Why I've Come To Like "Angel" Better than "Buffy"

[stonester1]

I could easily see Doctor Who getting away with it. And I guarantee you, if/when a new Trek series comes, it's going to be far more daring and experimental that Trek has been for a very long time.

A few geeks howl...let ém.

[saturn5]

Caligula wrote:

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Agreed on all points, save for where BtVS was at its weakest. No way in my mind was Season 6 the weak point. Several of my favorite episodes come from Season 6. No, for the weak link, you'd need to travel ahead one more year... which brings up Reason #6:

6. Angel went out with a bang, not a whimper. "Not Fade Away" is a MUCH better series finale than "Chosen." And Angel's fifth season is overall a much stronger season than BtVS Season 7.

No, I like 'Chosen' better, it's a fitting finale for a great series but it's the difference between the tone of the 2, Angel is questing for redemption and he realises that this is a neverending process, the good fight always goes on. By contrast Buffy is a show about growing up and empowerment so 'Chosen' is a triumphant and fitting conclusion

[DevilEyes]

sonak wrote:

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BTVS was always the more popular and ground-breaking show, plus spin-offs are rarely as popular as the original. Still, I've come to enjoy "Angel" more for the following reasons:


1. More interesting main character. 240-year-old vampire cursed with a soul on a quest for redemption is more interesting than "hot blonde woman deals with frustrations in school and in her love life"

Matter of taste. Personally I find Buffy more interesting and far more relatable. Even though Angel is a really interesting character to analyze. But Buffy, especially since season 5, became one of my all-time favorite characters.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you're not a woman?

2. Better setting. Supernatural detective agency vs. high school, college, or wherever. Plus L.A. vs Sunnydale

Again, not to me. I've never worked at a detective agency, but I've been to high school and college, and Buffy's story is way closer to me.

3. Wolfram and Hart as series-long over-arching antagonist vs villains of the season on BTVS

Undecided. On one side, there are advantages to having one antagonist. But Evil Lawyer Firm is just about the most cliche, easiest-to-hate villain one could possibly think of. Personally, I prefer Holtz, far more interesting as an antagonist.

Not all of Buffy's villains were great, but many of them were, and Buffy's storylines were more versatile with villains that mirrored the season's theme: from the Master as the evil patriarchal figure embodying Buffy's problems with father figures and tradition; Angelus, Spike and Dru for the season that was about emotions, romance and sex; a politician and another father figure in The Mayor (by himself one of the best villains ever) and Faith as Buffy's doppelganger; a vain hellgod and her human 'brother' in a season about family; followed by a trio of nerds playing at being villains who seem harmless until you realize they really aren't - and of course, Willow finally showing the dark side that was always there beneath the sweetness. Season 4 had the weakest villain because there was the weakest connection to the main characters and their issues, and the First in season 7 could have been great but unfortunately didn't make sense in the end (I'd still take it over AtS Season 4 villains any day).

Besides, Wolfram and Hart wasn't even always the antagonist, in season 4 it was Jasmine and the incredibly boring and cliche Beast. Plus Angelus again, but so much lamer than on BtVS.

4. Angel is more adult and darker in tone. By avoiding the high school setting, Angel was able to tell more adult-relevant stories, plus avoided the drift from a mid-series shift in settings after graduation from high school on BTVS. Angel was also grittier and more noirish in tone, with a darker message of the "no big victories" and that the fight against evil is always going on

Yes, that was the idea of AtS in the first place. But 1) why would a show have to tell exclusively adult-relevant stories? Being a teenager is a big part of human experience. 2) what is wrong with having a shift after leaving high school? That's one of the things I like about BtVS. It reflects the experience of growing up. It seems like you want your shows to be the same in tone all the way through.

And I'm not sure that AtS was that much darker or more adult than BtVS seasons 5-7.

5. Angel at its weakest(perhaps season 3 or 4 depending on your view) was better than BTVS at its weakest (season 6)

I couldn't disagree more, on two accounts:
a) If you consider season 6 BtVS's weakest season, we have a disconnect immediately since I think it's one of the best (together with seasons 5 and 2) and my personal favorite.

b) I don't think that AtS on its weakest is better than BtVS on its weakest. BtVS's weakest season is 1, the show was still finding its footing, but I'll take it over AtS season 4 any day. I'd also take BtVS season 4 and season 7 over AtS season 4 any day. (Maybe over AtS season 5 as well, it has some great stuff going for it but it also is infuriating in many ways.)

Giles, Willow, Xander, Oz, Tara, etc. vs. Gunn, Fred, and Cordelia? no contest)

At least we agree on something.

