Angel came to Los Angeles to brood, fight vampires, and apparently make some wildly questionable hiring decisions. Rewatching the 1999 pilot now is equal parts nostalgia, chaos, and “girl, please do not go into that basement.”
There are shows I remember liking, shows I remember loving, and then there are shows where apparently entire sections of my brain are still occupied by useless information about characters who have not been on television in more than two decades.
Angel falls into that last category.
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff premiered in 1999, sending Angel (David Boreanaz), the vampire with a soul and an almost supernatural commitment to brooding, from Sunnydale to Los Angeles. He got his own city, his own show, and eventually his own strange little found family of people trying to help the helpless while battling demons, evil law firms, apocalypses, and occasionally each other.
It lasted five seasons and became a much bigger, weirder, more complicated show than its first episode suggests.
That may be what struck me most rewatching the pilot, “City Of,” all these years later. Season one Angel really thought it knew what kind of show it was going to be.
It did not.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The pilot gives us a darker, noir-ish supernatural detective show with Angel lurking around Los Angeles, saving beautiful women in distress. Eventually, Angel became much more of an ensemble series, with bigger mythology, stranger worlds, morally complicated characters, and Wolfram & Hart evolving into something far more interesting than “evil lawyers working for rich vampires.”
And thank goodness this show aired in an era when television series were sometimes allowed to breathe, stumble around, make some questionable choices, and figure themselves out.
Some of those choices worked beautifully.
Others gave us Connor.
But we’ll get there eventually.
A Completely Necessary Spoiler Warning
I am about to spoil the pilot episode of Angel, which originally aired on October 5, 1999.
So if you’ve been meaning to get around to it for the last 26 years, this is apparently the moment when I ruin everything.
Proceed accordingly.
Wait. Is That Sawyer?
The episode opens with Angel sitting in a bar, appearing to be very drunk while keeping an eye on a couple of vampires circling their next victims.
And immediately:
WHOA. IS THAT SAWYER FROM LOST?
It is!
Josh Holloway shows up for approximately five seconds as a very good-looking vampire, which was apparently his first television appearance. How have I watched this episode multiple times and never noticed him before?
Maybe I was distracted by David Boreanaz pretending to be drunk.
Playing drunk must be weirdly difficult because very few actors seem capable of doing it without looking like someone performing “drunk” during an improv exercise. Boreanaz isn’t terrible here, but I am also not convinced he has ever encountered alcohol.
Then the fighting starts, which brings me to one of my favorite things about rewatching Buffy and Angel: the stunt doubles.
They are so obvious.
There are moments when Angel launches into a fight, and David Boreanaz essentially disappears from the screen only to be replaced by another man with roughly the same hair.
Does it bother me?
Absolutely not.
At this point it’s part of the charm. I see that extremely visible transition from actor to stunt performer and think, yes, welcome home. This is exactly the kind of late-’90s television nonsense I came here for.
Angel, Now With More Acting
Rewatching early Angel also reminded me just how much David Boreanaz improved as an actor in a fairly short amount of time.
Season-one Buffy Angel and pilot-episode Angel feel like they were played by the same extremely handsome man after he discovered several additional facial expressions.
And he kept getting better.
It’s funny because Angel feels so inseparable from Buffy in my memory, even though he was really only a core part of that series for its first three seasons before moving to Los Angeles. He came back, obviously, but his full-time Sunnydale tenure is much shorter than it feels.
Maybe that’s because melodramatic teenage me was VERY invested in Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Angel.
I desperately wanted Angel to get his soul back.
Adult me?
Adult me kind of loves evil Angel.
Which, looking back, may explain quite a lot about my eventual Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder) problem.
That Theme Song Still Hits
Then the opening credits start.
Oh, that instrumental theme song.
I had forgotten how much I loved it until, after approximately two notes were played, a dormant section of my brain immediately woke up.
There are television themes that introduce a show, and others that somehow capture the show’s entire mood. The Angel theme belongs in the second category.
