Weekend rundown

[thebratqueen]

stakebait and I had a marvey time yesterday. We went out for a proper tea in spite of the heat, rummaged through thrift and book stores, went to my LYS, knitted, and generally talked about geeky things. 'twas a good way to spend a Saturday.

Today I'm doing catch-up on all the other random things I'd like to do this weekend. On that list was watching the s2 premiere of Rescue Me while I munched on my breakfast. I won't get into spoilers or anything, only state my opinion that: ahhh, there's my show.

It's interesting in that Rescue Me is the only show so far that feels like it has any chance of coming close to Angel. Joss's other shows have some pretty good... I don't wanna say successors because that implies the new ones are better and brighter. But if you're dying for Buffy you can get a good fix off of Veronica Mars. If you're dying for Firefly then Deadwood's gonna do you real well. VM!=Buffy and Deadwood!=Firefly, and of course all four shows are quality in their own right and yadda yadda, but VM and Buffy are similar enough and Deadwood and Firefly are similiar enough that you can watch either/or and go "Oh yeah, that's the stuff." (Though arguably Deadwood goes to the places Firefly wanted to go but was not allowed.)

For Angel though there's nothing yet that comes close. Like House certainly has the slashy subtext and Lost has the storylines that are built around the idea of slow reveals that are not spoon-fed to the audience, but in a way those are really trappings. If those could compare to Angel then one could just as easily say that Felicity is a comparable show to Buffy simply because it involves a young female protagonist. Deadwood isn't a good match for Firely simply because it's a Western with a unique patios (though that helps) but also because it gets the core concept of layered characters who are not simply good or simply evil doing what they can to survive in a world that has placed them on the edges of polite society.

Which then raises the question of okay, what was the core of Angel? Much though I adore, love, and worship the show, funnily enough I don't know that I could answer that question except to say that I know when I don't see it. House doesn't have it, Lost doesn't have it. But Rescue Me... comes real close.

I suspect it's because Rescue Me is first and foremost a show for adults, with adult storylines. Yes, unfortunately adult=sex over on the Rescue Me side of the fence, which is part of why it's not a perfect match, but when it comes to the idea of the pain the characters feel, the decisions that they make, the realities that they have to live with, Rescue Me has a take no prisoners kind of attitude that matches the one that Angel had.

Plus both shows star protagonists who are essentially assholes who struggle with the fact that their most basic urge is to be an asshole, and yet on the whole they'd like to be good guys.

It's things like that which make me look at Rescue Me and Angel and go yeah... yeah, that's kind of what I'm talking about.

Not that anything could replace Angel (or Buffy, or Firefly), of course, but for me when I watch Rescue Me it's nice when it's not only a good show in its own right, but a show that hits some of the things that made Angel so special to me in the first place.

And now I scurry off to do the other things I want to do today. Y'all be good while I'm gone.