Buffy is Dead, Long Live Buffy 5/27/2001

He did it. He knocked us in the breadbasket, leaving us breathless and in a spastic fit of heroine-mourning lachrymose frenzy unseen since the departure of Lady Diana's corpse to the sound of cascading bells and a blizzard of roses some four distant years ago. Just as we thought he'd shown all his moves over the course of 100 episodes of primetime boundary expansion, his Whedonness pulled the final punch that turned out to be no less than the doomsday device, both literally, figuratively and all points in between. As dimensional barriers dissolved in the elixir of allegorical menstrual blood drops, so too did the emotional walls between reality and fiction fade into ether for no less than five million devoted soldiers of the Buffy Nation who quickly ran to purge their agony and grief across the modems and IP addresses of this our digital realm. Logging on to the Buffy posting board during the three hours immediately following the Central/Eastern Time airing on Tuesday night was next to impossible. There was panic on the streets of Sunnydale.

As Whedon and company had promised for months, the final episode of this 5th and final WB season would see the maker-meeting of at least one of the Scoobies. Certainly it would be a lesser member of the Buffy Tribe such as Anya (Emma Caufield) or Tara (Amber Benson), characters who had not been around for the entire run of the show. Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) or Ben (Charlie Weber) (Okay, so Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) did suffocate Ben to end the Days of Glory (Clare Kramer), so to speak- so he's out, but not so much a regular, anyway) would certainly make sense, since they had only first appeared this season and their demise, due to their unique origins, would have, as incessantly pointed out in the final four episodes, averted the impending apocalypse. Spike (James Marsters), one of the more compelling dark horses in Television history, and English no less, had come a long way into the light. Martyrdom would have been a proper and dignified out for this Vampire-Cum-Man United Yob-Cum-Slayer puppy lover. Spike's corpse would have been truly poetic in the penumbra of the St. Crispin's Day exchange between he and Giles.

Amber Benson, in an online interview, promised that the 100th BTVS episode would "blow you away." No amount of sly hints and conjecture would have led any naturally media savvy TVlander to venture that the aforesaid regular character would be the title character, no less.

Yes, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is dead [no, not Sarah, but the character she plays]. Say it ain't so, Joss, and all that jazz. We mere mortals will be wondering all summer long as we wait for the UPN premier, "Is Buffy really dead?" Well campers, here is the news: Buffy is really dead. You, me, Ross Perot, and the American people saw her pretty corpse plop down onto the tarmac with not one wit of life to speak of and a nice fresh swath of fully-grown grass over her grave. She ain't coming back (though many a good webziners say otherwise, and indeed I hope they are correct--by the way chosentwo.com is my fave source for BTVS news and activism links- yup activism [no, no one did, nor would pay for such an endorsement herein]), except of course, in maybe an advisory role, sort of like Bill Gates stepping down as President of Microsoft to be just a member of the Board. She may still have a degree of presence, but she won't be in charge. Again, like Herr Gates, she will be more of an enigma than a truly living breathing human being, except much more savory, of course. I expect flashbacks and maybe some communications from beyond the dimensional borders with Willow and the Wiccans, but no more. At most, she will haunt her survivors. If indeed she is brought back, it had better be convincing. Mssr. Whedon has built no small bond of trust with his audience. To bring back a dead title character, especially after such death sent tsunamis of shuddering epiphanies worldwide, could spell a disastrous dissolution of trust between creator and audience if not done with absolute legerdemain.

The Scoobies will be in disarray come the dawn of UPN-time, but someone will step up to the plate and take charge of the fight against evil in Greater Sunnydale. Best bets for that are Spike or Giles. These are the only blokes on the team with long-term experience. A little Slayer strength in the mix would be a welcomed addition, and a return of self-esteem issues poster girl Faith (Eliza Dushku) would certainly not chagrin this scribbler. Dawn will certainly move up a few notches on the food chain now that she has bled her way to maturity and dern near sacrificed herself on the oil derrick of the nether-realm (oh my phallic metaphor!). If you missed the obvious allusions to menstruation as rite of passage into the mystical romanticism of woman as life-giver this season -- notice how Come-to-the-Cabaret-Joel Grey's shallow cuts were right over Mlle. Trachtenberg's ovaries-- by all means, please avoid train tracks and busy intersections. Anyway, as you know, this show is all about female empowerment. To watch Dawnie, a feeble little thing, rise to heights of bravery in her own unique way will no weak show make. Here comes the next generation.

But I did not come here to praise Buffy, or bury her, or raise speculation for next season. I came here to wallow in the heroic, yet oh so tragic exit of our dearest Chosen One, to riff upon a star and rhapsodize about a generational icon for those stuck with mere chromosomal letters and not proper adjectives to modify generation as noun.

First and foremost, la vie de Buffy was about duty, the eschewing of narcissistic self-indulgence epitomized by her parents' generation. Duty was always priority one despite her desire to be "just a girl," a consumer, or an object to be consumed- to date, to shop, to hang with friends, live a normal life, to have low-expectations, to be mediocre- part of the crowd, and do all the things her media-drenched culture would expect her to do- in essence, to be walking dead, not unlike the vampires- to not give but to only take, to suck the life from her fellow earthly inhabitants.

Though she feared duty as the end of her humanity as the Original Slayer (Sharon Ferguson) hinted in Intervention, the Buffster slowly and stubbornly rose above her precepts of how life, mediatized life, should be and realized that her humanity flowed not from her ability to consume, but from her duty. It would be trite to say how ironic it is that a television show imbued with humanity and uplifted from narcotization the very audience television is meant to dehumanize and narcotize. The characters on BTVS are mirror images of the audience themselves. These characters know, like their audience, that life is not a Pepsi Ad, but hard, dirty work, and that friendship and sisterhood are not about hanging with your mates, but saving the world with them, day in, day out. It is the gospel of a generational uprising, no matter how many Maybelline ads you shoot at them.

In essence, this whole dirty, filthy, splendid mortal realm (as her Groovetastic one, Glory, referred to it) is all about giving until it hurts, and letting that hurt make you alive. Buffy's teaching, and wonderfully entertaining and thankfully far from didactic it is, goes like this: "Pain is good, Pain is Power, Pain is Life. Go with it, make it your own, make the most of it." Yet, in this case of ep 100, in Buffy's swan dive as swan song, the stakes (sorry for the pun) were increased and the lesson stepped-up to the ultimate sacrifice- giving your death so that others may remain alive and carry on the good work- yes, especially if his Jossness finds a way to return our hero, no small Calvary factor resides here.

For most persons living in our present day and age (your scribbler stands naked and guilty on this count, too, in most of his daily dealings), and even within the countless other fictional opportunities of the televisual and cinematic context of the vast entertainment-industrial-complex, the rampant cynicism of our human race would dictate haughty sneers at such a mythic and romantic gesture as Buffy's, deriding it as useless martyrdom in what is naturally a petty and absurd world of every man for himself, as basically far removed from reality. Oh Voltaire, how far the enlightment has brought us. But thank god for transcendence. In the Buffyverse, such is the making of the desires of a generation in search of heroes, honor, and poetry in a dry, prosaic world.

Demons and vampires aside, with the Scoobies' code of honor and absolute loyalty to one another and the fate of our mortal coil, Sunnydale would not be a bad place to live. May this fictional cadre be an example to us all.

Buffy is dead.
Long live Buffy.

Here endeth the lesson.

Basil Joe Rocker

Postscript: According to an interview with BTVS Creator Joss Whedon published in TV Guide Online two days after the airing of BTVS 100, our Chosen One shall be making an arduous, unpredictable trek back to lifeland.The article is republished at josswhedon.net.