It’s dramatic. It’s melancholy. And, it’s a little sexy. It absolutely believes someone should be standing on a rooftop staring moodily across Los Angeles.
Preferably while wearing a long black coat.
Oh Man, Doyle
And then Glenn Quinn walks in.
This is one of those rewatch moments that lands differently now.
I knew Quinn first as Mark on Roseanne, a character I could not stand, so when he originally showed up as Doyle, I remember not being especially excited about the casting.
And then I loved Doyle.
Quinn is immediately funny and charming, and his chemistry with Boreanaz gives Angel someone to bounce off before the series has really figured out what its ensemble will become.
Seeing him now is bittersweet. Quinn died in 2002 at just 32 after an accidental drug overdose. His time on Angel was painfully short, but Doyle became one of those characters who somehow mattered far beyond the number of episodes he actually appeared in.
The pilot uses Doyle to deliver a whole lot of exposition about Angel, Buffy, the soul, redemption, the Powers That Be, and why our favorite brooding vampire should probably stop sitting alone in the dark feeling sorry for himself.
For viewers coming directly from Buffy, none of this was exactly breaking news.
But I do wonder how it played for people who had never seen Buffy.
Especially once Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) later starts asking whether Angel is still evil.
Those of us who survived the Angelus years knew EXACTLY what she meant.
Meet Tina, Apparently the Least Cautious Woman in Los Angeles
Doyle’s first vision sends Angel to a coffee shop to find Tina, a young woman in need of help.
Tracy Middendorf plays Tina, and within seconds I yelled:
IT’S STEVE’S (IAN ZIERING) PSYCHO STALKER FROM BEVERLY HILLS, 90210!
Technically, Laura Kingman, the woman who became obsessed with stealing Brenda’s (Shannen Doherty) role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Why is this information still readily available in my brain?!
Angel attempts to approach Tina in the coffee shop and is painfully awkward about it. And look, I understand the joke. Angel is socially uncomfortable. He’s been alive for centuries, but somehow talking to a pretty woman remains the real demon.
Fine.
But are we seriously supposed to believe that 1999 David Boreanaz is having trouble getting a server to pay attention to him?
Sure.
We’re already accepting vampires. I can accept one more supernatural premise.
Eventually, Tina agrees to meet him after work, only to pull pepper spray because she thinks he’s working for someone named Russell.
Honestly?
GOOD FOR HER.
Finally, a woman exercising some basic Los Angeles survival instincts.
Unfortunately, this burst of good judgment will not last.
Angel convinces her he isn’t working for Russell, mostly because he says he isn’t.
And she believes him.
Girl.
You thought this strange man was potentially dangerous five seconds ago. You do not know him. He has been lurking around your workplace. You could have left through another door or asked a coworker to walk you out. You could have ghosted him, and I personally would have applauded.
Instead, she’s basically like, “Oh, you’re not creepy? You’re just lonely? My mistake.”
Insert eye roll here.
Russell Who? No, Seriously, WHO IS RUSSELL?
Tina needs a ride to a Hollywood party, so naturally Angel takes her.
This section eventually gives us one of the episode’s best little jokes when he attempts to dramatically jump into his convertible and gets into the wrong car.
I cannot imagine two identical cars like that sitting side by side in the same parking garage, but I’m not going to fight this one. I like the gag too much.
The early episodes really did seem more interested in letting Angel be funny. The comedy never disappeared, but the show hadn’t yet fully committed to the level of emotional devastation it would eventually inflict on everyone.
For now, we get awkward Angel.
And I love awkward Angel.
We also get Angel asking Tina about Russell again.
This is where I started laughing because, from Tina’s perspective, this guy has a WEIRD fixation.
So she tells him there’s some guy named Russell bothering her, and Angel basically spends the evening going:
Who’s Russell?
Okay, but Russell?
Tell me more about Russell.
Russell Russell Russell.
DUDE.
Maybe try pretending to be normal for ten consecutive minutes.
CORDELIA!
And then finally:
CORDY.
