The One With The Challenge: My Favorite Television Program

Once again I am forced to make a very difficult decision.

I have many different shows I like for different reasons. I loyally watched Friends for its entire run and still will catch an episode in reruns from time to time. There are several shows I have watched from the beginning and stuck with through good times and bad, like Grey's Anatomy and Lost. I love comedies like How I Met Your Mother, dramas like CSI and supernatural fare like The Vampire Diaries and, well, Supernatural. My current favorite is probably Glee, but even that show doesn't hold a candle to what I consider to be my absolute favorite TV show of all time.

And I am astonished I don't have it on DVD yet.

It was early spring of my sophomore year in college when I first started seeing the promos for this new show set to debut in March on the WB. After a quick 30 second hit I knew it was something I would have to check out. This show had everything I found interesting in a good hour of television. Action, adventure, comedy, suspense and of course, vampires. As anyone who reads this blog already knows I have loved vampires long and hard for years. Since I was old enough to understand what they were, vampires have fascinated me. But nothing cemented my love for the long-toothed dark mysteries of the night more than Buffy The Vampire Slayer.


I remember sitting in my dorm room after the pilot thinking, this, this is what I had been waiting for. Where had this caliber of show been all my life? Sure, there were a few (very few) hit or miss episodes, but mostly each time I watched this show I was captivated by not only the "monster of the week" aspect but the overall mythology interwoven in the series. How certain events and clues from one episode would become vital to another weeks ahead. In the world of Buffy the problems that teenagers face become literal monsters which is why I think I resonated so strongly with it. As Buffy grew and matured, so did I, experiencing a lot of the same things in life as she did (super powers aside) as we both went to college and struggled to find how we fit. Buffy soon became the must watch show of the week. We would hold viewing parties and I would record each episode to watch over and over again. The stories made me laugh, cry, scream and throw things at my TV (when Buffy had to kill Angel to stop the portal from opening...yeah my remote went flying as I screamed in anguish.) I can recall names of episodes that were brilliant in writing and acting, something I can't often do with other TV series that have so many episodes to recall. Innocence, Hush, The Body, Once More With Feeling are a few right off the top of my head that were so fabulous I get shivers even just thinking about them.

The casting was perfect. Sarah Michelle Geller was the every girl you could recognize with but still able to kick serious ass when need be. She plays the part so well you can imagine yourself as Buffy, struggling to adjust and accept these powers she never asked for. David Boreanaz was steamy as Angel, the first vampire with a soul that stole my heart long before a guy named Edward came along. Alyson Hannigan was the perfect best friend sidekick and I loved her portrayal of Willow so much I followed her years later to another of my current favorite shows, HIMYM. And who could not love Spike, the bleached bad boy from Britain. The Scooby gang made me long for my chance to research monsters and lore that would help our heroine and best friend beat the bad guys. I wanted my own Giles, Willow and Xander! I was so into the show I would long to be a part of the gang and help fight evil while still making it to class on time.

I watched Buffy, and its spin-off Angel, religiously every year until the last season, season 7, came around. At the time we had just moved back to Massachusetts and in planning for our wedding, the series switching channels to UPN which my cable service at the time did not have right away and not having a reliable VCR for long stretches of time, I missed a lot of episodes. I am such a purest I didn't watch the end of my favorite TV series of all time because I had not seen every thing I needed to know to watch the finale. I ended up seeing it years later when they came out on DVD and I could finally see the entire seventh season in its entirety. I still regret not seeing it when it was originally aired because some of the magic had gone a bit. But it was every bit amazing as I envisioned it being. Buffy went out in a blaze of glory, like I expected her to, and held nothing back. She's a character I strive to be like personally. Fearless, strong, and at the same time delicate and lovable. The all-around perfect role model, super powers or not.

Man, I need to go buy those DVDs now!