The Girl's Got Bite: The Original Unauthorized Guide to Buffy's World

by Kathleen Tracy

  As the show has evolved, so has Spike, who, Marsters notes, “has been used in different ways—as disposable villain, hapless wreck for comedic purposes, wacky neighbor by design, and then love interest.” One of the more difficult transformations for Spike was to would-be rapist. After Buffy breaks off her relationship with Spike, his desperation leads him to try to take her by brute force on her bathroom floor. Marsters told about.com he can’t watch the scene even now. “I can’t even watch a movie where that’s in there. I get up and want to kill the guy. It’s my personal issue. I told Joss, ‘You cut right to the bone, dude. This is not a safe show.’

  “That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. I went home shattered after that. I still don’t think I’ve picked up the pieces of that one. Sometimes the work gets real tough, I’ve got to say. When the writing is that good it can surprise you sometimes how it can rock you.”

  Much easier for James are the love scenes and the fighting sequences. “More and more, the choreography is stuff that I can do well enough that we don’t have to cut to a stunt double, which doesn’t really make Steve Tartalia [his stunt double] very happy. He gets very bored. I’ve always wanted the fighting to be more street-fighting moves, which is stuff that I’m more used to, as opposed to sophisticated martial-arts stuff.”

  During Spike’s first love scene with Buffy, James was nude—and very carefully filmed—but he shrugged it off, since he also appeared nude in his first professional play. Nor does he think the sometimes-graphic sexual content of the show is over-the-top. “All the sexuality is implied, we’re not doing anything graphic, or that hasn’t been done elsewhere on TV,” he told Starburst’s Rupert Laight. “I also think it’s a responsible exploration of a young person’s sexuality. It’s not just titillation.”

  Because of his hair and his physique, James is frequently recognized by fans, but says celebrity has not been an obstacle, although it sometimes makes for strange experiences, such as the one Halloween when he was approached by a fan dressed as Spike. “This guy walked up to me dressed as me, and he asked his friend to take a picture of me,” Marsters told about.com. “The friend was dressed as Darth Maul, and he was getting a piece of pizza. So I had to sit and wait for Darth Maul to get his pizza. It was very surreal, but mostly the fans are great.”

  Being on Buffy has allowed James to pursue other interests. His band, Ghost of the Robot, has released a CD and he provides the voice of Spike for the animated series as well as the Buffy the Vampire Slayer X-Box video game from Fox Interactive. As far as where Spike’s road will lead, Marsters isn’t sure. The only think he does know is that “nothing ever stays the same season to season—nothing.”

  Michelle Trachtenberg

  It’s hard being the new kid on the block, or for that matter, the new actor on an established series, especially when the cast is very close knit. But in Michelle Trachtenberg’s case, joining Buffy was almost like coming home. Because not only had Michelle been a die-hard Slayer fan since the show started, but she was also an old friend of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s. The two worked together on All My Children in 1994–95 when Gellar was playing Susan Lucci’s daughter and Trachtenberg was cast as Lily Benton Montgomery.

  The two kept in touch over the years, so when Gellar invited Michelle to visit the Buffy set, Trachtenberg was thrilled. Little did she know Sarah had an ulterior motive. “I went when they were shooting the fourth-season finale,” Michelle recalls. “While I was there I met Joss; then, a couple of weeks later, I got a call to read for ‘Dawn.’” Whedon had already seen a number of actresses for the new character and it was at Gellar’s urging that he called in Michelle. “I pushed really hard for her,” Sarah acknowledges. In the end, Whedon agreed and Michelle was hired to play Buffy’s out-of-the-blue sister.

  Typically, Joss kept Trachtenberg guessing as to what exactly was in store for her character. “My first creative meeting with Joss was rather short. ‘Hi, welcome to the show, you’re a teenager, you have a secret—you’re a Key but we really don’t know what that is yet. Have fun.’ But it was a little nerve-wracking because they’d all been together so long and were a well-oiled mix. I was worried, but on my first day I was welcomed with open arms and they really accepted me and made me feel at home, like I’d been there for four years along with everybody else. I blended right in. It helped that I was a huge fan of the show.” So much so, Michelle calls herself “a little walking Buffy encyclopedia.”

