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RSS FeedWhich Joss Whedon TV series was better: Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel?
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| Buffy | 68% | 460 votes | Total: 674 votes | |
| Angel | 32% | 214 votes |
Buffy
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Add to FavoritesWhen Joss Whedon's series first premiered on television, I didn't watch it. I actually watched the premiere of a short-lived comedy (Party Girl) on another station. Three years later when I actually caught an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I was instantly hooked and sad that I had missed my opportunity to be a part of the Buffy craze since its inception. From that moment on, I was hooked and did not miss an episode of Whedon's valley-girl-gone-her o come-drama.
Whedon's success with Buffy was in the juxtaposition of the wildly inventive and sinister supernatural world against the simple and sometimes banal human world. The dialogue was witty. The characters were fun and engaging. And the storylines, though fantastical and morbid, were actually very telling of the human condition.
With the exception of the few episodes preceding the amazingly brilliant musical episode of the ninth season, Buffy never took itself too seriously. And although the plots and characters and messages were universal, the common viewer could watch the show and be entertained without delving into the deeper meanings of the complex and double-edged dialogue or the relationships between the supernatural world and the human world around us. On the other hand, uberfans, like myself, could study the dialogue, explore symbolism and hidden meanings, and thoroughly dissect each intricacy of Whedon's multi-layered creation.
So imagine my excitement when, soon after I was hooked on Whedon's first series, this amazing screenwriter created Angel as a spin-off to his wildly popular Sunnydale Slayer series. But while Buffy seemed to maintain a twisted sense of humor, a blend of worldly insight and mild self-deprecation, Angel didn't have the same light, the same blend of humor and sarcasm, the same twisted honesty that used the supernatural to comment on the state of humanity in general.
Where Buffy succeeded was were Angel seemed to falter. With Angel, Whedon tried to create a more serious world, a darker place that was filled with nervousness and angst. He tried to explore what would happen if heaven and hell collided in one person, or vampire. And although the show was immensely entertaining, it was gloomier, more depressing, and much more taxing on the brain than its wittier predecessor. The dialogue was more serious and more directed at trying to solve the case du jour. At times, the action felt forced, especially between the characters of Cordie and Angel, an unlikely pair in the City of Angels.
However, probably the most revealing comparison between these two shows must be in how Whedon decided to end both series. The final episode of Angel revealed a band of unlikely warriors about to face off against all of hell in order to save Los Angeles, and apparently, all of human kind. No resolution. Does good win out over evil? Does hell triumph over heaven? No answer. No optimism. No pessimism. Nothing. Blackout.
To end Buffy, though, Whedon had to put his story and his creation to rest. He had to destroy Sunnydale, leaving behind a huge crater and an exhausted battalion of slayers and slayers' comrades looking back over the destruction in hopes of driving away to spread their success through the rest of the world. True, lives were lost in the battle, but energy and optimism live on. That's what makes Buffy great: the eternal idea that good does win out over evil. That and, like, the cutest outfits ever to grace a vampire killer. Like, totally.
Learn more about this author, Walter Allen.
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Angel
"Nothing in the world is as it ought to be. It's harsh, and it's cruel, and that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done, or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be."
These words, spoken by the title character of Angel to his troubled son, Connor, in the heart-wrenching season four premiere, have lived with me since the moment I heard them. This and other powerful dialogue, delivered by characters who truly try and often fail to "live as though the world were as it should be," make for a show that, more than just being entertaining, amusing, and often emotional, offers important comments on our world.
Though the central character of this Buffy spin-off is a vampire, fighting to redeem centuries of cruelty by defending humanity from the creatures that lurk in the night, underlying themes in Angel show us that it isn't the monsters and demons out there in the darkness that should scare us it's the ones living within our own hearts. The fact that the overlying evil in the show was a law-firm made up primarily of humans, shows right away that Whedon was creating a world based in very different issues than his vampire slayer and her Scoobies so often dealt with.
From the memorable elevator ride down to hell in season two which turned out to lead right back to our world, since true hell exists in our own violent actions toward each other to the dethroning and murder by the gang of Jasmine a demon goddess whose only crime was to attempt to bring peace and order to our otherwise chaotic world (well, that and eating a couple dozen people a day) in season four, Whedon's spin-off makes an effort to really force us to look inside ourselves, to think about who we are as people, a community, and a race. To think about who we have been, and where we are heading. And this is something that Buffy, for all of its own demon-fighting and deranged goddesses, never made much of an effort to do.
The true heart of the show, of course, comes from the central cast of characters. Every character in Angel is flawed, and has personal struggles that they must overcome. No one's path was darker or more difficult than that of Wesley Windham-Price, portrayed by Alexis Denisof. Starting off halfway through season one as a somewhat bumbling, idealistic and overly self-confidant "rogue demon hunter," following his being fired from the Watchers' Council after his introduction in Buffy, Wesley's character was, more often than not, comic relief. Yet as his time on the show continued, Wesley's path became increasingly darker he was tortured by a former charge, shot by a policeman, had his throat slit and was left for dead by a troubled human girl, was abandoned by all of his friends and loved ones, and finally had two girlfriends in a row die traumatic and painful deaths. And yet, having dealt with more suffering than any human should have to bear, Wesley never turned his back on his desire to help the helpless, and to make the world a better place.
This trend is the same with all of the Angel characters from the sweet and brilliant Winifred Burkle (Amy Acker), who spent years trapped as a slave in a demon dimension, to the vampire with a soul, Angel (David Boreanaz) himself and that's what really makes them champions, and worth remembrance. It isn't that they're perfect people, as they've made mistakes and shown flaws time and time again; it's that they are doing the best that they can despite their own pain, their own weaknesses, and their own suffering. Despite the people they are trying to protect so often being the very ones working against them. These elements come together to produce a story far more inspiring and far more important than that of its predecessor.
Learn more about this author, Rachel Rositano.
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