The Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel Appreciation Thread - Page 16

I watched both of these shows after they went off the air, despite being the same age as the Buffy characters while they were airing (I boycotted Angel because its premise was a little too close to Forever Knight, a show I loved as a kid), and this was initially why I figured they killed off Doyle. And for me it worked. I figured that if one of the main 3 characters could be killed off, anyone but the main guy was fair game. I thought it was pretty brilliant too.

I don't know, I never found those shocking because it was always built to. It wasn't like Doyle took a bad hit in a random fight one night and died. There was a whole episode building to it.

It's like, I never thought Cordelia would be killed either.

That's part of what made it seem planned out and not a "hey, this guy's an unworkable druggie" solution.

Except, she kinda was. But that's an entire discussion in itself.

Not until the 4/5 season. It also fit into her arc, kinda.

I mean, it doesn't feel like they could have done that in S1 or even S2.

But again, look at Perlich's Whistler. He was slated to be in the Doyle role, wasn't he? I doubt the plan was to kill him off after seven episodes. I think it was probably a confluence of events - Quinn's problems, Doyle not clicking, Whedon's desire to pull the rug out from under the audience.

And I reiterate: would've loved to see Whistler again in some form.

Which is the point I was trying to make; Whedon's great at improvising story, and that's what shines through all the dumb decisions and dead ends in the first year.

I'm glad that didn't work out. Perlich is one of my least favorite presences, and if he drug down Angel half as much as he did Homicide, it might have been fatal for a show that was already wobbling quite a bit.

It's a definite silk-purse/sow's ear situation. I remember there was talk of somehow bringing Doyle back as a Big Bad in series three or four. How in Hell that would've worked at all is beyond me.

One more Whistler point: the name is so damn on-the-nose. Whedon's not usually so crushingly obvious with his references.

To be fair to both the dead and terminally rat-faced, a good deal of the negativity I feel toward Doyle or Whistler as long term fixtures is that the way it shook out brought imo the strongest character and performer (with due respect to monsieur Marsters and the missus Denisof) in the 'verse to the forefront of a show that needed the help. No matter what kind of soap opera gibberish the leads find themselves sinking in, or how awfully the goofy Whedon sensibility clashes with the "gritty" street setting, from here on out Wesley Wyndham-Pryce ensured that I'd never consider giving up on the show.

Fuck Bell's Palsy in the throat, man. I got hit when I'd just moved abroad and didn't know anyone, and shit was the scariest couple days of my life. I thought I had a stroke or tumor or something. Then it's gotta fuck up Wes too? Straight bullshit.

I never knew Doyle was a junkie. I always assumed the reason he was kicked of the show was because he wasn't working. I'm not even sure if it's the actors fault. The character was just boring. I really remember dislking Angel while Doyle was on the show. I'm pretty sure they would've replaced him sans the drugs.

I just watched a rerun from season one of Buffy. SMG was so beautiful then. I don't know why she thought she had to lose weight.

I know! At least it worked for the character, Buffy just got more stressed out and hard looking through the seasons and less soft and pretty.

She's hottest when she's a vampire.

ANGEL SEASON TWO

aka Step At A Time

New Team Member:

Wonderful. Who doesn't love Krevlorneswath of Deathwok Clan? No one that's welcome at my table, thank you very much.

Strengths

-Hot redheads. Look, I'm just going to put this out there. One thing that Angel has over its predecessor is a steady stream of comely crimsons filling in the margins. There's Eve, Bethany the unstable telekinetic, Wes's rich ladyfriend, the chick the physics nerd tries to freeze in time, and I suppose Justine, if dour hunchbacks do it for you. No judgments. Probably a few others I'm forgetting, but as a gentleman with a taste for ginger, I appreciate the effort.

-Caritas is a fantastic setting, and allows for some terrific comic business, with Boreanaz and Carpenter proving especially adept at laughably horrible singing. That's nowhere near as easy as it seems, by the by.

As I got at before, this is a functional counterpoint to the dynamic that didn't work with Kate and the LAPD in S1 (Merle provides a similarly flipped street-level source of info after Gunn proved capable of greater things). That it introduces us to Lorne's debonair, Sea Breezin' self is just icing on top of icing.

-Case in point: possibly the funniest moment of the whole series comes when the gang regroups after being fired and gets into a boozy three-way argument that is interrupted by a glorious jump cut to an even boozier three-way butchering of "We Are The Champions".

-Lilah gains prominence on the W&H front. Christian Kane does fine work as Lindsay, but I like that Lilah is less wishy-washy about her badness, and how she oscillates between officiously evil and plain ol' bitchy. Plus, you know, HAWT.

-Kate gets written out, and as has become typical, a disappointing character is at their best when being dismantled. Having her ostracized and eventually ejected from the force makes her more sympathetic, and this storyline doesn't waste so much time trying to insert Angel directly in it. This is the element of the private eye premise that took the longest to shake off, but it's for the best, as spending time with the cops draws our attention to all the nonsensical elements that reside just outside of each and every frame of the Buffyverse.

