Angel vs. Buffy

*Originally published on 2/11/09



I've written a few articles where I pit one fictional character against the other. Here I'm going to do something a bit different and pit the two shows themselves against each other.

As much as I enjoy Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as much critical acclaim as it has gotten, I believe that Angel is the superior of the two shows. Again, I like Buffy. It's a solid show that gave us five years of above average television (seasons four and six were not all that great). It had characters that grew over the course of the seven years, it had good stories and good amount of butt kicking action to boot. In addition to that, it also had a unique ear for dialogue. Now, I personally think the dialogue was overpraised. I can also see how it would grate on some people; but I fell somewhere in between.

Even from Season One, it seemed like Angel was the more mature show. Where the angst from Buffy usually came from a dramatic breakup, the angst on Angel came from the moral dilemmas of dealing in the shades of grey that lie between good and evil. I know a lot of people loathe the romanticized "brooding vampire" trend that Anne Rice started. With Angel, it makes sense as that is part of Angel's curse.

Angel's not without it's weak points. Some of the early Wesley speeches were a bit heavy handed in trying to portray Angel's loneliness. Most shows usually need a season to find their footing and Angel did.

Another weak spot was Fred. It wasn't Acker's fault, not at all. Whedon just stuck her with subpar dialogue. He tried to create another Willow and it didn't work as well. Willow was just naturally adorable, in no small part due to Allyson Hannigan, while Fred is usually tolerable there are many scenes where they try too hard. The fact that other characters frequently point out, and state directly, that Fred is adorable doesn't help things. Fred is proof that lightning doesn't strike twice.

It's weird, one of the things that people praised Buffy for was the witty dialogue. On Angel, the moments where Whedon tries to shoehorn in some of his trademark dialogue, it actually doesn't seem to fit.

Still, without Buffy there wouldn't have been any Angel. Buffy was a good show in its own right. The first season was kind of by the books, but again, that's expected. The second and third seasons though were dead on, almost perfect. Even season five, where a new character was randomly thrust in (a sister who had never been mentioned or seen no less) Whedon managed to make it work.

It would've been interesting to see more overlap. There were crossovers, especially in Buffy season four and Angel season one. Even later in the show, events from Buffy would seep into Angel's life. It never went the other way though. Buffy and Oz met Doyle only briefly, Heck, Wesley showed up shortly after Doyle's death so those two never met, Gunn and Fred never went to Sunnydale and despite the many apocalypses both teams faced, they each faced the threats alone. I get that they were fighting the war on two separate fronts, but when the big stuff occurred, you'd think that they would combine their resources. I'm curious to see how Buffy's crew would fare against Wolfram and Hart and how the firm would deal with the Scoobies.

Both shows had their pros and cons, and while taking place in the same universe, the two shows managed to take on two different genres while still sticking to similar story lines. While I believe that Angel was the better of the two, both were solid programs that gave us years of entertainment.