Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the other  supernatural vampire series  True Blood are  entertaining with lots of sexy and intriguing characters However, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has much more depth – as  if you were comparing a kids comic book to a piece of classic literature.

Vampire Stories have been around for centuries

Did you know that Dracula wasn’t even the first story in this genre. Something captures us emotionally about the idea of a spooky – usually sexy undead man or woman who can suck our blood and either kill us or turn us to what they are. 

However   the  recent series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood have kept the genre alive. Both are lots of fun. 

Both of these recent supernatural television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood  show some similarities – but to my mind even more discrepancies. Both shows have supernatural female superheroes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer of course, and Sookie Stackhouse the telepath who turns out to be a fairy. There are all kinds of vampires and bad guys they fight. Both have some excellent actors. But  although both have  entertainment value, Buffy is clearly the better show.

The credit goes to both the writers and actors, all of whom worked together to provide some of the most memorable and relatable characters ever put to television.

What were the origins of Buffy the Vampire Slayer vs True Blood?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer started on the screen. BTVS was based on a movie by the same name that didn’t just quite make it. Buffy the Vampire Slayer  with Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland and Paul Reubens left Whedon dissatisfied.  But he still believed in the idea of a strong female super-hero who fought vampires. So he created a whole new series. Of course BTVS  became wildly popular and gave birth to the other series Angel that created the  Buffyverse .

After the series ended, the fans kept clamoring for more, so the Buffy and Angel Comics were created to help fill in some of the gaps.

On the other hand True Blood started off As a Series of Books – and became a Series on TV

Charlaine Harris did a bang up job in creating some fascinating novels that led themselves to the small screen.  The Southern Vampire Novels are infamous if you are a fan of the genre. Much of the  strengths of the book series were lost in translation to TV.  The books are  better at characterization, taking on the important social issue of racism in the South, and free of a lot of the unnecessary violence and gore of the TV series – True Blood.

Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood had blonde young female superheroes

Whedon deliberately set about to make a young female SUPERHERO instead of a victim. In the horror space, in fact in TV in general that was unheard of.

Both  protagonists  show a  unique and innate power that both leads them on their dark and supernatural path and helps them overcome all of the roadblocks that they face along the way. As well, both characters fall for a similar brooding vampire looking to leave behind their vampiric ways.

However Buffy is definitely on the classic hero’s journey and we see her developing and changing through the series.   We are treated with round characters that grow in BTVS , who change in relation to their circumstances and in True Blood they seem to be more just reacting to them.

Both heroines “just want to be a girl” at the beginning of the show, but Buffy develops a sense of purpose and strength by the end of the series where she stands alone, and recognizes herself as a woman regardless of who she is with.

Buffy does have some advantages. Buffy had both a mother and a father, although her dad turned out to be disgustingly absent as the series evolved. Sookie on the other hand, has parents who have died.  She is raised by a grandmother who loves her. Since she is telepathic she knows that her mother is scared of her – and she latter learns that her father has tried to kill her.

Both women are fierce, but Joss Whedon also creates Buffy as a hero who is funny as hell.

Both heroes are played by excellent actresses: Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy and Anna Paquin as Sookie. However, the writing  teams of both shows  were not equal, so we really cannot see the potential of the stars in True Blood. 

It should be noted that each character was created with a unique intention, although it’s a safe bet that Charlaine Harris was certainly consciously taking some inspiration from Buffy when creating Sookie, as well as the overall world of The Southern Vampire Mysteries.

Both heroines grew and developed. Both became women. But although Sookie gives up being with vampires, that does not equal  Buffy’s  sacrifice in any way. I mean Buffy died twice for her cause.

Basically Sookie had  some tough shoes to fill when it came to taking Buffy’s place, and she doesn’t quite meet those high standards.

While Sookie may be the every-girl that audiences see themselves in, Buffy is the hero they aspire to be.

Both Buffy and Sookie had vampire lovers

The love of Buffy’s life was Angel, the tall dark and handsome vampire with the soul. If you know the series, you know that Angel had been cursed with this soul. That curse meant that he  suffered shame over all the death and destruction he had done in the 145 years he had walked the Earth as a vampire, before he suffered the gypsy curse.

Their love was transformative, taking him from skulking in the gutters with guilt over the crimes that he had committed to becoming a hero against the forces of evil.

Her other vampire love turned out to one of the vampires she had detested the most – Spike or William the Bloody. Spike, the blonde and handsome vampire started off in the series as an arch-enemy. He became someone who was working with the Buffy’s helpers – Xander, Willow, and Giles her watcher when he got essentially neutered but a government project who put a chip in his head.

