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Season five
 
Like every season before it, season five takes
Buffy
in a new direction, with a new set of issues and characters. The first episode ends with the enigmatic introduction of Dawn, Buffy’s mysterious younger sister. The story centers around Glory, an immensely powerful Goddess bent on the destruction of Dawn, the opening of a portal to a hell dimension, and, in the process, the destruction of Earth as we know it. Season five is wonderfully done and raises a set of core issues, including friendship, grief, death, sisterhood and independence. It also shot down criticism that Joss was spread too thin to maintain
Buffy’s
quality.
The first episode, a funny and enthralling encounter between Buffy and Dracula, is on its surface a stand-alone episode. But
Buffy
vs.
Dracula
cleverly sets up the story arc for the season. This episode highlights the insecurities that ultimately lead to Riley’s departure. It also, in Xander’s determination to stop being “everybody’s butt-monkey,” showed us the motivation that would ultimately lead to Xander’s emergence from the basement and his engagement to Anya. And most importantly, the episode introduces Dawn, who would become a regular on the program.
Michelle Trachtenberg won the coveted role of Buffy’s younger sister. Trachtenberg knew she was joining a successful show and was already a big fan when she came on board. Like Gellar and Hannigan, the young Trachtenberg was already a Hollywood veteran, having begun acting at the age of four. She played Lily Montgomery on
All My Children
, was a series regular on
The Adventures of Pete & Pete
and made several guest appearances on
Meego, Guys Like Us, Figure it Out, Dave’s World, Law & Order
and
Clarissa Explains it All
. She’d starred in the feature films
Harriet the Spy, Inspector Gadget, Can’t Be Heaven, The Cage
and
Melissa
.
And she did all of this before turning 16.
Getting the role as Buffy’s little sister was one of the best moments of Trachtenberg’s career. “I was so happy, because I was such a big fan of the show already,” laughs the actress. “I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to get to hang out with these cool people and characters every day.”
Trachtenberg fit right in with the
Buffy
cast; it didn’t hurt that she already knew Gellar. “She had worked on
All My Children
and I knew her from there. She has become like a real sister to me, and in the beginning, she and everyone else was worried about how I was doing. Was I happy? Was everything going OK? They make you feel very loved and a part of the family,” says Trachtenberg.
When she joined the show the character Dawn was called the Key. In the beginning, Trachtenberg wasn’t clear on what that meant. She says Joss told her in an early meeting that Dawn was a regular teen who was a Key, and even he didn’t know how it was going to all work out.
“I’m not sure if he didn’t know, or if he really didn’t want to put too much on me at once, but it worked,” says the actress. “We’ve really developed—I almost feel like I’ve been a part of the show from the beginning because I’ve been watching it since its debut and I’m a little walking
Buffy
encyclopedia, rather scary but it’s fine.”
In the touching episode
Family
, which Whedon wrote and directed, Joss did for Tara what he did for Oz in
Innocence
—he made us love her. Some fans were having difficulty accepting Tara as part of the Scooby gang. In typical Joss fashion, he took this head on, painting Tara as even more of an outsider as the Scoobies struggle with what to give her for her birthday. But conflict with Tara’s family forces the Scoobies to choose sides. They ultimately choose Tara as their own and, more importantly, we desperately want them to make this choice.
I’m a little walking
Buffy
encyclopedia, rather scary but it’s fine.
—Michelle Trachtenberg
 
Even more important, in
Family
, Joss returned to one of
Buffy’s
“mission statements.” Your family can be difficult and cruel, Joss tells us, but you have the power to create your own family. Your new family can be more important, more real, than the family you are born into. This theme replays itself throughout the series, from the initial formation of the Scoobies in season one to Xander’s failed attempt to form a new family with Anya in season six.
As Joss tells it: “When we created the show, they said, ‘Do you want [Buffy’s] family?’ And I said, ‘Well, mom and whatnot, but basically, she has a family. Her father is Giles, her sister is Willow, and it’s already in place.’ I had some things go on in my life that made me say, ‘I really want to get this message out, that it’s not about blood.’ Tara was the perfect vehicle for that.
“
Family
is as much of a didactic message show as I’ve ever done. Hopefully an entertaining one.” This theme is obviously heartfelt for Joss, but he insists it’s no reflection on his upbringing. “I actually love my family!” he laughs. “We’ve been an unconventional family. I was a child of divorce, and there was a lot of shuffling around. And [there were] people who were not in my family who became of my family.”
A particularly innovative episode was
The Body
, which was later nominated for an Emmy. The episode, written and directed by Whedon, employs long scenes with minimal cuts to convey a deeper sense of physicality and reality. Joss had lost his mother a few years before and the episode had a special poignancy for him.
 
