Buffy Legacy and Final Thoughts

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We would love your tales of nineties festival who are. Why not tell us all about your tent technique? Just email talk nineties to me at podmasters. co. uk or you could give us a voice note on Instagram at Talk nineties to me pod. Now on with the show . This is Talk nineties to me, where we get chucked out of school for burning it down, go to another one which has a hellmouth in its library, gather a collection of dorky, funny friends, fall in love with a couple of real wrongs and a boring rebound guy, try to live like a normal teenage girl whilst having to kill off vampires, monsters and big bads, die twice, come back equipping, and generally cause havoc whilst never quaking in our stylish but affordable boots. I'm Miranda Slayer and yes this week on Talk nineties to me, we are talking Buffy the Vampire Slayer Woo . And with me to discuss all things teenage and monstrous and vampiric . I am delighted to welcome Brendan Murphy, ace comedian and creator of Buffy Revamped, a show where he goes through all seven seasons of Buffy in seventy minutes whilst playing its most iconic male character and that is Spike. Spike. Spike . Hi Brendan. You are the perfect expert. And you are the perfect expert because as ever , I have not watched Buffy . I never watched any telling nineties. It's amazing that you're admitting this. Yeah, I admit this. I literally never watched any telly in the nineties because I was always out. Yeah, that's fair. And I just resisted the call of buffy. However , for this show, I have watched some buffy and I have to say it's really good . Oh yeah, good. Like I feel like this is now going to be something that I can return to and really enjoy. Like the acting is incredible, the wit is impeccable. I mean, the monsters are a bit off occasionally . I mean, it was the nineties . They were still good with a lower budget and building up, but it kind of stands up, right? Completely stands up. I was really surprised. I really I'm not somebody for, you know, I'm not a doctor who nerd. It's not my genre and I really really what I've seen I really really enjoyed is well that's great. Yeah, it's great. It's fantastic. Okay . So I feel like we should obviously start at the beginning . The beginning is really with a creator Jos Whseden, who we will return to wards the end of this talk . But Joss Whedon basically is a script writer from a family of script writers . His father was involved in the business, his grandpa was involved in the business. He doesn't really know what to do with himself, and he thinks, you know what, maybe I'll do that as well . And he comes up with an idea . And the idea is based on two things. One is the idea that high school and teenage life is hell on earth. Yeah . Which I do quite like. And the other one is the idea that in most horror films there is a beautiful young blonde girl who is chased down and killed. She's always the person that leaves the house you're like, Mate, don't leave the house what are you doing? You're going to die because you're too pretty and you also probably are slightly you know you're having sex or you have to die. And this is a quote from him. He said the first thing I ever thought of when I thought of the movie this because there's a movie before the tele show was the little girl, the little blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror movie, the idea of Buffy was to subvert that idea in that image and create someone who was a hero where she'd always been a victim. That element a surprise, that element of genre busting is very much at the heart of both the movie and the series. Absolutely. That's which is like as soon as you read that you're like, Oh, I'm sold. Yeah . But they do this movie . They do the movie first before they do the series. The movie has all the elements of the series, but not quite right, right? Yeah, so he wrote the script, but he didn't direct it. So it was kind of his vision , but it didn't go quite down how he wanted it to No, it didn't. And it's a different cast . Notably for the watcher, which is who is eventually played by Antony Heard it's Donald Sutherland. And Donald Swutherland misbehaves really badly on the film. I think you can say this seems to be completely backed up by evidence in that he just didn't say the script. You would just go off script and throw everybody off and was really difficult to deal with. I think perhaps at the time people weren't taking it seriously you're right a concept and Josh Whedon is this you know wondakin' this precocious young sci fi nerd who has studied film and comic books and therefore in the TV show you get all of these wonderful references and whatnot. But I think going through the Hollywood sort of film mill , some of the things that he wanted to happen didn't quite happen. Yeah, I mean , it basically sounds it's not a complete disaster. You know, the reviews are okay , but it sounds like, you know, when they call it a formative experience , one of them like had you, know, at the time it was terrible . But anyway, there is a line in that film which I really, really like. So the buffy character is played by this woman called Christie Swanson. Yeah . And so the Donald Southern character, her Sullivan character, her watcher, says to her that she's not like other girls . And she pulls in close and whispers in her ear, Yes I am . And that is great . Yeah. That is really great because you know, when the series happens and generally throughout the whole of this these seven series, the thing that is really amazing to me, bear in mind, I'm the mother of a fifteen year old girl. Yeah, yeah, is teenage girls are actually phenomenal. Like they are, in real life they really are. Like they wipe the floor of the boys at that age. They're really funny, they know what they want to do, they're like they obviously kind of look brilliant, you know, they dress how they want to dress. And it absolutely taps into that . So the fact that a young woman at school will have all these teachers telling her to do and she's a bit like yeah whatever and does her own thing and that is like at the heart of the show. She has this superpower and you know, one of the sort of themes of Buffy is one girl in all the world . So she is special. She's outstanding, but by the end of it, it's all of the women . It's all of these young women just coming in, finding their own power and also no longer having to hide it. 