The
Legacy of Joss Whedon
Ten
years ago, on March 10, 1997, the cult television series Buffy the
Vampire Slayer premiered on the now-defunct network The WB. Based
on an unsuccessful motion picture of the same name, no one gave the
show much of a chance at the time, especially since no one was giving
The WB much of a chance. But succeed it did, for seven seasons, and
in many ways changing the television landscape—for the better—in
the process.
Created
by Joss Whedon, a third-generation television writer, Buffy
centered on a high school girl serving as her generation’s “chosen
one” in the battle of good-versus-evil, with “evil”
primarily manifesting itself in the form of vampires. Neither the name
of the series, nor any one-sentence synopsis, however, does justice
to what the series actually became: a female-empowering, life-as-metaphor,
genre-mixing concoction of great characterization, dialogue and storytelling.
Whedon
would go on to create two other television shows, Angel and
Firefly. Buffy ended in 2003, Angel in 2004,
and Firefly was cancelled by FOX after only eleven episodes
in 2002. But ten years after Buffy premiered, Whedon’s
legacy lives on. His most important contribution (besides the often-cited
creation of a strong female heroine who paved the way for the likes
of Sydney Bristow and Veronica Mars) is the concept of the self-contained
season. Not knowing if the series would last, Whedon crafted the first
season of Buffy as a self-contained story, and each subsequent
season followed a similar blueprint: Buffy Summers had to face a “Big
Bad” intent on destroying the world, only to thwart and defeat
said Big Bad by the season finale. It is a concept that Veronica
Mars utilized its first two seasons, and one that Heroes
likewise seems intent on following in its inaugural.
Whedon’s influence
goes beyond this particular story-telling device, however, and many
shows owe credit to his ground breaking efforts. Some cases in point:
—Before
Boone, Shannon, Anna-Lucia, Libby and Eko went to the Big Kahuna in
the sky on Lost, Whedon had already built a reputation for
killing off fan-favorite characters. Doyle sacrificed his life in season
one of Angel, while Wesley met his demise in the series finale.
Tara was murdered in season six of Buffy, Anya was killed in
season seven. Even Firefly was not immune; in the big-screen
adaptation Serenity, two of the nine major characters died
by the time the closing credits rolled.
—Before
Gilmore Girls expanded our vocabulary with a litany of pop-culture
references, Buffy taught us how to use such fictional names
like “Scully” and “Keyser Soze” as verbs, as
well as “Stepford Housewives” as an adjective. In fact,
the show practically created a language of its own. A book on the phenomenon
(Slayer Slang) was published by the Oxford University Press
in 2003.
—Before
The O.C. had the Bait Shop, Buffy had the Bronze,
where indie-rockers along the likes of Aimee Mann, Splendid, Cibo Matto,
Angie Hart, Michelle Branch and Nerf Herder all performed.
—Before
the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi Channel
redefined the definition of “science fiction,” Buffy
had defied genre expectations of its own by deftly combining horror,
fantasy, action, drama and comedy.
—Before
Lost started depending on flashbacks as a form of storytelling,
both Buffy and Angel had used them to tell the sagas
of their centuries-old vampires and demons, including Angel, Spike,
Darla, Drusilla and Anya, filling in those back stories to create more
compelling characters.
—And
before there was Grey’s Anatomy, there was Buffy
the Vampire Slayer. At least according to series creator Shonda
Rhimes, who told the New York Times (Sept. 28, 2006), “I realized
a lot of the really good character development is happening on TV,”
before specifically citing Buffy. “The language was great,
the world was great, and you completely invested in those characters.
I’m still not over its cancellation.”
In professional
sports, one way to measure a coach/manager’s legacy is by how
many of their assistants move on to become successful with other teams.
For a television creator/executive producer, a corresponding measure
would be how many of their writers move on to find success with other
series. And in the case of Whedon, the list is impressive. Shawn Ryan,
a writer during season two of Angel, went on to create The
Shield. Tim Minear, who worked on both Angel and Firefly,
served as executive producer on the short-lived Wonderfalls,
and co-created the new FOX drama Drive, scheduled to premier
in April.
There are
also numerous shows that have hired Whedon alumni as writers, a virtual
roll-call of the most critically-acclaimed series from this decade:
24, Alias, Battlestar Galactica, CSI,
Gilmore Girls, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost,
The O.C., Rome, Smallville.
When Angel
was cancelled during its fifth season, Felicity/Alias/Lost
creator J.J. Abrams immediately snagged two of that series’ writers
for his own shows. He told Zap2It at the time (Dec. 10, 2004):
“You desperately try to find the best people out there to work
with. I felt slightly like an ambulance chaser, but... I know he (Whedon)
has an amazing ability to find these great writers.”
Both Whedon
and Abrams recently directed back-to-back episodes of NBC’s The
Office. Kristin Veitch of E! referred to them as “the two
best TV directors alive” in her Feb. 12, 2007 blog post, and watching
the Whedon outing, entitled “Business School,” it is easy
to see why. The scenes within the confines of Dunder-Mifflin were filmed
in a very rapid, quick-in, quick-out fashion, keeping the light-hearted
plot of a bat on the loose moving at a swift pace. But when the story
switches to Pam’s art school exhibition, which serves as the emotional
crux of the episode, Whedon uses slower, steadier camera movements to
add to the scene’s impact. In both cases, his direction proved
effective.
But it
was a morsel, simply an hors d’oeuvres to whet our appetites.
Although Whedon has not officially “retired” from television,
he has been putting his efforts into both motion pictures and comic
books as of late, leaving fans to patiently wait and wonder when he
will return to the small screen; one can only hope that a full-course
meal will again be in the offering from Whedon in the not-so-distant
future, adding to his already impressive legacy.
(This article
orginally was published in Flak
Magazine.)
March 8,
2007
