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Before the show ended last year, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an odd place for Christians to find spiritual truths, but those who did could find similar spiritual themes being explored on the spin-off Angel. Created by Joss Whedon, who also created Buffy, Angel's finale will be tonight. And like Buffy, the show attracted a theologically-minded audience. Jana Riess is the author of What Would Buffy Do?: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide. She has an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and a Ph.D. in religion from Columbia University.

What are the basic story lines of Buffy and Angel?

Buffy is about Buffy Summers who, as the show begins, is a high school sophomore, who wants to have a normal life. She's just moved to a new town, but her calling follows her. Her calling is to be the Slayer, the one person in her generation who is chosen to stand against the vampires and other evil creatures that plague the world. And this lovely California town that she moves to, named Sunnydale, is situated on the mouth of hell, so all of these nasty creatures are drawn to this place because of its deep, mystical energy.

Angel started after Buffy had been in production for three years. It followed Buffy's on-again/off-again boyfriend, who is a vampire with a soul. Most vampires are soulless, but Angel, because of a gypsy curse, struggles with having a soul, which makes him feel, on the one hand, absolutely terrible for all of the murders that he has committed through his decades as a vampire but, on the other hand, just as committed to working on the side of good to try to achieve some kind of redemption for himself.

Some people would argue that it's occultish, it's about vampires, it has a violent premise, that it's got a lot of adolescent sexuality, that the very nature of it's popularity is mindless, that it can't really be a setting for spiritual lessons. How do you understand this mix of the profane and the spiritual in these shows?

I think you're asking two different questions. One is, is this mindless entertainment? And the answer to that question is no. People can find very profound spiritual themes. They're there. They're there intentionally and sometimes they are quite profound.

The other question is about graphic violence and depictions of adolescent sexuality, which a lot of people have raised, particularly in the sixth season of Buffy, which was the darkest season. The Parents' Television Council, which is a Hollywood watchdog organization, named Buffy their public enemy number one, the least family-friendly show for of everything that was on television that season, including Temptation Island.

The show Friends has just closed down, Angel is closing down, Buffy has closed down. But those shows, particularly Buffy and Friends, have as one of their central themes the idea that you need companions, you need friends.

Isn't it interesting to compare that to some of the other shows that are popular now like Survivor, where you're voting people off the island. What could be more individualistic than that?

What do you make of that?

It's a tremendous dichotomy. I think we're kind of schizophrenic. We value community but we don't necessarily want all of the messy, entanglements that real community entails.

A friend of mine described Buffy as a show about empowerment, and Angel is more about redemption, the vampire with a soul looking for redemption. Is that accurate?

That's a very accurate summary. Angel is clearly a show about redemption and it's also a grittier show than Buffy. Even just watching it you can see visually how dark it is. Angel is a vampire, so he doesn't go walking outside in broad daylight. Most of the scenes are either interior shots or they're night shots. The whole show has a darker, grittier, almost a noir feel to it. Buffy takes place in Sunnydale, where, at least superficially, it looks all bright and happy, even though the mouth of hell lurks below the surface.

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May (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48