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Allen
Professor
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« Reply #41 on: 02-20-2004 15:38 »
« Last Edit on: 02-20-2004 15:38 »
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Watched last Wednesday's episode. Pure gold. Absolutely hilarious! Joss was right, they are hitting their stride. I'm very appreciative of the stand-alone eps with just a hint of something bigger going on behind the scenes. Last season was essentially one long episode. I missed a few and was majorally bummed by it. But this is a season that you can pick and choose and not fall behind too much. BTW, all you naysayers of the show, I respect your opinion to the extent the law requires, but I don't like them. The characters on Angel have/had grown since they left Buffy and they're better for it. I love Wesley's character more now than I did on Buffy. In fact I hated him on Buffy. He made Giles look like a party animal. Cordelia is NOT one-sided anymore. On Buffy she was a snot who got mixed up in the battle between things that go bump in the night. She adapted well to life on Angel and soon she was slaying just as well as the rest of them. There are signs that her old self still lingers, but no one can completely do a 180 on personality. As the star of the show, we got more depth to Angel. On Buffy he was just a vamp with a soul. On his own show, he became so much more. Season 2 taught him (and us) that having a soul doesn't automatically make you good. It's a choice you have to make every day. There's tons of bad stuff out there that makes you want to give in. You have to fight for it. He also had a kid. Personally, I hate the direction they went with that, but you can't have a baby on a show like that for long. If he could have just accepted what happened and moved on, but noo! The kid's more broody than dear old dad This season is/was a special treat because Spike came back. If anyone deserved to come back from Buffy, it was Spike. Fortunately Spike did most of his growing on Buffy. It is regrettable that they're canceling Angel because he hasn't been used much of late and we won't get to see if he can grow anymore than he already has. Man, that was a long post, but I felt I had to talk about what made Angel great. One last thing that made the show truly great is that there was no strict black and white. Unlike most of Buffy, there are good demons. Evil is just as hard to make out just as in the real world. I realize that Buffy had good demons too, but this wasn't apparent off the bat.
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Lurrr
Professor
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Oh I dunno, look at the amount of people that watch godawful shite like Coranation Street, Eastenders et al. People are prepared to invest the mental agility to follow ever more contrived soap plots but when confronted with a SciFi show asking the same involvement they just can't be bothered. A couple of things to bear in mind about soaps: 1) They are exposition heavy. There is always one character who spends most of the episode saying "And it looks like Audrey may really be alive, even though we thought she was run over by her schizophrenic transexual ex-husband last week." 2) There are at least two episodes of a given soap a week meaning that you can quickly catch up with what's going on (that is, if you missed all the coverage in the Radio Times ) 3) Soaps are not stuck in crappy timeslots. 4) Soaps, despite being stupidly complicated at times, never deal with parallel universes, temporal paradoxes, clones, etc. I remember Joe Straczynski saying on a Babylon 5 commentary that if he could write the series again he would get rid of a lot of the exposition and just rely on the audience having seen the previous episodes. Which is where Farscape fell down. Most mainstream TV viewers don't want to have to actually think, they want to just switch off and have everything beamed into their heads. I've never watched Angel and only saw a couple of episodes of Buffy which didn't grab me at all so I have no strong opinion one way or the other. I will say that the loss of Angel will only mean even more time for the networks to show yet another reality show, or an extra episode of Eastenders. no it's not a photoshop. In next weeks ep Angel will be turned into a puppet. This will either be very very lame or very very funny. I'm not sure yet. Really? I might actually watch that...
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PCC Fred
Space Pope
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Originally posted by Lurrr: I remember Joe Straczynski saying on a Babylon 5 commentary that if he could write the series again he would get rid of a lot of the exposition and just rely on the audience having seen the previous episodes. Which is where Farscape fell down. Most mainstream TV viewers don't want to have to actually think, they want to just switch off and have everything beamed into their heads. I consider myself a far more dedicated TV viewer than most people, but I tried getting into Farscape during it's third season, but gave up because it was too confusing. Maybe all these JMS wannabes may want to consider that most successful sci-fis - The Twilight Zone, the early X-Files and the first two Star Treks - consisted mostly of stand-alone episodes. Other sci-fis may have been cleverer, but they didn't get enough people off their tractors.
