Final Angel
May. 20th, 2004 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimac(not by David del Tredici - never mind, obscure music joke)
As a dedicated Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan I followed its spinoff, Angel, for a while, but it was never as good as the original, and I stopped watching altogether when the vampire sometime-detective signed up to work for his nemesis, Wolfram & Hart, and the writers dredged up the discarded BTVS characters of Spike and Harmony for no better reason than that they could.
However, I got home from class last night in time to catch the last half-hour of the final episode, already being watched by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wild_patience and, with somewhat less interest, two cats.
Jumping back in after a gap caused me to note the reappearance on Angel of a couple of beloved Buffy tropes:
1. There will be an extra-special super villain, preferably played by a surplussed actor from Firefly, identified by his ability to pick up the hero by the neck and throw him or her across the room. (Actually there was a whole series of extra-special villains on Buffy with that penchant.)
2. There will be a not-exactly-human female character whose robotic voice will express puzzlement at the discovery that strange things called emotions are coursing through her system. (In Buffy, Anya; in Angel, She-who-is-no-longer-Fred - and yes, I am making an Edward Eager reference there.)
I'm to be on a panel at Baycon on "Grieving for Lost TV Shows," simultaneously withcynthia1960 being on an identical panel at Wiscon. Our panel is asking the question, "Did they die prematurely?", and in the case of Joss Whedon's 3 sfnal shows, I would say no. I liked these shows - they're the only tv series that had commanded my allegiance in the last 30 years; not even TNG or B5 could get me to watch consistently - but Buffy and Angel both went on too long, and I suspect the surprisingly outstanding Firefly may have died just in time to preserve its sterling reputation.
As a dedicated Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan I followed its spinoff, Angel, for a while, but it was never as good as the original, and I stopped watching altogether when the vampire sometime-detective signed up to work for his nemesis, Wolfram & Hart, and the writers dredged up the discarded BTVS characters of Spike and Harmony for no better reason than that they could.
However, I got home from class last night in time to catch the last half-hour of the final episode, already being watched by
wild_patience and, with somewhat less interest, two cats.Jumping back in after a gap caused me to note the reappearance on Angel of a couple of beloved Buffy tropes:
1. There will be an extra-special super villain, preferably played by a surplussed actor from Firefly, identified by his ability to pick up the hero by the neck and throw him or her across the room. (Actually there was a whole series of extra-special villains on Buffy with that penchant.)
2. There will be a not-exactly-human female character whose robotic voice will express puzzlement at the discovery that strange things called emotions are coursing through her system. (In Buffy, Anya; in Angel, She-who-is-no-longer-Fred - and yes, I am making an Edward Eager reference there.)
I'm to be on a panel at Baycon on "Grieving for Lost TV Shows," simultaneously with
cynthia1960 being on an identical panel at Wiscon. Our panel is asking the question, "Did they die prematurely?", and in the case of Joss Whedon's 3 sfnal shows, I would say no. I liked these shows - they're the only tv series that had commanded my allegiance in the last 30 years; not even TNG or B5 could get me to watch consistently - but Buffy and Angel both went on too long, and I suspect the surprisingly outstanding Firefly may have died just in time to preserve its sterling reputation.
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Date: 2004-05-21 02:55 pm (UTC)Having watched all the episodes more than once, and listened to others' criticisms, I think Firefly wa a hard show to get into: you had to get to know the characters before you could appreciate it, and that took several episodes, no matter where you started. Getting to know the characters, in my view, is what the show was really about - it wasn't the world-building (which was the hackneyed thing the show so astonishingly rose above), nor the broader plot arcs (which there weren't any of, except for getting to understanding the characters better), nor the plots of the individual episodes (though some were very good indeed).
My concern was that Firefly couldn't have gone on much longer without derailing the premise of the show (as Angel was derailed very early on, and never recovered), and that either revelations about the character mysteries were going to have to come out (one of them, "what did the government want with River?", was essentially answered by implication) or else Joss was going to have to divert us by throwing spanners into the works. And you know he would. The first one was already clearly in the works: Inara was about to leave.