Aziraphale + Emotional Expressiveness
Aziraphale spends the vast majority of Good Omens generally delightfully happy and jovial (usually with a smile on his face) or worried and fretting. Sometimes he pouts around Crowley, or is uncomfortable around other angels, but his emotions are usually pretty obvious. He is a very expressive character.
It’s actually one of the reasons more of us (myself included) should probably have picked up on the switch in episode 6, as Crowley as Aziraphale is considerably less effusive.
His face is still in a way that is very un-Aziraphale
Which is why the moment that Michael Sheen believes Aziraphale fell in love with Crowley is so important; is why his expression becomes even more weighty. Because, unlike what we are used to from Aziraphale, it is a very small, nuanced expression.
When contrasted with the rest of the series, the subtleness of this scene is very apparent. In contrast to Crowley, who is generally more subtle and level with his emotions, whose outbursts of emotion are more noteworthy (”I lost my best friend”), Aziraphale is very expressive in his emotions, and so the moments where Aziraphale is still and has less expression are often the ones in which the most interesting stuff is going on, and the ones which tell you the most about him.
This was, I believe, the last scene Michael Sheen filmed, and so by this point he was pretty used to his character’s personality. He made the decision to play this scene - a scene with so much emotional charge and impact - with such a subtle play of expression, and that subtlety pays off. It highlights rather that detracts from Aziraphale’s emotional state. It is him entirely without barriers, no smiles to hide behind, just completely and utterly stripped bare by his personal revelation.
I’m not saying that Aziraphale’s expressive personality isn’t his true personality, because it definitely is, but I think that the big moments are often shown in his interiorisation, rather than expression, of those emotions.
Another noticeable instance of this is the scene at the Nunnery, where Aziraphale’s expressiveness is much more muted, despite a being in a highly charged situation.
Considering Aziraphale’s rather extreme reaction to paint getting on his jacket not two minutes before, one might expect another slightly whiny protest at this treatment of the coat he has kept for over 180 years. Instead we get an extremely muted response to being shoved up against a wall.
I’ve seen lots of posts talking about how unconcerned Aziraphale is here, obviously showing how much he trusts Crowley, which I agree with. But I think it’s even deeper than that. It’s another one of those moments where what he’s feeling is actually too much, and he’s only able to express the truest part of those emotions.
Love is, after all, more than just an emotion. It is an uncategorizable phenomenon which, similarly, cannot be articulated through expressions alone.
Tl;dr
Though Aziraphale is very expressive in his day-to-day emotions, some of the most important scenes for him are the ones in which his expressions are pared-back and subtle, particularly when it related to Crowley.
