Why do some people find Angel "dull"?

[Robb Stark]

Really don't get it. Like, can't even see the other side of the argument. From S1 of BTVS through to the final episode of his own series, Angel's personality, relationships, history and decisions are explored in great depth. He probably has the most understated humor in the Buffyverse (Just as Buffy, Xander, Spike and Giles have their own humor, Angel has his). Yes, he broods, but he's hardly the only fictional character that does so. He displays a wide range of emotions and is hardly one-dimensional (as more than a few other characters are). This part is obviously a matter of personal taste, but his story, from BTVS S1 on, is always compelling and interesting. The link he has with Angelus is one of the most unique aspects of the series and the quality of his relationships, with almost every other cast member, is the best of the series.

I know that's a bit of an Angel gush (he is my favorite character after all), but I really see it that way. There are plenty of other characters, with their own unique traits and personalities, which I like very much as well (Spike and Buffy are my favorites after Angel), but even if there are characters you like more than Angel, I just have never gotten the "dull as a table lamp" argument.

 

[Blaze]

I love Angel. Like you said, he is a very complicated and three dimensional character, but I think a lot of his stories don't really apply to most of the viewers. Those who appreciate his development as a character tend to love him, those who can't appreciate it tend to hate him and find him dull. And I'll admit, he's not the type of character everyone can appreciate.

Actually, I disliked him on BtVS (I didn't actually disliked him, but I think he's one of the weaker characters). So I can see how someone would find him dull on BtVS. On AtS, it's a complete different story, I absolutely love him, he's a great lead. He is fleshed out so well. I think he needed to get away from all the Bangel stuff (sorry I just think the whole Romeo and Juliet type romance was a bit overdone at times). Once on his own show he became a great character, I especially like him in s2, where we see a whole other side of him. I mean, I have no clue how anyone could call him boring at that point.

Overall though, I think most people calling him dull are just haters.

 

[firecracker90]

I agree! I really don't get it either. Angel has plenty of depth, not just brooding. His character is one of my favorite's of all time. Watching him grow from the mysterious shadow boy in season one that fell in love with the slayer to an awsome warrior for redemption in his own series was enjoyable. BTVS & ATS are two of the only shows I can watch over and over because of how amazing the characters are and Angel is one of the tops!
-Firecracker

 

[Robb Stark]

I love Angel. Like you said, he is a very complicated and three dimensional character, but I think a lot of his stories don't really apply to most of the viewers. Those who appreciate his development as a character tend to love him, those who can't appreciate it tend to hate him and find him dull. And I'll admit, he's not the type of character everyone can appreciate.

You know, I've never thought of it from this perspective before. The biggest reason I dig Angel so much is because I find him so relatable, and if I'm being totally honest I never really considered that others don't. For me, Angel's entire journey, his story, his attitude and view of life, his time with Buffy, I really, truly get it, and it gets me. But now that you outline it, I can see that others don't see it that way.

I gotta say, I learn something new every time I read one of your posts 🙂.

Overall though, I think most people calling him dull are just haters.

"Good evening Sir, what's your name?"
"@white avenger. I have a standing reservation."
"Of course sir. You are after all, our charter member."
"Well, I try. Did you know I once started a club about-"
"Oh yes. I heard. How many members again?"
"Well...recruitment has been an issue."
"sigh...right this way sir. There's a seat for you right up front."

 

[white avenger]

I think that what gives some people the impression that Angel is dull is the fact that whatever humor takes place around him, he is always the straight man. What most people don't realize is that the straight man is usually the most important part of a comedy team. Costello would never have been able to pull off "Who's On First" without Abbot delivering the straight lines.

Angel is always portrayed as the serious, hard working member of the team, and serious equates as dull to some people. Usually, Angel is the one who the funny things happen to, and what makes them the most funny is his deadpan expression, sometimes mixed with a little embarrassment, like that ridiculous leather jacket Iliona gave him in "The Girl In Question."

Anyhow, Angel isn't actually dull, he's stoic, serious, persevering, dependable, forthright, honest, trustworthy... Come to think of it, that IS pretty dull.

