The Eternal Angelriffic Thread (Merged) (1 Viewer)

[Chris]

So far, I'm not buying it. And while I may have missed it (I kind of devour series, it took me 3 weeks to go through all of Buffy, in ~3 weeks I should finish all of Angel) the whole "vampire with a soul saves enough people becomes human" prophecy is lost on me.. this season is the first I remember hearing anything about it.. and Spike's inference of what he did in Sunnydale kind of fits.

The problem with adding Spike the way they did infers the acceptance of the conclusion of Buffy. Which is fine, but as I complained in the Buffy thread, it implied every girl would be a slayer now. So, why isn't Fred a Slayer, etc. with Slayer powers? That was one of my one many complaints at the end of Buffy.. because I thought that bit was pretty ridiculous. Too many Alexanders in the world, so to speak.. maybe a Ghengis here and there..

 

[Scott-S]

Well it wasn't that all women become slayers. It was just all the potentials became slayers. Fred wasn't a potential.

I just wish that they didn't put Spike's picture on the DVD set for season 5 of Angel. That sort of ruined the suprise for me.

 

[KeithAP]

I just finished watching Angel for the first time and I have a question. While I enjoyed the series quite a bit, I absolutely hated the character Conner. Does anyone else feel this way? He just seemed to be a whiny pain in the butt and I never felt any sympathy towards him.

In fact, there were times I almost didn't finish the series on DVD because I was getting so sick of him.

Although I will say that with his attitude change, his appearances in season 5 worked well for me.

Just wondering what others thought about Conner.

Also, a bit off topic, I saw where Joss Whedon and Anthony Stewart Head are apparently doing a prequel based on Giles experiences before Buffy. This news came out of Comic-Con.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Ah! I was watching Mad Men, and one of the smarmy guys was someone that looked familiar, but I couldn't quite come up with his name. He played Connor!!! His name is Vincent Kartheiser. Hated Connor in the beginning as well. His character was almost like the shoehorning of Dawn into the BtVS show.

 

[DAN NEIR]

Hated Connor about as much as I hated Dawn, difference is that I like how they ended things with Connor where as I've always felt Dawn was always the Scrappy Doo of the Scooby Gang. Her inclusion in the show I felt forever changed the show in a bad way. Connor's last 2 appearances I felt were really good.
Overall I cared more in the end about Angel and his crew than I did Buffy and her gang.

 

[Chris]

See, I thought Dawn was a pretty crafty plot convenience of long term writing in Season 5. A character who was not a character.

Now, that's where it becomes a hitch. It would have made a lot of sense, once it was known, for her character to "poof" at the end of the season, after all, she was never "real"... or as I said in the Buffy thread, since she was "made" of Buffy by the monks, for her to replace her after Buffy's epic close at the end of Season 5.

But her character in Season 6 and Season 7, save one episode in Season 7, was really difficult to deal with because it lost it's forward movement.

The character of Conner in Angel (so far, I'm episode 9 of Season 5) was fairly effective in his plot line, but a bit over the top at times, far more so then Dawn in Season 5.

But they apparently learned something from Buffy.. Conner was a good one-season plot device. After it served it's purpose, pretty well out of mind, basically (so far for me, if he re-appears, even passingly, it's OK).

Dawn moved into a weird role in Buffy because everyone was aware she was not "real" but just played along for two seasons.. which was difficult to deal with, and her character had no purpose in Season 6/7.

 

[Jason Seaver]

See, I think that's kind of missing the point with Dawn - she was, in fact, real, even if she was "new". The big problem is that the writing on that show's final two seasons stank and the writers missed what was an obvious angle for the final season: That Dawn was now the same age that Buffy and the others were when they started fighting vampires, but their perspective had changed.

As for Connor - yeah, Angel's writers were smarter about it, although I think part of it was that they had written themselves so completely into a corner that they had to get him off the show and give him a clean start, or they wouldn't be able to do anything else with the characters.

 

[Scott-S]

I hated Dawn and Conner with a passion. It is like they took the worst parts of teenagers and amplified them.

Dawn should have jumped into the portal, thus salvaging a little respect for her in my eyes. But no..... She let her sister die for her.

Conner, at first, had a right to be mad/confused. But just got worse and worse instead of better.

I love how this thread is indeed "Eternal". Back from the dead so to speak.

