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Rochallor posted:It didn't click with me when I first watched it, but last time I went through Angel, it struck me that the first half of Season 4 (which, Cordelia character assassination aside, I do quite like) is extremely similar to the X-Men event Inferno, with the whole hell on earth thing going on. It's less of a character assassination and more of a literal assassination. I've been watching Season Three of that show again, and it honestly starts there. IMO it's a good arc if you know what's going on and where it's going, but it's also mean as gently caress and sneaky with it. Introducing the current season's Big Bad during the previous season isn't unheard of -- even within the Mutant Enemy school of shows, you've got Holtz and The First both getting previewed before they come significantly into play -- but it's never done quite like this, and never in a way where you sort of realise that one of the regulars has been secretly subsumed by the villain and that you've been looking at an imposter for a nearly a year's worth of television. Cordy isn't gone-gone until around the end of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, but the Jasmine personality starts surfacing a lot lot earlier than that.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:00
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I always thought the Cordelia being replaced thing was just an rear end-pull they didn't even come up with until after she was back, and then they retconned everything to do with her and Conner since S3 to be those events, including having Skip the likeable demon actually be a bad guy. Not that I think they didn't intend to have all of this stuff add up to SOMETHING - obviously, because they keep adding questions, but I don't think they knew where they were going to end up with it and I doubt Jasmine was even a thought in their mind until they were halfwaythrough writing season 4. The pieces don't flow naturally into each other, they have to be contrived and flat out explained by Skip hey, this is what all really happened, seriously. Plus we know that a lot of why Cordelia was even written to be pregnant and then off the show was because of Charisma's real pregnancy and Joss's vindictiveness. If she hadn't been pregnant in real life, Cordelia wouldn't have been, which is pretty central to the whole thing, so the idea they planned it at all falls apart. I don't see how you gets 'she's half demon, she's a higher being, she's back but has amensia, she remembers now, she's hosed Angel's son, she's pregnant, she's evil, now she's in a coma' series of events through actual planning. Plus, 90% of this part of the show is terrible. Some good plotlines mixed in with a lot of bad, even the humour was feeling very strained. They were flailing. Buffy, too, at that point in time. S5 of Angel isn't even close to my favourite but I'm glad it exists because it brings the world of each show to a more respectable end with a good run of 10 or so episodes, and even gives Cordelia a proper send off, too. roomtone fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 21:43
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roomtone posted:I always thought the Cordelia being replaced thing was just an rear end-pull they didn't even come up with until after she was back, and then they retconned everything to do with her and Conner since S3 to be those events, including having Skip the likeable demon actually be a bad guy. As I understand it, Cordelia was originally the main villain for that season, and the Jasmine switch was their jury rigged solution to the problem. It's a big driver for why Whedon was such a piece poo poo to Carpenter, beyond being controlling and all the rest. She "derailed his plans" or whatever the quote was. I figure this means Carpenter was always out at the end of the season one way or the other, but that part's just my speculation. I mean, go back and watch the first proper Connor ep from season three, where Cornelia gets her magical glow lights on and suddenly starts calling Connor her sweet baby. First time through the show it reads like random convenient nonsense but within context of seasom four it reads differently. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 21:48
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roomtone posted:Plus we know that a lot of why Cordelia was even written to be pregnant and then off the show was because of Charisma's real pregnancy and Joss's vindictiveness. If she hadn't been pregnant in real life, Cordelia wouldn't have been, which is pretty central to the whole thing, so the idea they planned it at all falls apart. I don't see how you gets 'she's half demon, she's a higher being, she's back but has amensia, she remembers now, she's pregnant, she's hosed Angel's son, she's evil, now she's in a coma' series of events through actual planning. I had always heard that part of the change up with Cordelia's pregnancy was switching up the big bads of Angel s4 and Buffy s7. Buffy was supposed to fight Caleb and Jasmine and Angel The First. But that was always early days of internet rumors so I'm not sure how true it is.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:50
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:I had always heard that part of the change up with Cordelia's pregnancy was switching up the big bads of Angel s4 and Buffy s7. Buffy was supposed to fight Caleb and Jasmine and Angel The First. Caleb was never part of any plan, come on. He was clearly "well, we've figured out the First sucks as a villain because we can't punch it and Nathan Fillion is available and we don't have any other ideas" thing.
