When the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired in 2003, fans mourned the death of the hit television series. Yet the show has lived on as a commercial success through syndication, global distribution, DVD release, and merchandising. Buffy offered sharp, provocative commentaries on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and youth. In the process, it helped shape trends in television production and reception. The flagship show for the WB network from 1997 until it moved to UPN in 2001, Buffy represents an important shift in network television, the moment when the "netlets" - Fox, UPN, and the WB--began to focus on markets that had been largely overlooked by the three major broadcast networks: teenagers, African Americans, and Latinos. In Undead Television, media studies scholars tackle the Buffy phenomenon and its many afterlives in popular culture, the television industry, the Internet, and academic criticism. One contributor considers Buffy lead Sarah Michelle Gellar's successful career as representative of a new, more fluid form of stardom capable of traversing television, film, and the Internet.
Another explores the show's feminist (or postfeminist) agenda in relation to its depiction of Buffy as a New Woman balancing a powerful position with her femininity. Others explore the WB's marketing of Buffy to viewers of different ages; the reception of Buffy and its spin-off, Angel, in the United Kingdom; and the representation of alternative masculinities and queer desire in Buffy and Angel.
