Angel gets the stake?

Last night Scott and I shook our heads over the fact that yesterday the entertainment news outlets reported two things about the WB Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff, Angel: (1) the show has been cancelled, and (2) last night's show was one of its most innovative episodes ever. Entitled "Smile Time," the episode features a demonic cast of puppets who use their kids' TV show to extract "pure innocence" from the children watching. In one stroke of pure brilliance, Angel himself is transformed into a puppet. ("I'm made of felt. And my nose comes off.")

Some other things also come to mind this morning, like the fact that Angel's ratings are much stronger than they were last year. Also, the Angel DVD sets that have been released have been very big sellers. Fox, the studio that produces Angel, has a vested interest in producing more episodes not only to get paid for airing them, but also so they can sell them on the DVD market. I think we'll see the studio shop the show around pretty aggressively -- UPN did pick up Buffy for its final two seasons. Of course, you need the TV exposure in order to sell viewers on the DVDs, but I wonder if or when we'll see an established series, after its cancellation, start releasing new episodes straight to DVD. The per-episode price on DVD would go up, of course, but at some point someone's going to give it a whirl. DVD (alongside technologies like Tivo) is changing the economics of TV. For the better, I think.