Angel

I suppose I can't say anything about the episodes I saw (the two most recent WB reruns) in case the British are all pissy about spoilers, but I think spoilers are funny: I see two thirds of my Buffy episodes in reruns, and I kind of enjoy fitting together the pieces from the three different segments of time I'm seeing, taking advantage of the information I get from all of them (plus just doing that within the last-season reruns since I didn't see them all).

Have the lawyer always been there? What's their deal?

the lawyers: they're evil, duh.

The problem, increasingly throughout the second season and now strongly in the third season, is that they're far too incompetent compared to the enormous capital and magical outlay that goes into their continued operation, with all of the visible members coming off more like witless and powerless individuals than representatives of a scary conglomerate. It would be cool if this was somehow a comment on Enron etc. but I think it's more the product of a writing stalemate - the creative arc demands that both Angel and W&F manage to continue on relatively intact for poss. a couple of seasons - which the whole "W&F want to keep Angel alive for later use" excuse seems less able to cover the longer it remains unsubstantiated by a glimpse of the firm's plans.

Also, the writers should either really expand Lilah's character as they did with her former partner/rival or just kill her off and move on up the heirarchy. Her new partner/rival is just hopeless, if depressingly accurate - his "evil" is exactly the same as that of many of my fellow law students.

I prefer Angel to Buffy: I love the theme music and the crying, terrified individuals in LA bars in the opening sequence. I also find the big brooding destructive man learning how to love, comfort and care on a personal and abstract level more of a moving storyline than the old "buffy must learn patience and take care of all around her" thing.

Wolf Ram and Hart (geddit) are fantastic too: their incompetence surely stems from the chaotic nature of the powers they enrol: as often as not they double back and destroy their agents.

have they always had all the flashbacks?

The ones on Angel have tended to focus around the vampire hunter in the lead-up to him being brought into the show, but earlier on when the focus was on Darla his inclusion was if I recall incidental and occasional.

A thought: i like Gunn and Fred (plus Loren!), but does anyone else agree that Angel worked really well as a three-character show (Angel, Cordelia and that other guy; then Angel, Cordelia and Wesley)? I think I liked the idea of a small number of characters being utterly dependent on eachother and sort of suffering a bit due to their isolation from everything else. Similarly the interaction with that police woman worked well as a constant reminder of Angel's inability to integrate with society. With so many people in the hotel these days, the need to integrate with society seems a lot less pressing.

I got into Buffy last year and was simultaneously watching series 1 on BBC, Series 2 and 3 on Sky and series 5 on TV3. Its ahrdly so sophisticated that you can't happily patch it together. And the Breeders have been playing the theme music on tur lately.

Lorne's the best character in Angle but then I liked Villa in Blakes 7.

If nothing else it gives me an excuse to make more butter jokes.

I stood around a bit earlier today in that "must think of something to do for five minutes rather than leave for work" space, and thought, it's season five, isn't it? How they fly. Darla, Medieval, Deep sea, Jasmine - all seem like quite silly end-of-season cliffhangers. On the other hand the focus on plot allows them to pack a lot into each season.

I like Angel, it's unrepentant good fun. The intensity of the plot and the way it winds around actors dropping out gives it a certain soap opera quality (Cordelia! Angel's son! Office love triangle! all gone). But the plot happens to the characters, and then the plot leaves and the characters remain: the Wesley in the new series is pretty much exactly the "indiana jones of the occult" in the writer's handbook for season 1.

The show finally finding its feet = Andy Hallett in the main credits.

i know channel 4 are no longer showing it, and i wouldn't mind so much but you can't rent the dvds for the new season.... wah

i mean i *could* download them but it'd take forever....

ch5 had the rights to the series after the one on ch4 but they soon moved it to midnight and then stopped it in mid season. things don't look good.

andy

This new law firm/Spike shit is really not doing it for me so far.

(There are UK s5 spoilers on here right?)

anyone think they'll bring doyle back? I was surprised to see him referenced and even shown. I thought the actor and Whedon had a giant falling out which was why he got killed off.

That's because it's not really wrapped up. He's coming back later this season.

I doubt there's any chance of Doyle coming back because the actor (Glen Quinn) who played him died a while back.

The end of the Buffyverse... I can't fucking believe it.

I'm more interested by the rumored Firefly movie - that half-season was better than almost any post-S3 Buffy season.

Some of you may have heard the hilarious news. I thought this would be a good time to weigh in. to answer some obvious questions: No, we had no idea this was coming. Yes, we will finish out the season. No, I don't think the WB is doing the right thing. Yes, I'm grateful they did it early enough for my people to find other jobs.

Yes, my heart is breaking.

