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Well from me it has to be Smallville :)

Angel?

1. I prefer the first season in a lot of ways to the ~technically better~ second season. The FotW episodes were generally stronger in season 2, but I felt like the show lost its heart in that season. The Lex and Helen relationship was dire for starters in how poorly developed it was, it was supposed be be a major relationship for Lex that ended in a proposal and marriage and yet, even with the terrible actress, I felt that in comparison more thought went into his season 1 relationship with Victoria when they both playing one another and fighting to get the upper hand. I was never sure how I was supposed to feel about Helen, and if I was supposed to buy Lex as sincere with the 'the wall around my heart' speech. The Henry Small introduction was also a pointless detour that never really went anywhere, the Clana relationship started feeling forced as to why they weren't together (as opposed to season 1 introducing a legit obstacle with Whitney), and Chloe's character was very one-note that year

2. I was a big fan of Lexana, I thought that there was potential there for a really interesting team-up when Lex first tells Lana about Level 33.1 and she agrees with him that protecting themselves from the meteor infected is a good idea. I would have preferred if season 6 had separated Lex and Lana by having Lana then suffer from conflicted loyalty after finding out about Clark, and Lex feeling betrayed when she tells Clark about his secret projects, instead of simply having her pregnant and torn as to which man she wants to be with. There were so many more interesting routes to take that triangle :(

3. Lois Lane only worked for me in her early introduction in season 4, and then from season 8 onwards once she was actually at the DP and feeling a little more revelant. If it were up to me then I would have written her out after Devoted and let her find her path off-screen at college, and waited for season 8 for Clark to see her again when he joins the DP. They did use her better in early season 6 with Oliver I will admit, but most of the comic relief with Lois in seasons 4, 5, 6, and 7 was just painful to me, and they clearly had no idea how to write her path into journalism in a way that made sense

4. I wasn't a fan of Clark and Lois, I thought that the show was trying way too hard with other characters like Jimmy hammering it into our heads that Lois and Clark sound/look good together, and the writers got lazy with actually developing their attraction and relationship organically

5. I really disliked the pairing of Jimmy/Chloe and the way that Jimmy would take out his insecurities on Chloe and make everything her fault, the low point was when he tried to stop Chloe from even answering the lie detector on whether or not Jimmy was the one that she loved. That was a healthy relationship right there! It baffled me how a lot of the fandom seemed to just view them as sweet and cutesy and want that relationship to continue for Jimmy's sake, all while complaining about how terribly Chloe supposedly treated him by being friends with Clark and having to keep secrets from Jimmy

(I was going to talk about the Clex friendship and how that should have been handled, but I suspect that my opinions there aren't so unpopular :P )

Edited Date: 2015-02-09 06:57 pm (UTC)

1. Cordelia's character was not destroyed because of the pregnancy, season 3 already lost their handle on her when they decided to make her Angel's love interest. Episodes like Billy still had that old Cordelia spark, but by midway into season 3 Cordelia was being written terribly when she was completely hung up on Angel and would make comments about Angel being the only person that she cares about. It was also contrived how they suddenly tried turning her into a saint with the power to heal, it was later retconned with Skip joking about Cordelia being a pure and radiant Saint, please, but I'm still not sure if we were supposed to take the season 3 cliffhanger on face value or not at the time (I suspect yes based on the earlier writing from that season)

2. I don't really get why fandom was so stuck on Gunn/Fred being such a terrible couple with no chemistry. Yeah they were a bit too cutesy at times, but it seemed like everyone agreed on them having zero chemistry, and I always thought that they had just as many chemistry as any other couple and were hardly a Buffy/Riley situation? Actually I thought that they made a pretty sweet couple and much preferred them to Wesley/Fred

3. Eh I wasn't a big fan of Fred, she was okay, but I felt like at times the behind the scenes love for Amy Ackler came across a little too blatantly with how much they kept pushing how loveable Fred was and how much the other characters adored her. I much preferred when Fred turned into Illyria, she become one of my favourite Ats characters ever

4. Intellectually I could appreciate Wesley's character and the good intentions behind what he was doing, but I could never emotionally connect to darker Wesley or like him very much. I usually like the darker characters, but I was just never feeling it with Wesley, if anything I thought that at times he came across as downright creepy and disturbed (how he handled what he thought was his father, his attitude towards Fred and Lilah)

5. Honestly Ats isn't my favourite show because I never liked any of the characters much, including Angel lol, so my opinions might seem a little overtly negative XD Gunn was probably the least problematic character for me, and I would have loved to see him and Cordelia become an item in season 2, but I had a hard time connecting with most of the characters and the writing of their relationships

Edited Date: 2015-02-09 06:59 pm (UTC)

Maybe Pretty Little Liars? :D

but I could never emotionally connect to darker Wesley or like him very much

Ditto. All they did was take Wes and turn him into Angel, except somehow skeevier. Muh angst!

