Tag: angel

Oh, it’s a sad, sad day. It’s now official: I’ve seen every episode of every Joss Whedon show. I suppose it’s a happy day, really — it’s been a very satisfying journey since the day I saw Serenity (October 1, 2005, as it happens.) Still, I can’t help feeling a little grief at the fact that I’ll never watch another new episode of Buffy or Angel.

Well, at least I had a good sendoff. I was quite pleased with this season of Angel. Like season 7 of Buffy, the show found its feet again after a dreary and depressing previous season. It was both funny and thrilling, with a solid premise that was low on the endless angst and high on the superheroics of old. Not only that, it had a lovely elegiac quality, bringing back moments and characters from previous seasons like some kind of victory lap, or maybe a greatest hits album.

*** Spoilers after this point for all seasons of Angel, and lots of Buffy as well. ***

Season three of Angel had a great arc, and a cliffhanger ending. Season four resolved the cliffhanger well enough and managed a couple of strong episodes, only to descend into a disappointing spiral, full of bewildering choices, shredded continuity, and the same kind of personal disintegration that characterized season 6 of Buffy. As a whole, these episodes had less humor and fewer highs than ever before. The show recovered some ground for the final third of its season, luckily, and wound up in a head-scratcher of an ending that certainly piques my interest in the beginning of season 5.

*** Turgid, supernatural spoilers below ***

Amid the depressing degeneration that characterized season 6 of Buffy, it was a pleasure to watch season 3 of Angel. It didn’t grip me the way that some previous seasons of Buffy have, but it was solid, enjoyable television, with lots of good surprises and dramatic twisty turns. Strangely, though, it wasn’t the main plot that I found most compelling, but rather the thematic unity that draws together some of the season’s most important events aside from the main plot.

*** Spoilers below for season 3 of Angel ***

This season of Angel is all over the road, veering from the very very dark into the very very kooky, sometimes quite abruptly. It’s also pretty inconsistent in terms of structure, starting with a long arc and ending with a short one, and stringing a few individual pearls between the two. Still, I found a lot to enjoy at both ends of the spectrum.

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Buffy started out as a horror riff with elements of superhero drama thrown in, but it seems to me that Angel announces itself as a superhero drama with a horror theme. Since I’m a big fan of superheroics, this sits quite well with me. Also, Angel himself is much more tolerable when he’s not a supporting player in Buffy’s life. For one thing, he actually breaks a smile every so often. He’s still often annoyingly mopey (“Broody McForehead”, I’m told they call him over at Television Without Pity, and that’s about right), but Cordelia does a nice job of lightening the tone. The metaphorical underpinnings of the show don’t really hold up to those in Buffy, since “city life” is a much broader target than “high school/college”, but I still enjoyed it.

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