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Jul 4, 2023 01:40
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Sometimes Caleb and Jasmine both feel like "Firefly has been cancelled, how can we fit the stars into the other shows" and that would include Adam Baldwin a year later.
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Jul 4, 2023 01:49
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Pinterest Mom posted:Caleb was never part of any plan, come on. He was clearly "well, we've figured out the First sucks as a villain because we can't punch it and Nathan Fillion is available and we don't have any other ideas" thing. Yeah, I'm assuming they thought the First being able to take on the form of anyone who's dead would be a neat enough concept to hang a big bad around, but it turns out you'd just have a lot of Sarah Michelle Gellar talking to herself.
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Jul 4, 2023 01:58
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I always thought that was purposeful -- hence Tudyk and Glau doing Dollhouse arcs, Glass going on to appear on SHIELD and Staite doing a run on Wonderfalls (Tim Minear's next show). In all cases, except Glass, they're an antagonist who's introduced late in the run of a season. Seems a weirdly huge coincidence if it is one, given that it happens six times.
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Jul 4, 2023 02:03
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Rochallor posted:Yeah, I'm assuming they thought the First being able to take on the form of anyone who's dead would be a neat enough concept to hang a big bad around, but it turns out you'd just have a lot of Sarah Michelle Gellar talking to herself. So instead we'll have Nathan Fillion spew some of the vilest pseudo-religious misogyny we can put to paper, cuz he's Bad, see, and Our Heroes are women! (I seriously don't even remember what Caleb's deal even was, other than the misogyny, and I don't care to go back and look)
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Jul 4, 2023 02:17
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Open Source Idiom posted:I always thought that was purposeful -- hence Tudyk and Glau doing Dollhouse arcs, Glass going on to appear on SHIELD and Staite doing a run on Wonderfalls (Tim Minear's next show). In all cases, except Glass, they're an antagonist who's introduced late in the run of a season. Still irritated that The Sarah Connor Chronicles was axed for Dollhouse to keep going.
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Jul 4, 2023 03:06
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Rochallor posted:Yeah, I'm assuming they thought the First being able to take on the form of anyone who's dead would be a neat enough concept to hang a big bad around, but it turns out you'd just have a lot of Sarah Michelle Gellar talking to herself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z76cH2tMI2A&t=15s The First peaked here and never came anywhere close again.
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Jul 4, 2023 03:19
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Fighting Trousers posted:(I seriously don't even remember what Caleb's deal even was, other than the misogyny, and I don't care to go back and look)
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Jul 4, 2023 03:48
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It was a drat good scene. The First was a great idea, but it needing to spend the entire season not doing poo poo hamstrung it. And needing to spend like twelve episodes mostly in Buffy's house with her giving speeches instead of doing poo poo herself was also a poo poo way to save your budget for the finale. They should've done rather a lot more monster-of-the-weeks and focused less on The First to dramatically diminishing returns. But I still quite like the season.
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Jul 4, 2023 03:51
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NikkolasKing posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z76cH2tMI2A&t=15s When I first watched that I thought that it was just building towards The Master and I was pumped to go back to vampires after everything else, because I thought the Master was cool. Then Buffy showed up at the end and I was like "she's evil now?" I was so confused
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Jul 4, 2023 07:16
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I liked when they were doing a fakeout for several episodes that Giles had died and been replaced by the First, by having him not touch any objects, only to reveal he was just lazy
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Jul 4, 2023 09:53
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NikkolasKing posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z76cH2tMI2A&t=15s yeah this scene alone is good use of the first. if they'd kept bringing back all the previous villains like this, it might've been worth it for pure entertainment value. i'm not gonna turn down some mayor banter. there's also the 'what the gently caress is going on' aspect of the scene, and the very good music. GoutPatrol posted:When I first watched that I thought that it was just building towards The Master and I was pumped to go back to vampires after everything else, because I thought the Master was cool. it would have been cool to have buffy the vampire slayer have to face off against a vampire again for the last season. just another really good one like spike or angel. i like the idea of the villain wanting to end the slayer line in theory, too, which was part of the first's plan. you can still do that but just don't have a bunch of annoying side characters move into buffy's house - keep it for the end. the villain wants to end the slayer line and then at the very end oops, it backfired, dozens of slayers worldwide.