 

[Chris]

Whedon has at least been open about Buffy jumping into the portal at the end of Season 5, they thought it was the end of the series. And as a series end, it had epic flair - a Hero's journey feel about it.

I don't know, I always found Season 5 of Buffy to be the best of the lot. Anyway, I will finish Angel Season 5 this week. So far I'm enjoying it. It is different, almost like a whole different take on how this could have went down.

I like Spike's character, but season 6/7 of Buffy really messed with him, whether or not he was on the path to redemption or not.. kind of a mess. So, it's interesting to see how this plays.

 

[Chris]

The psycho slayer episode was almost clearly apologia for Buffy watchers to make up for some of the odd conclusions people like I reached at the end of Buffy Season 7.

 

[DAN NEIR]

We never got your final impressions of the Angel finale.

 

[Chris]

The final season was very different, and there is some appeal to it. But it also struck me as really kind of flying in the face of previous mythos as had been setup within this series and Buffy.

That's not a bad thing, there were some great episodes within it.. but often it left me cold more then thinking this was a great change. Like Buffy, I felt that in it's wane some characters were changed to the extent that it was kind of a betrayal of the character path.

This isn't saying "don't kill them!" Part of what makes a show good is that any character on this really was in peril. So, I didn't mind the loss of Cordellia, per se. But the way it was done, with the handling of Season 4, was so odd that it set to revise too much of the show's history. The entire construct that those kind of events were always "pre-planned" seemed laughable.

So, I didn't think that was ill at ease.

But other moments in this season really struck me as strange.. I'm specifically thinking about Gunn. The finale was interesting, but they were so pinned into a corner that this was, for all purposes, suicide.. which is fine, it's the hero's death.

But what killed me about that was that Season 5 of Angel spent a lot of time in apologia for Season 7 of Buffy, the re-vamping of all pre-slayers getting a calling, etc. reform of Spike, etc. that to end on a note where hell on earth was released and it started because of action on their part.. I'm not sure if that's a noble conclusion or not.

In fact, it kind of made me wonder: if such a demonic uprising were possible at any moment before, even in a super-weakened state as they were supposed to be after the assassinations, why not break it out earlier?

Yeah, I'm not sure. I find myself going back later and catching episodes of Buffy and enjoying it, and Angel had some great high points, but it was seemingly a lot poorer in it's execution. I think if you had just Angel on the air, and there wasn't a Buffy, it'd be great, because it wouldn't have to live within the rules of that mythos and when those rules were broken it wouldn't stand out as much.

But because it was tied down with that set of global views, season 5, and the finale, seemed.. wrong.

 

[Scott-S]

I am watching this series again and am on Season 2. I just got reminded of one of my really big gripes about this show. I really love the entire series but I have always been bugged at how the cops are shown shooting Angel in the back as he runs out of the room. They also shot at Buffy as she ran away in that series as well.

Cops do not shoot at someone running away. I get mad that they make such a huge mistake just for effect.

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

 

[KevinGress]

 

[Chris]

Kevin -

I like the way you see that at the end. I could go along with that. Would be interesting.

Yeah, I don't know.. I go back and watch "Buffy" often, it's enjoyable popcorn. Very few shows in that niche for me (like DS9, etc.) But Angel doesn't have that season I could watch repetitively or enjoy to that extent. It doesn't hit the same "lows" as Buffy (season 7, 4) but it doesn't hit the same highs for me either.

Just one of those things.

 

[Scott-S]

I also like Kevin's ending. That would have at least given a little bit of hope to the situation.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Wouldn't that have missed the point, though? Angel was all about fighting the good fight even when there's no chance to win. A tragic ending works for it; a last minute rescue from some outside force would just have been weak.

 

[Citizen87645]

Well, we'll get to find out what Joss thinks when "After the Fall" comes out in a couple months.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel:_After_The_Fall

 

[Nick Martin]

Weak?

Hell it would have been flat-out stupid.

Having those Buffy characters show up to help or heaven forbid, save the day, would have completely undermined not only the message of 'never give up the good fight', but also the integrity of the entire series. It would have sent the message that ANGEL, as both a character and a series, could never stand on its own from the originating show.

That is why I find that idea flat-out stupid. If that actually happened, I'd never watch the show again. I'd chuck my ANGEL DVDs in the trash if I knew the series existed just to build up to that kind of cop-out resolution. Would have been a complete disgrace to me.