This 1 Line From 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' Is An Ode Our Old Habits

"The line is a meta reference to the night that Buffy used to air on television."

In an oft-quoted line from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the titular slayer herself quips: “Dawn’s in trouble, must be Tuesday.” The line, delivered after learning that her younger sister is in trouble in the musical episode in Season 6, is a meta reference to the night that Buffy used to air on television.

Buffy’s bit of banter has been referenced by other shows as well, including “Supernatural” and “The Flash.”

The moment is more than just a wink-and-a-nudge to the show’s time slot, concocted in a boardroom by a bunch of executives. It was a very real ode to the time fans carved out every week, choosing to spend it with Buffy, rather than with other characters jostling for their attention. Watching her story unfold was an intentional journey, like a great, long friendship. To watch “Buffy” every week was akin to Carrie going to brunch with Samantha.

There are still multiple television shows that continue to release on set days of the week, but in the binge-watching era, shows are less tied to temporality than they were in the past. If your favorite show releases on Tuesday evenings on Netflix or Max but you can’t catch it, you can simply watch it the next day — or more likely, months later, when all the episodes are available and you can lie down and consume them all in one go. In this sense, binge-watching has turned the temporality of TV on its head: Those of us who grew up prior to the streaming era would conform our schedules around television shows, now television shows are available to us when our schedule permits.

Part of the joy of what was called “appointment TV” was that its time was considered a feature, not a bug of the format. When we talk about “watercooler moments” on television — or things that you could discuss the next day around the office — we are referencing the way that TV brought people together in communities based on the day and time it aired. Sure, you can have a community when something drops — but that level of camaraderie and community is no longer a formal part of the television viewing experience.