A 92%-Rated Supernatural Teen Show No One Remembers Today Was a True Game Changer

If you watched TV shows in the late 90s and early 2000s, you will remember that most popular shows did not focus on a consistent plot. Each episode told its own arc and there was no need to know the characters’ backstory.

It was a pretty smart move: a person could jump into the show at any time. However, one series changed the way the TV projects were made – Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Today, Fewer and Fewer Viewers Remember Buffy

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is Joss Whedon's cult series about a high school girl who leads a double life. During the day she studies and spends time with her friends Xander and Willow, and at night she goes out into the abandoned streets of the city and the cemetery to kill demons.

Today, only hardcore fans in their 30s seem to remember Buffy, despite the show’s cult status.

“I’m 28 now and not a single person my age gets it when I try to explain how important this show was to me, if they've even heard of it,” Reddit user 89-by-boniver wrote.

So let's remember why Buffy the Vampire Slayer is so important, not just to teen shows, but to television in general.

Joss Whedon Took a Teen Show And Made It Relevant to All Ages

Making a teen series relevant to different audiences is a very difficult task. For example, My So-Called Life, which came out in 1994-1995, was a high school story with good actors (Claire Danes and Jared Leto ) and just the right amount of drama. But there was a problem – the show relied on realism, and teenagers were not always interested in watching it.

What did Joss Whedon do with Buffy? He deliberately introduced soap opera clichés (lots of romantic lines or problems with school) and never forgot that Buffy is a tough vampire slayer and she has to fight with someone in every episode. And at the same time, he wrote excellent dialogue and lines – sarcastic, smart and wildly funny.

Buffy Was One of The Most Important TV Female Protagonists

Of course, Buffy Summers was not the first cool female protagonist on television. But in the late 1990s, many showrunners were reluctant to put a girl at the center of the action for fear of losing a large portion of the male audience. Before Whedon's show, classic examples of strong female protagonists were Ripley from Alien and the warrior from Xena: Warrior Princess.

But despite these doubts, Buffy still appeared on the screens. In the early 2000s, no one expected a teen protagonist to change so dramatically over the course of the story. Buffy learns to live with the inevitability of her fate, and at the same time is willing to make at least some adjustments to it.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Changed the TV Series Structure

And it is thanks to Buffy the Vampire Slayer that we can now watch TV series with a well-developed, continuous plot. Of course, Buffy was not a pioneer of this format – it was popularized by The X-Files, which had a season-long main mystery and mini-mysteries in each episode.

However, Buffy perfected the format: small arcs were integrated into the plot of a larger story which glued the fans to the screens.