explain it ... it’s just not an easy thing to describe.

So, what am I talking about here, four paragraphs later? It’s a little something I call the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer Effect," or "Buffy Syndrome" for short. It was something I came up with some time back to describe how viewers can take entirely the wrong mindset into a television show or movie based on nothing more than the name. I use the Joss Whedon series "Buffy" as an example because it describes how I allowed nothing more than a name to rob me of months and almost years of television viewing pleasure, simply because I had the wrong mindset.

Let me explain this without all the babbling. In 1992, when I was just a sophomore in high school, Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry starred in this little Twentieth Century Fox movie called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." For me, watching the previews was more than enough to convince me that this was a "wait for the video" type of movie, and even when I did put it in my VHS some months later, it killed me to watch it, and I didn’t even need a star quarterback-turned-vampire to do it.

Apparently, I wasn’t alone in my dislike for the film, because it grossed a grand total of $16 million at the box office, and was pretty much one of the many forgotten duds of 1992.

You could imagine my surprise when, five years later, The WB thought it would be a hoot to cash in on the "success" of the "Buffy" movie and bring us a television series. When I first read about "Buffy" in the trades, I started laughing, and I think I even commented to a friend or two about how desperate The WB must be if they dug into the movie vaults and that was the only thing they could find.

So I didn’t watch the series. When someone would tell me that I should watch it because it was clever and entertaining, I lowered my respect for them, and decided that I could never take their advice on television and movies again.

I actually held on to this prejudice all the way through the end of 2001 when someone I was dating sat me down in front of the boob tube and practically forced me to watch my first-ever episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I was all in my "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" mode when something strange happened: I had nothing to make fun of. Even worse, I was totally enthralled in the story, which I later learned was called "The Body," an episode that people had been raving about. By the time I reached the shocking end, not only was I raving about the show, but I was looking to find out how I could watch all previous 100 episodes before it.

I got lucky. FX was airing the series, and was doing two episodes a day, and had just started from the beginning again. So I got to meet Angel, Spike, Drusilla (I just love her!), Anya, and all my favorite Scoobs. I also realized that Joss Whedon is God in human form, but that’s for another column.

I had spent all that time hating on "Buffy" simply because I thought it would be nothing more than a continuation of a real bad movie from 1992. If Joss had called it something different, but left the same premise, I probably would’ve given it a shot. But it was "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," a name that was hardly impressive to me, as it killed the career of Donald Sutherland, and made me cringe.

"Buffy" wasn’t the first time people (especially those who nominate for Emmys) didn’t give something a fair shake because of its name. And it wasn’t the last either. In fact, the most current proof of the existence of "Buffy Syndrome" is "Battlestar Galactica."

The biggest obstacle I have in trying to get people to watch BSG for the first time is getting them past the name. I say "Battlestar Galactica," and they immediately think of Ben Cartwright, robots that sound like Stephen Hawking, and a short person in an animal suit trying to convince us he’s a robotic dog. I can say over and over and over again how much the new "Battlestar Galactica" is nothing like the old "Battlestar Galactica," but just like me with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" a decade ago, people are just too damned stubborn to hear it.

It’s sad how strongly we attach different things to names, and heaven forbid we let anything change that.

I don’t know what the cure is for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer Effect," but President Bush needs to form a task force to get research going in search of one. If he doesn’t, then left untreated, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, will remain afflicted with the terrible condition, and they won’t have a chance to recover until it’s too late: When SciFi Channel pulls the plug on "Battlestar Galactica," and there’s no way to bring it back.

Let’s just hope we’re not too late already.

SyBits Last week, in a rather short SyFriday column (do you think I made up for it this week?), I talked a little bit about how the marketing people behind "Battlestar Galactica" were putting far to much emphasis on the soap operaness of the show. I got a lot of e-mail to support my position (OK, and a lot against it, too), but for some reason, many people were more focused on my opinion of ABC’s "Grey’s Anatomy" (I think it sucks) than my feelings on love quadrangles on BSG. Here are some of the thoughts from the mailbag:

I’m a longtime reader of your Web site. I agree that the writers have pushed the love triangle to the detriment of what makes the series so great. However, I have to disagree with your characterization of "Grey’s Anatomy" as "garbage." My television viewing skews towards science-fiction, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a well-written soap, and "Grey’s" is certainly the best out there.
— Michael Lachance (no location given)

Sorry, Michael, but I have to stop you right there. Thanks for loving the site, but you’re killing me! I mean, I am bleeding all over the place from where you twisted the knife in my heart, and I can’t take anymore!

Actually, I’d apologize for offending people by expressing my opinion about "Grey’s Anatomy," but I’m going to wait for ABC’s apology for ever airing that series first.

But wait ... there is a place that gets "Grey’s Anatomy," I’m sure, but doesn’t get a single sci-fi show. I’m serious! It’s a country called Denmark, but I prefer to call it "hell." But don’t let me ruin Janne’s letter ...

If you think it’s a problem with the whole selling love scenes instead [of] focusing on the rest of the show and that being the only thing you can bitch about, then let me invite you to a trip to Denmark. Denmark — a neighbor to England — is absolutely sci-fi free. I mean, try talking to the network and convince them of showing some sci-fi shows, and they simply laugh at you, thinking you’re crazy.
— Janne Kloser of Aalborg, Denmark

The only thing crazy in that letter, Janne, is your belief that I would still want to visit Denmark after that bit of news. How the hell do you people survive?

But hey, if you want to spring for the plane ticket ...