Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series premiered on March 10, 1997, on The WB. The series narrative follows Buffy Summers (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar), the latest in a line of young women known as “Vampire Slayers,” who are chosen by fate to battle against vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness.

Buffy wants to live a normal life, but as the series progresses, she learns to embrace her destiny. She is guided by a Watcher who teaches and trains her. The series was an instant hit with librarians because Buffy’s Watcher (Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles) had a day job as librarian at the Sunnydale High School media center, a facility with more rare occult books than Cornell University.

Some TV critics view Buffy as the beginning of a second Golden Age of Television. Its layered examination of identity, feminism, and social issues, plus creator Joss Whedon's facility for incorporating pop culture references and neologisms (Slayer slang), made the series an academic topic of literary study and analysis.