I probably watched all of Buffy when I was 16 and I loved it. I would say I’m a feminist so I loved when TV shows had strong female leads. Buffy was the first badass female leads in TV and I think a lot of girls related to her and looked up to her. Before on TV even if the lead was female like ‘I Love Lucy’ there were still a strong male lead to support her along with her character itself not being a strong female. While Buffy had love interest during the show she never relied on them for the plot to move forward.

Moving on the ‘Hush’ I think it is a good mirror to what is going on in today’s world. At the start of everyone’s voices being gone we see the liquor store still open and busy. Just like how even though New York had a full shut down liquor stores were demined essential and were still high traffic areas. We then pan over to see a man selling whiteboards already trying to profit off of a change in time, just like how we saw a bunch of people making masks and trying to sell them. Them losing their voices is a lot like having to wear masks now, and very much of what our current world is like for deaf people. This just goes to show how realist tv shows can be and how Buffy really connected with people because it understood how humans think.

I shortly wanted to bring up how Buffy influenced the LGBTQ+ community. When 16 year old me first started watching Buffy I didn’t know it defined a lot of lesbians coming of age. So when I told my friends that’s what I was watching I got asked if I was a lesbian because of the stigma Buffy has. Buffy is a badass and seeing that on a screen I’m sure could show someone coming to age what they are attractive too and it was really the first show that was know for that.

The idea of having an episode with very little talking and the plot based around no talking is quite interesting. I’m not sure if Buffy was the first one but since Buffy a lot of drama and thriller tv shows tend to have an episode that takes away that comfort of talking. Us as humans rely so much on our voice to communicate with each other that when it is taken away it is terrifying. I mean a universal nightmare humans have is not being able to scream loud enough.

As a TV show Buffy the Vampire Slay was the first of many things for a tv show. They showed that a strong female lead can be interesting and stay on the air for many seasons. It help open the eyes for a lot of lgbtq+ kids coming of age. It also started a a genre of tv shows with a coming of age horror show.