IMO Buffy had much more interesting and better developed characters. I find almost all the characters on Buffy interesting. On Angel, I'm interested in Angel, Darla, Wesley...Cordelia is OK until they started turning her into a saint in season 3, and I don't care either way about Fred and Gunn, while Lorne was a fun character but never properly developed.

Now let me list a few more reasons why I prefer Buffy to Angel:

- Buffy was by far the more innovative and experimental show. It mixed genres better and it played with the narrative format in episodes like Hush, Restless, The Body, Once More With Feeling, Conversations with Dead People. Angel was by comparison a straightforward noir story.

- Buffy had better humor, much wittier dialogue and was more fun overall.

-The lead character of Buffy is inherently a more groundbreaking and interesting hero by virtue of being the unexpected and unconventional hero - a woman, a teenage girl, a blonde ex-cheerleader who quips and likes fashion and shopping and at the first glance is absolutely not someone a traditional narrative would cast as a hero.

By contrast, the protagonist of Angel is a brooding, tall, dark handsome man in a long dark coat who saves damsels. Speaking of which...

- Buffy is a show that plays and examines gender roles in deeper and more interesting ways than any other I can think of. Angel, on the other hand... really doesn't. It's very traditional in that respect. A man is the hero, women are there to be emotional support or femme fatales or damsels or trophies for the boys to fight over... and to be fridged, which brings me to:

- What seasons 4 and 5 of AtS did with its female characters was really atrocious. Buffy was more female-oriented but still had great male characters and great character arcs for men as well (Spike). Angel disposed of its main female characters in the most demeaning ways possible until it was completely a boy's show at the end. Doyle and Wesley got great heroic deaths; Cordelia and Fred got their agency completely taken away and got possessed, violated in all sorts of ways and left for dead, just to draw some reactions from the men. I cringe at the "my boys" scene. A Hole in the World was the most egregious example of Woman In a Refrigerator.

- The Powers That Be and the big retcon of season 4. No, thank you, I don't like shows where a bunch of things are supposed to have been manipulated by higher powers. If Buffy is Shakespeare, Angel is a Greek tragedy, with gods looking down and playing the character's strings. And those are just not my cup of tea.

- Angel had the worst episode of Buffyverse ever, The Girl in Question.

neozeks wrote:

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Angel is to Buffy as DS9 is to TNG, in a lot of ways. And seeing how DS9 is my favourite Trek, I agree with you.

No, it's really not. For that to be true, the following would have to be the case:

- BtVS to be a non-serialized show like TNG. No, it was a very serialized show, except in season 1 and part of season 2. AtS was also rather non-serialized in season 1.

- BtVS to have a lot of bland characters and just a few interesting ones, and AtS to have all its main characters and a bunch of recurring characters wonderfully developed. No, in fact I think it's more of the opposite.

- BtVS to have no character development except for one or two characters. Hell no.

- AtS to have more good actors than BtVS. Again, no.

- BtVS's female characters would have to be boring and traditional, while AtS would have to have a great balance of great male and female characters.

I'm curious how is BtVS:AtS = TNG: DS9 to you, except for the fact that AtS is a spinoff and that there were some crossovers?

neozeks wrote:

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S6 is my favourite season of Buffy, though, despite all it's flaws. And posibly my second favourite Buffyverse season, after AtS S2. Go figure. Probably because I think it's the darkest and least formulaic season of Buffy.

Season 2 is my favorite season of Angel by far. Too bad it ends with the Pylea arc which really doesn't fit and ruins the structure, if it had ended differently it may have been the best season of both shows.

[sonak]

That was a good response. I can see your perspective on the way female characters were treated on "angel," hadn't thought of it that way.

We disagree strongly on some stuff, obviously. "Adam" was a cool villain, season 3 was BTVS best season, etc. agreed on the pylea arc

[saturn5]

sonak wrote:

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That was a good response. I can see your perspective on the way female characters were treated on "angel," hadn't thought of it that way.

We disagree strongly on some stuff, obviously. "Adam" was a cool villain, season 3 was BTVS best season, etc. agreed on the pylea arc

Adam was horrendously terrible! I like the Pylea arc although you're actually glad when they go back to LA.

I don't think the dark coolness of Angel could exist without the fun basis of Buffy, it's interesting that we have loads of original Buffy characters on Angel but none the other way around.

[trekkiebaggio]

Yeah I prefer Angel as well. Willow and Xander annoy the hell out of me. I just find Angel a lot more compelling.

[Ethros]

Like others say, I love Buffy, but yeah I do prefer Angel.

... which makes me think of this scene

[sonak]

saturn5 wrote:

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Adam was horrendously terrible! I like the Pylea arc although you're actually glad when they go back to LA.