  Despite her youth, Trachtenberg is a seasoned veteran. Born in Brooklyn on October 11, 1985, she decided she wanted to act when she was all of three years old. “I was watching a little girl braiding Barbie’s hair in a commercial and I thought I could do it just as well. So I announced I wanted to be on TV and wouldn’t move until I was told I could be.”

  Trachtenberg’s parents, Russian émigrés Lana and Michael, decided to let Michelle give acting a try. Lana found an agent in New York who sent Michelle on her first commercial audition for Wisk detergent and by the time she was ten, she had been in more than a hundred commercials. In 1993 she was cast in the Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete and Pete. A year later she joined All My Children, playing an autistic character. “On the set, Sarah was like a big sister,” Trachtenberg told Serena Kappes in a People.com interview. “She would take me into her dressing room and we would play around between scenes. We would find a way to sneak around and have fun.”

  Her breakout role was the feature film Harriet the Spy in 1996, co-starring Rosie O’Donnell and based on Louise Fitzhugh’s 1964 novel. Three years later, she appeared in Inspector Gadget opposite Matthew Broderick. Through it all, Michelle took the accolades and critical raves in stride. “Hopefully I’ll never ever go on an ego trip,” Trachtenberg says. Her mom Lana, who also acts as her manager, does her part to make sure her daughter keeps everything in perspective by making Michelle toe the line like any other teenager. “I have to do my chores and the whole thing,” Trachtenberg admits. “I get grounded if I don’t clean my room.”

  In 1997, Michelle was cast in the short-lived series Meego. She and her mom moved to Los Angeles but her father, a phone installer in New York, stayed on the East Coast. Two years later, Lana and Michael Trachtenberg divorced. Currently Michelle lives with her mom and older sister Irene, an agent. During hiatus, she attends private school, but when filming has a tutor on the set and maintains a straight-A average. “While we’re all eating cake, she has to take a trig test,” noted Gellar to People. “She handles it with ease.”

  That’s because to Trachtenberg, her studies are just as important as her job. “I think education is one of the most important things offered in the world,” she says, and muses about attending college one day and studying theater in England. “I try to set my goals high and I work hard to reach them.”

  She told TeenHollywood.com that she’s also thinking about getting an education in life as well as academia. “I know what to do before the cameras. Now I want to learn what to do behind them. I’m even thinking of taking a year off after I graduate high school and maybe making a movie in a place like Italy—that would give me a chance to travel and work at the same time. Education is important to me. So is work. But the most important thing in my life is my family.”

  The upside of being a celebrity is that it gives Trachtenberg the chance to influence and help others. Being a role model is also a priority for Michelle, who is active in several anti-drug causes. “If I can stop one kid from doing drugs, then I’ve really accomplished something,” she says earnestly. The downside of fame is the loss of anonymity, says Michelle, such as “when you just want to go out with your friends to the mall, or you’re having a bad hair day, you’re not looking forward to someone stopping you and recognizing you.” On the other hand, she says fans are uniformly gracious, so “the truth of the matter is, it’s always flattering when it happens.”

  Despite her youth, Trachtenberg has some sage advice for others who want to follow her example and act: “I a
lways like to say that even though you may be attracted by the more glamorous aspects of Hollywood, it doesn’t happen overnight,” she told SFX magazine. “There’s a lot of hard work that goes into being a good actress. People do not just wake up and think, ‘I want to be on TV today.’ You have to truly believe in your goals, and really fight for what you love.”

  Emma Caulfield

  In some ways, being a successful actor for Emma Caulfield has been a case of ‘Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.’ Although Caulfield says starring in a hit series is a dream come true on one hand, on the other, she sometimes feels there’s something lacking in her life. She admits the entertainment industry as a whole doesn’t “feed my soul. For a while now I’ve had this feeling that there’s something else that I’m supposed to be doing, like I’ve missed my calling somehow.”