When Buffy ended, I was tapped out and ready to send it off. When Firefly got the axe, I went into a state of denial so huge it may very well cause a movie. But Angel... we really were starting to feel like we were on top, hitting our stride -- and then we strode right into the Pit of Snakes 'n' Lava. I'm so into these characters, these actors, the situations we're building... you wanna know how I feel? Watch the first act of "The Body."

As far as TV movies or whatever, I'm not thinking that far ahead. I actually hope my actors and writers are all too busy. We always planned this season finale to be a great capper to the season and the show in general. (And a great platform for a new season, of course.) We'll proceed ahead as planned.

I've never made mainstream TV very well. I like surprises, and TV isn't about surprises, unless the surprise is who gets voted off of something. I've been lucky to sneak this strange, strange show over the airwaves for as long as I have. I don't FEEL lucky, but I understand that I am.

Thanks all for your support, your community, and your perfectly sane devotion. It's meant a lot. I regret nothing (except the string of grisley murders in the 80's -- what was THAT all about?) Remember the words of the poet:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn."

See you soon.

-j.

Ohhh, yesss...

http://www.popbitch.com/images/angel.jpg

You just noticed this now? I've been making fun of him since I started watching the show! He looked adorable as a puppet though.

See? Adorable...

Buffy had vamps galore, so what the hell sense is that? Besides, when NBC (I think) did a new version of Dark Shadows years ago, it lasted five minutes. OK, maybe 10. If the WB ain't careful, it's going to turn into ABC.

Pardon while I go mourn. Bastards.

And yup, I actually stayed in house to see the puppet episode. Most awesome part? When the Nest Egg exploded...

I actually wanted to cuddle it, puppet was so cute.

It was the funniest Buffy/Angel though.

You just noticed this now? I've been making fun of him since I started watching the show!"

True, but the deterioration has accelerated and the hair just accentuates it.

Was it really necessary to make her even more of a poor-man's Willow?

Anyhow, these last few episodes have made me sad the show might be ending. Last season, wouldn't have minded - aside from Lilah and Wesley, it was dreck with evil Cordelia and angsty Connor. But Ben Edlund (Spoooooooooon!) was a great addition, and the arcs seem tighter this year.

If there's an Angel geek here, can you mention what happened with the Scourge threat that ended Season 1? They were supposed to be an apocalyptic threat, and afaik, they never appeared again.

That, or "choose and perish."

Did anybody else find the final scene (in which Fred gets progressively more delusional/sick and finally turns into demon Fred) extremely tedious? The episode was written & directed by Joss, and I couldn't help thinking that it'd been better if he'd been writing for the audience rather than for his girlfriend's Big Dramatic Acting Moment.

I don't remember where I heard that, but I'm not surprised that I'm wrong about it.

What pisses me off about Angel lately is the number of times Angel himself says things like "Let's go save the world" or "We just do it because we have to." He's really flattening into a bullshit two-dimensional "hero" character.

And bah on the Wesley/Illyria scenes. Bah.

And yay for Wesley/Illyria.

cf the differences between the Xena and Hercules finales, too; overblown, overplotted, overhyped melodrama vs another day in funkytown.

Haha, PSYCHICK!

Me too. I absolutely loved it.

I was shocked that over on the twop boards there were lots of fans complaining about what a horrible ending it was, and how Angel should have shanshu-ed and went to be with Buffy. To me, that sounds like a horrible ending. It would have been very dishonest to the character of the show if everything had been wrapped up neatly and been fluffy mcbunnycakes at the end.

This sounds like what McDonalds will call its upcoming rabbit pancakes.

TWO BUNNIES are seen eating away.

YOUNG BUNNY: Mommy, will I EVER get to go to McDonalds?

OLDER BUNNY: Why YES, sweetheart. Here comes the nice man now!

*"Meat is Murder" kicks in on the soundtrack, but with oddly rewritten lyrics and a faster, peppier pace*

JUSTIN: "Breakfast with some BUNNIES! Breakfast with some BUNNIES IN PANCAKES! Ooowah ladies good morning let's have some pancakes yeah..."

VO: "McDonalds. We're killing them."

I was shocked that over on the twop boards there were lots of fans complaining about what a horrible ending it was, and how Angel should have shanshu-ed and went to be with Buffy.

Like I alluded to Dan when we were talking about the rac groups, I used to be active on the alt.tv.buffy (or .btvs or ... what the hell was it?) group, and geeeeez. The "Buffy and Angel MUST be together, FOREVER" contingent was enormous and strident. I think the best thing the spinoff did -- even if the show had turned out to suck -- was remove Angel from Sunnydale, and force the writers to contextualize the Buffy-Angel relationship as Buffy's high school drama (and the first movement in her "I like to fuck bad boys" opera) instead of the be-all and end-all of their respective love lives.