But he's a hero, so that makes him heroically dull.

 

[Kean]

I can understand why people find him dull. He spends a lot of time sitting and thinking, of course there is the glowering, we can't forget that. At a first glance he doesn't appear a terribly interesting character... at least to some people.

For me, I'd gladly watch an hour long show of Angel brooding because the whole time I will be wondering about what he is thinking about. I think Angel is fascinating in every single way. I'm drawn to stoicism because stoic people are filled with stories and experiences. The most interesting thing about Angel for me is that really, we haven't even scratched the surface of his depths yet.

 

[Black Eye Guy]

Not a clue.

 

[Taake]

I think that the impression of Angel being dull mainly comes from Buffy. Not only is he the straight man but on the first three seasons of Buffy he is not exactly given much of a chance to shine or show many sides of his character. When his own show comes along he starts to spread his wings obviously but first impressions are hard to shake...

Though 'heroically dull' sounds fairly to my ears 🙂 Not that I find him dull but he's not exactly the firecrackers that e.g. Faith or Spike are.

 

[Kean]

Not that I find him dull but he's not exactly the firecrackers that e.g. Faith or Spike are.

To me, that big bravado in-your-face-I'm-a-big-ol'-rebel attitude that Faith and Spike go around with is the dullist thing on the planet. It's not real, it's just farce and show. For me, the interesting moments are always the sincere and genuine moments.

 

[EffyStonem]

I honestly don't understand why Angel receives so little love and why people find him "dull" or "cardboard." Angel is actually an incredibly complex character. I think that people don't bother trying to look deeper into his character and I don't know why.

This is a character haunted every single waking hour with the memories of what he did as Angelus. A lot of fans wonder why Angel feels guilty for Angelus' crimes due to the canon fact that the demon is separate to the soul. Well, for those who wonder why, imagine living with crystal clear memories of two centuries worth of torture, sadism, violence and death; not only with the memories of the events but with the memory of relishing in it. Imagine understanding the darkness that can drive a someone to commit those kinds of atrocities; because this is what I find the most fascinating part of Angel - the darkness is a part of him when he has a soul. Angelus is a such a monster because Angel has a darkness in him that was there before he was turned.

So this guy lives with these memories and he struggles with the darkness every single day. He has an incredibly hard time connecting with people and the few people he forms deep bonds with are all taken away from him; at the end of his series he stands with Spike, Illyria and Gunn, who is ten minutes away from death. No Cordy, no Wes. Doyle, Fred and Connor are all gone. He's left with no one.

Yet despite all this, despite the darkness and the guilt and the loss, he keeps fighting because he knows that it's the right thing to do. And yes, sometimes he is swayed by the promise of redemption, sometimes he gives up on humankind, sometimes he gives into the darkness; but he always manages to pull himself up and keep going.

And as if this all wasn't enough, he has some terrific and highly entertaining personality quirks and flaws. He is arrogant to a fault, he can be incredibly petty at times ("I'm not little!"), he is emotionally stunted and he does have a bad habit of taking choices away from people. But he grows and evolves as character so much and he has so many layers and is put through so much that I cannot understand why he is so under appreciated.

Wow, well, that turned into a bit of an Angel Love Letter :S My bad.

 

[white avenger]

Though 'heroically dull' sounds fairly to my ears 🙂 Not that I find him dull but he's not exactly the firecrackers that e.g. Faith or Spike are.

Think about it though. Arguably the greatest superhero who ever existed, Superman, is the poster child for the heroically dull. All that he ever does is fly around fighting evil and saving the world. When he's off duty, he's the dullest milquetoast on the planet. Never goes to parties, never has a drink with the boys. He's only been kissing girls for the last few years.

See? Angel's right up there with Superman. How much better than that can you get?

Up, up, and awayyyyy...

 

[Ethan Reigns]

Angel should have been a Shakespearean character.

