Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is what happens when teen drama, horror, and monster-of-the-week storytelling are forced to share the same hallway. By our assessment, its real strength is the mix of tone: it can be funny, sad, and scary without losing the emotional thread that keeps Buffy and the rest of the cast grounded. The downside is that the show’s long run includes stretches where the premise has to stretch to keep going, and the mythology can become a lot to track. In practice it still feels fast, witty, and strangely intimate for a supernatural series, because the fights and the high-school and college problems are tied together. Compared with straight horror shows, it is more emotionally open; compared with plain teen drama, it is much wilder. Buffy the Vampire Slayer changed what a genre TV show could carry on its shoulders, and that mix still holds up.