Angel

CJL’s Review of ANGEL Season Five

And so it ends—not with a bang, but with a rumble, as Angel and his crew of do-gooders set their jaws and prepare to roll the rock up the hill one last time for our viewing pleasure. Joss went for the Myth of Sisyphus ending, as I’d always suspected. No reward in the offing, no benediction from the Powers That Be, no ultimate victory in sight-just the satisfaction of a job well done and a battle well fought. As someone who punches the clock every day and tries to make the world a better place through my tiny contribution to the magazine, I saw it as an optimistic ending. It was both a final statement about the character of Angel and a statement of purpose about Joss himself: he knows his time in the media spotlight is limited, and he intends to battle the forces of greed and mediocrity as long and as hard as he can. I hope Angel’s last stand will be remembered by talented writers and producers who are still fighting the ever-increasing banality of American television within the system, and who can keep the flame alive until quality scripted programming returns full force. I light my candle in solidarity.

In the meantime, let’s look back on Season Five and the path to that final battle. As David Boreanaz himself noted, ANGEL S5 was a great deal like Season One, with a brand new premise, a brand new set, stand-alone episodes, and an atmosphere of constant experimentation. But Season Five had two big advantages over Season One: first, the Mutant Enemy writing staff had enough experience after eight years of producing television to neatly place the threads of a season-long plotline within the individual episodes; and second, many of the key character interactions in Season 5 benefited from the cumulative power of Joss Whedon’s creation. Did the writers exploit this cumulative power to its full advantage? Did they do justice to Tim Minear’s radical restructuring of Angel’s world in "Home"? Did all our favorite characters get a chance to shine in the spotlight?

Well—yes and no....

WHAT WORKED:

1. Angel and Spike

Remember when this was the most contested topic of discussion on the ANGEL boards? Was there room enough for two ensouled vampires on the same show? Would Spike "take over" the series? In retrospect, the apprehension and arguments were kind of silly. ME deliberately structured the Angel/Spike relationship in Season 5 as a love story—not in a "Ho-yay!" sort of way (although there was that "one time")—but as the love of brothers who rediscovered each other after a long estrangement. Joss and crew meticulously dealt with all the issues separating Spike and Angel over the course of the season, ending with "The Girl in Question" and the hot button topic (Buffy) that started all the arguments in the first place. There were times when Spike and Angel’s banter saved an entire episode from falling flat, and their Season 5 interactions both honored and enriched the previous seven years of characterization. Some might say that Spike as an individual got a little short changed in the process of Angel/Spike bonding, but "Destiny," "Damage" and the poetry slam in "Not Fade Away" were more than good enough for me.

2. Ghosts in the Machine

I had a few problems with the Wolfram and Hart plotline (see below), but the one part ME got right was the soul-deadening aspect of working inside a corporate monolith. The endless deadlines, the lack of sleep, the vague pronouncements and ill-defined goals of the higher-ups, your personal identity swallowed by the collective—all handled with stark realism, as befitting a writing staff working within the belly of the beast. Wolfram and Hart was like Spiritual Death for the Fang Gang, and watching Angel putter forlornly around his enormous kingdom in episodes like Soul Purpose and You’re Welcome was sublime melancholia.

3. Gunn

After three years of solid, if unspectacular support work and only occasionally interesting character arcs, ME finally gave J. August Richards a fat pitch to hit, and JAR knocked the sucker out of the park. As the representative of the Fang Gang corrupted by the perks of W&H, Richards made the transition from street smart demon fighter to corporate shark look smooth. And when Whedon asked him to bear the guilt of the season’s tragedies, Richards was heart-wrenching. It’ll be a long time before I forget Gunn begging Doctor Sparrow to tear the knowledge out of his brain.

