Joss Whedon, co-creator of The WB's Angel, told SCI FI Wire that he doubts that Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar will ever appear on the spinoff series. "I don't know that we'll see her on the show," Whedon said in an interview at the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention. "I don't know that she'll ever pick up a stake again. I don't know. But that's really something you'd have to ask her."

Gellar has recently been quoted as saying that she probably won't appear in an Angel episode this season, which could be the show's last. Whedon said that he hasn't received word on Angel's fate yet, but that it would be nice if Gellar reciprocates the favor Angel star David Boreanaz made by appearing in Buffy's final episodes.

"If it became definitely the end of Angel, that might come up," Whedon said. "But since we don't know, you know, we're counting on anything. You know, Angel really is its own thing, and the cast ... they have a lot to go through anyway. I would love to see her on the show. But we're definitely prepared for anything."

Whedon added that he's not worried about whether Angel's current season, its fifth, is its last. "I'm concentrating on making this season," he said. "And we have an ending that has a lot of closure, but will also lead in very nicely to next season if ... they have one." Angel, which airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, returns with original episodes in January 2004.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, who reprises the role of Daphne in the upcoming sequel film Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, told SCI FI Wire that her character goes through a process of discovery that sounds almost like her own. "I think the first story sort of revolved around Daphne finding her place, that same in-between [place] that I think a lot of teenagers and young adults find [themselves in], which is: Where do I fit in? What's my place? What's my purpose? What am I good at? Because everything to her was, she was the pretty one, she never really fit in," Gellar said in an interview during a break in filming on the movie's Vancouver, B.C., set.

Gellar, who won worldwide fame for her starring role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, added about her Scooby role: "This one is more about public image, and how in the beginning, you find Daphne, and she is confident. She's confident because she's deriving her strength from what other people think, the press and the fans, and it's about public image. And what she soon realizes is that the public image can change. It's fickle, and you have to find your strength from within before you worry about how everyone else perceives you."

Beyond that, Gellar said that the sequel, which wraps its 71-day production schedule in about 10 days, is also more confident about what it is trying to be. "I think ... we weren't exactly sure what our niche was the first time," she said. "Were we a movie for kids? Were we going to be a little more esoteric and go for a little bit of an older, more satirical audience? And we shot everything both ways. And it was really put together in the edit and really made for a family film. Now, coming in, you know we're coming in to make a family film. We know our characters. The story is set. And it makes it much easier to just jump into a story."

In the sequel, Gellar and co-stars Freddie Prinze Jr. (Gellar's real-life husband, who plays Fred), Linda Cardellini (Velma) and Matthew Lillard (Shaggy) take on a mystery in their hometown of Coolsville, which will feature the return of several well-known monsters from the classic Scooby-Doo animated TV series. Mystery, Inc.'s adversaries this time around will include the Black Knight Ghost, the Pterodactyl Ghost, the Tar Monster, the 10,000-Volt Ghost and others in an adventure that also marks the return of Jeremiah Wickles (Peter Boyle) and new characters played by Alicia Silverstone and Seth Green. Scooby-Doo 2 is in production with an eye to a March 26, 2004, release.

You can admit it without shame: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a work of genius. Your oh-so-sophisticated friends might scoff, but the broadcast of Buffy's final episode in the US last week (it airs on Sky One in Britain next month) marked the end of a televisual era.

To those lazy enough to trot out the line that the show's sole admirable feature was its having a female hero, quote Laura Miller, writing at Salon.com: "It's commonplace by now to rave about the liberating effect of Buffy's heroism on girlhood ... But if what Buffy's heroism has done to girlhood gets talked about all the time, what her girlishness has done for heroism is even more revolutionary, if less well sung." In fact, Buffy created a new heroic trope because "from the very beginning, she could not keep her mission to herself".

Those who feel challenging TV must involve a Jeremy (Paxman or Isaacs) are probably laughing. Put them in their place. "With astonishing bravura, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has succeeded in blending the conventions of teenage soap opera with smart, dialogue-driven comedy, a phantasmagoria of supernatural motifs - and even knotty theological debate," you remark, quoting Boyd Tonkin in the Independent. And it goes without saying that the programme's "supernatural structure also triggered metaphysical discussion on a level that left British telly's God slots in the shade".

There will be sceptics who try to tell you Buffy was only a TV show about vampires for teenagers. Don't listen to them. "What should concern any TV fan is the end of a daring work of love and imagination, something born of passion instead of a fleeting, this-year's-flavour fame," you say, like the Miami Herald. "And those monsters Buffy battles ... are the demons we wrestle throughout our lives: the desire to fit in, the need to be your own person, the emotional risks of love and sex." The world the show inhabited, too was a cut above, as the Toronto Star noted. It was "a multi-dimensional, deeply recessed and densely layered mythology ... that could engage both supernatural escapism and earthly social constructs such as friendship, love, power, religion and free will".

Oh well, you reflect, remembering the words of New York Newsday: "All great epics come to an end. The Iliad. The Odyssey. War and Peace. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Just kidding. The Tolstoy book is a ringer. Doesn't belong on this list. Too literal. Not enough monsters."

The Guardian, 27/05/2003 (Michael Hann)

E-mail me: edoardo@emmacaulfield.com





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