'Cause like a lot of the series about her making sure she's not rumbled, she has to go out at night. She can't tell other people. People think it's weird. I mean, there's other slight plot holes in terms of like the police never calling up the vampire threat Rubbish. The death counts pretty high. Yeah . And there's also a factor that she doesn't, I mean it changed she meets another slayer who's like her dark counterpart in a later series. But there is also the element where she's a slayer. So she is this absolutely exceptional person, but she doesn't really want to be. She wants to go to the mall. They will say Mall, don't they? Yeah, I go say mall. She wants to be normal. And that's a big theme because what's interesting to me is like obviously she's exceptional, but also even in being normal, teenage girls are quite exceptional. They're like an unusual being. There's this kind of role that I think for Buffy that she's been told she has to fulfill and she kind of can do she could pass . You know, she auditions for the cheerleading team . She's got a very sort of all American look. She's just she looks like an innocent blonde girl just going to school and she didn't choose to be a slayer either. It's just something that's within her . And then she's being told by her watcher, you have this, you know, this power and responsibility as well, that you have to go out and fight the forces of evil when she just wants to go to the prom. Yeah, exactly. If you wants to wear cool boots, man . Okay , so they make this film. It isn't, you know, it's alright. It's not really particularly well received. It's okay . And then Josh Whedon is given the chance to make it into a series. It came out on a channel called WB, which stands for Warner Bros. But this was a small channel not well known. The WB was like , I think they were just starting around that time, putting out stuff that was geared towards a teen demographic. So there are lots of other shows. This was a little bit of a standout because of its supernatural nature and also the sort of form in which they broke genre barriers. They had a musical episode. They started . But when it first came out, I think the WB just thought, Oh, well, it's the film did alright with the demographic that we're looking at and they didn't really think anything beyond that. But it did soon to outgrow the channel and sort of bring a lot of notoriety to it as well. Yeah definitely it kind of made the channel which I think it was, you know very, was happy for. They did eventually move off it, but you know, that's what happened. So do you want to talk about Sarah Michelle Geller? Because she's like, I would love to. She is amazing. Like that is like, I mean, I have to say, you know, having watched very few episodes now. I was like, Oh my God, this girl is amazing. She's really young when she starts, isn't she? Season one, I think she was twenty. Amazing . And she is number one on the call sheet. She in pretty's much every scene . It's a phenomenal workload and for I mean, I think she had been she'd been in a few things beforehand, but this was the first real lead role. She goes to a really just to say she, goes through a really intense process to get the part as well. Yeah, she gets cordelia at first and then they say, Oh maybe do you want to try out buffy? And she's like, Oh, I don't know because then I might lose Cordelia. They make her do about nine auditions. And by the very end she literally goes in crying and going, I'm really sorry. It's just all too much for me. I'll take Cordelia and they go, Yay. It's amazing. Yeah , she's a Powerhouse. Yeah. And amazing. You know, it's impossible to imagine anyone else doing that role now. Yeah, absolutely. She's really, really, really good. With the dramatic performance, but also so much of the comedy. Yeah . She's great and the it's very hard to get that sense of, I don't know, like the kinship between the characters. Yeah. It feels real. I think that's why so many people love it so much because it's that kind of chosen family thing. Yeah, you know, they're all outcasts in their own way. Do you want to explain who they are? So in the original season , there's Buffy . There is William Willow. Sander and Cordelia. Really? Is that it? Yeah, yeah. And there's a whole other group of people around, but they're the hardcore, right? They're the scoobies. Yeah, they're the scooby gang. They go off on the advent ures, they share in the secrets that is , you know, that there's vampires and demons and all this sort of stuff. And how would you describe each character ? Okay, so Buffy is the protagonist. She's the hero . She's the slayer, she has the burden and responsibility . Then you've got Willow who is her really so sweet, nerdy wallflower best friend. That's played by Allison Hanagan. And she has a cute red hacker. Absolutely. And she's like apologizing for existing . And she like the wonderful thing is all of the characters go on the most tremendous character arcs through the seven seasons . Willow goes from being , yeah, complete like just the shyest little thing in the world to becoming the greatest threat to the world . Whenever she turns into dark willow, she almost destroys the world. She has this unbelievable witchcraft power within her Xander is a goofy friend is tripping over himself but means well and is kind of the heart of the group. And that's played by Nicholas Brandon and it's basically Josh Whedon. Basically, yeah . Zander is, I think, the character that ages less well when you're re watching through the twenty twenty six . That's just boys. Yeah. Boys from the Nighties Age worth less. We there's like a thing in my show where I asked the audience, you know, Zander, is he an incel or is he just a sixteen year old boy? You know, he's in the nineties , it's kind of hard to tell. Yeah. Yeah . But I think he does grow and he learns. He's overprotective, but he's got a good heart. And then Cordelia is amazing because she comes across as this classic mean girl , maybe even a bit of an airhead. And she's played by Charisma Carpenter. Yeah , and so phenomenally done. And she becomes this she's so witty, she's so brilliant. She's powerful. She backs herself, she backs buffy . She goes through this like journey. She loses her money, she becomes independent and yeah, I mean between them they cover all sort of facets of the experience of being a sixteen year old . Exactly that because one of the things that Josh Wheden said when he was thinking about it I mean I do think sometimes when people when writers talk about their scripts and stuff like that, they kind of post rationalize it. You know, in the end you're trying to write an entertaining show. But he said, look, we are all these people . Like he didn't want it to be divided, which is so often the case in American shows about schools that you know, you're a nerd or a jock, you're a geek or you can hit a ball. You know, like most people and most teenagers are all of these things . So the idea is within that group, you can instead of kind of say with six in the city, you go, I'm a Miranda do what I mean? Like, you don't have to pick one because you're actually all of them. That's the idea of it. Yeah, you don't have to fit into well, we define ourselves often in those situations by like what clique you are , are you a jock, are you a nerd, whatever it is. But for them , it was like not fitting in was the common factor. I mean, we love it, don't we? Absolutely. And that's