Glad I Stuck With "Angel" (PLEASE NO SPOILERS)
 

I'm a huge Buffy fan who's caught only a few scattered episodes of Angel. It never really took.

But needing some episodes of TV to watch on the train, I decided to go with Angel. After the first 5-6 I was about to give up on it, it just seemed to be missing what Buffy had.

However, then I Will Remember You hit. Wow, what a stellar episode. Very well acted, great story, really incorporated alot of what I liked about the Buffy mythos. The next ep about the Scorge is starting out good as well.

So is it all uphill from here?

I remember not being too wowed by Season 1, but everything from there was great. Season 4 was probably my favorite - very serialized.

I thought Season 4 was just ok. Enjoyed everything else a lot, though. I do think Buffy is the better of the two (in fact, it's my favorite show), but I've seen many DVDTalkers name Angel as the superior show.

There's definitely a lot for you to enjoy in Angel, so... enjoy it!

I thought Season 1 was pretty lackluster, to be honest, but stick with it -- it quickly gets good, then great. In my opinion, each season was better than the last (with the possible exception that Season 5 may only have been as good as Season 4, not better).

What he said.

I started watching back when it first aired, and I remember jumping off the train in the first season. However I jumped back on at the beginning of season 2 (caught up downloading or somehow I don't remember), and never got off again. The show is fantastic, and right up there with Buffy.

I thought Season 1 was the weakest of the seasons. Still good stuff, but wait until you see what happens in later seasons. :thumbsup:

Yeah, it's all uphill after Season 1. I had a pretty similar experience as you; I started watching it at the beginning, thought "It's ok, but I don't get the raves about it". But by the time I got to the end of Season 1 and (especially) Season 2, I was hooked, and I understood why people loved it. It really comes into to its own.

They only get progressivley better as the series goes on. Admittingly, season 1 is abit slow, but then its nothing but kick ass.

1) Season 3
2) Season 2
3) Season 5
4) Season 1
5) Season 4 (BLEH)

It's funny. Both Buffy and Angel had fantastic seasons two and three, solid season fives, and a weak season four.

I have to agree with your observation and your season ranks.

I flew through seasons 1-3 this summer and started season 4 but got a new job and just put the show on hold. I'd like to finish the series soon. Very good.

IMHO Buffy is the superior show.

Frankly, nothing has come along that has equaled it for sheer charm, enjoyment and mythos.

I could never get into Angel. After season 2 I gave up on it. Except for a few episodes, I thought it was an OK show.

For me, the true successor to Buffy is Smallville. I've currently just finished watching season 5 on dvd. A quality show with an uplifting feel.

I think Buffy didn't handle transitions as well as Angel did. Each iteration of Angel seemed just as good or better to me whereas I was less satisfied with Buffy after season 3.

If you ask me, Smallville is a poor Buffy substitute. A much truer one was Veronica Mars.

The first season of Angel really feels different than the other seasons. It is a little more formulaic than what comes later and you can tell the writers are getting a feel of what direction to take with the characters.

To quote The O.C.'s Summer Roberts:

"eww!"

I actually just sold off all my season sets of Smallville. I'll go down with the ship and watch it through the end of its run, but it really isn't good at all.


VM is one show I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into in the near future.

I thought "City of..." was a great way to start out the show. I was feeling it more then Buffy at the time. Somewhere along the line during season 1 it just stopped feeling the same way. Season 2 though 5 though it tops Buffy in my opinion. They just hit with the cast with a few additions (and yes I love Gunn along with the rest of them)

They started out as a "monster of the week" show during Season 1, and when that didn't work they switched to a full-blown mythology show like "Buffy".

"Angel" has the distinction of being one of the few shows that demonstrates true character change over the course of the run. There are several characters that end up completely different by the end of the show, but the changes happen very naturally. It is also more of an "adult" show, without the high school/college angst aspect of "Buffy".

They complement each other well, and "Angel" definitely has some ups and downs, but Season 5 is especially good and the show ends on a tremendously high note, which is something that "Buffy" failed to do.

I prefer Angel to Buffy, if only for the fact that I think Angel is much more consistent. While the first season of Angel was working out the kinks (monster of the week type stuff, which Smallville took seasons to work itself out of) it was still good. There were a couple seasons of Buffy that I didn't care for at all (the "Adam/Initiative" season, I took a nap every time Riley was onscreen, the Jonathon/Warren/Andrew stuff got old real quick, and the last season drug on and on until ending fairly satisfactorily, in my opinion). When Angel hit its stride, it was excellent for the duration of its run and ended perfectly. While people are talking about Buffy's logical successor (V. Mars gets my vote), I think Angel's logical successor is Supernatural (which is very underrated in my opinion).

I envy anyone who is just starting this show out. It really does just get better and better and has just an awesome series finale.

With people talking about successors, this is as good of a place as any to ask about Charmed. Serialized or monster of the week? I know it has a lot of fans but I've just never tried it.

Charmed is pretty serialized if you ask me. I have watched random episodes and don't really get what is going on in the show.

When I look at the early episodes, with only Boreanaz, Quinn and Carpenter making up the cast, the word "humble" comes to mind. Such humble beginnings.

Here's a 10MB trailer for the series launch:

http://www.buffyworld.com/angel/videos/angel_s1.mpg

I took every WB ANGEL trailer I could find online and made a DVD out of them for nostalgic reasons.

Yes, add me too the list of "it's all uphill from here". Angel just got better and better. It was the darker, grittier side of Buffy.

Or, another way of putting it... if Buffy were Star Trek-Next Generation, than Angel is Star Trek-Deep Space Nine. Especially towards the latter parts of both shows. While they may occupy the same "universe", they're different colors, almost opposite ends even, of the spectrum.


Wow, you couldn't be more wrong. Smallville has had it's moments, but to me it's always been a pale imitation of Roswell (itself a bit of a Buffy clone).

If you want a "quality" successor to Buffy, then again, count me in with the the folks who said Veronica Mars.

I love Buffy. To give some indication as to how much I enjoyed watching it for the first time, I had received the S1 set for Christmas of 2002, started watching the day after Christmas, and 26 days later, I had watched the entire series up to the current episode of S7 (6 of those days was me waiting for seasons 3 to release in the US and then 4 and 5 to arrive from Australia since they weren't available in the US yet).

I say that to hopefully give a bit more impact when I say that after I finished Buffy, I immediately started watching Angel and think that as a whole, it was the better show. Of course, that's like comparing two near perfect meals created by the same chef, so it's not a negative to one or the other, just by comparison, by the end of Angel's run, I would rank it just above Buffy. The Wesley character ended up having my favorite arc of any character in any series I've watched. Usually when a character ends up as different as Wesley from the first time you see him to the last, there is a lack of development for that change, but with him, they put it all on screen and have the personality changes fit perfectly.