I’ve been blogging too much about television recently and what’s worse I’ve been holding back in some respects. The problem is my relentless viewing habits. Aside from the dozens of currently active television shows I watch, many of which I fully accept are probably not worth keeping up with, I also have a nasty habit of watching old shows, some because of some cultural importance they hold and others because I watched them in my youth and I want to revisit them.

I’m currently in the process of watching Quantum Leap — a show that desperately needs a modern more serialized remake, which I totally want to write — but once that’s done, I think I’m going to take a break from these sorts of marathon viewings of television shows. I need to invest in some non-televisual thoughts.

Of course, in the meantime, all these episodes of Quantum Leap are still going to have to be watched, and I’ll probably have to write about at least a few of them before everything is said and done.

A lot can be said about why Buffy outlasts so many of her enemies and survives so much; one thing that seems to pop up as the reason is her friends, but it’s not that she has friends, it’s the friends she has. More specifically, Xander. The show doesn’t shy away from belittling Xander’s abilities, but he really is the glue that holds everything together. He’s not a great fighter and he doesn’t have powerful witchcraft at his disposal but if he weren’t there, the group would fall apart.

Let’s be honest here for a second, Buffy is a bit of a bitch sometimes, and the rest of the time she’s a huge bitch. Most recently was her behaviour towards Riley during the fifth season. On first viewing it might not have been noticeable but Buffy’s distance from Riley stands out in hindsight. And I feel like his actions, while not completely justified, make a heck of a lot of sense. When I was younger I probably just sided with Buffy because she reacted to any accusations, no matter how accurate, with utter disdain and indignation, but with age and experience I can see what Buffy is doing and it doesn’t endear me to her.

Through the course of the show Buffy reverts to a childish little girl a little too often for my tastes, but every time she does someone is there to give her some freaking perspective. And most of the time it’s Xander. Without Xander, Buffy would either be a mess or dead. Granted, Xander can be a douche sometimes too; they all can. But they all contribute to the slayer. We can even ignore the most obvious example of this — when Xander, as the heart, joined with Buffy to defeat Adam — and still see that Xander is the one who keeps Buffy on track. He’s their rock. He provides stability to the whole gang and from that stability comes strength. And that’s how Buffy wins.

Season one has a lot going for it. It ends on a really big cliffhanger, it introduces something which can drive Angel’s ongoing adventures, and the show develops and sympathizes a character just so they can kill him in the ninth episode. Many people think that Glenn Quinn was canned, but Joss Whedon was clear from the beginning that the character was going to be killed heroically shortly; it was something he wanted to do with Jesse in Buffy the Vampire Slayer but didn’t get a chance to accomplish.

The show was much less serialized than in later years, but you could still see the reverberating consequences of stories. The most interesting aspect of the season is the growth of Angel. As Wesley said, it’s our desires that define our humanity and, while there was a tacit understanding of why Angel fought the good fight, the Shanshu prophecy gave Angel something to desire; something to make him human. Angel moves from that view as his story continues, he begins to fight the good fight because it should be fought, not because of some base self benefit. Angel is always seeking redemption, but somewhere along the way he realizes that redemption isn’t a destination, it’s an ongoing process.

Already in the first season, you can see how the stories told on Angel will be much darker and ambiguous as to who is evil and what is moral. And neither the questions nor the answers get easier as the show progresses.