Angel

" Angel Season 5 is probably the best one of the series, sadly it’s also the last. "

FILM SCORE: 10 / 10

Angel Season 5 is probably the best one of the series, sadly it’s also the last. Finally Angel is paired up with his perfect “spouse”, unfortunately for him it’s his long time enemy and newly soul-ed vampire, Spike (James Marsters). The chemistry between these two is absolutely fantastic, they bicker back and forth like a couple of grumpy old men, stopping only long enough to kill a couple of demons. But I’m getting ahead of myself, this season starts off with Angel and crew now running the LA branch of the EVIL law firm, Wolfram and Hart. They were given the reigns of the nemesis group at the end of season 4 because all their enemies within were dead and it would just seem more fitting that Angel and company ran the “new and improved” Wolfram and Hart.

The season starts off with everyone settling in to their roles within the belly of the beast. Angel becomes CEO, Wesley (Alexis Denisof) is the historian and researcher, Lorne (Andy Hallett) heads the entertainment division, Fred (Amy Acker) manages the science, research and development department and Gunn (J. August Richards), the former “muscle” of the group, becomes a brainy lawyer through a series of implants. The latter plot plays a huge role in future episodes as Gunn tires of being the “dumb street thug” and wants to be a key player. Harmony (Mercedes McNab) who has been in the Buffyverse since the pilot of Buffy TVS returns this season and plays Angel’s new secretary, she is much needed hotness with the trimming of Charisma Carpenter from this season. Storyline wise it was a better decision since Cordelia has grown so much that there really was nowhere else for her to evolve. Harmony on the other hand is very much like when Cordelia was Angel’s self-centered and somewhat ignorant secretary.

The difference between this season and the last season is that nearly every single episode would stand quite well on it’s own. In season 4 the entire 22-episode season ran like a giant 19-hour movie. This is a better form of storytelling in my opinion being that you can jam in a lot more interesting characters since nearly every week there was a new threat. Spike doesn’t show up till the last 20 seconds of episode one and is just a ghost for a good number of episodes after that. One very well done episode called Hellbound has ghosty-Spike being haunted by freaky and gory dead people as he feels that his ghost form was slowly slipping into Hell. I remember seeing disclaimers about the gore in the original airings of the episodes, it ended up being very dark and creepy.

The best thing about Angel is the great diversities of the stories. In one episode you have a historic type tale where Angel and Spike deal with Nazis and submarines in WWII and the next episode hilariously Angel gets turned in to a felt puppet straight out of Sesame Street and gets made fun of by Spike. Many episodes make me bust out laughing with it’s clever quips and funny character quirks. The formula is done perfectly and keeps from getting stale episode after episode.