Buffy the Vampire Slayer's spinoff show Angel (1999-2004) is one of the few shows that I started reviewing with the first episode and continued with right up until the end. Like Buffy, my Angel reviews were initially carried on three different web sites, all of which are now gone from the web.
When it first started airing, Angel was on directly after Buffy, making Tuesday my favorite night of television. But as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Angel was never just a second hour of Buffy for me. While it was set in the same 'verse, a supernatural detective agency in Los Angeles was whole other thing than a hellmouth in a high school. Coincidentally, I moved to Los Angeles in the middle of Angel's run, and the L.A. in-jokes were one of my favorite things about the show.
It's funny how much more I like David Boreanaz now than I did back then. Who knew that he'd be such a reliable male lead for so many long-running series for so many years? I recently watched all of SEAL Team and you know what? The man can act. He wasn’t that good in the first season of Buffy, but he can definitely act his way out of a paper bag now.
I’m also a huge fan of Amy Acker, who joined Angel near the end of its second season. Acker was also a regular on another of our top twenty shows, Person of Interest. And I also very much liked Charisma Carpenter's Cordelia, Alexis Denisof's Wesley Wyndham Pryce, and J. August Richards' Gunn.
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.
It is thanks to David Boreanaz that I ever got into Buffy/Angel and through them found this site.
ReplyDeleteOne of my closest friends in London and I were sitting on a train one day talking about the new TV shows that had just come over from the US. I was telling her about this show I was really enjoying called Bones. She asked who was in it. When I told her, she said, "Oh, Angel."
Me: "Who?"
She: "You know. Angel from Buffy."
Me, completely disbelieving what I was hearing: "the Vampire Slayer?!? You have GOT to be kidding me."
She began to sing the praises of Buffy and I listened politely never dreaming I would take the plunge. Fast forward about six months. I went to my local video store (yes, I am dating this story) and saw the first season of Buffy sitting on the shelf. Figured what the hell and brought it home. The rest is history. Blasted through Buffy and Angel in record time and then watched them both again.
Looking for information about the shows the second time through, I found this site and have been hanging around ever since. So, thanks David.
ChrisB, thanks for sharing -- I had no idea. And thank you, David Boreanaz.
DeleteYeah, I was someone who liked the show Angel before I liked BtVS. After watching Dr. Horrible when it came out on Hulu (during Hulu's first few months of existence) and (I think?) both Firefly and the first season of Dollhouse, I figured I'd try out the older shows by that creator. I watched the first 2 episodes of Buffy and was put off by how campy they were and the poor effects (I'd missed out on most 80s/90s TV). Plus I wasn't totally sold on vampires as a concept yet. But Angel's more adult slant convinced me to give it a chance instead, and I watched the entire first season (all Hulu had at the time) and enjoyed it quite a lot.
ReplyDeleteA year or two later, I was unemployed for a few months and decided to watch both BtVS and Angel in chronological order. By this point, I'd seen Being Human (UK) and was a bit more comfortable with vampires as a plot device - and of course it helped that I'd watched Allyson on HIMYM and Anthony on Merlin in the meantime. The backstory on BtVS made that first season of Angel richer (especially I Will Remember You), but it still stood quite well on its own.
I got through all 12 combined seasons in 3 months (with a 3-week Veronica Mars hiatus, so roughly 10 weeks), before moving on to watch Bones from the beginning.
Katie, I honestly do get why people are turned off by Buffy at the beginning. I was in grad school in Texas, of all things, when Buffy started airing, and I really wasn't impressed.
DeleteI didn't get into Buffy until David Boreanaz' Angelus arrived in the back half of season two. I remember being at a party around then and talking with a complete stranger about how incredible the entire Angelus arc was. I had never really felt compelled to review anything before. Who knew?
As someone who's midway through binging every mid-2000s science fiction and fantasy series known to man, I absolutely adore reading all your reviews, but specifically the Angel ones. I love seeing opinions that were written so close in proximity to these properties getting made—so often, the only things I can find nowadays are modern retrospectives. Sometimes, my favorite part of watching an episode of Angel wasn't the episode itself: it was coming onto this site to see what you thought of the episode! Thanks for all your work at the time, and your continued reviews.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, you're so very welcome. This is one big reason why I don't update my oldest reviews -- because they're a connection to when I started writing. I like to think of Doux Reviews as a time travel site. Come here, and it's 1999 again. In a good way.
ReplyDeleteWhen I started farming out my reviews, before I had my own site, Buffy was so hot and there were a zillion Buffy sites. Not any more. But I'm still here!
I love this show so much, and I definitely started watching it because of your reviews, Billie: my discovery of Buffy coincided with Angel's fifth season, if I recall correctly.
ReplyDeleteI'm the weirdo who loves the fourth season best, despite the fact that it is, in the show's own words, a "turgid supernatural soap opera." But this might be one of my ultimate found-family shows, especially the way that each character grows over the course of the series.
These are random snippets of the show that lurk in my brain and pop out when I'm not thinking of anything in particular:
--"Evil hand!"
--Can I get my sleep removed? Is that really a bad idea?
--Cordelia's ever-changing hairstyles
--Angel eating waffles
--That guy who kept the orb in his head. ("Where do you keep yours?")
--Leather pants
--When Angel gets Cordelia a necklace, and she says "This makes my breasts look incredible!....What, you know you were both thinking it."
-"Demon Resources"
"I started watching [blank] because of your reviews" is probably my favorite sentence. :)
DeleteDavid Boreanaz has ideed had a great career. Has he ever been offscreen for a season since his advent on Buffy?
ReplyDeleteI really should rewatch Angel. I particularly liked how it gave characters introduced on BtVS more room to grow. Cordelia, Wesley, Darla, Harmony. Angel himself. The new characters were great too. Lilah was a terrific foe.
I also think they did a better job at integrating the supporting characters with the main arcs better than BtVS did.