honestly where the show really succeeds in aziraphale and crowley is taking the time to show their familiarity, their domesticity with one another. their conversations meander and ramble; they talk about things other than the antichrist. they have lives and histories with each other outside the main plot. nobody could call the velvet underground bebop. ducks! that’s what water slides off of/just drive the car. arguing about driving 90 miles an hour in central london. these are all the sorts of things that flash bang media these days tends to cut because they’re not showy, they’re not really even relevant. cutting these moments is an easy way to cut time, stretch budgets, streamline narratives. i think we’re more used to now getting an “establishing” scene where we are meant to understand a relationship’s dynamic, and the rest of the time that dynamic stays implied through the movement of the narrative. but good omens revisits these moments again and again. it invites us into a relationship that has movement, depth, give and take, nuance. it invites us into a relationship that has problems and one that has beauty. crowley doesn’t just show up to save aziraphale in 1793 and 1941; they banter back and forth while it’s happening. it’s easy to see them as people that the plot is happening to, rather than characters reacting to a plot. they live and breathe. it’s really beautiful.
