"I get visions."
"We do things a certain way here in L.A."
"I'M BAD, I'M BAD!"
Angel is at an L.A. bar drunkenly talking to a stranger about Buffy.
His eye is on a table of people partying and playing pool including Sawyer from 'LOST'.
Turns out the two men are vampires getting takeout.
And Angel them both in a pretty cool battle.
As the victims' approach to thank him he tells them to get away.
And we can see in his eyes a thirst.
Remember he recently took a deep drink from the goblet of Buffy
And it's already been shown that Slayer blood has a profound effect on vampires.
"Oh God! The power!"
Clearly he is suffering from some withdrawal.
He has left Sunnydale, found a new ride, and is holed up in the basement of an old office space
Then when he comes home we meet for the first time
"Well, I like the place."
"Not much with the view."
"But it's got a nice Batcave sort of an air to it."
...Doyle.
Doyle is half-demon receives visions from The Powers That Be regarding bad stuff about to happen.
and was sent to provide Angel fuel for his redemption
He passes the first one on right off the bat
Tina.
Who is obviously suffering from some distress over someone named Russell.
Angel earns a modicum of trust and asks her if he can escort her for an evening.
They end up at an L.A. entertainment soiree, and this is where we run into...
"Cordelia?"
"Oh my God, Angel."
Cordy hasn't changed a bit. says she's now living on a beach in Malibu and that acting is just clicking for her.
Then she needs to get back to mingling
"Well, I better get mingling-ly. Really should be talking to people that ARE somebody."
"Tact is just not saying true stuff."
Tina gets grabbed and Angel saves her in the parking lot.
At his place, Tina describes Russell in no uncertain terms as a bad guy.
"He likes pain."
"I mean he REALLY does."
Angel does some research at the L.A. Library and discovers Russell's pattern.
Tina sees Angel's note from Doyle
and runs out in a fit of distrust
Later that night, Angel finds her body.
And at Russell's mansion he is being given the lowdown from a lawyer named Lindsey McDonald as to how her death is being hidden.
"Wolfram and Hart is a full-service law firm, Mr. Winters."
And on the video of the party, Russell spies Cordy.
As Cordy is being driven to Russell's mansion,
Angel drags a spineless Doyle along with him.
I'm just a messenger."
"And I'm the message."
At the mansion, we gain some insight into Cordy's struggle, and then, in what is my favorite bit in the episode:
"Hey, you're a vampire!"
"What?"
"No, I'm not"
She may not be a big-city girl,
but she is most certainly a Sunnydale alum.
Angel breaks into the mansion and saves Cordy letting Russell go.
He then breaks into Wolfram and Hart and pushes Russell out a window which leads to a pretty spectacular death.
I think this is actually one of the best stunts in the series.
Both the stuntman and the camera were attached to a decelerating cable falling at the same speed
Back at the office:
[rings]
Buffy: "Hello."
"Hello?"
And Cordy has appointed herself as manager of Angel's new mission.
All things considered, it's a pretty good pilot.
My favorite sequence is the opening which sets up one of our central metaphors.
Strongly lays out the early season motifs as well as instantly departs from 'Buffy'.
Though in the DVD commentary for the pilot.
Whedon said he immediately felt a sense of betrayal over how he began 'Buffy' versus how he began 'Angel.
The last time he had a girl threatened in an alley she turned out to be the Slayer.
But here, the women needed a big strong hero to save them.
But it's Angel's complexity,
right now reflected more in his backstory than the evidence of his time on 'Buffy',
that drew Whedon to the show.
And part of that complexity is established in the opening visual metaphor of the episode
Angel is at a bar drinking, which visually establishes the metaphor of him being a recovering alcoholic.
One I believe is constant throughout the rest of the show and dovetails well with the ideas about redemption and sacrifice.
Whedon and Greenwalt designed 'Angel' the Series as a noir.
A term that I think most people FEEL like they understand but probably can't define, myself included, and there's a reason for that
What specifically defines 'noir' is actually a continuing debate.
Other than the general consensus as to some common visual and character tropes
The genesis of noir as a category is due to a fairly complex set of circumstances relating to the studio system in the '30s and '40s.
For instance, the visual language of noir was originally driven by the necessity of Minimalism and 30s black and white B-movies.
As in what is the minimum visual information necessary to provide the story?
Consequently, there's a lot of strong single source lighting, dark shadows, ow angles and maximum contrast.
American Cinematographer Alan Davio said, "In noir, what's important are the lights you don't turn on."
And that stark visual language filtered into the common story and character tropes as well.
Noir sprung out of a sense of nihilism leading up to, and just after, World War II.
Consequently, the common narrative tropes were ones that both lend themselves well to that simple visual language and reflected the current feelings in the cultural zeitgeist.
The hard-boiled detective.
The damsel in distress.
"I came here to be a famous movie star"
"...but they weren't hiring."
[noir intensifies]
Crime stories. Cynicism. Moral ambiguity.
"You can't cut yourself off--"
"--Doyle."
"I don't want to share my feelings. I don't want to open up."
"I want to find the guy that killed Tina. And I'm gonna look him in the eye."