It seems like the plan may have been for Kate to become a permanent member of AI, given how abruptly she leaves and quickly Fred pops up as the New Girl. It's probably for the best that didn't happen, given how much stronger a performer Acker is, but I could also see an ex-cop having more potential for romantic chemistry with Gunn, so who knows what might have been?

-Darla and Drusilla are a great combo, and the moment when Dru shows up to re-sire her is a very well executed twist ending. I also like the underlying idea that Angel could potentially lose his soul without any curses or reverting to Angelus. But the best part of the storyline is how it allows the supporting cast to coalesce and come into their own. Wes and Gunn in particular develop a strong, surprising chemistry in his absence.

-The Pylea storyline is a great lark, with some terrific comedy beats ("I think we're winning!"/smash cut to..., Numfar and his Dance of ____), and I love Lorne's ultimate conclusion that he loves LA because "no one belongs there". It's just too lightweight compared to the mid-season Darla arc not to feel a bit disappointing as a finale.

-Evil hand!

Weaknesses

-Gunn is a real mixed bag. He's fun enough to spend time with, and Richards does well with almost any material he's given. But he also brings a lot of the show's biggest weaknesses to the forefront, particularly the inability to portray the seedy side of LA with anything approaching subtlety or believability. Any time we revisit his backstory I know we're in for some cringeworthy shit.

So here's where I start wildly and irresponsibly impugning the motives of the creative team. It seems to me like Gunn's integration into AI was in no small part motivated by how white the Buffyverse had always been. So they crafted an interesting character whose backstory gave him plenty of reason to have a more hard-nosed, less compassionate approach to life and demon-fighting. But they didn't have the balls to follow through with it, which I assume was motivated in part by not wanting the first prominent minority figure on the show to be less noble or heroic than all his white pals. The result is a character who can still be tough and funny and likable, but is domesticated far too quickly and smoothly when there is potential for a more complicated and interesting arc.

It's a marked contrast with say, Wes, where I look at how he started and am amazed at how far they were able to push him in directions I never would've considered. Whereas with Gunn, I like what he is just fine, but I can see so clearly what he might have been if they had taken a few more chances that it still feels vaguely disappointing.

-"Rogue" Angel is something that works better in concept than execution. Leaving aside the laughably overwrought voice-over in the otherwise excellent "Redefinition", it still seems odd that Angel goes so far off the reservation just to hunt down a pair of vampires, given how easily the human characters can mow them down in other episodes.

The emotional connection is there for him to feel especially responsible for the havoc they wreak given, their shared history, but they needed to do some more damage. Or maybe summon a larger, Judge-style physical threat in order for Angel going off the deep end to really make sense. I know it's not supposed to be his best decision, but we should be more in line with his mindset than we are.

It also ends with an odd abruptness, as Angel (awesomely) lights them on fire, but doesn't bother finishing them off and they just sort of leave town.

-Not a strictly S2 thing, but this is as good a place as any to highlight just how inconsistently vampires are portrayed throughout the series. Sometimes there will be a scene that goes out of its way to show how Angel is insanely faster and stronger than Wes, while in others Gunn and Fred can wade into a whole nest and knock it down with minimal fuss. Two vampires are sometimes a catalyst for our hero to declare total, scorched-earth war, and sometimes a comic inconvenience.

-Like I said, Pylea is a bit underwhelming as a finisher, and doesn't do much to tie the whole season together into something great. And Lorne's decapitation fake-out is just the worst kind of cheap. Come on.


Total Bullshit Move That Makes The Whole Bullshit Show A Big Pile Of Bullshit

Darla is the latest character to come back from the dead, and it's getting to be a bit much. And just for extra squirreliness, she comes back human just so she can be re-vamped. And then get pregnant with a MAGICBABY...

Why I Don't Care

It seems to take a lot of work and literal sacrifice on W&H's part (as opposed to Angel's resurrection just sort of happening), but more importantly, she's a bad guy. When the good guys aren't constrained by the limits and finality of death, it kills drama and tension. When the bad guys break those rules, it makes them that much more formidable as adversaries. It ain't fair, but what is?

Highlight Episodes

"Guise Will Be Guise" - Wesley-focused episodes are always going to be favorites of mine, and this one is a gem. It basically replays Wes's entire arc from Buffy through this season in miniature, starting with him bumbling and exaggerating his capability, and culminating with him stepping into the role of romantic hero for real. Angel's parallel identity crisis with Tish Magev is also a fun diversion with a strong character focus, plus it contains several of my favorite gags of the entire series:

Upon learning that Angel's strategy to get past W&H's vampire detectors is to "get to the office before they stop me", Gunn is distressed. "That's the plan? Walking real quick was the plan??"

