Darla: No. No, I don't think so. Once he's gone, I won't be okay. I won't be okay at all. I don't know what I'll be. Angel... Our baby is gonna die right here in this alley. You died in an alley, remember?
Angel: I remember.
Darla: I wanna say I'm sorry. I wanna say it and mean it, but - I can't. Aren't you gonna tell me it's okay.
Angel: No.
Darla: No? It's really not, is it? We did so many terrible things together. So much destruction, so much - pain. We can't make up for any of it. You know that, don't you
Angel: Yeah.
Darla: This child - Angel, it's the one good thing we ever did together. The only good thing. You make sure to tell him that.
-exchange in Lullaby
There is a section in the first act, during the courtship dance, where my foot slips. My ankles turned and - and I don't quite hold - every time. He doesn't notice. He doesn't even know ballet that well. But always, at that same moment, I slip. It isn't just the same ballet. It's the same performance. I don't dance. I echo. -Ballerina in Waiting in the Wings
Dearest Steven, This is a most difficult letter for me to write. You mean more to me than anything in this world or any other. But your best interests must come first, which is why, by the time you receive this, I will be gone. I hope one day you will be able to forgive an old man's weaknesses, which compels him to say these things in a letter. But to attempt a good-bye in your presence would be impossible for me. I fear I would never let you go. And I must let you go. I know that if I didn't you would only end up hating me. And that I could not bear. Your destiny lies with Angel. I know that now. You will have a better life with him. I'm comforted by that certainty and the knowledge that with him you will discover your true purpose and come to know what it is you are meant to be. -voiceover by Holtz in Benediction
Best Season 3 Episodes:
-That Vision Thing—In possible the season’s best episode, Angel,
after Lilah persuades him to, travels to a prison guarded by the demon Skip to
release a prisoner of the PTB.
-That Old Gang of Mine—An underrated episode in which Gunn
is torn between loyalties to Angel and the rest of the team and to his old gang
when his old gang starts taking out demons and vamps just for shits and
giggles.
-Fredless—A decent enough episode, this is the first real
character development for Fred’s character. I also enjoyed how genuinely kind
and loving her parents are, especially given the Buffyverse’s tracked record
where that’s concerned (outside of Joyce, of course).
-Billy—A really great episode, a man named Billy with the
ability to get other men to brutalize women puts Fred in danger at the hands of
Wesley and Gunn.
-Quickening—In the second of three Darla entries, Holtz
begins to search for Angel, while the team tries to figure out more about the
baby.
-Lullaby—In definitely the best episode of the season, Holtz
hunts Angel while Darla gives birth to their son.
-Birthday—Skip comes on Cordy’s birthday and tells her that
her visions are going to kill her unless she goes back in time and chooses a
different path in life.
-Waiting in the Wings—Easily retitled “Angel Investigations
Goes to the Ballet”, this starts out seeming like it’s not going to be very
good, and then proceeds to be fantastic. They go to the ballet, where Angel
realizes that the performers are the same dancers he saw perform the same show
110 years before.
-Loyalty—Wesley obsesses over and dreads the eventual fulfillment
of the prophecy he has translated, “The father will kill the son.”
-Sleep Tight—In possibly the biggest character turning point
of the entire series, Wesley takes Connor away from Angel in an attempt to save
him.
-Forgiving—Angel searches of Sahjhan to learn more about the
prophecy Wesley had acted upon while Fred and Gunn search for Wesley.
-A New World—Angel’s son returns as a teenager and Angel
tries to catch him.
-Benediction—Holtz tries to use Connor to get to Angel, and
Justine learns of Holtz’s return.
-Tomorrow—In a powerful episode, Angel and Cordy plan to
meet to finally acknowledge their mutual feeling and discuss their collective
future, but things don’t go according to plan.
Overall Season 3 Review: This is a great season of TV. Not quite
as perfect as season 2 nor even as excellent as seasons 1 and 5, but still
really great. I’m pretty sure I like this season more than most, and I’m proud
of that. Oddly, many of the episodes some people tend to think are great I find
to be just above average and vice versa, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.
