theorb77 refuses to shut up about Angel.
His posts over the last several weeks have been about how Angel is superior television, because he’s so intellectual, and because his IQ is too high for normal television and that Joss Whedon is some kind of demi-god, meant to create great TV.
First off, let’s start by saying theorb77 has a predisposition towards vampires – lots of people do, so it’s not really an affliction. Most people, however, like the occasional vampire – like in Underworld, Dracula, or even Van Helsing. (theorb77 didn’t like Van Helsing, probably because Angel wasn’t in it.)
A weekly vampire – let alone a nightly vampire, is simply too much. Add in the weird demon guy with the green face, or that dude in the wheelchair (or was that Dark Angel …) – and it just gets rather stagnant.
It’s not that all the vampire is too much – it’s that it’s supposed to be entertaining. I didn’t find the stories gripping enough to command TiVo to ensnare it every week – even though it occasionally decides that Angel might be something I want to view – and I flat out don’t find it interesting.
‘So-and-so threatens to destroy the universe by using the blank-of-blank’ type storylines don’t really add up to much. What would have been cool is a series of adventures with a slowly massing large story in the background – a Saga Grande, if you will.
These cheap, repetitive, ‘always threatened’ storylines have lost their appeal a long time ago – they are also part of the reason that the Star Trek series of the Deep Space Nine and Voyager varieties became uninteresting to me, and yet Star Trek: The Next Generation maintained an appeal for 7 seasons (because the episodes were always different and unique – which is appealing) — DS9 and Voyager both had the same repetitive story week-in and week-out – “Oh no, something very menacing has come through the wormhole thing! – Did I mention that I’m the solution to all of these problems?”
Blah blah blah, BORING.
Bottom-line, I didn’t find Angel entertaining, and it didn’t appeal to a strong enough core audience that the WB was looking for – they are actually trying to amass a large younger-viewer audience – when they realize that the Gilmore Girls isn’t reaching the people they want it to, they’ll kill it, too.