Episode 86: Angel the Series (Seasons 3-5)

Monia, the Exiled Fan, returns for another discussion of the Jossverse and its influence on contemporary fandom and contemporary fandom practices. You can listen to our previous discussion on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer here and here and read Monia’s in-depth look at the Buffy/Angel-verse fandom here.

While Buffy: The Vampire Slayer began as a teen show set in high school, Angel: The Series began as a Los Angeles-based noir. It kept the supernatural elements and the characters from Buffy but dropped them into a dark, dank, hard-boiled detective story. I loved it. Quite a few of the characters from Buffy would find their way over to Angel including the titular Angel, the vampire with a soul… or rather, a vampire with a soul, which we’ll get to in our discussion of Season Five. Cordelia, Wesley, Spike, Harmony, Darla, Drusilla, Faith, and Anne/Chanterelle all wash up on the mean streets of L.A.

This episode was recorded well before the untimely passing of Michelle Trachtenberg and I think I speak for both Monia and myself that we were shocked and saddened when we found out. Rest in peace, Michelle, you will be greatly missed.

Part 1 of this discussion covering seasons one and two is available here.

In Part 2, we really dig into the meat of the series and unpack the poor treatment of Cordelia through seasons 3 and 4, the extremely mixed reactions on the addition of Spike to the cast, and just how much we love this show.

Some of the topics discussed include:

• Tina from The L Word aka Laurel Holloman also starred in one of the lesbian movies of the 1990s (The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, 1995). It seems very silly now but the Willow/Tara storyline from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer was actually quite controversial at the time. Angel: The Series hangs a lampshade on it by having a dumb Hollywood NPC loudly ask an actress, “This thing where your character’s gay…is that just for ratings?” in “Blood Money,” Season 2, episode 12.

• Season 3, episode 13, “Waiting in the Wings,” marks the Joss-verse debut of Summer Glau, who plays a tragic ballerina. Amy Acker also has a ballet background and filmed a cute deleted scene where she dances.

• “Waiting in the Wings” also features a powerful visual of Fred sitting in between Gunn and Wesley that is later echoed in Twilight: New Moon. The Fred-Gunn-Wesley triangle is mercifully not much of a triangle.

• Vincent Kartheiser joins the cast towards the end of season 3 and while I didn’t care for his plot line at the time, upon rewatch I actually really enjoyed Vincent’s performance. I thought he did a fantastic job with material that could not have been easy, especially for a young actor. I will also never forget this interview.

• “Dead Dove Do Not Eat” is a fanfic term used to warn readers that they may find what they’re about to read gruesome or disturbing. Click on these fics at your own peril.

• The Leather Pants trope is also taken from fanfic and signals a sexy bad boy character.

• Technobabble is fictional nonsense that writers put in to fill out fantastical television plots. As far as I know, the term originated with Star Trek. Writers would stick [tech] into the dialogue and then a technobabble writer would figure out a way to make it make sense. You hear this in shows like Angel and Buffy but with demons and magic instead of warp drives. The addition of Wesley in the early part of the show gave them a character to say all the [tech] parts; Fred is another character good for delivering [tech]. Just based on various actor Q&A’s I’ve heard over the past 20+ years, delivering [tech] is actually quite difficult. You need to make complete nonsense sound meaningful.

• Gunn the Blerd makes so much sense and I wish it had been explored more.

• Charisma Carpenter has spoken out about her bad experiences with filming Angel. As much as I love the show, I’m sorry she had to go through such a traumatic time.

• Charisma was 24 when she played a high schooler on Baywatch; she would have been around 32 years old filming with Vincent (about 23 years old) for season 4 of Angel. Vincent just looked extremely young for 23 and, unfortunately, Charisma’s styling at the time had her looking more like 42.

• Jasmine’s whole MO is to forcefully bring about utopia. What I love about the Jasmine arc is how it clearly shows that utopia is… extremely dystopic. There are a lot of interesting fringe psychological concepts played with in this arc, including the oppressiveness of groupthink with certain points that reminded me of the Maoist Cultural Revolution. For my money, it’s one of the best television narrative arcs of all time.

• MKUltra was a CIA mind control project that was considered a conspiracy theory until the Church Committee revealed all in 1975. Sometimes the conspiracy theorists are right.

• Art Bell hosted a late night radio show that delved into the paranormal and UFOs and similar topics.

• Monia calls Spike the “Fonzi” of the Buffyverse and she’s not wrong. TV Tropes labels these guys “breakout characters” if you want to browse the list. One woman’s Spike is another woman’s Steve Urkel.

• Flowers for Algernon used to be one of those books everyone had to read in middle school.

• Seven of Nine was a character on Star Trek: Voyager played by Jeri Ryan in a skin tight cat suit. She was added to give the show some more sex appeal and a certain section of fandom nicknamed her “T of A.” I always liked Seven of Nine and Illyria was in the same T of A mold. I liked her, too.

• The episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine I refer to is “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang,” which is a light-hearted farcical holodeck episode that comes right before the show ends in a grim run of dark, darker, and darkest episodes about war.

• The comics are garbage and we shall speak of them no more… but we will speak of this queen played by ex-Playboy model Carole Raphaelle Davis.

• It’s Lil Meow Meow’s world; we’re all just living in it.

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The songs played are:

1. “Angel” by Darling Violetta

2. ["Take it out any time you like."] S3 x E12

3. [Cordy! Theme Song] S3 x E11

4. ["You took my son!"] S3 x E17

5. [“Oh, Jasmine”] S4 x E21

6. “Lady Marmalade” by Lorne (Andy Hallett) from S4 x E3

7. ["Keep your mittens on, Sparky."] S4 x E16

8. ["What?"] S4 x E11

9. ["Angel."] S4 x E17

10. ["I guess I thought this one was better than the others."] S4 x E21

11. ["Share the Love With those MKUltra Bastards."] S4 x E19

12. "Hey Sailor" by the Detroit Cobras from S5 x E9

13. ["If cavemen and astronauts got into a fight who would win?"] S5 x E15

14. ["But I would make a deal with Charles Gunn, Attorney at Law."] S5 x E14

15. “Take Me In Your Arms” by Dean Martin from S5 x E20

16. “Self-Esteem,” edited by tuschman168