Watch: In ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ Doorways Were Everything

To say ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘ was deceptively light is a not-so-deceptive understatement. The Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle, with its heady mixture of young-adult struggles and visitors from the world of nightmares, was always, at the very least, self-aware–and at its best, it was downright literary in its depth and range of reference. This video essay by Manuel Betancourt takes us through one particular image on the show–that of the doorway–and convincingly shows the depth this image accrued during the show’s all-too-short run.