All three of Joss Whedon’s TV series have devoted fans on the SDMB. And there’s a lot of crossover. I enjoyed all three shows, and I’m hardly the only one.
So which one do you like the most? (Based solely on the TV series – no comics, no movies.)
(And I’m trying to decide, in the interests of fairness, if it’s more or less fair to specify a single season of either Buffy or Angel, since Firefly only has 17 episodes. On the one hand, B and A have more gems to choose from; on the other hand, they’ve got a lot more crap to sort through, as well. So consider this in your answer if you like.)
Me, I’m torn between Buffy and Angel. A couple of months ago, it would’ve been Buffy, no question – either season 2 or 3 beat what I’d seen of Angel.
But thanks to TiVo, I’ve caught up on Angel seasons 4 and 5, which are, I think, the series at its best. The “transition to adulthood” that, IMHO, Buffy never quite pulled off works beautifully on Angel. Season 5, with its continual wrestling with the ideas of selling out and working within the system and trying to balance big picture with little picture? Great. And they made Spike interesting again – I wasn’t a fan of him on Buffy’s last couple of seasons.
So at the moment, I’m going with Angel. (Sorry, Firefly, but you never hit me where I live the way the Buffyverse series did.)
I enjoy Firefly - and I’ll see Serenity when it comes out - but it’s never drawn me in the way that Buffy does. Thanks to Netflix, I’m working my way through Angel - I think I’m about halfway through season 3, but I don’t particularly want to go purchase the seasons for my collection.
If I had to put the three in order, I’d go with Buffy, Firefly, Angel.
So…is it unfair of me to choose Firefly if I’ve never seen the others? I have a hard time imagining that I would like them as much, but figure I should probably borrow them from the library sometime and at least give them a chance…
I love Buffy like crazy after seeing the first four seasons, and Angel after the first season. I’m so happy to have seven more wonderful seasons to go, between them. As for Firefly, I’ve only seen the pilot so far, but I’m sure I will like the rest of the series a lot – once I catch up with Buffy and Angel.
It’s a tough call, but I gotta go with Firefly. It may not have the most great episodes, but IMO it has the best average. Plus, I gotta consider that Buffy and Angel took about a season to hit their stride; just imagine what season two of Firefly would have been like.
Buffy, by far. I seem to be odd in that I like all seven seasons of Buffy although I will admit to its final season being the weakest whereas a lot of the middle of Angel kind of bores me and I HATE the whole Connor, Jasmine, Cordelia clusterfuck in S4. That was almost enough to make me write off the entire series but, thankfully, S5 is proving to be much more fun and enthralling.
If Firefly had lasted a couple more seasons, it probably would have supplanted Buffy. As it is now, it’s practically tied with Angel.
As I type I’m watching the “Joss-a-thon” on Space TV in Canada. It’s been a day of mostly Firefly (plenty of ads for Serenity), some Buffy and some Angel. Currently the Angel episode with Summer Glau as the ballernia is on.
I like all of them, and have all of them on DVD, which I like better depends on my mood, though I only started watching Angel once Buffy ended, and only started watching Firefly after it was cancelled.
My least favourite seasons for both Buffy and Angel are their fourth. On Buffy, I never liked he Riley storyline, and on Angel I really did not like the whole Cordy/Connor/Jasmine arc. I though that Angel suffered with the loss of Cordy, something that really hit home on the season 5 ep when she returned for her goodbye. I thought the fifth season of Angel, on the whole, was terrific. James Marsters and David Boreanaz had a lot of chemistry together, and Amy Acker post Fred’s death was more interesting to me than before.
Best Series: Firefly
Best Season: Buffy’s 2nd
Best Episode: Out of Gas
Episode most likely to make me cry and compulsively watch the rest of the season: Hole in the World
If you can hear Fred say “My Boys. I Walk with Heroes” and not be enthralled until “Would you like me to lie to you now?” then you’re a better man than I.
Buffy was about teenagers, with whom I cannot relate. Angel was about; well, I don’t know because I’ve never seen it but figured it was about teenagers. Firefly was about adults, with the pains and desires of adults, even if they were young adults.
Sorry, but I cannot relate to children and River Tam was, mentally, older than I am.
Buffy, Angel and then Firefly. All of them were excellent, but the story and character development of Buffy’s first three seasons (and its fifth) blew Angel and Firefly out of the water. An exception can be made for Angel’s second season. (Except for the last coupla episodes.)
Buffy. Angel got better after the first season, but never as good as Buffy for more than a episode or two- like “Spin the Bottle”- in a row. And Firefly is left behind by a mile…cowboys in space just didn’t do it for me.
Pssst, dropzone. There weren’t any regular teenage characters in Angel. (Unless Cordy was 18 or 19 the first season)
I wouldn’t know, assuming, as I did, that it was aimed at the same market as Buffy. It took me some effort to figure out that Firefly wasn’t aimed at teens, too. Effort i wasn’t willing to go to in order to try to catch up with Angel.
Angel was definitely aimed at an older audience than Buffy. Not sure how much older though. The idea, as far as it was ever explained to me by anyone, was that Buffy came on before Angel, and was a bit more family-friendly as far as that show gets, while Angel tended to be a bit grittier and more unforgiving in how it treats stuff.
Then when Buffy got moved to UPN, Angel was shown after 7th Heaven on WB, which one review I read in the newspaper described as being “like having a tall cool glass of orange juice and following it up with a vodka chaser.”
Best series: Firefly
Best Episode: Conversations with Dead People (Buffy season 7, included the actor from Firefly who played Mal and Zoe’s war buddy)
Best Musical: Once More, With Feeling (“I think this line’s mostly filler!”)
One thing that I think Firefly lacked was proper “DAMMIT JOSS!” endings like Buffy was infamous for. Stuff like the floppy disk behind the desk in Season 2 of Buffy, or the Harbringer with the battle-axe in early Season 7.
