There is a problem here though: the amulet. Why would Wolfram and Hart give it to Angel? There are some rationalizations made along the way but some contradict each other and none are particularly satisfying for me. It really comes down to one thing: it was a double-edged deus ex machina. The first being the thing that will save the thirty slayers from the army of twenty million ubervamps to cap off the most climactic battle in Buffy history. The second to bring Spike to Los Angeles. And dei ex machinis annoy me. But and they are not unprecedented in the Buffyverse, so I can manage.

If you ignore that little qualm, which doesn’t much interfere with your enjoyment anyways unless you’re someone who tends to quibble the minutiae, this season not only caps off one of the best shows that ever graced Television but also introduces some larger ideas that the show could have explored in future seasons. Previously, the show explored the ideas surrounding Faustian bargains and Pyrrhic victories, and those themes are expanded on this season which puts the phrase “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” to the test.

Angel and his team have been offered a powerful weapon to wield against the dark forces of the world, the only problem is it exists because of those dark forces, so to keep the weapon you have to pick your battles. Therein lies the rub, and man do the senior partners rub that shit. This season, above anything else in the series, shows that Wolfram and Hart are not really evil. They operate because of the evil in the world, and the evil inherent in the way businesses are run. Firefly had a company, Blue Sun Corporation, that arguably was the greatest force of evil in that universe, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Joss Whedon was in an anti-corporate mood when breaking these stories.

The interesting thing about this season is how various ignorant factions of evil battle each other and the casualties are all Angel’s friends. Gunn was given knowledge of the law, which led to the rebirth of Illyria inside of Fred. Meanwhile, Lindsay was employing the amulet, used in the finale of Buffy, to garner favour with the senior partners and join the Circle of the Black Thorn. And the senior partners were slowly wearing away the team’s once heroic worldview. As Lindsay said near the end of the season, heroes don’t compromise with the world; they see the world the way it is and they fight it.

All of these evils twist and distort our heroes intentions, making them less and less heroic, whether they know it or not. And when Angel is finally returned to the right path, it made sense that Cordelia would be the one to do that for him. Not because Cordelia was Angel’s most recent Love — we’ll exclude Nina since they weren’t dating yet — but because she’s the one who’s been with him since the beginning. She’s seen his ups and downs and knows what he wants to hear and what he needs to hear. It was a fitting end to the character, though if they hadn’t made her so damned mature over the past couple years it would’ve been entertaining to see her get completely swallowed up by the glitz and glam of the Wolfram and Hart lifestyle.

There are some who feel like the ending for this season was bad: they are wrong. It was the most tragic yet uplifting ending the show could have done and it’s the melange of those two characteristics that has always made Angel such a fantastic show.

Dawn is completely annoying almost all of the time. One of the few episodes she doesn’t piss me off is the aforementioned where she thinks she might be a potential slayer; in that episode, she’s mature, responsible and selfless. But in every other episode where she plays anything beyond a peripheral role she’s a completely insufferable selfish childish brat. The first time through I’d probably given up hope of Dawn being a character of any depth, but damn my naivete I really thought going into this rewatch that I’d like Dawn by the end of all of this.

And I already knew I didn’t like Kennedy all that much, but it’s amazing just how much I truly hate her. It’s not that she’s bossy and acts like she knows more than Buffy, and it’s not that she does nothing but encourage Willow’s magic, willingly ignorant of her dangerous addiction, and it’s not the hastily developed lesbian relationship between her and Willow, which was probably only created so that Joss Whedon could finally state conclusively to the world that Willow was not bisexual but homosexual. It’s that the writers so obviously want her to be an appealing character by making her strong, independent and “sassy” but, in my eyes, it just made the character abrasive and annoying.

And Buffy was just plain annoying. After about the 30th speech to the potentials about how much they suck and they’ll probably all die trying to conquer this evil… it gets a little tired. Almost every second episode of the season ended with Buffy giving a rousing speech full of bravado both stating how unprepared they all were for this and how they’re going to win regardless. Meanwhile this speech was immediately preceded by Buffy getting the shit kicked out of her or some other terrible calamity. So we get a season full of barking paired with useless impotent bites.

The writers were trying to show how desperate the situation really was but by doing so they made the ultimate success seem… unrealistic. When the single Turok-Han is released early on in the season it’s OK if he kicks Buffy’s ass at first; that’s expected from new enemies. But when, for three straight battles, she is utterly pummeled and barely survives it’s a sign that this is a formidable enemy and not a minion. This is not her being off her game for a fight, this is a real badass kicking hers.