"You're ambivalent."
"I am and I'm not."

Confused by a call about Wes's new client, Angel asks if he was in Virginia, to which Wes quietly demurs "that's beside the point..."

Boreanaz does one of his great "wounded pride" takes when Virginia's father reveals that he targeted Angel because he is a eunuch, prompting him to protest and mutter about how "the curse isn't even that clear..."

"Happy Anniversary" - Lorne really steps into the fold for the first time, and his sunny pacifist streak proves a wonderful counterpoint to Angel's dour militaristic bent. It also progresses the Angel-less AI dynamic that I enjoyed so much mid-season.

But in a broader sense, it finds the show stepping away from the narrow noirish template of the original conception and playing around with other kinds of detective stories. The main storyline is a very fun buddy-cop riff, while the side plot jumps hilariously past the main action to an Agatha Christie parlor mystery denouement. Wesley's pompous account of the convoluted, unseen mystery plot is a miniature tour-de-force for Denisof, and I absolutely lost my shit when he casually drops in "-but we all know that Kevin is impotent, so..."

Why on earth would they all know that? They met these people yesterday.

I still remember jumping out of my seat when Dru returned. And I love how ME managed it from a business angle: Since Landau doesn't have any lines in that ep, they didn't have to list her in the opening credits and give away the surprise.

This episode is one "you lied to me" scene away from being absolutely perfect. If only sitcoms were as funny. "I don't usually... drink in front of humans."

I don't mind that scene because it's not a conclusion, but a catalyst for further twists, and she gets over it rather quickly.

I love the part where Wes realizes he's being cock-blocked by Angel's curse. Then he just goes ahead and bangs her anyway.

"Less of a curse and more of a hex, actually. Barely that. A recommendation."

No one's going to stick up for Gunn, huh? I always thought he was fairly popular.

Awesome stuff, Schwartz. Incidentally, what did you think of the episode "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been"? It's one of my favorite Whedonverse episodes ever.

If memory serves, he doesn't get to do any relationship-type stuff until Season 3 or 4. And of course his development as a regular character is totally overshadowed by Wesley's.

I like Gunn quite a bit. Or, more specifically, I like J August Richards playing Gunn quite a bit. I have nothing to contradict criticism of his relationship stuff or the street episodes he spawned, but elsewhere he is very enjoyable. The one part I hated most (yes, most) was when later in s4, I think, his characterization began to gravitate entirely around him being the "muscle", which always felt odd considering s2 portrays him as rather smart.

It gave me confidence that the 2nd season would be much stronger than the first, which it was. It's takes advantage of one of the main strengths of the premise, that even though our hero is sort of one-note, there is room for lots of different variants via flashbacks and magic. Here he gets to explore some of the area between Angelus and our present-day moper, and as usual, DB shines when he gets to stretch the characterization a bit. The stuff with the beatnik bookshop guy is a lot of fun, too.

Ultimately, though, it's a bit too Angel-centric for my taste, as it's the supporting cast that makes the show come alive for me (Buffy was often my least favorite character on her show, but it's even more pronounced here). Angel needs a really strong personality, like Lorne, to bounce off in order to bring out the best of him, and pairing him mostly with a similarly morose unknown just doesn't do it for me.

So I appreciate it a good deal, but it's not a personal favorite.

But you've got to admit, that sets up what he does in season 5 perfectly.

It does, but it's still weird that he would be characterized that way, since Angel is superhuman and all, and Wes isn't noticeably weaker when it's time to throw down.

It's one of the areas that would've worked better if he'd been depicted a little more rough around the edges from the start. I mean, on paper the guy's a high school (elementary) dropout, but most of the time he acts and speaks like a salutatorian from the suburbs.

I checked the comics forum for a Buffy season 8 thread, and there wasn't one. So I have to ask my question here. Am I the only one who is creep-ed out by Xander and Dawn being a couple?

ANGEL SEASON THREE

aka None Forgiven

New Team Member:

Mixed bag. Acker is a fine actor, and despite a wonky accent does wonders with material that is frequently cutesy and straining with forced quirk. Her role in the group takes a while to work out, though, since they already have a brain on the mystical side, and the show is really inconsistent about the role and usefulness of technology. So for much of the season, she is confined to romantic subplots that vary from well done (her early, hopeless fixation on Angel) to not so much (turning Gunn into an even bigger pussycat). Fred eventually brings a lot of heart to the show and proves to be a great, albeit brief, match for Wesley, but for most of this season she doesn't quite pull her weight.

Strengths

-Holtz is a terrific adversary, and I love the subdued, gravelly menace the actor (I ain't even trying to spell it) brings to the role. His cold, unhurried manner perfect befits a character whose pursuit of vengeance takes him across dimensions and centuries.

