It's the end of the Whedonverse as we know it

In about nine hours, the final episode of Angel will have aired and Joss Whedon's remarkable series, which reinvented itself from the original Buffy movie and spanned two TV series, three networks, and innumerable books, comics, and toys, will effectively have come to an end for the forseeable future. The early reports that there would be a series of Angel TV movies on WB have proved to be premature exaggerations, alas. But I blog this day not to bury Angel but to praise it.

Angel always had a rougher time of it than Buffy did; it lacked the genius high concept of its parent series, which was summed up in one of the best titles ever conceived. Putting the words "Buffy," "the," "vampire," and "slayer" together in that order tells you a great deal about what's to come, whereas Angel could have turned into your standard good-vampire-fights-bad-vampires show. It never enjoyed the breakout pop awareness that Buffy did, either, and yet that lack of attention often worked to Angel's creative benefit; last season, for instance, wound up being structured as a series of escalating cliffhangers that was exhilarating to follow from week to week but that a higher-profile series probably could not have gotten away with.

And this (regrettably) final season was a pleasant surprise; the loss of Charisma Carpenter from the cast, and the addition of James Marsters as Spike, along with the new status quo of Angel and his compatriots taking over the evil law firm of Wolfram and Hart, all seemed like the kinds of shark-jumping shakeups that aging series tend to do when they're out of creative juice. Instead, though, we got what was arguably the show's strongest season ever; the law firm setup opened the door to the sort of done-in-one episode stories that both Buffy and Angel's writers and producers seemed to have forgotten how to do for a few seasons there. And in the midst of these episodes, larger plot and character threads weaved their way subtly throughout the season, until in last week's penultimate episode we stepped back and got to see what the larger storyline was about.

So whatever the resolution of tonight's final episode, I hope it's the sort of ending after which we can imagine Angel, Spike, Wesley, Gunn, Illyria, and Lorne still out there fighting the good fight.

And this seems as good a time as any to tell the David Boreanaz story. In the summer of 1998, I was nearing the end of my ill-fated escapade as a writer for Mania.com. One of my jobs was to cover the San Diego Comic Convention in August; this was the summer after the second season of Buffy, when the show was at its peak, creatively and popularly, and there was a panel featuring Joss Whedon and every cast member whose character was not named in the title. It was a huge, hot, sweatly ballroom packed to the gills with fans, many of whom were of the preteen female type.

Joss and the cast were great - funny, friendly, everything you'd hope they'd be. But the real treat came during the question and answer session. After a few of the standard questions ("Are Willow and Xander going to get together?" "Is Buffy coming back to Sunnydale?") a woman and her daughter, who was probably not older than 13 or 14 and who was literally shaking, came up to the microphone. The mom said she had two questions for David Boreanaz for her daughter, who was too scared to ask. Question one: "Are you married?" And Boreanaz said that he was, and you could hear 5,000 12-to-16-year-old hearts breaking. Question two: "Can she have a hug?"

You have to understand just how easy it would have been to say no: If I give one, I have to give one to everybody; security won't let us; etc. But instead he simply said, "Of course," and hopped down off the stage and made his way toward this girl, who was now flat-out crying with delight and heading toward the stage for her hug. I'm not exagerating when I say that this was one of the two or three most incredible things I've ever witnessed. Think about when you were the age that girl was, and just how much the stuff -- whatever it was -- that you cared about really meant to you. Imagine how much of herself she must have invested in her conception of Angel and the man who played him to get that worked up just being in the same room with him. And imagine her finding out that, at least for that one moment, he lived up to every hope, dream, and wish she had about him.

All of this happened right in front of the press area for the Buffy panel, and I managed to take three photos of The Hug; they're now framed and ready to go on the office wall as soon as I make some progress tackling the rest of our unpacking. If I ever run into David Boreanaz, I'd like to buy him a beer; and as for his vampiric alter ego, I'm hoping he gets a happy and triumphant ending.