But what happens when the final plan is devised about, oh say, five minutes before the climactic battle? All of the potentials, who have barely been trained in battle let alone hardened by years of real world apocalypse aversion, become ubervamp destroying machines because they have… the exact same mystical strength Buffy always had. So what turned the ubervamps into a bunch of pussies? Plot contrivance, that’s what did.

But that kind of thing is something I’m usually willing to ignore if the other aspects of the story felt true; but the emotions Buffy went through during this season didn’t feel true. Buffy constantly isolates herself despite every single one of her friends constantly trying to open her up. And I don’t think that leadership implies a solitary life. I think Buffy thinks that, despite all the friends she has been surrounded with her entire career as a slayer. And quite frankly, it’s getting old. Well actually it got old in the fourth season but its annoying persistence has yet to win me over.

I think I would have appreciated this path of further isolationism if it led to some lesson for Buffy, but all it led to was Buffy Being Right. When Buffy is finally called on her self-righteous, mightier than thou bullshit by… all of her long-time friends and the potential slayers she isn’t taught a valuable lesson about how to lead without alienating your charge, she doesn’t see the dissent and rethink her authoritarian stance, she gets pissy and decides that hey, her friends are all fucking worthless anyways. I mean, Spike agrees with her so she must be right, right?

So Faith gets a chance to take charge and she royally fucks up. Right? Well that’s what the show would like you to think. In reality, through some magic (literally people, this is a show about vampires) she managed to get some information out of one of the Harbingers but it turned out to be a nasty trap. Well that’s some bad luck but there’s no way for them to have known. Buffy is gracious enough to admit this when she returns to pick up the tattered pieces of their dissent. She ever so graciously absolves Faith of her sins. And then Faith decides to let the audience in on how completely alone you are the second you’re responsible for anyone else, just so any stragglers in the audience can finally figure out the Buffy was right all along. Of course, her feeling alone doesn’t really explain her behaviour except that when you feel alone, no-one else matters so treat everyone like shit instead of treating them like people which isn’t a particularly good message.

With that unexpectedly long rant over with, I feel I should finish this off by saying I still loved the season. The story was compelling, I still loved the characters (most of the time), and, like I said at the beginning of this whole mess, the final moments of the show are terribly moving and I don’t just tear up, I sob like a baby when it comes around. When it’s all said and done, the finale was practically perfect, but there was a lot of parts of the build-up that didn’t ring true for me. But I can live with that if it lets me have the ending the show received. The ending a show that held my heart for so long deserves.

My biggest gripe with Angel was the Cordelia/Angel love story. They were very close and grew closer as the show continued but their love should have remained platonic: the deep respect and admiration shared between champions who have fought beside each other. And their relationship was not a heavy catalyst for anything else. All of the events necessary to bring forth Jasmine could have happened over the course of the series without the burgeoning love. The conflicts therein fed into certain developments along the way but those developments could have happened some other way.

I also don’t like Cordelia being evil, even if it is only because she’s being controlled by a Power That Was. Though when you rewatch the season it’s fun to see all the points where evil Cordelia is subtly twisting the world around her preparing for Jasmine’s arrival.

Season three and four of Angel told a really compelling story, continued to explore themes of redemption and atonement, and had murky water, “so grey there’s hardly any black or white to it” ambiguous moral decisions galore. So it’s hard to complain. Much like season five of Buffy, there’s nothing especially horrible about it, but the moments of greatness come with a nasty tinge of adequacy and questionable plot development.

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.

Let’s be honest here for a second, Buffy is a bit of a bitch sometimes, and the rest of the time she’s a huge bitch. Most recently was her behaviour towards Riley during the fifth season. On first viewing it might not have been noticeable but Buffy’s distance from Riley stands out in hindsight. And I feel like his actions, while not completely justified, make a heck of a lot of sense. When I was younger I probably just sided with Buffy because she reacted to any accusations, no matter how accurate, with utter disdain and indignation, but with age and experience I can see what Buffy is doing and it doesn’t endear me to her.

Through the course of the show Buffy reverts to a childish little girl a little too often for my tastes, but every time she does someone is there to give her some freaking perspective. And most of the time it’s Xander. Without Xander, Buffy would either be a mess or dead. Granted, Xander can be a douche sometimes too; they all can. But they all contribute to the slayer. We can even ignore the most obvious example of this — when Xander, as the heart, joined with Buffy to defeat Adam — and still see that Xander is the one who keeps Buffy on track. He’s their rock. He provides stability to the whole gang and from that stability comes strength. And that’s how Buffy wins.