He ended up spending more time with Buffy and eventually falling in lust and then deep love for her.

And it appears that she fell in love with Spike too. 

Both of the vampires hold eternal flames for Buffy, and she is the love of both of their lives.

In True Blood there is also a love triangle between Sookie and her two vampire lovers. Like with Buffy and Angel, the tall, dark and handsome  Vampire Bill was the first love of Sookie Stackhouse. Vampire Bill had developed over his time as a vampire, going from being a rabid killer to developing a conscience. He is one of the first vampires who realized that he could feed off of humans without killing them. He would hypnotize his victim, into allowing him to feed until Bill was satisfied but the man was still alive. The victim would have no memory of the attack. Thus Bill found a way of living where he did not have to kill humans to survive.

This is the Bill that Sookie found. And this was the educated  gentleman who attracted her.

Her second vampire lover – Eric – came to her until strange circumstances as well. Eric – the tall blonde, gorgeous owner of Fangtasia, a vampire bar was completely contemptible to Sookie when she met him. He was arrogant and not interested in doing good. She had been brought to him so that he could take advantage of her telepathic abilities and find a thief that was working at the bar. She had nothing but contempt for him when she first met him.

But the witches cursed Eric and erased his memory, Sookie picks him up on the road and shelters him in her home. Something in him appeals to her. They went on to have a whirlwind relationship that eventually ends, but it seems that Eric and Sookie still share a place in each others heart.

Vampires are different in Buffy the Vampire Slayer vs True Blood

In both series, vampires are immortals who have died, and feed on humans for sustenance. They are incredibly strong and fast in both series, and are imbued with special powers.

But there are important differences.

In BTVS when a human dies at the hands of a vampire, and the vampire decides to turn them into vampires, they lose their soul. That means they can do evil deeds without any conscience. They resemble the people they were but they are not that person. And they are compelled to do evil.

Vampires are evil in BTVS and Angel through and through. There might be the appearance of the person, but not the personality and humanity. That is what made Angel and Spike – the vampires in the series who get souls special.

Vampires in True Blood were  evil, true enough. And the more time that vampires spent together “nesting” the more vicious they became.

But the premise of True Blood is that they could naturally evolve and become more caring and human. But they didn’t do it very much because they were just pure ID, and lets face it – evolving is a lot of work.

Prime examples of vampires who did evolve  were Bill, and his progeny Jessica, and Godric and even Eric as time went on.

In BTVS and Angel  the only vampires that developed human kindness were Angel and Spike the two Vampires that got their souls.

In True Blood vamps are able to act like humans. The premise of the story is that they are “main streaming” because of a substance  – “True Blood” – has been developed that allows them to live without killing humans.

There  is a slight difference in how a vampire is created after it is bitten too: in True Blood the sire has to sleep in the grave with the new vampire, but in Buffy the sire can go about it’s business after it bites the dead.

What kills vamps differs slightly between the series. Although, be-heading, staking and the sun affects vampires in both series, holy water only burns in Buffy. And it takes longer to kill a vampire through light in True Blood., which is used as a plot twist in several episodes.

How vampires died in BTVS and Angel as opposed to True Blood is different too. In the Buffyverse, vampires are “dusted.” That means that when they were killed, they were instantly turned to dust. In True Blood, they became this gross, hideous mass of blood and guts. Who needs that?

Both Buffy the Vampire and Angel  as well as True Blood have hosts of interesting characters and talented actors

However,  the characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer evolve  as the series develops, True Blood’s characters are more flat and stereotyped.

Truly Buffy and Angel are on the hero’s journey.  Even Spike, Willow and Xander, and Cordelia have evolved by the  end of the series.

I mean there were plenty of talented actors and actresses in True Blood. That’s including Juilliard trained actors  Nelsan Ellis, Rutina Wesley and Carrie Preston. Sam Trammell and many others do a bang up job as well.

There are plenty of memorable moments in True Blood. One of my favorite actors was Nelsan Ellis. He played the  flamboyant gay chef “Lafayette”. In the books by Charlaine Harris, Lafayette was killed off quickly. But the fans loved him so much, that they kept him as a regular through out the whole series. He made it through the whole series, but in real life Ellis  died tragically as he tried to withdraw from alcohol by himself.  The  world is a poorer place because of it.

But although the stories in True Blood will capture your attention – the writing of Buffy is just so much better. Buffy is full of witticisms, and groundbreaking episodes like “The Body” – which talks about real human death, “Once more with Feeling” which is a musical and “Hush”  where all the actors are robbed of the ability to speak.

