The Saturday Reviews
Home Contents

 

Rating the Episodes of Season 1
The Saturday Reviews
Character Analysis
General Thoughts
Updates for 2000
Updates for 2001
Links
Buffy The Vampire Slayer

 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SATURDAY REVIEWS

Why write reviews for a Television Series?  Why write reviews for ANGEL?  Why write reviews on a Saturday?  Why do I ask so many pointless questions?

Well, believe it or not there are really good answers to all of these questions.  But until I figure out what they are let me share with you a brief history of the Saturday Reviews.

It really all began when I discovered that most characteristic phenomenon of the Internet - Newsgroups.  I had been surfing the net intermittently for a year or so before a friend of mine suggested I try these.  I did and  over the following few weeks I discovered a whole world of the people who were demented, rational, stupid, intelligent,  bigoted, benign, malicious, funny, crass, frivolous and serious.  They held opinions on politics, religion, sex and gender, morality,  other countries, their own country, war and peace as well as literature, art,  favorite television and movies, food, manners and what is the best way to tie up your own shoe laces (yes seriously).  Above all the mere fact that they knew absolutely nothing about a particular subject seemed to be the only encouragement they needed to share the benefits of their opinions on it with everyone who would listen...er read.  These, I realized, were my kind of people

It wasn't too long before I decided that, rather than just lurking in this wonderful new world, I would be a good idea to post to at least one Newsgroup.  I only have a limited amount of time each week to devote to the Internet let alone Newsgroups so it was always likely that I would have to restrict myself  to one or two.  I tend to shy away from serious subjects and I had always enjoyed discussing movies, books, television etc. with friends so I decided to join in the fun on one of the entertainment Newsgroups.  But which ones?  I had always been interested in Sci-Fi and Fantasy.   And of all the  series of that type I had found BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER to be one of the most intelligent and consistently interesting programs.   By that stage its spin-off ANGEL had started and I found myself enjoying that even more, probably because it was just that bit more adult both in character and in theme.  The BUFFY Newsgroup (ABTVS) was already long established and had far more posters.  In particular there were already a number of people doing reviews of episodes on that Newsgroup whereas there were only one or two doing the same on the ANGEL Newsgroup (ATS).  So I decided that I would make a contribution to ATS by writing reviews of the episodes.   Of course  finding the time for this would be a problem.  One of the few quiet corners left of my life was Saturday morning.   So,  I decided that from now on breakfast on Saturday would be taken hunched over my word processor and the Saturday Reviews were born.  You will probably have guessed by now that, apart from anything else, I am noted for my imaginative approach to naming things.

Anyway having made that momentous decision I realized that I had overlooked one small detail - I had never written a review in my life and knew absolutely nothing about doing so.  Of course I have to say that this had never stopped me before.  After all how hard could it be?  All I had to do was say why I liked/disliked any given episode.  In the end it proved difficult enough.  I learned through trial and error.  I am, in fact, still learning.  I flatter myself that my latest reviews are better than the early rather halting efforts and that these have been considerably improved by rewrites.  But that is not for me to judge.

In the Summer of 2001 I made one more major change to the site.  For the first time I started incorporating BUFFY Reviews as well.  So, I suppose it in now somewhat inaccurate to refer to this as an ANGEL site.  But then I like to be contrary.

Finally I should say that what follows are reviews rather than synopses if the episodes.  They refer to things that happen but, if you haven't seen a particular episode of ANGEL the review for that episode on its own may not make a lot of sense.  So, if you are ready for the experience, just click on the link below to be taken to the reviews for ANGEL. 

 

ANGEL Season 1

ANGEL Season 2

BUFFY Season 5