The show was much less serialized than in later years, but you could still see the reverberating consequences of stories. The most interesting aspect of the season is the growth of Angel. As Wesley said, it’s our desires that define our humanity and, while there was a tacit understanding of why Angel fought the good fight, the Shanshu prophecy gave Angel something to desire; something to make him human. Angel moves from that view as his story continues, he begins to fight the good fight because it should be fought, not because of some base self benefit. Angel is always seeking redemption, but somewhere along the way he realizes that redemption isn’t a destination, it’s an ongoing process.

Already in the first season, you can see how the stories told on Angel will be much darker and ambiguous as to who is evil and what is moral. And neither the questions nor the answers get easier as the show progresses.

I think that to properly handle this kind of stuff out you have two options: you can either have a Buffy marathon where you watch the Angel episodes that directly crossover with Buffy episodes or, if you really need to see all of Buffy and Angel, you should go through a detailed analysis of where Buffy and Angel episodes overlap and schedule accordingly. My best idea so far is to interleave Buffy and Angel episodes unless there is a multi-part story. So if there is a two parter in Sunnydale then you watch them directly after one another and then follow it up with two Angel episodes. This way, each series goes steadily forward but the ratcheted tension of multi-episode stories doesn’t get broken up by intervening series episodes.

There are some problems with that but it’s probably the best way to do it when dealing with a multiple TV shows. Of course, how many shows have interconnected shows running at the same time. I mean, you could have a Frasier Crane marathon, but that would entail watching all of Cheers and then all of Frasier; neither show aired at the same time. I’d wager that no other shows have this kind of problem — with the possible exception of the Star Trek shows, but they have completely separate storylines so you could easily watch them independent of each other — so this may be the last time I have to really think about this kind of problem.

But at the same time, the first thing Angel wants to know of the Oracles when asking of his new fate is if he is “free.” In the third season episode of Buffy, Amends, Angel says that he’s a weak person and he always had been. He was tortured by his past actions for over a century and in the back of his mind perhaps he felt that if he did enough good, the math would even out. And it’s with this shallow idea that Whistler convinces Angel to fight for good and aid Buffy. And with this scene we can see that this idea still holds a place in Angel’s mind; as much as he does what he does to “show the world what it can be” he’s still a weak person hoping for redemption. In later years, he realises that there is no redemption for what he’s done and that fighting with that goal is fruitless. The goal of fighting evil is to fight evil; because the people who can, should.

I really love this episode not only because of the heartbreak Angel must endure — to give up what is surely his ultimate dream — to continue the fight against evil, but also because it shows us a point in Angel’s progression as a character that shows a sort of shallow heroism; but heroism nonetheless.

The show doesn’t have the corny or cheesy mentality that drives a lot of Buffy, so its stories can be much darker and the show immediately takes itself much more seriously. Not that Buffy didn’t become a really serious, and sometimes very depressing, show in its later years, but Angel started off with the mentality of showing the real world. This show isn’t meant to be a supernatural allegory for adolescence, it deals with the nuanced evils in the world like the evils of apathy and of banality.

In the coming episodes, the show will grow, and, while it won’t reach its apex until its later seasons, these early episodes show a show ready to deal with the big ideas. Also, this is the first time I’ve watched the Buffy and Angel episodes interleaved since they aired that way lo those many years ago so it’s great to experience all those fun little cross-references anew.

And when Buffy started off in high school at the beginning of the series she made all sorts of friends quite fast. Hell, by the end of the series she was commanding a damned army of students! Do the writers really expect us to believe she’s the demure, insecure wallflower she’s presented as in this episode? And are we really supposed to believe that she could get her ass kicked by a poser on-campus vampire? She has, to date, kicked the Master’s ass, defeated Angel and Spike — two notoriously vicious brutal vampire of the past — and yet this wannabe vampstress can kick her ass? I don’t care how bad she’s feeling about not fitting in on campus, vamp slaying is mechanical at this point and she needs a real threat for it to be realistic.

I’m not great at making friends, in fact I’m terrible at making friends, but even I managed to scrounge up a couple people to talk to in between classes, so to have the show act like someone who is as pretty, as funny and as interesting as Buffy would have trouble making new friends, in any situation, is beyond absurd.

