Does 'Buffy' Hold Up After 20 Years?

Twenty years ago this week, Buffy The Vampire Slayer debuted on the WB Network after both NBC and Fox said they weren't interested in the series. Buffy and the gang didn't make much of an impression at first, tucked away as they were on a minor network, but the series went on to become a major milestone in popular culture.

Critics weren't particularly impressed with BTVS when it originally hit the air. Most of them took a look at the wisecracking teenage characters and proclaimed them derivative of Clueless. They thought the series was clever, but they didn't see it appealing to anyone beyond a teen or pre-teen audience.

Two decades later, BTVS gets credit for a lot of things, including launching in earnest the career of creator Joss Whedon, who became a pop culture icon. But with its dedicated cult following that eventually expanded to become a mainstream following, the series opened the door to two decades' worth of supernatural series.

Would The Vampire Diaries, which concludes its eight-season run on The CW this week, have ever happened if it weren't for BTVS? Or what about the Twilight book and film franchises? A whole lot of vampire- and demon-based entertainment owes its existence to Buffy and the Scoobies.

You can also give credit to BTVS for paving the way for strong female lead characters, LGBTQ characters and musical episodes, among many other innovations. If it's been done on TV in the past twenty years, there's a good chance that Buffy did it first.

So when we look back at BTVS after two decades, does the series still seem like a big deal? Why, yes, it does. It does, indeed.