Buffy the Vampire Slayer

SPECIAL ANNOUNCMENT:
Not only is this the first ever hour-long script on the site, but it's also the last spec for 2017. My wife and I are heading on a fun December adventure to see friends, family, and foreign lands. But fear not! Spec-a-week will return in early January with more fun and hastily written scripts! In the meantime, read the other specs!

INDULGENT MUSINGS:
Buffy was an impossibly important show to me growing up. I started watching in the 7th grade while living overseas and fantasizing what it was going to be like to go to High School in the USA. Buffy the Vampire Slayer set an expectation of witty banter, sunny California days (my home was in Virginia), and a new evil to fight every week. Spoiler alert: it was not like that.

I could probably get carried away while writing about this show so I'm going to try and limit myself to only one aspect of its greatness:

Metaphor.

In an interview at AVClub, the show's creator (and moral disappointment), Joss Whedon, said that Buffy was conceived as "a metaphor for how lousy my high-school years were." It was essentially a serialized b-horror movie where the internal "demons" every teenager faces manifested as actual demons. Not only is this a beautifully clean TV show pitch, but it meant that the show gave verification and weight to all that its real teen viewers were going through.

In the episode "Out of Mind, Out of Sight", a student who feels ignored by her classmates actually becomes invisible and terrorizes the school. In "Witch", a cheerleader's overly controlling mother casts a spell to switch bodies to relive her teen years "the right way." And in one of my all-time favorite episodes, "Hush," each character is having trouble communicating something. Buffy and her crush, Riley, are both living secret double lives. Xander refuses to show Anya how much he loves her, leaving her worried and sexually unfulfilled. Willow's feeling isolated in her new wicca group at school. Then in a master-class of ironic torture, the whole town loses the ability to speak. It's only then, in all of the commotion, that these people are finally able to communicate and are better off for it.

The relationship between monster-of-the-week and melodrama is so appealing to me. It raises the stakes of the slithery reptile boy when you know he represents fraternity rape culture. You feel for Buffy when she can't get her friends to hate her soon-to-be stepdad because he's an evil robot programmed to be charming. And it can actually make three angry nerds a little scary when you know what years of bitterness and inferiority can do to a person.

The use of metaphor is what kept this niche, high-concept horror show running and helped connect to its audience.

EPISODE SUMMARY:
Buffy fights Krampus. What else do you want? For hardcore fans, please note that this takes place around season 2. 

HONESTY CORNER:
Writing an hour-long episode in a week is stupid and hard.

As I've already highlighted in this post, I love when the monster of the week represents a less-slayable struggle for one of the characters. I took a swing at that here but at the end of the day, I just wanted Buffy to fight the Krampus. I'm not sure the emotional weight totally got the time it deserved.

Another thing I love about Buffy is how indulgent the witty banter can be. This has become a controversial staple of Whedon's work and writing it makes me endlessly self conscious. I don't really like giving dialogue to characters that feels overly written. I've programmed it in my head that the people in a script should talk like people on the street. Once I turned that switch off for this spec, I may have swung the pendulum too far the other way. Everyone might be too "funny." I honestly don't know where that gage should be set.

Also, I typed "Angle" instead of "Angel" more than a few times. Hope I caught all of those.

SPECIAL THANKS TO:
My sister and fellow Buffy fanatic, Allison Haynes Miceli, for making her way through this script on a Sunday night and sending over notes. She's forever smart and helpful but currently pregnant and a mother of a 2-year-old, so I'm exceptionally grateful. Also, thank you to her husband (my brother-in-law) , Joseph Miceli, for touching base this week with some helpful notes as well.

Okay! I want to hear your thoughts on this script and all the scripts prior. Hit me up in the comments below!