Angel Season Rankings

Sweeney: More finale flaily fun times! Let’s celebrate with more gifs from She:

Anyway, that being said, there is something strange and surreal about this. It’s weird to imagine this blog without the Buffyverse and it’s over this week. Or, as Lorraine put it in her Buffy “Best Of” video – “this is the end, except for the part where it’s not” because we will undoubtedly continue to pick it back up here and there. It also, of course, colors everything else we do here, so there’s that.

We’ve made no secret of the fact that we find this the weaker of the two shows. That said, I think I probably enjoyed it the most of the three of us and actually can see myself rewatching some of this. One day. In the future. When I’m not blogging 84 other things. I’ll pretty much forget anything from halfway through S3 up to halfway through S5 ever happened, save for an episode or two. I want to wrap things up on a high note so I’ll say that for all of its shortcomings, I respect that this show always had really big ambitions. It’s failures were usually of execution not of aspiration and I give it a fair bit of credit for trying to do big things.

 

1. Season 2 – There were just so many amazing character things here. S1 was the bridge between Sunnydale Cordelia and Angel Cordelia, and this is where we see some of her at her best. We meet some favorites, we got fun Darla times (the Angel/Darla stuff was also pretty fantastic), we watch Gunn struggle to adapt to working with a vampire. FRED joined the party. There really was a lot to appreciate here.
2. Season 1 – I went back and forth on this and it hurt my soul a little to not put those Doyle episodes at #1. It’s ridiculous that I still have such strong feelings for a character who got a handful of episodes in the five seasons, BUT I DO. Related: I was summing up the show recently and I remember starting S1 and noting that this was a darker show and the fact that I thought that about S1 is almost laughable now. THIS WAS SO LIGHT AND FLUFFY! One of the things that I loved about this season (aside from Doyle, who is #1) is the vaguely comic book feel it had. It went a long way to set a distinct stylistic tone for the show.
3. Season 5 – While 1 & 2 were close because of my nostalgic affection for them, 5 & 3  were also close for their imbalance. The first half of this season is pretty bad. It wasn’t even riding on S4’s awful coattails – it was doing it’s own unique brand of bad. BUT THEN! Then they ended things. I mentioned this yesterday, but I think that the success of the latter half of this season (The Girl In Question notwithstanding) is partially improvements with the writers, but also something in the show’s DNA. As has been said a thousand times not just by us but also by you guys in the comments (in fact, probably mostly in the comments) this show is concept-heavy. They try to tackle big ideas and having 4.5 seasons of build towards its big apocalyptic end means that they were poised to get to do all of that. I almost just talked myself into moving this up the line, but then I remembered how much I hated the first few episodes and I changed my mind.
4. Season 3 – Another thing I’ve said enough times that you’re all probably tired of hearing it is that Waiting In The Wings was the point at which this show took a nosedive for me. I also think this season was sort of the precursor to S4 in that it included slightly smaller versions of the writers biting off more than they can chew. Here were big concepts that occasionally got muddled. There are also just a number of developments that I just plain didn’t like, like Angel/Cordelia (their BFFship was my favorite) and Wesley’s self-righteousness. It also brought us the terribly boring Fred/Gunn relationship. That all said, it is impressive how much happened this season. Waiting in the Wings, in spite of being pivotal to stuff I did not like, was an amazing episode and there were some great Darla things here too. That’s just not enough to promote it.
5. Season 4 – This was just shit. They utterly assassinated Cordelia Chase as a character and all in service of a story that was fucking stupid. There were some redeeming moments – Willow and the final pieces of Faith’s arc – but they were blips on the radar for this cesspool of a season.

 

Lorraine: I feel like I’ve been saying the same stuff about Angel from the very beginning– right out of the gate it was super clear what the strengths and weakness of this show were, and with only a few exceptions, that remained true for the duration. Weakness for me, unfortunately, were some pretty big ones. Angel struggled with plots, consistency, and continuity. It struggled to tell complete stories and to make sense within the rules of its own world. I’d like to say that it had great ideas and crappy execution, but even that is only half true; some of the ideas on this show were straight up nuts. So, while I will go on to list a number of strengths next, because the core of what I’ve complained about season after season was, you know, THE STORY, I can’t very much say that I will ever count any of these amongst my top TV seasons.

I know that sounds super harsh, so I’ll dilute that all by saying I do have fond memories of the series. Its strength is, after all, this core group of characters who are going on the same cracked out journey we are. I could probably count some of these characters as my favorite TV characters, which is saying a whole lot considering that most of them were butchered by the story in one way or another, at one time or another. For the most part, Angel himself was such an interesting main character. The show never shied away from making fun of him, painting him in dark colors and giving him true and lasting weaknesses. I have a soft spot for that oaf, what can I say?

