Angel - The Series

I'd recommend Seasons 2 and 3 of Angel; the others are, for the most part, not very good.

I find I like the plot arcs and most of the episodes in Buffy better, but I love the character interactions in Angel. I'll skip the bulk of an episode's plot to just watch the bits where the main characters are interacting and hanging out with each other.

edited 29th May '18 5:43:10 PM by Galadriel

I'm currently watching Angel for the first time and I'm on Season 2. It's pretty great for the most part. However, I thought Season 1 was pretty good as well. The best episodes were "City Of", "I Will Remember You", "Five by Five", and "Sanctuary", all of which were pretty fantastic if you ask me.

Also, I heard from many fans that Season 5 of Angel was the best season.

The back half of season 5 is fantastic, but I think all the different threads coming together (and pulling apart) over the course of Season 3 makes it the series' finest.

Lindsey's exit from the show (both times) is probably my favourite, though, as far as the series as a long meditation on the nature of good and evil is concerned. I don't really like much about his initial return in Season 5, but I really love that final Heel–Face Door-Slam and the sputtering, incredulous Villainous Breakdown that goes with it.

edited 30th May '18 2:47:46 PM by Unsung

Angel and Spike have an argument over who would win in a fight: Astronauts or cavemen. It's automatically the best season.

And, I mean, Smile Time. You do make a convincing case.

Season One definitely has its charm, as it's a lot more rooted in the Film Noir side of the Occult Detective and as such feels a lot more different than the Urban Fantasy it became in season two. Angel Investigations as an actual part of the show mostly faded away after the second season. Season Five in some ways returns to that style as it becomes more about the individual cases they work on. Season Four was just such a mess with characterizations and random events, which in retrospect sullies Season Three because it set most of that up.

In retrospect I feel the strongest part of the show was season two up until Pylea, as it takes all the characters through a really interesting arc. The Pylea arc is fun in a Hercules: The Legendary Journeys / Xena: Warrior Princess sort of way, but not especially compelling stuff.

Season 5 was my personal favorite because of the very interesting and unique dynamic it introduces. There's nothing really new about a show having an Evil League of Evil in it, an organization based around evil that exists to advance evil agendas. Wolfram and Hart does a great job of it and has a clever twist of being a literally evil law firm, but it's well-tread ground nonetheless.

But never before or since have I seen a story go, "And then the heroes owned the place." Lex Luthor hands over the keys to the Legion of Doom to Superman. Luke Skywalker unseats the Emperor, takes a seat on his throne, and starts weighing his options as to what the Empire could be made to do in better hands. Gandalf puts on the One Ring of Power and tries not to be a dick about it.

It's a fascinating exploration of the temptation that comes with that kind of power, which the heroes of our stories usually just know better than to accept in the first place. We get to see the cast trying to wield their power for good purposes but also having to accept compromises they never would have let slide before for the sake of perpetuating and preserving that power.

It's easy to go, "Well, if I had the power, I'd just do good things with it and everything would be objectively better off." But, like, if you give all your money to charity in a big lump sum, you won't have any money left to give or the means to make more. You have to start making compromises to keep that cash flowing. All while you also find yourself falling in love with unnecessary luxuries like Angel's many cars and necro-tinted windows. And at some point, the compromises and luxuries begin to define you, and the charity well dries up.

It's hard to be a good person when you are a cog in a toxic machine. It's too easy to see yourself as the good part of the machine. To justify. To delude. But to everyone else, you're just another murderer spending your blood money on a new Porsche.

"I Will Remember You", "Five by Five" and "Sanctuary" are all excellent (and are also, notable, the episodes where Season 1 crosses over with Buffy). The latter two, in particular, are some of the best episodes of the whole show.

But most of Season 1 is comparatively weak.

I love Sanctuary. Sanctuary is, in my opinion, the point where the show grows its beard. Throughout season one, we get to see Angel grow into a much stronger character now that he's away from his role as "Buffy's love interest".

Sanctuary is where that comes to a head, as the episode pits not only Buffy and Angel against each other, but the very themes of their shows. Buffy wants to Kill The Bad Guy, Angel wants to Save The Broken Soul, and since they're talking about the same person, conflict rapidly becomes unavoidable.

This episode is a defining moment for both Angel the person and Angel the series. The moment where he steps out of Buffy and her show's shadow and establishes himself as a distinctly separate force for good.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. However, I will say "Five by Five" has my favorite Faith sequence ever (at least for now until I finish both shows). Like seriously, I had mixed feelings on Faith when she was in Buffy Season 3. I thought she was just a little inconsistent and her descent into darkness was far too quick. But then I saw this scene in the nightclub and I just FELL IN LOVE.

If this was Faith's character introduction, it would be a perfect one.

edited 31st May '18 12:32:02 PM by deuteragonist

I don't buy the claims that Buffy is really set on killing Faith in "Sanctuary". When she first shows up she thinks she has no other choice, as Faith is violent and dangerous and there's no prison that could hold her against her will; and a major reason for Buffy coming to LA is concern for Angel's safety. But when Angel asks her to protect Faith she does so.

