With glaring examples such as AfterM*A*S*H*, Joanie Loves Chachi, and The Tortellis, it’s easy to see why it’s the rare spin-off that ever matches up with the original show that spawned it. And in these days of the “you’re-either-an-instant-hit-or-you’re-gone” network mentality, it’s even rarer that a new show - to say nothing of a spin-off - is given the time it needs to finds it’s audience. I submit that if The X-Files, a show which I loved, had gotten its start in 2003 instead of 1993, history might have written a different destiny for it. Victims of this quick death scenario are numerous, but include Freakylinks, Freaks and Geeks, Harsh Realm, Wonderfalls and Firefly. The last show being the most recent endeavor of TV uber-genius Joss Whedon, whose most famous creation is the iconic Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Buffy was unique in that it not only managed to survive the quick death scenario, but even more incredibly, managed to crank out a spin-off that, in my opinion, surpassed it - Angel. A real coup for Angel was getting a guest appearance from Doc Ock. The Flick CAUTION: This entire review is one big spoiler. You’ve been warned. I’m amazed that I’m able to write this review without pulling out what hair I have left on my head and not mailing anthrax to the offices of the WB. After having seen what I believe to be the best season of any genre show that I can ever remember, I almost wanted to stalk the head of the WB with my ‘64 Plymouth and turn him and whatever weenie mobile he happens to drive into a 3-D Jackson Pollock. The WB cancels Angel, the best show on free TV and replaces it with The Mountain, otherwise known as The Snow.C., Gibraltar 90210, etc. Yeah, I give that show six weeks if I give it a minute. But even if I’m wrong, it’s my hope that whatever waste of an hour happens to fill that slot dies a quick, fiery death, just to hammer home the fact to the WB that us connoisseurs of the couch are sick of shit like The Mountain, The Surreal Life, or whatever useless shitcom they happen to crank out this week. Give us entertaining storytelling with a twist: great characters, engaging storylines and cliffhangers that blow us out of our seats. When Boreanaz heard that the end was coming for Angel, he got himself a guest shot on Stargate: SG-1. Here’s my recommendation for the next episode of The Mountain: everybody gets buried in an avalanche, end of show. Jack and Bobby? Both kids are used for target practice, just like their Kennedy namesakes. I don’t want Angel tele-movies, I want the show back, kicking my ass with it’s storytelling every single week and making me want to slam my TV because I have to wait 167 hours for the next one. That’s what I want. But thanks to the WB, that’s never going to happen; and I have to be content with the four DVD sets of Angel that I have in my collection. I told Nick that I wanted to review Angel: Season 4 because it was my favorite show on TV. Period. Like all of you, I loved Buffy, and I wasn’t let down by the fact that it left the air last year, because I felt that Whedon and company closed out the show the way that they wanted. The saga had been told, the villains had been defeated, the show was free to ride into the syndication sunset. Thanks for stopping by, Buffy, we’ll never forget you. Meanwhile, I still had Angel, which just wrapped up its fourth season, which was better than the third, which was better than the second, etc. Season 4 was the season that flipped everything in the Buffyverse on its ass. When it opened, Angel was literally sleeping with the fishes on the bottom of the ocean, having been deposited there by his screwed up hell spawn, Conner. Cordelia was a higher being and had left this mud ball to fight the good fight in some Xanadu universe thanks to the Powers That Be. Wesley, who was still on the outs with the Fang Gang due to his misguided actions involving Holtz and Conner in season three, was running his own demon-fighting organization and nailing Lilah from Wolfram & Hart on the side. Lorne was Wayne Newton-ing himself in Vegas, Gunn and Fred were trying to hold the fort together, and Conner was dusting every vamp in the “310” and making with the ignorance on the fate of daddy. The overconfident Beast didn’t count on Angel’s little-known invisible ally, Ramim Updeeass... It’s not long however before Wesley, seeking a bit of redemption, brings up a starved and crazed Angel from the ocean depths, and Angel kicks Conner out of his house for being a bad little boy. The next order of business is to find out what happened to Cordelia, since none of the gang was there when she