Buffy, of course.

Gabrielle

I agree with this so much. (Well, except that I didn't like Illyria, either. Sorry!!!!)

Gabrielle

Hmm I'm not sure what the unpopular opinions are there, but I'll do my best!

1. One opinion that I know isn't popular in fandom is that I felt really bad for Allison in season 5 after she came back, I was disappointed in how quickly her friends turned against her. Yeah maybe they needed to break away from her domineering influence on them from when they were younger, but I thought that the show jumped a little too quickly into Aria blowing a rape whistle around Allison, or the girls deciding that all of their problems with A should be solved now that Allison is in jail. I also thought it was skeezy how they discussed planting evidence to make it look like Allison killed Mona, even though they had no proof of that, and I was uncomfortable with the shot of them all ganging up against Allison just before she was arrested. Allison has made a lot of mistakes in how she treated people, but it doesn't seem like the other four girls are doing that much better right now in how they're acting towards their former friend IMO

2. Toby is okay, but I think that Spencer and Wren would have made for a much hotter couple. I was kind of disappointed that they dropped them so completely, yeah there was the age gap and the dodgy past history, but still Wren was pretty sexy :P

3. This is possibly popular or unpopular, I'm not sure how many fans they have, but Ezra and Aria have been really gross to me ever since season 4 revealed how he deliberately manipulated 16 year old Aria in order to write a book on Alison's disappearance. It didn't seem so bad at first when we were led to believe that he had been unaware of Aria's real age, but now we know that he had a trap laying in wait for her from their first meeting in that bar, which shines a really sinister light on their relationship. It's ridiculous how the show now wants to have them publically dating and fine with one another, just because Ezra got shot (and is apparently no longer teaching?) That doesn't wipe away the beginnings of their relationship!

4 I don't believe that Aria is A

5. I find Emily kind of boring :( She's sweet enough, but I don't think that I've got into any of plot lines that much. At the beginning her coming out was handled very well, but ever since all of the stuff with swimming and college she's been the dullest of the main four to me

I really loved Illyria, but maybe that's because she was only around for a brief time lol. The writing for most of the Ats characters was all over the place a lot of the time, and that's why in retrospect I'm not such a big fan of that show as I was at the time, it wasn't aged well for me

Usually I like the more morally ambiguous characters as well, I think that Wesley was the one case where I preferred the lighter and more bumbling version of a character! That was back when Internet was really slow and I used to read spoilers from the U.S. on what was happening on Buffy and Angel, and on the page I always took Wesley's side, so when I watched it myself for the first time I was surprised at how unsympathetic I found him. From what I remember (it's been a while since I watched Ats now!), he came across as pretty surly and self-indulgent in how he would wallow in the angst and how much Angels Investigations had wronged him. And, even though I did like his relationship with Lilah, in retrospect they were also pretty self-important in all their discussions on how Judas committed the worst sin of all in betrayal. It's funny that Buffy is the character that you hear more about her being whiny and self-important, yet a lot of the time Ats had nothing but excess man pain with Angel and Wesley over the ~burdens~ that they carried

he came across as pretty surly and self-indulgent in how he would wallow in the angst and how much Angels Investigations had wronged him

Yeah. For me it's just a question of what did he expect was going to happen? They were gonna thank him? Yeah, he thought he was doing the right thing, but I can't see how anyone would see the result being different even if it went as planned. If he'd have owned it instead of the 'i got my throat cut and my friends abandoned me!' stuff I'd have felt more for him. Also I cringe at his whole chivalry act in S4 regarding Lilah.

It's funny that Buffy is the character that you hear more about her being whiny and self-important, yet a lot of the time Ats had nothing but excess man pain with Angel and Wesley over the ~burdens~ that they carried

"Whiny" Buffy is always something I side-eye, tbh. I just...don't see it? Self-important, sure. That's part and parcel of being a proactive hero. It takes self-importance to say people need saving and I'm gonna do it. As far as whiny people in BTVS/AtS goes, she's not very high on the list, IMO.

Doctor Who!

