For a long time I’ve considered Angel the superior show. Not because I thought that Buffy was bad but because I thought Angel was that good. But that being said, it’s been a long time since I really explored the reasons behind that decision. And one of the things that’s been racing through my mind as I’ve been flipping between Angel season two and Buffy season five is how damned amazing both of these shows are. With each new episode I start to think “man, this show really is the best of the two” but each show makes me think that!

Both have been so impressive and expressive with their core message. From the startling and terrifying realism of the shock of losing a loved one found in The Body to the nearly beatific monologue Angel gives at the end of Epiphany, both shows were just endlessly awesome through and through those years. One thing that I noticed this year was the much improved serialization on Buffy. In previous years, there was an overall season arc but each episode felt fairly self-contained but this year the stories spread out over the season in a much smoother manner. I still think that seasons two and three were their best stuff but the constantly intensifying story really made the season much more dramatic and addictive.

But as much as I like the more mature themes the show explores in the fifth season, I can’t help but remember the annoying early Dawn. I never loved the character, even in the final year of the show — probably because she was more and more frequently given the childish reactionary personality the annoying selfish half of Buffy handled in earlier seasons — but in the first half of this season she’s like Wesley Crusher on crack for annoying fans. It seems to me that they created the Dawn character to give Buffy someone to care for and not lead — a daughter of sorts — but I don’t think the show ever recovered from her introduction. For that season the story was beautiful and moving and I love the sacrifice that ends the season, but after that she returns to being an annoying teenager who gets in the way more than anything else. Like season four, season five has some fantastic episodes and some really moving moments, but there are aspects of it which still rub me the wrong way. Of course, it’s still a vast improvement over season four in virtually every way.

And yet, with all the greatness going on over on Buffy, Angel still wins out for me. The thing that really stands out about Angel to me is this: there is no Big Bad. When the season is over, the world doesn’t decide that evil is Just Not Worth It for the summer before a new unspeakable evil decides to give it a try. From the very first episode of Angel, Wolfram and Hart is shown as ambiguous at best with regards to morality. But they’re never the Big Bad. Evil simply persists in Angel’s world. Holland Manners says to Angel that if each and every human didn’t have a little tinge of evil in them, Wolfram and Hart couldn’t exist. This goes with the idea that Angel is in many ways about the banality of evil. Wolfram and Hart isn’t the source of the evil we see in our world, it survives because of it. When Angel finally understands this after a dark turn in his character he comes to a realization:

If there’s no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters then all that matters is what we do. ‘Cause that’s all there is. What we do. Now. Today. … All I want to do is help. I want to help because I don’t think people should suffer as they do, because if there’s no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.

That idea is the reason I think Angel is the better show. Angel comes to a realization that, no matter what you do, evil will persist but that doesn’t matter; what matters is what we do in the face of evil. This sentiment echoes something Angel says in the fourth season.

Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It’s harsh, and cruel, but that’s why there’s us. Champions. It doesn’t matter where we come from, or what we’ve done, or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world were as it should be. To show it what it can be.

And all of this comes back to the idea that there is no Big Bad. There’s life and there’s what you do with it. Which is a good philosophy whether you’re in our world or a supernatural one filled with demonic monsters hoping to bring ruination to all of humanity. Beyond the appealing worldview there is the fact that, while Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a great deal of stuff going on with the peripheral characters, Angel was much more of an ensemble show. It wasn’t until the later seasons that Buffy explored the lives of the Scooby Gang in any real depth; there were episodes like Dopplegangland and The Zeppo earlier but they dealt with the insecurities of the character and weren’t a part of the greater mythos of the show. On Angel, on the other hand, characters underwent strife and character growth from the beginning. Doyle’s heroic sacrifices stemmed from what was revealed about him and what had happened to him in earlier episodes. Cordelia’s ongoing struggle with her visions rarely took the spotlight but was persistent even when the plot of an episode was not reliant upon it. Wesley’s development from a bookish weakling to a warrior, though still bookish, and his ongoing distaste for father figures never felt forced and informed much of how we see Wesley’s actions. I did not even mention any of what has happened to Angel over the course of these two seasons; the show is so rich with well developed characters and subplots that it’s not necessary.

There is just so much that I love about Angel and Buffy as shows and as explorations of the human condition through inhuman subjects. Now that these seasons are over with I get to enjoy seasons six and three respectively. Buffy will pleasure me (in my dreams) with episodes like Once More, With Feeling and Tabula Rasa and finally let the fans who had yet to realise it see that Xander is what keeps the world from falling apart. Meanwhile, Angel’s actions from the last season will come back to haunt him in more ways than one and the consequences will reverberate throughout not only the characters but also their world for the rest of the series. This rocks way too hard.