Happy 20th Birthday, Buffy! - Now Supergirl Slays (W/ SPOILERS)

     This past March, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In April, Entertainment Weekly reunited the cast for a chat about the show's impact. Star Sarah Michelle

Buffy explaining her relationship with
Angel - via GIPHY

Gellar and creator Joss Whedon agreed that their literal manifestation of "high school is hell" often played on multiple thematic levels and that their portrayal of happy relationships were far and few between. Gellar looked radiant sitting next to the still-hot David Boreanez, who played the sensitive soul-cursed vampire Angel. She admitted her personal choice would be for Buffy to live happily ever after with Angel instead of Spike (James Marsters), a bad vampire that gained his own conscience after falling in love with Buffy in the later seasons. Boreanez and two other cast members, Alexis Denisof (Wesley) and Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia) left he show after the 3rd season for Angel's spin-off, where the vampire "moonlighted" as a detective and saved L.A. from demons and lawyers. Carpenter incredibly looks as young as she did when Angel began filming 18 years ago. Denisof's rugged looks won him the hand of another cast member, Alyson Hannigan. The couple married in 2003.

The wisdom of 'Oz' via GIPHY

     There were deeper issues to discuss in the reunion than choosing a side in the Spike/Angel debate. Actresses Amber Benson (Tara) and Hannigan (Willow) spoke about their beautiful lesbian relationship on the show and how it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable on TV as little as 15 years ago. As Hannigan's other major love interest, Seth Green spoke more in this interview than his entire time on the show as laconic musician/werewolf, Daniel 'Oz' Osbourne. He offered to host cast potlucks! The loveable duo  Nick Brendan (Xander) and Emma Caulfield (Anya) agreed their characters would have stayed together if Anya hadn't been killed in the final episode.  By the end, Caulfield performed a dramatic then performed a eulogy for her character, who despised bunnies.

'The Body' - Season 5 via GIPHY

     The effervescent Kristine Sutherland (as Buffy's mom Joyce Summers) spoke about her role as the clueless mom and how she slowly became a mother to all of Buddy's marginalized friends, her ball of energy fake sister Dawn (Michelle Tractenberg), and some demons (Clem!!). This sometimes came at the expense of getting kidnapped or knocked unconscious. Sutherland spoke highly of the cast and their commitment to telling stories with multiple levels. Sutherland's character's unexpected death in the 5th season had a dramatic impact on the season, and I would go as far as to say, the course of the last two seasons of the show. Whedon addressed the story (Buffy's mom had first a brain tumor that made her see demons, and after healing, was found unconscious from an aneurysm.) and Buffy's absolute helplessness. There was nothing she could kill or beat up to help her mom, and she went through all of the feelings of grief  in one scene. Whedon also shared his mother passed away when he was a teenager. As he worked through his feelings, the writer found a catharsis and was grateful for fans to share their own experiences of losing a parent too young.

My signed postcard from
Sarah Michelle Gellar, 1999.

     In my 90's Buffy binge haze, something has become abundantly clear to me. While some of the fashion fuzzy sweaters camisoles over t-shirts, knee socks) and  Xander's dialogue is questionable, the messages and themes still hold up. The lessons are timeless and the gains are huge.  Buffy has very heavily influenced the current CW show Supergirl. Read on as I discuss both shows and the continuing legacy of kick-ass female superheroes.

Image from Comic Vine

TROPE: The Dual Identity
     This is pretty obvious, so I won't spend too long on this point. Gellar's Buffy always looked chic, and in the early seasons, Buffy seemed to own an unlimited closet of trench coats and leather jackets for all of her lurking.Buffy spent her high school career sorting through pencils and stakes in her bag and running from math class to stakeouts to graveyards.  She struggled to hold down a job after dropping out of college, although construction work seemed promising given her super strength.  While she didn't often get a restful night's sleep, being the slayer is her calling. She doesn't have a choice. She's lied to her family, dates, hospitals, police, and the entire town. In the end, her graduating class knew there was something funky going on and awarded her the class protector award.

Image from GIPHY

     As you may know, Melissa's Benoist's  Supergirl has a disguise. I'm not saying it's clever, but taking off the suit and throwing up a messy bun and thick glasses transform the hero into plain old Catco Media worker Kara Danvers. I am seriously in love with her red Supergirl boots! In her daily life, Kara dresses pretty boring, classic sweaters and button down shirts, trousers and pencil skirts. A casual game night will land her in some jeans. In her demure persona, Kara get bullied by both of her bosses. First, as an assistant to Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart), she gets shade for the the long coffee runs end with defeating aliens and warming up the coffee with her eyes.

