I liked the show alot...Doublemeat Palace being the worst fucking episode of all time, and ironically, the first one I ever saw.

I didn't mind the darkness...especially the whole Spike storyline. I remember thinking post-rape attempt that the show was going downhill and could never be saved, then loving his soul quest resolution, which I originally thought was a bid for power of course to fuck her up.

I never read anything about the show beforehand, so I had a month or two of viewing which rocked.

Then, I started listening to Joss and hated the show a little...fuck all this bullshit women empowerment talk. Who the fuck cares? I didn't get that from the show, I just got an entertaining ride. No one reads Elektra because they are for women's empowerment, they do it to watch a badass bitch fuck shit up.

Same with male Buffy viewers.

When Whedon does interviews, he's sooooo heavy-handed with this shit. True empowerment would be equality - and equality would be to not fucking sell it over and over. A true moral doesn't need to be explained, and a true artist would say, "Get your own moral from the story." It should be obvious.

I don't know. Still like the show for entertainment and great stories, just wish I never would have watched the interviews.

Also hated the 'man who watches' bullshit he tagged onto Xander at the end. He started out as the 'man without powers'.

For all of Whedon's claims of feminism and female empowerment, it's kind of curious how the female characters tend to get killed off right and left, while the make characters get to live.

Let's take a look at the people who appeared in the main credtis:

Buffy - alive
Xander - alive
Willow - alive
Giles - alive
Cordelia - DEAD
Oz - alive
Angel - alive
Riley - alive
Spike - alive
Anya - DEAD
Dawn - alive
Tara - DEAD
Doyle - DEAD
Wesley - DEAD
Gunn - alive
Fred - DEAD (I guess, they made quite a point of Illyria not being Fred)
Harmony - alive
Connor - alive
Lorne - alive

Wesley is really the only long-running male character that was killed off. As opposed to Fred, Cordelia, Tara, and Anya.

And there's also a habit (seen on Buffy mostly) of male characters who get to leave the show alive (Oz, Riley) while the females get killed off. (Tara, Anya, Cordelia.)

I could also get into issues of classicism, where you have wealthy and middle class characters who have more integrity than poor or working-class characters. It's generally the characters from "poor" backgrounds -- Lindsey, Faith, Gunn -- who tend to willingly give into temptation and embrace evil while the middle and upper-class characters are the ones with the integrity and strict moral codes.

But when you get down to specifics, the "Tara dies/Willow turns evil" plotline was originally supposed to be "Oz dies/Willow turns evil" but Seth Green left the show early.

Joss wanted to kill off a regular on the finale, and Emma Caulfield had said she was tired of the character and had no interest in reprising it on "Angel."

I don't know if he originally planned on killing Cordelia, but he had to change the whole season's storyline when she showed up and said "I'm preggers!"

Angel, Spike, Gunn, and Lorne all died at the end of Angel.

They weren't shown as dying at the close of season 5, and in the comics that make up season 6 -- which Joss has said are canon -- they're...well, in Hell but alive.

ANGEL wasn't a show about female empowerment. That may have carried over a bit from Buffy but was never a focus. It was about adults surviving in the Big City, helping to prevent others from being swallowed up by it which was we all know, wasn't easy to do.

I actually haven't read the "After The Fall" season 6 comics, because I would have the hardest time reading them. I'm just not a comic book reader at all so it has nothing to do with the story.

I just have problem's were the comics were leading the story. I never thought I would prefer the ending of "ANGEL" to what the sixth season could have potentially be...

I've been reading 'After the Fall' in trades, and I really dug the first collection, although the flashbacks that made up the second didn't really hold my interest.

Actually, I think the message of the final moments of season 5 -- that the fight will always go on -- was pretty much note-for-note perfect. I'd hate to see Buffy end for good on the lousy note it closed on, but I don't think there would've been a better way for Angel to end.

I've maintained from the night it aired that "Not Fade Away" featured the absolute perfect end to the series, though many still feel it was....less than...and that's being nice about it.

Whatever.

Sucks for them.