Also, her suspicion of Faith is legitimate since Faith tried the conflicted-pentinent act to seduce Angel once before.

Okay, so I'm currently in the first half of season 3 and I'm starting to feel very strongly about two characters. First, Fred. Oh my God, I love her so much. She deserves all of the best things in the world.

But on a more serious note, Gunn. Gunn is a decent character, but I really hate his writing. He's such a token character; always saying things like "DAMN" and "Oh, that's tight" and "Yooo!" Just, ugh. What the hell, Joss Whedon (and David Greenwalt)? I mean, he does have a level of complexity that prevents me from hating him, but what the hell kind of line is "I haven't watched a movie Denzel Washington lost the Oscar after he played Malcolm X?"

Like...w-what? This is doesn't ruin the show for me, but it's really distracting. This doesn't get any better, does it?

Kendra on Buffy really should have been the first clue just how much Whedon messes up when it comes to race.

Whedon is good in a few areas, par for course in others, and stuck in the 1950's for a few topics-you just found one of them. Expect to hear a lot of 'brother' and 'yo' moving forward. Fortunately, Richards is good enough to make Gunn likable in spite of the writing, and there really are not many non-white people for Whedon to turn into walking stereotypes after the first few episodes of season 3.

I don't know if S5 Gunn is better or worse. He's just... yeah. Actual spoilers: He undergoes some "enhancement" to basically funnel all legal knowledge into his head because he's sick of being Dumb Muscle, especially since he's not actually dumb. He explicitly has the intellect, but just doesn't have the education. It really really could be an interesting way to point out how shitty schools hold back intelligent people but it honestly feels more like "oh shit, we need a way to keep this main character relevant".

Fred's just... great. I loved her parents showing up and the plot twist is that they're actually wonderful human beings and care about her. Because in a Whedon show, a happy, whole family is the true twist.

Have you gotten to "Billy" yet? That episode was... yeah.

God, I really do love this show. I'm looking at the S3 episodes and there's so many great ones. Skip's pretty fantastic, too.

edited 11th Jun '18 12:19:16 PM by Larkmarn

I have watched Billy and...yeah that was one of the most uncomfortable episodes of television I've ever seen. However, it did make me love Fred, Cordelia, and Wesley more. Wesley for different reasons of course because of his remorse for what he does to Fred. However, it does kind of foreshadow his descent into darkness, which I haven't gotten to yet but have heard so much about.

Speaking of which, the scene between Angel and Wesley at the end of Forgiving was spoiled to me ahead of time and I'm kind of mad about it. But it's still a great scene nonetheless.

... such a great scene. Between Wes, Cordy, and to a lesser extent Angel, it's damn impressive how good the show is at rescuing Scrappies from the heap.

I have to say Billy is a great episode.

They could have gone for a big supernatural evil but, instead, decided to go as misogyny as the ultimate evil.

Okay, I just re-watched "I Fall To Pieces" the season 1 episode about a supernaturally-empowered stalker and I remembered what bugged me about this episode when I first saw it.

When I first watched this episode I at first thought the idea was that the villain was stalking the woman by being able to see through her eyes because of something he did to her while giving her an eye operation. Then the episode revealed that it was because he had his eye in her apartment.

Okay.

How did she not notice this?

Seriously, a floating human eyeball is not something a person with functioning eyesight will miss. It's too obvious and jarring to not notice. I can see her missing this once or twice but sooner or later she'd have to see it. And this has been going on for seven months! How did his eye hovering around in her apartment escape her attention?

It's small and can hide easily. If it can also move quickly, it'd actually be really easy for her not to notice. Human senses are notoriously unreliable in many regards. All it has to do is avoid being in direct line of sight unconcealed.

Basically, it just needs to behave like a prey animal whenever she catches it in her peripheral vision. If she turns to look, dart away and stay out of sight. As long as her eyes don't have a second or two of focused vision to linger on what it is, her brain will lie to her and tell her it was a fly or a shadow or something.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 18th 2018 at 9:17:49 AM

Boom Studios is making an Angel comic.

Something that I realized is that as humans, Angel and Spike play the stereotypes of Irish and British people straight but this is inverted with their vampire selves.

As a human, Spike was a sensitive poet. As a vampire, he's a violent brute.

As a human, loved fighting and drinking. As a vampire, he's more sensitive and as Angelus is portrayed as cultured and intelligent compared to Spike.

Well, this is the Buffyverse we're talking about. Stereotyping was pretty prevalent in both shows, even if a lot of them are inverted.

An article dedicated to Andy Hallet and Lorne.

Whedon seems to have an interest in exploring the ways that trauma can alter people and the question of how to reclaim the person you once were. Firefly and Serenity had River's journey back to something resembling her former self, the back half of BTVS had Buffy trying to rebuild her life after being ripped out of Heaven, Astonishing X-Men saw Scott redefining himself after temporarily losing his powers, and then, of course, there's Dollhouse, with Echo slowly remembering bits and pieces of each of her imprints. I wonder if the contrast between Angel and Spike's pre- and post-vampire personalities was part of that.

Edited by StrixObscuro on Mar 29th 2021 at 1:23:56 PM