Buffy

My straight lesbian blogger friend out east has recently come to the conclusion that Buffy rocks. As in, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, this is bound to happen to anyone who has seen a Whedon production. .. Resistance is futile... Hmm... Bad taste; shouldn't mix pop-cultural phenemonas.

Her post got me thinking about TV and, you know, other than being a complete brain atrophic, the good that can come from enjoying the occasional viscous violent vampire vivisection. Prior to the last few years, I had been an avid consumer of the delicasies offered up on TV as sitcoms, dramas, dramedies, drahmsitcomedies, sitcomrahmedies, buddyromcomdrahmedies, etcetera and so forth.

As a child, - Prior to cable, the discouragement of latchkey kids and video games other than pong - I spent a lot of time watching shows like Andy Griffith, Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, My Favorite Martian, Lost in Space, I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Star Trek, The Munsters, The Adams Family, Gilligan's Island..... I lived with my pops and he worked days, nights, days and nights, etcetera, consequently, I had a lot of time on my hands. And sort of like that old HBO show, Dream On, TV played a large role in shaping my (cliche alert) young and formative mind. (Quick 'Splaination: My bros lived with my moms and my sis wasn't around yet. More questions? Hold onto them, I may get to them sometime)

You can learn a lot from TV I guess. Like, for example, there were no black people back in the day. TV shows were black and white, but the people in the TV shows were not. Apparantly blacks appeared around the mid to late 60s early 70s. When they did start to show up on programs, as I got older, they were mostly thieves, pimps, taxi drivers or Huggy Bear. Ah, Huggy Bear. Anyway, my point isn't to rehash the cultural evolution of television, my point is... er, well, I guess I don't really have a point.

Other things I learned from the great B&W TV shows: Always open a door for ladies, always stand for ladies, always allow ladies to precede you, when kissing a lady, be sure to crush her in a bear hug while mashing your closed mouth as hard into her face as the law allows. That last bit is essential.

Listening to Melissa, you can't help but realize that Whedon, via Buffy, presents us with life in all its complex, painful and exhilerating glory thru campy tongue in cheek dialogue and fantastic and impossible situations. Tempered with a dose of realism, maybe an atrophic isn't all bad?

Top Five TV Monster Serials (Caveat: I haven't seen any of the recent slew of monster shows, like Surface, etc)

1) X-Files
2) Buffy
3) Night Stalker (old one, not new one)
4) Angel
5) Dobey Gillis