why it's huge with the LGBTQ community . The idea of life . Especially with what happens with because Willow basically starts off and she's like she has various kind of affairs with boys especially and then eventually she has a really, really important love affair with Tara. Yeah , yeah. And you know, at the time it hadn't really happened on TV . No, and it's also very they have great difficulty with it. So when they do actually have this very intense love affair from the top, from the kind of studio at the top they're like they can't kiss. I mean it's unbelievable isn't it? I think the way that it was portrayed on screen was actually really it was really impressive because they just focused on the friendship and the love and then the way the other characters also cut and darn, there's a moment where Spike sees Willow just sort of playing with Tyra's hair and he just goes okay and that's it. No he, doesn't mention it.' Its just like, oh, I guess that's happening now. Yeah , which is, I imagine exactly what you'd want. Yeah, you know, it doesn't have a big, big deal. This isn't weird . This isn't strange or wrong. No, that's great. So we're going to get on Sptikeo and Angel a little in bit how,ever, I would like you to just tell me how you encountered Buffy because you've now done, I mean, I'm not being funny about it, you've now done the whole bloody thing. So you obviously meant something to you when you were a kid. How did you come across it? I loved it. I was , I think I was ten when it came out, so a little younger than the target though that's inspirational. It was aspirational. And you know, you've been watching these twenty year olds play sixteen year olds, but the fact that I grew up in Birmingham, I went to a state school and like Californian school with lockers and people are wearing their own clothes. Look, can we just have a moment for lockers? Lockers were so exotic to us, weren't they? Absolutely. Imagine having a locker. We never had anything like that. You were lucky if you had like a drawer in your desk . Yeah, absolutely. With all the bubbleg um stuck to the mouth. Nobody had a locker. So excited around a bag. Yeah . So exciting. But there was so much about that that appealed. Also, I was a bit of a nerd in terms of I lo lovedved fantasy, I lo Tvedolkien, yeah, Terry Pratchett, all that sort of stuff . And to have something that was a teen drama that was funny and clever and referencing like films and books that I was kind of interested in at the same time as having, you know, werewolves and witches and all these things, which are, of course, you can see them as like silly fantasy, but they're also tied to like folklore that is like really tied to , I don't know, the like civilization, paganism and certainly European folklore , which impacts the way that our society sort of works today. Yeah, I mean and also I am not a particularly genre person, right? But what I understand is that if you're dealing with something like vampires , in each show , there are kind of rules around how vampires work and there are some classic things which obviously like they can't see the sun. You know, that kind of thing they can't get a stake and even I'm a vampire amateur no sense . But there are other things which I was reminded of which, is they can't go into your house unless you invite them in. Yeah. Just funny little rules like that, aren't it? So there's, I think with every vampire film or book , sometimes rules are slightly bent or added or taken away depending on what they want their characters to do. But certainly basing stuff on like Dracula is like a pretty good text to sort of base the rules of vampires on. Just goffee in it. Yeah, just go ffee. Like I don't think in buffy there's like garlic has an effect but it's more like annoying than anything and crosses work to a certain extent. They get burned, don't they , it's not light. And the more powerful, the more like ancient a vampire, the less that stuff works on them. They can kind of hardcore. Yeah, absolutely. Dracula does turn up in one episode and he can turn into a bat and do all these magical wonderful things. The other thing that was I thought was interesting is that they decided because obviously when you die , you die. If you're a vampire, you die. And they decided that when the vampires were going to die, they would just turn to dust. And the reason why they decided it was because basically they couldn't be bothered to work out how to do what they were going to do with all the bodies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where do they go? This dust. Yeah, dust is great. What did you think of like the 'cause obviously it's quite a long time ago? What would when you were young when watching it, what did you think of the special effects? Were they convincing or did you think, oh that's crap? I thought it was great. I don't think they're bad. I think they're alright. I think all of the practical effects have aged really well and looked really good at the time. The things that harder is like, I think it's season three maybe when the mare turns into a massive snake, spoiler alert . He's not good that may he? He's really wrong. Yeah, but that's when I think CGI had just sort of started and it's like that was a little bit it hasn't aged too well but lots of it looks fantastic still Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to do list may feel endless with new tasks and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out , but simplifies everything as a built in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and ten percent of all e commerce in the US from household names like gym shark, rare beauty, and Heinz , to brands just getting started. 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You are Gary Desnake. And your last name, Gusnake. Dream team . The new habitats. Zutopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly we're gonna eat Zutopia too. Now available on Disney plus rated PG . This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking . Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't t just buil for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin. com the dream . Okay, you mentioned a little bit earlier Spike and Spike is a very interesting character that we will return to before we get to him, I think we should talk about Angel. Sure. So Angel is Buffy's love interest essentially, but also her foe. He ends up having his own show show. Yeah , and he is played by let me get his name right. You can tell Borianas. David Boranas, thank you. And one of the reasons why it works is I was reading around, obviously, as you do, is that him and Sarah Michelle Gullah really get on well. They're completely different. He's slightly jockey . He's very inexperienced . She helps him a lot, but he is so am iable . And he's like, I mean, to be honest, he's the I mean, I can't bear this, but he's the kind of person that does practical jokes. I can't ask practical jokes. Like literally, so Seth Green, who comes in a bit later, he plays Oz, he this is what David Buriola did. He would do a poo in Seth Green's trailer every day and not saying who it was and not flush it. Isn't that funny? Hahaha then and Seth Grean found it. So that's the kind of thing that I have to say would make me want to kill him. But anyway, practical jokes are go through David. It somewhat undermines his his credentials next door, you know? Sarah Michelle Geller, who is a lovely person . Every interview I've read with that woman, she is graciously personified . She's absolutely brilliant. So they get on and they work really well and the charisma is pretty genuine and because they're good friends, not because they fancy each other, but they're good friends. And he is , you know, almost like an ideal companion for her, meaning that he is hunky , he loves her . You know, it takes a while , but you know, she loses her virginity to him, all this kind of stuff, but it cannot be. Absolutely. It cannot be because he is a vampire . Yeah . It can't be because he will bring her down. There's so much tied up in that relationship , but like also the common theme that you mentioned about like high school is hell . It's an opportunity to explore all of your fears, anything that you're ashamed of , the kind of things that you experience for the first time when you are a teen and relationships , of course. Absolutely. Finding out that like maybe a boy acts differently after you've slept with him. Oh, it's so awful my goodness this monster, not the person that has been so sweet for the last however long. Yeah, it's such it's not even a metaphor, it's so real. Yeah . Like because basically, you know, they get together it's been really a long time. It happens and then he's horrible to her afterwards . Because he's he's been an insoled vampire and the curse was that once he's found one true moment of happiness , he returns to Angelus who is this ancient like two hundred and fifty year old vampire who's very bad . The big bad, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of great I, think. That is really great writing and it's very, very well done . Completely So with Angel, what's interesting about it is because Dav olis is so good , as the series kind of progresses. So basically I think for fans, season one is okay. Season two is really when things kick in. They've got a bit more money, they've got a bit more respect. They understand the show a bit more. It's really kind of kicking on. At certain point in series two, they realize that actually Angelo is really good and they're going to do a spinoff show . And that happens when series three is happening. Yeah. Now what is really interesting to me is , you know, essentially Cordelia goes as well, doesn't she? Yeah, she goes off to join. She goes off to join him. Josweden has to run that show as well . So for me , that is almost like the seas of destruction because essentially what happens is Josh Weedon, who is the creator of the whole world , has to work too bloody hard . Everything gets kind of shattered and the although the show continues to be really, really great , there are pressures that are put on various characters within that show that eventually come out in the washing and not great , I would say. In terms of the in terms of how the show is run . Right. Yeah, yeah. The characters within it, you know, the inter relationships just all kind of go a bit wrong. The other factor was that because the first series was really successful, people like movie type people are looking at Sarah Michelle Geller. Right. And so she does , she does know, I know what you did last summer. She just screamed to and she does cruel intentions All iconic. Absolutely iconic. She is completely great . But Josh Whedon doesn't like it and he says some mean things about her in cruel intentions. He calls it porny please . And of course, Sarah Michelle Galler because she is so great, says I did what I think is my best work to date in that movie, brushing it off by calling it porny is unbelievably hurtful to me. He owes me flowers and that's on the record. She' sos gracious about it. But Nicholas Brendan, who plays Xander , he basically says that seasons one and seasons two, we were all in it together. That was the thing we were a team. And then it basically went away with the success of the show because statuses changed. People move off and make other shows and it all went a bit kind of hoo ha . And writer says, in retrospect, the buffy set was definitely pet tier than other sets. You had young cast members . Sarah had become extremely famous, some people were jealous of her, and there was a little bit of hierarchy because she was literally on the cover of magazines non stopp stedarring engage movies and it kind of altered everything. Plus there were other factors which we will come to later on, but it's weird because it actually starts going a bit wonky really quite early on with the personality. I mean , there's no way you would see it. You don't see it on the show. I think it's amazing that none of that managed to come through in the show because it really does, I mean they managed to keep on churning out episode after episode of such a high quality . But yeah, you can you imagine I mean being twenty, twenty one, twenty two with even younger actors as well and going through all of that must be insane. You know, American shows have loads of episodes. It's not like here where we do like six and we go okay absolutely these go on for ages. If you're someone like Sarah Michelle Guller, you're in everything, you know, it's not like you're really getting much time off because the whole thing revolves around you. But also even Allison Hannigan, you know, you're just constantly in it all the time. Yeah . And one of the actors points out Spike , the character, James Master's, Masters, sorry, he's got an RN . Masters who plays Spike says The thing that's difficult about it is you're given a script and you have to do it. So within a film you might negotiate a little bit because you've got more time, but you're giving a script, you have to do it. You give them a script, you have to do it. There's no negotiation, and Josh Wheden is not somebody who will let you alter the script. No. So you have to do it, even if you think I'm not sure about this. I'm not sure about this. Let's talk Spike. . So I am a very new to Buffy . Spike's my faith. Okay, great. You've done it right there. You play, when you do your show, you are Spike, right? I have bleached blonde hair. Yep. I'm in the black black leather coat. Absolutely, the long black leather duster got the boots on. Yeah . Yeah, it's great. It's such a fun character to play what is so good about him? He's so camp man. He's just yeah camp as tits. I love him. Well, he's got this kind of billy idle kind of London eighties vibe to him. Yeah, that's really true. Slightly slightly copy and yeah. I mean, he's James Masters, I think, does