Michelle Trachtenberg poses with Sarah Michelle Gellar.
I really want to get this message out, that it’s not about blood.
—Joss
 
“I really made the episode to capture something very small. The black ashes in your mouth numbness of death. The very morbid physicality of it. It’s why Buffy threw up. Why Dawn said she had to pee. Why the girls kissed. Why there were so many shots of the body.
“You know, I worked my ass off on [that episode]. And my whole cast was extraordinary. But I really thought people were going to sort of hate it, because the whole point was, there’s no catharsis. There’s no point where you go, ‘We’ve learned this!’ or ‘She’ll always be a part of us!’ It was just, ‘My mother is a dead body. And that’s all.’ But people actually did get a kind of catharsis from it. A lot of people who have lost people said it really helped them deal with it or it really moved them. I was surprised by that, because my intention was just to capture that reality, not really to comment on it or be helpful about it.
“The reactions of all the characters were based on things I’ve done. My mother was not the first person I lost. The first person I ever lost, there was a whole thing where I had to find a black tie, because I thought you had to wear a black tie to a funeral. Of course, it was California, so people showed up in Hawaiian shirts, but I didn’t know that! And I couldn’t find one anywhere in LA. I went to dozens of stores, and I was sweating and shaking, like, ‘If I don’t find this, it’ll be sacrilege!’ That’s where the Willow thing came from.
“And then when I lost my mother, there was that numbness that I tried to capture with
Buffy
, but at the same time, I had already lost someone, and I was around a lot of people who hadn’t so then I was sort of in Tara’s shoes—watching other people’s reactions, and just trying to help and get through it. So it’s all there. Everybody’s got a piece of that.”
The finale of season five,
The Gift
, represented the culmination of a story arc that Whedon had forshadowed in season three. As everyone knows, Buffy sacrificed herself to save the world—the ultimate sacrifice. Or was it?
By the end of season five Whedon portrayed a Buffy that is traumatized and deeply tired. She has lost Angel, Riley and her mother and the resolution she showed when she killed Angel at the end of season two has faded. She isn’t willing to kill Dawn, whatever the consequences. When she realizes that she can die in Dawn’s place, her reaction is... relief. “The hardest thing to do in this world is to live in it.”
So Joss kills Buffy in a brilliant episode that broke fans’ hearts. “Our mandate was: MAKE THEM CRY! And when we watched it, we all cried,” says Joss. But not everyone was thrilled with this development, including some of his cast.
“I went straight to Joss,” Marsters says. “I said, Joss, you can’t kill Buffy. The show is called
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
! You can’t do that, man—I need the job!’
“Joss looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Dude, it’s my show. I can do whatever I want.’
“He smiled his little trickster smile and left,” the actor recalls, “which led me to believe that I’d have my job, not to worry. And I think this was the most dramatic way to close the original thesis of the show, which was, ‘How does one get from childhood to adulthood? How does one pass through adolescence?’
“Now the question for Buffy and the Scooby Gang is, ‘How does one negotiate the perils of adulthood?’ And a bloody good corollary is, ‘What’s Spike’s role in that process?’”
Buffy’s death was equally stressful for executives at UPN, who had picked up the series from the WB.
Joss looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Dude, it’s my show. I can do whatever I want.’
—James Marsters
 
The Move to
UPN
 
There are times when the WB made suggestions that didn’t sit well with Whedon, but for the most part they gave him free reign. From its beginnings as a mid-season replacement,
Buffy
had evolved into a very important show for the WB, a show that helped define the network. And in return Whedon received creative freedom and, almost as important, respect for his creation.
But things turned rocky as WB’s five-year contract for
Buffy
approached its end. Fox, which spent $2 million per episode producing
Buffy
but only received $1 million per episode from the WB, expected a large increase in its fee. This was normal for the television business. Production companies typically sold their shows for less than production costs, making up the difference with international and syndication sales for their hits. And with large increases in fees at the five year renewal point.
While this was typical for the television business, it wasn’t typical for the WB, which as a fairly new network was losing $50 million per year and had never before had a show reach the five-year mark. In the negotiation process, Jamie Kellner, Turner Broadcasting CEO (who also runs the WB) took a hard line. Kellner, who has a reputation as a tough negotiator, refused to pay over $1.8 million per episode. He also downplayed
Buffy’
s importance to the WB, saying it was a niche show that appealed mainly to teens and certainly wasn’t “irreplaceable.”
The cast felt strongly about staying with the WB. After all, the WB had supported them and nurtured them from obscurity into one of the most praised shows on television. Sarah Michelle Gellar went as far as saying that she wouldn’t play Buffy on any other network. Reminded that her contract with Fox had two more years to run and that she was obliged to play Buffy regardless of what network was airing the series, Gellar retracted her comments.
Whedon was furious, telling the
New York Daily News
that, “For Jamie Kellner to call it a teen show and dismiss his own product angers me. It doesn’t breed love.” For Whedon a key issue was the disrespect shown by Kellner, and he sent Kellner a letter complaining about the disparaging remarks.
Ultimately the WB lost the bidding to UPN, who offered $2.3 million per show. Whedon blamed the loss squarely on Kellner. “Jamie said ‘I won’t budge an inch,’” said Whedon, indicating that other top WB executives supported
Buffy
.
At the Television Critics Association Press Tour Gellar apologized for her comments during the negotiations. “What you have to understand is that for five years we had a home on the WB,” Gellar says. “We had a place where we were supported, where we were able to make the show creatively the way we wanted to make it, and so the thought of making a move was scary.”
BOOK: Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy
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