Angel

It doesn’t exactly suck to be a BUFFY fan right now, even though the series itself is going off the air in only a few more weeks. Not only is the spinoff series ANGEL still going strong (though its future is uncertain as of this writing), there’s Joss Whedon’s FRAY comic (reviewed this week) and regular box set releases of both BUFFY and ANGEL, of which this is the first.

There’s more reason to watch ANGEL than just David Boreanaz (even though he’s certainly pretty enough to warrant it). This is no cheap BUFFY knockoff - it’s a fully-realized series of its own, as this boxed set proves. Although the first episode "City Of" contains almost too much BUFFY-related info and there are two BUFFY cast member visits in the first eight episodes alone - including Sarah Michelle Gellar herself - the series finds its footing fairly quickly, meaning that only the first few episodes have that "new series" feel that makes most season one boxed sets hard to sit through. A slightly different continuity establishes itself - for one thing, demons aren’t nearly the epitome of evil they are on BUFFY, as Angel’s half-demon sidekick Doyle (played by the late Glenn Quinn) shows. And the intercourse between the human world and the demonic is a bit more free and open in Los Angeles than in Sunnydale (hard to believe that about L.A., isn’t it?) - vampires and devilspawn alike even hire lawyers from the firm of Wolfram and Hart to protect their interests in the human world. It’s a world just as prone to silliness as Buffy’s, but the stakes (no pun intended) somehow feel just a tad bit higher from the start.

While Boreanaz brings a touching vulnerability to the lead character, he never really seems to change all that much from the first episode, despite finally becoming human for a day in the touching "I Will Remember You," watching the death of a close friend in "Hero," and having to watch a ally and potential love interest slowly become an enemy in the form of detective Kate Lockley (Elisabeth Rohm). A look at any of the recently broadcast episodes of the series reveals an Angel not much different from this one. The real focus of interest here is the supporting cast. We only get to see Glenn Quinn’s Doyle for nine episodes, for example, but when he dies in the otherwise lackluster "Hero," it’s a loss that the other characters (and we) feel for the rest of the season. Doyle’s replacement, "rogue demon hunter" Wesley (Alexis Denisof), hasn’t got the same appeal at first, coming off as nothing more than unneeded comic relief, but by the season finale even he has found a firm footing. Angel’s uneasy alliance with Lockley provides welcome appearances by Rohm (who later joined Law and Order), who manages to steal every scene she’s in, even in the somewhat uneven "Sense & Sensitivity."

But the real attention grabber is Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), the character who experiences the most growth this season. Initially she’s just like she was on BUFFY: snotty, self-absorbed, and sarcastic to a fault. Even then, she’s immensely likeable, even though we know she’d probably give none of us the time of day. But her slowly building attraction to Doyle, tragically unfulfilled at the time of his death, and his gift to her of his blindingly painful prophetic visions, are what really make her blossom. When she first manifests her powers in "Sense & Sensitivity," her reaction is the same as any of ours would be: she wants these visions gone, and she wants them gone now. But by the time we get to the season finale "To Shanshu in L.A.," in which she suffers a grueling hours-long barrage of visions which almost kills her, the first thing she says when she comes back to reality isn’t how much she wishes she didn’t have this burden - she instead talks about all the people she saw in danger and suffering and insists they must help them all. It’s a beautiful moment, and one which makes us adore Cordy (and Charisma) forever.

So, the season itself is great - shame the disc set isn’t. While the episode transfers themselves are top notch, and while it’s cool to have the option of hearing Angel and the gang speaking French and Spanish, the extras in this set leave something to be desired. The Season One featurette is in an odd place on the third disc, spoiling some of the season’s best surprises if you’re watching chronologically while giving very little in the way of information we didn’t already have. The other three featurettes are equally useless - the "I’m Cordelia" one simply doesn’t feature enough time with Charisma Carpenter; "The Demons" is misnamed and should simply be called "The Villains," as it includes some of Angel’s non-demonic adversaries. While it’s nice to hear series creators Whedon and Greenwalt talking about "City Of," Espenson seems like an odd choice for commentator on " Rm W/a Vu" - whatever happened to getting the actors to commentate on an episode or two, for a change? The still photo gallery is rather difficult to navigate, which must be why you’re given the instructions on how to navigate it every single time; and the featured blueprints of sets not only require a magnifying glass to appreciate (since the zoom feature won’t work on them), they come from Season Two, not Season One. And finally, I challenge anyone to read through the entire scripts of "Five By Five" and "Sanctuary" -the genius at 20th Century Fox who decided that luminous blue print on a dark background would be easily legible obviously never bothered to try it himself. With any luck, all these problems will be fixed with the release of the second season in September - but after watching these episodes, that seems like a very long way away.