A lot of people hate season 4 a lot because it introduced Riley, and while I never had any strong distaste for Riley myself, I get the feeling I’m going to be considerably more annoyed with this season than any of the previous ones. There are some really great episodes this season, including the Emmy-nominated Hush, but that doesn’t mean the season as a whole isn’t poor. More as my marathon progresses.

But the marathon process behooved quick turnover so I read and I read and I read. And it was a damn good read. The pace was quick, and the story was filled with bizarre twists. The most entertaining thing about the series though is the inexplicable connections between the two worlds. From the soulful singing of the old folk song “Hey Jude” in Mid-World, to the mystically haunted locations strewn about our world that seem to have indelible connections to Roland’s world that has moved on. The next two books are both 700 pages so they’ll be a little more arduous and might have to be split over multiple days but I won’t find out until I’ve watched a couple more seasons of Buffy/Angel.

Xander was still a douche when it comes to Angel but it was considerably more sedated than in previous seasons so it didn’t bother me nearly as much. So much happened in this season with all of our main characters growing up in some way or another. Xander finally managed to find a place in the world and accept his place in the Scooby gang. Willow grew into the wiccan arts, a story thread that will continue to build for the rest of the series. Even Cordelia is given moments of real growth. But beyond that, this season was about how things change. Not always for the better, but things change. And as Whistler said in the season two finale “the big moments are gonna come. You can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.”

And one thing I have to say about the Faith storyline is this: it’s what the writers of Lost wanted for Michelle Rodriguez. They didn’t get it because they made the character too unlikeable too fast, but because Faith started off as a more vivacious version of Buffy, and was slowly revealed as a deeply troubled person we feel for her much more. I only mention Lost because as I was rewatching the Faith arc it reminded me so much of Ana Lucia that I felt it deserved comparison.

This season was about self-discovery which, unsurprisingly, is something that normal students must go through as they prepare to either enter the real world or head into post-secondary education. Either choice is scary and leads to a much more complicated and dangerous world, and the tone of future seasons only represents the realities of our world transposed to the realities of theirs. They made it through high school and next season… things fall apart. Not only is the former gang schizmed across two shows but the trials they are put through change them all in drastic ways. I can’t wait.

But I’m gonna pretty much ignore the arc elements. It suffices to say: Faith bad, Mayor badder. On to Willow. Something about which I have had many a dream.

She finally realises that she’s boring. Well, she’s not actually boring; she’s a computer-hacking, witchcraft-performing, super-nerdy, super-sexy girl. Any one of those things on its own would mean she was not boring, and putting them all together is not a “two rights make a wrong” kind of situation. But anyway, she likes to think she’s boring and decides to be more dangerous. Which lead to her performing a funky time-folding spell with Anya, formerly the vengeance demon du jour for scorned women, that got messed up and led to her parallel world vamp version coming to in our world. And then the fun begins.

The jock whose homework was to be done by Willow get his ass womped, Willow gets to pretend to be a dominatrix psycho bitch, and last but not least we get our first overt clue to Willow’s future homosexuality. My personal views on homosexuality aren’t exactly as strict as Joss Whedon’s; for instance, just because you fall in love with a girl doesn’t mean you couldn’t also fall in love with a guy. Most people would stick to whatever side of the tracks they’re on, but if you’ve gone both ways before, you’re no longer bound to one side or the other. (To be fair, that might just be a part of my consistent delusion of hoping that Xander and Willow will end up together in the long run, because they’re perfect for each other)

There are so many school-boy-squealing, this-is-freaking-awesome moments in this episode but the best ones sums it up pretty well. Giles rushing like a little boy headed toward his mom to hug Willow. Nuff Said.

The episode is your standard episode: impending apocalypse and relationships in turmoil. The only difference being that Xander isn’t really a part of the gang here. They’re all too worried that Xander is putting himself in too much risk and shouldn’t be as involved in their escapades. So while they’re off saving the world from falling into hell, Xander is having all sorts of adventures. First he falls into some bad luck with a group of undead guys looking to blow shit up, and that’s all well and good until they want him to join their undead gang whose main prerequisite is… well, being undead.

Then, he gets to save the day, at least marginally, by slamming his car into an apocalypse demon whose plan is pushed into the background where it would normally be the foreground. But again, this episode is Xander’s which tends to shift the focus. Anyways, this momentary success leads to a sexually frustrated Faith and Xander’s first time. Then, as we can’t just make fun of Xander for a whole episode without some sort of personal growth or life lesson, he finally manages to save the day. The crazy zombies plans are thwarted when Xander chicken’s the main unman into defusing the bomb. And thus Xander is a hero, though no-one will ever know because Xander realises that showing off isn’t what heroes do.

