Buffy/Angel (1997-2004)

Begun my run with the Buffyverse last month and wrote of my thoughts on it on MI6. Now that's all gone. UGH. The condensed version:

Season 1: Shaky but does its job establishing itself.

Season 2: MAJOR improvement. Takes everything set up in the first season and delivers. I was really drawn in with this season.

So I didn't write much on Season 3 because I just began watching it right before MI6 got nuked. So here are my thoughts on it...

I still didn't like Angel being brought back from hell. It started off interesting with him having endured thousands of years in the lake of fire, setting up an interesting dynamic where Angel went through so much while Buffy only went through summer (dimensional time difference stuff). But within two episodes he's the same old Angel as if nothing happened. Did not like. And throughout the whole season I thought it was a waste trying to repeat the whole Buffy/Angel relationship stuff. Even if they still brought him back I would have preferred something very different with what they did here.

I didn't find the whole arc with Faith to be that engaging. That's just how I felt. Apparently she'll make appearances on ANGEL. Whatever.

The Mayor was a hoot. So evil yet so UPBEAT. I like little touches such as him opening a cabinet full of black magic stuff and all he really came for was a fluffy tissue. I was a bit surprised by the lack of Spike appearances. I thought he would become a staple after season 2 but I guess he doesn't really until later in 4. So I'll see how that goes.

Overall very solid season.

So I also just finished BUFFY's Season 4 premiere and the series premiere of ANGEL. I didn't expect little crossover moments such as that mysterious phone call being revealed in the latter's premiere. Whedon must have had a lot of fun with having these two shows back to back. I'm definitely going to have to watch them in air order.

So thoughts on the BUFFY premiere: Basically the characters starting college. I thought those college Vampire kids were gonna be the main antagonists for a moment, which would have been terrible. Thankfully Buffy kills them all. I'm trying to watch this show spoiler free so I have no clue who the next "big bad" will be. I don't recall any hints of such during the end of 3. Oh yeah, I like that the episode begun with a vampire approaching Buffy and Willow but then he notices the piles of stakes and crosses nearby and then immediately changes his mind "screw it" and walks away. Smart move there buddy.

Now on the premiere of ANGEL.



I wasn't sure how I'd react to this. After seeing it... I think it's okay. Not bad. I think there's some potential and I'll follow it. Is Cordelia ever going to grow beyond a two dimensional character? I do like how she immediately spots that the dude is a vampire. And I like the moment Angel thrusts the vampire out of his chair to a skyscraper window and we see the beast falling terrified while burning from the sun. That was a neat effect. And you know what, I like Angel a lot more here than he was on BUFFY. He became too much of that brooding mopey boyfriend stereotype at times on that show. He still kind of brooding and mopey, but he's less passive. He'll have to be less of that if you wanna follow him as a lead of a TV show. So yeah, I'm gonna follow this show for sure.

I never had a viewing pattern when watching Buffy seasons 1-3. One night I might watch just one, or two, or three. Sometimes a few nights in a row, sometimes every other week or sometimes not watching anything for a couple of days before jumping back on. So with the two shows being back to back I'm gonna be watching each episode of the two every night.

Never really got into Buffyverse. I don't know why, I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon and I do appreciate that it does share Firefly's trait of witty and smart dialogue. I think the Space Opera setting of Firefly was just more to my tastes that the - initial - HS setting of Buffy.

I've not seen any of the TV series though once slept through the movie.

Salomé wrote:

Never really got into Buffyverse. I don't know why, I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon and I do appreciate that it does share Firefly's trait of witty and smart dialogue. I think the Space Opera setting of Firefly was just more to my tastes that the - initial - HS setting of Buffy.

That's where I stand. I would love to have gotten more of Firefly. Having watched Buffy I can tell that when he went in with Firefly he took all the experiences he had with Buffy and pretty much had a better handle with how to start a show, knowing how to do it more properly. Firefly immediately hits its stride very early that I wonder how the show might have grown from that had FOX not canceled it.

Still I enjoy Buffy. His writing is what really kept the show ahead of all the other programs that were airing on The WB network.

The best scene in Angel, ever.

That scene is amazing. But wait til you get to the last series. All I'll say is - puppet.....