I don't think the dark coolness of Angel could exist without the fun basis of Buffy, it's interesting that we have loads of original Buffy characters on Angel but none the other way around.

I don't get the hate in fandom for Adam as an effective villain. He was a good match for Buffy-strong, smart, and I like the whole Zen thing he had going. For me, the worst villains were the nerd herd and Glory.

[Warp Coil]

I love both shows, and sometimes I have a hard time choosing between them. I find Angel to be a more consistently good series. Buffy was more likely to have its ups and downs. There would be a mix of good, average and poor episodes whereas Angel was more consistent in terms of quality. It was fantastic at doing really dark, dramatic stuff. It was far more serious. Buffy, however, had more lighthearted moments. Dark and serious Buffy was sometimes less affective.

I think the only thing that might put Buffy ahead of Angel was that Buffy had more stand-out, memorable individual episodes. Hush. The Body. Once More, With Feeling. Angel really never experimented with its format in such a way.

[neozeks]

DevilEyes wrote:

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Undecided. On one side, there are advantages to having one antagonist. But Evil Lawyer Firm is just about the most cliche, easiest-to-hate villain one could possibly think of. Personally, I prefer Holtz, far more interesting as an antagonist.

Not all of Buffy's villains were great, but many of them were, and Buffy's storylines were more versatile with villains that mirrored the season's theme: from the Master as the evil patriarchal figure embodying Buffy's problems with father figures and tradition; Angelus, Spike and Dru for the season that was about emotions, romance and sex; a politician and another father figure in The Mayor (by himself one of the best villains ever) and Faith as Buffy's doppelganger; a vain hellgod and her human 'brother' in a season about family; followed by a trio of nerds playing at being villains who seem harmless until you realize they really aren't - and of course, Willow finally showing the dark side that was always there beneath the sweetness. Season 4 had the weakest villain because there was the weakest connection to the main characters and their issues, and the First in season 7 could have been great but unfortunately didn't make sense in the end (I'd still take it over AtS Season 4 villains any day).

Besides, Wolfram and Hart wasn't even always the antagonist, in season 4 it was Jasmine and the incredibly boring and cliche Beast. Plus Angelus again, but so much lamer than on BtVS.

I'd have to disagree about the villains here. S1 and S2 W&H are by far my favourite villains of BtVS/AtS. I actually think they're the least cliched. Unlike all the other villains they are not a single powerfull individual but an organization that is founded on a idea and represents that idea, and those are always more dangerous, organizations and ideas. And its not about destroying the world, or to quote Holland Manners, anything so prosaic as winning, but power and control over the system, whatever the price. In many ways, they are what I wished the Mayor was. Or maybe the Watcher's Council. I think that's the advantage of Angel's villains, they have more complex and interesting motivations that are at the hearts of their plots. Though I actually disliked Holtz, I think he was too one-dimensional in his fixation on revenge.

Watched abstractly, yeah, Buffy's villains can sometimes mirror the seasons' themes, but I never really felt it played any real practical role in the stories. In practice, I find most of them pretty interchangeable, they just wanted to destroy the world, one way or the other. If I may ask, what do you (and most other fans, it seems) see in the Mayor? Aside from his paternal relationship with Faith, I found him pretty boring. Like I said, he lacked any really interesting motivation (I want to become invincible and a giant snake because... ?). How exactly did the fact that he was a politician and the Mayor play any crucial part in the story,? He could have been mostly anything. I liked Angelus and Dark Willow for their pivotal connections to Buffy and the Trio because they were ordinary humans (and I enjoyed their geeky humor ) but the rest, eh. I think Glory is just as boring as the Beast and the Beast at least looks scary and cool. Angelus was definitely lamer on AtS than on Buffy, though, with the exception of that brief appearance in S1.

Regarding the adult/teenage comparison of the shows, what I prefer in Angel isn't so much the "adultness" in itself, but the more down-to-Earth and less over-the-top quality. Buffy saved the world. A lot. Angel saved the world, once? I thinks it's nicely encapsulated in that cute Willow/Wesley scene in Orpheus where Wesley is all "I've seen the darkness in me, I did things, held a woman chained in my closet" and Willow goes "yeah, I flayed a man alive and tried to destroy the world!". Of course, like most things here, that too is a matter of taste.

Buffy had better humor, much wittier dialogue and was more fun overall.

Hmm, Buffy definitely had more jokes, but I tend to find Angel jokes more consistently funny (and funnier at their respective peaks). Well, at least in Angel's S1 and S2, a lot of the humour was lost after that. OTOH, Buffy did manage to mantain a lot of humour throughout, even in the darkest portions of S6.

