Buffering the Vampire Slayer | A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Podcast

Giles is back in corduroy with some new potential slayer step-sisters, Drusilla as The First is wriggling and giggling about, Xander and Andrew *cannot* stop flirting, and Turok-Han is really, really strong. So strong, in fact, that he almost undoes Buffy... but, battered and bruised, she explains to the potentials and the Scooby gang that if the Hellmouth is gonna f*cking swallow them?? It is gon...

Dear friend of the pod Helen Zalztman (The Allusionist, Answer Me This!) joins us today for a deep dive into linguistics in Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Why does Giles' leatherbound book use a "Y" in Vampyre? Why does television rely so heavily on Latin to convey magic spells? Where does the word "coven" originate? Did Buffy coin the term "wiggins"?! In the words of one Jenny Owen Youngs, wow wow wow...

We celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from Torrance High School, aka Sunnydale High, with hundreds of your beautiful nerdy faces — and it was one of the best nights of our damn lives. We are going through some of our favorite high-school moments from Buffy, including the infamous Oedipus Rex performance at the end of "The Puppet Show," (17:22) the meeting of The Mayor, Fai...

Andrew is cosplaying as Spike and being interrogated by Xander and Anya while Actual Spike is drinking blood out of bags and shattering chairs to bits (at the behest of another More Evil Spike). The scoobies would do well to remember that there are manacles in the basement, and everyone else would do well to remember that they could USE THE DOOR instead of BREAKING THE F*CKING WINDOWS AGAIN. It is...

Time to repair all of the broken windows at the Summers' house, see Aimee Mann at The Bronze, and get a little kinky with Spike in the name of detective work! The thing beneath us is also getting PARTICULARLY hot and bothered as we near the mid-point of the season and, perhaps relatedly, several women in Sunnydale seem to only be able to speak in breathy porn voices when they meet attractive vampi...

Special Guest Hrishi Hirway joins us to discuss S7E7: Conversations with Dead People! Cassie is back in the library making Willow cry (which makes us cry), Dawn is microwaving marshmallows with poltergeists, Spike is on a date, Holden Webster is EXACTLY the kind of guy who would rise from the dead just to tell you about how your womanly mind works, and Andrew is doing very very bad things at the s...

You know that feeling when something from beneath you is devouring and you're like, really trying to sort what the hell that is so you can save the world for like the billionth time, but then some high school student puts on a mystical letterman jacket and then instead of working on saving the world you have to try to bazooka the principal to win over the love of this letterman jacket wearing hott...

We are BACK, the year is 2022, and everything is coming up Anya. We go deeper into understanding Anya's origins and past then ever before, we get a brilliantly horrible CGI spider, Kristin dubs the frat house "Murdercrombie" (did she miss the perfect opportunity to say "Murdercrombie and Witch" — yes, she did) and Jenny expounds on what it means when you call someone "Lemon Drop." We hope that som...

Buffy is using all of her slayer know-how to be a guidance counselor at the new Sunnydale High and it seems that, as many might have anticipated, those two skill sets do not have significant overlap — though she is great at sharpening pencils. Spike is still feeling very very sad in the basement, Zachary Ty Bryan is here to remind us that boys (in robes) will be boys (in robes), and Cassie's death...

Today's episode was taped LIVE and both of us were in the same place at the same time ...to talk about Season 7 Episode 3, "Same Time, Same Place"! HOW NOVEL. Will there be Gnarl impressions? Yes. Will we re-enact the entire scene between Willow and Anya with their sexy candles? Pretty much. Will we get weepy in the end when, as always, chosen family holds strong? Damn right. LOCATE YOUR HOSTS UPO...

This is a re-airing of "Seeing Red & 'The Monster Myth,'" which originally aired in our Patreon feed alongside Buffy's S6E19: "Seeing Red" We've chosen to re-air this episode in the main feed the week after Season 7's second episode, "Beneath You," to double down on the conversation surrounding accountability, and on the nuance that exists when there is a pre-existing intimate relationship that ha...

From Beneath You, This Episode Devours. That's it, that's the whole description. LOCATE YOUR HOSTS UPON THE INTERNET Jenny Owen Youngs: @jennyowenyoungs; jennyowenyoungs.comKristin Russo: @kristinnoeline; kristinnoeline.comBuffering the Vampire Slayer: @bufferingcast on twitter, facebook, and instagramLearn more about our team at bufferingthevampireslayer.com/our-team Produced by: Kristin Russo, J...

Sunnydale High School is BACK, and so the f*ck are we!!!! Welcome to Season 7, scoobies. We've got ghost zombies, blueprints, and a brand new principal — not to mention a second ensouled vampire hiding in the basement with every single big bad we've ever met? Buckle up, buckle in, helmets on, let's do this thing. LOCATE YOUR HOSTS UPON THE INTERNET Jenny Owen Youngs: @jennyowenyoungs; jennyowenyou...

