Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
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Curious
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Weird
Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: October 5, 1999
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Angel, “City Of” (season 1, episode 1). [Stream on Netflix.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: It’s not that Angel seems like an odd character to have spun off of the cult hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer in retrospect. Angel seems like an odd character to have spun off now. The fact that Angel was able to go on for five seasons (four of them good ones) is something of a miracle considering the fact that the two characters it pulled from Buffy had barely ever interacted with one another, and the title character was a mopey vampire who couldn’t vamp. It’s also heartening to remember that seventeen years ago today, a brilliant cult TV show managed to spawn another brilliant cult TV show, all under the guidance of Joss Whedon. What a time to be alive that was.
The thing was, Angel was perfect for the show they ended up creating for him. Angel tended towards the brooding; Angel was set in a permanent-midnight Los Angeles, with a broken dream on every corner and a lost soul in need of saving on every block. Given how much Angel (the character) was defined by his swooned-over romance with Buffy, fashioning his spinoff as a kind of supernatural noir must have been a bit of an oddball pitch, but boy did it ever work. Angel as a detective series, with Cordelia Chase as his perfect Girl Friday. Cordelia ended up being the character who grew and changed (not always for the better, alas) the most over the course of the series, but it’s impressive how much they got out of the Angel character on this show. By steering into the skid of Angel’s darkness, they were even able to push through to the other side and make him (occasionally) funny! What dark alchemy was at work there, we may never know.
There are even some who would say that Angel ended up being a better series than Buffy. Those people would be wrong. But for certain long stretches, Angel probably did have a stronger central conceit than Buffy. Vampire warrior in the shadows. Help the helpless. Earn the soul he was cursed with. Occasionally patronize a demonic karaoke bar. It all worked so well.
