Let Giles be Giles (or even Ripper)
A thought this Halloween: Pouty villainesses in red dresses who look like they stepped off the set of "Grosse Pointe" are all very well, but wouldn't this season be more interesting if we saw a little more of the Ripper side of Giles?
Joss Whedon and the multi-talented cast of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" have shown a marvelous ability to communicate without dialogue, as we saw last season in the Emmy-nominated episode "Hush." This season we saw another example of how much can be said without words, when Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) stared at Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) in his wizard's outfit. For a show that is world-renowned for its snappy, witty dialogue, "BtVS" has also opened new television frontiers in the power of silence.
Unfortunately, action-adventure fantasy and horror shows can easily become nothing more than extended videogames filled with fight sequences. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has always been distinguished by the subtleties of character development which has allowed this series to rise above the common run of action shows. Outside villains can be entertaining (as were Spike and Drusilla when originally introduced), but the most memorable conflicts on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are those which occur between, and within, the regular characters.
Not all of this has carried over to "Angel," a show which continues to struggle over how to use the supporting cast properly without taking the focus away from the hero. (If not for the untimely demise of the character, the beginning of the show's first season might have been better named "Doyle," and the Cordelia and Wesley that we see on the show today have only a tenuous connection to the original versions of the characters as seen on "BtVS.")
"BtVS" has usually done better with the supporting characters, although the demands of action and adventure do inevitably require a certain number of flashy opponents for Buffy to battle; but some of the greatest resources available to this show can already be found in the present cast, even without bringing in the villain flavor of the year.
Many fans of "BtVS" are aware that Anthony Stewart Head (Giles) played Frank N. Furter on the European stage tour of "Rocky Horror," but until the VH1 broadcast of the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," most American fans had never seen him in the role. For the brief space of a single song each, viewers saw a different side of Anthony Stewart Head and of Amber Benson (Tara) as they performed songs from "Rocky Horror."
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