Once they introduced Gunn, Angel lost it's edge.
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Saturday, December 2, 2006 21:08
VIEWED: 7833
PAGE 4 of 4
Huh.... wierd.
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Well said. I couldnt agree with you more.
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Hey Big G :D
Interesting you and me - we're on different sides of the fence here.
Gunn I thought added - especially in his initial stint - a kind of grounding into some semblance of reality. Not TRUE reality of course, but a an audiece reality, where all the mythos of angel 'past' had to be explained.
He was at his best when in conflict with Angel, and this worked even until the later seasons.
The areas where he didn't work were with the times when he wanted 'in' with the gang. That came about too quickly and a personality like that would never have wanted to stay in an office answering phones...
But it was refreshing that he wasn't some kind of pimp daddy that presented himself as all knowing about LA and prevelant with a entourage of fine looking ladies... er well ok that may have been cool but... No no bad Somnambulist... :D
Er hum... Anyway J August Richards did a great job with Gunn and I especially liked his turn on the character when confronted with Fred. Their relastionship, theough extremely contrived, worked mainly in part because of 'J' he always gave the appropriate amount of pathos...
But as for the writers not being able to write good streetwise characters... I dunno... I mean I haven't the references to be able to make a formative critique, but I think within the boundaries of the show I think they did a pretty good job - I mean I don't think for a show like Angel we want to be looking at a 'Boyz in d Hood' interpretation of the character, it's just too too heavy.
www.cirqus.com
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Actually, it was around the time Gunn was introduced at the end of Season 1 (but mostly Season 2) that Angel as a show became less of a show that I wanted to see because it was Joss and featured characters I loved from Buffy and morphed into a show I NEEDED to see. I don't think Gunn distracted from that at all. ]
Side note: It was the episode in Season 2 when Angel had the epiphany and they were on the way to save Cordy and Gunn told Angel that if anything happened to her, Gunn might have an epiphany himself regarding Angel that I realized how much I loved Gunn. Angel was the star of the show and at the time my favorite character on the show, yet here I was thrilled beyond belief at newbie Gunn's thinly-veiled threat to dust him if he caused Cordy to get hurt.
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same here, towards the end of season one was when angel started picking up pace, it never really occurred to me how realistic or not gunn might be, he worked as a character, for me. course being a middle class white girl in suburban england I'm probably not the best judge of what would cut it on the mean streets of LA 
and I never felt he was just there, I liked the way he fitted with the group dynamic, his grudging relationship with angel and the whole unlikely friendship with wesley and then the falling out over fred. he wasn't always centre stage but there was always stuff going on.
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