The first I knew of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an ad I saw on the side of a Michigan Avenue bus in the early '90s. After seeing the movie, I thought it possibly the stupidest piece of shit of that year, and I did not, as I usually would, mean that as a compliment. So when, five years later, I heard that there would be a TV series based on the movie, my reaction, in full, was, "I can't wait for the Howard the Duck TV series." I did not bother watching it.

            But over the next couple of years, people I respected, both in real life and online, kept recommending the damn show. My usual reply--"Seriously?"--began to wane in intensity, and I started to get a little bit curious. In the spring of '99, I had a little time to myself, because of how unemployed I was and how broken up with my girlfriend I was and how fucked up and devastated about the breakup I was, so I thought to myself, Self, why the hells not? Let's watch us some Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also, I was drinking a lot and that tends to lower my sales resistance.

            The first episode I ever saw was called "Gingerbread," and I reacted rather differently from the way I'd reacted to the movie: I believe a romantic might call it rapture (not the capital "R" kind; I didn't float away heavenward) (actually, I doubt I'd be one of the ones floating away even in the big "R" rapture) (but if you are, can I have your stuff?). Was I really hearing dialog this witty? Was there really a show on television with a plot this complex and convoluted? Did this episode actually have a subtext about gay children coming out to their parents, and the parents' reactions? (Was the rejectionist parents' organization really called Mothers Opposed to the Occult--MOO? I didn't yet know that there was also the Council Of Watchers: COW.) Was the writing really this good? My reaction was still, "Seriously?" but I meant it a whole different way.

            In the ensuing year or two, I went completely fucknuts, in a benign and mostly harmless obsessive fanboy kind of way. I immediately ordered the Season 1 and Season 2 tapes--they were not the complete seasons, but they were the best I could do: there were no DVDs yet, and the show hadn't yet gone into syndication. I knew months in advance when both those holes in the time-space continuum would be remedied, and recorded every episode I could, and had my advance order in for the DVDs the minute Amazon allowed me to. No, I didn't have a creepy old-guy crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar (Willow would have been more my type anyway); I had a creepy old-guy crush on the writers. Lines like "The subtext here is rapidly becoming, er, text," and "Mom, I'm not acting out, I'm a witch! I can make pencils float! And I can summon the four elements! Okay, two, but four soon. And I'm dating a musician!" were just icing on this show's cake of writer-y goodness. (My kids and I still use the word, "mathier," from the line, "He probably sat in math class thinking, 'There should be more math. This could be mathier.'") (And my personal favorite: "Tact is just not saying true stuff. I'll pass.") (I'll stop now.) The characters were fully realized, the plot arcs utterly involving and unexpected, and the emotions operatic. (Especially the end of Season 2.) (And to anyone who might have been with me while watching "Becoming Part 2:" those were allergies. I have allergies. They make my eyes water.) Dude, I had dreams set in the Buffyverse. You could not shut me up about Buffy; luckily, there was the Salon Table Talk Buffy thread, where I could, with all the other obsessive geeks, speculate (i.e., fanwank) endlessly about the meaning of Spike's erroneous crediting of Angel with being his sire and what the hells was up with that sister of the Slayer and had Joss finally overreached by pitting Buffy against an actual god? I had never become so engrossed in a TV series.

            Oh, and having a tiny little blonde protagonist who talked tough (when she wasn't speaking in an endearingly goofy teen patois that no teen had ever been witty enough to speak in) and who kicked vampire ass (and demon ass, and Ultimate Evil ass), a protagonist my tiny little brunette daughters could emulate, just closed the deal for me. By the time I'd seen every episode, I was Joss Whedon's bitch.

            Ah, yes, Joss. I rapidly had the same writer-crush (a manly platonic one, you understand) (because of how manly and, um, platonic, I am) on him that I did on Harlan Ellison and Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon; that motherfucker could write. He wasn't writing just a vampire show, he wasn't writing a teen drama (yeah, I'm talking to you, Vampire Diaries, you boring-ass pale shadow of the wonder that was Buffy), he wasn't writing melodrama: he was writing drama. I suspected that most of the show's fans were older; I know that damned few of the participants in the Table Talk Buffy thread were teenagers. You could talk about the show in an adult way, derive from it adult meanings: it was mature writing that had a deeply subversive streak of humor (often extremely black humor). It was, quite simply one of the two or three best-written shows ever on the small screen, and easily the equal or the better of all but a few on the large screen.

            When Whedon spun off Angel and it too hit that same high level of writing, I went from being his bitch to being his acolyte. Seriously, I had a robe.

            The quality of Buffy's writing declined in the last couple of years it was on the air; I've long felt that it should have quit at a low point, the end of the fifth season, before it got even worse in its horrendous sixth and seventh seasons. (The musical episode was a welcome, if brief, respite from this decline.) Joss seemed increasingly to have lost interest in the show, letting developments be driven by his producer, Marti Noxon. (Across the interwebs in those failing years of the show, one could read the cri de coeur: "MARTI NOXON, YOU SUCK!!!") Noxon's idea of drama was to romantically entangle characters who had no chemistry, nothing in common and no good reason to be together, then, by dint of repetition, beat viewers into submission so they'd accept the mismatch. (Noxon was also responsible for the pairing of George and Izzy on Grey's Anatomy. Be very afraid if you watch Mad Men: she's now the executive producer of that so-far fine series.) (Expect Don Draper and Bert Cooper to start going at it like crazed minks any episode now.) When the show's Big Bad, Spike, became a Buffy-loving teddy bear with fangs, many of us groaned deeply. The subtext had not only become text, it had become crappy text. I watched to the end, vainly hoping for a sign of life from the moribund body hooked up to the ventilator.

            I'm watching the Buffy DVDs (yeah, I own all seven seasons; so?) again with HGG, who missed Buffy when it was first on, and since it's been a while since I was a Watcher, I'd forgotten some of the best bits, and have been delighted to discover them again, and to find that well-remembered scenes like the ending of "Becoming Part 2" still have the kick, you should excuse the expression, that they always did. And I'm of course watching Whedon's Dollhouse, which is probably a more technically proficient, mature and troubling show. It's just not Buffy, though.

            Your first real love will always have more bite.