I would like to wish you all happy holidays (for those of you that celebrated Hannukah, I would like to wish you a belated Happy Hannukah). Although today is Christmas, I didn’t really feel like making yet another post about Christmas or Christmas gifts, yet. So, this post is only tangentially connected to Christmas.
Last year for Christmas, my wife bought me the entire set of Angel DVDs. We started this year with a bang by rolling through about one-and-a-half seasons on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. For a while we kind of slacked off on watching it. Then, I decided I’d let one of my co-workers borrow a season at a time so she could watch and see how great Angel really is.
She started rolling through the seasons, too, so I had to start watching them again to make sure she didn’t beat me to anything.
On Sunday night, I finally finished season five. It’s all over, now. No more episodes of Angel for me to watch. In a way, it’s really kind of depressing.
For everyone, there are one or two television shows that come along in their lifetimes that really make an impact. For me, Angel was that singular TV show. No other television series before or after has had quite as profound an impact on me as Angel. I can’t really say why it ever became so important to me, but it did. In my very humble opinion, Angel is the best television show ever made. There have been great shows before, and there have been great shows since, but, to me, there has never been a show quite as good.
I’ve watched quite a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (after all, that’s how my whole obsession started – I still remember making an appointment to sit down and watch the series premiere of that show because I was such a big fan of the campy movie) and enjoyed it, but not the way I liked Angel.
For some reason, the combination of Joss Whedon’s creative direction, the writers of Angel, the characters and the actors that portrayed them, and the content of the episodes made Angel a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
I am a big fan of the new Doctor Who and its spin-off Torchwood. I really enjoy watching Family Guy, Heroes Bones, all the Law & Orders, House and more, but I don’t like any of them as much I like Angel.
I can definitely see myself sitting down on quite a few occasions in the future and re-watching Angel. I’ll certainly go back through and watch all of the episodes that include commentary.
I just have to wonder, though, why Angel ended when it did. It was the number two show on the WB the year it was cancelled (second only to Smallville, which is now on its seventh season) and its numbers had consistently grown from year to year. Despite that fact, the WB apparently came to Joss Whedon halfway through the fifth season and told him that this was his last year.
Thankfully, they were told in advance that they were being canceled, so they were able to put together a fairly decent series finale. That’s much better than all of the series that ended with cliffhangers because the creators had no idea they weren’t coming back.
Still, I will always hope that Angel will make some sort of a comeback. Whether it’s a silly made-for-TV movie (BTW – Highlander just did that recently), a theatrical release or some sort of reunion show, I’ll be sure to watch it.
Anyway, I’ve babbled long enough. I would like to hear about some of your favorite shows and what kind of impact they’ve had on you.