  While in Australia filming the horror film The Tooth Fairy, scheduled for a January 2003 release, Caulfield said she finally made peace with her angst. “I had this awakening there of what I’m supposed to do. I made peace with the fact that this business is not what I’m supposed to do. It’s really a stepping stone for other projects,” she said. “I think it probably has something to do with animals, because I’m very passionate about animals.”

  However, Caulfield doesn’t want to sound ungrateful: “I really love what I do, and I have since I was a kid. I was always the little drama queen. But I’ve said it before: I don’t know that I’ll be doing it in ten years. I mean, I love the process of acting, but not the masochism. No matter how successful you get in Hollywood, you cannot rest. Your new movie doesn’t open well, they’re looking for the next person to replace you; it’s always something. You never have true peace.”

  Caulfield was born Emma Chukker April 8, 1973, in Greenville, California, near San Diego, and began studying drama as a teenager at the La Jolla Playhouse and the famed Old Globe Theater. After high school, she enrolled at UCLA as a psych major but ended up dropping out after being stopped on the street by an agent who offered to represent her. “I had only been in Los Angeles for a couple of weeks. It was just that random. And you have a choice. Are you going to pursue it or what? This was too random for me to just turn my back on it. And so I started auditioning and started working, but school was always something I wanted to finish. I really liked school and really liked psychology.”

  While waiting for her break, Emma earned money by working at a number of odd jobs. “I had so many retail jobs growing up and starting out, when I moved here to L.A.,” she recalls. “I worked for Nordstroms, in the hosiery department, which was the one retail experience I had that was actually enjoyable, because the company was really cool. I remember thinking when I first started auditioning, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this, I’ll just work in Nordstrom. I don’t care, I’ll just have a normal life.’

  “I had a bunch of different waitress jobs, too, but I was a horrible waitress. I remember being a cocktail waitress at a bar here in L.A. and they had horrible food, so when customers asked what would I recommend to eat, I would just say, ‘The food here is horrible, you don’t want to eat this … but, you know, our melon-ball shots are great and our beer on tap is fantastic!’ So instead of eating, they’d drink and drink and I ended up getting big tips. Had the management known, I would have been fired earlier than I was; it was the only time I was ever fired, but it was because I was so bad.”

  Emma worked sporadically the first few years, appearing in a handful of television guest roles, including Silk Stalkings, Renegade, Burke’s Law, and Saved by the Bell: The New Class, which Emma says was one of the best experiences of her career. But Caulfield’s days as a waitress finally came to an end in 1990 when she was cast on Beverly Hills 90210, as Brandon’s college girlfriend Susan during the 1995–96 season. After a small role on General Hospital as Nurse Lorraine Miller, Caulfield abruptly decided she wanted to go back to school, and enrolled at San Francisco State University. “I do love psychology. I think people are just fascinating.”

  However, the reality of paying bills intruded on Caulfield’s sabbatical. “I needed to make some quick cash,” she told SFX magazine. “I still knew people, like the casting director for Buffy. He contacted my agent and told him they were looking for someone to play a female demon. I immediately agreed to meet Joss Whedon, because I already knew the show very well, and really enjoyed it. Shortly after doing my reading, I learned that I had the part. It was just supposed to be a onetime thing, but sometimes Joss likes what he sees and something happens.”

  Caulfield thinks Anya struck a chord because her attempts to understand human idiosyncrasies reflect very basic insecurities. “She still doesn’t get it quite right and that’s something we can all relate to—the idea of not being able to get something right, no matter how hard you try.” Caulfield credits Whedon for developing such a character. “He’s very much in tune with what the response of the audience will be. So here I am, acting now. But I could have easily been a psychiatrist, and happy with it.”

  Caulfield has found it difficult to simply be a celebrity. She told Buffy the Vampire Slayer Magazine, “I really do hate it but I’m trying to learn how to view it differently. I hated it so much for such a long time that I avoided anything at all. I just went to work and that was it. I had to shut it off. But I realized that is as big a part as anything else in this business, to be seen outside of who you are on the show, and let people get to know you a little bit.”

