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The Now and the Then: Buffy and History
Mundusmundi ~ Aug 24 2001 More to the point, one could argue that history has the same effect in the Buffyverse as in the Realverse. On Buffy, history isn't an endlessly repeated, hermetically-sealed cycle, as on Family Ties or Northern Exposure. These series use each episode as a means of teaching its main characters a facile lesson ("Money can't buy happiness," "Small towns have big values"), only to have the lesson promptly forgotten by the next installment. They teach that history is something passive yet didactic, like a dim Hallmark homily. In reality, history is an active, unstable, volatile force. Joss Whedon is aware of this fact. On Buffy, history can hurt.
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