E! Online News - "Angel" Calls It a Night

"Angel" Calls It a Night

by Kimberly Potts
May 18, 2004, 4:15 PM PT

No matter how Angel ends its five-year run Wednesday night, fans of Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff aren't going to be happy.

But the devoted viewers, who were so distraught when the WB announced that this season would be the show's last that they raised thousands of dollars to rent a billboard truck that blasted their support of the show, wrote thousands of letters, protested outside the WB offices and sent "Save Angel" chocolate bars to anyone and everyone connected with the show, may be shocked and even more distressed by the violent way 250-year-old vampire Angel and his cohorts end their prime-time run.

As Whedon told the Calgary Sun, "The cancellation was a horrible blow. It was much more emotional than I thought it was going to be.

"[And] the pain of loss when they canceled the show? I'm going to share."

Translation (that means SPOILERS AHEAD): In the episode, titled "Not Fade Away," there's no return of Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), as had been long-rumored; one major character meets a grisly end; and another engages in a betrayal after deciding the whole good-vs.-evil fight isn't necessarily worth it.

In other words, those rumored Angel miniseries, TV movies and big-screen adventures depend not only on the WB's decision on whether or not to continue the Angel universe in any form, but on who's still standing at the end of the series finale.

The cancellation of Angel comes just one season after Buffy wrapped its run--with a decidedly more upbeat ending that the Wolfram & Hart gang will see--on UPN.

Despite the demise of its sister series, the WB's decision to slay the David Boreanaz drama was somewhat surprising. Most fans and critics agreed that the show had experienced a creative spark this season, thanks to the addition of Buffy alum James Marsters as cheeky bad boy Spike and to juicy storylines like Angel and crew finally taking control of the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart and the deaths of main characters Cordelia (Playboy cover girl Charisma Carpenter) and Fred (Amy Acker). The show has averaged more than 3.9 million viewers this season, up from 3.7 million last year.

But even a ratings boost for first-run Angel airings wasn't enough to offset the network's unhappiness with the dismal ratings for repeats--the WB loves its "second-view" repeats of its drama series--and that, along with what Whedon says is Angel's failure to fit into the network's big picture for financial success, did the show in.

"We were staring at a brick wall, which is the financial model the WB operates by," Whedon said. "This is a really bad time for television and for television drama. I just felt we didn't have a shot, or I would have been outside the WB with a placard and bullhorn myself.

"Ultimately, [Buffy and Angel] were cult shows. We didn't make Friends. No one is going to use us as a financial model. If I had invented reality TV, I would have had a greater impact. But then I would have to kill myself."

As for the future plans of cast and crew, at least two of the Angel-ites are already busy with other projects.

Whedon is beginning production on Serenity, the big-screen continuation of his failed Fox series Firefly.

And Marsters, who shaved his head and auctioned off his blond Spike locks for charity after the Angel finale was shot, will next continue his tour of the U.S. and Europe as lead singer of his rock band, Ghost of the Robot, but has been mentioned as the star of another potential Buffy spinoff.


"I have no idea what's in the future, but what I do know is that I play a vampire and the clock is ticking on how long this face can be believably exactly the same as when we met [Spike]," Marsters told the Associated Press. "If they want to do something, let's not wait too long."

Meanwhile, Angel star Boreanaz, who recently told TV Guide Online that he's looking forward to having some time off, is the cast member most reluctant to revisit the series.

"I don't think I will, no," Boreanaz said when asked if he would come back to the character. "The only way I would do any kind of loose-end wrapping up would be if the pieces were right, and if they decided to do it on a different, higher level, like a film...If they decided to do that with Angel and if the pieces were right, fine. But you never know where everyone is in their lives at that moment."

Boreanaz did say he is content with the way Whedon decided to end Angel's TV life.

"I'm comfortable with the way they're ending it. It's very open-ended. The title of the episode is 'Not Fade Away,' which I dig [because it's] a Grateful Dead tune. It goes out fighting, which I think is great."