But that's the problem with shows like this, or rather with getting involved with the show's fans: it only takes a few episodes, maybe a season or two, before propriety sets in, and from that point on a large part of the fanbase is watching for the thrill of resentment as the pros mishandle "their" characters.

This is why (except for ILC) I don't read the non-ILE boards. Fanhood and fandom are strange things, which I think have very little to do with the objects of their fannishicity.

Early Angel really is very good. I think it lost some focus and suffered from Greenwalt's departure and Whedon's short attention span, but it was still better than most of what's on. Buffy, really, becomes two shows in retrospect: the first three seasons are the high school show; fourth season is the awkward, lumbering transition period; and fifth to the end are really a spinoff, the Buffyverse version of AfterMASH -- new character dynamics, new worldview, new ongoing dramas, little in common with 1-3 except for half of the characters.

But Buffy's first two seasons were grebt. Season 4 gets half-credit for not being completely useless, but after that it was all downhill.

I think this was intentional. Angel was designed to be less campy than Buffy from the outset.

Even when the seasons weren't as great compared to others, there was never a time that I didn't look forward each week to watching both shows. This year at least there was still one of them to watch, and now...

I'm kinda surprised to be as sad as I am about something like television.

I'm not sure you missed as much as you think you did with Angel, Nabisco -- it depends on how many episodes you're short. The second-to-last established the "Angel is infiltrating the bad guys b/c he's decided the apocalypse isn't winnable and just wants to take as many of them out as he can" thing, and Fred being replaced by Illyria (sp? who knows) has gone on for the last few, but other than that it wasn't really the end of an arc the way Buffy/Angel finales usually were.

Reunite the spinned and spinned-off! New Connor-Faith show now!

I'd have to say most recently the thing that bugs me more than the frog is the WB's use of the term "fresh" to replace "all new" when describing episodes.

"A fresh Gilmore Girls starts now."

Argh...

I'm all in favor of Faith being in one of the TV movies, and if she has time for Wrong Turn, she certainly has time for it. I'm skeptical of the TV movie thing in general, though -- has it ever gone well? I've only just recently watched Babylon 5 (all but the last season), but I can't imagine those TV movies were much good.

It's probably vaporware anyway. It's fine for the writers and directors to "plan" to do TV movies, and for the network representatives to support the idea, but there are no contracts, and any minute they'll turn around and realize half their cast has committed to other projects and the other half is Harmony and Andrew.

I think the tv movie idea was just thrown out there by the WB to placate Angel fans -- from everything I've heard it's probably not going to happen.

The Tons And Tons Of Slayers was an odd story choice to make, I thought, but if they do any kind of TV movie thing I'd definitely like to see a new Watcher's Council, or whatever they establish to deal with that. It seemed odd how little evidence of a changed world we saw on Angel, but I had started to think of the two shows as only sort of coexisting.

It would really focus more on the Watchers Council, the slayers are kind of played out at this point. Plus, Anthony Stewart Head and D.B. Woodside are much better actors than SMG. I thought even the little bit Wesley had last night about his training in the Watcher's Council was interesting -- there's so many things in Buffy about the mythology of the slayer but there really is not that much that's known about the watchers.

I get the feeling that S7 wouldn't have been as bad as it was if it had better writers, and wasn't so focused on Buffy speechifying and the distractions of introducing all of these new slayers as if they were characters we were supposed to care about.

My worry here is that essentially, in the Whedonverse the more things are explored, focused on, and explained, the closer they come to sucking.

On the third hand, if Whedon wrote the Lucasverse as a TV show, you'd have an episode with a throwaway bit of fluff involving a droid using the Force, and then a big season-ending arc that would depend on some quasi-mystical definition of "life" or "the soul," according to which definition droids would never be able to be Jedis, use the Force, etc., which would lead to eternal reams of fanfic explaining why XG-71 was such a badass Jedi robot guy and got to fuck Padme.

Plus, Li'l Anakin would get bitten by an Ewok and become a were-Ewok, the Jedi Council would send in representatives to try to bring this disobedient Luke Skywalker dude to heel, some guy in a big rubber suit named "Sith" would show up and have to get the crap kicked out of him, and Leia would have better hair.

the nerds (or warren at least) were one of the 2 or 3 best buffy villains ever! (other two: the mayor and evil willow) i agree that adam was the worst (but my personal reading of that season is that riley was the real villain anyway heh).

the only buffy/angel spinoff i want to see: the buffy cartoon!!

giles would be played by dennis from eastenders. the soundtrack would feature king crimson, gandalf, and all the prog bands phil collins played in pre-genesis. ideally rupert murdoch would finance it and go bankrupt.

