From: daviderl31@yahoo.com   
      
   http://www.hypable.com/2014/10/05/15-year-anniversary-what-angel   
   did-better-than-buffy/   
      
   Fifteen years later: what Angel Did Better Than Buffy   
      
   15 years ago today, on October 5 1999, the Buffy spinoff Angel premiered on   
   The WB. The first episode, “City Of…” saw Angel (David Boreanaz) leave   
   Sunnydale behind for L.A., where he was hoping to find redemption.   
      
   It quickly became clear that Angel would be a very different animal than   
   Buffy, and many fans of the original show didn’t bother with the spinoff. It   
   also developed its own unique fanbase, who had either never watched Buffy,   
   or had given the first show a try and decided that Angel was more to their   
   liking.   
      
   And for those who watched both, it was impossible not to have a favourite.   
   And loyal Buffy fans had to ask themselves the uncomfortable question: “Do I   
   prefer Buffy because it’s better, or because I watched it first?”   
      
   Because Angel was darker. It was more grown-up, and the stakes were higher.   
   Main characters died like flies, proving that “daring to kill characters”   
   isn’t a new phenomenon in television. Angel was way ahead of the curve.   
      
   Still, Buffy fans refused to admit the possibility that Angel might be the   
   better show, and Angel fans refused to see the value of Buffy, dismissing it   
   as the unpolished prototype.   
      
   Let’s face it: Angel was cooler than Buffy.   
      
   Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) was a teenage girl cursed with supernatural   
   abilities and the responsibility of saving the world. Angel was a   
   200-something-year-old-vampire, cursed with a soul and an undying love for   
   the aforementioned teenage girl. In Angel we delved deeper into his   
   backstory, learning that the soul didn’t magically turn him into a hero.   
   That was a choice.   
      
   The Angel series also humanized the character in a way the Buffy series   
   never quite managed to do with its lead (despite her awkward slayer puns):   
   he got funny. Fans already loved Angel’s dark alter-ego Angelus, but when   
   Angel got his own show, his good self had to be infused with a large dose of   
   personality. Thus his broodiness became childish stubbornness, and he   
   developed a wonderfully inappropriate, dark sense of humour.   
      
   While Angel was probably more angsty than Buffy, he was very rarely allowed   
   to wallow for too long. When he sulked in the shadows, Cordelia (Charisma   
   Carpenter) was there to lighten up the situation with a well-timed pun. When   
   Buffy was sad, everyone had to be sad.   
      
   Still both characters were badass and versatile in their own right. Buffy   
   did a lot for female characters on television, and the fact that the writers   
   rarely compromised her character for cheap gags speaks to their credit. She   
   is a fantastically well-developed, flawed character whose biggest crime was   
   reacting realistically to the countless tragedies she had to endure. She   
   might have been depressed, but guys, she had plenty of reasons to be. And   
   yet she kept fighting, being the hero everyone needed her to be.   
      
   Ultimately Angel probably comes across as more likeable because he tended to   
   embrace and indulge his dark side, making him more of an antihero. Buffy was   
   purely good, and unfortunately that’s not always as “interesting.”   
      
   We tend to forget that a) killing characters for shock value is a soap opera   
   trope which was already overused in the 90s, and b) Angel was the first –   
   and arguably only – show that did it right.   
      
   Main character deaths do not automatically improve a show’s value. Believe   
   it or not, living in uncertainty about the fate of your beloved characters   
   doesn’t necessarily improve your viewing experience. When shows kill   
   characters and life goes on like normal after the fact, the death was cheap   
   and unnecessary.   
      
   Character deaths on Angel were never cheap and unnecessary. Over the course   
   of the series, the show killed a total of four main characters – that’s   
   half   
   its cast, by the way: Doyle (RIP Glenn Quinn), Cordelia, Fred (Amy Acker),   
   and Wesley (Alexis Denisof). Each character was loved, each character was   
   missed, and each character’s life and death mattered to the show as a whole.   
      
   Peripheral characters had worthy arcs and demises, too. Most notable was   
   Darla (Julie Benz), who staked herself giving birth to her and Angel’s son   
   Connor (the o.g. vampire baby, y’all). Lindsey (Christian Kane) and Lilah   
   (Stephanie Romanov) both had dramatic, worthy death scenes.   
      
   MORE at the link   
      
   http://daviderl.com/ .   
   http://daviderl31.blogspot.com/   
      
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