The Best Supernatural Teen Drama Will Be Available To Everyone

Originally airing in 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is based on the 1992 movie of the same name. It follows Buffy Summers, a teenage girl imbued with supernatural power to fight against various monsters.

Joined by her friends in the fight against evil, they face down supernatural threats that often coincide with mundane coming-of-age problems. 

Hand in hand with The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer helped establish the “monster of the week” formula for television, with most episodes focusing on a one-off villain.

Many of the show’s most beloved episodes, like “Hush” and “Once More With Feeling” fall into that category, using episodic gimmicks to great effect. They allow the show to experiment with structure and tone in between episodes focused on the overarching plot. 

While the “monster of the week” structure isn’t unique to Buffy the Vampire Slayer it’s exceptional at meshing that structure with a compelling overarching plot.

After the first season, nearly every episode either progresses an individual character arc, the season-long plot, or the show’s overarching story. This gives the show a sense of scope that other shows in the genre often struggle to imitate, avoiding the problem of filler episodes. 

As much as I love the structure of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it’s the characters who elevate the show above others in the genre.

The core group of characters Buffy, Willow, Giles, and Xander are fleshed-out characters with believable personalities that ground the show’s fantastical premise.

Secondary characters were often just as well written, with my favorite characters like Anya, Spike, and Cordelia all beginning as one-note characters who developed more depth over time. 

The characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer are brought to life by an incredible cast.

That cast includes Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Stewart Head, Nicholas Brendon, David Boreanaz, Charisma Carpenter, James Marsters, Emma Caulfield, and Eliza Dushku among numerous others. It’s a show full of incredible, career-defining performances.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is also elevated by the surprising emotional depth beneath its fun monsters and quippy dialogue. Episodes like “The Body” and “The Gift” make me cry even after dozens of watches, portraying death and grief with heartbreaking nuance.

It also delivers profoundly uplifting moments like the characters standing up for Terra against her abusive family or Buffy being recognized by her classmates in “The Prom.” 

I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer and genuinely believe it’s the greatest TV show ever made, but I acknowledge it has numerous flaws. The show has some laughably bad effects, like Oz’s werewolf costume and the CGI snake demon in “Graduation,” that can be tough for a modern viewer to get past.

Some of the writing has also aged poorly, with infamous episodes like “Seeing Red” that seem to prioritize shock value over everything else and a comedic dialogue style that many have grown tired of in recent years. 

Despite those flaws, I wholeheartedly recommend Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its incredible characters, emotional resonance, and incredible individual episodes.

I think its virtues far outweigh its flaws, with the series as a whole still standing out to me as exceptional. With the show coming to Tubi on September 27th, there’s never been a better time to check the show out and decide for yourself.

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