Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION - Posts Tagged "angel-buffy-the-vampire-slayer"

If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. -- Angel

I find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse. -- Riley Finn

ANGEL was one of the more unlikely television shows of its time. To understand this, it is necessary to grasp that the show from which it was spun off, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, was derived from a second-rate feature film of the same name, debuted almost five years after that movie had disappeared at the box office, and was itself a low-budget, mid-season replacement whose debut season totaled only twelve episodes. Hell, BUFFY was even shot on 16mm film. Nothing about it augered well for success. Life would not be worth living, however, if every long shot missed its mark, and the ultimate success of BUFFY allowed ANGEL to take wing. Before we can take this particular trip down the Lane, however, it's necessary to give some background.

BUFFY was the story of Buffy Summers, a suburban teenage fashionista with a sarcastic tongue, a big heart, and a decided taste for quirky pop culture references. By day, Buffy was a mediocre student at Sunnydale High School in Southern California: by night she was the Slayer, a supernaturally-powered warrior with the strength and skill necessary to fight the vampires, demons, witches, and various other monsters which happened to plague her adoptive hometown. BUFFY operated from the first principle that since real life high school is basically hell, Sunnydale High should would be a metaphor for this harsh reality, literally sitting on the mouth of hell itself, with the monsters metaphorically standing in for the various angsts, fears and phobias of teenagers everywhere. What set BUFFY apart from most superheroes -- Spider Man would be an exception -- was the fact that her powers did not spare her the suffering of the ordinary 16 year-old girl. She agonized about clothing choices, wept over boys, endured bullying from bitchy classmates, caught hell from her divorced mom for flunking classes. Her woes were exacerbated rather than eased by her calling as a Slayer, and she often rebelled against the constraints imposed upon her by her duties, leading to yet more groundings and embarrassing "go to the principal's office" moments. In this way, Whedon was able to create a show about a young vampire huntress which may in fact be the most eloquent comment about high school ever put on film.

As the title suggests, BUFFY balanced comedy with horror -- always a very difficult task, but in this show's case, one which was brilliantly carried off by a small team of superb writers. And these writers saw from the outset that while the attractive Buffy would naturally draw male attention, she needed one abiding love interest who could intrigue her, challenger her, and altogether beat her at her own game. His name was Angel.

Angel is introduced in the pilot as a handsome, mysterious, not terribly friendly stranger who drops in from time to time to issue cryptic warnings, make Buffy's heart flutter, and then slip off into the shadows. We later learn that he himself is a vampire originally known as Angelus, one who in his bloodsucking days was so vicious even other vampires were afraid of him, until at last he crossed the wrong gypsy, who cursed him by restoring his soul, and thus his conscience. Haunted by remorse, he now works for good, and thus befriends Buffy and ultimately falls in love with her. Unfortunately for the two of them, the gypsies wrote some fine print into his curse: if he ever knows a moment of true happiness, he will lose his soul and once again become evil. So naturally, when Angel and Buffy finally get it on is BTVS season 2, Angel becomes Angelus again, commits a bunch of horrible murders, and is ultimately sent to hell. When he returns in Season 3, soul restored once more, he realizes he can never be with Buffy, lest he risk becoming evil, and departs for Los Angeles to start his unlife over again.

Such is the in-universe backstory. In the real world, Whedon and Greenwalt had decided in Season 3 of BUFFY that David Boreanaz, the actor who played Angel, had enough charisma and acting chops to carry his own series. So they put ANGEL together, and armed him with a sidekick drawn from BUFFY's ranks: Cordelia Chase, the beautiful, bitchy nemesis of Buffy played by Charisma Carpenter, who has gone to L.A. from Sunndale to seek fame. There they encounter Doyle (Glenn Quinn), an enigmatic, offbeat Irishman with connections to "the powers that be," who guides him on his quest for redemption by showing him visions of people in distress who require his help. Angel, who is famous for brooding, sulking, and lurking in shadows, doesn't really want the job, but ultimately comes to accept it as the only possible path to redemption for all his innumerable sins. So he forms a detective agency which "helps the helpless" by socking evil, in human and demonic form, on its collective jaw. Meanwhile, he reflects on something called the Shanshu Prophecy, which hints that one day, as the apocalypse looms, he may recover his humanity, and be able to live a normal life -- presumably running off into a literal sunset with Buffy.