And the thing is, he deserves that vengeance. As cold a fish as he is, and cuddly as we've seen Angel be, he and Darla ruined Holtz in the most monstrous manner imaginable, and time and curses do nothing to change that. So the gypsies punished him for something else; it's not like we don't charge murderers if they already went to jail for something else, right?

-This is also the most thematically tight season of the show so far. It will always be spottier than Buffy in this area, (as well as narrative momentum and general quality) but that's mostly by design. It's still more of a collection of mini-arcs than a full and cohesive storyline, but there is a common thread of revenge and (lack of) forgiveness running through most of it. This is interesting territory for the show to explore, as it has always been about atonement, and forgiveness is a flip side of that. Atonement is a difficult but internal process, while forgiveness requires the cooperation of others, and can't be expected or demanded even if it can be in some way earned. Whedon's characters are generally pretty good about accepting each other's mistakes, even if what makes the story-telling interesting is that they never forget. But this season seems to have a more pessimistic perspective, as there is no real reconciliation between Angel and Holtz (despite Angel's sincere repentance), or Wesley and AI (despite the parties knowing that he didn't act out of malice), or Angel and Connor (to put it lightly). This seems rather bleak for the show's tone, but it actually fits with the its point of view that redemption is an arduous and above all personal process, and the only way for it to work is to put your head down and try to make a positive change, and forget about keeping score.

-WESLEY. He gets the most shocking and dramatic arc of the season, and Denisof knocks that shit out the park at every turn. I particularly like the development of the relationship with Lilah, which is oddly believable even as it oozes with contempt. Wesley was always my favorite character, but from here on out no one else is even in contention. Sorry, Spike, not even you.

-Groo is not a character I was eager to see more of, but I enjoyed how he was used as a contrast to Angel here. And his exit, while reminiscent of that other blandly heroic love interest on that other vampire show, is surprisingly affecting.

-Gunn gets off a C.H.U.D reference!! It's the little things you savor.

-I mentioned before how much I enjoy Wes and Gunn as brosephs, and this season has my favorite moment between them, as the hotel is about to come under siege and they psych themselves up.

Gunn: What are you doing?
Wes: Trying to imagine myself as John Wayne in Rio Bravo. You?
Gunn: Austin Stoker, Assault On Precinct 13.
(low five)

-Darla is the focus of a lot of the more convoluted and soapy plot twists throughout the series, but I do think Julie Benz is really great, alternately vicious and sexy and disarmingly insecure, in the role. I hear she's mostly wasted on No Ordinary Family these days, which is a shame, because she has range that has gone untapped by significant but thankless roles in Dexter and otherwise-entertaining schlock like Rambo and Punisher: War Zone. In the coming chewer utopia, no actress as talented, easy on the eyes, and surprisingly game will suffer such a low profile, I can assure you.

-Skip the demon is a wonderful design, concept, and performance. I don't like the eventual reveal that he was sinister all along, but his appearances this season a ton of fun.

Weaknesses

-Man, Cordy's haircut sucks. I'm not much of a fashionista, but it's just ridiculously unflattering beyond the fact that she doesn't make a very good blonde.

-Daniel Dae Kim is marvelously smarmy as Gavin, but he's underused on the W&H front.

-I see the purpose served by hooking up Fred with Gunn. It brings her further into the fold at a time when they haven't quite figured out how to make her useful to the company, and starting to estrange Wesley from the group lays the groundwork for his decision not to share what he knows about the prophecy with anyone. But it doesn't feel organic, as they have absolutely nothing in common beyond their both being fairly nice people. I could probably buy them as friends-with-benefits or something, but mooning over each other like a pair of lovestruck 8th-graders just doesn't ring true.

It also highlights all the worst failings of Gunn's characterization, as he can't even register as rough enough to pull off a "bad boy" or "opposites attract" angle. I mean, how screwy is it that Wesley is the edgier, more dangerous option in the triangle, and the street kid is wooing her with Shakespeare quotes at the ballet?

-Angel and Cordelia almost work as a romantic pairing, although that fact just highlights how far afield they've taken her. I mean, sure, everyone in the Buffyverse has to swing a sword eventually, but making her some kind of Amazonian warrior, then a demon-powered sorceress is a massive misjudgment of the character's appeal. Some of the business with Angel trying to tiptoe around his feelings, or Groo as a third wheel works quite well, but overall it's reflective of how they're losing the track of her character, which will only get worse after she floats off to the clouds to play harp or whatever.

-Connor = the single most slappable character in the history of fiction. Discuss.


Total Bullshit Move That Makes The Whole Bullshit Show A Big Pile Of Bullshit

Everything about Connor is awful soap-opera crappola, from his Shocking Pregnancy! conception that I don't think they even explained (and did we ever care about vampire's procreative biology anyway?), to how they make a big point of him being a completely normal baby before he randomly shows up with super-powers after being (sigh) magically jumped forward in age.