I preferred Angel to Buffy. There were times when the Buffy story arc became tedious (yes, I'm thinking Initiative). The final series of Buffy was a bit much. Spike became absolutely fantastic, and the best reason for watching either series. The Connor story arc became tedious. I thought Jasmine was a bit of a disappointment. Cordelia was wasted unnecessarily really. TPTB sort of sidelined.

The whole premise of Vampire With Soul being somehow more than normal Vampire Without got very tedious. I thought it a rather weak plot point, especially when Vampires Without Souls were being just as heroic, just as brave - and just as good, if not better - than Vampire With Soul.

But then, I take my vampires quite seriously. ;)

Currently in the middle of Season 5

Spoiler:

Well so far this season I think is much better than season 4, which I thought turned out weak with the whole cybernetic Frankenstein thing. Riley was kind of bland and by 5 he seemed pretty much redundant though the way they wrote him off the show as some insecure t*** I rolled my eyes over. At least he's out.

As for Spike's inclusion to the cast. I think he's always a hoot in every scene. His first dream of Buffy shocked me and had me laughing. That was great. So this is how he somehow becomes good? Well, I can kinda buy it with him trying to win over Buffy... Not sure. Still, it's a hilarious development. Marsters just sells it.

As for Angel's Season 2 I'm kinda mixed. In many ways it's really great while in others it's... not so great. I'm already tired of Wolfram & Hart, I find Lindsay McDonald to be a really boring antagonist.

Ranking of the seasons...

Buffy 2
Buffy 5
Angel 1
Buffy 3
Angel 2
Buffy 1
Buffy 4

If 5 remains consistently good it might edge 2 for me.

BUMP.

I assume you might give this a shot? I know you're not into the fantasy genre.

I've taken a break from ANGEL. I'll likely finish it soon, as I'm pretty anxious to get to S5 as I hear nothing but great things about it.

Makeshift Python wrote:

The best scene in Angel, ever.

Just watched it. This still makes me lol.

Angel > Edward, or whoever the fuck Pattinson plays.

I watched the first episode of BUFFY.

Well. I'll keep watching, but I wasn't overly impressed by the pilot. Odd to see it was directed by Charles Martin Smith.

Anywho. The "witty" dialogue stinks, and it's delivered very, very, very badly by the cast.

Basically the show sets up an interesting premise, but not very clearly at all. Pity they couldn't have a 90 minute pilot to really establish things, because this is just sloppy.

So Seth Green doesn't come in until S2?

S1 in general is a very weak shakedown season. Kinda lays the groundwork but there's really nothing memorable about it and the Big Bad of the first season is very forgettable. So definitely yes, it's in S2 that it gets really good when characters like Spike are introduced and the show becomes more serial.

Like Sisko said, "just gonna have to rough it up for awhile".

Ravenstone wrote:

That scene is amazing. But wait til you get to the last series. All I'll say is - puppet.....

I preferred Angel to Buffy. There were times when the Buffy story arc became tedious (yes, I'm thinking Initiative). The final series of Buffy was a bit much. Spike became absolutely fantastic, and the best reason for watching either series. The Connor story arc became tedious. I thought Jasmine was a bit of a disappointment. Cordelia was wasted unnecessarily really. TPTB sort of sidelined.

The whole premise of Vampire With Soul being somehow more than normal Vampire Without got very tedious. I thought it a rather weak plot point, especially when Vampires Without Souls were being just as heroic, just as brave - and just as good, if not better - than Vampire With Soul.

But then, I take my vampires quite seriously. ;)

Its interesting what he did with Spike. Spike was introduced as a real bad, and later we learn that Angel was just as bad, if not worse, until he got his soul back. But somewhere along the line, Spike became a sympathetic character, so the only way to make him actually safe, and not a threat to eat everyone, was to give him his soul back too. But there was a period when Spike, even without soul, was becoming likeable which didn't jive with the whole vampire-bad thing. I think Whedon maybe pushed that envelope a little far. Even Darla who was always bad, wasn't quite so bad, once we got to know her. Otherwise the vampires were consistently despicable I thought, and in need of staking. I did find myself rooting for Angel and Darla but alas it was not meant to be. Leila was my second favourite Buffy/Angel babe - the Wolfram and Hart lawyer that you couldn't help but root for, even though she was technically bad.

