Watching S2

[snick_backup]

So I've started rewatching Buffy S2, just for a change of pace from rewatching S4 eps for Seraph. Stuff I've noticed:

1. The first moment of the show when I sat up and decided I might be a fan was, typically, a Spike moment: that last scene in School Hard when he drags The Annoying One up into the sunlight. I was bored by the Master the entire first season and prepared to be annoyed by Kid Vamp for the entire second season, and suddenly, poof! Spike made him go away. Yay, Spike. It was my first sign that the show was going beyond the campiness of the first season.

2. I think one of the major reasons I have such trouble with Angel, and particularly with Angel/Buffy, is that I just can't reconcile the uncertain, inconfident Angel of early BtVS with the take-charge, my-way-or-the-highway Angel of Ats. Compare Angel of Buffy S1 ("Why don't you do something?" "Because I'm afraid.") with the Ats flashback ep "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," wherein Angel's antisocial and ruthless. Where did this shrinking violet Angel come from? I realize that he's supposed to be feeling his way around humans again for the first time in a hundred years, but yeesh. If I squint I can almost see the Angel who repeatedly makes decisions "for Buffy's good" without her input, but mostly I just see a really awkward teenager with his first crush - which is, yanno, pretty funny considering his past.

So basically I'm saying, the writers had no idea who this guy was for the couple of seasons they wrote him, as evidenced by the fact that he has, like, no personality. Of course, it doesn't help that it'd take Boreanaz a while longer to figure out this whole acting thing...

3. The S2 DVD menus have seriously cheesy graphics. Swooping around mausoleums and naked statuary? What? And the DVD's themselves have hearts behind the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" logo.

Comments

[rahirah]

I sometimes try to fanwank Angel's behavior in S1, and then I throw my hands up and surrender. *g*

[snickfic]

I think it may be a lost cause. Plus there's the more troublesome issue of fanwanking his fashion in S1... *g*

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

2. I think one of the major reasons I have such trouble with Angel, and particularly with Angel/Buffy, is that I just can't reconcile the uncertain, inconfident Angel of early BtVS with the take-charge, my-way-or-the-highway Angel of Ats. Compare Angel of Buffy S1 ("Why don't you do something?" "Because I'm afraid.") with the Ats flashback ep "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," wherein Angel's antisocial and ruthless. Where did this shrinking violent Angel come from? I realize that he's supposed to be feeling his way around humans again for the first time in a hundred years, but yeesh. If I squint I can almost see the Angel who repeatedly makes decisions "for Buffy's good" without her input, but mostly I just see a really awkward teenager with his first crush - which is, yanno, pretty funny considering his past.

So basically I'm saying, the writers had no idea who this guy was for the couple of seasons they wrote him, as evidenced by the fact that he has, like, no personality. Of course, it doesn't help that it'd take Boreanaz a while longer to figure out this whole acting thing...

You speak the thoughts that are in my head. :)

Angel's character is just poorly written on BtVS. There's no way around it. He's not so much a character as a love interest for Buffy. In that way, he's basically an accessory whose personality changes to suit whatever's needed to forward Buffy's development (Which, admittedly, is a nice change of pace from the usual trope of a chick being the personality-less love interest).

Anyway, it still floors me that of all the characters on the show, Angel got his own spin-off. It's just...gah!

3. The S2 DVD menus have seriously cheesy graphics. Swooping around mausoleums and naked statuary? What? And the DVD's themselves have hearts behind the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" logo.

Oh yeah. God, I hate those DVD menus. Plus, you have to swoop through the graveyard to get to an episode. It's a pain in the ass.

[snickfic]

(Which, admittedly, is a nice change of pace from the usual trope of a chick being the personality-less love interest)

I wonder if, for precisely that reason, I would have noticed it less for a girl? I hadn't thought of that before. I'm trying to even think of a comparable female Whedon character. Well, Fred drove me up the wall pretty much her entire stay on Ats, but even then it's not quite the same; she was never the love interest to the lead the way Angel was to Buffy. And at least Acker could act.

Anyway, it still floors me that of all the characters on the show, Angel got his own spin-off. It's just...gah!

