Angel

(S01E01) Quiet. If there’s one word that can describe the essence of the Angel series premiere it would be ’quiet’. Oh, sure, there are battles, there are chase scenes, and Angel tosses another vampire out the window to a fiery, sunlit death, but even those were very subdued.

Of course, that’s the nature of the main character, Angel (David Boreanaz); the quiet, loner vampire with a soul who kills other vampires and demons to atone for his past sins. We didn’t notice this when he was in Sunnydale because Buffy Summers and the rest of the Scooby gang of Buffy the Vampire Slayer made up for it with their snappy dialog and daily battles against the demons of the Hellmouth. In fact, Angel left Buffy, his one time lover, and the town of Sunnydale, after a particularly bloody battle to save the town from a human-eating demon. It’s just when he relocates to Los Angeles do we realize that Angel is quite the brooder, quite the wandering soul . . . and very much unsure of what his role in life is.

DoyleEnter Doyle (the late Glenn Quinn, formerly Mark on Roseanne), a half-human, half-demon who receives visions from "The Powers That Be" of troubled souls that need assistance. "The Powers" have recruited Angel to save these people and hopefully give the sullen hero some purpose in his life. Unfortunately, his first attempt at saving fails as the woman he was told to protect is killed by Russell Winters, a wealthy and influential businessman who is also a vampire.

Spurred on by this failure, Angel commits to finding and killing Winters. Using his skills of subtle intimidation and stealth, our hero finds him in his mansion where, unbeknownst to Angel, Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is the businessman’s guest. Cordelia, who is trying to get her big break in Hollywood, is urged to meet with Winters after wowing his associates at a party the previous evening. However, as she was a member of Buffy’s gang of protectors back in Sunnydale, she knows a vampire when she sees one (dark curtains, no mirrors) and she runs from Winters. Luckily, as she is about to become another innocent victim Angel comes to the rescue.

While Cordelia thinks that it’s all over, Angel doesn’t; he feels that Winters will continue doing what he wants to do without anyone stopping him. So, after entering his corporate offices, Angel kills Winters by pushing him out of the office building glass window. However, that’s really insignificant. The important part is that Angel has his first meeting with representatives of the law firm Wolfram & Hart; an organization that will haunt him throughout the entire run of the series. Fret not, though, because our quiet hero now has friends (Doyle and Cordelia) who want to help him rid Los Angeles of the supernatural and undead.

In all, this was a good first start to the series. While darker and quieter in nature to its Buffy companion, creator/writer/director Josh Whedon does inject some of his customary humorous barbs into the episode. If you began watching the series in later years, when it became more of an ensemble show, you wouldn’t recognize much about it other than Angel and Cordelia. Yet, there’s something raw about this episode that makes it just as enjoyable.

More from our avenging angel and his friends next week.