That's certainly debatable.

L8r

Wasn't the year that Joss had all three shows going simultaneously during Angel S4 and Buffy S7? That's why Nathan Fillon appeared at the end of Buffy S7, because Firefly had ended mid-season. So Sessa has another season to go before you can blame the sub-par Joss episodes on juggling three shows.

I kind of like the Groosalugg. I like the idea of his primal self in the modern times.

Summer Glau was once a real ballerina. They mention it in the Firefly commentary. hmmm and according to tvtome Charisma and Amy were also ballerinas once upon a time.

I knew it, I knew it. Another prediction I saw coming from a mile away. . .

"Couplet" - A pretty fun ep, I thought Angel was funny in this one, making faces at Groo & standing next to him to see who is taller. Really can't stand the Gunn/Fred thing. Possibly the most awkward & phony TV romance I've ever seen.

"Loyalty" - First through all 3 of these eps Wes is great in all of them. He is my favorite character now. He is the Giles of the series where he can be so diverse. He can do comedy, be bumbling & sheepish, & now really do the dark stuff well. Also, now that the plot has fully developed I like Holtz now. The talking hamburger was a nice tough.

"Sleep Tight" - Now of coarse I'm not positive if my prediction was right, you guys all know, but I sais when Connor was first named, that he would probably somehow go into another dimension grow up, & then come back, & I got that all b/c of what they named him. We'll see if I was right.

Really enjoyed this one, I found it odd that such a pivotal episode didn't have Cord in it. I thought this one felt more like a season finale than most season finales on both shows. We have Wes betraying the gang & getting his throat slit, & a great ending. Its hard to see Angel trusting Wes after this. I really liked that Holz's revenge was not to kill Angel, but to take his son & raise him as his own. I have a big problem with Wes alligning with Holtz though. It didn't make sense, all he wanted to do was protect Connor & he could have easily just told the gang about the prophecy & just taken Connor not not tell the gang & still take Connor, I never saw the reason to go to Holtz, he still didn't know much about Holtz or how possibly mad he was, so why go to him alone like that. Also, for someone so smart & in such a hurry to get away with Connor, why wouldn't he just have everything he needed in his Jeep so he could just leave once he took Conner, why on earth would he take the time to go back to his apartment, which would likely be the first place Angel would look for him? Also we never do find out why Sajin (sp) wants to kill Angel so bad but I would think Angel would remember doing something to him, so my guess is this show is going to start doing some time travelling, & Angel did something to him in the future, which is why he doesn't remember. I'm really so into the show now, I can't wait to see where this goes.

I know you weren't fond of my 'highlight of the season' comment, but THIS is what I was referring to. You may not agree with it, but to each his/her own.

Good stuff. Much more to follow.

I loved the talking burger thing! It really cracked me up. And I think this is really when most people started really digging on Wesley's character. Like you said, by now he can go in any direction: comedy, tragedy, psycho, dark, whatever.

It wasn't a matter of "agreeing with it", I just don't want anyone posting things telling me what to look foward to, I want to discover it on my own. I don't know if it was the "highlight" of the season for me, but it certainly was the culmination of the Holtz story, & by the end, I certainly liked the story a lot.

After Joss completed "Once More With Feeling" (Buffy Season 6), he moved on to start work on Firefly. He was hashing out the details of the series and writing the pilot script between working on OMWF and "Waiting in the Wings" (Angel Season 3). Then he went off to make the pilot to Firefly, which included weeks and weeks of casting, set building, crew hiring, etc. before the actual shooting. You'll notice he didn't write or direct anymore episodes of BtVS or AtS until the following seasons.

So technically, he was juggling three massive projects since the midseasons of BtVS S6 and AtS S3. Keep in mind that Whedon had to reshoot part of the pilot to Firefly to appease network execs and get the series pick up. So he probably planned on coming back for the end seasons of the both other series, but couldn't since his commitment to Firefly was now extended.

AtS S4 was left largely in the hands of Jeffrey Bell while Joss and Tim Minear concentrated on Firefly. And Marti Noxon took over the reigns on Buffy during S6 and S7 while Joss concentrated on other projects.

Joss didn't have three series concurrently in production until Buffy's seventh season and Angel's fourth, but that doesn't mean he wasn't working on them beforehand.

HA! I'm glad you dig Wesley's growth, Sessa. It was right around this time that Wes became my favorite character, too.

BING!

L8r

Thank you for that timeline, which is certainly more accurate than Barry's post (now deleted) that I was responding to. I still think that my main point stands that whatever deficiencies "Waiting in the Wings" may have isn't the result of Joss having three simultaneous productions going.

Actually, the series was picked up after Joss and Tim submitted the script to "The Train Job." The reshoots for the pilot were never a factor in the series getting picked up, and Joss has voiced doubts about whether the execs ever even watched the re-edited pilot.

THIS was mainly what I was talking about with your precog predictions, Sessa, but didn't want to say anything for fear of spoiling anything. I'm glad you're digging this storyline, since it is, I feel, when the show really hit it its stride.

Also, to answer your question about Wesley, you're right about how he should have just told the group. But he didn't go to Holtz with this intention of allying with him. He wanted to try to reason with him and tell him that Angel was not the man he knew. He has a soul, he saves lives. Something Angel never tells anyone. When he first met with Holtz in the present, in fact, he said something like "I've done a lot of wrong to you, but I'm not going to justify myself to you", when perhaps if he did, things would be different (Holtz proves that wrong when he finds out about the soul but doesn't care, though Angel and Wes didn't know that). Then Holtz tells Wes that he's attacking tonight, whether the baby is there or not. Wesley was trying to make the best out of a shitty situation. He had no intention of helping Holtz or giving Connor to him. It only appeared that way to the group, since Holtz's bitch got the drop on Wes and slit his throat. I agree, like most of you, that this is when Wesley became my favorite character of either shows. I mean he desperately didn't want to believe the prophecies he was reading. He spend weeks researching, all nighters for days on end looking for some loophole or explanation. Then there was the Hamburger (which was awesome) that told him the prophecy was true, and the icing on the cake was Angel's wierd-ass behavior around Connor thanks to Wolfram and Hart. It was lose-lose and Wes made the only decision he thought he had. Anyway, i'm glad you're really digging the show, this is a fun ride.