Buffy Seasons 1-3, I think is the classic Buffy. Buffy 4-7 was good too, but like Angel, the series got a little edgier. The series just kinda grew up.

Great fun though. Someday I must run through the whole saga again from start to finish.

I read the Buffy Season 8 and Angel:After the Fall continuation comics for a bit but then got bored of them. It was interesting to see how the final battle in the alley played out. Gunn becomes a vamp. Angel and the dragon become pals and Los Angeles becomes a hell zone, although who would really notice the difference.8)

Meanwhile Buff commands her slayer army. Dawn turns into a giant. I didn't find the comics that easy to read, so I dropped them but I notice the Buffy Season-8 comic-volumes have been transferred to an animated-motion dvd-format, so that might be worth picking up at some point.

Watched the second episode. Sloppy and smarmy, but there is a cheese factor that I enjoy.

I won't hover around to start crowding this thread with negativity, but allow me this one interjection so I can get it on record and out of my system:

I despise BUFFY.

Whedon sucks. That is all.

I do approve of Charisma Carpenter.

I have tried to watch BUFFY several times, but the lead is just so incredibly unconvincing with the fights that I just can't get with it. They really SERIOUSLY needed to get Eliza Dushku or somebody more in that vein, who looked like she enjoyed fighting and could actually do a small fraction of it w/o stunt assistance. I saw the last half of the final ep and liked some of the big fight, but keep thinking I could probably get what I needed out of this show by watching funny dialog -- ACTUALLY funny, not tried-and-failed or tried-and-lame funny -- compilations.

ANGEL ... I have probably seen two-thirds of them by now, but all out of order, so I find it confusing but very entertaining. I've seen the last episode twice, and liked it a lot. Villains don't seem to be as impressive as they should, but if you can keep the principals entertaining, that offsets this problem a bit.

In terms of non-trek showrunners in genre work ... well, overall, I'm much more impressed with Whedon than with JMS, though if you'd asked me this before the final season of B5, I'd've tripped all over myself saying JMS absolutely ruled, even though he had written himself out by then.

Harmsway wrote:

I won't hover around to start crowding this thread with negativity, but allow me this one interjection so I can get it on record and out of my system:

I despise BUFFY.

Do you feel better now? :D

I can't say I'm a Whedon fan, even though I faithully followed the whole Buffy/Angel saga to conclusion along with both Firefly and Dollhouse. So I am obviously a fan of his work. It holds my attention. He tells good stories and creates interesting characters, however I don't his find broader vision to be very interesting. He doesn't really have much to say. He flirts with themes of good and evil but hits a wall. He can't develop these themes beyond his secular-humanist world view.
Compare with excellent shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost which are rife with Christian and other religious themes. These shows have a much broader thematic scope and thus are equipped to tackle weightier matters concerning the human predicament.
Now, none of these shows work unless the stories are well told, and in that respect Whedon IMO is A-list, so I'll happily watch his work but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. BSG and Lost on the other hand, if you can keep abreast of all the mythology, can be very thought provoking.

I didn't care for BSG becoming a religious drama, nor did I find anything it did on the subject beyond showing rival beliefs to be particularly interesting. It was a great surivalist drama based in a fairly real world. Then it dove head first into mystical prophecies like so many other shows on television. I still think that a big mistake for BSG. The conflict could have been handled in a more compelling way, I think, on existential terms, rather than "God is love" or whatever was going on. I'm not a fan of supernatural interference in fiction. I don't find it very interesting, and I think it hurt BSG because as the show went on it was all about that.

I think FIREFLY had the chance to show a really cool set up with the Alliance being a sorta paradise in terms of a standard of living, but with a very pronounced dark side. But it is better than living on some dusty rock maybe under the rule of local thugs and despots, right?

We don't need to open any doors, but religion isn't required for tackling weighty issues.

