By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Even after all these years, Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans have difficulty describing Oz’s character, the chill-beyond-chill Sunnydale musician played by Seth Green. It’s not hard to see why. Oz’s personality is completely different from that of the other Scoobies, and outsider demon characters like Anya and Spike arguably seemed a better fit with the gang than the aloof Oz ever did. As it turns out, though, the script notes for the Buffy episode “Inca Mummy Girl” perfectly explain Oz’s character by noting that Oz has “the kind of cool that is completely unaware of itself.”
Explaining Oz
Those Buffy script notes help to explain some of the seeming paradoxes of Oz’s character, including the fact that his sarcasm–a very defining character trait–never came off as particularly cruel. According to the script, “There’s a quiet restraint and total lack of bitterness to [Oz’s] sarcasm.” This is perhaps made most evident when you compare this wolfy wunderkind to sarcastic characters like Cordelia and Spike who always use their own acidic hilarity to lash out at the people around them.
Incidentally, Cordelia served as Oz’s counterpart for the first three seasons of Buffy by offering genuinely mean sarcasm as opposed to his gentle mockery. Once she left Sunnydale after Season 3, the show brought in Anya and Spike to take the show’s sarcasm to the next level. Sadly, the unexpected departure of Oz in Season 4 meant that the extra meanness no longer had a counterbalance to it.
His debut Buffy episode’s script notes further explain Oz’s character by comparing him to one of his fellow musicians: “where Devon is your typical excitable rock and roller, Oz is completely unflappable.” Certainly, this is evidenced by all the wild things that Oz takes in stride, including the existence of vampires and the fact that he’s now a werewolf. Buffy plays most things for laughs, of course, but the truth is that Oz endures things that would break most Sunnydale residents’ brains, and all without so much as getting angry or scared.
That brings us to the final note in this Buffy script about Oz’s character: “His is the kind of cool that is completely unaware of itself.” As a longtime fan, this was the line that really explained Oz’s whole deal to me. In another show or film, Oz would be a self-consciously cool character like Jeff Winger on Community. However, whereas Jeff’s ego forces him to always be the center of attention, Oz has a Zen-like calm that helps him blend into any situation or group.
For Buffy fans, this is simply further proof that Oz’s character, just like Buffy, Willow, and so many others, is relatively unique in the television landscape. No other show (genre or otherwise) has managed to dethrone Oz with a new character who is acerbically sarcastic, charismatically cool, and ultimately unflappable. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer never tried to truly replace Oz, which is why other characters who stepped into his erstwhile Scooby sidekick role (like the aforementioned Anya and Spike) had completely different personalities.
Some Buffy fanatics might find these notes about Oz’s character to be a bit obvious, but I thought they were a fascinating glimpse into the show’s most mysteriously compelling (and compellingly mysterious) characters. Oz was written from the beginning as a kind of paradox: a guy who is sarcastic without being snarky, cool without being cruel, and utterly unaware of just how hip he really is. And if we’re all very lucky, the light of the next full moon might make us all even half as chill as Sunnydale’s wolfiest rocker.
