The Trouble With "Buffy"
<<2003-03-25 - 11:28 p.m.>>

Now, while I do think that tonight's episode was quite, quite good, something seems to be missing from recent seasons of "Buffy." What I used to love about the show was the centrality of the metaphor, the literalization of things—Buffy tries drinking, almost gets eaten by super-phallic, old-boys'-club-sponsoring, basement-dwelling snake-thing; Xander's pubescent mean phase is embodied by possession by hyena spirits; a social outcast actually became invisible, because nobody saw her. Personal things became as big as they feel, that was the power of it. When Angel went Angelus the morning after he and Buffy first slept together, it made mere human cruelty evil.

That scene in "Innocence" in which Buffy takes off Angel's ring, then lies down on her bed and just cries never fails to get me. Maybe it's that the emotional moments felt more earned, then, when each episode introduced, developed, and applied a new metaphor. Maybe it's that the show had a lighter touch then—when was the last time we had an episode finish on a light note, an incredulous "The world is doomed" from Giles, a flippant line, a joke of any kind? Maybe the emotional moments used to mean more because there was a better balance of emotion and entertainment, it didn't feel overdone. Ever.

But I think the metaphor-making, the literalization, was important. Because a metaphor from the mundane to the supernatural means that the show doesn't need to pound home the point, over and over again, that Look! This is important! Really, really important! A metaphor doesn't just talk about that importance, it displays it. If high school is, in nearly the most literal of senses, Hell, if it actually demonstrates its capacity to behave like Hell, to put its inhabitants through hell, no one needs to sit around and talk about how hellish high school is.

In recent seasons, there have been incidents of literalization run amok (hey, did you know that Marti Noxon meant Willow's magick addiction to be kinda like drug addiction?), but mostly there's been a lack of metaphor. "Buffy" has become painfully obvious. Characters Grapple with Life's Tough Issues. They Discuss their Emotions. Not a metaphor in sight.

I miss the metaphors, really, I do. I even miss the obvious ones. I miss Joyce saying in that I-read-parenting-books voice, "I know; you're sixteen; the world is going to end if you don't go out tonight." It was funny and it was true, and it was funnier because it was true, because we got to laugh both at the line itself (parents!) and at its metaphorical nature. The metaphor was the joke. We don't get lines like that anymore. And maybe One Big Joke is what "Buffy" is missing these days. A purpose of sorts.

"Buffy" used to be the smartest, funniest show around—and the realest, the most emotionally powerful.

I don't relate to it the way I used to. Because it's so straightforward, so grounded in the plotlines, it doesn't leave a lot of space for the viewer. These days I kind of have to push to relate, I have to say, "Oh, this thing, it's kind of like the thing I do sometimes..." But all I get then is someone talking—and perhaps the way learning by experience is more powerful than learning by lecture, relating by metaphor is more powerful than relating by discussion. Metaphor, in its recognition of its own metaphorical nature, is implicitly universal.

I miss the universal quality that "Buffy" used to have. "Buffy" used to be about everyday life feeling like apocalypse. These days it's a show about a hot blond woman who saves the world a lot.

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