Angel (the Buffy spinoff)
 

So I made it to Angel now, having re-finished Buffy seasons 1-3 (and I see old threads in General but none that I could resurrect). Just finished the pilot episode... eh. Not really good. I'm just not seeing the same level of energy from Buffy or the punchy dialogue. Kind of blah. I dunno if I've ever seen this episode before, or possibly any of early Angel stuff. Alternately, maybe I did see it and it didn't leave any impression at all on me. I'm just not seeing the "fun" here. Yet. Around 99, though, probably the push was to make Angel more adult and maybe even like "Highlander," the TV show that was ending at that point.

The first season of Angel is not that great when starting out, but they do eventually retool and it gets much better

Good. Even some of the more fillery episodes of Buffy I'm re-encountering, I'm laughing at random punchy or clever dialogue. This seems to be immediately taking itself dead seriously which I think is a mistake.

The dynamic between Angel, Cordelia and Doyle is pretty good and later Wesley. The eps themselves are mostly episodic in the first season, Angel is basically treated like a detective or police guy looking for crime before they realized what they wanted to do with the series.

Like its sister series it has its very silly moments like the puppet episode, and some forgettable characters, but overall it was or is, very good

So far it's gotten a bit better. The one where Oz showed up, bringing Angel the invincibility ring from Buffy was pretty solid. The one with the "burrower" that burrows from one body into the next until the flesh starts to decay was pretty good, too. "Cordelia's new apartment is haunted by a ghost" was even fairly clever. Starting to hit a patch of really slog ones, though... like, pure back-to-back boring police procedural type stuff.

Once Wesley comes back the show improved a ton. Wesley has the best character development in the entire franchise. Starting off as a throwaway comic relief side character to a badass main character over the course of a few seasons is great, and it's so gradual you don't even notice as you're watching until you stop to think about how much he changed.

Hit a few more gems. The back-and-forth crossover with Angel and Buffy and then back to Angel was pretty good. Where Angel gets his blood mixed with demon blood, which turns him completely human and uncursed. Obviously it had to end with him as a vampire again, but he gets this fantastic opportunity and he gives it up voluntarily just so he can... better protect Buffy? Even though he wasn't even doing that beforehand, with her in Sunnydale and him hiding away from her in L.A.? It doesn't make any sense. He might as well just remain human and stay with her, and call in favors with his buddies to keep an eye on her/them.

If you say so... we'll see. I didn't care for Wesley too much in his earlier Buffy appearances. But I'm almost there... the next episode is "Hero" where I know Doyle dies. So Wesley should show up right after that.

Angel gets a lot better once it gets out of the monster of the week format and gets arching storylines. I mean there will still be monster of the week stuff but storylines get to Big Bad type eventually.

Buffy is still better to me than Angel but I still enjoyed it for the most part.I didn't really like how Season 4 went....if I were to rank the 5 Seasons in order of my favorite to least favorite, Season 4 would be last.

I keep seeing that. "Angel season 4... TRASH!" and so on. What's the matter with it? It's even worse than, like, the filler police crap episodes of season 1?

Most shows are like that. It's why we are now in the Second Golden Age of TV (or were) - the rise of Blu Ray, streaming and on-demand TV means people can binge or watch at their leisure, so more serialised storytelling can take place. Even better can be miniseries or anthology shows (individual episodes or seasons).

The one show most people say is better in procedural is the X-Files. But as of yet I haven't seen enough of it to say.

For me (and I would assume most people) an ongoing storyline is simply much more interesting than disconnected episodes.

Are they going to drop the "Cordelia (formerly Doyle) had a vision -- quick, let's go investigate!" stuff eventually? Because it's a pretty lame device.

I'd have loved to see Dracula and Angel interact

Just finished off season 1 of Angel. I think I'm getting hints of how it's going to turn out, now with Gunner joining the team.

They definitely could have done bigger things with Dracula. They finally get him over on Buffy, and it's just a one episode thing? Should have been a half season thing, at least, WITH an Angel crossover.

well they did do more with Dracula in the sequel comics but yeah, kinda wasted potential

I know I'm in the minority, but the 4th season has always been my favorite season of Angel.

I thought that was my favourite season as well, I liked the character The Beast.

Kind of hitting a slog in season 2. The resurrected Darla stuff was OK and Drusilla showing up has perked my interest up slightly but this is kinda boring...

I've always been under the assumption that the second season was pretty much unanimously considered to be the best one.

Ugh, don't tell me that... it's going to make it harder to continue.

Made it to season 3. The season finale of 2 with Cordelia becoming a princess in the other dimension was dumb. And now this Fred/Amy Acker... not good!

Fred is one of the most popular new characters of the show, lol.

But... why?

I assume you haven't seen the rest of the show yet, she develops nicely over Seasons 3-5. They basically do the same thing for her they did for Gunn, introduce a new character in the last few eps of the previous season, then they become a major character and part of the group for the rest of the show. She does become "normal" as the show goes on, remember she got stuck in a random dimension as a slave for a few years.

She just seems unnecessary. The show has a big enough cast as it is... suddenly it's make room for random neurotic white chick to become normal, over in the corner?

And Gunn barely works for me, and only at times. He seems miscast, and you can tell the kind of dialogue they're giving him is not the way he would talk in real life.

Joss Whedon knows nothing about black people. Fred is great as the show goes on. She's basically a better handled version of Tara from Buffy.

Fred was kind of a boring character at first. But her character really becomes a lot more interesting in seasons four and five.

Oh, and I definitely found season three to easily be the most boring of the shows five seasons.

It's not like black people like Gunn don't exist. It's just you can tell that actor is "Acting" like that's how he is, all thug and such. And it isn't very convincing. It's like Urkel playing 50 Cent or something.

Just made it to the stuff with Darla giving birth to her baby with Angel. That was pretty moving, particularly her sacrifice there. I think they're slowly finding a better balance with over-arching stories and how much Wolfram & Hart they really need (or DON'T) throughout.

Not sure I'm 100% on board with the "vampire hunter" guy who was frozen for 200 years to get revenge on Angel. Maybe they needed to cast a more imposing dude for the part.