Movies - TV
Joss Whedon's Focus On Firefly Came At A Cost For Angel
By JAMIE GERBER
Back when Joss Whedon was in-demand in Hollywood, he had three TV shows of his creation airing at once: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the Buffy spinoff “Angel,” and “Firefly.” After spreading himself so thin, Whedon had to make sacrifices, and when he essentially chose “Firefly” as his favorite child, the decision robbed “Angel” of much-needed attention.
Whedon had “Buffy” writer Marti Noxon and “Angel” co-creator David Greenwalt to help him run both of those shows respectively, but he still needed someone to do the same for “Firefly.” The only person Whedon wanted for “Firefly” was “Angel” writer Tim Minear, who indeed left his current show to run the new sci-fi western as Whedon had requested.
“Angel” took more losses when Greenwalt left at the end of Season 3 to pursue other projects, and Noxon took leave due to her pregnancy. “Buffy” writer David Fury later said, “Joss was very focused on ‘Firefly’ and they didn’t want to think about Angel. They said, ‘Good luck with it.’ The feeling was almost they couldn’t care less; just let somebody else run it.”
The result of all this was the much-maligned fourth season of “Angel,” which suffered from poor character development, cringeworthy storylines, and Whedon's behind-the-scenes mistreatment of actor Charisma Carpenter and others. Whedon’s lack of focus on “Angel” may have hurt the show first, but the allegations against him add to the mess.