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Jul 4, 2023 10:22
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I just rewatched the episode where the First comes out, the Christmas one with Angel in the snow. You can totally tell they didn't plan what to do with the First at all, considering Jenny Calendar-ghost pushes Angel, strokes his hair so it's pushed back, and caresses his face outright. Not in the way Drusilla-ghost does to Spike in Season 7, getting like half an inch away when she does, but outright NOT touching.
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Jul 4, 2023 10:24
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I don't remember where I read this, but wasn't the original plan for The First to be the Big Bad of Angel, and Jasmine or someone like her the Big Bad of Buffy, but at some point those got switched?
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Jul 4, 2023 10:36
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PriorMarcus posted:I don't remember where I read this, but wasn't the original plan for The First to be the Big Bad of Angel, and Jasmine or someone like her the Big Bad of Buffy, but at some point those got switched? I don't know how much that'd make sense. I mean, isn't Jasmine basically a god? Buffy already fought one with Glory. Were they going to retread that theme?
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Jul 4, 2023 10:48
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Pan Dulce posted:I just rewatched the episode where the First comes out, the Christmas one with Angel in the snow. You can totally tell they didn't plan what to do with the First at all, considering Jenny Calendar-ghost pushes Angel, strokes his hair so it's pushed back, and caresses his face outright. Not in the way Drusilla-ghost does to Spike in Season 7, getting like half an inch away when she does, but outright NOT touching. Pretty sure she touches him in the season 7 premier too, it's later on that she doesn't.
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Jul 4, 2023 11:08
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PriorMarcus posted:I don't remember where I read this, but wasn't the original plan for The First to be the Big Bad of Angel, and Jasmine or someone like her the Big Bad of Buffy, but at some point those got switched? Well somebody wrote it above, I do remember seeing rumors/speculation back in the day that that was the case as well though. As they said, hard to know if that's just internet bullshit or a real thing. I don't see it personally or it'd had to have been the very earliest sketchings of the plots and then they abandoned it and went with what we got very, very early, Jasmine's whole "grey area" ambiguity where she kills dozens/hundreds of people a day to try and "save" the world feels like it fits Angel very well with how murky that show got and its general vibes, whereas the First and its very black and white nature fits Buffy more but then I could see the attraction for the writers in wanting to mix up both of those things. I think the First probably works in Angel better than Jasmine would in Buffy as they are in the current shows, obviously with some rewriting you can make anything work. As a thought experiment the way I could see Jasmine in a Season 7 of Buffy would be something like the below. She doesn't have the very distasteful method of being introduced (I think any of the main cast of Buffy being taken over the way Cordelia was would have gone down like a cup of hot sick, even worse than it did with Cordelia and even if it wasn't pregnancy, if it was just like, mind control, people would have been pissed still) and instead is just a charismatic religious leader or a zealot type that thinks Buffy is well meaning but not making enough meaningful change in the world just by being reactive. She doesn't instantly take over people the second they see her but has some other method instead and has a creepy cult of obsessives doing charitable work that slowly take over Sunnydale and then is trying to go country wide as the season ramps up, have some of the loveable side characters get taken over like Clem, Bob the bar owner, others who exist in this hypothetical Season 7 world and then the main cast in a similar vein to how it went in Angel, I could see that working if they kept the vibe up. Maybe have her final plan to incorporate some of actual Season 7 would be to activate the potential slayers herself while controlling them or something and have a personal army of them. Also give her some cool minions for when the mask comes off as well of course, I think cool monsters didn't show up enough in latter Buffy, Gnarl and Sweet were pretty much the only cool demon designs from the last few seasons that I can remember. Thinking about it, Buffy never had a season long plot that went as hard as Season 4 of Angel though, after episode 4 of that, basically every episode is concerning the season plot. Buffy always had monster of the week or wacky hi jinx episodes even once the big bad had shown up, I think the closest is Season 5 after they find out Glory is a god about halfway through and then it's pretty much all Glory all the time if I recall?