4. Illyria and her Watcher

Wait a minute—you mean Amy Acker can really act? She can play a character completely different from Fred? Wow. I wish we could have known about this sooner. While Amy did a fine job portraying Winifred Burkle, all-around Nice Person, the character simply didn’t seem like much of an acting challenge to the audience at home. (Also, Joss and crew got a bit "Mary Sue-ish" with Fred from time to time.) Illyria, on the other hand, was a neon-lit showcase for Acker, tapping into her vocal training and background in dance to create a character who didn’t look like Fred, act like Fred, talk like Fred, or even move like Fred. (Loved the ballet-like training/pummeling sequences between Acker and Marsters.) As an added bonus, the very concept of Illyria was tailor-made to inflict maximum grief on Angel and the boys, and we all got a front-row seat as Wes finally had that nervous breakdown we’ve been expecting for years. Alexis Denisof, who effortlessly sold us British Twit Wesley in Buffy S3, Doofus Wesley in Angel S1, Leader Wesley in Angel S2 and S3, and Scruffy Wes in Angel S3 and 4, finally brought it all home with Crazy Wes—and once again proved why he was the best actor on the series. The scenes between Wes and Illyria in the Girl in Question and Not Fade Away almost made the painful three-year courtship and aborted romance between Wes and Fred worth the effort.

5. Hamilton

Arrogant. Smug. Polished. Articulate. Unashamedly evil. Ruthless (when necessary). Supremely confident of his power (and that of his masters). Only villain of the series who literally looked down at Angel. Nailed Harmony (lucky bastard). And give him props—he looked fantastic in a suit. I’ve just given you ten reasons why Adam Baldwin’s Hamilton was a great villain and the perfect liaison to the Senior Partners. That’s about ten more than I’d give Sarah Thompson’s Eve.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

1. Wolfram and Hart

I’m going to acknowledge up front that I might have had unrealistic expectations about this part of Angel’s Season 5 arc. So if anyone wants to lecture me that I should judge the W&H plotline on what actually happened during the year, and leave my unfulfilled dreams at home—I’m not going to disagree with you. That said, I don’t think Mutant Enemy came close to delivering what they promised with this arc, which only came together for me in the middle of Power Play. (Episode 21 out of 22, folks.)

My main frustration with the W&H arc stems from the buildup Joss gave it in the summer of 2003. The central idea of Angel taking over Evil Inc. was: "If you’ve worked for Greenpeace for years, and you get the opportunity to run a division of Shell Oil, can you do good work within the system, or does the system inevitably wear you down?" As I said above, ME did a great job showing how everyday life within the corporate arena can slowly eat away at your soul. But they never gave the other side of the debate a fair shot. Angel did a staggering amount of good inside of Wolfram and Hart, but we never got to see the extent of his accomplishments. All of Angel (and Gunn’s) best work was dismissed (in terms of narrative) as the stroke of a pen in "Cautionary Tale." I found this a bit insulting. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people working inside and around the borders of corporate America these days, genuinely trying to improve the lives of their fellow citizens, and it does them a disservice to dismiss their efforts so casually.

If you want a concrete example of what I’m saying, try this: suppose the cameras swung around and Angel Season Five was magically transformed into Mutant Enemy Season Five. An entire season of Joss, Fury, Bell and DeKnight working within the belly of the beast at the WB, fighting with mid-level studio executives who don’t know their ass from their elbow, placating temperamental writers, actors and directors, groaning under unimaginable deadline pressure, and waiting for the Senior Partners to drop the cancellation bomb. The catch is: we don’t see the fruit of their labors—the twenty-two episodes of Angel Season 5 and what they mean to the creators and the fans out there in the dark. After a full year of watching ME suffer through office backstabbing and Hollywood lunacy, the audience would say: Why bother? Nothing could be worth this kind of grief. And, of course, they’d be right. But they’d only have half the story. [/end rant]

As for what actually did happen in the halls of Wolfram and Hart in Season 5, I had some problems with that, too. I thought the reveal of Wolfram and Hart’s demonic clientele as the sinister Circle of the Black Thorn was extraordinarily clever (especially since I’ve been clued into the circle/gear/crown of thorns motif running through S5); but if you look at the season’s events closely, the supposed source of all evil in the world didn’t inflict much damage on Angel and his crew at all. Most of the badness suffered by the Fang Gang during Season 5 was due to outside agents, the Gang themselves, or W&H employees pursuing their own agendas explicitly against the wishes of the Senior Partners.

