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Angel (1999)
At It's Best It's Wonderful, But It's Not Always At It's Best
In some ways Angel feels like four or five different shows because so much changes so drastically as the show progresses. It is definitely at it's best at the beginning. By late season 3 things have started feeling shark jumpy, and the show had already gone through at least 2 or 3 incarnations by that point. So here's my ratings for all the different Angels (descriptions contain broad story arcs which might count as spoilers but I tried not to give anything too secret away):
{SPOILER START):
Angel #1- Angel, Doyle & Cordie in small PI firm, lots of cop/Angel interactions & helpless-helping
Angel #2 -Angel, Cordie, Wesley still small PI firm, still some cop or walk-in PI cases
Angel #3 -Angle, Cordie, Wesley, Gunn, Fred, Lorne. Few PI cases. Hotel instead of PI firm. Ongoing devolving battle with Wolfram & Heart, with Darla & Holt as additional long-story bad guys. No police investigations anymore. More demons as good and bad guys, and as PI clients. Less about vampires or the streets of LA. More supernatural. Angel & Cordie get close, it seems like they are about to get together.
Angel #4 -Things change again. Conor comes back grown. Wesley's status changes. Cordie & Angel ...well things aren't as expected. Both Cordie & Angel stop being themselves for awhile this season. Then Jasmine's arc, which feels like it's a season long but is really only 5 episodes.
Angel #5 -Most Drastic changes. Angel & team take over Wolfram & Heart. No more PI firm at all now. Angel is now head of an evil empire trying to stop evil. Everyone else changes too. Gunn magically becomes a lawyer, bye-bye tough street kid. Fred become Illyria, bye-bye sweet bookish Fred. Cordie is gone. Conor gone too. Spike joins them, but he doesn't seem entirely like himself either (he just came from making a huge sacrifice for love of Buffy but he won't even pick up the phone to let her know he's alive?). Lorne leaves at one point, but he had already changed before that too (he used to run a night club remember). Lindsay, Wesley & Harmony return and become different versions of themselves too. The whole feel of the show changes. Then it ends.
(SPOILERS END)
So, things change a lot. Which means it doesn't go stale, but it also means it is hard to get comfortable with it. You end up missing characters when they are still there on the screen but everything has changed so much that you don't recognize them anymore. That said, like all Joss Whedon, there are still moments of brilliance even in the parts I find the most difficult to connect to. Humour too (like the puppet episode in the last season). Also, one of my very favourite Buffy episodes is actually an episode in Angel's first season when she comes to visit her dad in LA. It is brilliant and beautiful and touching. All Buffy fans should at least see that episode (S01e08 'I Will Remember You'). Here's how my ratings would break down: Beginning = 10 Middle = 8 End = 6 So I averaged out to an 8.
Stitchers (2015)
There's Something Wonderfully 1990's About This Show
This show feels different than other TV being produced right now. In some wonderful combination of styling, casting and writing they have managed to create something that feels simultaneously fresh and current and like a TV show from the 1990's. Here's why:
Styling: None of the women look like they have spent a minimum of 3 hours curling their hair, applying fake eyelashes, & glossing themselves up. I didn't realize how much of a problem this has become in today's TV until I re-watched Twin Peaks and was shocked by how supremely un-sexilly Lara Flynn Boyle was styled, and I remembered her being a sex-symbol at the time! This show takes a more realistic middle road: If the scene calls for them to dress up and get sexy the do, but they don't look at all times like they are ready for the runway. Any realism is lost when your female cop character, for example, tries to fit into her male dominated profession by being as girly or sexy as possible and wearing high heals to chase perps. In this show the female characters are like regular people, sexy sometimes, professional other times. The styling of this show is refreshing for the men too. I can't believe they let us get through multiple episodes before we found out if the male leads have abs or not. No shirtless scenes inserted for no reason in the first 15 min of every show! And then when they are shirtless, they don't look like they had just furiously worked out so that every vein and muscle is maximally (sometimes grotesquely) bulged. Yep, TV today is hard on men too. This show feels different. Better.
Casting: People were clearly cast for character and talent rather than just looks (no casting interchangeable pretty people in all the roles). They all feel authentic. The male leads are more geeky than usually cast these days and this makes you want the love stories to work out even more; it's not just mutual prettiness that makes these matches good. This is also reminiscent of 1990's TV. Allison Scagliotti (who was also great on Warehouse 13) is quirky and funny and awesome. You really want to root for the four main young leads.
Writing: It's a good sci-fi / murder-mystery with a long story that keeps you coming back to get more answers while each week's mystery is satisfyingly resolved. The sci-fi and mystery elements feel fairly new, even if the cop-procedural part of the show is familiar. Even so, there is something refreshing in the way that those more common grounds are explored. Here again, with the relationships and character development, it feels a bit like a 1990's show. It's just so ... feminist, for lack of a better word. I can't even put my finger on what's different, but something is. There's something in the way the female leads approach their lives, careers, sex lives and friendships that just seems so grown up. Just look at the way Linus and Camille's relationship was written -it seems very unusual, with the power dynamic switched from what we would normally see, without making it seem like they are making some kind of point. No, it just feels fun and entertaining and light.
I highly recommend this show!