Yes! Me being an Oz fangirl, I think an Oz spinoff would have been awesome, although of course it wouldn't address the fact that the reason Green left Buffy in the first place was to go do movies. *pouts at Seth Green* Or a Faith spinoff would be fab. Or, heck, I'd be totally behind a Giles spinoff - it's not like his character ever got a really thorough exploration on BtVS...

[silverusagi]

My sister's boyfriend said the S2 DVD menus look like a bad videogame, LOL.

[snickfic]

They are a thing of wonder. And then there are the swoopy sound effects...

[silverusagi]

I'm also not big on Angel on BtVS S1. He was just sort of there. And there was nothing in there. But when he got his own show, they had to rewrite all that, LOL.

[snickfic]

I think possibly the reason I didn't really get irritated with Angel until S2 is the fact that I really wanted to like him (morally ambiguous! angsty! haunted!), and I was able to project all sorts of depth on him as long as he didn't talk too much. *g*

[phoenixofborg.livejournal.com]

*nods* I've come to the conclusion that Angel on BtVS was a big, attractively shaped prop. And until I found myself having to actually write the bastard, I was generally willing to forgive that for the pretty eyes. And then Spike showed up, and I'm like "Angel! Spike has pretty eyes, a cute accent, and he's interesting when he interacts with his love interest... and he's the bad guy. Where does that leave you, hon?"

I think Giles may have hooked me on the show in the first couple eps, but I went heels over for Spike with Dru in School Hard, when he's encouraging her to 'just eat something' (the girl chained to the wall...) And I was like "Dude! I love this guy!" And I spent a good part of S2 morose thinking Buffy was gonna kill him and Dru at the end of it.

[snickfic]

Giles was definitely what got me through the first season. I liked Willow okay, but she didn't exactly carry the show, and I was sort of iffy about Xander and Buffy. But Giles I adored, 'cuz he was all British and sarcastic and nerdy.

I actually liked Angel better in S1 than S2 (at least while he was soulled), because he talked less. The lack of personality and acting ability came through a lot less clearly when he didn't talk. *g*

[phoenixofborg.livejournal.com]

Heh, I kinda just tend not to register Angel in the first half of S2... But I love him as Angelus. His span as Angelus toward the the end of S2 is honestly the only reason I bothered with AtS. And he remains one of my favorite Buffy villains.

Every time Angel does an Irish accent in a flashback, though, I cry. :(

[snickfic]

I'm interested to watch the Angelus episodes again and see how I feel about them. I didn't like him the first time, but it was a sort of visceral, creepy-crawly dislike, which I think is what they were going for. Ironic that soulled or not, he still does the stalkery thing - his methods don't really change much, just his motives.

Every time Angel does an Irish accent in a flashback, though, I cry.

There, there. *g* I have to admit, though, I love it in that one ep in late Ats S2 (right before they go to Pylea) when he breaks the accent out in front of Wesley and Cordelia and starts talking about wenches. That was fabulous. Also, it finally confirmed my theory that he had developed an American accent by choice, the same way Spike picked up his working-class London bit. (Where Darla got her American accent, way back when Americans were all displaced English people, is a whole other mystery. *g*)

[phoenixofborg.livejournal.com]

Stalker Angel: "Except... you're still the only thing he thinks about." XD

Accents: Oh god, Darla's... I swear to god, there's some points right after they raise her where she sounds like she's trying to do some kind of faded Southern accent. "I do miss that boy..." And it's just... Gah. And hell, she was born English, and came to America...

I guess I just need to let these things go. >:(

[riccadonna.livejournal.com]

I thought it was the right thing to do, giving voice to a vampire on the show, because where's the thrill in the fight if the enemy is just a lump of mindless evil? Let's see what one of them is thinking, even if he's the special ensouled one.
But Angel was pretty voiceless himself...we had to wait for Spike and Drusilla to have vampires with personality!
The swooping through the bad videogame gets me in a very impatient mood everytime I want to watch one of those episodes.

[snickfic]

Totally agree that they needed a vampire with personality. I was really terribly bored with the Master and Darla and the Annointed One. It was just such a pity that their first attempt at a vampire with complexity was so, erm, simplistic.

[blackoberst.livejournal.com]

I hear you and totally agree!

[snickfic]

:)