Buffy the Free Agent

The deadline for renegotiating the contract for Buffy to continue on the WB has now passed, leaving 20th Century Fox free to shop the show around to other networks. The WB does retain the right to match the first offer made.

According to Michael Ausiello's article in the TV Guide Insider:

http://www.tvguide.com/newsgossip/inside...

Joss Whedon told TV Guide: "I believe whatever happens, I will make the show." In the event that Buffy moves to another network, depriving Angel of the lead-in from the mother show, Whedon said "I don't think it would help Angel, but I believe Angel can stand on its own." He added: "I'm not particularly worried - I'm never particularly worried. I'm either going to make the show or they're going to tell me to stop. As long as I'm trying hard to make it good, I don't notice anything else."

Whedon certainly is "trying hard to make it good," and it shows. Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel aired exceptional episodes this past week, but in different ways. On Angel, the theme was the welcome return to a less dark, less bitter Angel, and the restoration of his broken connection to his friends; but, as Angel brightens, Buffy touches the dark.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the superb episode "The Body" brought Buffy face-to-face with a child's worst nightmare: finding her mother dead. In a stark, haunting episode, with very few special effects (there is only one very brief fight scene and no background music), and with a simplicity and realism more often found on the stage than on television, we watched Buffy and her friends as they were forced to deal with the reality of death.

For the first time in the Buffyverse, we saw death as it happens in real life, with no apparent reason, and we saw its devastating effect. (Not all of our loved ones go out in a blaze of glory and are forgotten a few weeks later.) The impact of Joyce's death upon Buffy and her pseudo-sister, Dawn, will go well beyond this episode.

Sometimes an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel fails to live up to its promise, and at other times, it meets or even exceeds our expectations. Viewers expected that "The Body" would be a powerful and emotionally affecting episode, and this time, we were not disappointed. "The Body" was everything that we had hoped to see. And, just when some of us were ready to give up on Angel, that show too has turned the corner with the "Epiphany" episode, and is well on the way back to its best.

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