Angel

In a city overpopulated by demons, warlocks, and some really nasty lawyers, a creature of the night becomes Los Angeles’s greatest hope. Once a vicious vampire who terrorized Europe, vampire-with-a-soul Angel (David Boreanaz) helps the helpless in order to earn his reward from the powers that be—to be forgotten and to regain his humanity. In his quest, he sets up Angel Investigations, with the help of an unlikely (and quite effective) evil-fighting team. An unlikely hero, Spike (James Marsters) first met Angel (then known as Angelus) in London in 1880, where he was turned into a vampire by one of Angel’s travelling companions, an insane vampire named Drusilla. Over a century later, after several narrow escapes from Buffy, Spike is captured by a specialist army unit that plants an experimental chip in his brain that robs him of the ability to hurt humans, leaving him powerless. This humiliating event starts him along a new path in his life—one that will ultimately lead him to unrequited love and an unexpected part in saving the world. It is after this that he finds himself trapped in Los Angeles and once again becomes a part of Angel’s complicated world, much to Angel’s considerable annoyance.

DVD SCORE: 9 / 10

The DVD itself is done quite nicely. The box set fits into the motif of the entire DVD run. The color scheme is a bit different as the rest of the DVDs had darker colors this one is very bright with yellows and reds. Spike has replaced Cordelia on the cover reiterating that he is now Angel’s perfect significant other. The booklet gives info on the episodes including airdate and synopsis.

There were quite a few commentary tracks in this box, set a bit more impressive I think than Buffy Season 7. It was kind of sad not being able to hear a dual Boreanaz and Marsters commentary being that they work so well together and could come up with some great funny lines, actually Marsters isn’t on any of the commentaries. The special features included short documentaries on “Smile Time” the puppet episode, Stunts, The best moments of the show, recurring villains and a gag reel that encompassed the entirety of the show. Most of them were pretty good, the gag reel was nice a long but you can never have too much gag reel.

The format of the DVD is a 1:78:1, which fits wide screen televisions perfectly. The transfer is crisp and I see little to nothing wrong with the video quality. Audio is the standard stereo surround that it was broadcast in. There is also a Spanish and French audio track that I refuse to listen to. Honestly who does?

The final season debatably is the finest season for Angel, the episodes are very memorable and worth the buy. If you are a fan of the show you definitely have to pick this one up. If you’re not, give it a try, this season was made as a jump on point, too bad it was cut off by the frog network before the show was given a fair shake. The features are well rounded a few more would have been nice, at least it’s better than the Buffy final.