We all know that there are some actors who are bad in many things, but sometimes great. Was Halle Berry the “best actress” of 2001? Not possible while people like Streep are alive and working. Did she give the best performance that year, in Monster’s Ball? Arguably yes.
Some actors are limited, and some are just uneven, but sometimes the director or the script brings something forth in that actor that had maybe been less visible. Those are inferior actors; if you need a good director to be good, isn’t that like, say, needing glasses to see? Isn’t your vision, by definition, inferior to those who don’t need the appliance?
Why do I bring this up? Two words: Vincent Kartheiser.
He was hateful and awful in Angel. He was the Wesley Crusher of that show. And now, as Pete Campbell, he’s kind of amazing. Now, maybe it’s that playing a petulant, pain-in-the-ass teenager is inherently less compelling than playing a petulant, pain-in-the-ass married adult. Or maybe the scripts here serve him better. Joss Whedon is known for bringing great performances out of so-so actors (not. naming. names.) but maybe in this case he fell down.
Or maybe Kartheiser is a bad actor in the right role.
Basket of Kisses 
November 15, 2007 at 1:42 pm
I gotta say, I am stumped as well. No one thought worse of his performance on Angel than I did. I promise you… NO ONE.
And yup, now he’s kind of brilliant. In New Amsterdam, his reaction to being fired and then to being rehired are the real deal. Perhaps he has been studying, perhaps he is being coached, but this is great work.
With acting, in general, the talent vs. skill debate is one I could engage in forever, and not really know where I ultimately land. So I don’t know what it is he has, but he has it. No longer the weighted assmagnet he was on Angel. Thank the gods.
November 15, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Weighted assmagnet!
November 15, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Made it up on the spot.
November 15, 2007 at 9:28 pm
No one thought worse of his performance on Angel than I did. I promise you… NO ONE.
I thought that was me, but I’ll concede you first place. I always blamed Kartheiser, figuring he was one of Whedon’s rare casting mistakes, since the character of Connor should have been a great one (imagine if he had been played by, say, Jason Dohring!)
I haven’t seen him in anything else, so I can’t judge, but it may be that the character of Connor wasn’t right for him, or he didn’t grasp it. He got the peulance, but not the pain. Or maybe Whedon’s style of storytelling, which can call for operatic emotion, wasn’t suited to him. Mad Men, with its careful, emotionally-controlled characters, might be more in his range.
November 15, 2007 at 10:01 pm
The distinction between kinds of range is a good thought, Mel.
November 16, 2007 at 12:17 pm
It’s the lack of discernable pain that doomed his performance as Connor. Pain is a big thing in the Buffy/Angelverse. Joss’s true surrogate was D’Hoffryn who “didn’t go for the kill,” but instead “for the pain.” Since we never actually saw what Connor went through in Quartoth, it was necessary for the actor to keep us aware of its effect, and Kartheiser fell woefully short. That’s why i thought of Jason Dohring. No matter how much of a snarky jerk his Logan on Veronica Mars could be, we always remembered he was also suffering.
The people on Mad Men suffer too, of course, but the tone of it is different. It’s muffled, controlled, hidden. It doesn’t burst out in the searing way it did on Buffy and Angel.
November 16, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I don’t know Jason Dohring; never caught the VM heat.
But it’s like they pretty much told him, You play this guy “Angel”‘s son. “Angel” broods, so you brood too. Also, you are sad and angry, and you don’t like anyone.
And uh, that’s all we got. The more finessed an actor is, the more layers and levels one has, the more you like the character despite him/herself. And yeah, Joss never gave us that many great actors. Most of them performed well despite themselves. Boreanaz, for example. Not great, but worked it and managed to give us layers. But his snotty son? NOT never, NOT once.
Now, I admit that it still ain’t easy to find anything redeemable or likable about Pete Campbell, though I think that is more a function of the writing. Don, Roger, Joan, even Paul and Fred (are these names correct or am I just making shit up at this point) are all likable despite having some rotten qualities. In all those cases that is, I believe, a marriage of the writing and the acting. So why not Pete?
Time will reveal more, I suppose.
November 16, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Wow, I completely disagree that Kartheiser was terrible on Angel. I thought he was absolutely perfect and heartbreaking as Connor.
Was he hateful? Hells yeah, but who wouldn’t be given the circumstances of his life. Abducted, taken to an alternate dimension where he was basically raised a feral child – taught to kill or be killed, taught to revel in vengeance, taught to have no compassion.
I absolutely felt his pain.
November 16, 2007 at 7:44 pm
I will give Connor the “once,” when he came back in Season 5, the reveal at the very end, that he knew who he was, was elegantly done.
I’ll get back to you on the math.
November 16, 2007 at 7:44 pm
I never felt his pain until his final scene in Season 4. It wasn’t until he says to Angel “You let him get me. You let him take me” that I finally understood the character and what he was supposed to be, felt what a tragedy his life had been. But up until then he just came across to me as a sullen resentful teenager, nothing more.
November 16, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I will give Connor the “once,” when he came back in Season 5, the reveal at the very end, that he knew who he was, was elegantly done.