Ironically it was  easier  to relate to the characters of BTVS and Angel vs True Blood

Buffy’s characters may have been sillier , but they were more relatable.

And True Blood obviously took on the racism and ignorance of the South, which is praiseworthy indeed. But Joss Whedon expected everyone to know that the series was meant symbolically, with vampires as the destructive forces in high school which of course is your initiation to being an adult. Like he said “there will never be a very special episode of Buffy” – meaning that social issues are addressed in every episode symbolically.

But the characters in True Blood were for the most part  less memorable and interesting overall. And somehow  they also seemed slightly less human- whether they were vampires or not. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer,  all characters showed a wide range of emotion, sometimes being humorous, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, and always human (even if they weren’t). In True Blood, the dynamic range of the characters’ emotions simply wasn’t up to this level. A large part of this was the tone of the show, as True Blood was always trying to be more serious and dramatic. There was certainly a share of plot twists that turned out to be very tedious – like the Vampire Authority and the Fellowship of the Sun. However, in effect, it’s arguable that True Blood never hit quite the dramatic highs that Buffy the Vampire Slayer did.

Part of  that emotional punch was that the characters were given the breathing room necessary to grow in BTVS, and for the audience to become attached to them. Because Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn’t afraid to let it’s characters be silly, they grew more endearing to us,  and we cared more when something dramatic happened.

Joss Whedon meant for BTVS and Angel to be viewed ironically and appreciated the same way.

Bon Temp, Louisiana was Scary but it was no Sunnydale, CA – which was right above the Hellmouth 

Both series have interesting settings to be sure. Bon Temp is steeped in Southern superstition and prejudice – there is little Southern hospitality there . 

But although Sunnydale looked like a normal modern Southern CA town – with a UC to boot – it was much more than that. 

Because you see that Sunnydale was actually on the mouth of Hell itself.

It was only because the slayer was there to stop the vampires and the demons that they did not crawl out of the Hellmouth and run over the Earth. 

Both series had scary monsters to fight – with some differences

Both True Blood and BTVS and Angel had there share of monsters, demons, shape-shifters and vampires. Buffy’s characters showed more depth – they came out of fairy tales and ancient text. Nobody even went to college on True Blood although Tara was the most self educated of the lot.

Vampires were the primary foes in both series.

BTVS is known for it’s monster of the week format, but like True Blood vampires are the monsters they have to do with.

The heroines had different strength’s -Buffy was a vampire slayer – she came from a long line of vampire slayers – when one died the another would be called. Before she was called she was extremely popular, in her old school she was a cheerleader. Becoming a vampire slayer changed everything, and of course she fought against it. But she did accept it eventually.

Buffy was the only known vampire slayer who had friends that fought with her – and that was her saving grace. In BTVS season 9 episode 3 “The Wish” we see what happens when Buffy is thrown into an alternative universe where she works alone. She is working in the Hellmouth in Cleveland , but answers Giles call to come and fight the Master in the Hellmouth in Sunnydale. She notably says “I work alone.” Even though she is that’s on the challenge of fighting the Master, and even though she is helped by some of her friends like Oz – she is unable to defeat him. Even worse – the Master kills Buffy.

Sookie has some friends but is basically seen as an outcast because the townspeople are afraid of her telepathic abilities. She would not see herself as a hero. She is not answering a call of any kind.

Both series have the same kinds of supernatural with two noticeable differences.

There are no fairies in BTVS and no extra-terrestrials in True Blood.

And much to my dismay – neither series has leprechauns.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel were just better written than True Blood 

Joss Whedon is an amazing writer. Did you know that he co-wrote Toy Story? He has written episodes of Roseanne, as well as publishing comic Marvel comics. He did a modern Shakespeare series – “Much to do about Nothing” in black and white.
Whedon has written many of the comics that followed the series himself.

Now as for the writers of True Blood – or what were their names again?

There were so many examples of witticisms and unforgettable writing in BTVS and Angel that college classes have been organized around the series. From Buffy’s quirky way of dealing with what would seem to be certain death , to Angel’s and Spike’s discussion of fighting for Buffy’s love, to Spike’s 5 words to describe why he was stalking around Buffy’s house – “out for a walk, Bitch” to Willow’s unforgettable “Bored now” anyone who has watched the series will understand why it is so memorable.

The fact of the matter is that True Blood was never as groundbreaking and innovative as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

There have been many supernatural series on TV The Vampire Diaries, Grimm, Supernatural, The Twilight Saga, Blade and pretty much every other similar work have  a similar tone, plot, and color scheme. If these shows are all siblings, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is their proud parent However, it’s not just that Buffy the Vampire Slayer did it first, it’s that Buffy the Vampire Slayer did it better. It’s simply a matter of passion, creativity, and innovation, three qualities that were literally overflowing out of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cauldron during it’s entire run.