Think I’m delusional? Examine the evidence. Angel had to deal with W&H clients (Corben Fries and Magnus Hainsley) in episodes one and two—and that’s about it. From then on, the Gang’s "antagonists" were: John Billingsley’s xenobiologist and the restaurateur with a jones for gourmet werewolf, Pavayne (OK, gray area there), Sleep Deprived Lorne, Tezcatcatl, the cyberninjas, Eve and Lindsey, a Harmony wannabe (!), Eve and Lindsey again, Dana, you-know-who, Lawson, evil puppets, Illyria and her disciples (Knox and Sparrow), and Buffy (sort of). In fact, the dreaded Circle of the Black Thorn did so little damage that the introduction of the Circle as the seasonal Big Bad in "Power Play" felt like a retcon. (And even though I know better now, it still feels like a retcon!) I realize that ME meant for the Circle’s influence to be subtle, but maybe their influence was a bit too subtle (as in "not showing up on the screen").

As a result, I found Angel’s moaning about how Wolfram and Hart was killing them by degrees forced in places. Cordelia was killed by Jasmine and Fred was killed by Illyria—two beings with nothing but contempt for the Wolf, Ram and Hart. (In fact, the Senior Partners were counting on Angel to defeat or control both Jasmine and Illyria.) You could say that Angel’s presence within Wolfram and Hart set his crew up for the disastrous events of Season 5, but hey, this is Angel we’re talking about—bad stuff happens to him and his teammates all the freakin’ time. (Illyria’s sarcophagus could have just as easily been delivered to the Hyperion.)

I realize that part of the point of the Circle was that they were working sub rosa, under Angel’s bat radar; but ME could have built up the menace of the Circle throughout the season without revealing them prematurely. Looking back, the invasion of the cyberninjas in "Lineage" was probably the Circle’s test for the ’intriguingly unstable’ Wesley. Why was this never followed up? "Soul Purpose" looked like the starting point of two juicy seasonal subplots—Wes’ corruption by the ultimate power of Wolfram and Hart and Spike as an independent agent—but ME dropped them both by the end of "You’re Welcome." Why didn’t Joss keep Spike on the outside for awhile, using his perspective to comment on what’s happening to the Fang Gang inside of Wolfram and Hart? Why didn’t ME show the corrupting effects of W&H on all the members of the Gang (not just Gunn)? Maybe if Angel gave into temptation just a little (or at least seemed to) around the middle of the season, maybe his ‘will to power’ act in "Time Bomb" and "Power Play" would have fooled the audience.

In the end, the Wolfram and Hart plotline worked from episode to episode, but didn’t hang together when you consider the season as a whole. Much like the plotline involving—

2. Lindsey

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Lindsey, who resigned from Wolfram and Hart in a fit of moral disgust in "Dead End," was actually implementing Stage One of a years-long strategy to take over the L.A. branch and worm his way into the Circle of the Black Thorn. Working through his W&H double agent, Eve, Lindsey tried to convince the Senior Partners that they had the wrong chosen vamp by shipping Spike in from the ruins of Sunnydale, and setting Blondie Bear up as a new champion. Once Spike was comfortable in his new role and completely trusting of ’Doyle,’ Lindsey and Eve would knock off Angel, and W&H would recognize Lindsey as the power behind the power of the all-important Shanshu vamp. The Senior Partners would appoint Lindsey CEO of the L.A. branch, and the Circle of the Black Thorn would embrace Lindsey with open tentacles. He’d then use his new power base to gather up enough allies to destroy the Circle the way Angel did in "Not Fade Away." Is that it?

Sorry, not buying it. The plan doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense. Even if it works to perfection, I don’t think the manipulation of the Shanshu prophecy is going to convince the Circle of the Black Thorn to let Lindsey join their exclusive evil country club. So he’s drinking buddies with the new vampire of prophecy—so what? The Circle was an organization with demonic roots hundreds, perhaps thousands of years old. Vail, the Fell Brethren, Brucker, Sebassis, Izzy—these were old demons, with enormous power bases. You had to have serious connections to join this club; heck, I found it somewhat incredible that they let Angel join. I could fanwank Angel’s membership because Angel was the vampire of prophecy himself, and he had a considerable reputation for evil as Angelus. But Lindsey How in the name of all the Hell Dimensions would a former mid-level attorney and disgruntled W&H employee make the cut?