GIF from Timblr

     In season 2, she moved up to the rank of  magazine reporter (yes, that's still a paying job in National City). At times Kara stands up for herself to her Editor-in-Chief Snapper Carr, but writes way too many basic pieces about her buddy, Lena Luthor. She, like Buffy, fired. Then like Buffy, she saves the world, stops an alien registry (so timely with politics), gets re-hired by Catco. Cat reveals after a traumatic battle that she knows Kara (often purposely called Kira by Cat, like in Devil Wears Prada) she's Supergirl. Cat had a great friendship with Sueprgirl over the course of season 1, but was always tough on Kara. On top of all of this, Kara is a super hero because she's an alien that crash landed on earth. She was supposed to protect her baby cousin, but she got lost on her way to earth, and he was grown up and fighting bad aliens off his new planet by the time she arrived. With her powers from her homeland and parental-instilled sense of right and wrong, Kara can't sit by and watch other aliens bring chaos and destruction.

TROPE: The adopted sister/Protecting Family

GIF via FanPop

     Buffy was an only child until some  monks with no eyes combined a dimensional portal into a human body (season 5). They called the teenage girl 'Dawn' and wrote her into everyone's memory. This was an interesting plot choice and became the key arc of season 5. A demon (Hell-God if we're being precise) named Glory (Clare Kramer) was trapped in our dimension and wanted to go home. The way out was a portal with a special key, which was running through Dawn's veins. This led to the phrase "Dawn's kidnapped? It must been Tuesday night."  A super creepy guy named Doc (the legendary Joel Grey) finally lured Dawn away and put her up a big tower in  a junkyard as her blood began to open the portal. In order to save her sister and the dimension, Buffy jumped in to use her blood to close the portal, killing herself in the process. Buffy's sacrifice (in the 100th episode, titled The Gift)  is one of the most devastating season endings of any show. Joss broke the rules by killing off his heroine (twice), during a time of network uncertainty and a season already marked by Joyce' death weeks earlier. The show was cancelled by the WB after contact renewal discussions and "The Gift" ended with a sappy title card from the network thanking the show for 5 years.

     Buffy didn't take things lying down. The show was quickly acquired by UPN and lived on for two more seasons. (Ironically both networks merged a few years later to form the current CW). Whedon also found loopholes to bring Buffy back after both deaths, however damaged she might be. Both times, Buffy's friends jumped in to rescue her. If she was a typical slayer, Buffy have no friends and would have probably died the second she arrived in Sunnydale. But as the every-woman slayer of the 90's/2000's, Buffy made connections with friends that were committed to save the world. As Xander once said, "Here to help. Want to live..." 

Kara and Alex celebrate a rough day. - via Tumblr

     Supergirl had a different family structure from the start. Alex Danvers (Chyler Leigh) became Kara's big sister when the young alien landed on earth and met up with her cousin, now known as Superman. Kara's cousin placed her with the Danvers family because they protected and raised him.  This new family struck Kara odd at some points but provided her a foundation for being a normal kid.  Sure she could melt things with her eyes and fly, but she was asked to keep those under wraps. As the younger sister, Kara always wants to please Alex. First, she saved Alex's commuter plane,  revealing herself to the world as a superhero. In their many adventures with the Dept. of Extraterrestrial Operations (DEO) Alex has dram jumped and done many stupid things for a human, all in the name of saving her much-powerful sister. The girls became very close to their mother as teens, much like Buffy and Dawn, although for much different reasons.

     The Danvers girls were told their father died on a professorial mission, which was a lie because it was  a mission for his secret DEO work and he is very much alive, minus a hand. Read my take here. The Summers girls were a product of divorce. Buffy's unpredictable all-night slayer schedule and school trouble for 'fighting' put a strain on her parents' already-fragile marriage. Mom moved the girls to a new town and their dad just stopped showing up after a few years. Even Angel came to Joyce's funeral, but Mr. Summers was off on an island (allegedly with his secretary).

     In both cases, the girls became close to their mothers out of necessity. In the season 2 thanksgiving episode, both sisters were trying to outbid each other to out themselves to their mother. Kara planned to come clean about being Supergirl (where has her mom been living by the way? How could she not notice or suspect?). and Alex about her newly discovered feelings for a woman, Maggie. The Danvers girls found a great amount of respect from their mom when everything resolved, which took a lot longer for Buffy. In late season 2, she began letting her mom in on more things, explaining her creepy (vampire) ex was not invited inside the house anymore. The season closer finally brought Buffy, Joyce and Spike to a conversation where Buffy declared herself a slayer. "Did you every try not being one?" asked Joyce. While the subtext for a different coming out is here, Joyce represented the 90's parent, much more naive and willing to believe her kid was out doing good instead of bad. But after a summer, [Buffy ran away to be a vampire-free waitress (possibly the longest non-slayer job she ever had] she returned home again and was welcomed in with a new sense of understanding and maturity.
   
Other Future Tropes to Discuss:

• "GIVE ME SOMETHING TO SING ABOUT!" -Musicals
• The Surrogate Father
• The Delicate Balance: Romance Vs. Saving the World
• The Scoobies vs. The Justice League