Here's another essay from this Hibbs guy. Seems to think that Buffy actually got less post mod, deeper, more traditional, as the series progressed. He apparently sees the battle against "evil" in the 'verse as being similar to the cultural battle against apathy, nihilism....
Buffy's War
Good and Evil 101.
By Thomas S. Hibbs
At one point, in this season's final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the good girl gone bad, Willow, mocks one of the friends who's striving to save her from herself: "Willow doesn't live here anymore." It was one of the best and most chilling moments of the two-hour finale, a moment that underscored the central and consistent teaching about evil in this surprisingly successful series about a teenage, valley-girl cheerleader turned vampire slayer. In the culminating episodes of this season "” a season that repeated last season's uneven plotting "” Buffy returned to the dramatic depiction of the metaphysics of good and evil, a metaphysics that reflects classical accounts of evil as vacuous, as a deprivation of goodness.
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The show is in many ways different from what it was in its early years. For one thing, it used to be much more funny. In the initial, high-school years, verbal repartee between the characters captured the caustic side of adolescent humor in ways that a teen show like Dawson's Creek "” with teen characters speaking in complete paragraphs and sounding as if their young bodies had been invaded by thirty-somethings just emerging from years of therapy "” never could. In an early episode, Buffy is taken aback by her attraction to Angel, a vampire, cursed by the return of his soul, and now a would-be assistant of Buffy. She informs him that it's not good form for a vampire slayer to be seen with a vampire. Then she adds bluntly, "Or do you find that offensive? Do you prefer 'undead American'?"
But, graduation from high school and Angel's departure (to star in his own spin-off series, of course) signaled a shift away from humor and toward greater analysis of human relationships, even if the characters have never become as self-involved as the Creek kids. Last season's finale featured Buffy sacrificing her own life to save her sister, Dawn, and the cosmos from the reign of evil. This season opened with Willow "” Buffy's brainy high-school buddy, now accomplished witch "” finding a magical, slayer exception to the unyielding law of death and bringing Buffy back. With her friends a little miffed at her lack of joy at being returned to the living, Buffy manages to thank them for saving her from what she describes as hell. Unable to tell her friends the truth, she confides to her longstanding nemesis Spike that death was in fact heavenly bliss, compared to which this world is hell. (The darkest story line of this season has been the sadomasochistic sexual relationship (in the family-viewing hour of 8 PM!) between a demoralized Buffy and Spike, from which Buffy seemingly emerged in the last episodes.)
Indeed, in the past two seasons, male characters, particularly noble male characters, have been pushed to the margins, while female characters "” especially the lesbian relationship between Willow and her Wiccan lover, Tara "” have taken certain stage. Buffy seems unable to find any man who can replace Angel; even the older Giles, her virtuous watcher (the one assigned to train and advise the slayer), left the country to return to his homeland of England. That left two male characters: Xander, whose life peaked in high school as Buffy's wisecracking sidekick, and Spike.
Previous seasons have often been unified around the presence of a powerful demon whom Buffy must defeat. This year seemed to lack that persona, until Willow's dark side began to take over. For a number of years now, Willow has been a devotee of the arts of magic, at first using them only for good but increasingly as a way of expressing her own power or even for revising recent history and covering up her own vices. Her inability to exercise self-control led to the breakup of her relationship with Tara.
When the head of a trio of nerdy boys who covet the allure and power of magic tries to kill Buffy and accidentally kills Tara, Willow is disconsolate and consumed by a desire for vengeance. After an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the dark forces to bring Tara back from the dead, she corners her assailant and then kills him by skinning his entire body. She then heads off in search of the other two plotters, whom Buffy and company are now committed to protecting, not, Buffy is quick to add, so much for their own sake as for Willow's. If she continues to kill, she will "cross a line" from which it will be nearly impossible to return.
Buffy proves no match for the scorned Willow. The only hope appears to be the return of Giles who is fortified with mystical powers of his own. When he is unable to restrain Willow, she drains him of his powers and leaves him for dead. But Giles's powers come from a different source "” the true essence of magic, Giles calls them "” and they afflict Willow by making her feel pain and emotion. To rid herself of pain, Willow sets out to destroy the world. When the suddenly brave Xander confronts her, admitting that he cannot stop her but wants only to be with his childhood friend as she puts an end to human history, she scoffs and begins to torture him. Eventually, Xander's professions of friendship and love for Willow break her down and she relents. A suddenly recovered Giles explains that the infusion of good magic into Willow enabled Xander to tap into the "spark of humanity she had left."
The ending "” with Xander's defeat of bad Willow and Buffy's subsequent protestations that she now wants to live on earth, to see her friends happy "” seemed a bit contrived. Indeed, the dialogue at times seemed to reduce the difference between good and evil to a sappy distinction between those who feel and those who don't. But, in a show that has always stressed the inevitable and dire consequences of decisions and actions, we can be sure that earth will remain closer to hell than to heaven and that Willow will suffer the consequences of her immersion in dark arts.
And Buffy's renewed sense of purpose, rooted in her newfound love for her sister and friends, is a counterpoint to the metaphysics of evil. By contrast to goodness and in parasitic dependence on it, evil involves isolation from the rest of humanity, a closing off of the possibility of love, friendship, and communication; it is a will to raw, unconstrained power, a nihilistic drive to destroy all that is, including oneself."
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-hibbs052402.asp
"Thomas S. Hibbs contributed the essay "Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Feminist Noir" to the recently published book Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, edited by James South. Hibbs previously wrote about Buffy for NRO in May, 2002."
"”Has anyone read this book, essay?
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