Angel - Season 5

Angel's fifth and abruptly final season didn't have the great long, continuous story of the fourth, but in the end it just may have been the most entertaining of them all. The only one that got Whedon's full attention due to other projects taking precedence in the previous four years, it has more of a sense of fun and some really good stand-alone episodes, especially possibly my favorite in the entire run of this show and its parent Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Smile Time". The dynamic between Angel and Spike is one of the most interesting and funniest of any character relationship in the franchise, and they only really had a chance to explore it in one season of Buffy which wasn't quite enough, so reuniting them again really worked out.

It's not all fun and games though, as while the shows have always had the threat of an apocalypse looming at the end, this season focuses on THE apocalypse they've been preparing for the entire time, and there is a feel of doom and dread surrounding them. It's also not a very good season to be a supporting character, with a pretty high mortality rate resulting in some really good episodes and powerful, sad moments. The series ends with some events unresolved, though really it wasn't a terrible note to end the show on, and just like with Buffy the story is being officially continued in the medium of comic books. I'm not going to rush head on into them, but they're definitely on my radar for eventual consumption.

Angel - Season 4

At this point in the series, the writers have basically abandoned stand-alone episodes in favor of long-form, serialized storytelling. The second half of season three was dominated by one plot line, and except for maybe one or two brief tangents here, the entire thing is one big, slowly unfolding story. It's probably as strong a single tale as I've seen a Whedon show tell, filled with human elements, deception, and crazy looking monsters. I think it's the longest lasting storyline in any of his shows, and while I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer gradually grew weaker as it went on, Angel really seemed to improve as it went along. His shows don't tend to start off very strong, and Angel has seen the most steady improvement over its years.

A lot of the focus is on Vincent Kartheiser's character, whose fate is central to the vast conspiracy behind many of the events in the show. I like Kartheiser's smug sliminess on Mad Men for some reason, though I can't say I like him too much on Angel. His motivations as a character always seem weak, like he's not bothering to think about what he's doing, and his entire relationship with the rest of the cast is just an unusual one. It's actually interesting, this was my favorite season despite my thinking the series really picked up once the main crew finally came together, and they sort of fall apart this time. They're still together as a group, but the a lot of the individual relationships are broken past the point of repairing. I'll be interested in seeing what else can go wrong in the final season.

Angel - Season 3

You can really see Angel come into its own and out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's shadow in the third season. With a whopping six people working or staying at the hotel, they finally figured out that a strong supporting cast is the key to making Angel work as a protagonist. Really, it's a hard formula to get wrong - a variety of interesting people working together makes for a more compelling long-term viewing experience than just one or only a few. Joss Whedon obviously had this down to a science when Firefly premiered the next year with a main cast on the ship of nine. Dollhouse got better once the focus shifted from Echo to the workings of the whole facility, and Buffy was better once it expanded beyond the main four too. Everyone bouncing off each other plays particularly nicely with Whedon's style of snappy dialogue, so it's no wonder the shows improved as they went along and the cast grew.

Not standing idly by while Buffy's tone grew steadily darker as it entered the new millenium, Angel follows suit with a pretty somber plot for a lot of the way. Darla first appeared way back in the pilot episode of Buffy, and she'd been bouncing around on Angel for a while with no clear direction. Not that she wasn't an interesting character or played fairly well by Julie Benz, but I was waiting for it to go somewhere. It did that in season three, delivering something to the show that became the focus point for the last two thirds. Along with the arrival of a foe from deep in Angel's past and Cordelia's continued ascension from high school drama queen to something much more, it makes for a pretty engrossing story. And you don't have to look any further than Wesley's arc in the second half to see that this show doesn't play around. The return of a character at the very end carried with it some pretty lame and dated looking computer-aided action bits, but it was still a generally well-executed payoff to the whole thing. The ending was a pure cliff-hanger begging me to keep watching, and it won't be long before I pick it back up.

Angel - Season 2

Angel's second season expands naturally on the first, as his crew gets a little larger while he continues to kill a bunch of demons. There's much more of a real story arc through the whole thing, and an awful lot of the season is not spent following the status quo of the cast being paranormal investigators for hire. A character brought back at the end of the first run is the focus of most of Angel's attention for a long while, and a lot of time is spent with him estranged from everyone else and not really being himself. It was sort of interesting for them to go in that direction this relatively early in a series, although it's not too terribly long before he's back to where he was, just in time for another unusual storyline.