a brilliant, a brilliant performance and it's so rare because, you know, Americans always get a hard time for their British accents . But But it kind of works. I like it because it's not quite right. So it's like it is British, he's clear, he's meant to be British, but it's also slightly twangy occasionally, but that makes it even camper, I think. And obviously he's meant to be like, he's not meant to be camped. Well, I mean maybe he is but he's meant to be you know, he's meant a heart throb. He's a heart throb. Yeah. Like it's the campy bits I love. But he plays the comedy so well. So good. He just knows how to undermine himself . He does really great falling. I mean, he has so many private falls here. Brilliant . He's so good. He is phenomenal. So when you're doing it, when you're doing this show, obviously he picks Mike 'cause he's a coolest, but is there another reason for picking him? Yes. He's slightly outside obviously. Absolutely . So he is in more episodes than anyone else apart from the main sort of cool gang. He doesn't come in until the second season , but he also has this great character arc from being the big bad, the sort of antagonist to becoming a sort of reluctant ally. Yeah . And then, you know, he becomes almost like a slight thorn in the side , but then he's a friend, and then he's a love interest . And then he has a fall from grace, but then a redemption arc as well, where ultimately kind of saves the day. He becomes a martyr to the cause. Yeah, he's very interesting. There are things that we can talk about later, which I want to talk about, which is what how Buffy affected everything else . But essentially he's Draco Marfoy. Right? Yeah, I mean, hey, I wonder where Jacob quite came out at the same time same year. So from what I've read about the show , the seasons are very, very different. So season one establishing season two we like season three , is that the imperial phase would you say? Ooh, season three well, that's the final year high school yeah, which I mean, I think it's great. The thing is you might be talking to the wrong person for a critical analysis . I love it. I think the general fan response is season four people start to struggle with. And why did they struggle? I think you know, I think it's Riley . Yes. Okay, so let's talk about Riley . Okay . So basically Buffett has this incredible love affair with Angel who has to leave and it's just really sad. And then she has a rebound and rebound is Riley and it is played by quite an inexperienced actor. He's essentially a jockey you know, lot to be the he's like he's a track athlete or something. Yeah. He's done he does a wonderful job , but the character is meant to be the antidote to Angel. Who's this bro ody vampire who just nothing will work and is always not there when she needs her, but you know confined to vampire rules can only be around in the evenings and what not . That's so funny isn't it? No . You know, I'm hanging with my majest during the day and I'm like, okay, you're available now. Yeah, exactly. Lives in a crypto and that sort of stuff for Riley. Riley's just a bit just a nice guy. Yeah . I think that season also slightly suffers because the main antagonist there is also this mad Frankenstein's monster type thing called Adam. And he's quite heavy fun, but the whole premise is a little bit wild. Yeah, so the person who plays Riley is Mark Blukas and what's interesting about it is Jos Whedon says to him before it even starts, he says everyone will hate you. Like do not read. The internet is around now. Oh wow . Do not read any things on the internet. They will hate you. And there is one of the articles I didn't read it because I just thought, okay, there's so many articles. I can't actually can't get through them. But this is what the headline is, a hate letter to Riley Finn, worst man in the buffy verse . So rude. God, nothing means that again. This kid is really your three. And he's never acted before. I mean, come on, give him a break. But anyway, they hate him. They absolutely . So mean, there are people that absolutely love him. There's people that I think now recognize that he was a good guy. He wasn't given all the best lines. He's a little bit goofy , but he loves Buffy and he like supports her and totally tuppy, Wuppy. Exactly. He's got big Labrador energy for sure . Okay, so that season four, we'll say, okay, that's a bit rileyish, we're not so sure. Season five people really like. What is good about season five? Well, it's a sort of uni now, right? Yeah, yeah, it's a sort of return form . It's sort of where the series was meant to end. Yes . So it ends with Buffy making this sacrifice and it's kind of could easily have been the end of the show. Some fans think that it should have finished there, right? Yes , some say that that's kind of ties together all of the different threads of the story. Yeah . There's also the introduction of her so Buffy's sister, Dawn , who comes in and there's a beautiful relationship between Buffy and Dawn and Dawn is played by Michelle Trachtenberg so well and again a really young actor taking on a really difficult role because for the first, I think it's like the first three or four episodes, she's not explained. Buffy just didn't have a sister. And now she has a sister . And like I think the collective feeling was like, What? Do you know what were we just meant to? Was she in a cupboard? Yeah , but then it's explained where she came from, what she's there for. And yeah, she's she's gray. And there's this lovely sort of exploration of sisterhood as well. Yeah, it's pretty good. I think what's interesting as well is because like obviously just generally , you know, within the universe of buffy, the buffy verse, obviously, Buffy is she's not completely undefeatable as we know, you know, like that she definitely can be defeated . But her Achilles heels are her relationships . So not just that she falls in love with people that happen to be vampires or whatever, but also how you get at somebody that is so strong is via the people that they love. So via the sister, via the mum, via your friends via you what know I mean? And that's I find kind of that is also a metaphor for life. It's like, if you want to have a very easy and less messy life, then just go through it, you know, by yourself . But if you want to have a more fulfilling but yet more dangerous life you open yourself up to loving other people. Absolutely. Yeah, vulnerability is the superpowers, the strength and there's again this wonderful ongoing sort of theme that slayers have always been one girl in all the world. One person, you go alone and Buffy's the first slayer to have a team . And that becomes her power. And that's why she defeats, you know, the first evil because she can work with others and is willing to go the extra mile for them. Yeah, it's absolutely anti incel, isn't it? Mate? Yeah, yeah, it is make some friends. Go out and make some friends. Yeah, and like just that's the answer