If anything, he under-reported its virtues, but then space permits only so much. Full justice to its back-story and moral depths would have surely have lost too many readers.
In truth, the tensions between friendship, love and lust are treated with a degree of realism and lack of moralism that's truly remarkable for television. (For example, lust brought Zander and Cordelia together in the first place despite the fact they hated each others guts, thereby setting many more changes in motion.)
The fact that the computer nerd is a girl could be the end-point of the show's imagination -- heck, just ONE strong female character would have exhausted most shows -- instead it's just the beginning. In contrast to the science-bashing premise of "The X-Files", which sets up a woman as a potential role model, only to mock her rationality in every episode, Willow plays a significant role in the rationalist side of the struggle against evil in the show.
The episode with the Skull-and-Bones knock-off (they fed real virgins to a real monster till they grabbed the wrong girl to sacrifice) was a true classic, complete with falling stocks and CEOs once the monster & its power were destroyed.
As to "NYPD Blue," I take his point, but I've long since stopped watching the show. Smits was a far too good actor for his poorly written role in a truly execrable series. Last night's "Buffy" was not the first where Buffy has to fight alongside of one bad guy -- save his life, actually -- to defeat others. This kind of moral complexity is anathema to the sensibility "NYPD Blue" plays to.
One of the things that makes "Homicide" so vastly superior to "NYPD Blue" is that it DOES manage to treat the deaths of anonymous individuals with profundity, even though it's primary focus is the Homicide dectetives who can't possibly do their jobs if they let this happen to them. Andre Braugher's now-departed character took this tension to it's highest point, but every character in show dramatizes it in one way or another. If you want to do Dosoevsky on the screen, the "Homicide" crew is who you'd want to do it.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"