Little sister has loaned me her newly purchased DVDs of Angel: Season One, since nobody felt the urge to buy them for me off my wishlist (no surprise there). As promised, I'll be reviewing them. If anyone wants me to review Buffy... the DVDs are still on my wishlist (heh).
Angel: City Of: I jumped into this show in the middle of the fifth season, so I expected to be surprised by some of what I saw. I was more surprised than I expected. The only two characters I really recognized were Angel... and Lindsey. If that was supposed to be Lindsey. I recognized Cordelia from "You're Welcome", but obviously an awful lot happened between this appearance and her appearance in season five. As for Doyle, I knew a bit about him, but I didn't know who he was. Quite a difference. Anyway, as to the show itself... if I had caught this when it first aired (5 October 1999) I probably would have tried to keep watching. The pace is fast, the characters are engaging, and Angel himself is a hunk. I loved the joke about "have you looked at youself in a mirror lately?" from Doyle, as well as his quick correction. I think the thing that impressed me most was the well-done explanations for everything that was happening, from Doyle's overview of Angel's life to the sample "burn" of Angel so we weren't surprised when Russell later flames on. I also loved Cordelia's knowledge about vampires coming out at the worst possible moment. Looking at it from the perspective of someone who has seen where the show went a few seasons later, I also like the nods to Wolfram & Hart and Lindsey's prophetic statement about Angel. In short, pretty darn good TV, and when it finished I sat back and said, "oh wow."
After watching the episode, I went back and watched it with the commentary by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt. It was quite fun. They explained what the theme song is supposed to represent, complained about the time the elevator took to move, and talked about blowing things up. One comment they made is that they try to undercut the expectations of the genre. So Angel looks like a wonderful Batman character, but he makes silly mistakes like jumping into the wrong car, or more serious mistakes like not saving the girl. It's where a lot of the humor in the show comes from, as well as a lot of the drama, and it seems to be what makes Angel different from your average TV show. I usually don't watch commentaries on DVD, but this one kept my attention quite nicely. I also tried the Spanish and French tracks, but only for parts of a scene. I'm afraid it gets old pretty quickly when you can't understand what people are saying. I watched those mostly to check out the voices for the actors in other languages, and what little I saw seemed to fit ok. Not a lot of extras, but enough to make this package nice anyway.
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