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From Thestar.com

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Stake pierces hearts of fans

By Malene Arpe

Friday 28 February 2003, by Webmaster

A curse on your black heart, Sarah Michelle Gellar.

By making official what we’ve suspected for months and resigning from UPN’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, you’ve cast a pall over all our Tuesdays to come. Like sad, frayed demons from a cold fifth dimension we’ll be wandering the empty graveyards looking for smart entertainment. Oh, woe!

When producer Joss Whedon’s Buffy started some six-and-a-half seasons ago on the WB, it quickly attracted a panting cult following of viewers who appreciated the sexy smarts and sassy superstitions of the show. Here was television, which, due to superior writing, managed to deal equally well with teenage angst, popular culture and serious issues of morals, ethics and the difficulty of living life as a good person.

Through the show’s lifespan, we’ve seen Buffy grow from a 16-year-old high school student worrying about making the cheerleader squad to a woman of authority who commands respect. Buffy became a proto-grrrl, a sexually aggressive modern feminist who is equally at home putting the moves on Spike or beating him up. While wearing stylish, yet affordable clothes.

As well, Buffy’s friends and helpmates, the Scoobies - from Willow the angst-ridden, lesbian witch, to Anya, the brutally blunt ex-demon - have each grown into interesting people. (Except maybe for Xander, who has just grown fat).

Buffy’s grand love affairs with the yummy, soulful vampires Angel and Spike have reduced grown women viewers to quivering bundles of romantic TV anticipation every week. And the surprisingly, for prime-time at least, graphic sex scenes got more grown up as Buffy herself grew up. Buffy dealt better with the love/hate dichotomy of relationships than most sensitive teen dramas around; Buffy and Spike’s relationship was an appetizing mix of loathing and unbridled passion.

Buffy never made a huge dent in the ratings. Last season the show habitually came in somewhere around 85th place, with reruns going as low as 123. As for Emmys for acting and writing, forget about it. Even the genius that was the musical episode Once More With Feeling was overlooked. But that is the fate, of course, of shows that have one foot in sci-fi, another in Goth and a fang dipped in fantasy.

It is no surprise that this will be the last season - Armageddon has been looming over Sunnydale since October; the Scooby gang is falling apart; the writers have run out of new and exciting demons to kill; it can be argued that the show jumped the shark when Spike got his soul back - but we’ve kept hoping there would be one more year.

The fantasy ended yesterday with the announcement by Gellar, who no doubt feels a need to make vapid, romantic, hair-flinging big-screen comedies.

Now, all we can hope is the producers in their wisdom put a stake in the show and let it rest in peace for good. It would be a dying shame if they did a spin-off starring the irritating little sister and the third vampire from the left.