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Jul 4, 2023 11:28
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Clare Kramer is delightful, why wouldn't you put her front and centre of everything
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Jul 4, 2023 11:53
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSXK2c-LWgg&t=1634s Here's an interview with Tim Minear and David Fury where they talk about how they only came up with the idea for Jasmine, including the world peace/eating people thing, after they learned about Charisma's pregnancy. That would have been months into writing and filming the season. Jasmine was never planned for Buffy, the idea of Jasmine didn't even exist when they were setting out the seasons.
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Jul 4, 2023 12:08
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Pinterest Mom posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSXK2c-LWgg&t=1634s Ah, yeah, that's what I figured. But they're also very clear that this was an offshoot of their original plan for Cordelia to be the villain, which is what I was originally arguing.
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Jul 4, 2023 12:29
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Weird sudden season changes and character assassination of Cordelia aside, I still like several parts of season 4. The Angelus arc (and the perfect twist of "Awakening") was good, and I love the final half dozen or so episodes of Season 4, once Jasmine actually shows up. The episode with Fred on the rib from the Jasmine-Ites was so creepy Certainly not the first media I saw that dealt with the idea of "World Peace, but at what cost?" But I like the idea that Jasmine was one of The Powers That Be that wasn't content with subtle nudges of fate, or just having Champions do their work for them. Edit: My girlfriend is also really weird with Buffy...she loves Seasons 1-4, and then hasn't gone much beyond that. She's started 5 but, as much as it pains me to say...she HATES Glory! I'm not even sure she ever got far enough for the Dawn reveal. And she's never seen Angel and despite my efforts, doesn't want to start it. DrBouvenstein fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 02:27
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DrBouvenstein posted:Weird sudden season changes and character assassination of Cordelia aside, I still like several parts of season 4. The Angelus arc (and the perfect twist of "Awakening") was good, and I love the final half dozen or so episodes of Season 4, once Jasmine actually shows up. The episode with Fred on the rib from the Jasmine-Ites was so creepy The only thing I liked about Angel Season Four was that it gave us Angel Season Five and "Smile Time" with it.
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Jul 6, 2023 02:30
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I liked Season 4. Things took off after the first 1/3. Still hated the Connor/Cordy stuff. And the Cordy erasure. These were all peak moments, Wolfram Hart Zombies, Lilah escaping the Beast, Angel losing his soul, Faith turning up to help Angel. It was a real escalation of problems. The Jasmine cult stuff was certainly intriguing and especially Fred going on the run. That maggot face was horrific. I was more into S4 than S5.
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Jul 6, 2023 02:54
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For me, Angel season 5 was comparable to the best seasons of Buffy, but the rest of Angel was just ok. The first half of season 1 with Doyle, and season 5 are really the only parts I have ever re-watched.
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Jul 6, 2023 07:29
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Oasx posted:For me, Angel season 5 was comparable to the best seasons of Buffy, but the rest of Angel was just ok. The first half of season 1 with Doyle, and season 5 are really the only parts I have ever re-watched. 
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Jul 6, 2023 07:44
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It's been a long, long time, but I remember Season 2 and 3 were my favorites. Lindsey was getting character development, Holland Manners had possibly the best scene in the show, Angel's struggle with good and evil, and then Holtz entering the picture and being an awesome character.... Good stuff. I have always preferred Buffy at its height but I almost feel its apples and oranges. The two shows just have very different tones and explore different ideas. I think I wrote about this ages ago in this thread but Buffy is a coming of age story with monsters while Angel focuses on adults having adult problems. This is not some values judgment, it's just what the two shows were going for. A character like Linsey works in Angel far more than he'd work in Buffy but conversely Faith's character wouldn't work in Angel. I mean, she's fine there, but Faith's story is very much about a lonely, abused teenage girl going the wrong way and trying to find her way back. They try to compare her and Angel but they're nothing alike. Not everybody who is evil or makes mistakes is identical. Faith's character needs the foil of Buffy to be at its strongest. Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seDhO4Uis34 I love when old YT vids I enjoyed are still around.
