Classic Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episodes Delayed Due To Real-Life Tragedy
These days, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has secured a permanent place in pop culture history, and aside from some Season 6 weirdness (and later revelations about showrunner Joss Whedon), the series isn’t considered very scandalous. However, at the height of Buffy’s popularity, two Season 3 episodes were both delayed because of seemingly scandalous content. Those episodes were “Earshot” and “Graduation Day, Part Two,” both of which were delayed due to the real-life tragedy of the Columbine school shooting.
Buffy Doesn’t Use Guns
To know why these Buffy episodes got delayed, it’s important to understand the sad context of Columbine. On April 20, 1999, two students of Columbine High School (Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold) killed 12 students and one teacher before killing themselves. While this wasn’t the first school shooting, the prominence of this tragedy and its high body count led to changes in school policies and security, as well as police responses to these situations.
Now, Buffy is a show where our heroes famously eschew guns in favor of stakes and crossbows, so you might be wondering why the Columbine massacre would delay the release of episodes.
Earshot Was Delayed
In the case of “Earshot,” it was a combination of the general plot and a phenomenally awful bit of dialogue from Xander (more on this soon). This was an episode where Buffy gained the ability to read minds, and after she picked up a stray thought from somebody who wanted to kill a bunch of students, she tried to track down the would-be perpetrator in order to save lives.
A Week After A Tragedy
The real culprit ends up being a disgruntled lunch lady who poisoned the students’ food, but there is a red herring where Buffy encounters nerdy Jonathan (who had written a cryptic letter apologizing for what he was about to do) in the clocktower assembling a rifle. In a truly weird twist, he was only planning to kill himself, but considering that this Buffy episode was originally meant to air a week after Columbine, the combo of a student with a high-powered rifle and a plot to mass murder students led to a delay.
It likely didn’t help that Xander asked his friends, “who hasn’t just idly thought about taking out the whole place with a semi-automatic?” The thoughtless question was perfectly in line with the stupidity of his character, but this line was a bit too much to put on the air only one week after Dylan Klebold had, in fact, tried to take out his whole school using (among other things) a semi-automatic pistol.
Students vs. Faculty
The second Buffy episode delayed due to Columbine was “Graduation Day, Part Two,” and this delay was much more confusing and controversial. It was originally set to air a month after Columbine, and it didn’t feature students sporting guns or anyone threatening mass murder. The plot does involve Buffy and her friends providing weapons to the student body and building a bomb, but it’s all to kill the evil mayor after he turns into a giant snake demon and tries to kill everyone.
Fans Got Creative
Buffy fans were understandably upset about the season finale getting delayed, but WB executives were worried that if any Columbine-like violence happened at any graduations that year, news stations would play clips from this episode and generally blame the show. However, impatient fans of the Slayer began bootlegging VHS rips of the episode from Canada (where it had aired on time), and Joss Whedon himself encouraged this practice.
In retrospect, these Buffy episodes and their controversies seem incredibly mild, especially because the endless school shootings that followed the Columbine tragedy have proven to be scarier than any fictional vampire.
