Angel

ANGEL: This was one of those episodes where I loved it while it was happening, and had several incredible jaw dropping moments (all involving Spike). And I loved the idea of Andrew showing up...loved it so much that it took me all the way to the end of the episode to realize that it really didn’t work. Andrew shouldn’t have shown up for the same reason that Ted Baxter wouldn’t have worked in a guest shot on "Lou Grant." It’s too jarring. Too many things we’re being asked to swallow for reasons that are too obvious. Andrew’s lengthy expository speech underscored too many major problems. He had to make the speech for those people who might have started watching "Angel" and knew nothing about "BtVS" which is, okay, fair enough.

But are we actually supposed to believe that in six months, Angel and Co. have remained completely in the dark over the events of the Buffy season closer? This wasn’t a small scale event: Sunnydale was swallowed. With all the resources of Wolfram and Hart at his command, Angel wasn’t able to find out about the multiple slayers? He wasn’t able to contact Buffy? Giles? ANYone? Oh, but we’re told Buffy and Co. don’t trust him. Why is that, exactly? The last time Buffy saw Angel, they parted on good terms and, by the way, the resources of W&H provided the amulet that helped save the world. So in six months, Buffy couldn’t pick up the phone, call Angel and say, "Thanks for the amulet, we have a ton of slayers now, and by the way, tell me more about this whole W&H thing you got going."

It’s annoying. It’s contrived. Almost as contrived as Andrew requiring W&H’s help until the 11th hour at which point he pulled a dozen slayers out of his ass to be his back-up. If he had them handy, why in the world did he need W&H to go in and finish the job? He was worried a dozen slayers (armed with tranq guns, no less) couldn’t bring down one nutball slayer? Doesn’t sound like the world’s in such safe hands, does it.

I was really with the story until that end sequence when Andy’s Dandys showed up, and that whole "Buffy doesn’t trust you" speech, at which point the entire episode started to retroactively unravel for me. Which was very, VERY annoying.

I’m hoping for better things this week. Let’s just hope they don’t do something unfortunate like kill off Cordy.