The last several episodes revolve around a plot involving portals to another dimension stuck in a medieval society where humans are slaves, and brings in two main characters, one of which who already appeared frequently since the season premiere. Lorne is a green-skinned, lounge singing demon with special mental abilities, and is a pretty likable character considering how cheesy that sounds. Wesley and Gunn both have bigger parts this time, though I can't really say I totally like either yet. Fred is the late addition, and so far she seems pretty entertaining. She's played by Amy Acker, who also has an increasingly interesting part on Dollhouse. Whedon's shows seem strongest when there is a sizable, fun cast, and Angel is definitely building towards something there. It's not great, but the first 44 episodes kept me reasonably entertained enough to keep watching.

Angel - Season 1

500 posts. Weird.

Angel isn't as funny or easily enjoyable as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it does enough to stand on its own in its first season while still feeling like part of the same universe. It's aided by a number of crossovers with its parent show, which makes for some interesting situations as a thread is opened in the original and tied up an hour later on Angel. Aside from a shorter-than-expected stint by an Irish half demon, the main cast in the first season is made up of Buffy castoffs, and while they were mostly tangential there, they manage to establish themselves as a decent foundation for a series on Angel. The titular character himself can handle the lead well enough, though I like him more when he's being dark and standoffish than when he's trying to make clever quips in battle. Cordelia's role in Buffy was mostly just being a huge bitch, but Los Angeles manages to calm her down a bit and make her more tolerable here. Even Wesley becomes likable once he finds his niche in Angel's crew.

Unlike Buffy, there isn't much of a story thread running through the whole season. Wolfram & Hart are an evil law firm that can be found hiding in the background behind a lot of the show's antagonists from episode to episode, and their presence increases as it goes on, but it seems like they're mostly just setting it up for something bigger later. The action and supernatural stuff is about as competent as Buffy, but where it's not as interesting is the other stuff - the lives of the characters. Buffy and her friends fight a lot of demons, but they also go to school and hang out, whereas Angel seems to be all business. It's still an interesting series, it's just not as fun to spend time in its world. Still, I'm curious to see where it goes.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 3

The third season is an important one, as it's end marks the split where some of the cast continues on in Sunnydale, and some move to Los Angeles for the Angel spin-off. It's pivotal for most of the characters too, as it's the last year of high school before everyone can move on, and they have to make decisions about their future. Buffy's desires are at odds with her destiny and blah blah blah she keeps fighting monsters. Willow is transforming from genius bookworm into genius bookworm that can do some magic, Xander's still occassionally funny but irritating whenever stuff's actually happening, and Giles cements himself as possibly my favorite character, although I suspect his role will be diminishing soon if not immediately.

The story this time is about the town's mayor, who has been hinted in the past as being more aware of the town's supernatural troubles than he led on, but to this point has been unseen. He's fairly friendly and non-serious for a major villain, and although that isn't exactly a unique idea, it's executed well enough. There's also Faith, a new slayer in town who appeared after the death of the other slayer at the end of the second season, who was summoned because of a glitch in the logic at the end of the first season. She has some problems. Besides the main story, there are a few other pretty entertaining tangents like an alternate universe where the sidekicks are bad guys. There's also an especially good one surprisingly focusing on Xander, where a pretty dramatic event requiring all the other main characters' attentions happens mostly offscreen while he gets into some trouble before anonymously saving the day. I've decided to watch Angel's first season next, so I can alternate between the shows until I finally finish.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 2

It's hard to say how exactly it happened, but the second season ended up seeming noticeably better than the first. The characters just grow on you and you end up caring about what happens more than before. It helps that it was ten episodes longer than the first run, giving them more opportunity to set up a strong story arc and pull it off. My favorite episodes are still the ones where the whole status quo is flipped on its head for a while, because it's always fun to see how the cast changes for a bit, but the main story worked better this time and actually made the one-offs seem a bit more out of place. The show still has a strong emphasis on humor, but the plot is more dramatic instead of campy.

The focus is on the relationship between Buffy and Angel, and it what appears to be typical Whedon fashion things go less that favorably in that area leading to the true threat after the mildly interesting vampires Spike and Drusilla antagonize the good guys for the first half. Buffy's not the only one who gets close to somebody with pretty much every main cast member hooking up with someone. Some of it doesn't seem totally realistic, but the huge expansion of that aspect really pushes the characters forward and helps the series grow. Even Xander's more likable, even if his constant wisecracks still wear on you pretty often. I'm already almost halfway through the next season, and I'm sure I'll be watching pretty heavily until I'm done with the series. It's pretty good!