Yeah I prefer Angel as well. Willow and Xander annoy the hell out of me. I just find Angel a lot more compelling.
Why I've Come To Like "Angel" Better than "Buffy"
- Thread starter sonak
- Start date
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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.
Definitely agreed on that, I hated it. In fact, I just choose to think Skip lied or at least exaggerated.
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.
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.
Last edited:
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)
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."
"Angel the Series", kind of like 'Star Trek' now means the franchise and TOS the original show. It's just to help differentiate.
Ah, OK, I kept having "Angel the Slayer" pop into my head, and knew that was ridiculous.
Thanks
Angel never really got off the ground or found a direction - it was hamstrung by Boreanaz's very clear limits.
Wow. I thought Angel got off the ground with the very first episode, and the story and character arcs were absolutely fantastic. Boreanaz isn't the best actor in the world, I agree, but I think he played the part great.
Yeah, if you've ever watched the unaired pilot they had this girl as Willow;
and they replaced her with this girl
The 11th sexiest woman in the world according to FHM readers. It is a cliche, one reason I'm always amused by the thought of a girl who looks like Buffy having to work in fast food in season 6. The Last Action Hero has a great gag based on this (about the only one in the film)
That's a bit of a strange comment, in that not every single attractive girl will become a supermodel or starlet just for being hot. You see hot girls all the time and think "nice, she's hot" and then forget it. Yet if she suddenly became the star of a TV show, or was in a big movie, or became a pop star, she'd easily be appearing in these "Sexiest women on the planet" polls. Look at the most the girls in something like the FHM Top 100, most of them aren't that special.
Yeah, if you've ever watched the unaired pilot they had this girl as Willow;
and they replaced her with this girl
The 11th sexiest woman in the world according to FHM readers. It is a cliche, one reason I'm always amused by the thought of a girl who looks like Buffy having to work in fast food in season 6. The Last Action Hero has a great gag based on this (about the only one in the film)
I don't think the issue was so much her job, but how supposedly "socially awkward" she was supposed to be, and her "trouble" finding boyfriends.
Yeah, they tried to explain it away by having it be about her being a juvenile delinquent and stuff, but still-that's why premises like "the freshman" just made me laugh-a woman who looks like Sarah Michelle Gellar is going to have an awkward time in college?
riiiiiight.
Exactly. Out in the real world, hot girls are very common. They even work behind fast food counters. The difference between them and those on TV and FHM...is that they aren't on TV or in FHM.
Meh. Fred was cute and Lorne was funny. I liked it a little better in the last year when Marsters was on.
Similar threads
