The difference between the Good Omens book and the Good Omens TV adaptation...
Now that Good Omens is over, I can finally see what I love and what I hate about this narrative, both, the book and the series, in terms of storytelling and characters...
Regarding Aziracrow/Ineffable Husbands, before the series, the audience understood their relationship as "an honest and solid queerplatonic" OR as "they are totally an old married couple, Your Honor, it's right under your nose".
Both interpretations worked because the book left enough room for it. Aziraphale and Crowley had a connection, but this unique connection wasn't openly explored, which opened the possibility for the audience's mind to explore it in whatever way they saw fit, in theories and fanfiction.
Although there are some elements in the book that I find somewhat prejudiced, nothing excessive, but it needed a post-90s revision (something that the adaptation attempts to correct, in S1, where possible).
But, too, after season 1, some things changed in how the audience understood the personalities of these characters…
I love the irreverent narrative tone of the book and Season 1. I think the adaptation retold the book, improving some elements. It was great to have flashback scenes of Aziraphale and Crowley, it was interesting to see Satan visually at the airbase, and the punishments of Aziraphale and Crowley and how they escaped were also creative additions. There's more Queen songs playing.
But despite everything, there are things we need to point out; The flashback scenes in Season 1 better outlined their relationship, giving them more prominence in Season 1. However, this makes it seem like it only takes on a more 'romantic' form in the last centuries, whereas before, because there are no flashbacks in the book, fans were much more freer to imagine when and how their relationship became more than it seemed.
But the change in personality began there, in season 1, albeit in a more subtle way;
Look, Crowley was an "optimistic" in the book, but in the series he's given a more grumpy and whiny personality. While in the book Crowley goes to Tadfield without being told to, I never interpreted the Crowley in the book as thinking Aziraphale was dead, only that he thought he was disembodied and in heaven (which he was). I simply thought he would know the difference between hellfire and ordinary fire. But the Crowley in the series doesn't know the difference; for him, Aziraphale is dead, so he suffers, drinks, and becomes a sentimental mess (the crazy thing is that NG stated that he changed this because he 'suffered from Terry's death' and wanted to express that in that scene, about 'thinking you've lost a friend', when I think about it now it makes me angry!!!).
But even before that, the series has them fighting in the 'bandstand scene', and after that when Crowley goes after him in S1E3 and S1E4. This change in the character's personality made the audience see Crowley as more needy and emotionally dependent on Aziraphale than he was shown in the book.
In the book there wasn't problem between them because they don't fight in the book, there's no scene in the bandstand, no argument, they were more integrated because the plot didn't focus on them, it's leaving room for for readers to simply assume they were a good duo and that's it.
Now, in season 1, that argument between Aziraphale and Crowley at the bandstand scene, and Crowley chasing after him in his car only to be rejected again, I see that as a foreshadowing of what was to come, because the problem was introduced there: neither of them ever talked about it, nor about their differences of opinion on heaven and hell or their relationship openly.
Now I see it as a sign that NG didn't know, since that, how to develop any kind of relationship between those characters!
So, this new understanding, brought about by the adaptation, of their personalities; of Crowley's more needy side, and the long time they spend together without really talking about 'us,' will have consequences for the next season...
Look, season 1, despite some flaws, is still brilliant overall. The problem with the narrative and characterization effectively begins in season 2 and spirals out of control in the finale.
In season 2, we have a Crowley who seems more grumpy (Crowley version from the flashbacks, as Bildad and with Elspeth and Wee Morag, still seems cheerful. He also seems to have fun when he goes to heaven with Muriel, but the plot forgets that he should be helping Aziraphale, not there), but increasingly in the present centuries he seems more closed off, serious and grumpy, further and further from the "optimistic Crowley" of the book.
Meanwhile, the audience expected a development of Aziraphale's character that didn't actually come. We expected that after season 1, he would be better able to discern that "sides" don't matter, and we even expected that the flashbacks in season 2 would be a way to explore this over time. However, in the final episode of season 2, we still hear him saying things like: “You could come back to Heaven and... and everything, like the old times. Only, even nicer” or like “Obviously you said no to Hell, you're the bad guys. But Heaven... Well, it, it's the side of Truth. Of, of Light. Of Good”. Ultimately, this contributes nothing to the character's development.
Fans began to see Crowley as the "poor, heartbroken guy", while trying to find plausible justifications for Aziraphale's words without interpreting it literally. This is evident in fanfictions and theories...
But this only happens because the plot of the second season had already mischaracterized them, since Crowley should never have been transformed into a "mere grumpy, miserable and emotionally needy fool" and Aziraphale should never have been reduced to a "mere naive fool who still believes in opposing sides". From there, things went downhill…
In season 2, the story fails to reconnect the characters with who they were, with what they were in the book, with what they were in season 1.
- First, season 2 erases the remaining human characters from Book/season 1 from the narrative because it doesn't know what to do with them, so it removes them from the narrative core. So we lose Adam, Anathema, Tracy, and all the others from season 1.
- And with the characters that remain, mainly Aziraphale and Crowley, they resemble them visually, but with dissonant personalities.
Because the plot also doesn't know how to truly write these characters!
Aziraphale becomes excessively silly (a disservice to the character; many had already mentioned that Aziraphale seemed to have regressed in Season 2, but most of us chose not listen, thinking there was more to his actions than what was shown, and in the end, it was just a regression, without anything truly elaborated behind his actions), while Crowley becomes more grumpy and needy (when in the book Crowley was optimistic! And in Season 1 he was more fun! But now he became a depressed and needy bore, almost a martyr, where the plot constantly tries to give him the spotlight).
Crowley never says he's living in the car, Aziraphale never asks. They never really talk about their relationship. The Season 2 storyline, without really addressing the second coming or a new apocalypse, getting lost in trying to develop random characters, and failing to establish the "Aziracrow" relationship, and after going nowhere, ends with a dispute between them that divided the audience into "pro-Crowley" or "pro-Aziraphale".
It was awful. The fandom was divided, people started creating theories and writing "fix-it" fanfiction or taking sides, whether it was Crowley's or Aziraphale's.
While the Finale be unsure how to develop their relationship; Aziraphale becomes even more mischaracterized because the narrative insists on forcing him to still believes in sides and making Crowley more and more depressed with martyr-protagonist tones.
And they continue without any dialogue about this or about anything happening between them. Both, the Season 2 plot and the finale, give shape to any other romantic relationships, but not to the main couple.
We never see them have an honest dialogue about "us".
It's curious that, in the book and in Season 1, we have several characters, and even though Aziraphale and Crowley are just more one of all them, they manage to delineate their personalities and relationship well. But in Seasons 2 and the finale, where they are seemingly placed in the foreground, where they should have more prominence and more screen time to develop THEIR story, this doesn't happen!
Perhaps it would have been better to keep them as supporting characters (it seems to have worked for Beelzebub and Gabriel, and for Muriel and Eric), perhaps it would have worked for Aziraphale and Crowley too if plot hadn't tried to force them onto the screen as the "protagonists" they never really were!
And this leads: In the end, the Crowley of the finale was very far from being the "optimistic" Crowley of the book; he basically became his reverse twin, a pessimistic and depressed Crowley who lives on the streets and has lost all hope. Meanwhile, Aziraphale doesn't evolve; he continues to think that hell is terrible and heaven isn't as bad as its actions suggest, as in phrases like: "Someone must've had a motive for the theft. A motive for the murder. Angels aren't killers". So he suggests that it might be hell that stole the book of life. In other words, he learns nothing beyond the "sides".
Their character development was terrible because it was a "involution", a decline. And this, added to the fact that they never talk about "us", ends up making us, as fans, hate what plot did to them.
On the other hand, the Finale returns to central points of the narrative, of the book and the series, the question: is this universe, and the world they live in, deterministic or stochastic?
At this point the plot attempts to recapture elements from the book such as;
"God does not play dice with the universe; plays an ineffable game of own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time" - GOOD OMENS BOOK
"Maybe it's all part of a great big ineffable plan. All of it. You, me, everything. Some great big test to see if what you've built all works properly, eh? You start thinking: it can't be a great cosmic game of chess, it has to be just very complicated Solitaire". - GOOD OMENS BOOK
The plot of the finale even attempts to suggest that they're going from a deterministic universe to a stochastic one. But it FAILS.
It fails to conclude its central narrative arc because, in presenting the new world requested by Crowley and Aziraphale, this new world makes a point of showing that all the characters from the past universe, immortal or human, still exist in this new universe, all at the same time in the same place, that there's still a strong connection between who they were in the past universe and who they are now in the new universe. The new version of Aziraphale still likes books, still has "fell" as a name, his love still called "Anthony Crowley" and eventually they not only fall in love but also acquire a globe with the bookshop and the Bentley from the previous universe, proving that that universe wasn't truly forgotten.
Which leads us to the question: Did God bluff? Did they not overcome the system? Is it a deterministic or stochastic world?
In other words, in an attempt to give the characters a happy ending, despite all the flaws and setbacks in the plot, the story ends up returning to a deterministic universe. Except without the supernatural element. Making what Agnes had already predicted a reality? Consider this:
"Further Nife and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter," Anathema read slowly, "Concerning the World that Is To Come; Ye Saga Continuef l Oh, my . . .". - Good Omens Book.
What was the overall problem? I think it stems from trying to make Aziraphale and Crowley the protagonists they were never intended to be.
It would make more sense to me if it were like this: Instead of Crowley and Aziraphale, it could be Adam and Josh/Jesus at the end facing God, asking for their world back, but everything supernatural (angels, demons, heaven, hell, God, and Satan) would need to stay away in a parallel plane. At most, they could observe from afar, without interfering… So those who wanted to stay and interfere could simply stay, but as humans, and all the laws governing the universe from then on would be the laws of physics and nothing more.
That way they would solve the "determinism vs. stochastic world" problem that was created as the plot of the finale.
Crowley and Aziraphale would only need to talk about one thing: what do they want for themselves, what do they want for their future together? From there, they could even choose to remain human and finally live the love story they were never able to before, given that I doubt they would be happy in a parallel plane, far from humanity, surrounded by other angels and demons, forever...
...The story still wouldn't be able to fix the damage it did to their personalities on S2 and Finale, not at this point, not in 90 minutes, but it could still fix what it could and give them a happy ending in their original world, and at least get it right with "the right world".
But, in the end, that wasn't the chosen path. Yes, I was frustrated by that...
Well... the ending itself, what we saw, I don't think is bad, but it left many questions! Are they them? Aren't they them? Is it a new world? Isn't it? Will they eventually remember? Won't they remember? Did God bluff? Did God not bluff? Does God still exist? Does God not exist? Why does everything in the new world seem so ineffable? Many questions, no answers.
But, despite all the flaws and the TERRIBLE character development of Aziraphale and Crowley, there are still points I consider positive in the adaptation of the book in the first season and its expansion into the second season and the finale episode:
1) I loved getting a red-haired Crowley played by David Tennant, I also loved Sheen's Aziraphale visual concept. I didn't know I needed it, but now I can't imagine anyone else playing these characters.
2) All the flashbacks are creative, whether make sense or not. I simply love when the plot shows them in another time, whether in S1 or S2, and whether people liked the finale or not, I became obsessed with Aziraphale's long hair in that first scene. Someone can put me in a straitjacket now, I'm obsessed with hair! Now I simply need a collection of fan art with Aziraphale and Crowley, both with long hair. It's mad!
3) I liked the blossoming of Beelzebub and Gabriel's relationship, as well as Eric and Muriel's. Aww, both so cute. These two couples were something I wasn't expecting, and I'm glad I got them in the adaptation. I liked Nina and Maggie too, despite everything. And, despite people hating it, I also liked Asa and Anthony! Regardless of whether people think they're still Aziraphale and Crowley or not, they're still so cute the way they are.
4) Oh, and I can't forget, I loved Jesus! Another such cute character!
5) And, despite everything that's wrong with Season 2 and the finale, I still laughed at several moments.
6) I like how much more queer the adaptation is than the book. In the book, God is a he, in the series a she. And we have many more queer characters in general than in the book. I know that in the book supernatural beings are canonically genderless or gender-fluid, but the adaptation embraces queer diversity more broadly! And this had an impact on the fans, who began to accept themselves more as a result.
It's a strange feeling. I didn't love it. Nor did I hate it. I just tolerated what I got from the adaptation. Maybe it's because I'm a Libra! It's very difficult to take sides when you're a Libra; we always try to measure things, balance positive and negative points, weighing all the pros and cons exhaustively without ever really reaching a conclusion that benefits either side!
Anyway, I'll keep the good things that Season 1 + Season 2 + Finale gave me in my heart (a collection of several things), but I'll minimize the things I didn't like (quite a lot, but what can I do? I can't change it, I can only overlook it). I didn't love the Book + Season 1 + Season 2 + Finale collection, but I didn't hate it either. I'm somewhere balanced between the two. Love the good things and hate the bad things. Life goes on…
These characters now belong to us to do with them as we please, because what they originally were in the book or the series no longer matters, but rather what they represent to us, because they live in our minds now; the part of them and the plot that still 'll lives in our minds is all that matters at the end of the day. And fanfiction will continue to explore what's best to explore, whether from the book's plot, or from Season 1, Season 2, or the Finale!
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