Happy Buff-Day

On This Day In History, Buffy The Vampire Slayer made its debut on the WB network. 1997, if you can imagine that.

I first saw the Buffy movie back in high school when it came out, in 1992. I liked it enough, but didn't have a strong attachment to it. I think my favorite part was the workout montage to the Divinyls' song.

The first time I saw the TV program was in 1999. Andy and I drove from Paris to Bruges in a little Twingo. When we got there we were so pooped we just watched TV, and we landed upon Buffy just as she was sadly killing her boyfriend Angel, end of season 2.

Shortly thereafter, Amber and I created Buffy Club, which meant that every Tuesday we would take her TV out of the closet, attach the Radio Shack Rabbit Ears, and watch Buffy. Later we would watch Smallville afterwards, but often it was on mute just so we could admire Clark.


Throughout time I've had many special Buffy friendship moments: there was the time we played the Buffy Board Game with Kevin and Shane, the time Amber never let me watch the episode with the horses, the time I went to Jeremy's Angel Club and Amber and I never spoke again, the time I saw Fred on the street walking her dog, the time Paul and I drank too much Fish House Punch and then spent the next day watching Buffy on the couch, and I'm sure more.

We've had many debates over which were the best seasons, by which I mean which was better, Season 3 (Faith) or Season 5 (Glory). I tend towards S5, but I can see the arguments for Faith. Of course I liked Buffy herself, but I was always more enamored of the secondary characters: primarily Cordelia, Faith, and Anya.


Nowadays people can read the Buffy Comics, and they even tried to get a animated program going:

But I prefer to leave the Buffiverse as a fond memory, occasionally revisited on the DVD. Amber and I still have standing Tuesday night plans, but now we call it Awesome Club, and mostly we watch Murder, She Wrote. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Thanks for the memories, Buffy!