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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
The best and worst of TV's season-ending episodes.
Jun 1, 1999 | The TV season officially ended last week the way it always does -- in a spasm of weddings, births, deaths and other gimmicks. But the oddest finale by far was the real-life cliffhanger WB executives devised for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." A day before the second part of the season finale, "Graduation Day," was to air, WB chief executive officer Jamie Kellner announced that the network had postponed the episode "out of sympathy and compassion for the families and communities that have been devastated by the recent senseless acts of violence perpetrated on high school campuses." The episode that was pulled depicted high school seniors in an apocalyptic battle with a 60-foot-tall serpent demon at their commencement. At one point, reportedly, part of the school blows up. Instead of the finale, WB substituted a rerun from earlier in the year.
This was the second time since Littleton that WB executives had shelved a "Buffy" episode just hours before airtime. A week after the massacre, the episode "Earshot" was pulled because it involved Buffy discovering that a classmate was planning a mass murder at school.
The strangest thing about WB's decision to pull "Graduation Day, Part 2" was Kellner's assertion that the episode would air sometime later this summer -- implying that the memory of Littleton, and the debate over violent images in the media, would both have faded by then. WB is gambling that the American attention span regarding news events will remain short, and the gamble will probably pay off. For now, its act of self-policing protects a vulnerable media giant -- Time Warner has long been a target of anti-media violence groups. But moving "Graduation Day, Part 2" to August or so serves the network by keeping fans' curiosity piqued and creating a ready-made media event when it does run. It also gives the episode a better, less competitive air date, removing it from the swirl of May finales, and that's good for the fall 1999 "Buffy" spinoff "Angel," which "Graduation Day, Part 2" sets up. ("Buffy" fans on the Net have launched a counter-attack on WB, offering a bootleg of the episode for download.)
After watching "Part 1," I can see why WB pulled "Part 2." It was impossible to hear high school kids in the episode saying things like "If I survive graduation day" and "We have our whole lives ahead of us and now we're not going to get to do the things we're supposed to do" and not find yourself distracted by thoughts of Littleton.
That doesn't mean WB was right, though. "Buffy" is caught up in the aftermath of Littleton, but it's being punished for anticipating it. In its Gothic horror-cartoon way, "Buffy" is an extraordinarily astute depiction of what it's like to be a teenager in suburbia. The show is all metaphor. For much of its run, the weird, different-drummer kids like vampire slayer Buffy, brainiac Willow, geek Xander, werewolf/garage band dude Oz were the only ones who could see the truth about the world around them (the popular kids and the jocks are finally catching on, though). Since their California suburb, Sunnydale, sits atop the mouth of hell, evil is a stalking, breathing, undead thing. But "Buffy" makes it clear that this evil is as old as the world itself -- not a new concept like video games, the Internet or rock 'n' roll, all of which the parents and teachers of Sunnydale have been quick to blame for the town's numerous killings and maimings.
But Buffy and her friends are unusually resilient in the face of evil; beneath its smartly delivered wisecracks and demons of the week, "Buffy" is the most optimistic show on television. Friends stay loyal; classmates rise above petty rivalries and cliques to battle adversity together; teens sacrifice their own desires to a larger sense of duty and community. On "Buffy," goodness always triumphs, and darkness isn't represented solely by vampires, zombies and 60-foot-high serpent demons, but also by teenage depression, alienation and thoughtless cruelty. The episode that aired the week before "Graduation Day, Part 1" recalled Littleton even more directly than the finale: Buffy discovered a boy's plan to unleash a pack of killer hellhounds at the senior prom as revenge on all the girls who turned him down for a date. Buffy kicked his ass of course; no troubled teenager ever gets away with violent acts of vengeance here, and anybody searching for validation of antisocial, neo-Nazi, violent, self-pitying behavior would probably be bored by the show.
The real world, in the form of problem kids with easy access to weapons, has finally caught up with the formerly over-the-top universe of "Buffy." The wise-ass wisdom the show imparted to viewers -- high school sucks, but you'll live -- has served many an unpopular kid very well for a long time. Not anymore.