There were sections of this season that I found amazingly good (like the Darla triad,
I don’t actually know if that’s a word) and others that I found altogether
unworthy of sections like the Darla sequence. For me, any downsides of the
season are saved in that three-episode sequence. Additionally, the middle
section of the season is immensely strong, quality-wise.
Thematically, the season continues to explore humanity as
all of them do, this time in terms of what makes humans tick. It delves into
the innate responsibilities of being human. This obviously comes to a head in
Lullaby, when Darla and Angel’s child is born.
I initially wrote here that the character development is relatively minimal, but then I started writing about it and realized that it's actually quite strong. Wesley receives by far the largest development, what with his
immense inner struggle and eventual disastrous decision to try to save Connor. Cordy
also gets a tremendous change in Birthday, but then she becomes frankly, well,
boring, and I don’t just mean her transformations are boring. She, the
character, is boring. Also, I’m fine that Angel and Gunn didn’t receive as much
characterization this season (though Gunn did receive some nice work in That
Old Gang of Mine), but I wish that Fred and W&H had been developed. Stephanie
Romanov and her consistently excellent depiction of Lilah Morgan are the only
thing keeping W&H at its position of hatred in the viewers’ mind this
season. Linwood Morrow is truly lackluster in comparison to the truly
detestable Holland Manners and Gavin Park just isn’t given much.
It’s interesting. As I was watching the season, I though
after most of the episodes, “Damn. That was really good.” But once I got to the
end of the season, I thought, “I need to start watching the fourth season
because this third one didn’t really finish saying anything or really go a ton
of places.” In other words, unlike every single other Buffyverse season, I am
sad to say that this one might be less than the sum of its parts. That being said, the sum of its parts is so great that the entirety of the season being less than it still adds up to an incredible season. As I said, each episode is a great watch, I just wish it
all meant a little bit more when all was said and done.
Season Score: 9/10
Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It’s harsh and cruel. That’s why there’s us. Champions. It doesn’t matter where we come from, what we’ve done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be.
-Angel in Deep Down
Best Season 4 Episodes:
-Ground State—Angel, Fred, and Gunn try to steal an object
that could help find Cordy, but an electrically gifted thief name Gwen wants it
too.
-Slouching Toward Bethlehem—Cordy finally returns from
never-never land, but can’t remember squat about anything, not even who she is.
-Supersymmetry—In a great episode, Fred’s has a scientific
article published and speaks at a science symposium, but some bad stuff happens
and Fred and Gunn have to make a monumentally difficult decision.
-Spin the Bottle—In a fantastically entertaining, but still
worthwhile episode, Lorne attempts to restore Cordy’s memory, but instead
reverts everybody to their teenage personalities.
-Apocalypse, Nowish—In a pretty great episode, Cordy,
plagued by nightmares, sees them come to fruition when the Beast emerges. Cordy
and Connor get together, showing the first signs that something’s not fine with
the Mudville 9.
-Long Day’s Journey—A discovery about the answer to the
Beast problem leads the gang to suspect the answer lies with Connor. Gwen
returns and helps Angel search for and try to save some mystical totems in
order to prevent the Beast from blotting out the sun.
-Awakening—In a pretty good episode, Wesley brings in a dark
mystic to try to remove Angel’s soul in an attempt to locate and destroy the
Beast.
-Soulless—Angelus is interrogated by Wesley and the team as
they attempt to figure out how to kill the Beast.
-Calvary—The team discovers that the Beast has a far more
powerful master, but they’re unaware of exactly how close that power really is
to them.
-Salvage—In a really great episode, Wesley frees Faith from
prison to help capture Angelus and take out the Beast while Angelus goes after
the Beast in his own right
-Release—In what I find to be an underrated episode, Angelus
continues to search for the Beast while Faith tries to contain Angelus.
-Orpheus—In a really great episode, Willow returns to
restore Angel’s soul while Angelus and Faith, both in comas, relive Angel’s
good deeds.
