The Legacy of Joss Whedon

Ten years ago, on March 10, 1997, the cult television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on the now-defunct network The WB. Based on a unsuccessful motion picture of the same name, no one gave the show much of a chance at the time, especially since no one was giving The WB much of a chance to begin with. But succeed it did, for seven seasons, in many ways changing the television landscape — and for the better — in the process.

Created by Joss Whedon, a third-generation television writer, Buffy centered on a high school girl serving as her generation's "chosen one" in the battle of good-versus-evil, with "evil" primarily manifesting in the form of vampires. Neither the name of the series, nor any one-sentence synopsis, however, does justice to what the series actually became: a female-empowering, life-as-metaphor, genre-mixing concoction of great characterization, dialogue and storytelling.

Whedon would go on to create two other television shows, Angel and Firefly. Buffy ended in 2003, Angel in 2004, and Firefly was cancelled by FOX after only eleven episodes in 2002. But ten years after Buffy premiered, Whedon's legacy lives on. His most important contribution (besides the often-cited creation of a strong female heroine who paved the way for the likes of Sydney Bristow and Veronica Mars) is the concept of the self-contained season. Not knowing if the series would last, Whedon crafted the first season of Buffy as a self-contained story, and each subsequent season followed a similar blueprint: Buffy Summers had to face a "Big Bad" intent on destroying the world, only to thwart and defeat said Big Bad by the season finale. It is a concept that Veronica Mars utilized its first two seasons, and one that Heroes likewise seems intent on following in its inaugural.

Whedon's influence goes beyond this particular story-telling device, however, and many shows owe credit to his ground breaking efforts. Some cases in point:

— Before Boone, Shannon, Anna-Lucia, Libby and Eko went to the Big Kahuna in the sky on Lost, Whedon had already built a reputation for killing off fan-favorite characters. Doyle sacrificed his life in season one of Angel, while Wesley met his demise in the series finale. Tara was murdered in season six of Buffy, Anya was killed in season seven. Even Firefly was not immune; in the big-screen adaptation Serenity, two of the nine major characters died by the time the closing credits rolled.

— Before Gilmore Girls expanded our vocabulary with a litany of pop-culture references, Buffy taught us how to use such fictional names like "Scully" and "Keyser Soze" as verbs, as well as "Stepford Housewives" as an adjective. In fact, the show practically created a language of its own. A book on the phenomenon (Slayer Slang) was published by the Oxford University Press in 2003.

— Before The O.C. had the Bait Shop, Buffy had the Bronze, where indie-rockers along the likes of Aimee Mann, Splendid, Cibo Matto, Angie Hart, Michelle Branch and Nerf Herder all performed.

— Before the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi Channel redefined the definition of "science fiction," Buffy had defied genre expectations of its own by deftly combining horror, fantasy, action, drama and comedy.

— Before Lost started depending on flashback as a form of storytelling, both Buffy and Angel had used it to tell the sagas of their centuries-old vampires and demons, including Angel, Spike, Darla, Drusilla and Anya, filling in those back stories to create more compelling characters.

— And before there was Grey's Anatomy, there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At least according to series creator Shonda Rhimes, who told the New York Times (Sept. 28, 2006), "I realized a lot of the really good character development is happening on TV," before specifically citing Buffy. "The language was great, the world was great, and you completely invested in those characters. I'm still not over its cancellation."

In professional sports, one way to measure a coach/manager's legacy is by how many of their assistants move on to become successful with other teams. For a television creator/executive producer, a corresponding measure would be how many of their writers move on to find success with other series. And in the case of Whedon, the list is impressive. Shawn Ryan, a writer during season two of Angel, went on to create The Shield. Tim Minear, who worked on both Angel and Firefly, served as executive producer on the short-lived Wonderfalls, and co-created the new FOX drama Drive, scheduled to premier in April.

There are also numerous shows that have hired Whedon alumni as writers, a virtual roll-call of the most critically-acclaimed series from this decade: 24, Alias, Battlestar Galactica, CSI, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, The O.C., Rome, Smallville.

When Angel was cancelled during its fifth season, Felicity/Alias/Lost creator J.J. Abrams immediately snagged two of that series' writers for his own shows. He told Zap2It at the time (Dec. 10, 2004): "You desperately try to find the best people out there to work with. I felt slightly like an ambulance chaser, but... I know he (Whedon) has an amazing ability to find these great writers."

Both Whedon and Abrams recently directed back-to-back episodes of NBC's The Office. Kristen Veitch of E! referred to them as "the two best TV directors alive" in her Feb. 12, 2007 blog post, and watching the Whedon outing, entitled "Business School," it is easy to see why. The scenes within the confines of Dunder-Mifflin were filmed in a very rapid, quick-in, quick-out fashion, keeping the light-hearted plot of a bat on the loose moving at a swift pace. But when the story switches to Pam's art school exhibition, which serves as the emotional crux of the episode, Whedon uses slower, steadier camera movements to add to the scene's impact. In both cases, his direction proved effective.

But it was a morsel, simply an hors d'oeuvres to whet our appetites. Although Whedon has not officially "retired" from television, he has been putting his efforts into both motion pictures and comic books as of late, leaving fans to patiently wait and wonder when he will return to the small screen; one can only hope that a full-course meal will again be in the offering from Whedon in the not-so-distant future, adding to his already impressive legacy.

E-mail Anthony Letizia at anthonyletizia at hotmail dot com.