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Lurrr
Professor
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I personally love Farscape but I do realise that it's difficult to get into if you haven't watched it right from the beginning. It pays to be a dedicated viewer but I doubt most people (in general, not just sci-fi fans) take their television that seriously. If it doesn't grab you from the word go most people won't stick with it. Farscape was the extreme of that in that if you didn't watch every episode you could easily get lost.
With Babylon 5 there were times when characters would be explaining what's going on simply to benefit short-term viewers. Although it helped them, to long term viewers it just took time away from seeing the White Star blowing shit up. It didn't make it a worse serious, but it's the only complaint I have when re-watching the series now.
Watching Star Trek: TNG again lately has also made me realise the benefits in having some good quality standalone episodes. If a series like that could rely totally on individual stories and maintain a consistently high quality output throughout most of its run then today's writers must be running out of steam.
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Allen
Professor
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Well this hasn't been posted in for months. I raise this dead thread with an ironic twist: The show aired its last episode tonight. It was a doozy of one too. A lot of series have ended on sickeningly sweet notes. This one went out the way it came in: fighting. I will say that I wish we could have a glimpse of what the show would have been after this ep as major changes occurred. Oh well. At least we had some quality programming for five years and all you naysayers can go stuff it I will miss the show and I hope to see another Whedon inspired show again soon.
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winna
Avatar Czar
DOOP Ubersecretary
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It was a very good series finale. But it ends almost demanding a "To Be Continued" almost movie-esque. I was watching these last episodes very intently up until the sereis finale, I just can't believe its over. I was more of a casual viewer and it kind of saddens and angers me that I didn't watch this show a little more. Also didn't Buffy end not that long ago, why Angel so close in its footsteps? Anyways time for another spinoff...... "You're a bloody puppet!!!"
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Lurrr
Professor
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I'm one of those people who doesn't understand the point of slagging off a show in front of all it's fans. But then again, I'm just full of crazy ideas!
I didn't watch Angel (and only watched a couple of episodes of Buffy) but it really is just another victim of the current obsession with soaps and reality shows. Whether I liked it or not, at least it showed some originality.
And i'm still after watching that episode with the puppet...
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Ninaka
commandant cleavage
DOOP Secretary
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That puppet ep had me in stitches. So hilarious and creepy at the same time! It even got the attention of my older brother who had previously slagged me about being so obcessed with the buffy/angel series. He actually found it easy to watch, and it was one of those episodes that wasn't too crucial in the whole story/plot of the season. Even though I missed the end of last season and subsequently the start of this season, I'm tuned in very intently, without feeling like I've missed too much - well sometimes I get a shock like when Andrew appeared a few eps ago. That was seriously cool... Anyway...
I also agree with Lurrr where people have a go at a show infront of all their fans. It's actually done some frustration when I have to go and read a whole thread to see what others think, and all I can see is "I never watched the show but based on my uneducated opinion blah blah blah" and "well it sucked anyway. Too bad".. I don't think that's not what this thread's here to encourage. Thank goodness for people like Allen also. Who can reason it in such an eloquent way. Thanks guys for sticking up for Angel. It's definitely one of the greater shows on air.
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Shaucker
Professor
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Just a tidbit I learned from the TV guide: The people that brought you Buffy are bringing Buffy back...in cartoon form. Yep, the animated Buffy the Vampire Slayer...all the same people doing voices (mmmm Alyson Hannigan), but not Sarah Michelle Gellar.
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~FazeShift~
Moderator
DOOP Ubersecretary
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I saw the final episode a few weeks ago and I think I kinda liked it, it's a shame they had only a few episodes left to work with. Strangely, I saw the Buffy final after the Angel one, and saw how rushed Angels ending was compared to Buffys. Bah, Anya should have survived, bloody hell! Why didn't that nerd guy die instead? "I'd like to take the dragon..."
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