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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
While "Buffy" has been flailing, its spinoff series, "Angel," thrives; it's turning out to be one of the best new shows of the season. In "Angel," Buffy's vampire
"Angel" and its star David Boreanaz get more assured, more haunting and more poker-faced funny every week. Indeed, "Angel" has more of the old "Buffy" vibe than "Buffy" these days, so you have to wonder: Were Boreanaz and Carpenter that important to the show's magic potion? Well, yes. You can see it in the way "Buffy" has quickly attempted to fill the Cordelia void with another snotty, self-centered female character (Emma Caulfield's Anya, a man-hating, centuries-old witch banished to live as a human in Sunnydale) to work Buffy's last nerve. You can see it in the casting of Blucas, a big, blunt-featured pin-up type in the Boreanaz mold, as Riley, and in the way Riley gets tongue-tied around Buffy, just like Angel used to. You can see it in the defanging of Spike, who now fills Angel's role on "Buffy" as the vampire who isn't so bad, once you get to know him.
And you could see it in the Nov. 23 "Angel" episode, "I Will Remember You," on which Sarah Michelle Gellar guest-starred. No installment of "Buffy" this season has captured the essence of the slayer's dilemma -- Buffy just wants to be "a normal girl, falling asleep in the arms of her normal boyfriend" -- as tenderly or movingly as this "Angel"/"Buffy" crossover. On "Buffy" this year, without the smoldering Angel, the source of all her pain and pleasure (he deflowered her, before that no-sex curse kicked in), Buffy is not truly whole. And if this seems masochistic, well, aren't all of the great tragic romances?
In "I Will Remember You," Buffy visits Angel in L.A. to tell him off for skulking around Sunnydale (in the preceding "Buffy" episode) behind her back in order to protect her from an unkillable demon. In the middle of their argument, another demon bursts in and in the ensuing battle, Angel is dosed with the demon's blood, which renders him suddenly human. For the first time in centuries, Angel has a heartbeat, a reflection and an appetite (in his first official act as a born-again human, he ravenously pigs out on everything in the fridge). Most important, he can have sex again.
He and Buffy get (in the words of the grossed-out Cordelia) "groiny," but it's soon apparent that there's a downside to a mortal Angel -- robbed of his superhuman strength, the guy is useless in a fight with the forces of darkness, which, by the way, are gathering for "the end of days" (and I don't think they mean the Schwarzenegger movie).
Buffy and Angel may not like it, but they can't let matters of the heart (or groin) prevent them from fulfilling their destinies as vanquishers of evil. In order to keep Buffy focused on her slaying, and fearing that she'll be killed in battle if she has to worry about him getting pounded into a pulp, Angel strikes a deal with "the oracles" -- they will erase the previous day, and make it as if Buffy and Angel's 24 hours of bliss never happened. Buffy will stay pissed off and sad and get on with her life, and only Angel will remember their tryst -- only he will shoulder the burden of their lost love.
"I Will Remember You" was a sublimely weepy addition to "Buffy"/"Angel" lore; these two are fated to be together and you can bet that, eventually, in that final Very Special WB Crossover Event, they will. But for now, it's Angel who's getting the better suffering and brooding scenes -- he emerged from "I Will Remember You" more swoonily noble, more lost, than ever ("He doesn't even have a heart," wonders Cordelia. "How can it be broken?"), while Buffy just seems all drippy-girly.
As the season unfolds, it's becoming more obvious that "Angel" is Whedon and Greenwalt's "adult" series (it's telling that Buffy and Angel's semi-nude groininess occurred on "Angel," not "Buffy"). The touchy-feeliness of the "Angel" pilot, in which Doyle brings Angel a message from "the powers that be" decreeing that he "reach out" to humans in trouble and feel their pain, has been (thankfully) toned down. The doom and dread quotient has been upped. And the writers have beautifully expanded on the show's themes of transformation and redemption, making all the characters, not just Angel, works in progress. Cordelia, the pampered rich girl, is penniless and on her own and (to her surprise) liking it; she was even actually starting to care for the disheveled Doyle, who was besotted with her, but he was killed off in the Nov. 30 episode (note to Whedon and Greenwalt: What were you thinking!). Doyle started the series as a coward, but he went out a hero, sacrificing himself to save his people, who were being persecuted by a Nazi-like movement of purebred demons.
In "Angel," as they have in "Buffy," Whedon and Greenwalt have married the supernatural and the mundane to create a richly textured show where evil isn't merely a spook-show device, but a dark part of the characters' selves. "Angel" carries that theme further, using evil as a metaphor for addiction and vice. Angel and Cordelia (and Doyle) are struggling to let their better natures hold sway; they're in the hard process of change, they long to become better, kinder, braver beings. Forget Roma Downey on "Touched by an Angel" -- Boreanaz's sensitive-guy vampire in the flapping black overcoat is the most soulful and spiritual presence on TV.
