Angel (season 1)
At the end of the third season of "Buffy", the 242-year-old, re-ensouled vampire Angel left Sunnydale to give teenage Slayer Buffy Summers the chance to live a normal life. Angel is now living in the big city of Los Angeles. With Buffy gone Angel is now completely cut off from society, every day getting closer and closer to giving in to his vampiric hunger. It's not until he befriends the half demon and fellow Irishman Doyle, who is sent visions of people in trouble by The Powers That Be, and fellow Sunnydale resident Cordelia Chase, who grounds Angel's life in the humanity around him, that he truly begins to take charge of his life and seek atonement for his past sins. He sets up his own detective agency, Angel Investigations and begins to "help the helpless".
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (season 2)
During the season finale, Buffy and Willow come across the spell Jenny was working on just prior to her death. While they deliberate on what is to be done, Kendra returns to Sunnydale by word of her watcher who claims that a dark power is once again rising at the Hellmouth. This power turns out to be the stone statue of the powerful demon Acathla who, once upon a time, attempted to swallow the world into Hell. Angelus hatches a plan to awaken Acathla once again and destroy the world. After he fails to awaken the demon however, Angelus sends a team led by Drusilla to kidnap Giles while he calls Buffy out to distract her. As Giles is taken away, Willow is left comatose, Xander's arm is broken and Drusilla kills Kendra. Buffy returns to the library to find the police waiting for her. She flees their attack and makes it to the hospital to find her friends. When no one can find Giles, she goes to his house where she finds a demon named Whistler (Max Perlich). He tells her that what happened with Acathla wasn't meant to go the way it did — Angel is in fact the key that will re-open Acathla but the Powers that Be thought that Angel's destiny was to stop him. Drusilla uses her psychic powers to trick Giles into giving Angelus this information after Angelus sadistically tortured the watcher. Meanwhile, Willow awakens from her coma after a proclamation of love from best friend Xander and adamantly decides to try to perform the ritual of restoration to return Angel's soul. Spike joins forces with Buffy to help take down Angelus while Buffy's mom, Joyce Summers (Kristine Sutherland), finally figures out the truth about her destined daughter. As Buffy leaves to retrieve a mystical sword brought to Sunnydale by Kendra, Joyce tells Buffy never to come back. Sunnydale High School Principal Snyder (Armin Shimerman) expels Buffy from Sunnydale High. With nothing left, Buffy storms Angelus' mansion while Xander aids a weakened Giles. Buffy is too late, even with Spike's help (who takes Drusilla out of the fray). Angelus uses his blood to reawaken Acathla. As Buffy and Angelus compete in an epic sword fight, Acathla begins to swallow the earth. Meanwhile, Willow successfully performs the powerful spell after she is overcome by an unknown mystical energy. As Angel's soul is returned, Buffy has one chance to save the world and, after kissing him and proclaiming that she loves him, runs the magical sword through Angel's chest, who is then swallowed by the portal, closing it for good. Left utterly devastated, Buffy flees Sunnydale.Series creator Joss Whedon served as executive producer and showrunner. Besides Whedon, only David Greenwalt and Rob Des Hotel & Dean Batali, now executive story editors, returned. Whedon wrote the most episodes, writing five by himself and co-writing one with co-executive producer David Greenwalt, and doing another story with Greenwalt, totaling seven episodes. Marti Noxon joined as a staff writer (promoted to story editor midseason) and wrote the next highest amount of episodes, writing five on her own and co-writing one with Howard Gordon, who joined as consulting producer for the first half of the season. Greenwalt devised the story for "School Hard" with Whedon, but wrote the teleplay solo. He then wrote and directed one episode, co-writing "Ted" with Whedon. Rob Des Hotel and Dean Batali (returning from the first season) wrote three episodes together. Freelance writer Carl Ellsworth was fired following his first episode "Halloween". David Tyron King wrote two freelance episodes (as Ty King), King was previously an executive producer on the previous series Whedon worked on, "Parenthood" (1990). Former story editors Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer returned and wrote one freelance episode. The other freelanced script of the season was "Go Fish", wrote by husband and wife team David Fury and Elin Hampton, Fury would continue to write freelance in the following season before joining the show full-time.