ascended. This leads us to an encounter with the luscious red-leather-clad Gwen Raiden, an electric mutant and cat burglar who’s out to steal the only artifact that can find Cordelia. Follow that up with a quick one-off to Vegas, where we learned that Angel was a acquainted with the Rat Pack, Bugsy Siegel and was a guest at Elvis’ wedding reception back in ‘67. Upon the return to LA, the season really kicks into high gear when Cordelia mysteriously returns with no memory of who she is, who her friends are, or what her purpose is. After a psychic reading of her by Lorne, we find out that Cordelia is the key to the biggest of the big bads, which is on its way to make everyone’s life a living hell - in the literal sense. It’s not long before that evil arrives in the form of The Beast, the most unstoppable hunk of walking masonry to ever emerge in the Buffyverse. In one of the best fights ever to be shown on either Buffy or Angel, Team Angel takes him on and has their collective asses handed to them. The Beast then sets in motion a series of mystical rituals designed to do bring about the Apocalypse. This includes giving LA some much needed rain...of fire that is, slaughtering everything that moves at Wolfram & Hart, and summarily wasting five ancient powerful beings and collecting their energies and mystic relics that form a totem. The Beast then uses that totem to actually blot out the sun, which turns LA into a vampire and demon playground. Along the way, the Fang Gang is always one step behind and they continue to get some more ass-beatings handed to them by the Beast. But while there’s an apocalypse going on, Angel is having his own personal Armageddon as he discovers that Cordelia, the woman he loves, has shacked up with his son. Oh God, I’ve never wanted to be a green finger until now... Eventually, they learn that the one person who can help them get intel that might be able to stop the Beast is the last person they’d ever want to ask for help - Angelus, Angel’s evil counterpart. So they release Angel’s soul by way of a little imaginary perfect happiness with Cordy and Angelus gives them the info on the Beast, and mindf---s at no extra charge. He then breaks free from the cage they’ve been keeping him in and sets out to make up for lost time of killing and maiming. It’s then that we find out two shocking things: the Beast not the Big Bad that they have to worry about, Cordelia is. She conveniently lets us know this by icing Lilah. So now with Angelus on first, the Beast waiting to steal home and the unrevealed Big Bad on deck to drive in the winning run, a desperate Team Angel brings in the big gun for the save - Faith. Since late in Season 1, Faith had been spending time in prison for murder. Thanks to Angel’s intervention when Faith was close to losing her soul forever, Faith has been on the road to recovery and figures she owes him one. Wesley brings her to LA and she quickly tracks down Angel and the Beast - and gets the tar kicked out of her by Lava Boy. But in yet another twist, Angelus kills the Beast with a knife made out of the same material and the one that Cordelia used to waste Lilah. The sun is returned to LA, and Team Angel have their first victory in an otherwise dismal campaign. Up next is for Faith to have a knock-down, balls-to-the-wall slugfest with Angelus in order to bring him back to the fold and restore Angel. This is done in a fight that was almost as good as the first with the Beast. At the end, Angelus bites Faith, but is knocked out by a drug that she injected herself with. So with Angelus back in his cage, the Fang Gang recruits yet another helper from Buffy, everybody’s favorite hot witch, Willow. "Hey WB execs, I got somethin’ for your ass!" After a mystical tug-of-war with Cordelia for Angel’s soul, Willow succeeds in re-ensouling him, and then she and Faith head back to Sunnydale for the final showdown with The First over on Buffy. It’s then that we discover the biggest twist of the season. Not only is Cordelia the big bad, but due to bumping uglies with Conner, she’s pregnant with the entity that’s going to bring about the Apocalypse. Angel and the gang finally discover that Cordelia is the one who’s been pulling the strings all this time and confront her. But thanks to Conner, Cordelia escapes and plans for the final phase of her plan. Needing to know what happened to Cordelia, Angel is forced to slug it out with Skip, the wise-cracking demon who not only tricked Cordelia into becoming half demon in order to handle her visions from the Powers That Be, but was there to guide her to her faux ascension. It’s Skip who lays the whole shebang