Amilyn is the major vampire henchman of the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” movie. To this day, I have still never seen the movie, and I have never watched the TV show. Nothing to do with newly problematic individuals Joss Whedon or Kristi Swanson. It’s just even as a 14 year old, I thought “This seems dumb as fuck”. And then eventually with the TV show, I thought “they made that dumb as fuck movie a tv series?!”. I did try to watch the movie a few months ago. I made it 10 minutes in before I decided that the dialogue was so fucking terrible there was no way I was ever gonna make it through. And at this point, I just have zero desire to ever watch the show. I was, however, a huge fan of “Angel”.
Amilyn is portrayed by the recently, dearly departed Paul Reubens – better known as Pee-Wee Herman. Usually I am not affected by celebrity deaths, but his passing really bummed me out. I grew up on his HBO special (which was NOT kid appropriate!), the Tim Burton movie was on a constant rotation, and of course the Pee-Wee Playhouse show. After he moved on from Pee-Wee (and his weird fall from grace – which was SO overblown and pretty tame by most other celebrity falls from grace), I loved seeing him pop up as an actor in things. I feel like this was his first real post-Pee-Wee role. I didn’t care so much for his return as Pee-Wee, but maybe he felt it was necessary. Either way, I’m glad he remained in the public consciousness and it’s incredibly sad that he is gone so soon. Fuck cancer.