He goes on the killing sprees of Macbeth, he has the tortured indecision of Hamlet and he is Romeo to Buffy's Juliet. Tragic characters like him are always constrained to act in a certain way and there is nothing about that way that we haven't seen before - as I implied, in high school English Lit courses. He may fight the good fight but in the end, he is just a character on a conveyor belt who is getting moved from event to event with little control over his circumstances. He may make decisions, initiate events and continue searching for redemption, but he is always passive even when he does initiate things.

Angelus is a bit more unpredictable and therefore a bit more interesting.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Was Angel boring? Not really.
William's poetry was crap, boring and sometimes silly, even when said by the vampire Spike. Yet, those poems are interesting and full of life when compared with Angel singing Oh, Mandy.
Although that is the time that Angel and Angelus agreed. Angel sang Oh Mandy using the Angelus method:
Look at it
Play with it
Then torture it.

 

[thetopher]

Honestly, this just comes from first impressions. On the first Season of Buffy Angel is pretty much there for two things- be a love interest for Buffy, and so Xander can poke fun at him (whether its to his face or not). He's the straight man when it comes to the humour of the show, at least to begin with.
And then in S2 Angelus comes along and he's fun, he's cruel and funny and a dangerous (and kinda sexy...) bad guy.

And then Angel comes back in S3 and he's sort of back to being the love interest, brooding and moping and lonely, he rarely interacts with any cast member apart from Buffy.

So, I understand the 'dull' label, at least on Buffy.
I don't really agree with it, but that's because I find Angel's character, how he came to be, really interesting. It doesn't matter if he's not the 'funny one'.

And on Angel, forget it. I watched the first ep and saw the DB could do comedy, after that first ep he was a fully rounded character and could never be called dull.
You could call him quiet, reserved...cool actually. Y'know, like Oz was. But never dull.

 

[ladydorotea]

Blink. I have to say that I never get it why people find Angel dull in Buffy's S1 either. His first appearance is a riot. That DB's little smirk after 'I never said I was yours' always gets me, because it already holds all the potential for AtS' weird and darkly subtle humor, plus all of the Angelus's danger lurking under the (very pretty) facade. Adding all the little quirks like that glance after 'Bite me', or the look he got when he replies to the 'Do you snore?' in 'Angel' and you can already see there is a lot of quirky weirdness about the guy , even before we find out he is a 200 year old vampire. The funniest part for me was always the fact that DB's natural inclination for comedy was squeezed into the straight-laced jacket of romantic drama - but the funny bits always managed to get through. Heck, I find even his brooding in the first 3 Buffy seasons was a bit on the funny side - because it was so theatrical, you could not but suspect that Angel would have loved to check how well he broods in the mirror - and that was the biggest handicap of vampiric state for him. (Compare Angel with Louis de Pointe du Lac and you'd know the difference right away.)

One of my favorite comedic scenes of S2 is :'These people don't know anything about vampires: What they are, how they live, how they dress...[a guy cuts through them dressed exactly like Angel] ) . And it can only be as funny as it is because of how well it was delivered.

Not to mention that both Angel and Angelus can be heavily sentimental - which is why Mandy instances are so funny, yet remain heroic/demonic to extreme. I daresay no Superman ever managed to have all of the above in one package.

My guess is folks who find Angel dull are just not used to nuances and half-tones, and prefer their fun/drama to be delivered in the cream-pie in the face kind of way, where the funny has to be saucy, and melodramatic has to be pine-y.

 

[The Bronze]

Angel is not dull. I suspect people who call him dull simply don't like the character and from there equate his brooding with general dullness. I have all sorts of problems with Angels decision making but that's a part of what makes him so interesting. He's capable of moments of great heroics and terrible villainy. His humour is great as well. He gets his own good lines in as well as playing off the rest of the characters very well.

He's got hundreds of years of back story and you never know what he'll do next either. He's a very rich character and I think anyone calling him dull is very much missing the point with him.

