25 Years Later, Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Best Episode Has Aged Like Fine Wine

Although Buffy the Vampire Slayer has plenty of iconic episodes, the show’s greatest contribution to TV was one that surprisingly subverted its central premise. If it weren’t for the classic ‘90s cop show The X-Files, viewers would likely never have gotten a whole range of cult classic shows, from fellow police procedurals like Grimm, Evil, Lucifer, and Fringe to more offbeat, unconventional spooky dramas with monster-of-the-week episodes like Supernatural, Legacies, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

However, as influential as The X-Files was, Buffy the Vampire Slayer played just as important a part in TV history. Admittedly, some of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s worst episodes are the sort of insensitive outings that many fans wish they could erase from existence, but it is still tough to deny the impact the series had on television as a format. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s ambitious writing style blended season-long arcs with monster-of-the-week episodes, paving the way for the Second Golden Age of Television’s Mystery Box shows.

Furthermore, despite its playful title, Buffy the Vampire Slayer brought a new level of emotional sincerity and realism to genre TV. While iconic hits like The X-Files and Star Trek: The Next Generation featured some great character writing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s greatest lines prove that the show felt more rooted in reality than many of its competitors despite all the demons, ghosts, vampires, and demi-gods. This was perfectly encapsulated in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s best episode ever, season 5, episode 16, “The Body.”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5 Episode 16 “The Body” Changed TV History

Image courtesy of Everett Collection

Originally airing in February 2001, “The Body” begins with Buffy arriving home to find her mother, Joyce, lying unresponsive on the couch. Despite her best attempts, Buffy is unable to revive her mother and later learns that Joyce had died unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm. As the episode continues, notably devoid of the show’s usual incidental music, Buffy the Vampire Slayer explores Buffy and the rest of the Scooby Gang’s attempts to wrestle some meaning from this tragic, devastating event.

What makes “The Body” such a historically important moment in genre TV history is its approach to death. Throughout its run, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was always unflinching about the topic, but the show’s fantasy trappings meant that death was hardly a permanent problem. The vampires of the title were literally undead, meaning the show immediately introduced the possibility of life after death and continued to expand on this with demons, vengeful ghosts, and other paranormal entities that broke down the veil between life and death.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Most Important Death Highlights What Its Imitators Were Missing

Image courtesy of Everett Collection

As such, it would have been easy for Buffy the Vampire Slayer to feel like The CW’s murder mystery Riverdale or any of the other hits that followed in the show’s footsteps. In those shows, death was often a temporary inconvenience rather than a storytelling choice with real, tangible stakes. However, “The Body” subverts this approach completely.

In this episode, the titular teenage heroine of the series, who has saved the entire world numerous times each season, is suddenly just as helpless as any young person who loses a parent unexpectedly. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had innumerable imitators in the years since the series ended, but this mature approach to death was the main element of the original series that these later shows consistently missed out on.

While the teen mystery Pretty Little Liars was fun and unpredictable, the show never had any truly gripping stakes because none of its major character deaths felt like they could really be permanent. In contrast, unlike so many of the teen TV shows that tried to replicate its success, Buffy the Vampire Slayer proved with “The Body” that the show was unafraid of incorporating realistic, senseless tragedy into its largely escapist fictional world.

Release Date

1997 – 2003

Network

The WB