Angel

Touched by Angel Fans A Worldwide Outcry Over a Show’s Demise

Thanks to WB’s cancellation of Angel, I now have an amazing postcard collection: at last count, 1100 from unhappy fans in nearly every state, all over Canada and England, plus 20 other countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Brazil, Poland, Italy and Germany.

I’m not sure if any are written in blood, but they certainly show a lot of heart. As cult followings go, Angel’s is pretty awesome.

Several Internet-driven fan campaigns, hoping to persuade WB (against the odds) to cancel the cancellation, have raised money to buy ads in trade papers and hire a billboard truck to canvass Hollywood with the message "We’ll follow Angel to hell... or another network." There have been rallies, even - appropriate for a show about a noble vampire - blood drives.

These creative protests come at a time when creativity is an endangered TV commodity, with contrived reality trumping the most inspired fantasies.

Much of the mail I’ve received expresses fear that the networks have given up on shows that stimulate the imagination. That’s why these people are so forcefully mourning the end of Joss Whedon’s wild world of apocalypse and redemption that began with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

On April 14, Angel returns with the first of its final six episodes. The story is full of action, humor and surprise, while also confronting big themes of humanity and heroism. As I watched, I was entertained, moved - but saddened. Like any fan, I’ll miss Angel, too.

Roush Rant What could be worse, I have often asked myself rhetorically, than yet another season of the soul-numbing Big Brother? Now I know: "A reality show without an end," which is how Fox touts its tawdry new time waster, Forever Eden (Thursdays, 9 pm/ET). Forever may be a relative term, given the lousy ratings so far for this open-ended series about a bunch of shameless, foulmouthed slackers who do little but drink, flirt and beg not to be banished from a tropical resort. Like anyone would notice. Contestants come and go, leaving barely a ripple in their scummy, boring wake. Eden is the most rotten of apples in reality TV’s overstuffed garden.