Return from Sunnydale

The temperature here today hit 106 degrees[*], and even with the cooler going at full blast, it was still too stultifyingly hot to want to do anything except sprawl out in front of the TV with a glass of something cold and try not to move too much. Thus, I have now finally finished watching season two of Buffy, as well as all the extras on the DVDs. And what can I say, except: Damn, this is a good show.

Buffy really does have just about everything I love to see in a TV show: Humor. Snappy dialog. A rich and seamless blending of different genres (in this case, everything from comedy to horror to drama to tragedy to romance). Complex and well-developed characters (most emphatically not excluding the bad guys). Character conflicts. Continuity. Intricate story arcs which are allowed to develop gradually over time. Events having logical consequences, both in plot and character terms. A willingness to go out on a limb and do things that are unexpected or shocking, or that even break the usual rules of dramatic narrative.[**] In other words, pretty much everything I've been praising about Farscape and lamenting the lack of in Enterprise. Joss Whedon, Buffy's twisted-genius creator, has now joined my personal pantheon of scriptwriting gods, along with Chris Boucher of Blake's 7 and Farscape's David Kemper.

Oh, and did I mention that Giles is cool? 'Cause Giles is really, really cool.

I suppose the DVD extras probably deserve a mention, too. They included a lot of the usual miscellaneous stuff (TV ads for the show, character/actor bios, that sort of thing), as well as commentary tracks on a few of the episodes, and some nice little "featurettes" on the costuming and makeup and set design. Far and away the most interesting, though, was Joss Whedon's commentary on "Innocence," one of the more important episodes. Whedon is a tremendously funny guy, in his own self-deprecating kind of way, and he also has a lot of insightful and interesting things to say about the creative process and about exactly what he was trying to do with the show. Not to say that the commentaries that were done by other people weren't interesting, because they were. But I'm really hoping that they get Whedon to do more of them on the third season discs when they come out. Preferably as many as possible.

And, believe me, I'm going to be waiting with great impatience for the third season. According to the advertisement packaged in with the season two discs, it should be out in "Winter, 2003." I'm really hoping that means the January part of winter, and not the December part...

[*] I believe that's about 41 degrees to those of you from countries that use a more rational system of units.

[**] See previous blog entry. Hell, the pivotal event in that particular episode actually had me scrambling for the rewind button on my DVD player because, oh my god, that could not possibly have just happened, could it? Except of course, it had. Yikes.