As a part of a four-episode series surrounding 6.19 Seeing Red, Kristin curated a conversation with Emma O'Sullivan — a former Kitten Board member who met her wife on the Willow & Tara boards in the early aughts — and Jen Malkowski, our very favorite "scholar of death," who also happened to be hanging out on The Kitten Board when the show aired. This conversation is both its own capturing of queer...

We are heading out of the grave and into the light, dearest scoobies — it is the end, the end of Season Six! WE MADE IT!!!! Dark Willow did not destroy the world, Giles did not die (but did smolder), Dawn efficiently fought off the lobster tree demons alongside her big sister slayer just like she always wanted, Spike, um, well... also got what he (maybe?) wanted?? Hard to really SAY, but we have a...

Oh mannnnnnn Dark Willow needs to kick every square inch of Buffy's ass and is also driving a truck by standing on top of it and is also making cops take naps and by the way did you know she also has some shit to do with Rack and *also* she would like to do an impression of Dawn whining?!?! A busy day. It is S6E21: Two To Go. Oh, and one more thing? Daddy's home.+++ LOCATE YOUR HOSTS UPON THE INTE...

She owes you! She owes you paaaain! Whewwwww, that's right scoobies: Willow has gone and smooshed her vengeance seeking hands into *all* of the dark magic books and slurped up so much dark magic that her hair and eyes have turned black and her voice got an octave lower. This is not a drill! Dark Willow is here and she doesn't need anyone's help because she is going to avenge the death of Tara and,...

Amber Benson is here with us, in conversation with Kristin & Jenny, and we could not be more overjoyed!!!! We talk about witchcraft, memories from the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the impact of queer characters on television, the beauty and power of the Buffy fandom, and even that time that Amber thought no one noticed her dancing into a pole in Once More, With Feeling... The biggest of all th...

Seeing Red is here, whether we want it to be or not! This is one of FOUR episodes we produced and recorded to cover the episode as responsibly as possible. Making space for nuanced conversation on both the bathroom scene (a link to our episode with Jess Clark is below) and the Bury Your Gays trope (episode airing tomorrow on Patreon!) means that here, today, we get some space to have fun with Anya...

If Spike and Anya doing it on the Magic Box table wasn't enough for you (Giles would be scandalized!), then how about Ira Madison III here in-episode with us talking about all of his hottest takes on Season 6?? One thing we all agree on: Xander, shut the f*ck up. +++ LOCATE YOUR HOSTS UPON THE INTERNET Jenny Owen Youngs: @jennyowenyoungs; jennyowenyoungs.com Kristin Russo: @kristinnoeline; kristin...

The bells of hell stopped ringing just long enough for three asshole men to gaslight Buffy (AND US?!) into doubting her own reality! How cool. How sweet. How lovely. HOW CHARMING. Fuck everyone, because yeah it's S6E17: Normal Again and we are pissed. Oh, also, we play a game where we guess all of the groceries that Spike is carrying in his brown paper bag, because we care about you! And hey, if y...

Sarah Duncan, a Pop Culture Scholar, Multidisciplinary Artist & Cultural Worker, is here in conversation with Kristin & Alba — we are talking about the harmful mental health tropes found in Buffy's Normal Again, how common they are across pop culture, and how harmful and dangerous those tropes have been and continue to be! Kristin & Jenny will be here with your episodic conversation on S6E17: Norm...

Okay. Well. In today's episode — S6E16: Hell's Bells — Spike has brought a date to Xander and Anya's wedding (a date, did you know, it is a date) but only cares about Buffy's happiness, Dawn has met a cute demon teen, Clem looks absolutely excellent in his suit, Tara and Willow can't stop giggling, and Buffy is really good at juggling (less skilled at charades). Also in today's episode, Xander's f...

In our last live-taping of the season, Captain Can-Do is BACK and he has a SCAR and he wears GLOVES and a LEATHER VEST and he has a WIFE named Sam and we LOVE HER. Listen, this is the one where Riley comes back to town to find some demon eggs, Buffy is horny for anyone with or without a pulse, and we ruminate on the temperature of vampire penises? You're incredibly welcome, and yes it is S6E15: As...

Ah, it's the annual tradition of marking the birth of Buffy Summers with interdimensional chaos! Halfrek has capitalized on Dawn's wish to keep everyone inside the house, Anya is hoisting a red-shirted boy into the mix (lookout, buddy), there's a demon who uses his sword like a Polly Pocket, Spike has too many muscle cramps to count, and WE LOVE SOPHIE. Yes, that's right — it's S6E14: Older and Fa...