In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, chummy college witches Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson) finally declared their love for each other, to the delight of some fans and the chagrin of others.
The whole thing was handled extremely tastefully — or cowardly, depending on your viewpoint — with nary a kiss between the two actresses, which is the way that the show's creator says he wanted it.
Joss Whedon tells TV Guide Online that he couldn't show the same kind of "graphic coupling" with which Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her beau, Riley (Marc Blucas), go at it, "So you have to use your imagination, and to me it's the best thing that could have happened to us.
"It forces you to come up with something that is a little more primal, and, I think, much sexier than if we were allowed to do anything we wanted." Uh-huh.
As a fan shrewdly noted in a post to the official Buffy site: If the show were on Fox, instead of the WB, we'd have seen that girl-girl kiss by now, as we did between Calista Flockhart and Lucy Liu on Ally McBeal and Neve Campbell and Olivia d'Abo on Party of Five.
The romance with Willow has been brewing since Tara joined the show in February and the two began staying up all night, er, casting spells. Nothing was ever shown, and Willow's best friend, Buffy, was none the wiser to the romantic liaison. Last week, the return of Willow's estranged boyfriend Oz (Seth Green) forced her to choose between her werewolf beau and her witch girlfriend, and in doing so, to finally reveal her secret romance.
On the Buffy message boards, one disgusted fan wrote, "I have been watching the show since its inception, but no longer. It is not appropriate to institute a homosexual relationship in the subplots. I had always liked Willow's character, till now. Thanks for ruining another show."
But another poster wrote, "I give mad props to Willow and Tara for finally fighting against society's ideas and showing us all how they feel … and they do look very cute together."
The unconventional match-up hasn't been to every viewer's taste, Whedon admits. "But generally speaking, people are dealing with this as a romantic relationship. And because all of the relationships on Buffy are kind of romantic, it doesn't feel unnatural or out of place." He also says that the romance should continue for the foreseeable future.
Info taken from Mr. Showbiz