Buffy vs. The New York Times

Une "analyse" (j'utilise le terme de façon large) des critiques lors des débuts de la série:

Citation :

Buffy vs. The New York Times

Over the past few years, a few of my students have researched how Buffy the Vampire Slayer was received in its first season. Some of the reviews they dug up were fascinating, so I thought that I’d share some juicy quotes from their sources:


John J. O’Connor, of The New York Times, panned Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a 1997 article talking about the “fledgling WB network” and how The X-Files and other shows should “not worry” about this supernatural show because “nobody is likely to take this oddball camp exercise seriously….” O’Connor goes on to describe the show’s audience as being “Humbert Humberts all over America” because the main character wears “hot pants and boots” and “changes from one skimpy outfit to another.” He finds amusing the concept of a feminine powerful girl as the main character, writing “What a bother, when there are split hair ends to worry about.” He dismissed it in the end, writing, “The series is fun, but that’s a thought to make you really shudder.”


(Of course, when students do similar assignments on other works, they find that the paper of record got it wrong on Psycho, Night of the Living Dead and All in the Family too.)

Todd Everett of Variety: “Direction by Charles Martin Smith and John T. Kretchmer is OK; if story sags a bit in the second half, it’s a script problem. Series has potential for early-teen viewing, though a second episode viewed was far less amusing than show’s original segment.”

Henry Mietkiewica of the Toronto Star: “The TV version comes up short. Satire is fine in a one-shot project, but it’s tough to sustain in an ongoing series. We’re left with the amusing but unexceptional tales of Buffy.”

Entertainment Weekly’s Kristen Baldwin: “Infinitely more entertaining than the cute but forgettable 1992 movie it’s based on, Buffy The Vampire Slayer …is this mid-season's most distinctive and sharply written new show.”

Tom Gliatto of People magazine, loved the series, writing, “...all in all, this looks like one of the brightest new shows of the season.... The cast…is as smooth an ensemble as you could wish in an hour-long series.” But I love this observation: “The vampires, presided over by a king bloodsucker (Mark Metcalf) who looks like an albino rat in a leather bar, are the only disappointment. Because of his fangs, Metcalf slurps his lines."

Franklin Foer, surveying his colleagues’ opinion at Slate Magainze, found BtVS to be one of the editorial boards favorites of 1997.

Interestingly, the Parent’s Television Council didn’t say one negative word about BtVS until season four, when it started to make its top ten list for worst television, debuting at fourth, then third, worst for season six... and then not making the list at all for season seven. (Angel's second and fourth seasons made their lists, incidentally.)

Consider this blog post a follow-up to Kristen’s “6 episode rule,” as clearly reviewing a series based on a few episodes is a holdover from television production practices pre-Hill Street Blues and Twin Peaks. Myself, BtVS inspired me to try to give a series an entire season, although that was pretty painful with Babylon 5 and Charmed.

Et voilà la review en question du N-Y Times:

Citation :

Just the Girl Next Door, but Neighborhood Vampires Beware
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: March 31, 1997

With the cult suicides in California, these aren't the best of times for television entertainments to be peddling supernatural fantasies. Series like ''The X-Files'' and movies like ''Asteroid'' might take a deeper breath before leaping into the mass-market imagination, a notoriously delicate thing, with their scarifying ploys. What then to make of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' the new Monday-night series on the fledgling WB network? Not to worry. Nobody is likely to take this oddball camp exercise seriously, though the violence can get decidedly creepy.

Based on the 1992 movie, the television series, created by Joss Whedon (''Toy Story,'' ''Twister''), stars Sarah Michelle Gellar (''All My Children'') as 16-year-old Buffy, recently transplanted from Los Angeles to Sunnydale, Calif., which just happens to be sitting above the mouth of hell. That concept isn't too much of a stretch. Given to hot pants and boots that should guarantee the close attention of Humbert Humberts all over America, Buffy is just your average teen-ager, poutily obsessed with clothes and boys. One difference: she is a vampire slayer, a chosen position for only one girl in the world. What a bother, when there are split hair ends to worry about.

With a couple of trusted friends and an older vampire watcher, who is Giles the school librarian, played by Anthony Stewart Head (whose British accent will be familiar from those long-running soap-opera commercials for instant coffee), Buffy drifts reluctantly from one spooky adventure to another. She uses karate skills, crucifixes, wooden stakes, plus occasional holy water, to dispatch dreadful night creatures who cackle things like ''Bring me something young; the earth will belong to the old ones.'' The series doesn't fear ageism.

In tonight's episode, ''The Anointed,'' Buffy is so taken with a serious young man that she ponders getting a volume of Emily Dickinson to impress him, an event that Giles says would be ''grounds for a national holiday.'' But her big date with Owen (Christopher Wiehl) is interrupted when the local vampires act up again. Off she runs to the cemetery, followed by the intrigued Owen who has to admit that ''she is the strangest girl.'' Owen even helps her subdue the villain, later complaining: ''He tried to bite me. What a sissy!'' After the menacing vampire is shoved into a burning furnace, Buffy says sweetly, ''I was hoping we'd finish up at Ben & Jerry's.''

Buffy's mom blithely takes an oh-kids-nowadays approach, observing sagely that ''everything is life and death when you're a 16-year-old.'' Meanwhile, viewers are warned that ''90 percent of the vampire-slaying game is just waiting.'' But you don't have to wait too long for the action in any episode. As Buffy changes from one skimpy outfit to another, Giles gleefully promises: ''I'd say the fun is just beginning. We may stand between the earth and its total destruction.'' The series is fun, but that's a thought to make you really shudder.

C'est chiant quand même que tout soit en anglais J'ai toujours une grande flemme de me forcer et de chercher à comprendre les phrases ^^

Bah c'est pas ma faute si personne ne parle de Btvs en français. ET je veux bien traduire vite fait quand c'est tout p'tit, mais là, sorry, j'suis pas non plus un dictionnaire ambulant