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Posted on 02/15/2004 9:37:59 AM PST by mosel-saar-ruwer
In a move that has completely blindsided producers and fans alike, the WB Network announced late Friday that it was cancelling its long-running Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff, Angel.
"Those bastards!" was the reaction from Loey Lockerby, film critic and operator of Loey's Guide to Angel, an Angel review site. "I haven't trusted the WB Network since the debacle over 'Graduation Day Part 2.'"
Many fans like Loey have already turned to the first wave in most cancellations these days, PetitionOnline.com. An online petition has already gathered almost 5,000 signatures within hours of its creation. Lockerby expects that number to rise quickly once the word spreads.
The fans may have to fight this round on their own. David Greenwalt, co-creator and consulting producer for the series, sounded almost defeated when reached by the Zap2It website. "It's official enough to know it's real," Greenwalt told the website, "but I haven't talked to anybody at the network or the studio. I can tell you that it's real, that it makes Mr. Whedon and myself very sad, that we wish it had kept going and we thought it was only getting better.
"Joss and [executive producer] Jeff Bell told the cast and crew today. We have no understanding of the inner workings of the corporate world, but we've had a long and fruitful relationship with [producing studio] 20th Century Fox and The WB, for which we are grateful. We just wish it could have gone on forever. Apparently, it's not going to."
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For the last seven years Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have been cornerstones of our network. The sum total of the work done on those shows has produced some of the proudest moments in our history. Like some of the great series that are leaving the air this year, including Frasier and Friends, the cast, crew, writers and producers of Angel deserve to be able to wrap up the series in a way befitting a classic television series and that is why we went to Joss to let him know that this would be the last year of the series on The WB. We have discussed continuing the Angel legacy with special movie events next year, which is still on the table. In a perfect world, all of these details would be completed before this information went to the press so that we could be definitive about the show's ongoing future. But in any case, we did not want to contemplate this being the last year of Angel without giving the show the option of crafting their own destiny for this character and for this series. David Boreanaz continues to be one of the finest, classiest and friendliest actors we have had the pleasure to work with and we hope that the relationship furthers from here. The same can be said for all the actors and producers on the show.
Observers have already noted the strange timing of WB's announcement, coming within a week of the highly promoted 100th episode of the series and late on the Friday of a 3-day weekend, resulting in little press coverage. Some have speculated that this has been in the works for some time and that the network would have cancelled the series sooner had Birds of Prey not tanked. The mentioning of possible TV movie "events" may be a pre-emptive attempt to keep the series available to the network, should its new Dark Shadows revival suffer Bird's fate. Those possibilities are of little consolation to fans of the series or to Greenwalt.
"I might just go direct episode 20 so I can say my farewell to everybody. That's something that might happen."
Update: On Saturday, series creator Joss Whedon commented about the cancellation to the readers the Bronze Beta message board:
Buffy & Angel creator Joss Whedon "Some of you may have heard the hilarious news. I thought this would be a good time to weigh in. to answer some obvious questions:
No, we had no idea this was coming.
Yes, we will finish out the season.
No, I don't think the WB is doing the right thing.
Yes, I'm grateful they did it early enough for my people to find other jobs.
Yes, my heart is breaking.
When Buffy ended, I was tapped out and ready to send it off. When Firefly got the axe, I went into a state of denial so huge it may very well cause a movie. But Angel... we really were starting to feel like we were on top, hitting our stride -- and then we strode right into the Pit of Snakes 'n' Lava. I'm so into these characters, these actors, the situations we're building... you wanna know how I feel?
Watch the first act of [Buffy episode] The Body.
As far as TV movies or whatever, I'm not thinking that far ahead. I actually hope my actors and writers are all too busy. We always planned this season finale to be a great capper to the season and the show in general. (And a great platform for a new season, of course.) We'll proceed ahead as planned.
I've never made mainstream TV very well. I like surprises, and TV isn't about surprises, unless the surprise is who gets voted off of something. I've been lucky to sneak this strange, strange show over the airwaves for as long as I have. I don't FEEL lucky, but I understand that I am.
Thanks all for your support, your community, and your perfectly sane devotion. It's meant a lot. I regret nothing (except the string of grisly murders in the 80's -- what was THAT all about?) Remember the words of the poet:
"Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I took the road less traveled by
and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW.
I totally shoulda took the road
that had all those people on it.
Damn."
Although I suppose it serves him right for donating to Wesley Clark's Campaign.
This is as bad as when Sci--fi canned Farscape for being to good. By the way, The Farscape crew is half through with producing their 4 part Farscape mini-series.
And if you are wondering, WB will be replacing Angel with the second remake of Dark Shadows.
The best hope for Angel is TNT picking it up and considering repeats are doing great on TNT, this is a very real possiblity.
Anyway, since DVD sells and repeats on TV are doing so well, I doubt this is the last we will see of the Angel series.
On a side note, I think the Fifth Season of Angel has been their best season so far.
She became a Mommy [in real life]. You could tell last season that she was really bloated. I guess they couldn't fit her pregnancy into the script, so they put her in that idiotic coma. Then she wanted time off to be with the baby.
Whether she wanted to come back, or whether she quit to stay at home with the baby, I don't know.
I didn't like it when Joss forced her to be a lesbian. It was artificial and un-natural, even though I'll admit that every great Vampire tale needs a lesbian subplot [the key being that the lesbians have to be evil - it doesn't work if you try to make them appear to be on the side of goodness and mercy].
Other than Willow's lesbianism, I think the two biggest problems were
1) Having Buffy drop out of college. I thought they were on the right track when, in her senior year in high school, she really buckled down and studied hard and did so well on her SATs [with just a few months of work] that she was able to get into Northwestern. They should have pushed that angle - in fact, I could have seen a plot line where Buffy really worked hard in college and got a degree in math or the hard sciences, whereas Willow got seduced by all that feminism/wicca bullshit and got her degree in some social sciences/women's studies nonsense.On final problem was that they had Buffy becoming a real slut by the end of the series - there was almost no one she hadn't slept with. But that goes kinda hand in hand with 1) above: If she had been in the library studying she wouldn't have had time for all that sluttery. Instead, we got Buffy as college dropout fastfood-working white trash slut.2) While I liked the idea of Dawn initially, they made a huge mistake when they decided to make Buffy and Dawn fight all the time. I read recently where someone on the team said that originally they had envisioned Dawn being much younger, but the powers that be wanted her as a teen, so they were forced into Buffy -vs- Dawn cat fights that they the creative team never wanted.
You gotta try Stargate SG-1, Friday nights on SciFi channel.
It's such a right wing Republican oriented show it's amazing to me that it every made it to the air.
How long ago? Recently the stuff has been radically pro-military. For instance, there was a classic episode where the Asgardians refused to negotiate with the human politicians, demanding instead to negotiate with General Hammond, because he was the only human leader they could trust.
The current [two part] episode involves this obnoxious Hollywood dweeb - sent in by the outgoing president as part of the president's effort to secure his legacy [sound familiar?] - where the dweeb is under orders to preserve the work of SG1 on film for posterity.
Everyone on the SG1 team utterly despises the dweeb and won't even give him the time of day. Colonel O'Neill [MacGyver] told the dweeb that if he needed some footage he could film a picture of his [O'Neill's] ass.
Oh, and the evil archenemy of SG-1 is a US Senator running for president [sound familiar?].
It's so funny how different people react to different parts of a show. Other than the great dialogue, I thought the Willow-Tara story arc was the very best part of the show. It's why I watched!
Willow/Kennedy was forced and awful.
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