P.S. - as far as Badass Wes goes, the begining of it for me was the following -

Goon - "How about I slit your throat?" (or some other random threat, I forget)

Wes - "You could..." (decks him in the throat)... "or you could just lay there and gag for a while."


Awesome

Yeah its funny you love wes now , since you HATED him when he first arrived on the scene in buffy. Which I had no hate for him, but can surely see your point. I remember because someone mentioned it in the buffy thread when you said aweful things about wes lol.

I thought EVERYONE hated Wes on Buffy. Man he sure bugged the hell out of me. The crazy thing is to look back on his interaction with Angel. I think their only contact was when he busted into the mansion with some watcher goons and sucker punched Angel to make off with Faith. This is also the same Wes that got he-bitch-man-slapped rather easily by some jobber vamp at graduation, and now he's a Rogue demon hunter/ Boss of Angel Inc./ estranged Badass... man I love his arc.

Doc

I agree and didn't mean to appear to be saying otherwise. I think WitW is exactly what Joss wanted (just like OMWF), I just didn't dig it too much. No, but I think his attention to Firefly is a big reason for a lot of the stupidity in S6 BtVS (some people don't seem to notice or care, but there's a discernable difference in quality to me), and a big reason for the gloriousness of S4 AtS. Because Joss wanted to play in Firefly sandbox, Marti Noxon took the reigns on Buffy and Jeffrey Bell took the reigns on Angel. One took the series to new heights, the other nearly killed it. I'll let you guess who is who.

I wonder why Barry deleted his post? *shrug*

L8r

How could I or anyone have possibly predicted what the character would become, or that he would even stick around. The most shocking thing I've seen on Angel so far is his first ep, b/c I completely thought he was just a throw away character. When he was on Buffy he was just this whiny British twerp & with a "schtick" that I found annoying. I never would have thought that the actor would be the best performance on Angel & maybe the best on both shows after Giles.

"Forgiving" - These endings just keep getting better, it must have sucked so bad watching this when it first aired & having to wait a week or more until the next ep. Fred & Gunn still completely suck & have ruined two characters that I liked (well, I was more indifferent to Gunn, wouldn't say I liked him). Linwood is also awful, maybe the worste bad guy of both series. But everything else was good. Literally out of every ending from both series this was the first one that completely caught me off guard, I think I even jumped a bit. Now, I don't think it was real, I think it was a dream or something, it seemed WAY to out of character & he used words that Angel would never use or at least hasn't, I don't think he has ever cursed & just the way he phrases stuff seemed like another person, not even Angelus. Plus, just earlier Angel sayed he would never hurt anyone they care about and I thought they proved that Wes was innocent & didn't give the baby to Holtz, he got his throat slit trying to keep it from Holtz. I have no doubt now that I was right all along about Conner & that we will eventually see him all grown up. I really hope it gets explained how Angel fathered a baby though, that is still bugging me. And I realized in this ep that the show really doesn't need Cordy, & I still find it very odd that all of this would be happening without her being there, the actress & the character.

Aw man, I forgot how shocking this ending was. No matter what Angel's faced in the past, we've never seen him completely lose it. When Buffy died, when he snapped at her over the Faith ordeal, even when Darla came back and wolfram and Hart had Dru re-sire her he was only in slow burn seething hatred mode. We've never seen Angel in a completely emotionally dead, hopeless rage, and while at times I question some acting choices Boreaniz (sp?) makes, I thought this in particular was a highlight. (And just to toot Alexis Denisof's horn some more, that look he gave as the camera was dollying out and it cut to black was just harrowing.)

Doc

I remember thinking Wesley was such a bafoon on Buffy and didn't care for him. A lot of people disliked Fred when she came on too but if any characters have evolved more, it's these two and they are probably two of thethe richest characters in the Buffy/Angel Universe. They are certainly my favorites.

Totally agree.

If I recall corectly there was more then a month's wait from last episode to this one. Can you imagine seeing the end of "Sleep Tight" and then waiting 6 weeks to see "Forgiving"?

Charisma Carpenter took some time off from the series during this season. I think in an interview that came out last year she finally spilled the beans on everything that was happening, but I don't remember where I read it or what it said. Basically, there were some issues between her and David Greenwalt I believe (one of the producers) and she took some time off. She did come back, but . . .



L8r

Cordelia's absence worked in the series' favor - She would have been there for Wes, but he was alienated from the others (Gunn and Fred: their romance, Angel: he's trying to avoid altogether because of the prophecy)

He had no one to turn to, and Lorne spent all of his time with the baby. Cordy would never have let Wesley do what he did, but she wasn't there to stop it.

About "Sleep Tight" and "Forgiving" and having to wait all that time...it was agony!!!!

It's moments like that that made me realize just how much I loved watching this show.
I cared about seeing what would happen next.

...

hdtv00,

Do you think it's wise to post your first statement without a spoiler tag?

L8r

Spolierized just so the mighty Sessa can't gleem anything off the statement.

ETA: Wait how the sentence is written my post makes no sense...yeah lets get some spoiler action.

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