A Tabula Rasa Meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Recently, the earthling’s gaming group got invited to a game using a system called Monster of the Week. He accepted because he loves tabletop RPGs, but there was a tiny problem: he didn’t know what a monster of the week was. He has no memory of watching a show like that, because the last one he saw was Doctor Who when he was like six. (Recent earthling faves: Dimension 20, The Good Place, Are You Being Served? These are not exactly monster of the week shows, unless capitalism, moral philosophy, and customers can be considered monsters. And having typed that out, I realize there’s an argument to be made there. But they aren’t classic monsters, anyway.)

The description of Monster of the Week, demonstrating how au courant the game designers are, namechecks Supernatural, X-Files, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all shows that, to the earthling’s gaming group, exist in distant prehistory with the dinosaurs and the Hittites and poodle skirts.

Our parental duty was clear: we had to educate this child. And that is why we sat down with some DVDs to show Buffy to someone who was born well after the last episode of Angel aired, someone who knows nothing about its history or fandom, someone who has never watched a TV show that didn’t autoplay the next episode three seconds into the closing credits. I was not a tabula rasa when I first watched Buffy, and neither was Best Beloved. We had no idea what to expect.

( We figured he probably wouldn’t like it much. Spoiler: he did. )