I think the Christian themes in BSG allowed the show to tackle the nature of the soul which Whedon couldn't do with his limited frame of reference in Buffy/Angel. And I can't think of weightier issues than the nature of the soul, or the root sources of both good and evil.
In BSG, the debate raged as to whether the cylons had souls or not, and if you are talking about souls, then you need to address their source, where they come from etc. Whedon couldn't tackle that, but BSG could by referencing Christian theology concerning the soul.
BSG also kicked around concepts of monotheism vs polytheism but ultimately the real quest for the cylons was to discover the nature and source of the soul and become human. The cylons were eventually concluded to have souls when they showed a capacity for love. The soul, it was understood, originated from a supernatural source or the "one true God", in the cylon parlance. It got to the point where the cylons were indistinguisable from humans and the show concluded with the notion that both ensouled humans-and-cylons populated the earth as we know it, interbred and that we, their descendants are descended from a human/cylon mix - the cylons having achieved a human status with immortal soul, but with the attendant physical mortality, once they had evolved to the point where they were worthy of souls as bequeathed by the "soul-giver" or "God". The show never attempted to resolve the matter of polytheism vs monotheism. It just kinda threw it out there, but I think it did kinda lean towards monotheism, with its portrayal of the evolution of the cylons to human status, and ultimately the pervasiveness of monotheism which has dominated western religious thinking. However it also rather smartly demonstrated how both theisms might have found their roots in human history, given the nature of the human/cylon conflicts on the matter, before the two "species" effectively merged. BSG also played with the notion of angels or possibly demons, or at the very least, a lower-than-God supernatural entity, which observed and even guided(angels), human development or interfered (demons) -its not really clear which, as these supernatural entities were somewhat ambiguous in their designs.
I thought the religious themes made the show that much smarter and gave the writers that much more latitude to explore what hits at the heart of the "human predicament" - ie the root source and mystery of our dual nature - our capacity for both good and evil.
Lost of course ups the ante considerably and liberally laces its survival/adventure narrative with religious themes of good/evil and redemption.
I like the work of Whedon, BSG and the Lost creators. All three crafted well conceived storylines and interesting characters, but the Lost and BSG creators left me more to ponder.
Lost, especially inspires one to delve further and brush up on both philosophy and theology.

Bottom line though, is that these shows have to be well-crafted entertaining television, first and foremost, but it they can intelligently work with religious themes as well, I find the whole presentation that much more engaging.

An interesting reading. You and I have different viewpoints as to belief in souls etc., but what you said was interesting. I'm more interested in existential handlings of these topics, though I'm open to seeing others as well. I just didn't care for it cropping up in BSG. I wanted to see a union of humans and Cylons, but through natural compassion and empathy. I find it more dramatically interesting first and foremost.

But I was also annoyed at how everything seemed to be guided. I want to see drama where things happen because of the actions that characters take, not from being guided. That reminds me, I said to someone that I don't believe things happen for a reason, but that things happen for reasons. But really, it's about what I find compelling in a dramatic sense.

I wanted to see what they'd cook up for Starbuck's situation. I was not at all happy with the "God did it" answer. As in life "God did it" doesn't cut it for me.

The Starbuck thing didn't make much sense. She was robbed of her free-will. God did it, doesn't cut it as excuse for anything. We humans make our own beds.
BSG basically cherry picked some Christian themes to help drive their story along, but ignored the Christian doctrine of free-will, at least when it came to Starbuck. The BSG theme of pre-destination I thought was rather contrived, but that's what they wanted to do. Create a mythos which essentially says that human history is an endless loop, so that was at least somewhat interesting.
Still I do find it fascinating that I might be a descendant of Adama or even better, Trish Helfer's #6. Not crazy about being a descendant of Gaius Baltar though.
The BSG mythology is also, as interesting an explanation as any, for the origin of man. Its not even inconsistent with the Bible really. The Bible doesn't attempt to explain how man, after the Fall, came to populate the earth. Just that we do, and here's how we get back to the Eden.
"Adama" could very well be the post-Eden Adam. The fallen Adam. It's not a coincidence, I don't think, that he was given that name.
Very profound show which also featured some of the most prodigious drinking ever seen on TV.
Bill and Saul I think were the two most accomplished boozers in human/cylon history.
As this is a Buffy thread, (a great show in its own right), for me the Buffy verse, just didn't pack the same gravitas as BSG. The over-riding Buffy/Angel mythology was basically incomprehensible and Buffy didn't have any characters like Saul and Bill. I could listen to those guys yammer at each other for hours. Damn they were funny.