 True Blood certainly stands out in  television but it is but it’s made out of stock elements that it doesn’t develop. Because of this, new people are still being converted into the Buffyverse each day, with fans and devotees actively propagating the mythology of the show with fervor equal to the kind found at the peak of the show’s popularity. Not only is this not currently happening with True Blood, but it’s hard to imagine it ever happening because it simply wasn’t as iconic or memorable. The popularity of True Blood is gradually fading away, although there are plans to re-do the trashy supernatural series. (Won’t be the same without Nelsan Ellis if it does happen)

 Is True Blood more interesting  for adults than Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Because is dealing with the in inhiation theme, and is about high-school kids it is easy to see why we could believe that it is not for adults.

However, I think the inhiation theme is relevant to all of us no matter how old we are. And Angel did provide an older group of actors.

But if you think that Buffy is just for teeny-boppers you are missing the point. BTVS and Angel are based on change and growth.

True Blood boxed itself in because of the profanity, violence and overt sexuality

True Blood will never be a family show.  While I am not a prude, the use of the “f” word for dramatic emphasis grew tiresome pretty quickly.

And while both BTVS and Angel and True Blood  both deal with profanity, sexuality, including homosexuality and other adult themes, it is much more subtle in the Buffyverse.

You might say that Joss Whedon was reined in because of the censors of the time. Maybe so. And maybe he would have done it differently if had put out the series in this decade. But I hope not. Somehow, the sexuality is hotter when not all is displayed.Both Bon Temps and Sunnydale were memorable settings

Both True Blood and BTVS have made up settings.

Here I believe that the writers of both series shone. “Bon Temp”s is a tiny, little made up town in Louisiana with creatures of the night, ignorance and bigotry. The opening scene is a collage of  KKK,  immersion baptisms, and  racial protests that let you know what series will be about.

The series True Blo0d evolves around a bar “Merlot’s” where by showing the food, people and vampires that visit the bar.

Sunnydale from the Buffyverse  was another fictional town – but it had some profound differences. There was a University in Sunnydale, similar to UC Santa Cruz. It was bubbly and effervescent, like Buffy herself, although of course there are lots of dark elements that are being dealt with – And to some degree there was a higher level of education although like the mayor said the populace was “profoundly stupid.”

Many of the characters and plots of True Blood seem to be directly ripped off from BTVS and Angel 

Well true enough, most of the vampire genre since Dracula has borrowed from each other. But the makers of True Blood seemed to be taking notes as they watched BTVS and Angel.  Let’s list some obvious similarities:

• As mentioned before a young blonde superhero falls in love with a dark haired and they a blonde vampire. In Buffy, however the door is left open to Buffy’s future relationships, and while Sookie ends up without a vampire lover, she does end up married. The dark vamp in both series seems to be more noble, and the blonde is more dangerous.
• Vampires are the biggest monsters, but there are many others that need to be faced – including werewolves, ghosts and demons. And sometimes people turn into the monsters, like Oz turning into a werewolf in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Tara turning into a vampire in True Blood.
• Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood had significant female vampire leads who had been prostitutes. Darla was the daughter of the Master himself, as well as the sire of Angel. Pam was the progeny of Eric, and she was the madam of a famous New Orleans brothel when the powerful Eric met her.
• Both series have lesbian and gay themes – since they are appealing to guys who love science fiction, the sexuality is lesbian rather than gay for the most part.
• Some of the names are even the same between the two series, such as Tara in both series who is sought out by a big, gorgeous, bad. (Glory in BTVS and Maryann Forrester the Maenad)
• There were bad witches in both series that started off as good
• There were some similarities that were too close to be coincidence – such as the powerful  child vampire who set beside  the Master “The Anointed One”    and “Alexander Drew” on the Vampire Authority council who was another nine year old vampire. Both were angelic, both were destroyed.
• Both series had happy endings against all odds

Who would win in a fair fight Buffy the Vampire Slayer and/or Angel and Sookie the Fairy and her friends?

• It is hard, hard, hard to beat Slayer strength – although not impossible
• Sookie was half-fae which gave her telepathic as well as lightning rod finger strength
• Both had vampires and humans who would fight for them – although just at night for the vamps

Sookie was definitely a lover not a fighter, and Buffy was a warrior. So I would put my odds on Buffy.

Both True Blood and Buffy the Vampire Slayer had rabid fans. But I would bet on Buffy to stand the test of time.