Still, David Greenwalt lists the scene where Angel jumps in the wrong car in the parking lot as one of the most important bits in the pilot.
It's a mission statement moment shouting that 'Angel' the Series is going to attempt to subvert the classic noir, not retread it.
But ignoring all that, the whole opening scene just kicks ass!
You've got a great little fight sequence climaxing in what ends up being one of the visual icons from the series:
the double stake.
You've got some heavily John Wu influenced low angle bits of Angel walking towards the camera with his cape-like trench flapping behind him.
You have his Batman-lite gadgets,
and then his inner struggle to never drink again.
It's one part noir detective, one part supernatural thriller and one part comic-book superhero.
The cast feels a little sparse at the moment
...but promising.
The one I found most charismatic and interesting from the start was Doyle,
played by Becky's former boyfriend, Glenn Quinn,
and was quite excited to see where they might go with his character over the course of the series.
I love how his half-human demon dichotomy reflects in his dialogue and behavior.
"It's about reaching out to people showing 'em that there's love and hope still left in this world."
"Hey, spare change?"
"--Get a job, you lazy sow!"
And of course, that dichotomy reflects the show's subversive elements.
And Cordy instantly feels like a better fit here than she did on 'Buffy'.
There were more than a few episodes of 'Buffy' where it seemed like the writers didn't know exactly how to include Cordy,
especially after the Xander breakup.
Already, Cordelia feels more at home to me with 'Angel' in L.A. than she did within the confines of Sunnydale.
At most, Sunnydale would have a baroness,
L.A. is a city for a queen.
And she is, even here, a perfect foil for Angel's broody loner Batman routine.
I also loved how she preemptively figures out Russell was a vampire.
Cordy is not dumb.
While it's a topic I avoided in 'Why You Should Watch Angel',
I think in setting the table for this season of the 'Angel Guide', it's important to talk briefly about the core distinctions between 'Buffy' and 'Angel'.
I'm going to speak overall about both shows without getting into any specific spoilery details...I hope.
Where 'Buffy' has a pretty defined, you might be tempted to use the word 'rigid', symbolic structure, Angel does not.
On 'Buffy' you had the Big Bad who was usually in some way after Buffy.
That Big Bad stood for some sort of impediment to growing up and that impediment tended to structure the manner in which the season arc unfolded.
Early on, even the episodes that were seemingly about the Scoobies and not Buffy,
were always nearly in some way thematically related to her and her season arc.
And each season represented a concise step on that path to adulthood which constructed Buffy's life.
In an interview, Whedon stated that there were two things he tends to write about
The journey to power.
And the idea of the burden of power.
'Buffy' is the first,
'Angel' is the second,
Which is one thing that accounts for their drastic differences in style.
Whedon has admitted that early on he didn't know how to write 'Angel' the Series.
This big, handsome, sexy pile of man-meat with superpowers and a cape.
He couldn't relate to the character the way he COULD to Buffy.
And the supporting cast on 'Angel', which each have a function to enhance the show, are actually not related to him symbolically.
And that lack of metaphor tether gives them much more interesting potential stories
than what some of the Scoobies got in 'Buffy''s first three seasons.
But because Whedon didn't felt like he didn't know how to write Angel,
what he'd end up doing as a matter of process was to tear him down each season to try and figure him out,
leading to he and David Greenwalt reinventing the show each season as they found a better grasp of who Angel was.
'Angel' seasons are actually deconstructions of his character
the inverse of 'Buffy' seasons.
It's partially why the seasons don't always have a specific single character Big Bad.
The show just didn't NEED one as Angel is often his own adversary.
But we'll get into that further as we go on.
Lastly, I want to have a quick chat with those of you new to 'Angel' about patience and how to watch the show.
I say all this assuming you came here from 'Buffy'.
But if you didn't this still applies.
Given Whedon's admitted struggles with the character, it goes without saying that there are some hurdles to get through.
It's a question I get a LOT.
Should you watch 'Angel''s episodes as they aired
as in 'Buffy' Season 4, Episode 1,
'Angel' Season 1, Episode 1,
'Buffy' Season 4, Episode 2,
'Angel' Season 1, Episode 2.
Or should you watch one complete show and then the other complete show.
When Angel started 'Buffy' had been on the air for three years already.
By 'Season Four', the cast and crew had found their strides and the show has a light and easy chemistry to it that is a liquid joy to drink in.
I found switching between them sometimes sapped my experience of 'Angel''s first season
and despite there being a small handful of crossover episodes between the two shows
I actually enjoyed Angel much more when I watched it sequentially and didn't swap in 'Buffy'.
But I'm sure there will be a hot debate over this in the comments and in fairness, the very first time I watched 'Angel' I did swap.
But the thing I most wanted to emphasize is however you choose to watch 'Angel', be patient with it.
The first season HAS some growing pains. It can be dry and a little cheesy at times.
I'm certainly not going to hold back on those problems here in the guide.
But never forget 'Buffy''s first season.
What I can say for most of you is that if you give it some space and time to discover itself, it will find a place in your heart.
It certainly did for me.