Buffy is a show that plays and examines gender roles in deeper and more interesting ways than any other I can think of. Angel, on the other hand... really doesn't. It's very traditional in that respect. A man is the hero, women are there to be emotional support or femme fatales or damsels or trophies for the boys to fight over... and to be fridged.

Angel's treatment of it's already too small female cast is pretty bad (and I haven't even reached Fred's death) but, while not denying the revolutionary importance of Buffy's take on female characters, I don't think Buffy's treatment of it's male characters is all that good either. Xander and Giles are good in the first few seasons, but pretty much fade away later (and leave their respective females). Riley is pretty weak. Watchers, mostly males, are incompetent. All the fathers are horrible, etc. I really think Buffy lacked a strong male character in it's second half. I'm not too thrilled by Spike. Not so much for the whole "defanging" thing but for the fact his character became completely defined by his often slavish relationship with Buffy. Ok, I did quite like Wood.

The Powers That Be and the big retcon of season 4.

Definitely agreed on that, I hated it. In fact, I just choose to think Skip lied or at least exaggerated.

I'm curious how is BtVS:AtS = TNG: DS9 to you, except for the fact that AtS is a spinoff and that there were some crossovers?

Well, I did say "a lot of ways", not "all" or even "most" ways. I haven't really analyzed the idea much. It's just the general feeling regarding theme and tone, things that form a show's "identity" in my mind, that I get when thinking about the shows. Character-wise, yeah, the comparison doesn't hold. Both BtVS and AtS are DS9-like in being centered on character development. I agree Buffy characters on the whole had better development (Buffy is my favorite character in the Buffyverse - and I'm a guy ) but that's more "quality of craft" than "identity".

I just see Angel as a darker, more serious show, more ambiguous and political in it's themes and stories. More grounded and less concetrated on high concept stories. And larger in scope. Buffy may have been about saving the world most of the time, but it definitely always felt pretty individualistic and isolated in it's little Sunnydale world to me, with Angel feeling grander and more universal.

And while BtVS was definitely a lot more serialized than TNG, I do think the even higher level of serialization of AtS compared to BtVS - throughout the whole show, not just season by season - merits the comparison. Also, but this may just be me, in AtS most of my favourite episodes are storyarc-episodes, while on BtVS they tend to be standalones (in the sense of season plot arcs, not character arcs), generally the same as my favourite episodes of DS9 vs TNG. Of course, TNG didn't really have plot arcs at all...

The public perception of the shows can also be mentioned, with both Angel and DS9 being overshadowed by their more popular and iconic "parent" counterparts.

Season 2 is my favorite season of Angel by far. Too bad it ends with the Pylea arc which really doesn't fit and ruins the structure, if it had ended differently it may have been the best season of both shows.

Going in, I thought I would hate it, but I really, really loved Pylea. In large part exactly because it's the total opposite in tone to the Darla arc, with it's shamelessly fun and cheesy aproach - while still managing to fit in character-wise with the character journeys in S2, IMO. That's one more thing I like about Angel, it never rigidly follows the same season structure the way Buffy does most of time. Of course, me watching the shows on DVD instead of when they were first aired on TV might play a part in all of this.

[saturn5]

trekkiebaggio wrote:

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Yeah I prefer Angel as well. Willow and Xander annoy the hell out of me. I just find Angel a lot more compelling.

Will and Xander are the greatest! (Xander IS Joss and Willow is his favourite character).

Adam was a stupid enemy, he just looked stupid, if he'd been more like Cromartie in TSSC he'd have been better. The more human and interesting the villains are the better. Hence why Glory was so great (and hot)

[stonester1]

saturn5 wrote:

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Will and Xander are the greatest! (Xander IS Joss and Willow is his favourite character).

With you on this. I love both shows dearly, though Angel a bit more. But interestingly, I do have more warm fuzzies in general about the characters of Buffy. Those two being two of the warmest and fuzziest.

[sonak]

stonester1 wrote:

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With you on this. I love both shows dearly, though Angel a bit more. But interestingly, I do have more warm fuzzies in general about the characters of Buffy. Those two being two of the warmest and fuzziest.

The "Xander is supposed to be a loser in high school even though nobody who looks like Nicholas Brendon would be" thing always amused me. Joss even addressed it in a commentary track, basically saying "that's television."

[Sindatur]

I like Angel better as well.

What's the "tS" for in AtS? The show is simply called Angel?

[Chemahkuu]

Sindatur wrote:

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I like Angel better as well.

What's the "tS" for in AtS? The show is simply called Angel?

"Angel the Series", kind of like 'Star Trek' now means the franchise and TOS the original show. It's just to help differentiate.