Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" are both great shows, but it's a heckuva lot easier to explain "Buffy's" greatness. High school hell. Girl power. Sarah Michelle Gellar's Season 3 hair.
The appeal of "Angel" is harder to quantify. Sure, you can watch any of the first 109 episodes and come up with a healthy list of attributes: the awesome fight scenes; the noir cinematography; the biting humor; the stylish period flashbacks; David Boreanaz's deliciously evil turns as Angel's evil half, Angelus.
But the demon-plagued Los Angeles of "Angel" is the anti-Sunnydale; it seems to be as gloomy during the day as it is at night, and hope is harder to come by. This is Whedon's pessimistic vision of the world, one where "nothing we do matters," as Angel said in Season 2's "Epiphany." But the entirety of Angel's quote is comforting: "If nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do."
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Please note that the full article contains very, very minor spoilers but no season finale details. However, viewers in Australia and other countries who have not seen A Hole In The World and beyond may want to avoid it. |
