Vaguely related to the comics.

[elisi]

From a recent interview:

"The hardest [to write] was always Angel. How to make a decent, handsome, stalwart hero interesting -- tough."
Joss

I'm beginning to think that this comment was not meant ironically. Which would explain a lot...

Comments

[kikimay]

Joss likes teh evilness! *C*

[diebirchen.livejournal.com]

He actually thinks Angel is a "decent, handsome, stalwart hero"? Did he watch the shows, listen to the dialogue, analyze his actions?

[adoxerella.livejournal.com]

(Warning: meta fueled by lack of caffeine)

I have always thought that David Greenwalt had a better grasp on Angel's character than Joss. In his episodes (of AtS), Angel was often the bastard that I love so much. When Joss wrote him, he seemed to get lost in the angsting. Joss finally seemed to get this in season 5, which is when Angel finally said F@#$ it, and decided to be himself and stop trying to be a good guy. Sure he wanted to save the world, but he realized people were going to get hurt in the process and that he didn't really care (unless it was someone he cared about).

That is something I have noticed about Joss in general, he doesn't seem as comfortable writing the morally ambiguous sides of his characters. He realizes they are there, but he isn't quite comfortable going there (Spin the Bottle is an example, since he stripped all the glorious layers away from Wes and took him back to the idiot we first met on BtVS). He seems much happier when he is dealing with achetypal characters rather than flawed human beings.

Oh and speaking of Angel and Jack getting in an angst off, I don't know if you ever saw this little ficlet but even though the bunny faded and it was jossed all to heck by After the Fall and CoE, I still think it fits them both.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It's probably worth keeping in mind that Whedon was really only peripherally involved in most of Angel. The series was really, Tim Minear and David Greenwalt's baby. When they left, they hired Jeff Bell to take over the reigns.
Whedon acted more as an executive producer.

Sort of similar actually to the comics, where Whedon hands the reigns off to someone else to plot and write the Angel and Faith series. He did the same thing there.

I think Whedon wrote Angel as a metaphor, then never quite made it past the metaphor. Greenwalt and Minear ran with the character and used the metaphor in a different way - examining it as a sort of internal denial or mask. All you have to do is watch Amends and compare it to Dear Boy, the Prodigal, and Darla to see the differences. Or for that matter Becoming vs. Darla. And you see Minear saw Angel as more complex than Whedon did. I'm not saying Minear is a better writer, just that he was more comfortable, as was Greenwalt, in that specific genre.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

Eh, just another of the WTF things Joss has said since he started the meth and began writing comics.

[deird1]

decent - uh...

handsome - ...yeah, I'll give him that one.

stalwart - *gets dictionary*
Apparently, this means "loyal, reliable, and hardworking". So...
loyal - kinda?
reliable - hah!
hardworking - double-hah!

hero - nope.

Apparently Joss and I have very different definitions of, well, words.