to everything, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Bother to love people. It'll be fine. So season six . Okay, season six is very, very difficult for people . Yeah, so I mean, I should just say there are some amazing like there's so many standout episodes all the way through . Oh yeah, and we can go back to some of them because like some of them are just fantastic. Like a musical episode where they never they don't speak. There's well yeah, it's pretty much all is they mad ? Oh hush. Yeah, yeah, where they have their voices taken . There's the body where Joyce Buffy's mom dies and it's like a it's like an independent film it really is a standalone episode and it's it's phenomenal. It's so moving and And yeah, all of this in like this teen comedy supernatural drama The musical one. When was that one? That was in season six. Yeah . So we can say, okay, there is a nice bit. There is season six is a lot darker. It's a change of tone. It's a change of writer . Oh . So Josh Whedon has gone to he's gone a lot. He's obviously still overseeing it, but he's obviously got angel . He's also got firefly Fantastic. And so there is another writer. It's a woman writer called Marty. I can't remember her surname. But so she is obviously, you know, it's very difficult, isn't it when the original writer moves on? And he still has overview and I think it's the general regard that she has done , you know, she does a good job. It's just it's much darker. Yeah. I think it's a great season , but we're exploring what it means for Buffy to have been brought back to life . Also not necessarily from like hell, but by all accounts from like a positive heaven like place and her mum's still dead . And her little sister still annoying . And she's got all of these and she's not getting paid for being a slayer. The format I find really interesting because you can make parallels with Harry Potter, which I will in a bit, but there is a point in young adulthood. Yeah , which is this point where you're bit like, Oh man , this is it. Yeah. So I've done my school, I've done my university and now I've got to be kind of responsible for stuff hard. And it's not going to be a fun job. No, it's going to be like five pounds an hour. Yeah, don't you understand that more than that ? And she has to cope with this sort of like saving the world actual life and death versus like making enough money to get the cornflakes for a little sister. Yeah, it's like it's tough. The parallel I was going to draw between Buffy and Harry Potter is obviously I mean, obviously there's so many parallels meaning that you're chosen, you're the special one. You're the only one that can defeat . The parallel also for fans is to do with 'cause seven films. Yeah , is that start off the first film's a bit iffy, it gets better, it gets better, it gets better and then it goes dark and everyone's been like, Oh, it's dark and the sixth season is everyone's like, Oh no, it's really dark and then it comes out again and the reason how it comes out again is you get a huge amount of people all joined together Avengers assemble and then you defeat the budd ie. that' Ands exactly the same with Buffy. I mean , it's obviously like, this is how stories are told , but it's yeah, following a sort of hero's journey type arc. Yeah, and a baddie is allowed to be a goodie and you know, redeem themselves, all that kind of thing. There's so many different things explored . Redemption is a big theme and forgiveness. And when it's possible and when it's not and people overstepping marks, but that being a sort of very human element, even with vampires, I mean, they used to be humans. They still have human sort of frailty There's also something that happ ens in season six, which I think that spike, so James Master really finds difficult. So basically , you know, essentially he rapes Buffett. There's sexual assault definitely. Which is really terrible and not , you know, I mean, one could perhaps justify it within the storyline, but then the main problem is it's never really referred to. It's just a bit like, oh yeah that happened. Well, it's I think it's really it's the yeah, I think it's fair to say it's probably the darkest thing that happens in the series , which is about evil . So it's kind of mad. But they've been having rel a ationship which is , you know, it's physical and there's clearly some love, but I think Buffy just wants to feel something, anything because she's going through a kind of depression . And then Spike basically tries to force himself on her. She manages to defend herself, but it's clearly a line has been massively crossed and the only way he can redeem himself is by going through these trials , regaining his soul and then coming back and being able to sort of work up the trust in the relationship and also Buffy's in a bit of a pickle with the End of the World again. So busy, man. She manages to give him another chance and it plays out well. It's interesting because one of the things that has been said about that which is what you allude to is this is actually, I mean, obviously we're talking about a teen show, but it's a show about evil. Yeah . So what do you expect? He's evil . Of course, he's a vamp. And also we because he's so charming and he's so funny and for a lot of the show he's either helpful or he's sort of neutered and he can't really hurt humans . We overlook the fact that he's been a vampire for one hundred and seventy years. He's telling us he's evil. He's definitely done all of the worst things a vampire can do like murdered huge civilizations and and yeah, he's been off all around Europe and Asia killing people . But because we don't see that on screen, we go like, oh, but he's a good lad, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's sad. And then season seven, what happens in season seven? So season seven is really the amassing of the clans in the end, right? Yeah, so it's the final stand. Yeah . And Buffy's kind of her lowest ebb . Willow like in season six, she goes wild and has to be sent off to a kind of hogwarts like establishment. Like, you know, Willow like, I mean, she's almost got the biggest arc of anybody has. Oh yeah. Yeah, phenomenal. She just has this insane power and she's yeah almost like a slayer herself , but all of Buffy's friends, everyone in that network is sort of gone and she's on her own against the biggest foe. This is so Harry Potter. It's the same. Gotta pull it together and then you have to bring them all together. And it's good versus evil, which we will never get sick of . And actually I, think , you know, it was it was popular in the nineties to see these stories. And then we started flirting with the idea of oh what about the bad guys? Let's hear their point of view, anti heroes, things like that . And I think we maybe need to go back to good old fashioned good versus evil rooting for the good guys. That's pretty cool. As long as it's a cool good guy. Oh no because I mean, essentially, let's