I remember being very skeptical when I originally heard Charisma Carpenter was leaving Buffy for Angel.
Cordelia and Angel?
Those two?
How was THAT going to work?
Turns out, beautifully.
The pilot understands almost immediately why Cordelia belongs here. She arrives in Los Angeles pretending that her acting career is going wonderfully, then goes home to a depressing apartment where she’s broke, hungry, and trying very hard to convince herself that everything is fine.
It’s still Cordelia. She’s still vain, blunt, ambitious, and capable of being completely self-involved.
But there’s vulnerability underneath it now.
That was the beginning of one of the best character evolutions in the Buffyverse.
Which makes what eventually happened to Cordelia so much more frustrating.
Rewatching her early episodes now also comes with the knowledge of what Charisma Carpenter later publicly said about her experience working with Joss Whedon. In 2021, Carpenter accused Whedon of abusing his power and retaliating against her after she became pregnant while working on Angel.
It complicates the rewatch.
Because Whedon’s writing style is all over this episode, even though he co-wrote it with David Greenwalt. The sharp dialogue, the sudden joke in the middle of something serious, the characters puncturing their own dramatic moments. You can see the style that developed through Buffy, Angel, and Firefly and eventually became a huge part of The Avengers.
I miss that kind of writing.
I do not particularly miss the man himself.
Tina, Please Go Back to Missoula
After Angel rescues Tina from one of Russell’s goons, she ends up staying at Angel’s place.
His creepy basement lair.
Apartment?
Warehouse?
Sewer-adjacent fortress?
Whatever we are calling it.
And Tina walks in and sees elaborate weapons hanging all over the walls.
Again, yes, some perfectly normal people collect and display weapons.
Those people do not generally live in dark subterranean warehouse spaces with no windows and immediate sewer access.
At some point, survival instinct has to enter the chat.
Instead, Tina spends the night.
She even tries to kiss him.
Tina.
I need you to want more for yourself.
Angel does give us one of my favorite awkward cover-up lines when she mentions Missoula earlier in the episode, and he admits he’s been there.
“During the Depression.”
Pause.
“My depression. I was depressed there.”
Amazing recovery. Absolutely airtight. Nothing suspicious there.
Meanwhile, Angel heads to a library to research Russell and Tina’s missing friend.
And I cannot adequately explain how much I love watching characters on ’90s television conduct research.
Libraries!
Microfiche!
Giant desktop computers!
Primitive internet searches!
Give me forty minutes of someone dramatically discovering a newspaper article on a library computer, and I am happy.
Eventually Tina discovers Doyle’s note and realizes Angel knew who she was before they met.
FINALLY.
Some suspicion.
Unfortunately, Angel then accidentally reveals that he’s a vampire, and suddenly she has an extremely legitimate reason to run.
Which she does.
Straight back toward the OTHER vampire.
Tina, you should have stayed in Missoula.
Enter Wolfram & Hart
Russell kills Tina, which I suppose shouldn’t be shocking considering this woman has apparently spent the entire episode collecting vampires.
And then someone else appears.
Oh damn.
LINDSEY.
I completely forgot Christian Kane was here from the first episode.
This is one of the biggest differences between watching Angel then and watching it now. When I was younger, I cared mostly about Angel, Cordelia, and the heroes.
Now I’m much more interested in the villains.
And introducing Wolfram & Hart in the pilot was genius.
An evil law firm that protects supernatural monsters is such a wonderfully simple idea, yet the show got years of material out of it. Wolfram & Hart didn’t just survive as a villain. It evolved with the series.
The firm became bigger, stranger, more morally complicated, and increasingly intertwined with Angel himself.
But even here the idea works immediately.
Of COURSE the forces of darkness have lawyers.
Honestly, that might be the least fantastical thing in the entire episode.
Cordelia Finally Notices the Vampire Problem
Russell decides Cordelia should be his next victim and has her brought to his enormous, extremely vampire-coded mansion.
She gets inside and sees the curtains.
She notices there are no mirrors.
And then Cordelia’s Sunnydale training finally kicks in.