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Jul 6, 2023 07:57
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Buffy I can rewatch fine but I've zero interest in doing so with Angel. Never really gelled with it, and especially soured on it when it swerved into Bullshitville with what happens to Cordy. Hell, I never even bothered finishing S5, gave up a few episodes in.
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Jul 6, 2023 10:23
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S1 up until S2 ep 18 is what I consider to be prime Angel. A lot of people don't like S1 because it's 80% monster of the week, but I think the premise for the show up until the Pylea arc is the best. The vibe is just right. From episode 18 onwards, Angel's character goes through a fundamental change from weird loner to David Boreanez with superpowers. The rest of the characters all start to change, too, with varying results. Only Wesley is an unqualified success. Not that S3-5 don't have strong parts - even S4 like people are saying has some cool episodes - but it becomes much more insular as a show and more caught up in relationship and family drama than the more interesting drama of everybody trying to find their way in the lonely city as independent adults. Basically it becomes more like every other supernatural show out there, which is just a lot more bland to me. When the word 'champion' starts appearing on the show, basically. My version of the show is where Kate became main cast when she got fired from the police (replacing Fred who never exists/goes back to texas), Cordy never became a love interest for Angel, and Lindsey and Lilah stuck around for the whole show along with Holland Manners because that was a great trio of bastards. You also bring in Faith as main cast maybe in S4. Lorne keeps his karaoke bar and remains recurring. I'll be rewriting Angel in my head forever. roomtone fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Jul 6, 2023 |
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Jul 6, 2023 13:41
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Kate felt like the perfect example of relationship/family drama for the majority of her time on the show to me. Obviously it's a bit harsh to judge the character for that cause they were clearly ramping up to have her join the group or become more active in the plot right as they then had to write her out cause the actress got a main role on another show so they'd basically done a lot of the legwork and then had to discard it right when that stuff would have started paying off. I do agree that at the time it felt a bit weird they started pushing Cordelia and Angel together, just felt like default "well the main dude and main woman have to want to get together eventually right?" assumption. They did have decent chemistry in S3 around when it started getting pushed but then obviously we barely get any time on screen with them together after that, where Cordelia isn't evil at least.
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Jul 6, 2023 14:06
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During the Season 1 finale, when Cordelia goes into vision overdrive, Angel takes her to the ER, and when the nurse asks who he is, he says "I'm family". And that's basically my favorite version of the Angel/Cordelia relationship.
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Jul 6, 2023 17:41
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Rochallor posted:It didn't click with me when I first watched it, but last time I went through Angel, it struck me that the first half of Season 4 (which, Cordelia character assassination aside, I do quite like) is extremely similar to the X-Men event Inferno, with the whole hell on earth thing going on. That tracks Wedon's main influence is Clarmont's run on X-Men. Kitty Pride was basically his waifu. Edit: Now that think about wasn't Willows arch in season 6 based the dark Phoenix saga.
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Jul 6, 2023 18:25
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Whedon later on wrote a pretty good run of X-Men comics, so that wouldn't surprise me.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:04
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Kitty Pryde is most comic writer's waifu, it's why she's dated almost everyone in the Marvel universe.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:03
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:waifu, This term sucks and is racist. I've used it. A lot of us have used it. But I really don't think we should be, and need to find a new way to say this that paints the same picture and is just as punchy, but damned if one is coming to mind. And yeah, it is painfully obvious that a lot of comics writers had a big ol' crush on Kitty Pryde when they were young.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:17
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LividLiquid posted:Okay, so I'm gonna' use your post as an example here, but I'm not calling you out. Fair. Crush is a good enough term in and of its self.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:20
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LividLiquid posted:This term sucks and is racist. I've used it. A lot of us have used it. But I really don't think we should be, and need to find a new way to say this that paints the same picture and is just as punchy, but damned if one is coming to mind. I don't use the term because it's a meme, but can you explain what makes it racist?
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Jul 6, 2023 20:32
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