Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a television series that ran for seven seasons, 1997-2003. The brainchild of Joss Whedon, who wrote the screenplay for the original 1992 film and served as the guiding force behind its move to TV, BtVS premiered in mid-season on the WB in 1997. Beginning in Fall 2002, however, BtVS moved to UPN. After its star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, decided in 2003 not to return to the show, Whedon decided to bring the series to an end. Its final episode aired on May 20, 2003. Starting in 2001, with 100 episode in the can, the series began to air in syndication on FX. In Fall 1999, BtVS spun off Angel, a series that remains on the WB.
Buffy tells the story of Buffy Summers (Gellar), a southern California girl living in Sunnydale, a town built over a "Hellmouth" that is a center of demonic energy, who fulfills her role as the "one girl in all the world with the strength and skill to fight the vampires." With the continuing help of friends like Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), and, until recently, her Watcher, Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Buffy continued to battle not only the forces of darkness but her own inner demons.
In an interview with The Onion, Joss Whedon admits "I designed Buffy to be an icon, to be an emotional experience, to be loved in a way that other shows can't be loved. Because it's about adolescence, which is the most important thing people go through in their development, becoming an adult. And it mythologizes it in such a way, such a romantic way--it basically says, 'Everybody who made it through adolescence is a hero.' And I think that's very personal, that people get something from that that's very real. And I don't think I could be more pompous. But I mean every word of it. I wanted her to be a cultural phenomenon. I wanted there to be dolls, Barbie with kung-fu grip. I wanted people to embrace it in a way that exists beyond, 'Oh, that was a wonderful show about lawyers, let's have dinner.' I wanted people to internalize it, and make up fantasies where they were in the story, to take it home with them, for it to exist beyond the TV show. And we've done exactly that."
Slayage is a continuing effort to articulate the meaning and significance of this amazing television series.