-Players—Gwen gets Gunn to help her find a device to control
her abilities and Lorne tries to regain his empathic powers.
-Inside Out—The team finally learns about Jasmine’s future
birth through Cordy and Darla attempts to convince Connor to preserve his oh so
precious humanity.
-Peace Out—After a series of lackluster efforts in the
Jasmine storyline, this one is excellent. Angel travels to another dimension
where he searches for Jasmine’s true name. Meanwhile, Connor searches for Cordy.
-Home—In pretty good execution of an excellent idea, W&H
makes angel and the team an offer they can’t refuse. Connor goes over the edge
and Angel must make a painful decision.
Overall Season 4 Review: This fourth season falters ever so
slightly for lots of the same, albeit differently shaped, issues that season 6
of Buffy ran into. The season has really lofty ambitions, and it just can’t
quite get there. This is, of course, not to say that it’s a bad season of
television, it’s just not up to par with the rest of the series. I think the
issue is that the show tried to combine its free storytelling style with serial
drama. While pretty much every other season in the Buffyverse does indeed have
a season-long story arc, this season is pretty much 22 episodes of the same story.
A good number of the episodes begin where the last one ended. Unfortunately, it
just ended up that the writers bit off more than they could chew. That’s not to
say the episodes are ad, they just aren’t as
good. There isn’t really a stand out episode, except for maybe the season
premier, Deep Down. For pretty much the entire season, a really great episode
was followed by a mediocre episode and vice versa, which really does nothing
for quality consistency.
I thought the character developments here were quite well
done. Cordy’s development is pretty hardcore (unlike many, I was actually
really ok with how her character was developed during this season). Connor’s
also taken to some dark places that wouldn’t have been possible if not for
Vincent Kartheiser’s excellent acting making it believable. Wesley’s emotional
maturation is expertly done and Gunn is finally given the character development
attention he deserves, finally becoming respected for more than just brawn.
Angel’s struggle to understand and connect with Connor were decent enough, but
I feel like they could’ve been taken further and weren’t. Jasmine is a
perfectly fine character, but she gets kind of annoying after a while.
This season wasn’t terrible, just not as good as it could
have been.
Season Score: 8.5/10
Tell me, father, what is it that galls you so, that I was never as good at the job as you, or that I just might be better? -Wesley to his father in Lineage
Cordelia: I naturally assumed you’d be lost without
me, but this!?
Angel: I am lost without you.
Cordelia: You just forgot who you are.
Angel: Remind me.
Cordelia: Uh, no. That’s for you to figure out, bubba.
I can tell you who you were: a guy who always fought his hardest for what was
right, even when he couldn’t remember why, even when he was miserable, which
was, let’s face it, a not small portion of the time. He did right. And that
gave him something. A light, a glimmer, and that’s the guy I fell in… the um,
the guy I knew. I see him around here, and maybe I’ll start believing.
-exchange in You’re
Welcome
Angel: She asked me to breakfast.
Wesley: Breakfast. Right. How did you respond?
Angel: Well... of course, I -ahem- ignored it complete, changed the subject, and locked her in a cage.
-exchange in Smile Time
Wesley: Breakfast. Right. How did you respond?
Angel: Well... of course, I -ahem- ignored it complete, changed the subject, and locked her in a cage.
-exchange in Smile Time
Groofus: I've been working on this great new song about the difference between analogy and metaphor. (Polo throws at and hits him in the head) Man!
Polo: Are you out of your mind?
Groofus: Well, we want it to be good, don't we?
Polo: We eat babies' lives!
Groofus: And uphold a certain standard of quality edu-tainment
-exchange in Smile Time
Season 5: In this fifth and final season of Angel, Boreanaz,
Denisof, Richards, Acker, and Hallett stick around as the main cast. James
Marsters joins the party in the first episode and Mercedes McNab, after
recurring in 7 of the Buffyverse’s 12 seasons and a total of 26 episodes, joins
the main cast in the 17th episode of the season. Sarah Thompson
recurs as Eve in slightly less than half of the season. Christian Kane returns
to the series as Lindsey McDonald after being absent since the end of the
second season. Jonathan Woodward returns as Knox, and Firefly-star Adam Baldwin
joins as Marcus Hamilton. Dennis Christopher appears in a few episodes, as do
Vincent Kartheiser, Juliet Landau, and Tom Lenk (as Andrew Wells). Julie Benz
and Jack Conley each returns for a single episode. Roy Dotrice appears once as
Wesley’s overbearing father, and Charisma Carpenter also makes a guest appearance
in a single episode.
