The End of Angel:
Fantastic. It should have been two hours, really, but then, it really should have been the finale at the end of *next* season, when Whedon and company had time to really explore all the interesting developments they had set up in the last few episodes. This show has, in my opinion, been stronger than the series that it spun off from, not just because the last two or three seasons of Buffy were soooo uneven but because aside from some very worrisome stuff with Conner around season three, Angel has been pretty consistently great. The darker tone meant that I had an easier time going along with the darker stuff that happens to our heroes, where on Buffy it just felt a bit wrong. And it's amazing that the show started with two of my least favorite characters in the Buffyverse (Cordelia and Angel), added another that I pretty much hated (Wesley) and by the end had made me like all of them and even put Wes, poor tragic Wes on my list as possibly the best Buffyverse character period. Aside from Xander, who became completely uninteresting and poorly written right around season four or five of Buffy and never completely recovered.

Hell, the fifth season of Angel even made me love Spike again, a character I had grown to hate ever since he went from villain to goofy anti-hero who dominated the Buffy show. And that ending... oh, that ending was perfect, the kind of thing that takes real guts to do (especially with a rabid, judgmental and already pissed-off fanbase) and even more skill to pull off.

Then the WB puts up this little trailer at the end thanking the fans and the show for five years? Like it's not entirely their fault that the show is ending now, like the creators and the cast and crew didn't want to do more? Complete and total BS, and while I don't think the ire of a bunch of genre fans screaming "boycott" is really going to affect their bottom line, I do think they'll have a helluva time launching any kind of genre programming in the future if they decide to try it again. Certainly I'm not watching anything on WB next season, although in fairness that has more to do with their schedule being total shit than any kind of boycott decision on my part.