 

[The Bronze]

Thank you [MENTION=7585]Kean[/MENTION]. I've got to ask though, do you really not find any of Angels actions to be villainous at all? From the top of my head I'd say locking the lawyers in with Darla and Drusilla was a bit grim and possibly villainous, understandable of course. Walking away from the hotel and leaving the inhabitants as prey for the Thesulac without a backwards glance. Hanging with Darla, Spike and Dru after getting his soul and still eating people. Then there's Season 8. I'd say he crosses the line into super villain territory here.

 

[Kean]

Thank you [MENTION=7585]Kean[/MENTION]. I've got to ask though, do you really not find any of Angels actions to be villainous at all? From the top of my head I'd say locking the lawyers in with Darla and Drusilla was a bit grim and possibly villainous, understandable of course. Walking away from the hotel and leaving the inhabitants as prey for the Thesulac without a backwards glance. Hanging with Darla, Spike and Dru after getting his soul and still eating people. Then there's Season 8. I'd say he crosses the line into super villain territory here.

I find many of the choices that Angel made ranging from controversial to downright wrong. Maybe it's the word that is putting me off? Villainous strikes a maniacal tone, sort of mwahahahaha kind of thing. I associate it with an enthusiastic intent to do harm for ones own enjoyment or amusement and that just doesn't feel true of Angel, Angelus absolutely, but not Angel. I think you make argument with locking the lawyers in but even then I would say that was wrong, not villainous. But I think each individual situation you mentioned, we could pick apart and discuss the context etc and find ways to understand why he made the decisions he made, but when something is villainous, I don't think you can do that.

It's a distinction that probably means nothing to most people but I can't seem to ignore it. I have the same thing with Buffy and Faith and some of the decisions they made.

 

[The Bronze]

I find many of the choices that Angel made ranging from controversial to downright wrong. Maybe it's the word that is putting me off? Villainous strikes a maniacal tone, sort of mwahahahaha kind of thing. I associate it with an enthusiastic intent to do harm for ones own enjoyment or amusement and that just doesn't feel true of Angel, Angelus absolutely, but not Angel. I think you make argument with locking the lawyers in but even then I would say that was wrong, not villainous. But I think each individual situation you mentioned, we could pick apart and discuss the context etc and find ways to understand why he made the decisions he made, but when something is villainous, I don't think you can do that.

It's a distinction that probably means nothing to most people but I can't seem to ignore it. I have the same thing with Buffy and Faith and some of the decisions they made.

I see where you're coming from now. I think the word villainous can be used for more situations than just the evil laughing chap who wants to burn the world. Magneto I think would be comparable example. He can commit all sorts of evil acts but believe himself to be doing the right or necessary thing. I'd describe plenty of what he does as villainous even if I can see where he's coming from.

Same thing for Angel. I can pretty much always understand his reasoning even if I don't agree with it. It does lead him to some very dark actions and decisions.

 

[Kean]

I see where you're coming from now. I think the word villainous can be used for more situations than just the evil laughing chap who wants to burn the world. Magneto I think would be comparable example. He can commit all sorts of evil acts but believe himself to be doing the right or necessary thing. I'd describe plenty of what he does as villainous even if I can see where he's coming from.

Same thing for Angel. I can pretty much always understand his reasoning even if I don't agree with it. It does lead him to some very dark actions and decisions.

Yeah, I am the exact same. I've hated an awful lot of what Angel has done in the last few seasons but I always know how he got there and his reasoning for doing something is never "just because I can." Sometimes I think they are decisions that, if he had any other option, he wouldn't make at all. I often think if Angel lived in a world where the right thing to do was also things he felt comfortable doing, it would be a very different story. And other times I feel like he does these big, sweeping moves that needed more time and consideration i.e. Twilight. I think Angel is drawn to that type of "Hail Mary" action because it is so enticing to him that maybe this one thing could change it all, despite all reason, logic and experience standing against it. I understand why he trusted Whistler but I often think, why didn't you talk to someone else about it? Lorne! Gunn! Buffy! Even Giles! Anyone, really. And of course, I know why he didn't, but it is things like that that make him frustrating as a fan. But I'll be damned if I don't love his big, stupid head anyway. 🙂