Best Season 5 Episodes:
-Conviction—After taking over W&H, Angel and the team
struggle to adapt to their new surroundings. At the very end of the episode,
Spike materializes out of the amulet he used to save the world in Chosen. Only
issue: he’s a ghost.
-Just Rewards—The episode struggles a bit because of some
storytelling style issues, but I liked it. It should have told everything from
Spike’s viewpoint, but never did.
-Unleashed—This isn’t a great episode, or even a really good
one. It’s pretty good, but I liked the character of Nina, despite her relative
incomplexity.
-Hell Bound—This is a great episode, but it suffers because
it never ends up saying anything. The episode centers on Spike’s more and more
frequent disappearing acts, which are him slipping into Hell for short periods.
The issue is that you finish the episode knowing no more about Spike than you
did when you started.
-Lineage—In this perfect episode, Wesley’s overbearing
Watcher father visits unannounced during an invasion of W&H by cyborg assassins.
This is truly a remarkable episode and features what I consider to be Alexis
Denisof’s finest performance in the Buffyverse.
-Destiny—A terrific episode in which a mysterious package
makes Spike corporeal again. Angel and Spike battle each other for the “Cup of
Perpetual Torment” in order to settle the conflict over which vamp with a soul
is really the one being talked about in the Shanshu Prophecy.
-Harm’s Way—This is by no means a great episode, and I
honestly had hoped it would be a little better when I finally realized it was
going to be about Harmony, but it was decent nonetheless, and it featured
Harmony, which is awesome.
-Soul Purpose—In this pretty good episode, Lindsey returns,
claiming to be Doyle (that heartless bastard) to convince Spike that he’s
really the vamp champ. Angel, meanwhile, is plagued by nightmares about his
destiny of redemption being claimed by Spike.
-Damage—The beginning to an incredible succession of
episodes, Angel and Spike hunt down a psychotic potential Slayer, given Slayer
strength and stuff by Willow’s magic at the end of Buffy, who has escaped from
her mental institution and believes that Spike is drove her insane.
-You’re Welcome—In probably not the best, but probably my
favorite, episode of the season, Cordy awakens from her coma after a series of
visions of Angel in trouble. The episode is tremendous as it shows Cordy’s
attempts to steer Angel back from the edge of dejection. The final scene
between Angel and Cordy is incredibly emotionally powerful. For me, this is
Charisma Carpenter’s finest hour in the Buffyverse.
-Why We Fight—I like this one better than most, I think. It’s
mostly a period piece that takes place during WWII on a captured U-boat. That
being said, it suffers some because it doesn’t use era dialogue in its period segments.
It also suffers because, instead of using a demon, they insert Spike and two
cronies into the plot, a stretch and a bother. Nevertheless, it’s an
interesting storyline and I really enjoyed it.
-A Hole in the World—The team desperately tries to find a
cure for Fred, infected by a demon imprisoned inside a sarcophagus. Fred’s
death scene is immensely poignant, and while I hate to say that I kind of like
that they killed Fred off since she was such a fabulously lovable character, In
an attempt to save Fred from Illyria’s grasp, Angel and Spike travel to England
where they meet a kind figure from Angel’s past and discover a hold in the
world.
-Shells—Angel and Spike unsuccessfully attempt to restore
Fred. Gunn has some painful news and Wesley has some violent emotional
reactions. Illyria encounters the inconvenient truth of her modern existence. The
montage at the end of the episode is pretty poignant.