[Side note: speaking of "not buying it," could somebody explain to me why a bright boy like Lindsey would be stupid enough to call himself ‘Doyle’ in "Soul Purpose"? After going through all that trouble to conceal himself, he might as well have slapped a neon sign on his butt and walked into the W&H lobby. Did he honestly think Spike wouldn’t talk about his brand new friend with the rest of the cast?]

3. Lorne

If you take the episodes where Lorne had stuff to do, and run them together in your mind, you realize that Lorne had a fantastic character arc in Season 5. For the first time in his life, he was forced to step off his tightrope of impartiality, and take a stand in the never-ending battle between Good and Evil. What I liked about the arc was that Lorne couldn’t bear the emotional costs of fighting Angel’s fight. His resigned exit in "Not Fade Away" simply crushed me. So why is Lorne in the "Things that Didn’t Work" column? Well, to get to all this good stuff, you had to watch Andy Hallett hang around the set for about 15 episodes not doing much of anything at all. I resent ME for not coming up with interesting material for an actor who spends three torturous hours every day in a makeup chair. It brings back memories of Anya in Buffy S7, and that’s a mistake I was hoping ME wouldn’t repeat.

4. Wes and Fred

Mishandled all the way up to Fred’s death. ME started off with Wesley pining over Fred a la Season Three, which bored the spit out of me in both seasons. In "Lineage," they switched over to Creepy Obsessed Wes, which both bored and squicked me (and not in that good, Mutant Enemy way). Then, in "Harm’s Way," Craft and Fain decided that Fred had no idea Wesley was interested her as more than a friend, which confused the living heck out me. (So the mind wipe erased the Wes/Fred kiss in "Calvary" but let Wes keep the memory of Lilah’s beheading. Man, it sucks to be Wesley.) Finally, in "You’re Welcome," Fred was inexplicably turned on by Wes’ spell-casting abilities, which led to their kiss in "Smile Time" and her inevitable doom in the next episode. Why did Fred suddenly change her mind and warm up to Wes? Who knows? Maybe Wes slipped a little love spell in there while he was getting rid of Lindsey’s tattoos. Maybe Zeus threw down a thunderbolt. Any explanation would have been welcome, because we didn’t get one on screen. Without the proper build-up, the Wes/Fred romance felt like a plot device, not true love; and therefore, the Wes/Fred portions of "A Hole in the World" DID NOT WORK.

5. Eve

Oh dear god, what a disaster. Eve was the first Joss Whedon character I would classify as Dead Weight. No chemistry with Angel. No chemistry with the main cast, not even Marsters, who can spark with anybody. No chemistry with Christian Kane (which I thought was biologically impossible for human females); their love scenes made me long for Angel/Lindsey slash. Not likable, which is OK for a villain, but: Not clever. Not sexy. Not ruthless. Not intelligent. Not intimidating. Smug, yet wimpy—a bad combination. The only times I felt good about Eve on screen was when Cordy was insulting her, Gunn was strangling her, and Harmony was beating the crap out of her. Otherwise, I just wanted her off my screen as soon as possible. To paraphrase Ilona: "Eve? Ptui! We will speak no more of her!"

To sum up:

CONVICTION - 6.5
JUST REWARDS - 7.5
UNLEASHED - 5.5
HELLBOUND - 7
LIFE OF THE PARTY - 7
THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF NUMERO CINCO - 9
LINEAGE - 7
DESTINY - 8.5
HARM’S WAY - 7
SOUL PURPOSE - 8.5
DAMAGE - 9
YOU’RE WELCOME - 8.5
WHY WE FIGHT - 7
SMILE TIME - 9.5
A HOLE IN THE WORLD - 7.5
SHELLS - 8
UNDERNEATH - 9
ORIGIN - 8.5
TIME BOMB - 8
THE GIRL IN QUESTION - 7
POWER PLAY - 9
NOT FADE AWAY - 9