face it, the dark lords are always the coolest dream. That's true.. They dress the best They are the best. Okay , I would like , you know, we very briefly touched on the musical episode. The musical episode is very important, isn't it? People really love that that episode. You want to talk about it? Yeah. So it's called Once More with Feeling Yeah and it is such a mad sort of choice to make but apparently Josh Whedon used to have these sort of dinners and events where the c ast would come back and they'd have dinner together and then they'd sometimes sing songs. And they found out by this point six seasons in. They're like, Oh you guys are actually pretty talented . And he'd been writing some of these exactly. We'll just figure that out . But yeah, he had been writing some musicals with I think Neil Patrick Harris, he did sort of online series . And so he tried it in this world. And why not? Because you've got demons of all kinds. This one just happens to be a musical demon. Sweet and yeah, suddenly they're singing everything and it's just so good. It's really camp but the songs are kind of great and not all of them are brilliant singers, but they really playing with characters that we know and love so well to see them in this circumstance is just so enjoyable. Yeah, it's great. So I have got because I haven't watched all the series, I've got some quotes. Oh yeah. The quote, the lines are great. Oh yeah, the lines they are so many. So many . So I've got the spike, which if every vampire who said it was at the crucifixion was actually there it would have been like woodstock. Yeah . There's also the if the apocalypse comes beat me, that's like everybody says that right? Yeah that's a good one. Classic. Okay Okay, you're a vampire. Oh, I'm sorry, was that an offensive term? Should I say undead American? And this one I really like, where Buffy bumps into spike and she goes, What are you doing here? Five words or less and heon goes out for a walk bitch . That's why I love him. I did a best to spike and I was like, he's my guy . He's absolutely great. There's some that people find very , very moving. I mean, before we get to the moving one, I'm just going to do this one. She goes, alright, yes, I want to date and shop and hang out and go to school and save the world from unspeakable demons. You know, I want to do girly stick.s Yeah, that's so great. Yeah. That's what teenage girls are like. Okay, this is the bit that makes people laugh, which is and not laugh, makes them cry, is the hardest thing in this world is to live in it . Where does that come? Did she say that to her sister? Yeah, to Dawn. It's the sort of final closing exchange on the end of season five . She's just about to effectively sacrifice herself in order to save Dawn and the world. But there's this beautiful moment . And Michelle Trachtenberg very sadly died last year and I think she was only thirty nine. She was very young. Yeah . And yeah, that just this sort of lovely moment of love and like they know what's going to happen . And it's also kind of it's kind of the core of everything in the show. You do have to be brave and that's whether you're a teenager going to school and if you're being bullied . If you think you're falling in love with someone, there's so many different things and like you've just got to got to take the chance, you've got to be vulnerable. Step to it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to get to the problems with the show. Okay , but before we do, you've done a whole show about him , right? And you've done a whole show of Spike, which I completely respect. So when you were going through all these shows, there were one hundred forty four shows. You've got to get it down to seventy minutes What did you pick and what how did you pick and like what you know, what were the bits that you loved that you wanted to put in? Well, I knew it was going to be Spike's point of view . So I'd start from the start, Spike's not in the first season , but he can sort of explain that's really sort of get to know the gang. Yeah, establish the world type season . So I went through it figuring out what his point of view of each episode would be . And what's nice is that he's quite dismissive. He's gonna make fun of everyone. He doesn't have to say, Oh, and then the goodies win. He can sort of slag people off. Yeah, great whenever he feels like it. But yeah, it's also a kind of the monster's view of the heroes. Yeah. You know, I always thought it would be interesting to see like a zombie movie from the point of view of a zombie or a vampire movie from zombies. Why they moving so quickly? Yeah, yeah, my God, they calm down. Yeah, they have an opinion too . But yeah, the general gist was all seven seasons, seventy minutes, spikes version of all of the characters. And if you yourself as a fan , which are the bits that you thought, okay, I really want to put this in because I love this bit ? Well, there's certain episodes that people just love. I mean, once more with feelings, so there are some songs in there. I don't really cover that episode per se because they do it so well, but there's songs throughout the show and I think that's a nice little sort of nod to that. You've got to cover all of the like the love triangle that goes on with Buffy and Xander and Willow and like what's happening there . Of course I didn't even mention that but they're all in love with the wrong people exactly. And then love interests and then of course all the big bads, all the monsters and how they have to sort of prepare in a different way for each one . And some of the big baddies are like iconic. There's Glory, who is this hell goddess , and she's amazing. She's just this awful fantastic, beautiful woman in a red dress who wants to destroy everything. Great. And she kind of can 't. That's all I'm saying. Doesn't utter a cup of gin in a tin. Sure . 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Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly melty cheese and thick rich ketchup. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and Kraft. Okay let us talk about the problem okay I mean I don't think that people thought there were many problems while it was going on. But people and even you said if you watch the show, and I have to say, you know, having watched some of the show, I think it's great . But the main problem that has come up later is around Josh Whedon . What happened was that wife , who was with him throughout this time , basically discovered that he had been having affairs with various various people, young some, of the young actresses on the show . Oh, right. And the thing that she found very difficult was he was constantly promoted as a feminist writer because, you know, Buffy is a young woman and you know, he's always kind of said that he's got kind of feminist credential s anyway . So she comes out with that and then after that some of the actresses on the show also come out stuff. So Chrisma Carpenter, who was Cordelia , she basically said, this is a quote from her, he had abused his power, created hostile and toxic work environments . And what she said was that he has had a history of being cas ually cruel . He was constantly threatening to fire her, called her fat when she was pregnant. Mate, come on, come on. He kind of weaponized her pregnancy, you know, and fired her after she gave birth , then other people stepped up. Amber Benson , she played Tara, is that right? Yeah. And Michelle Trachtenberg who was Dawn Dawn, they backed her up. And Sarah Michelle Geller said that she was proud of them for speaking out . It basically all started weirdly actually, not only because of his wife going on record , but because he was asked to rewrite the Justice League, which was going to be directed by Zach Snyder, who's kind of he does dark shows . And basically Warner Brothers came in and said, We're not really happy with this. Can you come in and basically jolly it up a bit? Yeah. And while he was doing that , there were actors on it , Ray Fisher is the one who basically said, look , he was accused him of being abusive, unprofessional, unacceptable. His character is called Cyborg , and he was basically being written out . And Ray Fisher is black. So like it's, you know, he accused Joshua Whedon of kind of maybe conscious, maybe unconscious racism. It's he also came up against Gal ado who said he was really rude to her. It has been for Joh Weeden a disaster. He's unemployable now. He has canceled. Oh, yeah, I mean I think when you've got so many people testifying to the same thing such a long period of time. And the thing that Charisma Carpenter said about being casually cruel, this is something that people have really referenced. So you know, unprofessional , absolutely unacceptable, unnecessary. Yeah, I don't anyone to be in that way and presumably he got away with it for so long because yeah he's massively talented Yeah, massively talented also you know I mean the buffy goes ninety seven to two thousand three but the nineties you know, like I'm not being, you know, really it's a celebration there is a celebration of talent, but it tends to be male talent. Absolutely. An ego that, you know, if you're a maverick, you're kind of allowed to do anything. And some of the incidents that are kind of reported was he was essentially having some kind of thing with a young actress . They were rolling around on the floor in front of an execut, you know, really bad things . And you know, it's pretty bad. And then there's another point, I don't think it's on Buffy maybe on another show where a young writer, a woman, had written her bit and he humiliated her in front of everybody by reading her bits out and taking the Mickey out of her. I mean really unnecessary. I read that he seemed to take pleasure in making people cry It's wild . Yeah . And it's obviously awful for the people that were directly impacted by that behavior, but it's also really it's really sad and it's really hard for the fans because tied so much of our identity as people to the work that he created . Buffy an angel, but also Firefly. He wrote toy story . You know, there's like this clearly he could be nders . Like, yeah, he's phenomenally talented , but have a contract of like responsibility. Yeah, of course. So the people, you don't get to, just because he could get away with that . Yeah . I mean, it's it was a real let down and he did have this sort of position as a kind of a feminist and as like one of the good guys . So that fall from Grace was , I think, even more pronounced. I have to say, just to be correct, that he denies quite a lot. Of course, yeah, they're all allegations for it. They're all allegations, but he is now not the toast of Hollywood. And it's a real shame as well because he's clearly he could be making so much stuff. But you know, it's like, you know, generally in life don't be a twirl. Yes, it's such an interest ing rule. Yeah, just that. Okay, I would also like just to ask you before we finish is what do you think Buffy has influenced? I've got one thing that's really, really obvious and that thing is Simon Peg. Oh yeah, of course . So basically Simon did watch all buffy he loved buffy and you can see I mean in space there is a shrine to buffy but also in Sean of the Dead and in his work in general there is a level of attention to detail quips but, also completely the monsters and the scariness . Absolutely. It's always present . You know, you know, you can see him, obviously Simon is brilliant, but like, you know, you can see where that comes from. And also Dr. Who when Doctor Who is rebooted, it's really similar kind of thing. Absolutely. They established certain norms within the TV world that had never happened before and then became tropes. And I think Simon Pegg and Edgar Eye are like a perfect example of that. The references that were just there and if you got them, they were funny. If you didn't, it didn't matter, that the jokes still worked . Yeah, but you could watch an episode of Buffy and then go like, oh, they referenced something. What is that? And then go and watch that film that they mentioned. And it's the same with Simon Pegg and they 're so many to pick up on. And if you know them, you're like, Oh, these are my people . So here at Taught Night's to me, if the apocalypse comes beepers because we're busy listening to our talk ninety Spotify playlist. Okay, which track would you like to add, Brendan? Which ninety S ? Well, I've got a few options. Yeah, I'm going to have to whittle them down. Okay. First of all, I've got to say the buffy theme by Nerf Herder. Oh, you should maybe put that one in. It's so good. People love it, right? So great. Yeah, you like the idea of Nerf Herder as well. That's such a ninet een one sixty, I would suggest is buffy theme , not by Nerf Herder, it was covered by the breeders. Oh yeah, definitely. And it's kind of better . I mean, they're phenomenal. And it's like, yeah, a lovely sort of combination. So I think we'll go with that. That is great. I love that. Okay that is there . All right . That was Taught ninety to me, featuring Brendan Murphy who does buffy revamped Oh? my days. Okay, can people see Buffy revamped and what else are you up to, Brandon? Yes, they can see Buffy revamped. It will be touring over October , around the UK, including a couple of nights in the West End. Woo hoo and you're going to be blonde again. I'm going to be bleach blonde so I've been hitting the gym , getting back into my hot level bud as Spike would call it . And you're taking a different show up to Edinburgh, right? Yeah , I'm taking a show called Indy , which is an Indiana Jones parody show. Free Handa where three people take on the original trilogy and bring it all to life including boulders and mine cart chases and snakes and all of that. That sounds great. And where can people find tickets? What's your Instagram handle like? You can get me at Not Murphy . Not Murphy.