Why I Don't Care

Well, I do hate the little prick. He's even mean to Lorne! Not cool, shitheel, not cool. Plus there's the general principle that TV characters having kids almost never works, since it only serves to distract from the basic dynamic that drew us in to begin with. But his existence does kick off the Wesley arc that is the highlight of the series, so there's that. And I have to admit that the punishment he concocts for Angel in the finale is impressively sadistic for a whiny little brat.

Highlight Episodes

"Fredless" - This episode doesn't solve all the issues with Fred's character, but at least it confronts them head-on. And it introduces Fred's parents, who manage to be about the only decent parents in the 'verse (besides Joyce) without undermining the primacy of AI's surrogate family unit. Their return down the line will kick off the most heart-breaking subplot of the entire run.

Wes and Cordelia play-acting Angel and Buffy's reunion ("I love you so much I almost forgot to brood!") is a fun bit of self-awareness that the actors have a great time with.

If there's one thing I must take issue with, though, it's Fred's estimation of the group dynamic. For one, why do you need The Muscle when you already have The Champion? Clearly, the sorting should go like this:

Wesley - The Brains
Cordelia - The Looks
Angel - The Muscle
Gunn - The Token Black Guy
Fred - The Useless Chick
Lorne - The Wild Card

"Loyalty" - Wesley has always been cursed with a chronic ability to see the big picture, which makes him the one who can make the tough decisions, but this is where we start to see just how hard fighting the good fight has made him. Via an argument with an apocalyptically-fixated animatronic hamburger. That's the Buffyverse in a nutshell.

In Conner's defense, how would you act if you grew up in Hell?

Just because they hang a lampshade on tropes, doesn't make things clever. I can get why they made Connor an "adult" and it kinda worked, but it still falls into the same type of cliches that Whedon likes to turn on its head. I would say that that's not completely uncommon for him to do.

His superpowers are just screwed up. Did he get them somehow because of Quartoth? Because vampires are caused by demonic possession to the degree that Angelus is a separate entity. So does Connor only have one half of that or something?

Edit: If the portrayal, partly the acting and partly the writing was better, it probably would have worked out better. But, then again, you could say that about anything.

Schwartz continues to frighten me with his ability to see the Whedonverse through my very own eyes.

Buffy Season 8.

I actually dropped it some time after the Giles/Faith storyline; among other things, I wasn't digging the art (though god knows it was streets ahead of the Angel book in that regard).

Not saying the characterization is unbelievable or "wrong" somehow, just that it's not fun to watch. Whedon has a good track record of making evil/bitchy characters entertaining (Cordelia, Spike, Harmony, all of W&H, even Holtz), but Connor just brings out the meh in everyone.

Like I said, introducing kids into ongoing shows almost never works. Dawn is probably the most successful example I can think of, but off the top of my head Sons of Anarchy and The Office are currently struggling with child-based storylines that don't fit with the rest of the show, because we tune in to see Jax run n' gun with his biker gang or Jim and Pam pull amiable pranks at the office, not struggle with parenthood. We were sold on the premise of Angel as the leader of a motley crew of supernatural warriors, and despite being one himself, Connor distracts us from that. Plus, their interactions get rather one-note.

Connor: "I hate you!"
Angel: "I still love you. But that don't mean I won't smack ya around."
(half-assed bonding moment based on beating up some nameless goons)

I thought initially that Connor didn't work because of Vincent Kartheiser. But seeing Kartheiser take a character like Pete Campbell and make him loathable, relatable, hilarious, pittiable and utterly engrossing made me come around to the idea that Connor was just a terribly written character.

Absolutely. Although I suppose it's possible he just learned a lot from his time on Angel, he manages to play an immature and whiny character with a lot more depth and sympathy these days, so I don't think he's the problem.

Connor is just such an awkwardly positioned character. We're not supposed to like him exactly, but we're not supposed to really hate him either, and he's thrust upon us so suddenly (and through such weird mechanics) that we don't have time to develop such an ambivalent, nuanced relationship to him. When you add in how he throws off the group dynamic and brings out the most boring side of his pops, he's just not someone I want to spend any screen time with. As opposed to, say, Faith or the Mayor, who I have a much purer "dislike" for, but still find very watchable.

No mention or love for my main man Sahjan? His relationship with the dour Holtz was one of my favorites.

Though Holtz trumps all. One of the best characters Angel had to offer.

And much love also for that episode where everyone, from a vampire cult to a ninja to a chicken-footed doctor to Holtz is coming after Angel's baby. Multiple villains coming after our hero and getting in each other's way? That's pure comic-book goodness right there.

The fuck you say? Man, I'm so glad I never read any of those comics. I mean, why would you want to screw over one of the most perfect show endings ever (in reference to Angel, not Buffy).

After years of resisting, I'm in total love with these shows http://chud.com/articles/articles/26...910/Page1.html

Nicely done!

