First Thoughts on 'Angel' Season 1 (Episodes 1-4)

I wasn't initially intending to do these articles, but seeing as I have spent the best part of a day starting watching Angel, I thought I would solve my boredom problem with writing my thoughts on the few four episodes of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off.
While it took me a while to really get in to Buffy (not that it helped with each season ending with such a big epic finale that its amazing there was a following 22 episodes, let alone multiple seasons more), Angel has gotten me interested within four episodes, displaying much more of the expertise creator Joss Whedon had gained from working on Buffy and homing these skills in on a more adult series following supporting character Angel.
Angel is a very different beast to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, detailing a character of whom we as an audience still don't know that much about, and being much more of an adult detective show than a teen high school fantasy drama that its parent show was. This really does work in Angel's favour, and makes for a more interesting show. The plots are a lot more interesting, and it feels less like Sunnydale's demon of the week and more like Angel and co actually going around LA helping people across the city with their problems. Its less fantasy than Buffy, and more detective show, but this is something I really like - combining the two genres together to make something unique and interesting.
Despite this seeming to be tailored for a slightly different audience to Buffy, there are a lot of references and concepts the show instantly understands the audience to know before going in. A whole episode with Spike and Oz from Buffy would make little sense to those who don't know the characters, and the fact that Angel has only two main characters who aren't from Buffy so far merely cement this small problem the show has.
The original characters for this series also aren't as good as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with...um, what's his name? The Irish, half-demon one? Nope, can't remember. Oh, and the Detective...uh, Kate? Yeah, I'm four episodes in and I'd hope I could remember the characters' names within hours of watching the show but this isn't the case. I can remember most, if not all of the main characters' names from Buffy, and would only look them up to verify spellings. My problem here is that they don't really stand out among the Buffy characters we have in the show. Maybe its a flaw the show will fix further down the line.
However, I do like the 'cases' so far, and each one feels well-developed with good characters and story-lines. There's no real standout yet for me, but they were all done very well and it didn't feel all-too repetitive.
Angel certainly has some excellent writing on hand, although the original characters need more fleshing-out, but I see it really going far to become a truly great show in the future, and possibly better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer became in season 3.

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