“I’m from Sunnydale. We had our own Hellmouth.”
This might be the exact moment I became completely sold on Cordelia joining Angel.
Her slow realization that she is alone inside the fortress-like home of a vampire is perfect because Cordelia is allowed to be both smart and completely ridiculous at the same time.
She knows vampires.
She also voluntarily walked into this man’s house because she thought he might help her career.
Both things can be true.
Angel arrives to rescue her, and Cordelia starts delivering this fantastic speech about how Russell has absolutely no idea who he’s dealing with, and Angel is about to destroy him.
Which is very cool.
Except Angel waits for her to finish.
Sir.
THE VAMPIRE IS HOLDING HER.
I appreciate dramatic timing too, but perhaps attack first and let Cordelia finish the speech afterward?
Russell could have eaten her while you were waiting for your cue.
“Can You Fly?”
Angel eventually confronts Russell in the middle of a business meeting.
Russell explains that he’s rich, powerful, protected, and essentially untouchable.
Angel listens.
Then asks if he can fly.
And kicks him through a giant window into direct sunlight.
It’s still great.
More importantly, the entire sequence establishes what Wolfram & Hart will represent going forward. Angel isn’t just fighting monsters hiding in alleys anymore.
Some monsters have money.
Some have corporations and lawyers.
And some sit comfortably in conference rooms because the entire system has been built to protect them.
That idea would become so much more important as the series went on, but it’s already sitting right there in episode one.
The Buffy Phone Call Still Works
After everything is over, Angel calls Buffy.
He says nothing.
He hears her voice and hangs up.
It’s a small moment, but it worked especially well when the episode originally aired because the Buffy season-four premiere, “The Freshman,” aired immediately before it. Earlier that night, viewers had watched Buffy answer a mysterious silent phone call.
Then Angel showed us who was on the other end.
I still love that.
No giant crossover event.
Just two scenes in two different shows quietly connecting.
So We’re Starting a Business Now?
Then Cordelia decides she should work with Angel.
And here’s where I have questions.
Angel is a decent guy.
He knows Cordelia is struggling.
He clearly feels sorry for her.
But based on their previous relationship, hiring her is an absolutely insane decision.
Cordelia was not exactly known in Sunnydale for her compassion toward others.
Buy her lunch.
Maybe help her find a job.
Think about getting a coffee and catching up on old times.
Instead, they’re essentially like, “Should we start a supernatural detective agency together?”
Sure. Why not.
Obviously, it works because we know what Cordelia becomes and how important she will eventually be to Angel and the entire team.
But Angel did not know any of that.
He was just making some WILD hiring decisions.
So, Does the Angel Pilot Hold Up?
Yes.
There are definitely things that hit differently now. Tina’s willingness to repeatedly trust strange men while living alone in Los Angeles is genuinely stressful. Some of the plotting is clunky. The stunt doubles are visible from space.
And the show hasn’t figured itself out yet.
But that’s also what makes the episode interesting to revisit.
You can see pieces of what Angel will become, though the writers don’t fully understand their importance yet.
Cordelia is already more than the mean girl she was allowed to be in Sunnydale.
Doyle immediately gives Angel some badly needed humanity.
Lindsey and Wolfram & Hart show up before we have any idea how important they’ll become.
Angel himself is still figuring out what being a hero looks like when Buffy isn’t there to define his world.
And underneath all the vampire fights and wonderfully dated technology, the central idea is already there.
Angel cannot redeem himself by sitting alone in the dark feeling guilty.
He has to connect with people and care what happens to them.
That ultimately became the part of Angel I loved most.
Well, that and evil lawyers, karaoke demons, incredibly complicated romances, Wesley’s (Alexis Denisof) entire character arc, and an apparently permanent grudge against Connor.
I still love this pilot because it was the beginning.
But what makes me want to keep rewatching is knowing just how much better, stranger, funnier, darker, and more emotionally complicated the show was about to become.
This first episode thought it knew where Angel was going.
It had no idea.
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