Buffy the (Moral) Vampire Slayer
Jonathan V. Last
January 1, 1999
Before Felicity and Dawson and Buffy, before Julia and Amanda, there was only Brenda Walsh, pouting and plotting and sunning herself on the screen in Beverly Hills 90210.
In 1990, the infant Fox network gave birth to a new kind of show: the prime-time teen drama. These hour-long shows sought to capture the attention of a cohort of viewers that was ignored by the major networks, kids between the ages of 12 and 17. Fox hoped to lure these middle- and high-school students away from their homework, away from the phone, and put them in front of the television by using soap opera-like serials featuring teen life. And it worked.
In fact, it worked better than anyone at Fox could have dreamed. Kids made Beverly Hills 90210, the first teen drama, an instant breakaway hit. Three seasons later, Fox launched a spin-off of Beverly Hills 90210 called Melrose Place, which became, improbably, another roaring success. Three seasons after that, the network introduced Party of Five. And today, nine years after Brenda Walsh first graced the screens of suburban living rooms, Fox is the unofficial network of Gen X.
Ironically, just as Fox was securing its grip on twentysomethings, another impudent weblet, the Warner Brothers television network, determinedly calling itself the WB, has grabbed a hold of the leading edge of Gen Y—the kids born after 1979. And they've done it by using Fox's signature formula. In 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on the WB. It was only a mild success until it was paired in its sophomore season with a new show, Dawson's Creek. The duo provided the young network with its first dose of ratings power among teen viewers. Dawson's Creek instantly became the most talked about show in homerooms across the country, and ...
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