I reckon S8 proved his feelings on the issue remain the same...
Anyway I think there are some things that need to be pointed out r.e. melodrama. Firstly, the word 'melodrama' tends to be used as a perjorative term, not just with regards to Bangel within fandom, but in general conversation. Pointing out a person in fiction or even in real life is being melodramatic implies they are behaving with excessive and unnecessary heightened emotion.
In film studies, melodrama has become a more complex and legitimate area of study over the years. Scholars have pointed out that melodramas' historical association with popular culture (for a long time looked down upon as a subject for academic study) and largely feminine forms of storytelling (female-centred, enjoyed mainly by women), links back to its use as a criticism/term of abuse. Christine Gledhill pointed out that this was linked to the popular association of melodrama with the feminine: it was often posited as antithetical to realism, associated with sentimentality and sensationalism (feminine), as opposed to the 'authenticity' and 'truth' (and therefore masculine concerns) of realism.
"Twentieth century critics have taught generations of students to equate popularity with debasement, emotionality with ineffectiveness, religiosity with fakery, domesticity with triviality, and all of these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority. (Jane Tompkins (1985), Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, quoted by Christine Gledhill (1987))"
It is part of a wider and long-standing historical devaluation of feminine forms of literary and cultural expression, but it's really interesting when you think about this in relation to Buffy. Of course there's way more to the study of melodrama than I know or can explain here (I'm just working off stuff I've researched today)*, but if we take film melodrama at its most basic level to be defined by expressive style and concern with personal relationships and emotional conflict, then we can see that it's just not just Buffy's own relationships which have had elements of melodrama- the show itself thrives on it. Its use of gothic fantasy and horror as metaphors for life experiences necessitates melodrama because those elements almost always provoke heightened emotions and require heightened character reactions to deal with them. Angelus wouldn't be so terrifying if Buffy could simply to get upset, then angry and then throw him out, as one might to do to a normal human douchebag. Higher stakes mean more intense emotions. The way the show counterbalances this is by undercutting these moments with sarcasm and humour.
If melodrama is concerned with the relationships between characters then anytime BtVS foregrounds its domestic elements and interpersonal relationships whether it's romantic, platonic or familial, it is melodrama. If you think about it, this makes S6 the most melodramatic and soap-operaish given what happens in the absence of a concrete Big Bad: depression, father-figure leaves for no good reason, hate-sex, 'drug'-addiction, failed wedding, attempted rape, double shooting, revenge murder. It's basically Eastenders. (I honestly think if I showed this season to my mum - who has watched a lot of
Eastenders in the past - she'd agree).
But Buffy succeeds because it blends melodrama and realism - in fact, it uses melodrama-via-fantasy as a way of dramatising a deeper psychological realism. So I'd argue that the presence of melodrama throughout Buffy is actually part of its subversiveness as a feminist text. It takes a dramatic form traditionally characterised as feminine and uses it to achieve a better emotional authenticity and truth. And it does this my appropriating and blending it with a range of other popular genres. By making Angel (and Riley, Xander, Giles, and Spike - all of whom at different point embody different forms of masculinity) a part of that, it articulates the emotional trajectory of their narrative arcs through a stereotypically female mode of storytelling.
So I'd say when people call Bangel melodramatic, rejoice! It means the show is doing something right!
*I'm no expert on film melodrama, so what I'm suggesting here is quite generalised, but here are a couple of the links I used if anyone wants to get a better idea of the topic:
What is melodrama?
Melodrama - Cinema and Media Studies - Oxford Bibliographies
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Returning to Bangel, what might be an interesting exercise for us all is to actually look at their scenes together and see if any (I can definitely think of one!) can be viewed as objectively 'melodramatic' in the more critical/perjorative sense? If people are up for that I can make a thread.