When Angel hit its high notes, they were impressive. It managed to be thoughtful (if nothing we do matters…) grim, poignant and even laugh out loud funny. On that positive note, my season ranking are identical to Sweeney’s:

 

1. Season 2 – If there was any consistency to be found throughout this series, it was here, in season 2. The characters hit their stride and so did their entire operation. Someone in comments recently wondered how we would stack Angel up against Buffy, either by season or episode. We aren’t ready to answer that quite yet, but I will say that during season 2, I remember thinking about how far superior the group dynamics of the Fang Gang were vs. the Scooby Gang. Even thinking about it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. As far as stories go, Pylea was weird, but in a better way than any of the other weird we see later on. (Ahem. Season 4.) Darla was phenomenal and human Darla was even more fantastic. By and large, this was the best season.
2. Season 1 – If this season has anything over season 2, it’s a bit of feels and nostalgia, much like Buffy’s season 1. Sure it isn’t as good as what proceeds it (in both cases) but introduction to a world always seems to have a special spot in your heart, you know? Plus, there was Doyle and Faith showed up. Faith is one of my favorite parts of Angel. This season gave us a strong pilot and an equally strong finale (remember when we first heard about the Shanshu prophecy and we thought that might be a real, important thing? LOL).
3. Season 5 – This was my only point of contention. I kind of wanted to put it above 1. In the end, I can’t because the beginning of the season was that bad, but the end was better than a lot what we saw in season 1. It makes ranking tricky, as does the fact that 5, and all of it’s feelsy story lines, is fresh in my mind. I will never stop being impressed with Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof.
4. Season 3 – I wasn’t a fan of Holtz at all. I understood him and his position, but he dragged down any episode he was in for me. Darla showing up pregnant was great, but overall, I had mixed reviews about the storyline. The Fang Gang started to break apart here, and for so long, that was the big highlight of the show for me. Not a fan of Frunn, not of fan of Wesley’s actions, not a fan of the villains and it’s hard not to associate the pain of adult Connor with this season.
5. Season 4 – There was never any doubt. Most of my hate comes just the very end of the season, but it’s a lot of hate, so I don’t even care.

 

Kirsti: I spent a long time debating my Buffy season rankings with myself, because they’d changed so dramatically over the 20-ish months that it took us to recap the show in its entirety. With Angel, however, I had no such struggle. I mean, it helps that we have two less seasons to slot in. But still. This was pretty damned easy for me.

 

1. Season 2 – This was actually the only point of contention on the list. I have such fond memories of the Doyle episodes and the crossover magic in season 1 that it almost won out. Especially as season 2 gave us the whole CrAngel storyline, which was…not great. But. BUT. Season 2 also gave us Darla. And not only that, it gave us both Human!Darla AND Vampire!Darla, with all her sassy eyerolling. It gave us Fred. It gave us Gunn as a major character. It gave us The Hyperion, which – much like Serenity – is practically a character in its own right. And it gave us Wesley pretending to be Angel, which is one of the episodes I remember most vividly, because LOL FOREVER.
2. Season 1 – There was a lot of good stuff going on in season 1. Angel was striking out on his own, fighting the good fight, brooding a lot, and struggling to make ends meet. And he did it with the most unlikely of partners – an Irish half-demon, and Cordelia Chase. And, later, a highly inept Rogue Demon Hunter. It was great, because they had very little idea of what they were doing a lot of the time, and were firmly in the fake-it-til-you-make-it part of growing up. (Spoiler Alert: I’m still in that phase of life. Womp womp) Add in crossover magic, with visits from Buffy, Oz, Spike, and Faith, and the start of Faith’s redemption arc and you’ve got yourself one hell of a season. Course, you’ve also got that episode where the dude can remove his own body parts to grope women, so…yeah. Second place.
3. Season 3 – Man, they packed a lot into season 3. Darla turns up pregnant in episode 7, Connor’s born in episode 9, Wes gives Connor to Holtz in episode 16, and Connor returns as a batshit crazy broody teenager in episode 19. Like, DAMN. I wasn’t always a fan of the events of this season, partly because I found Sahjahn and Holtz pretty boring, and we got a LOT of Terrible Wig Flashbacks, and partly because they did cram SO MUCH into it that the audience was constantly in a state of “wait, what??” trying to keep up. But Darla’s storyline in this season was so freaking great, and Waiting in the Wings was one of the most memorable episodes of the show as a whole. Balance it out, and you get the middle of the road.
4. Season 5 – I really enjoyed the second half of the season. Well. More like I really enjoyed episodes 11-18 (with the exception of Why We Fight). But the first half was such a freaking struggle. I’m pretty sure that I sent apologetic emails to Lor and Sweeney with every episode we watched because I’d assured them that season 5 would be better than season 4. Even all the phenomenal episodes that we got towards the end weren’t enough to overwhelm the incredible mediocrity that we got with the rest of the season. And to put The Girl In Question so close to the end? NOPE. Shame on you, writers.
5. Season 4 – Yes, it gave us what was hands down the best episode of Angel – Orpheus. Willow! Faith! Hilarious conversations between the recently engaged Alyson Hannigan and Alexis Denisof! DISCO!ANGEL OMG. What more could you want from an episode?! BUT. (And it’s a big but) The rest of the season was so fucking awful that words cannot even begin to describe how much I hated it. I hated what it did to Wesley. I hated what it did to Fred. I hated what it did to Connor, who we saw in the end of season 5 was perfectly capable of being hilariously adorable. But most of all, I hated what it did to Cordelia. This season tore her character into shreds and then shat on top of those shreds with a coma-inducing mystical pregnancy. Even the culmination of Faith’s redemption arc couldn’t save this from being at the bottom of my list.

 

 

So, there you have it Traumateers. As always, we’d love to hear your own thoughts in the comments. How do you rank them?