Angel is so good

[Shurik]

I love both series, but Angel just blows Buffy away in the later seasons. I envy anyone who is experiencing this for the first time now.

I also liked Angel more than Buffy. Angel was more consistent in quality (yes, I liked season 4 as much as the others), while Buffy had both great seasons (second part of 2,3,5, most of 6) and average to bad ones (1, 4 and second part of 7).

Angel also had much less annoying characters (maybe Connor some of time). On Buffy, Willow annoyed me pretty much from season 1 - first it was "look, I'm a geeky girl, nobody loves me", then it was "I do magic! Seriously, a lot of magic!", then "look, I'm lesbian and I do magic!". Alyson Hannigan is a good comic actress (like in American Pie movies or now in HIMYM) but when she tried doing something dramatic, it looked bad ...

I should rewatch both shows.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Oh, Willow wasn't anywhere near the worst on Buffy's annoying scale. I really couldn't stand Tara. It's like, make Willow a lesbian, OK, I can dig it. But they wanted to make Willow the dominant one in the relationship. ... They wanted to make the most submissive character on the freaking show the dominant one. In order to do that, they had to dial down Tara's personality so far that she barely registered as sentient sometimes. Amber Benson is a fine actress but she was stuck in the most redundant role on the show.

And I'll take Connor over Dawn any day. They did some stuff with Connor towards the end that redeemed him in my eyes. But Dawn, when she registered at all, was not really a character but simply a plot device to generate angst. And the worst kind of TV angst is "Lets spend all of our time & energy trying to shield this child character from an unavoidable truth that she'll eventually have to face anyway."

 

[RoJoHen]

^I really started to like Tara AFTER she and Willow broke up, when Buffy was confiding in her about her relationship with Spike.

 

[Plain Simple]

I'm glad you're liking the shows! I just love both shows and have never been able to pick a favourite. There's not one season I dislike, although I do think that Buffy seasons 1, 4 and 7 are a bit lacking. I never quite understood the dislike of season 6. Sure, it was different, but to me it made a lot of sense, considering where Buffy was coming from. In season 1 they were still trying to find out what to do with the series, so I can forgive them that. Season 4 felt like a transitional stage both for the characters, but also for the writers who were trying to decide where to go after the high school years. The Initiative was a nice idea, but the way their story was executed was not very interesting. Prof. Marsh (or whatever she was called) had some potential to be an interesting villain, but Adam was just boring. Actually season 4 is the only time in the series I came close to giving up watching, because it felt like more of the same all the time. I'm glad I didn't though! The biggest disappointment to me however is season 7, since they seemed to be building up to something amazing in the first couple of episodes (Selfless and Conversations with Death People are among the best episodes in the series imho), but then it started wandering a bit. They ended on a high though. Angel definitely is a great series. Glad you're enjoying that too. And the ending to me is just perfect for the series.

 

[Forbin]

For me, Angel started off great, and descended into frustration and annoyance. I really came to not like it at the end. Like somebody else mentioned, you keep yelling at the screen.

 

[Shurik]

Oh, Willow wasn't anywhere near the worst on Buffy's annoying scale. I really couldn't stand Tara. It's like, make Willow a lesbian, OK, I can dig it. But they wanted to make Willow the dominant one in the relationship. ... They wanted to make the most submissive character on the freaking show the dominant one. In order to do that, they had to dial down Tara's personality so far that she barely registered as sentient sometimes. Amber Benson is a fine actress but she was stuck in the most redundant role on the show.

I didn't mention Tara because she was just there, sort of a background decoration for most of the time. And she was actually a better character than Willow's next girlfriend, which was by far the most annoying character on both shows.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

Kennedy was annoying, but she never got under my skin as much as Connor did.

 

[amdmiami]

All the potentials were annoying as hell but Connor was the worst. Half of season 4 is just him and Angel whining and bickering.

 

[Barbados Slim]

If you're only at Spin the Bottle, Season 4 hasn't even officially began. Get ready for a roller coaster ride.

Love this show. Wesley Wyndham-Price is one of the best written characters ever created on TV.

 

[Capt_Piett]

Spoiler: Spoilers for Season 4

It does make sense if you think about once Corelia came down from on high that Jasmine was driving the body, but didn't have access to her memories and consequently lost her way and purpose; This could explain why Cordelia was acting so "off" for most of Season 4. The lights were on, but no body was home. Once the memories were restored, Jasmine remembered who she was and why she was there. I think they as much as explained this later, or it has been at least conjectured.

I miss Angel. WB really screwed up cancelling it when they did.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

^I dunno. I think that the show reached its peak in terms of how big it could get in Season 4. Season 5 was only made possible by radically changing the format of the series. After that, I think they were running out of ideas (or at least ideas that were feasible on a TV budget).

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

Really? I loved season five. It has at least five of the series's best episodes. And that finale. Wow, that finale was the perfect way to end the show. I almost don't want the comics to exist as they would change the incredibly poignant fate that it's implied our heroes may have.

 

[species5618]

If you're only at Spin the Bottle, Season 4 hasn't even officially began. Get ready for a roller coaster ride.

Love this show. Wesley Wyndham-Price is one of the best written characters ever created on TV.

Agreed on both counts. I think I'm one of the few Angel fans who loved season 4. Logic-wise it's a bit of a mess, but it moves so quickly that you barely have time to notice the inconsistencies on first viewing.

Yes, there were problems with how Connor and especially Cordelia were handled, but I really liked how serialized and time-compressed the season was structured--according to one of the season 4 DVD commentaries, the entire 22 episode arc was meant to encompass a time period of 3 or 4 weeks.

To the OP, enjoy the rest of the series!

 

[RoJoHen]

Watched a couple more episodes tonight. Cordelia slept with Conner. A crazy beast is running around killing people and making the sky rain fireballs. Wolfram and Hart got locked down and everybody turned into zombies. Good times.

Meanwhile, in Sunnydale, The First is on the move. Giles just returned with the "slayers in training," and Xander keeps having to repair the windows. The episode ended with Buffy getting her ass beat by the Ancient Vampire thingy and then giving a huge speech about going to war.

I'm actually liking Buffy more right now, which hasn't been true since Angel started. They really seem to be getting back to the roots of the show, and it feels more like it did in Seasons 2-3.

 

[Rowan Sjet]

Well good news, you've just reached the part that, for me, was the turning point of season 7, where everything goes from seriously awesome to a mediocre confused mess. So Angel will most likely come back out on top soon enough.

 

[RoJoHen]

Aw...lame about the Buffy.

I probably won't find out until sometime next week.

 

[Ethros]

I love that speech Buffy gives-
"I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of hell, and it is gonna swallow me whole... and it'll choke on me. We're not ready? They're not ready. They think we're gonna wait for the end to come, like we always do. I'm done waiting. They want an apocalypse? Oh, we'll give 'em one."


btw, kudos to you watching in the original broadcast order. But one little niggle, later on I'd advise you to watch Buffy's Lies My Parents Told Me before the Angel ep Orpheus. I won't say why but you'll see, its not vitally important but its how it was meant to be. The WB and UPN kinda messed it up a bit originally

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

The fight between Angel's team and the Beast in Apocalypse Nowish is probably the best fight in the whole series. Especially because the team gets their asses thoroughly handed to them.

 

[Forbin]

Is that the ep where Buffy says "Thus endeth the lesson"? I wanted to smack her upside the head for that lame line.

 

[DS9Continuing]

That's actually the next episode, "Showtime."