So, Giles, got anything that could make this day any worse?
How about the end of the world?
Knew I could count on you.
We all know that Buffy the Vampire Slayer
is a crucial part of pop culture history.
It was a show that popularized supernatural teen dramas,
launched several long-standing careers,
and even changed the way TV shows are written,
but it was almost very different.
(SINGING) I can't even see if this is really me.
If not for the failure of the show's original unaired pilot,
it's hard to say what kind of impact
Buffy might have had on pop culture.
But one thing's for sure the show's creator, Joss Whedon,
has gone on record saying he never wants
it to get an official release.
So why did the unaired Buffy pilot fail,
and what made it so different from the show we eventually
got?
Luckily, both of these questions have virtually the same answer.
Before we get into them we've got
to open up our history textbooks to page 63
and trace the spread of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The Buffy franchise originated as a 1992 movie
starring Kristy Swanson.
Simply titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
this first attempt was rocky to say the least.
Written by Whedon and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui,
the movie was incredibly ill received
by audiences and critics alike,
[MOANING]
The creative butting of heads as well as a tight production
schedule left the movie in shambles
despite the admittedly valiant attempt
to depict a traditional teenage valley
girl as a monster-killing action hero.
Undeterred Whedon turned his attention to the small screen
starting from scratch with a new script and cast.
He wrote a pilot episode for a potential TV series
and shopped it around.
After several studios turned him down,
he eventually found a home for Buffy
at the burgeoning WB television network,
but even then things weren't exactly lush.
Because of WB s new status as a TV network at the time
and their unsteady faith in Whedon's pet project,
the unaired Buffy the Vampire Slayer pilot
would experience some major alterations
before it even started filming.
The script was shaved down so it could fit into a 25-minute time
slot instead of the planned 45 minutes,
making it more of a presentation than the actual pilot
Whedon was hoping for.
And the budget was about as low as it could be.
Add in the fact that we didn't demand
it to direct the thing with no prior experience under his belt
and the reported tensions he had with several crew members
and it looked as though Buffy would be dead upon arrival
even with the immense talent of Sarah Michelle Gellar, who
after auditioning for the role of Cordelia
eventually landed the starring role--
Hi, I'm Cordelia.
I'm Buffy.
After the unaired pilot had been published and sent
to executives, Buffy wasn't picked up.
It had failed to secure a spot on the WB network.
That is until ratings started to plummet for the steamy soap
opera Savannah, then WB president Suzanne Daniels
decided to pull the show off the air and order
Buffy as a last-minute midseason replacement,
giving Whedon and co an opportunity
to ditch the unaired pilot and reshoot the first episode.
Despite the poor quality of Whedon's project,
Buffy managed to sneak onto the air by the skin of its fangs.
We now know that despite all of these tribulations,
the show would be a massive success,
but it wasn't a guarantee at the time.
Perhaps I miscalculated.
I'm thinking yes.
So what was so bad about the unaired pilot?
At first glance, it's actually very similar to the show's
official first episode.
It is still dripping with the same campy
energy as the rest of the series,
and the plot is basically the same.
After a cold open where a female vampire lures a young man
to his death--
[ROARING]
Buffy shows up on her first day at Sunnydale High.
We're told through her conversation with the principal
that she got into some trouble at her previous school.
She's quickly established as an outgoing, self-assured,
fashion-forward valley girl as she interacts with Giles,
Cordelia, Xander, and Willow.
Through strange and deadly happenings
around campus and at the Bronze, we
learn that Buffy is the slayer, a girl born once
in a generation who is destined to slay vampires.
She saves her new friends from a couple
of vamps looking for a meal, and the episode ends.
But surface level similarities mean
very little in the face of the unaired pilot's glaring issues,
and one is worse than all the rest.
I'm here to have fun.
But I mean learning, fun with learning.
As a consequence of the limited runtime,
the unaired pilot has some pacing and set of problems.
Buffy is forced to jump from scene to scene
without much of a through line so the audience can get a feel
for the larger story at play.
As such, there are a lot of little moments
in the official first episode that the unaired pilot simply
couldn't afford to include.
These skipped moments end up being
ones of character development and interaction
which were left out in favor of keeping
the plot moving at any cost.
In the first episode, for instance,
Buffy finds herself without a textbook
in class, which prompts Cordelia to direct her to the library
where she first meets Giles.
In the unaired pilot, she kind of just shows up there,
and the conversation at the Bronze in the first episode
where Buffy inspires Willow to seize the moment
directly leads us to seeing Willow be
led into danger by a vampire.
In the unaired pilot, we're told by Xander
that she left with some guy off camera.
Oh, I saw her sneak out of campus with some guy.
Willow has a boyfriend?
She does tonight.
These seem like little things, but they
do a lot to build out the world, strengthen our connection
to it, and get to know the characters in it.
These are all extremely important,
especially when you're trying to develop
a show about teen drama in a heavily supernatural universe.
The unaired pilot leaves us wanting
for character interaction as well as any solid understanding
of Sunnydale as a location.
Then there's the appearance, or rather lack thereof appearance,
of Angel.
While he has a single intriguing scene
in the official first episode, he is entirely
omitted from the unaired pilot.
Angel becomes a tantalizing mystery for viewers,
and without him, it's just another missing element
it suffers from.
Now so far, everything we've mentioned
could have been fixed in subsequent episodes
if the unaired pilot had actually been released.
Angel could have been introduced later.
These issues didn't help when it came time to order the show,
but they didn't fundamentally change it.
That honor goes to Willow.
In the unaired pilot, Willow was not played by Alyson Hannigan.
Though the rest of the cast remained mostly the same,
the character that would go on to become a protagonist on par
with Buffy was instead played by a relatively unknown actress
named Riff Regan, and that single casting difference
turned everything on its head.
In Joss Whedon-- The Biography, Amy Pascal
wrote that Whedon described the character
of Willow as shy, clumsy, sensible, and sort of plain,
essentially Buffy's opposite in every way.
Given that description, Riff Regan actually
played Willow perfectly.
Her matronly style and purposefully diminished
presence made her a worthy addition
to that unconfident, nerdy girl archetype.
I'm totally jamming on your dress.
No.
It's dorky.
I'm aware that it's dorky.
But there was another element to the character's personality
as written that Regan just didn't
embody on screen, one that can be distilled down
to a single word which permeated the entire show, quirkiness.
Regan played the character quite seriously.
A true outcast, she was either shunned or taken
advantage of by most of her peers, and to combat it,
she literally ran away or smiled through it.
For a show as campy and fun as Buffy,
this kind of tragic innocence was a major misfire.
Hannigan, on the other hand, is certainly
still innocent and nerdy, but her portrayal of Willow
is more in line with the tone of the show overall.
Effortlessly funny in her line delivery,
Hannigan brings a deeply charming social awkwardness
to everything she says.
You play?
A little.
You could accompany us, and we could attempt to sing.
Oh.
In front of other people?
No, I don't play.
This makes her conversations a lot less tragic and much more
endearing.
Equally as importantly, it serves
to develop chemistry between Willow
and the other characters.
Without Hannigan's charisma to bounce off of,
the bond between Willow and Buffy
would not have been as strong.
Awww, I'm going to miss her.
Don't you hate her?
Yes, with a fiery vengeance.
Hannigan and Geller's natural chemistry
is noticeable from their first conversation
on screen, especially when compared
to a similar scene between Geller and Riff
in the unaired pilot.
And considering Willow's the only other character
to appear in every single episode of the show
alongside Buffy, keeping the cast list the same
would have been more than a missed opportunity.
It would have ruined the show.
As sweet and reserved as she was, Regan's version of Willow
simply would not have meshed with
the hokey, overdramatic, extremely sharp writing
and performances that makes up the majority of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer.
Luckily, after seeing Regan in the pilot,
the show's casting director Marcia Shulman understood this.
In a DVD special feature interview,
Shulman had this to say about Hannigan's casting.
Every line that somebody else would play like they were sad,
Alyson was joyful about.
I found you.
And made her the only one for the role.
And that pretty much sums it up the unaired pilot
failed to make anything of real quality.
From time constraints and budget cuts to Whedon's headstrong
creative vision, there was very little chance
it would have been able to rise from mediocrity.
And because of that, it nearly failed to bring Buffy
to our screens at all.
But the unaired pilot did succeed in one major way.
It showed Whedon and the rest of the creative team
behind the scenes what not to do.
Maybe most importantly, it showed the casting director
what they didn't want from the character of Willow,
and that paved the way for Alyson Hannigan
to bring a positive, likable spin to what could have
been a sad, serious character.
These lessons changed Buffy forever.
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