Does anyone know what seasons of Buffy correspond to what seasons of Angel?
Does Season 1 of Angel start after Season 3 of Buffy?
Just curious.
And is Firefly as good as my geek friends say it is?
by John Cole| 14 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Does anyone know what seasons of Buffy correspond to what seasons of Angel?
Does Season 1 of Angel start after Season 3 of Buffy?
Just curious.
And is Firefly as good as my geek friends say it is?
Comments are closed.
Dan Collins
“Firefly” is clearly too good for television.
iocaste
Angel Season 1 ran at the same time as Buffy Season 4.
Firefly was not perfect, but certainly good and should have had more time to find its footing.
sammy
I generally have a lot of respect for Joss Whedon: you can usually tell which episodes of Buffy are going to suck by asking the question, who wrote the script? If it was a Whedon script, it will likely be good. If not, dicey.
I only got to see the pilot of Firefly, and the Firefly faithful tell me three things:
1. The pilot sucked.
2. The rest of the epsiodes were much better.
3. It was hard to tell that the other eipsodes were much better because the network showed them out of order, making them completely impossible to understand. (Can you imagine them doing this with, say, 24?)
Chris P
Definitely check out firefly. The DVD set sold so well that they’re actually doing a movie continuation of it that coming out in september. A trailer for it came out a month or so, if you’d like to get a taste of the show.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/serenity/
Gary Farber
“Does anyone know what seasons of Buffy correspond to what seasons of Angel?”
Yes. But see above for the answer. (Given that Google was apparently broken. ;-))
“And is Firefly as good as my geek friends say it is?”
Depends on your taste. I’m a huge fan of Joss Whedon’s, and there are numerous aspects of the writing of the show that I’m a huge fan of (the casting and acting were also fine, to be sure). But I’d hardly recommend that as indicating it should be universally popular, and some people in particular have a problem with the combination of both western and sf motifs. (The dashes of Chinese culture making clear the importance in the future of China was something, on the other hand, that I particularly liked.)
“I only got to see the pilot of Firefly….”
I strongly suspect, although I may be wrong, that Sammy is incorrect, and is actually referring to the first episode broadcast, rather than the pilot episode, which wasn’t broadcast until the series was about over. But, then, although Fox’s decision to show it out of order was idiotic, it in no way whatever made the series “impossible to understand,” unless hundreds of thousands of us, at the least, are confused that we understood it perfectly well. (And the comparison to 24 is utterly inapt; the episodes, while taking advantage of continuity, weren’t remotely even close to being so tied together.)
But, hey, rent the DVD, and see what you think. And if you do like the show, don’t miss going back for the commentary tracks by Whedon, which are hilarious (although some of those by others, such as the costume designer, are skippable).
neoliberal
For $30, Firefly is certainly worth it. I find it a little uneven but occasionally excellent. The intended pilot (a 2-hour episode) is better than any of the other episodes I’ve seen, definitely some of the best “TV” I’ve ever seen.
dorkafork
Firefly is great, particularly the dialogue. The only thing I never did particularly care for was the theme song. It could have been one of the all-time great science fiction shows, had it been given the chance.
Richard Bottoms
The pilot of Firefly was great. Fox decided to show the series out of order. Like so:
3-4, 7-9, 5-6, 10-11, 15, 1-2, 14, 12, 13
Angel started with Season 4 of Buffy. Season 2 was very good. Season 5 rocked.
The movie looks very tasty.
BTW, the Spike movie is not dead.
Yet.
Gary Farber
“The only thing I never did particularly care for was the theme song.”
Ah, but on the DVD commentary (and possibly one of the extras, as well; I forget), you can hear Joss Whedon himself croon it. Also Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk. Which, okay, might not make you like it any better, but at least might stand a chance of cracking you up. It did me.
Geoduck
I like Firefly a lot, but, as noted, some folks viruently despise it. Decide for yourself.
The “pilot” that Sammy saw is probably The Train Job, an episode that Fox forced WhedonCo. to crank out almost literally overnight to replace the real (and vastly superior) two-hour pilot.
Also on the DVD, if you can find it, is a hidden bit where Adam Baldwin sings “Hero of Canton” while wearing The Cunning Hat from a later episode. It’s almost worth the price of admission in itself.
Bill from INDC
Firefly was awesome. The intended 2 hour pilot (not played first episode) was stellar TV. The theme song is great, dorkafork is smoking drugs again. It grows on you.
The chief barrier to appreciation of Firefly is how far they take the Western in space theme, which can be a bit hokey, and the fact that they swear in Chinese. But if one can let go of one’s tight-assed geekiness over scoffing at a slightly hokey sci-fi concept (I mean, it’s sci-fi, to begin with), then you’ll find the acting and stories to be great.
As with Whedon’s other franchises, the key to quality is in the casting, chemistry between the actors/characters and dialogue (let’s face it, some of the plots in Buffy were lame). The spaceship scenes, especially when the ship enters an atmosphere, are also cool.
Eric Pobirs
OTOH, the entire point of Firefly was to take the long running cheat of SF adventure shows, that they were just Westerns tarted up with high tech versions of six-guns and trains. Whedon took the setting of the best Westerns, post Civil War by just enough years for the dust to settle but the resentments to be fresh and keen, and transferred that to an interstellar civilization. In many ways it was the first truly honest show of that type. That was to me the most interesting part of the show, especially since I normally find the Western genre stultifyingly dull other than when the writer makes some interesting point about history.
Whedon is far from the first to have the expense of interstellar travel make for primitive colonial settings. Writers have been doing it for decades as an excuse to restage historical battles or their own direct experience in war. For instance, Jerry Pournelle drew heavily upon his experience in Korea and younger writer have refought Vietnam endlessly.
Gary Farber
“…(I mean, it’s sci-fi, to begin with), then you’ll find the acting and stories to be great.”
Sigh: “This isn’t science fiction, it’s good!” It never dies.
“…the long running cheat of SF adventure shows, that they were just Westerns tarted up with high tech versions of six-guns and trains.”
Um. Planet Stories. James Blish on “call a rabbit a smeerp.” 1950’s: “You’ll never see it in Galaxy!”
Interesting tv shows they had in the Forties, back before prose was invented.
Tom
My favorite line(s) from the show:
“Are you alliance?”
“Am I a lion? I don’t know – nobody’s ever asked me that. I don’t think of myself as a lion…”
“ALLIANCE.”
“Oh, no.”
“Are you a bounty hunter?”
“No.”
“What are you?”
“I’m a bounty hunter.”
Nobody else writes jokes around people misunderstanding stuff other people said. Nobody even puts those sorts of misunderstandings in a script. Yet, in real life, that can be the funniest sort of dialog… When you’re chatting with your buddies, and somebody completely misunderstands something, and you’re both totally confused until you figure it out, at which point you laugh until it hurts.