-Shells—Angel and Spike unsuccessfully attempt to restore
Fred. Gunn has some painful news and Wesley has some violent emotional
reactions. Illyria encounters the inconvenient truth of her modern existence. The
montage at the end of the episode is pretty poignant.
-Underneath—In a very good episode, Angel, Spike, and Gunn
travel to a suburban hell dimension run by the Senior Partners to track down
Lindsey with the hope that he has info on the Senior Partners that will help
the team out.
-Origin—In a really good episode, Connor’s new parents seek
help from W&H about his supernatural abilities. (Due to some plot details
revealed earlier in the season, Angel’s the only major person who knows about
Connor.) Wesley’s past comes back to haunt him when his memory is restored.
-Time Bomb—In this great episode, Illyria’s power is
destabilizing, causing her to jump uncontrollably through time. When the team
tries to stop her, she kills them all. Amy Acker’s performance her is incredible.
-The Girl in Question—Not even a pretty good episode, but a
damn funny one.
-Power Play—In this fabulous episode, the team begins to
doubt Angel’s loyalty and intentions after some highly questionable decisions
he makes. While Spike searches for Illyria, Drogyn arrives to tell him that
Angel tried to kill him. This all eventually leads to a huge, great reveal at
the end.
-Not Fade Away—Talk about fantastic episode, I just wish
this hadn’t been the last one. After revealing everything that he’s been
plotting over the last several months and how the team is going to start taking
down the Senior Partners, the team spends a final day doing what they love before attacking the Senior Partners, with some great and some terrible consequences.
Overall Season 5 Review: This is an excellent season of
television, I just wish it hadn’t been the series’ last. This is probably my 3rd-favorite
season of the series. The reason I rank it below season 1 is that it just doesn’t
have that continuous string of good-to-great episodes. The episode quality
consistency just isn’t there. Sure, there are a ton of great episodes, but
there are also a handful of really mediocre ones, too. The first 4 or so
episodes of the season are decent enough, but the 5th and 6th
border on really bad. Luckily, then we get Lineage and the rest of the season
has a really, really excellent run, with the obvious exceptions of Harm’s Way
and The Girl in Question, which were, I hope, always intended to be entertaining,
but lightweight, episodes. Season 1 had about 3-4 mediocre episodes and 1 bad
one. Season 5 has 6 and 2 of the same.
The character development continues to be strong, though I
continued to dislike what the writers did with Lorne. He’s totally sidelined to
making the occasional witticism. He never does anything, leaving a character I
loved when he first started recurring way back 4 seasons prior a tragically
underdeveloped, very two-dimensional (bordering on one-dimensional) character.
The one attempt they made to add some complexity to his character, Life of the
Party, failed miserably at making you care about his emotions really at all. Gunn
didn’t receive too much emotional development, but he does become a more
complex character through his intelligence implant, a development I liked even better
after he lost the suit. For most of the season, Angel undergoes the same sort
of character arc he does in season 2. He begins to slip into darkness and has
to be pulled back out. The big reveal at the end of the season is a fabulous
change of pace for Angel’s personal emotional struggles. Obviously, the biggest
character developments happen to Fred, or rather Amy Acker, and to Wesley. Amy
Acker handles her two characters brilliantly, and her work in the episodes in
which she’s required to portray both Illyria and Fred is unqualified
brilliance. Wesley is forced to undergo a huge amount of emotional development
over the course of the season, and the writers do a uniformly excellent job of making
his entire transformation, in a continuation of season 4, entirely believable
and powerful. Denisof also does a fantastic job acting his changes, though I
did feel like too many of his facial expressions during some of his close-ups
during the latter half of the seasons were bothersome.Overall, I feel like this season did a better job of wrapping up the series than the 7th season did of wrapping up Buffy. I say this despite the fact that season 5 wasn’t supposed to be Angel’s last and it only was because Joss Whedon got a little overzealous in asking WB for a renewal. Angel and the team’s struggle against the Senior Partners, and evil and darkness in general, is going to go on more a long time after this season ends, so having the series ending with the team uniting about to go into battle is a great way to finish it.
Season Score: 9.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment