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While not an official critic, Jake over at Not Just Movies has named Amy Acker’s role(s) in Angel as his #2 favorite TV character. Jake seems to be a huge Joss Whedon fan – also on the list are Spike, Willow and Captain Mal.
Joss Whedon created almost as many strong female characters on television as had existed in the 40 years of T.V. that predated him, but for my money, Fred was his best character. If you asked a nerd to describe his dream woman, he’d probably end up listing all of Fred’s attributes, whether he’d ever seen Angel or not. She’s adorable, sweet, brilliant and fragile, yet strong and pure enough to anchor a group of people who constantly struggle with their morality. She comes to view the Fang Gang as her new family, to the point that one of the few times she loses her cool is when she discovers that someone betrayed them. The other characters went out of their way to keep her innocence, particularly Gunn and Wesley, who both loved Fred because, hey, they’re only human.
And as much as I loved characters like Buffy and Willow being endowed with strength and magic to serve as a metaphor for female power, Fred never needed to kill something with a phallic object or by aligning with Mother Earth to be a strong character, and that kind of resonated with me more. Combined with Amy Acker’s subtle and imbibing acting — go back and watch the series: she goes through about 4 transformations so subtle that you don’t even pick up on it until the drastic change that comes with a tragedy in the final season — Fred makes the case for Joss’ writing brilliance without ever flaunting what makes her great.
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