RECAP
of the
Infamous Unaired Half-Hour Buffy PilotBy Jennifer Godwin (mail at jengod dot com)
P.S. Don't email in search of a copy of the pilot -- I shared my tape with a friend and I haven't seen it since!The infamous unaired Buffy pilot begins at night in a high school science classroom with some kind of brain-in-a-jar display. Beside the brain, a window shatters, and -- hey, look, everybody, it's our good friend Darla! "Are you sure this is a good idea?," she asks. "This is a great idea," replies her boy toy, as he clambers in the window. Cut to a hanging plastic skeleton. It's a horror show, you know, so a skeleton and a brain-in-a-jar are appropriate images, albeit random as heck.
Darla looks around, scared, and does usual her timid, disingenious routine. She's wearing an overlarge babydoll dress. I think back to 1996, when the infamous unaired pilot was presumably filmed, and I'm pretty sure that overlarge babydoll dresses were out by then. Their greatest television work, of course, was on Gabrielle Carteris, and her heydey was already long since past. Not sure if this outfit is the result of the ever-awful Jossian fashion sense or of the infamous vampire inability to keep up with the fashion times. If it is the latter we can assume Darla recently resurfaced in Sunnydale after going underground in 1992.
Darla looks around the classroom, asking if Boy Toy goes to the school, and he replies that he used to. Since we know this is a horror show, but presumably don't already know this scene on tapes of the real pilot, I think this is where we're supposed to start being nervous. Boy Toy said used to go to the school. Like before he was dead, maybe? Da da dum. Boy Toy and Darla (she's not wearing a nametag, so officially she's anonymous, but let's not kid ourselves -- we know what's what, and that is Julie Benz) exit the classroom and enter the school auditorium. The camera moves past a plastic clown head. Ha! Clowns. Clowns are scary. It's a horror show. This is all coming together. Darla and Boy Toy wander onstage, and Darla seems nervous, while Boy Toy flips a switch that drops open a trap door. At which point the low camera angel treats us to the rest of Darla's outfit -- black tights and saddle shoes. It's really quite Andrea Zuckerman.
"I could have fallen," whines Darla. "I would have caught you," smarms Boy Toy. Darla acts incensed, and Boy Toy swoops in for a kiss, and suddenly looks just like Sean Astin. Darla hears a noise. "What was that? I heard a noise," says Darla. "It's nothing," says Boy Toy. "Maybe it's something," insists Darla. "Maybe it's something," teases Boy Toy. "That's not funny," says Darla. Boy Toy hollers a questioning "Hellooo?" as the camera jumps out, showing the two alone on the stage and Boy Toy assures Darla there's no one there. "Are you sure?" she asks, facing away from him, peering into the wings. He's sure, he says. Darla whirls around, vamped out, and goes for his neck.
Because this is test pilot, the show doesn't yet have a sound effects budget, and as a result Darla's vampiric change is missing the amalgamation of animal snarls and growls that make our better- funded present-day vamps seem so dangerous. It's not the same without the growls, or the sound of sucking.
Hey, did you get how everyone thought it was going to be the boy preying on Darla? But Darla was really the one preying on the boy? What a twist. That Joss -- he's gonna be tricky.
Ah, the sound of silence, or sucking, or something, is broken. Exterior, the main entrance to Sunnydale High School, day. There's a rock song on the soundtrack, something about "salvation, show me what you got one" but I can't really make out the lyrics and I don't identify music very well, so just believe me when I tell you it's all youthful and punk sounding. [Since I first posted this recap I've had a bunch of kind folks email me that the song is "Salvation" by Rancid, from their Let's Go album, released in June 1994. RealAudio Sample.]
Anyway, we follow a pair of legs up the front steps, and are shocked to discover that it's our little Buffy. Sarah Michelle Gellar looks like Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest Buffy, except her hair is orange. Orange, I tell you. Also, she's a smidge thinner.
Going for the monochromatic look, she's matched her orange miniskirt to her orange hair, plus she's wearing a transparent cream-colored short-sleeved button-down blouse open over a crazy birthday cake shirt. And she's blowing bubble gum bubbles. You know that saying 'I'm here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of bubble gum'? Well, Buffy's apparently here in Sunnydale today to do the opposite. And don't give me a hard time if that's not really a saying. Buffy enters the front door, and -- hey! -- the sign over the door informs us that this is not yet Sunnydale High, but some place called Berryman High. Whatever. It's that school where they shoot the exteriors for Buffy and 90210, which FYI, is Torrance High School, located in the South Bay area of Los Angeles.
Inside "Berryman" High, Principal Flutie shows Buffy around on her first day and -- "Hey! It's that guy!" The principal in the infamous unaired pilot is played by Stephen Tobolowsky, the king of the nervous, squirrely adult nerd character actors. He was "Ned -- Ned Ryerson!" in Groundhog Day, and the computer scientist duped by Mary McConnell in Sneakers. The gag in the scene is that he can't remember Buffy's name. He tells Bunny/Betty that the rules are simple. "No gang colors, no fur, no hanging from the rafters in the cafeteria screaming 'meat is murder' on Sloppy Joe day. That became very popular last month -- had to put my foot down." Buffy interrupts to reassure him she will not cause any problems. "I'm here to have fun." Off his look, she corrects herself, "But... I mean. Learning. Fun with learning." Flutie reassures Buffy in turn, telling her that she'll do just fine. Naturally, he's jinxed her permanently, and chaos will ensue at Berryman High until she burns the school down two and a half years later to save the world from a giant snake. Have fun kids!
Cut to a California-style courtyard, with a lawn, several palm trees and a handful of scurrying students. It's not a location I recognize from the canonical show. And there we see her, for the very first time, sitting on a bench, reading. The Wrong Willow. The Wrong Willow, of course, is what makes this the Infamous Unaired Pilot. Our beloved Alyson Hannigan is nowhere in sight and instead, in this bad wrong alternate universe called Berryman High, Willow is played by one Riff Regan. Did you ever see that show Sisters? It was about four sisters. Starred Sela Ward and Swoosie Kurtz, launched the career of Ashley Judd, featured George Clooney the season before he started ER, as a detective investigating the rape of Sela Ward's daughter -- is this ringing any bells? Well, Riff Regan's most famous role, other than that of The Wrong Willow in the Infamous Unaired Buffy Pilot, was as Young Georgie, the mousy younger version of the homebody sister played by Patricia Kalember. If you want to visualize her, Riff Regan has very pale skin, chipmunk cheeks, brown eyes, and curly brown hair cut to shoulder length, with the top pulled back into a half ponytail and a single tendril hanging down each side of her face. Anyway, she's not Aly, and it sucks.
Last updated: 22 November 2005.
Created: 15 August 2000.
Recap copyright © 2000-2005 Jennifer Godwin.
Unaired pilot copyright © 1996 Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox Television, the WB Network, Kuzui, et al.
Questions? mail at jengod dot com
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