When he says “You gotta do what you can to protect your family. I learned that from my father,” I fell apart. It was a great, great moment. It redeemed him enough in my eyes that I even wrote a post-series fan-fic with him as the hero.
November 20, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Seriously, when someone flame Vincent K. and in the same breath call David B. a good actor, that´s when I shake my head and continues.
November 20, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Mary,
Uh… what?
Re Once… that was a great moment. But Maur, it’s not the qualities that made up his character that I have a problem with, it’s the actor’s execution of them. He just never convinced me. I never got lost in him. Never forgot that he was acting, and that is a sign that he was bad at it.
But he’s better, is all I’m saying.
January 31, 2008 at 12:44 pm
We must have watched different shows. Because I think Vincent Kartheiser was hands down the best actor on Angel. The best actor on any Whedon show, period. He moved me so much, made me care so deeply for Connor that I *know* there could never be another character (in any medium) I could possibly love more.
He’s also the reason why I started watching Mad Men in the first place–and he’s been as superb as ever as Pete Campbell.
January 31, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Sorry Mars, I’m at a loss :- )
But that’s what makes a … whatever it is they say it makes.
(A horse race? I think?)
January 31, 2008 at 10:34 pm
I’m going to stand on the majority in this case, Mars. If you follow Buffyverse fan sites, you’ll see lots and lots of criticsm of Kartheiser. Like I said, the Wesley Crusher of Angel the Series.
But that doesn’t make you wrong. A minority view is just that: minority. Not wrong-headed or crazy. We all perceive differently. Over on my James Bond board, some of us love movies that others hate. It’s all good.
January 31, 2008 at 11:12 pm
But to be clear, I did not form my opinion by polling. I formed it by watching his “performance”. All by myself.
And to reiterate, he has certainly redeemed himself. Not really sure what was going on back there, but it’s better now.
January 31, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Oh yeah. On the Bond board, we spend a lot of time talking about majority opinions versus minority opinions. And I’m big supportive of minority opinions. It’s sort of a theme. I might have a tag for it.
The point is to come from your individual experience, and ultimately bond (heh) with other fans over the love of the show, even if your ideas about what’s good and what’s not differ wildly.
February 9, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Has anyone out there seen “Another Day In Paradise” (1997)? If not, run, do not walk, to rent it. VK is suberb–bold, energetic, precocious, fabulous. Excellent cast–James Woods, Natasha Gregson Wagner, and Melanie Griffith in what I believe is her best film role, ever.
Vince has got the chops, even if his role in “Angel” was rather on the Teen Beat end of the acting spectrum. I cannot remember one scene in which Connor was as fleshed out and complex as Pete Campbell, but I didn’t watch “Angel” all the time. It never reached snarky, teen gidiness with consistency like “Buffy”did.
Besides exponentially better writing, I get the sense that the direction has Vincent’s back in the portrayal of this character. I’m fascinated by the way Vince’s height and smaller frame are used in crucial shots. When Pete goes toe-to-toe with Don, Don simply towers over him, making him seem both vulnerable and a little weasel. In “New Amsterdam”, camera angles shoot down when he is curled up, waiting to be fired, as if he is trapped or contained in that rather small couch. Then the camera angle shoots up while Roger is berating him, making the ceiling look like it’s coming down, containing all three men, but still making Roger and Don look like giants in comparison. Classic film noir shooting. There are other things that dwarf Pete and make him look contained or trapped. In the bar schmoozing Walther Veith of Bethlehem Steel, when Walter brushes him off for attempting to sell “the backbone of America”, Pete sits back, almost swallowed up in that large lounge chair.
If escape is Don’s theme, then being trapped is Pete’s. However, because of Pete’s “deep lack of character”, he accepts his entrapment just a little too easily and with a lot of resentment and self-pity. Don’t ask me how VK manages to portray that with so much sympathy. I end up liking Pete, in spite of himself.
February 10, 2008 at 2:09 am
It is the end of a very long and exciting day. So forgive me if I can’t remember if it was today, live, that I heard Matt Weiner say this, (I think it was), (actually now I think maybe it was at the New York Times event) but he said that Vince nailed it from the audition; that no one else touched the character.
So I don’t think it’s the direction.
February 10, 2008 at 9:42 am
I think it was at the Times event that he said that.
February 10, 2008 at 9:43 am
Max, love the new name, I’ll check out that movie.
February 10, 2008 at 10:13 am
And here’s the thing. One more thing.
I’m becoming curious about going back and watching Connor episodes.
Because maybe he didn’t suck as bad as I thought. Now that I have seen all this texture, I’m curious as to what I see. I dunno.
March 21, 2008 at 10:29 am
Vincent is a great actor have seen him in so different parts and it have done the parts so well. I think him do the parts Pete real good he parts there is so hard to do to create this person is not easy to do.
I’m act to in TV in Sweden so I know.
I wright abut Vincent in Swedish here so we here in Sweden become to discover Mad Men and Vincent little more. Mad Men is a great show by the way.
Mad Men go in KANAL 9 here in Sweden.
September 16, 2017 at 1:57 am
There’s certainly a lot to find out about this subject.
I really like all the points you’ve made.
June 20, 2018 at 5:00 am
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