  Although Caulfield has been linked romantically to actor Andrew Woodworth, there are no wedding plans in her immediate future. Nor is Emma sure she will return to Buffy after the seventh season, even if the series is renewed. “But then, what I’m thinking now, I might not feel six months from now.” Even so, the idea of working in films increasingly appeals to her. “I don’t think I’d want to do another hourlong series right away. In films, you’re only booked for three months and then you’re back to square one again. Whereas with a hit show you know it’s going to run for a few years. It’s been nice having that consistency with Buffy, but I think I’m ready to move on now and venture out.”

  .5.

  THE EPISODES

  For the Buffy-obsessed, there’s probably very little anybody could say about the episodes that would be a revelation after having watched each one countless times until every frame is seared into memory. But there is more to a series companion book than mere production facts and continuity bloopers. Hopefully, the episode guide will offer even the most knowledgeable BtVS fan not only a complete reference source, but food for thought as well, by taking a look at the series from several different points of view.

  Each episode listing includes a brief plot summary; anecdotal and production information, including names of the regular cast, recurring cast, and guest stars; any obvious bloopers; some noteworthy facts about the episode or some related aspect of the series; plus commentary and observation on the characters’ development. The subtext of each episode will also be analyzed in order to explore the ongoing theme of the series—that the horrors of life, both emotional and personal, rival any found in the movies. One aspect of the series’ overall theme—that life in high school, in college, and in general, is a real-life horror film—will be discussed in detail.

  Production Information

  Executive producers: Joss Whedon, Sandy Gallin, Gail Berman, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Kaz Kuzui

  Produced by: Mutant Enemy, Inc., and Kuzui/Sandollar in association with 20th Century–Fox Television

  Created by: Joss Whedon

  Theme music: Performed by Nerf Herder

  SEASON ONE

  SEASON ONE REGULAR CAST

  Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy Summers)

  Nicholas Brendon (Xander Harris)

  Alyson Hannigan (Willow Rosenberg)

  Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia Chase)

  Anthony Stewart Head (Rupert Giles)

  1. and 2. “Welcome to the Hellmouth”

  (MARCH 10, 1997)

  Director:
Charles Martin Smith (“Welcome to the Hellmouth”) and John Kretchmer (“The Harvest”)

  Teleplay: Joss Whedon

  Recurring cast: Julie Benz (Darla); David Boreanaz (Angel); Ken Lerner (Principal Flutie); Mark Metcalf (the Master); Kristine Sutherland (Joyce Summers)

  Guest cast: Eric Balfour (Jesse); J. Patrick Lawlor (Thomas); Mercedes McNab (Harmony); Jeffrey Steven Smith (student); Natalie Strauss (teacher); Brian Thompson (Luke); Teddy Lane Jr. (club bouncer); Deborah Brown (girl); Amy Chance (girl); Tupelo Jereme (girl); Persia White (girl)

  Music: “Saturated” (during scene where Buffy is debating outfits); “Believe” (played onstage when Buffy arrives at the Bronze); “Things Are Changing” (as Buffy leaves the Bronze to look for Willow); and “Right My Wrong” (Buffy’s confrontation with Flutie at the school gate)—by Sprung Monkey, from Swirl; “Wearing Me Down” (the song Cordelia says she loves) and “Ballad for Dead Friends” (as vampires descend on the Bronze), by the Dashboard Prophets, from Burning Out the Inside

  Plot: While trying to settle into her new surroundings in Sunnydale, California Buffy must come to grips with the realization that it is her destiny to be the Slayer—whether she wants to be or not.

  THIS WEEK’S PROPHECY: On the night of the Harvest, the Master Vampire can draw power from one of his minions while it feeds. This means that once he’s gathered enough strength, the Master Vampire will be able to break through the mystical barrier and come aboveground. If he succeeds, his plan is to begin the annihilation of humans so “the old ones” can regain control of the earth.