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Been a while since your last intellekshual musings on BtVS? Check out some of Frank Kogan’s excellent analysis as he goes episode-by-episode through the series (which he’s never seen — if you comment there no spoilers!). EDIT: No spoilers in this comment thread, either, plz.

I’m just now finishing the series for the first time myself, have a few musings in comments. The most important one is this:

The magic of Buffy, which starts to become clear, I think, as this season [Season 2] goes on, is that it puts its characters in a kind of psychology-space that’s more compelling than the “real” space (single mom! step-dad! etc.!) OR the “fantasy” space (vampires! demons! etc.!). The middle-ground is a kind of internal world that doesn’t cleanly connect back to Real-World but also doesn’t quite make it wholesale into a Sci Fi world. It starts to ride on pure character, and on pure(r?) emulation of a sort of teenaged mind-state (in this case junior year of high school — senior year is VERY “senior year” feeling, tho, because the show’s voice is more assured).

And among my favorite observations so far from Frank:

—On the mechanics of the Sunnydale High courtyard:

I love that courtyard: cheap functional “pillars,” a bush, and a tree of some sort, you see its trunk only (eucalyptus? palm?), hard to tell if it’s regular bark or metal mesh atop the bark to protect it from students. Courtyard convos are always so great; the courtyard seems to be the truth spot, the characters hidden in full view, the multicultural swirl going by (a couple of Chicanos on a bench, an Asian teacher, diverse ethnicities and all colors but still mostly white) while Xander or Buffy or Willow or Rupert speaks to one of the others about what he or she is most troubled by. This entire school is suggested by: a lawn, two classrooms, a hallway, a principal’s office, a library, a locker room, a gymnasium, a boiler room, a closet, a girl’s lavatory, and a few more nondescript rooms as needed. I recall in one episode there was also a media room with several computers. Also an episode with stage and auditorium. (Other places?)

— On Cordelia, Artist of Style:

What I really want Cordy to be is not just a pleasure center and a reality principle, but an artist of style. She’s not merely a girl with an eye to fashion, but a girl with her own individual look. Irl that would be required in her social set anyway, that people represent their own style as well as the group’s. In her great speech where she declares herself not a sheep, she’s not only standing up to her friends, she’s reflecting their values. But nonetheless, in declaring those values she really is declaring her own mind, her determination to judge for herself. As pleasure principle and reality principle and Artist Of Style she’s setting her own standards, no matter how typical of her class. And in representing a pleasure principle she stands for her own sense of fun. (Yes, this would give her coherence that the show doesn’t yet know how to.) Maybe some of this has already been going on in her dress and her body language and I’ve not consciously noticed it, being poor at such consciousness. Could I have taken some of this in subliminally?

And tons more. Well worth a read, for “Buffy” fans and semi-fans and non-fans alike (the criticisms are often more illuminating in helping me figure out why I like the show than the praise).