With Giles turned into a weird-looking wizard bird when the gang goes to investigate an amusement park built in the ruins of Sunnydale and gets sucked into HELLATOPIAPALOOZAVILLE! There can be songs and slaying and rainbows! I'm so there.

I watched the second last episode, rapidly cracked and BitTorrented the finale. Why on earth did they do the abysmal comedy-trip-to-Italy episode in third last spot then introduce the entire end of show melodrama in the last two episodes?

I like that they had the guts to do a bleak ending. I felt sympathetic towards Eve and Lindsay. I think I'd have preferred Lindsay as a cool maverick amoral trickster-god guy who fucks with shit without being full-on evil, like J Depp in Once Upon A Time In Mexico; it seemed a bit incongruous that he was a proper Enemy this series given the ambiguous way he first left (also why no Lilah, she wasn't properly dead last time I saw).

Connor was good. The episode where he got his memory back was one of my favourites from this series. I quite Drogyn as well, it's a shame he couldn't have had more to do. It was pretty warped seeing him wax philosophical about Crash Bandicoot with Illyria then minutes later getting martyred to the Greater Good all bloody pulped with his hair torn out, being blithely eaten by Angel.

Presumably the universe isn't doomed by the army of slavering dragons and demons triggered by the last battle, but it seems a pretty funny way to do a surgical strike on four beaten up dudes who messed with your law firm.

Most heart rending part of whole thing = how good D Boreanaz's cheekbones were five years ago in the ending montage

Buffy would have been better just cutting off with the S6 finale - Xander and Willow crying, everyone in disarray.

But I'm looking forward to watching it all over again.

x-post

Wesley was the best character on any show ever.

Man, remembering all the characters that died in both shows is actually making me sad in a good way. BTW, I've always thought Xander's reaction to Anya's death to be strangely subdued in his instant acceptance of it.

hm, honestly Season 1 has Doyle, who is a cool character... also, the Wesley character arc is pretty much worth the whole series, as far as I'm concerned. Faith also makes a presence (it was after her and Buffy switched bodies and back), but I was a huge Faith fan. Ooooh, and "I Will Remember You" was a pretty kick-ass episode also, unless you hate the whole Angel-Buffy thing.

I say if you're gonna do it, do it right.

My favourite bit of S1 is where Angel and Wesley do a dance over the end credits. I think Angel might be wearing a fair aisle jumper!

xpost - I haveonly just got up to Conor, but I think he is probably DUD.

FAIR ISLE.

"Begorrah Darla didn't I go and suck his blud to be sure leprechaun holy mary rot in hell OI'M OIVUL YAR KNAR".

My typing went a bit Geordie there, sorry.

This should have been the title of EVERY flashback episode with pre-vampiric Angel in it.

(That's another thing, slocki, as far as setup goes: the show mildly reinvents itself and its principals as it goes, by flashing back to way before the Buffy era and telling us Untold Tales Of The Vampires. For better or worse, the show really never stopped setting itself up.)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/61/224024533_6203a356aa.jpg

Ha ha Sarah otm.

The thing that struck me about season one of Torchwood is how badly it wanted be Angel and just flubbed it every step of the way. Maybe they need a Lila. I think she may be one of my favorite characters ever.

Here - you no longer have to watch "She": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GstpsPxX4A

(This thread seems like as lame a place as any to point out that I was watching a bit of Buffy season 7 a few weeks ago, during the whole "Spike's crazy in the basement" period, and one of his random ravings is "you're all glowing ... what's a word that means glowing? It has to rhyme" -- where the word he's looking for is the EFFULGENT from his much-referenced poem.)

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with_kristin/b106789_angel_star_andy_hallett_dies_of_heart.html

Bummer...

R.I.P.

aw, he was funny on angel. : (

can i just start on season 2 or

Yeah, it's not like you'll be confused by the set-up. You'll already know 3 of the 4 people in the opening credits from Buffy, and I think the 4th is introduced to the others in that very episode. And I think season 2 is a lot better than season 1.

Looking at the episode list (some spoilers of course) it's true the vast majority of the first season is unnecessary - particularly the stuff with Kate and Doyle - but the last few episodes might be worth tracking down since there's the Faith episode and the introduction of Gunn. The pilot is also worth watching. Fortunately the entire first season is up on Hulu.

unfortunately hulu isn't available in canada :(

All the Whedon shows just went up on Netflix instant streaming, so I figured I'd watch some episodes I never got around to watching in syndication. Damn that early Angel - a sensitivity training demon?!?