Life on Mars

1. I liked Dawn's character, I really didn't get the excessive hate from her from the very beginning. Yes I can see that she became a little too much at times in season 6, but I thought that her intro was handled really well as she was immediately an important part of the main arc, and her relationship with Buffy added a lot to the show. The first cliffhanger from BvD was really cleverly done, and then Real Me was a fabulous intro imo, so quite honestly I'm baffled that Dawn ends up on so many most annoying character ever lists with people saying that they could never stand her

2. I really hated the resolution to Willow's arc in season 6. I know that many people dislike Wrecked, or season 6 in general, but it does seem like most viewers still look back fondly on Dark Willow? And I just really hated those three episodes, well Villains was probably the best of the three as Alyson did a fabulous job being creepy while Willow was torturing Warren. But the last two episodes were a mess imo, Willow was turned into a ridiculous cartoon, and it lost all emotional reasonance for me until the moment where Xander brought Willow back to herself. I was especially disappointed because the show had spend so long on subtly building up Willow's lust for power, but I couldn't get engaged in those episodes when I felt like Racks magic had corrupted Willow so much that I wasn't even watching the same character. I would have preferred if Willow at least had an understandable goal, maybe being so griefstricken that she was prepared to kill Buffy and justify it as Buffy hates being here anyway (say if she found out that would undo the consequences of her spell in Bargaining and bring Tara back), instead Willow was just randomly throwing fireballs around and threatening to kill Dawn

3. I loved the parts of The Body that dealt with Buffy and Dawn's grief, but I thought that the scoobies crying and punching walls was WAY overdone. It seemed forced to present them all eating at Joyce's for Thanksgiving, even though we'd never see any of them share all that many scenes with Joyce before, Giles was the adult whom they usually based their meet-ups around if anything. I appreciated that Anya's character was confronting the permenance of death for the first time, or Tara worrying about how Buffy and Dawn were doing, but Willow and Xander grieving as much as they did rung false to me, like Joss was using their characters to show the different stages of grief that he wanted to cover

4. Season 4 was awesome! Okay the Iniative wasn't the best seasonal arc, but there was some great character work as the characters transitioned to college, and some of the best standalones come from that season too

5. Season 1 is also really fun, I'm tired of people acting like it's barely a part of the show and advising newbies to skip it because it's 'painful to watch'. Yeah the villains were cheesy and took themselves too seriously, but the character work with the main cast was so fun and well-done

Edited Date: 2015-02-09 08:10 pm (UTC)

I was uncomfortable with the shot of them all ganging up against Allison just before she was arrested.

Which makes me wonder once more if one of the 4 could be A. I don't exactly remember if one of them "started" the whole ganging up, but yeah...

I don't think Toby and Spencer will be an item much longer... quite frankly, I'm sure they are gonna break them up and have Spencer get together with this shady Jonny guy... -.-

I don't either, if anything Buffy was usually the one telling other characters to suck it up! I don't even think that she complained about her powers all that much after high school (admittedly she did complain a fair bit in early season 2), yet some viewers seem to remember her treating her slayer powers as a burden nonstop?

And yes, Wesley seemed very stuck on being a chivalrous and old-fashioned gentleman, but most of the time I just wanted him to get over himself! Early on the show would make fun of how pompous and self-important he was, but by the time of dark Wesley I felt like we we were supposed to take the character as seriously as he took himself, and get really invested in his angsting and creepy worship of Fred

Edited Date: 2015-02-09 08:21 pm (UTC)

Don't even get me started on Season 6 and Willow. *rage*

I like Season 4 (and I don't hate Riley).

I think Season 1 was swell!

Thanks for sharing your opinions. They're not the least bit unpopular with me.

Gabrielle

Yeah. For me it's just a question of what did he expect was going to happen? They were gonna thank him? Yeah, he thought he was doing the right thing, but I can't see how anyone would see the result being different even if it went as planned.

Given AI's culture of bragging about how they help the helpless and they're here to save souls to the tune that Wesley had to forgive Faith for brutally torturing him for hours the day after and Wesley/Cordelia/Gunn forgave Angel for abandoning them and the mission for no good reason, I think Wesley expected some forgiveness or a willingness to hear his side of the story or to confirm that he was discharged from the hospital safely. Or for Angel to keep his bullshit phoney promises and NOT try to kill yet another human being just because he felt like it or if Angel did so, for the gang to react like normal human beings who come out against against OTT brutal vengeance against again, helpless, people in their hospital beds.

Moreover, AI managed to ask and accept favors from Wesley with zero grace or pout and refuse to ask for his help in a manner that can only be described as depraved indifference to human life. Like how, Gunn asked Wesley for his expertise to cure Fred, after again, Gunn showed that he gives zero fucks if Wesley lives or dies or if Angel tries to murder Wesley or heck, how Wesley copes with a very painful, tragic mistake. However, Gunn can't just ask for Wesley's expertise. He has to victim-speech about how he doesn't even want to be Wesley's apartment and how this is all beneath him. Or how AI was cool with leaving a tear to a hell dimension wide-open to harm people from Sluk-related threats on up before asking their ex-researcher for help. Or Gunn was more OK with leaving Angel and Cordelia in whatever peril all summer and letting their business go to pot without half the members before asking Wesley for his help. And then, Fred and Gunn can't just graciously accept Wesley's rescue of Angel. They have bitch about how Wesley wasn't giving them reports of the rescue mission even though Gunn and Fred were the ones who decided to cut Wesley out of their lives.

