It always amazes me how much your age can change how you see the world. This has become the most apparent to me at age 42 as I try to rewatch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, two of my favorite shows growing up. And do you know what I realized about both shows?
I still love them.
But I am not the same person I was at 15.
Back then, my crush was on Angel. I won’t deny it, I was 100% an Angel girl. I was a big fan of David Boreanaz’s portrayal, had a signed autograph and everything. I still follow his work. He did an amazing job with Angel and brought dimensions to the character that I don’t think we would have had if someone else had played him.
However, as an adult, Angel isn’t my go-to guy. These days, I prefer a heartthrob who does not make the decision to leave for the love interest because he decided it was in her best interest. Granted he did have a good reason to leave, given that his curse could unleash his own Mr. Hyde situation that was likened to a serial killer.
And you know I was going to have to bring Spike into this. You can love him, hate him, or just be meh about him, but he is an important aspect of how age changes perspective. At 15, my first introduction to him was “Lovers Walk” when he was mooning over Drusilla, yes I came to this show in Season 3.
Where Angel was tragic romance, Spike was a loud problem in a leather coat and even louder music.
But Spike? I didn’t really develop an appreciation for Spike until my 30s, when I understood what it meant to pour your heart and soul into someone and receive nothing back. I have had friendships with a similar dynamic and I hate it looking back. Spike’s love was not always healthy or always right but I knew what that was like and I can say now with eyes wide open: You deserve better, Spike. Not because Buffy owed him anything, but because nobody should have to survive on crumbs and call it love.
And that is when I realized this was not just about who I had a crush on when I was younger. Age also changes how you look at certain storylines, certain scenes, and certain lines that may not have hit you the same way the first time around.
One of the biggest examples for me is the second half of Buffy Season 7 with the Potentials. I understand it was supposed to be a war story. I understand the pressure was supposed to be unbearable. But those girls were still teenagers, and watching it now, that matters to me more than it did when I was younger.
The way Chloe’s suicide was handled still bothers me. In “Get It Done,” Buffy calls Chloe an idiot, and I know the show was trying to show how hard Buffy had become under pressure. I understand that. I understand that war stories are not supposed to be soft.
But I also cannot ignore that Chloe was a terrified teenage girl who had been targeted by the literal First Evil.
That is where adult me gets stuck. Because yes, Buffy was under impossible pressure. Yes, she was scared. Yes, she was trying to keep everyone alive. But a teenage girl died by suicide, and the line we are left sitting with is that she was an idiot?
At the time I was 19, I may not have had the words for why that bothered me.
At 42, I do.
And this is not me saying I hate Buffy. I don’t. Buffy Summers is still one of the most important female characters to me personally. She was allowed to be brave, scared, funny, selfish, loving, angry, exhausted, and wrong. That is part of why she mattered to us, to me.
But loving a character does not mean everything they said works for me forever.
Sometimes age changes what you can excuse. Sometimes it changes what you notice. And sometimes it makes you look at a scene you have known for years and think, “I understand what they were going for, but I do not think I can follow them there anymore.”
Am I still a fan? Absolutely.
Do I try to rewatch Buffy despite its corniness? 100%.
Did I read Buffy season 8 comics? No, one word: Twilight.
But that is a whole different ball of wax.