From the outset, ANGEL was a show of a very different character from its progenitor. BUFFY could be, and increasingly was, dark in tone as it continued its seven year-run, but ANGEL never pretended to be anything else. The comedy was always there, but the series, from the pilot onward, placed all of its Tarot cards on the blood-spattered table. On its surface, ANGEL was a sarcastic, supernatural take on Los Angeles itself: many episodes ridicule the city's traffic, its prices, and its culture, especially as it pertains to the entertainment industry. It was also a savage roast of the legal profession generally and lawyers specifically: Angel's principal nemesis is not a demon or a vampire or a secret brotherhood of assassins, but a downtown law firm called Wolfram & Hart, whose unseen "senior partner" is presumably the devil himself.

Deeper than this, however, ANGEL was a study of good and evil, specifically the similarities between the two in methodology, the way they seem to feed off of and require each other; and the emotional, physical, spiritual and psychological toll of fighting evil when evil seems to be everywhere and tireless. The existential woe that Wheedon only occasionally touches upon in BUFFY rings like a dirge all throughout ANGEL. Our grim-jawed hero is often exhausted by his ceaseless battle, and is so courageous in large part because he secretly (and sometimes openly) longs for death. Not every soul he reaches out to protect is saved or even wants to be saved, he occasionally makes huge mistakes which cost lives or damage people irreparably, and his past is continuously reaching out to haunt him -- sometimes literally. Even more, he begins to hate his enemies at Wolfram & Hart so deeply that he plays very roughly indeed with them, in one episode simply walking away while several dozen of them are slaughtered by vampires as they plead for his help. At different times he deliberately alienates or harms his friends, sacrifices innocent lives for the greater good, and causes the deaths of evildoers simply because he feels they have it coming.

Cordelia, too, undergoes a difficult journey. Vain, shallow, selfish and prone to tactless cruelty, we watch her humiliated again and again as she tries and fails to break into the acting world. Ultimately burdened with Doyle's visions, which cause her excruciating pain and threaten her life, she begins to accept her role as a "champion" of the helpless, but like Angel, she often craves release from her responsibilities, often through romantic dalliances that inevitably end in failure. And like Doyle before her, she is also called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice. Indeed, sacrifice is a recurring theme in the series: its fifth, final, and arguably best season, is a kind of scorched-earth campaign against the viewer, mercilessly killing off beloved characters at such a pace that it almost resembles an installment of FRIDAY THE 13TH. I am trying to avoid as many spoilers as possible, but when one lists the regular and recurring characters on this show -- and it's quite a list -- the ones who survive even to the last, very ambiguous, frame do not make extensive reading. Indeed, the show's whole fatalistic, existential tenor can be summed up in this exchange between Angel and a lawyer from Wolfram & Hart:

Angel : You're not gonna win.

Holland Manners : Well... no. Of course we aren't. We have no intention of doing anything so prosaic as "winning." [Holland laughs]

Angel : Then why?

Holland Manners : I'm sorry. Why what?

Angel : Why fight?

Holland Manners : That's really the question you should be asking yourself, isn't it? See, for us, there is no fight. Which is why winning doesn't enter into it. As a corporation, we go on... no matter what. You see, Angel... our firm has always been here on Earth... in one form or another. The Spanish Inquisition. The Khmer Rouge Genocide... one of my favorites. I personally was there. We were here when the very first modern cave man clubbed his neighbor on the head with a rock for stealing his dinner. See, we're in the hearts and minds of every single living being on this planet. And that, friend, is what's making things so difficult for you. That is the source of Wolfram & Hart's power. You see, the world doesn't work in spite of evil, Angel. It works with us. It works because of us.

Like all long-running shows, ANGEL changed course more than once. The original cast of three ballooned at times to as many as seven or eight regulars, the standalone, task-of-the-week style of the first season gradually became overshadowed by increasingly complex, season-long story arcs, and by the fourth season the show had become, in the words of one of its own characters "a convoluted, supernatural soap opera." Sometimes the darkness of the plotlines could be almost impenetrable: poor Wesley Wyndham-Price (Alexis Denisoff), who starts as a stammering bungler used mostly for comic relief, becomes unrecognizably bitter and violent, kneecapping or stabbing people who displeased him, and while it often made for great drama, it was just as often depressing. Thankfully, some budget cuts forced upon it by the network prompted Whedon and Greenwalt to course correct for what became the final season: Angel and his surviving cohorts found themselves not warring with, but in charge of, Wolfram & Hart, and joined by the insolent punk vampire Spike (James Marsters), who was always good for cutting one-liners and assorted mayhem. This also gave J. August Richards, who played the uneducated street thug Charles Gunn, a chance to do some ferocious acting when he accepts, against his better judgment, a devil's bargain "upgrade" to become a genius lawyer. Inded, the final season, even more nihilistic than the others, took on the idea of whether any compromise with evil is even possible. Its answer was emphatic, but not easy to watch. I remember finishing the series finale feeling as if I had just watched the end of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" several times over after my dog died. BUFFY's final episode was apocalyptic and bloody, but ultimately left the heroine completely in charge of her own destiny, with most of her nearest and dearest still breathing. Not this time, kid. ANGEL began on a very dark note in "City Of....", with our titular hero failing his first mission. It ended like a goddamned Leonard Cohen lyric:

You want it darker/we kill the flame

So where does that leave ANGEL, twenty years after it went off the air? What is its legacy, and is it still relevant?

I have occasionally stated that living in the shadow of BUFFY did not stunt ANGEL's growth, and this is true: at its best it was as good as its progenitor, with some episodes ("The Prodigal", "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?", " "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco", "Tomorrow", "The Girl In Question") rising to truly dizzying heights of brilliance, pathos, tragedy, humor, or at least palm-tingling suspense. Indeed, the second season of the show is almost cruel in the way it increases the stakes in every episode, deftly moving from present to past as it at first sketches and then paints, in blood, the long history of Angel's relationship with Darla (Julie Benz), the beautiful, sadistic vampire who sired him centuries before. On the other hand, there is no question that the show struggled at times, and became increasingly dense and unapproachable to viewers tuning in for the first time: the fourth season is ultimately a mess, the villain was a bust, Charisma Carpenter's unplanned real-life pregnancy forced the writers to scribble in yet another supernatural baby story (the third of the show's five year run), and ultimately led to her departure after an ugly fight with producers -- the consequences of which came back to haunt Whedon many years later. It is for certain that ANGEL produced nothing like the cultural resonance of BUFFY, which not only changed the way most films and television shows are written, but also gave birth to a whole slew of imitations. ANGEL certainly did nothing of the sort. Its brooding tone and tendency to fall into moral ambiguity are common nowadays, but don't find their roots here.

This is not to say, however, that the show lacks a legacy. If BUFFY was the perfect metaphor for high school and, to some extent in its fourth season, college, ANGEL is an equally perfect metaphor for the terrible struggles people undergo in Los Angeles trying to live their dreams or find their purpose while simultaneously trying to hold onto basic values, or simply survive. BUFFY always struck me as a deeply personal show, told from the outcast's perspective: Buffy and her friends Willow and Xander, and even their stuffy patriarch Giles, are all essentially outsiders looking in, not only at normal life, but at acceptance: loneliness and rejection, both social and that brought about by duty, are recurring themes for all of them. ANGEL goes even further into this territory, as it is clearly an analogy and an allegory both. Whedon and Greenwalt are pointing at the city in which they live, the industry in which they work, the metaphorically bloodsucking lawyers and studio suits they have to deal with, and offering a kind of primal scream of existential anguish, broken up by outbursts of hysterical laughter at the absurdity of it all. Hollywood is, after all, a place where dreams go to die, and ironically, the ones that die the hardest are often the ones which come true. Every character in ANGEL -- Cordelia, Doyle, Gunn, Wesley, Spike, Fred, Harmony, Lindsey, Kate, Holtz, Lila, Darla, Drusilla, Connor, Holland, and Angel himself -- are all looking for something, questing for something, desirious of something, and nearly all of them get it. How they "get it" is another matter entirely.

If the age we live in has a central theme, it is probably cynicism, the quality of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. ANGEL is not a cynical show. It holds price and value in equal esteem, and sometimes it has to be reminded, painfully, of the former. Its hero is a vampire, but the series has a beating heart. Running from 1999 - 2004, it reflects the deeper angst of a transitional age: night was falling on the prosperous, happy-go-lucky 90s, and while nobody could see the shape of the post 9/11 future, it looked decidedly more frightening than the immediate past. Something had gone wrong with the rosy outcome we were promised and expected. Tribulations had begun, apocalypse was coming, and we would be in need of champions. But the champions would not be our father's champions: they would reflect the spirit of this new era. They would be dark, they would be brooding, they would crack jokes at inappropriate times, they would occasionally flee from their responsibilities, and often fight very dirtily indeed. They would fight this fight because it needed fighting, because it was the right thing to do, but they did not expect to win, and they did not expect to survive.

On that score alone, I would say ANGEL is more relevant than ever. Like Wolfram & Hart, it will go on...no matter what.