on the line. Not only is the entity that’s growing inside of Cordelia played them this whole time, it’s the one that’s played everyone from the beginning. It was responsible for everything that has happened in the four seasons of Angel up to this point: Conner’s birth (an impossible birth to make one possible - its own), Angel and everyone coming together, Darla’s resurrection, Doyle’s death, Cordy’s visions, Holtz, The Beast, Quartoth...everything. When it’s born, Cordelia’s lifeforce will be drained and the Apocalypse will be here. The only way to stop it is for Angel to find Cordelia and kill her. Just a thought here, Eliza Dushku in a remake of Chained Heat? When he does find her, he’s delayed by Conner long enough for the entity to be born in the form of Firefly veteran Gina Torres, a god-like chick who can mesmerize anyone just by looking at them (and who happens to be black...if I were Conner I’d be kicking Gunn’s ass when I found out). Angel finds this out when he’s ready to slice her into demon-kabobs. He almost doesn’t care that due to the birth of Jasmine, Cordelia has been put into a coma. But as it turns out, Team Whedon turns the idea of an Apocalypse on its ear when Torres, who takes the name of Jasmine, has indeed ended life as we know it - by bringing about world peace. Everybody loves everybody, there’s going to be no more crime, pain, suffering, anything. The only downside is that Jasmine has to “eat” a few people a day by consuming their life-forces. The season, and probably the show, would have ended right there if not for one thing. Fred, who is already manic in her efforts to please and help people, is extra manic in her efforts to clean a shirt that has Jasmine’s blood on it. She scrubs so hard that her own blood mixes with Jasmine’s and she’s soon able to see Jasmine for what she really is - a maggot-filled horror with a face worse than Medusa’s (in other words, Joan Rivers). The spell is broken and Fred is forced to flee as Angel and the entire city is looking for her. She succeeds in freeing Angel from Jasmine’s spell and they in turn free the rest of the Fang Gang, except for Conner, who was never under her spell. He did the things she wanted him to do because he’s already so messed up it didn’t matter anymore. "So let me get this straight, Melissa Joan Hart used to get naked in front of you all the time in the dressing room on Sabrina? Damn!" The season then enters the home stretch as Team Angel have to avoid the entire city, figure out a way to break Jasmine’s spell, and then kill the bitch. Angel discovers, by going to another dimension, that the only way to break the spell Jasmine has over the world is to say her true name aloud. He does just that, Jasmine’s spell is broken, and the world returns to the shithole that we so proudly made it. When Jasmine, who’s still far from a pushover, is getting ready to kill Angel, Conner literally rips her a new one and the threat is finally over. But Conner is so messed up by the whole experience, that he threatens to blow up a bunch of people and himself. Angel is forced to beat him senseless to stop him. And in a final twist in a pretzel of a season, Lilah, who has a literal lifetime contract with Wolfram & Hart, returns from the dead to reward Angel and the gang for their good work in ending world peace. That reward comes in the form of giving them absolute control of Wolfram & Hart, no strings attached. They have the keys to the den of evil to do with what they will. Angel reluctantly agrees, provided Wolfram & Hart end Conner’s suffering by removing his memories and giving him a normal family. So in the ultimate flip of irony, Angel and his friends become the corporate bigwigs that they had fought for four years, and the final season is set up. Season 4 was probably the most twist-heavy season of either Angel or Buffy. For those of us who watched this season in its first run, it was almost torture when Whedon and the gang sprung something new on us practically every week. It wouldn’t surprise me if people who may not have followed Angel during it’s initial run but have discovered it on DVD or syndication don’t pull a 24 session and watch the entire box set in a marathon session straight through. I don’t think that any of those involved - Joss Whedon and the production team or David Boreanaz and the cast - would have expected Angel to go beyond six seasons, and that would have been fine. I could have accepted that. But the ass clowns at the WB weren’t on the same page with the fans. It seems pretty clear that there were more stories in Angel that could have been told, since the series wrapped with a