I hadn't seen that viewing list before. The 'minimal disc-switching' approach is clever. And yes, 'Fool For Love/Darla' was a peak accomplishment. Personally, I prefer watching 'Darla' second, as it muddles things to know ahead of time that Angel is hiding his ensoulment in 'Fool'.

I resisted the shows for a similarly long time and similarly dumb reasons. Kicked myself a lot for missing out at the time. Maybe if I acted in time I could've been the extra viewer that saved Firefly! Which you should fire up on netflix instant when you're done with Angel. It's not the same thing (though in some ways better), but tonally similar enough to work in a methadone-ish capacity.

I've been revisiting the 4th season over the last week or two, which I remember being a jumbled mess. And what I'm struck by in the first half is how...good it is. It's not perfect, and the problems it has are rather glaring (not a great year for characters whose names begin with "C"), but there's a lot of really strong character work, a smoother sense of momentum between the mini-arcs, and just a bunch of really strong hours despite the considerable dead weight. I'm wondering just how much of my negative recollection is tied to Jasmine, who has yet to show (back) up.

Which in turn has led me to wonder how much of my view of Angel as a weaker show overall has to do with the fact that it doesn't specialize in endings the same way Buffy does. Angel seasons tend to have a more fitful pacing, and the highlights tend to fall in the middle. The third and fourth seasons manage to end on shocking notes that twist the show in interesting new directions, but they're shocking in part because they aren't built to as smoothly and inevitably as a Buffy slam-bang finish. A5 comes close to matching that, although the final storyline is still developed rather quickly compared to a seasonal arc on the mother ship. I wonder how much that contributes to the general opinion that 5 was the strongest season, as opposed to the obvious shifts like moving inside W&H or swapping out the whiny little mert for the awesomeness of Spike.

Rambleramble, but it leads me to 2 questions. 1) Was my opinion of Buffy as the more consistent show an illusion created by its knack for ending on a high note? 2) Is that illusion heightened by DVD set binging, compared to how first-run viewers saw the shows week to week?

Oddly enough, Kevin Matchstick (your quote gentleman) has told me to watch Firefly next as well, so I'll definitely be doing that.

And you're right about Angel's 4th season - it is really sharp and delightfully darker. Although, I confess I totally despise what they did with Cordelia's character. She's gone from one of my favorites to "I can't wait for her to go away" targets. And it all happened so quickly, there wasn't really any warning she would be ruined so drastically.

That's my only complaint so far, though, but it really bothered me.

Schwartz, I don't think it is an illusion at all. I faithfully watched both series as they originally aired. Buffy, in my opinion, always had a knack for sticking the landing. Even in the fourth season (which I consider to be the weakest of the 22 episode seasons), with the rushed and somewhat muddled Adam is Big Bad story arc, the show had an extremely satisfactory climax. Watching Buffy's final battle with Adam had me pumping my fist. Angel, on the other hand, seemed to do the complete opposite. It built up steam and momentum throughout the season only to crash and burn (exagerating here) in the season finale. I particularly think of this being the case in the second and third seasons and, especially, the odd Pylea excursion. It was in the later seasons that it seemed to cure this problem, culminating, of course, in my all-time favorite series finale.

It's like what I said before: Angel despite possibly weaker in the individual episode and conventional season pay-off sense than Buffy, manages to create a more unified and meaningful show length arc than its progenitor. The character progression and propulsion Angel had, along its singular thematic vision, is why I consider it to be a better product than Buffy.

Plus I love the 4th season. It's kind of bat shit crazy, with the showrunners spastically throwing away potentially season long arcs one after another, frantically looking for the next big thing that could put the protagonists up against the wall. Just full of energy.

A delightful gentleman, and as that signature proves, full of good advice. You should pretty much always do what he says, unless a butler has somehow become involved. I understand them to be his Kryptonite.

Yeah, the problem with 4 is that what doesn't work really doesn't work. Cordelia = Exhibit A.

Angel's finale is up there with The Shield and The Wire for me in terms of all-timers. It's hard to say, because I do think those shows are both better generally speaking, but the finales are both so dependent on their explosive penultimate episodes that "Not Fade Away" actually stands stronger on its own terms. But that's probably a discussion for another thread.

Anyway, what I was getting at is whether when I say that Buffy is more "consistent" than Angel, what I really mean is that the individual episodes have less variance in overall quality, or that they transition more smoothly into each other and the eventual pay-off. I know the second part is true, and I think it just caused me to assume that the first part was. Revisiting some of the rockier patches of Angel has me reconsidering.

Meanwhile, it took all of 2 episodes in Season 5 to turn him into a likeable nuanced character I wanted to see more of.

Friendly reminder: It’s Thanksgiving, and you know what that means! No, not football (C’mon, I’m from Michigan, I know how painful it is to watch the Lions), but the annual tradition of watching “Pangs!” It’s written by the great Jane Espenson, and Xander’s penis gets diseases from the Chumash tribe!

