Lies, Damned Lies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The room bathed in Hellmouth green and host Ben Lund-Conlon dressed suitably in Watcher tweed, he is a man who put his lockdown to good use with not only a complete rewatch of all one hundred and forty-four episodes across seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer but the dedication to note down every death, human, vampire, demon or otherwise and perform a statistical analysis of his findings.

The show originally conceived as Vampirical Analysis but now running as the more marketable Lies, Damned Lies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lund-Conlon’s research may not sound the most engaging way to spend an hour on an August afternoon but his presentation of the data and the illuminating insights it provides into the show will surprise even the most devoted fan.

A show which remains fresh in the memory, it is shocking to realise Buffy debuted in America twenty-five years ago, Lund-Conlon pointing out that Diana, Princess of Wales, could have seen the entire first season before her death, but Parisian car accidents are not included in the rare “unique deaths” which feature among the myriad stakings, bitings, combustions through sunlight and decapitations.

Imposing order on the chaos of the Hellmouth (“The Dewey Decimal system exists for a reason!”), with Lies, Damned Lies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer the devil is in the details, understanding that despite the (until now) uncounted hundreds it is still possible for a single death to be profoundly different and effecting, a reminder that despite those who would prefer we collectively “just move on” from the horror and unprocessed of the last two years that lives are not just statistics.

Lies, Damned Lies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer runs at Just the Tonic on the Grassmarket until Sunday 28th August

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