
Originally Posted by
Cosmic
Buffy is original in the sense it was probably one of the first times that specific combination of tropes was used in a TV show, but the tropes themselves are pretty common. "Person struggling to adapt to strange new town" is as old as literature itself and the whole "Must hide double life from parents and authority figures" isn't far behind, doubly so when even in real life that's something pretty much every teenager goes through to some extent. The things that made the show special were the heavy use of pop culture references, the quality of the writing and the way the tone could shift seamlessly between drama and comedy. For me it was also one of the first TV shows I can remember that really nailed the attitude and feel of a good comic book. Joss Whedon is very much influenced by the medium and has talked openly about basing the character of Buffy on X-Men's Kitty Pryde - Marvel themselves were so impressed with his work they even gave him his own X-Men title to write a few years back.