“To commemorate a past event you kill and eat an animal. A ritual sacrifice... with pie.” Happy Thanksgiving!

"Ceaser never said I came I conquered, I felt really bad about it."

The shot of Xander, Willow and Anya gallantly riding their bicycles (complete with dramatic music) is priceless.

ANGEL SEASON FOUR

aka Who Are You, Again

New Team Member:

Punchable. Mad Men shows Kartheiser to have chops, but we've been over how much he doesn't work here, and his character drags down the entire season.

Strengths

-The first half of the season is actually pretty great. Angel doesn't usually keep a physical adversary around for long (Whedon got better about not killing good villains right away as Buffy went along, but it didn't seem to carry over to this show outside this and Holtz), but having a proper Big Bad does wonders for the pacing and momentum of the middle parts of the season.

Plus, the rooftop brawl where it completely manhandles the entire crew is probably the best fight in the series. I love Wes pulling his gats, but also just tend to find fight scenes more dramatic when the heroes are losing.

-Wesley and Lilah's relationship is a great evolution for both characters. Beneath the surface push-pull of contempt and desire, there's a sort of sportsmanship as they vie to see who can get the next one over on the other. The whole thing, particularly the final goodbye scenes where he has to decapitate her corpse, is much more affecting than it has any right to be given the generally ridiculous circumstances and that she was an unrepentant black hat. As usual, a lot of the credit goes to Denisof, whose performance is an object lesson in how "cold" is not the same as "calculating".

-Fred and Gunn go splits halfway through, which drives both of them in more interesting directions. The handling of Gunn this season showcases a particular strength of Whedon's, which is the ability to see what hasn't been working with a character and steer into the skid, working it into a compelling arc going forward. Gunn's general uselessness outside of being an extra set of hands had becoming more and more apparent over time, and having it manifest in feelings of inadequacy makes it an organic part of his character rather than a structural flaw. And like many of the uglier truths within the story, it takes Angelus's evil candor to bring out the fact that he is the blander, safer alternative to the brooding badass Wes has become.

-Speaking of Angelus, while I'm skeptical of the hand-waving contortions that come with the ensouling/unsouling/un-unsouling/re-unsouling/re-resouling process whenever the writers want to goose a storyline, it's still a blast when they give him room to play here. Boreanaz tears into the rare chances to be both evil and cheery with relish, and while the Angelus flashbacks generally run colder than hot for me (the accent doesn't help anything), having him in the present day bouncing off our established cast jars the group dynamics in really interesting ways. Plus, he leads us to...

-Faith makes her biannual appearance. I'm not a raving fan, and the return in Buffy's last season in particular felt a bit like fan service, and the clashing with Buffy somewhat of a regression for her character. But her history with Angel and Wesley allow her presence on this show to develop in more interesting, messier ways.

-Why is Angelus a great villain? He threatens not only to have his way with Faith's dead body, and not only rape Fred to death, but to use his awful Irish accent while he does it. The first parts are sick, but the last is just beyond twisted.

-The finale is sort of meh as an episode, but moving the gang into W&H does spin the show in an interesting new direction after a disappointing climax, one which next season will capitalize on very successfully.

-Did Samwise Gamgee really direct the Angelus Lecter episode? That may not be a strength per se, but seems random enough to warrant a mention.

Weaknesses

-You know what's a really shitty story element? Amnesia. You know what's even shittier? Magical, deus ex machina amnesia that is a really lazy, obvious way of artificially extending/negating a particular plotline. Guess which kind makes multiple appearances this season?

-Another magical pregnancy storyline, I guess because they've worked such wonders for Cordelia and the show in the past.

-Relationship with Gunn aside, Fred's developing a little toowell. I'm starting to sense a pattern in the Buffyverse, where you take a flawed girl whose vulnerability makes her sympathetic, and put her through the demonic ringer to toughen her up. Then once you've grown the caterpillar into this beautiful, intelligent tigress, you have nowhere left to take the character. So you have them become possessed by an all-powerful evil force and/or kill them off. At least with Willow and Anya it wasn't quite so literal, and Illyria will admittedly be the most interesting iteration, but there are times this season where I can feel Fred becoming a little too perfect. And if we start to doubt the danger of that route, we can just take a gander over at...

-Cordelia. Right from the start we see what a terrible idea the ascension thing was, as they can't get around it without resorting to everyone's favorite type of amnesia, the Dramatically-Convenient-and-Ambiguously-Mystical. When you have to resort to those lengths to regress a character back from the place you took them, it'd probably be better to just keep them gone. From there we go to icky psuedo-incest to magical pregnancy to full-on possession to wait, is she actually in there? Still on the higher plane? Was she actually there?

Such a shame what they did to a once-vibrant character. She doesn't even get killed off properly, lingering in a coma. Sort of. It's possible she was never really back, so maybe she's been in heaven all along, I dunno. But the haircut has improved, so there's that.