Of course, really this whole episode is a massive adventure in cock-teasing because they show glimpses of a massive battle with a vicious demon, and even revel each other with the spectacular events of the previous night the following day, all without having to destroy their budget with heavy effects. Just a couple tentacles and and some strobing lights and they can simulate a season finale sized battle. Bastards. But God do I love them.

When the show Angel begins, we’re treated to a new prophecy related to the ensouled vampire. The so-called Shanshu prophecy promised Angel the chance to be human after preventing the apocalypse. But the final story of Angel isn’t that Angel fights to give himself a better life. He fights because there are people worth fighting for. He fights because the world isn’t as it should be and he can do good. As Buffy says in the climactic scene “You have the power to do real good. To make amends.”

Angel doesn’t want to keep fighting. The memories of the things he’s done are so terrible and haunting that he doesn’t think life is still worth fighting for. He thinks the world would be better without him. He says to Buffy “I’m weak. That’s all I’ve ever been.” trying to convince her, and himself, that he can’t resist the temptations of the world and its inevitable that he’ll make the world a worse place. Buffy says “If you die now, all you ever were was a monster.”

Every moment of this scene is replayed in the later years of Angel. And the most powerful moment is when Angel, begging Buffy to let the sunrise destroy him and end both his suffering and the threat he represents to the world, says “Just this once, let me be strong” to which Buffy replies “Strong is fighting. It’s hard and it’s painful and it’s every day. It’s what we have to do.” As a long time Angel fan, who on most days considers Angel to be the better show of the two, I can attest that this sentiment is at the absolute centre of what that show is about. So this episode, aside from being a great addition to the ongoing stories of Sunnydale, prepares the viewer to see Angel go through these struggles on his own in the coming years.

All joking aside, the episode is really great because it shows a truly hopeless world and, quite frankly, life without hope shows you what hope really is. By the end of the episode the world is… well, the world is over. Cordelia, who initiated the parallel universe in the first place, dies midway through the episode and you realise that, it doesn’t matter how it happened, this is the real world now. And the world just keeps getting worse until you arrive at the final moments and all the people we’ve grown to love and care for over the intervening years, however twisted they may be in this dreary world, dying by each other’s hands. Angel calls out for Buffy as he turns to dust, and though there is no history between them, the pain of the life lost to the ether reverberates through the moment.

Finally, we come to the end of the montage. Everyone is dead save Giles, who now knows how to reverse all of this. Just as he is to destroy Anyanka’s power centre, she asks of Giles “You trusting fool. How do you know the other world is any better than this?” and Giles replies with such pain in his voice “Because it has to be.”

The plus side here is that all of this is a part of Xander’s growth. Xander’s hatred comes from Angel’s involvement with Buffy so it makes sense. That doesn’t make it less annoying or a more desirable storyline. Really, the only good thing about these annoying storylines is that they are a part of realistic character developments. Sometimes, you don’t like what kind of person someone was, but that doesn’t devalue who they have become.

Overall, the season was even better than the first, and the interesting thing is that it didn’t seem to follow the formula later seasons dictated. Later on in the series, the show settled into a form more like the first season, where the “Big Bad” of the season in introduced within the first couple episodes with trickles of arc development revealed each subsequent episode. The second season was much more casual with its arc development. The real Big Bad of the season wasn’t revealed until the middle of the season, when Angel lost his soul. The arc was still continuous but it seemed structured as three or four smaller arcs joined together through consequence.

If memory serves, season three is structured differently, and seeing as those two seasons are probably the strongest of the series, I’ll have to compare the two once I’m finished the third season, which should be in around twenty hours or so.

And just now, I noticed a fairly glaring plot hole. In the episode “Innocence,” the Gypsy man talks to the person entering his room as though they were Jenny Calendar with Buffy, which is what we’re led to believe given the previous scene, but it turns out to be Angel who’s there to kill the guy. Now it’s entirely plausible that Angel Knocked on the door and the Gypsy guy said “Come in” without looking assuming it was Jenny, but you’d think they could’ve shown that. Without those two additional seconds the scene feels like a gaping hole left by the writer and not only that, but the mistake wasn’t picked up by anyone else on the staff.

And yet, as with all my issues related to Buffy, it’s a drop of sucky surrounded by oceans of awesomeness, so I can’t really complain about my own growing cynicism.