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Buffyversity: Is Angel Good?

By | May 21st, 2019
Posted in Columns | % Comments

In 1999, Buffy’s broody boyfriend got a spinoff where he got to play vampire Batman. In the pilot, he even had the same grappling hook gun. Angel never reached the same heights as Buffy, but its ratings were perfectly adequate and it developed its own fan following. Years later, as people discover both shows, Angel seems to have aged much harder than Buffy. Where the Slayer’s show has charm and humor, Angel is more typical of urban fantasy of the era. It’s dark (almost absurdly so at times), it deals with theological themes, and it takes itself way more seriously.

Angel is “mature” in both senses of the word. On the one hand, it wants to deal with heady, adult themes. On the other hand, it wants to childishly pursue every opportunity for sex and violence. At times, it achieves both objectives. That leads us to a fundamental question: is Angel a good show?

To Live and Die on the WB

The truth is, Angel ran for five seasons and was filled with episodes that were both good and bad. Where Buffy helped pioneer the modern adventure TV show format (with a season-long arc, a couple of mini-arcs and a final fight against the Big Bad), Angel was even more serialized. We can try to add up all the good episodes and all the bad episodes and see which number is higher, but that’s a disingenuous way to figure out good-ness. Instead, it makes sense to consider qualities of the whole run of the show.

And it’s hard to claim Angel wasn’t a well-crafted show (if you like these kind of shows, and since you are reading Buffyversity, I kinda assume that you do). The ensemble ranges from good to superb. The evil lawyers at Wolfram and Hart where always compelling antagonists, and the other villains ranging from vampire Darla, the demon-hunter Holtz, and the demonic Beast were also similarly compelling. The creature effects were if anything, even better than Buffy. The sets were perfect. The Hyperion Hotel is a more memorable locale than anything you’ll find on a Netflix original series.

But there’s no denying that Angel got weird. Some of this weirdness slowly blossomed into awesomeness- I never would have figured that green demonic lounge singer Lorne would click as well as he did. The show often dealt with icky plot beats that feel outdated today- there was more than one forced supernatural pregnancy. In fact, a lot of the sexual politics of the show got weird like when Cordelia does the deed with Conner, a time accelerated baby who’s diapers she was changing less than a year before. What the actual hell?

Angel groo

It’s a show that really went for it a lot of the time. It probably succeeded and failed in equal measure. Sometimes you get the gloriously campy Beastmaster universe the Groosalugg hails from. Sometimes you get Jasmine, a strangely racially coded godess (played by Gina Torres) who wants to enslave all of humanity with her love. I could do this for hours. Sometimes you get a genius demonic Sesame Street parody, and sometimes you get goofy gold painted prophets speaking for “The Powers That Be.”

Alienation Under Demonology

The thing is, Angel had some powerful themes at the core of the show. Even in the disposable season one episodes, or the squick-tastic season four episodes, the foundational questions were endlessly fascinating. Angel is a show all about growing up, staying true to your values, not selling out, and remaining ethical in the face of a heartless system that wants to treat you as less than human.

In the season four finale of Angel, the titular vampire with a soul is given control of the evil law firm of Wolfram & Hart. The evil masterminds figure that giving Angel the resources and luxuries of their organization will ultimately corrupt him. If he’s willing to make a few compromises for the greater good, maybe that will lead him down the slippery slope to true evil. Angel wants to use the powers afforded to him to help people on a huge scale, but his ability to do good is only made possible by massive evil. The money, the teams of researchers, the spells and artifacts at his disposal, all of them come at the cost of evil tricks, stolen souls, and good old fashioned exploitation.

Continued below

Wolfram and Hart office

And come on, how relatable is that? I mean, I don’t have a cushy job for an evil law firm, or even a halfway cushy day job, but that’s a question I grapple with every day. You go vegetarian to save the earth, but all the vegetable growing companies exploit workers and the environment. You think you know who to trust, but can you really trust anybody? Every company is owned by another company and another company and another company, and that last one is probably also owned by Disney or Google or Amazon. And what would happen if you woke up as a top executive at one of those companies? Would you be able to keep it going and stop it from doing evil things? Would you settle for doing fewer evil things, even if you are netting quite a bit of evil?

It’s really philosophically compelling, and the show wisely never quite answers the question. Angel may resist temptation, but some of his friends get really used to feeling rich and important and appreciated. He uses the powers of Wolfram & Hart to save some people, but at the end of the final season, it’s still an evil organization and it did not go away. But the show doesn’t end in the boardrooms of Wolfram & Hart, it ends in a rainy L.A. alley. The city is about to be plunged into Hell and the whole Angel gang stands together, ready to fight. If there’s any takeaway at the end of the story, it’s that all an individual person can do is keep fighting for what’s right, no matter what. That’s a classic moral, but delivered after a story that really calls simple moralizing into question.

So is Angel good?

Buffy is still a beloved classic, even if parts of it haven’t aged well. Angel is less well regarded. And sure, if you quantify all the good episodes and all the bad episodes, Buffy would have a much higher percentage than Angel. But the questions that Angel asked were challenging then and even more challenging now. That makes the whole show a worthwhile endeavor.

With Angel rebooting in comic book form, these questions have a chance to re-enter the conversation, and they are more needed than ever. Things are terrible. Corporate consolidation, government corruption, and rising fascism make every somewhat complicit in evil. It’s hard to know how to be a good person, or even how to sleep at night. The difficulties in our world make us all into Angel. We’re all looking for redemption that we probably will never find. And what should we do then? Maybe the reboot of Angel will have some answers.


//TAGS | Buffyversity

Jaina Hill

Jaina is from New York. She currently lives in Ohio. Ask her, and she'll swear she's one of those people who loves both Star Wars and Star Trek equally. Say hi to her on twitter @Rambling_Moose!

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