Then one morning I discovered that one of the cable channels was running "Buffy" early in the morning, before the kids got up. I was getting sick of the daily death toll from wars and disasters, courtesy of the morning news so I tried the Slayer's show. The episode I watched featured Spike the vampire on the run from a loan shark. The loan shark was an actual shark, and he was after what Spike owed him–kittens, won in a game of kitten poker! I laughed until I cried, then emailed a couple Buffy fans I know, demanding to know why they hadn't told me about this witty writing sooner.

Not all of the episodes were funny but the writers made you care about the characters.I wondered about all the dysfunctional relationships on that show though. I'd imagine that Dr. Phil would have a field day with a slayer who dated vampires, a witch who dated a werewolf and a guy who was engaged to a former revenge demon. I also wondered about the people who lived in Sunnydale, Buffy's stomping grounds. It looks like a regular town except for the alarming number of vampires, ghouls, living dead and curses, courtesy of the Hellmouth under the high school (the Hellmouth is to creeps what the Mall of America is to a shopaholic). In one episode, a high school student cheerfully says "if no one kills half the basketball team this season, we should have a great year!" Call me an overprotective mother, but if students at my kids' school drop dead on a regular basis, I'm homeschooling! And if ghoulies are roaming the streets half the night, I'm moving! The first thing I'd do when I got out of town would be to hire a lawyer to nail the real estate agent who sold me my house with a deceptive practices lawsuit. Then I'd work on the book and subsequent movie script.

Even more amazing, the local media wasn't picking up on all the chaos. Back in journalism school we learned that "if it bleeds, it leads". Hello, homicidal maniacs running amok! Lots of blood, good leads! Surely CNN would have sent a few satellite trucks–if they can be embedded in Iraq, they can go to Sunnydale. Wolf Blitzer should be ashamed of himself. There wasn't even a special episode of the "Jerry Springer Show, Live from Sunnydale." Not even "Cops." Now that would be interesting–"yep, it's a quiet night.hold on, we gotta report of a 10-666. That's bodies coming out of the ground at the cemetery."

You'd think somebody would have burst into a city council meeting and demanded that the mayor take action. If he wouldn't, that'd give his political opponents a HUGE advantage. "Vote for me, I'll get rid of the vampires!" Or how about "I'm in favor of more schools, not more ghouls?" To his credit, the mayor did authorize rebuilding the high school after it was destroyed during graduation (undead creeps, not a senior kegger). But they built the stupid thing in the same place! I know politicians do dumb things sometimes, but you have to wonder what the Powers That Be were smoking the day they decided to rebuild. Putting Budweiser in the vending machines would have been a better idea than that.

Thanks to reruns, I'm now caught up on all seven seasons of the show. I love its message of female empowerment, unlike the fluffy "Girl Power" of the Spice Girls. I know there are those who sniff that "Buffy" is just a TV show, but is it any worse than being hooked on a soap opera? I used to watch "The Bold and the Beautiful" and believe me, "Buffy" had more realistic scripts. So the rest of you go watch "The Bachelor" and "Survivor" and all the other must-watch shows. I'll be watching the antics of the gang from Sunnydale and waiting for Xander to flash that killer smile.