-Just in case we didn't get our fill elsewheres, the (otherwise good) Angelus arc is motivated by another bout of magical amnesia. Yippee.

-Gwen Raiden is hot, but as a recurring character she's slightly less interesting than Kate.

-I loved Skip as a character and conceit, and the twist of him being an evil all along kind of murders all of that. Boo.

-The whole Jasmine arc sucks, and the irony of Angel fighting her for doing exactly what he'll turn around and do to Connor isn't enough to redeem it. It's sort of painful to watch our heroes in their brainwashed states, and not in the good, "pain for the characters=drama for us" kind of way. It's all just weird and convoluted and underwhelming after the rollicking action of the Beast and Angelus' rampages. And man, there is some seriously stinky CGI going on in the home dimension Angel travels to, even for turn of the century cable TV. Also, the attempts to tie absolutely every event in the entire series into the plot to bring her about are labored and unconvincing.

On the plus side, Jasmine's part is shorter than I remembered, which just goes to show how much the strength of an ending casts an outsized shadow over the perception of a whole season, and how this has always been a problem for a show that tends toward a bunch of mini-arcs, with the strongest landing in the middle.


Total Bullshit Move That Makes The Whole Bullshit Show A Big Pile Of Bullshit

The parade of soap opera bullshit that is Connor's existence is topped off with another sweaty, steaming load of magical amnesia. It's not quite to the point of making the entire season a dream, but it's right up next to it.

Why I Don't Care

It mostly wipes away the shitty parts of the year. And if this is what it takes to get rid of Connor, I suppose I can hold my nose and choke it down.

Highlight Episodes

"Deep Down" - Before we get into any amnesia or needlessly complicated mystical plots, we're treated to a hell of a premiere. The reveal of Wes's closet is one of the best moments in the 'verse, and that's before he makes clear that the bucket is a privilege, not a right. Badass Wes is fucking awesome, and the early parts where he's sleeping with the enemy and on frosty terms with his friends make for some of his best moments. On the other side, the bits with Gunn and Fred as "parents" to Connor's surly teenager are about as tolerable as the character gets, since he's at least intentionally obnoxious. Plus, it ends with Fred taking a tazer to the little turd.

But I think a big part of the reason I like it so much is that Angel is inactive for much of the time and Cordelia is completely out of the picture. That means we're down to just the most flawed, interesting characters making decisions and stumbling along without the benefit of conveniently-timed visions or vampiric invulnerability to fall back on. It's character and story with as little mumbo-jumbo as the show ever does.

"Spin The Bottle" - For starters, I'd be fine with Lorne narrating every episode between sips of Sea Breeze on a smoky stage. Secondly, I don't give a rat's ass that this is a clear retread of Buffy's "Tabula Rasa", as that one was another favorite for many of the same reasons.

This is the kind of high-concept episode that Buffy always excelled at, but Angel rarely indulged in, which is more the pity. You take Connor out of the picture, let Boreanaz be goofy, bring back the bitchier, lively Cordelia and a gruffer, edgier Gunn, allow Denisof to stretch the comedic muscles that haven't got much use since the kidnapping, and the result is that the show is FUN in a way it hasn't been in ages.

"THE GOVERNMENT GAVE ME BAD HAIR!!!"

God, season 4 was a freaking roller coaster. It had some of my favorite moments in the show (the already-mentioned closet, the beast, more Angelus), but also some of the worst (Connor and the incest thing, Cordelia overall this season). At least it sets up the last (best) season wonderfully.

Also, related funny story - When we first watched this, my soon-to-be wife was thinking of possible names for future children and had brought up Connor before we started watching Angel. When this season was over, the first thing she says to me: "I don't think I'd want to name a kid Connor any more."

Man, looking back, so much to hate and so much to like about this season. The fight with the Beast? Awesome! The entire staff of Wolfram and Hart becoming zombies? Fantastic! Angel's perfect fantasy episode? Caged Hannibal Lecter manipulation Angelus? Scaffolding fight with Angelus? Inner-psyche fight between Angel and Angelus (a confrontation I didn't think we'd ever see)? Pure goodness!

Then well...a lot of the other stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think it was around when Fred was hanging out with that random midget demon who on and off again tried to eat her that I just threw my hands up and went "Okay, no thank you."

I'm told that a big part of why S4 is such a mess is Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy, which she apparently kind of sprung on Whedon & co. and neccessitated finding a lot of last-minute meta-arc fixes. Add to that the fact that Mutant Enemy was then juggling THREE shows (and Whedon's heart was clearly more in Firefly) and it actually becomes kind of amazing that the season was even as coherent as it was.

Totally disagree with you on the Jasmine arc. To me that put the season back on rails after an incredibly sloppy middle section. As an agnostic who's regularly surrounded by believers, I can more than relate to what Fred and then the others go through.