cliffhanger. Boreanaz has stated that he’s not interested in the proposed tele-movies that have so far been nothing more than a tease from the WB to the fans of the show, but that he would be interested in feature films. Even though I don’t like it, I can understand it. Remember, Boreanaz put in three seasons on Buffy before the five he did for his own show, where he was the only character to be in every episode of every season. Though the Beast was their mortal enemy, Angel and company were nonetheless impressed by his spot-on impression of E.T. I respect and enjoyed the direction that Angel took in establishing its identity from Buffy. In the end I think it succeeded in surpassing it’s predecessor, based on the risks that the show was willing to take and the different avenues in storytelling that were available due to Angel’s past. Buffy never had an ancient nemesis that was justified in seeking revenge on her like Angel did with Holtz. Likewise Buffy, although Dawn did spring up on her in similar fashion, nevertheless didn’t have a child that was hers mystically spring up on her - twice - like Angel did. And Angel went a different route by not always having a season’s big bad that dominated the storyline the way that Buffy did. That’s not an indictment on Buffy in any way, it was just a nice difference between the shows. Angel had many things in common with another vampire detective show that I really enjoyed, Forever Knight, which was also ended prematurely. I think that there’s definitely a demand for more stories in the Buffyverse and the hacks over at the WB would be wise to realize this. Spike or Faith anyone? You betcha. 10.0 out of 10 Michael Jackson finally went just a little too far with the plastic surgery... The Look About as good as TV gets on DVD. Angel was one of the first programs to go to widescreen, starting sometime in Season 2 I believe, and that’s always a good thing. There’s hardly any artifacting anywhere, which is especially nice considering how darkly the show was usually shot. 9.3 out of 10 The Noise Crisp Dolby Surround, with emphasis placed on the fighting. One special note is that whenever The Beast or Skip, who are both demons made out of rock or stone, took on somebody - notably Angel - there were nice bone-crunching punches heard. 9.1 out of 10 "So you’re saying I overdid it on the glitter?" The Goodies Prophecies: Season 4 Overview: As in previous editions of the Angel box sets, there’s a great 38-minute mini-doc that gives an overview of the entire Season 4 and features interviews with the entire cast and clips. Don’t even think about looking at this until you’ve seen the entire season, though, as it will spoil the entire box set. But if you’ve got ADHD, or your some masochist who likes to ruin any kind of surprise for yourself, then by all means, knock yourself out. Unplugged: Season 4 Outtakes: Three minutes of fun on the set. Last Looks: The Hyperion Hotel: A five-minute look at the hotel set, which was home to Angel Investigations for Seasons 2-4. Malice in Wonderland: Wolfram & Hart: A seven-minute look at the evil law firm and the lawyers who worked for it. It also sets up what Team Angel is getting themselves into in Season 5 by taking it over. Fatal Beauty and the Beast: Gives a quickie rundown of Jasmine and the Beast, including interviews with Gina Torres and Vladimir Kulich, the actors who portrayed them respectively. Angel and the Apocalypse: Covering the production of "Apocalypse Nowish" including stunts, special effects and writing. Commentaries: There’s commentaries for seven episodes, including "The House Always Wins" with writer David Fury and Andy Hallett (Lorne), "Spin The Bottle" with writer/director Joss Whedon and Alexis Denisof (Wesley), "Apocalypse Nowish" with director Vern Gillum and writer Steven S. DeKnight, "Orpheus" with director Terrence O’Hara and executive producer Jeffrey Bell, "Inside Out" with writer/director Steven S. DeKnight, "The Magic Bullet" with writer/director Jeffrey Bell, and "Home" with writer/director Tim Minear. All good commentaries, but it would have been nice to have a commentary by Boreanaz and Charisma Carpenter somewhere in there. 9.2 out of 10 The biggest shock for Angel when he was trapped underwater was finding out that, indeed, vampires are still subject to shrinkage. The Artwork The Angel box sets have a nice, simple motif going featuring Angel and Cordy on the covers and other cast members featured on the inside flaps along with photos from the season and quotes from the episodes on the discs. 9.0 out of 10 THE FLICK: 10.0 |
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