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