So, I really got why Wesley felt unfairly abandoned and treated like crap. I actually thought he was pretty restrained in his resentment. He had that one sole line to describe the whole team's really deplorable treatment of him.

Also I cringe at his whole chivalry act in S4 regarding Lilah.

What "act"? You mean, how he actually dove into W&H offices when he knew that the Beast was at large and murdering everyone there to rescue Lilah? Or how he hoped that she'd stop being evil and ordering murders and apocalypses and have some better future than eternity of hell?

Man, what a jerk...

I'm still betting on Hanna! XD

And I don't know, I always feel like the three main couples are safe, just because they're so aware of what the fan base wants. I would like for them to shake things up a bit though, it gets boring otherwise trying to care about the new love interests they introduce as obstacles (Travis, karate instructor etc) when we know that they're never going to last

Wow, we disagree on a lot. I agree that Cordelia was ruined before AtS S4, but then I was tired of her by mid-AtS S2. I also think Angel is interesting but such a jerk.

However, we disagree on pretty all else in particularly how Wesley is my guy and I really like Fred.

Completely agree with you on no.2 - it would have been totally understandable for Lana not to be apalled about Lex and his fotw experiments. The woman spent seasons running away from those guys to the extent that in reality you'd be in a looney bin. Then the conflict, in a sort of Vader/Luke imitation, after her finding out Clark was also a freak so to speak would have been a much better reason for her to have been torn and ultimately pick mr goody two shoes...rather than "actually I've decided this week that I'm not actually in love with you Lex and I don't want a baby with you. Sorry 'bout that, laters!!" like wtf?
Naughty lazy writers *angry face*

On the Lois front I always would have liked Clark to have kept his glasses after the episode where he gets glasses...er...title escapes me.....Anyway and then bring Lois in after that so she wouldn't recognise him later and all that (because I'm a sucker for traditional Lois and Clark) but like you said in hindsight she should only have been a character that popped up now and again maybe. And the hitting over the head with the destiny thing did wear a bit thin shall we say.

I never fell in love with any of the main cast of Angel, so it never became my show in the way that Buffy did tbh. I got into it more on my first watch as there were some great episodes and arcs, it's more now looking back that I feel like it's not a show that I want to rewatch as much as some others, mostly because the characters left me kind of hollow most of the time. I think that I liked the villains more on Ats actually lol (Faith, Dru, Darla, Lilah, Lindsey, Holland, and Illyria all kicked ass on that show)

And yeah Wesley was such a fan favourite at the time, so I always knew that I had the unpopular opinion in not really feeling it, but something about his character during that going dark arc always left me cold, even though intellectually I could appreciate that he was trying to do the right thing

Right, there were so many more interesting places they could have taken it! Having Lana just change her mind about Lex in Hydro and ask Clark to take her back (when she already knew that she was pregnant), or wanting to leave Lex at the altar and run away with Clark, made her character look so fickle and there was just no need for it. There were so many more interesting conflicts they could have gone with instead, like Lana drawing away from Lex's darkness after seeing how far he was taking his experimentation. They did hit on that a little bit in the episode Freak when Lana looks wary during her final hug with Lex, but they had to keep going back to it really being about how much more she loved Clark, which just really cheapened the whole thing. Promise was impressive in how terrible it managed to make all three characters look though, which was presumedly not what they were going for!

And Lois wasn't as bad when she was working alongside Clark at the DP, I thought that they had a pretty fun dynamic in early season 8 especially, but her character was so all over the place before then that it was really hard for me to adjust to the show suddenly treating her as a serious reporter now, so I wish that they had skipped most of the episodes between Devoted and Plastique that her character appeared in quite honestly

Edited Date: 2015-02-09 08:54 pm (UTC)

I was so disappointed in how heightened and ridiculous they made dark Willow, it might as just have just been another vampire version from an AU for all the relevance that it had to Willow's issues from Seeing Red, she was much creepier and more effective when she was hunting down Warren in Villains for reasons that the audience might even root her on for.

And yes, season 4 was so fun! I feel like that's the best season for casual rewatching if anything, because there's no heavy seasonal arc to get caught up with, there are so many light and fun standalone episodes that you can jump right into, which you can't really do with seasons 5-7.

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