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Ooooh, that moment in Touched is one of my favorites...

lillibrarian wrote:

Buffy came into my life at a point when I really needed it, because I also learned a lot from that show, but I took those lessons in more of an "adult-like" manner, since at this point I was about 20 years old. So I voted to say that I like them both equally. Both shows have been there for me a lot of times when I felt like nobody else was. It's crazy to think how much something that seems so insignificant as a tv show can change people's lives, but both of these shows did that for me.

I know exactly how you feel. And for me, it went in the opposite direction. Buffy came into my life at a time when I desperately needed it, and it was--to all intents and purposes--after the show was over, since the last season of Angel was on the air. I was obsessed. As much as I've ever been for any other story that's captured my imagination. I lived and breathed Buffy for awhile, and greatly annoyed my roommate in the process. Once I was all the way through Buffy and Angel, then I got into Xena. And I found something even deeper and better.

I voted Xena. I'm not gonna throw tomatoes at you, Aresbitch, or the others who voted Buffy! LK, the dialogue in Buffy really is good...not that the dialogue in Xena isn't, though. Joss Whedon's dialogue is very clever, and he's good at understatement. His characters don't usually say more than they need to say. But Rob Tapert's, R.J. Stewart's, and Steve Sears's dialogue is also brilliant. I mean, "Four is when you talk your way out of it, and we all know you can do that" is clever and funny, and "Evil Xena, she did this to me; don't let her do it to you" is still the best way to phrase the concept of "grace" that I've ever found.

We could hold up compare/contrast lists all day long. But at the end of the day for me, the choice comes down to which series lives the most deeply in my heart. I think Buffy prepared me to watch Xena. Buffy's continuity is more consistent. Its stories are more...um...I think they stay more on the surface. They go to dark places, but then move aside and continue a story. Once Xena starts exploring something, it goes all the way to the end of the issue. It experimented more, and came up with both more cringe-worthy moments to be explained away, and more moments of magic that will live in my heart no matter how many times I watch them onscreen. Oh, and there's something else I just thought of while writing this. Xena explored everything--no matter what else it was taking on that week--within the context of the wonderful, complicated, impossible to explain relationship between Xena and Gabrielle. It colored things, and it was exactly what I needed at that time (and, well, now too).