No One Can Really Tell You The Truth
The Buffy reboot was cancelled, but should you believe anonymous insider reports about why?
From the Author
Over the last week, we received confirmation that Disney/Hulu would not be moving forward with their sequel/reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that was in development. The show was being worked on by Academy Award winning director Chloe Zhao and would have featured the return of Sarah Michelle Gellar in the lead.
This is a natural part of the development process, especially when the medium is in the state of flux it is in right now. Disney seems unwilling to spend large sums of money on streaming shows, which this reboot would have been, and this comes on top of a reshuffling of executives at the top. Networks develop shows and shoot pilots that never see the light of day every year, the issue is just that now networks and streaming services are leaning into established franchises so fans will have a vested interest based only on trade reports.
And that’s what brings us to today’s topic: the consternation about why this show was cancelled. Ordinarily, we don’t get an explanation, mostly because we as the audience of a show we never saw aren’t owed one. Sarah Michelle Gellar said the show was great and the current executive wasn’t a Buffy fan. Then a report came out from one of the trades claiming (via an anonymous insider) the “real reason” the show was cancelled was that the pilot wasn’t very good and they didn’t want to sink money into reshooting it.
When it comes to “insiders” in this situation, we should take anything said with a massive grain of salt. It’s kind of like when there’s a shooting involving a police officer and the press takes the statement given by the police as a statement of fact without doing their own investigation. To be clear, the fate of the Buffy show is not nearly as important as an officer-involved shooting, but the comments by insiders and by the police press room both exist to serve the same purpose: protect the institution they work for.
When an “insider” is willing to go on the record and offer an official opinion of quality, even if it is anonymous, it should be treated as suspect by us the reader. The only objectivity that arises from whether a show is “good” or “bad” is whether or not it meets the minimum standards of cinematography, sound work, or other markers that make something watchable. In terms of whether or not something is to the taste of the individual viewer, it is entirely subjective and something the viewer has to rectify with what claims the reviewer makes.
For example, when I reviewed Project Hail Mary, I understood that my thoughts on the movie may not line up with everyone who reads it. Because it is an article I am writing (or a podcast I am recording), you have the opportunity to hear me make my case and decide whether or not you agree, preferably after you see the movie. Considering the current state of movie and television criticism, people seem to seek out opinions they agree with before deciding to watch something, or they look out for a general consensus from aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.
An anonymous assessment in this situation falls into neither of these categories. To report on what an anonymous person says in this situation is basically useless besides to generate clicks from people who assumed the show would be bad and want vindication in that regard or people who assumed the show would be good and want to be angry about it. It doesn’t have the benefit of being able to say “well I know this guy likes things like this so if it’s bad he’s right” or the ability to get a consensus from multiple people agreeing about the same thing.
In actuality, all it is doing is fueling culture wars, which is the last thing we need right now. The truth is, no one knows what “actually happened” leading up to Buffy’s cancellation, and truthfully we may never really know. If this show wasn’t Buffy, there wouldn’t even be a conversation about why it was canceled. It would just be another in a long line of pilots that didn’t get picked up. Because it’s a franchise and the media ecosystem relies on clicks to generate ad revenue, we get stories like this that blindly disparage people associated with a project without actually allowing them the equal opportunity to defend themselves.
From the Author
