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Buffy Sommers, high school student by day, vampire slayer by night, drops by her house for a minute to load up on supplies--holy water, wooden stakes, crucifix, lipstick, the usual. Since the prophesy forecasts nothing less than apocalypse this evening, she’s in a hurry. See, her high school is situated on top of a hellmouth (whose wasn’t?), and she’s running late to spar with the vampiric ringleader known as “The Master.�

She only has time for a quick “Hi, Mom,� but Buffy’s mother, unaware of her daughter’s extracurricular activities, forbids the girl to leave the house on a school night. Mom sighs an exasperated it’s- not- as- if- the- world’s- going- to- end- if- you- don’t- go- out- tonight- young- lady and sends Buffy to her room. But that’s exactly what’s going to happen if the Buff doesn’t get out there and kick bloodsucker butt. As she’s sneaking out her window to save the planet, the look on her face says parents just don’t understand.

Now in its second season, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer� is the best high school drama to hit television since the demise of 1993-94’s “My So-Called Life.� The differences between the two shows point to a kind of sea change that has taken place within pop culture--especially that produced by white youths--during the last three years. Watch “Buffy� or “Scream 2,� listen to Hanson or the Spice Girls (just try not to!), and you can’t help but find television, music (Fiona Apple, notwithstanding) and film more upbeat, more slick, more fun. Grunge is still around as a style, but it’s no longer a religion.

It’s hard to tell why. Is it because there’s been a kid in the White House--and that kid has a kid? Is it that there’s relative economic prosperity? Or could the new glamour have anything to do with a rediscovered hopefulness about sex thanks to greater tolerance about homosexuality and advances in AIDS treatment? Or did the marketers who made sure that teenage angst paid off well a few years back suddenly remember that teenage babes pay even better?

In any case, these days, three years is a long time: long enough to move from the confused, tortured, real Angela to the wisecracking, tough but fun glamour puss Buffy, long enough to mourn the death of Kurt Cobain and witness the birth of Hanson. “My So-Called Life� was the televised representation of the grunge era. It was sincere, anxious and set in the Northwest; its threesome of teen outsiders--the lovingly gawky Angela as played by Claire Danes, her goofball alcoholic slut friend Rayann and the eye makeup-wearing homosexual boy Ricky--looked like outsiders; and when Angela wanted to blow off steam, she danced wildly around her room to the Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun,� a song that has become de rigueur for every gloomy young rock fan of the last decade to fall in love with and then get sick of.

Buffy the blondie, on the other hand, is a California girl played by rising movie star Sarah Michelle Gellar. Buffy has the requisite couple of sidekicks, and she’s supposedly unpopular, but no adolescent outcast ever looked that good in spaghetti straps. Her friends (the sardonic but cute guy Xander and the smart but sweet Willow) are polite and normal-looking and OK to bring home to Mom. (Remember how Angela’s parents, like, freaked when they got a load of Ricky?) And when Buffy’s feeling all weird because her mother’s dating a meanie played by John Ritter or something, Buffy just works through her tension by karate chopping vampires for an exceedingly long time before she finally gets around to delivering the death blow.

I’m not suggesting that punky grunge is completely out and glossy pop is absolutely back. The young female pop stars of the last half of the 1990s couldn’t exist without the edgier achievements earlier in the decade. Buffy might dress like a “Beverly Hills 90210� bimbo, but the sarcastic feminism of her talk owes more to Courtney Love. Which all makes sense considering that (a) Courtney’s looking a little Beverly Hills herself these days, and (b) Tori Spelling’s “90210� virgin Donna finally got wise and stopped saving herself for marriage this year.

And whatever you might think of the (and I mean this in every sense of the word) overexposed Spice Girls, their unradical, easily accessible slogan “girl power� popularizes a version of the punk feminism of riot grrl’s “revolution girl style� rants circa 1992. “Girl Power,� after all, is something the average 14-year-old--who wants freedom while praying for love--can deal with. Scrawling riot grrl critiques like “SLUT� across one’s naked chest in public (one of the great gestures of the 20th century, don’t get me wrong) was inspiring and hilarious but, for most girls, never an option they cared to explore. Young women can now make up their own minds where they stand on the continuum between girlie and grrl.

Maybe it’s not just coincidental that one of the best (and sexiest) records of the year was “Dig Me Out,� a pop-punk masterpiece of desire by ex-riot grrls Sleater-Kinney. Some might even call this progress, that feminism might evolve and splinter off and become more individualized, which is to say useful and personalized and free.

The nice thing about Buffy (to get back to the grunge-to-gloss thing) is she gets to look good and have a cute boyfriend (who, de-spite the fact that he’s a vampire, is much more respectful of Buffy’s womanhood than dreamboat Jordan Catalano ever was of Angela’s), but she also gets to have a purpose. Buffy’s got a job to do, and Buffy does it really well. Furthermore, the most subversive thing about the character might be her humor. Buffy’s a lot of laughs. It’s not that the terrors grunge expressed so brilliantly all died with Kurt Cobain. It’s just that Buffy and her peers hint at the dark horrors through dark humor, which is surely less profound but more pro-fun.

Unlike that hot-to-trot hoot Buffy, the girls from the Fox network’s “Party of Five� are no fun at all, however. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Neve Campbell (Gellar’s brunet, big-screen co-stars in the slasher flicks “I Know What You Did Last Summer� and “Scream 2,� respectively) are selfish, humorless, bland. Campbell’s popularity, thanks mostly to her starring role in the successful “Scream,� is a complete mystery considering that her biggest talent might be that she can talk and swallow at the same time. Still, “Scream 2� is even smarter, funnier and more entertaining than its predecessor, in spite of Campbell. Maybe it’s not her fault. Judging by the critical or commercial successes of “Buffy,� her TV cousin “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,� folk wimp Jewel, country whiz kid LeAnn Rimes and Hanson, 1997 was a blond girl’s year. (While biologically male, of course, those flaxen Hanson brothers sang like sugar and spice and looked like everything nice.)

For a while, it seemed like Fiona Apple was going to be the weirdest golden girl of the year: At 20, she has a voice that sounds a thousand years old, she dresses like an extra from Larry Clark’s “Kids,� she’s always blabbing on about Maya Angelou, and she writes songs like ‘Sullen Girl� with lines like “Under the waves in the blue of my oblivion.�

Then Hanson’s almost psychotically joyous single “MMMBop� came out and knocked Apple’s off the throne for wacko of the year. The second I heard “MMMBop,� heard those now-familiar shiny record scratches, heard those wonderfully absurd “Mmm bop, du bop� lyrics, heard the will to get happy lurching out of the mouths of those beautiful boys, I couldn’t imagine, so late in the century, where that kind of unironic pleasure could come from.

In “Buffy,� for example, there was a lot of dumb fun, but it was of the street-smart variety. “MMM-Bop� was the only big pop moment of 1997 making a case for glee, for the kind of American culture bursting with what used to be called “childlike abandon.� Which was exactly why we needed the generosity of their bliss.

Slaying vampires isn’t the only way to save the world: Sometimes, a silly little pop song cranks out redemption for three or four whole minutes at a time.