I feel like generally Buffy verse fans hate change, innovation or deviation from the established ideals of the shows. Season 5 of angel is an incredibly brave and daring change to the formula of the show and confronts it's characters with deep moral questions that might be too thematically challenging for a lot of fans. The plight of this season isn't to defeat some big bad (until it kind of is at the end), it's our characters fighting desperately to avoid becoming big bads themselves. Wolfram and Hart represents the opposite to the moral fundamentals of Buffy and Angel, and so for the team to be placed in the belly of the beast and have to face the fact that they are all potentially far more corruptible and potentially easily swayed and corrupted by power than they thought is an existentially terrifying concept. For a TV show to rebuild itself so rapidly and so successful is an absolute marvel- season 4 broke down the team, the characters and their dynamics and it's rebuilt here incredibly. This is the perfect way to end a TV show, the statement of its final episode is so incredibly inspiring, putting Buffy's final episode to shame. By far the most consistently good season out of Buffy and Angel combined. Reaches dramatic heights that other seasons of both shows can only dream of. Suffers from what happened to Cordelia in season 4 of course, but James Marsters' returning as spike is wonderful, here he presents the character as a far more balanced depiction of both Spike's heart and his humour than Buffy season seven managed, when he often came off as a bit too weepy and humourless. Incredible season, sucks that it has such low ratings on here