This is going to be edited to death! There is too much to say and too little time to say it in. I will start now but who knows when I will finish.
Big Huge Fat Spoilers. You have been warned.
Monday 23rd August was the day I had been waiting for for over a year. It was the day when I found out what happened to Angel Investigations when it took over Wolfram and Hart. Both boxsets came out at once- 22 gorgeous episodes. They are so pretty. Red and orange with six cast members decorating the spines. Notably, Charisma Carpenter was gone and James Masters was on. And not just on the spines but on the box as well. How could his character who had only been in
Angel once before suddenly get to be on the box alongside the hero?
I dreaded Spike taking over
Angel. The wb (hate hate hate) forced them to write him in. It was the deal. The deal to get a fifth season. It wasn't because the writers deemed it necessary to the plot. It wasn't because he could bring anything to Angel's fight. It was for ratings. For the wb executives.
And so I dreaded it. The season seemed geared towards making the executives happy. Stand alone shows, monster-of-the-week episodes and a new hero. I was worried.
A friend called Alek reassured me somewhat by confirming that there was still an arc and although there were some questionable developments, it was not too far from the show we loved. I trusted Alek and I was right to because his summation was spot-on. Questionable, yes. But it was still
Angel. And still it caught my heart.
Can I at least deny you three times?
I am sorry to say that the first half of Angel season 5 was poor. On a par with the first half of season 3 if you ignore
Lullaby. I got my first tingle of joy in episode 11,
Damage, when Andrew told Angel that no one trusted him anymore. The idea that Angel was all alone in this and had lost the trust of Buffy and Giles shocked me. It made me ask, did I trust him? Moving to W&H wasn't working creatively speaking and it also wasn't working with helping the hopeless. He didn't have a plan- was he still the Man?
Seemlessly, the next episode dealt with Angel asking whether he trusted himself. The 100th episode was a marvel and worked to steady his faith and mine in both him and the show. He got to be the champion again, Spike was put firmly in his place as lackey/flunky/toadie after his brief attempt at being a hero and at long last Angel got the support that none of his "disconnected" employees could give him.
After this, the episodes were much stronger and Angel exhibited much more control over events and people. He even got his hair cut. Giles denied him help one more time but Angel didn't doubt himself. By
Time Bomb it became obvious that Angel had a plan and was willing to give up the little support he had from his team but he still retained their faith and they reformed when it mattered.
Toasted and Ghosted
I expected to hate Spike's inclusion. As it was, I wasn't bothered. He was superfluous and took up valuable screen-time but there was nothing particularly offensive about him. And at least he was funny and gave more opportunities for flashbacks.
Spike kept in Angel's shadow a lot. He had the same strengths and weakneses being a vampire and the same history more or less. There was very little he could do that Angel couldn't. Maybe even nothing. So as part of an ensemble cast, he didn't pull his weight. What he added was someone to give the snappy one-liners and say "shag" a lot.
Of course, humour is necessary and I enjoyed his screen-time for this reason. He played well with Angel making a fun double-act at times. However, by taking this role he booted Lorne out of a job. In seasons 3 and 4, Lorne's reason for being was for his one-liners. His jokes. His unlikely friendship wit Angel was great and it sparkled a lot more than Spike's did. And so I see Spike as a totally unnecessary addition to the cast. An addition that resulted in the downsizing of one of my favourite characters. But I cannot complain too much because the writers did the best job they could under the circumstances and he did make me laugh. A lot. And hard.
Captain Forehead?
It's all about the hair isn't it? My how it grew in the "19 days" since we saw him in Sunnydale. The thing about David Boreanaz is that his face is... odd. Maybe even ugly (at least on screen and in my opinion) and the bigger his hair the greater the distraction. So... egad he looked so cute for the first half (until his hair went back to the season 4 style).
Maybe I shouldn't focus on the looks. It makes me look shallow. But what else can I say? He's the man. He's the champion. Angel is such a strong character and I think that he is spot on in this season just as he is in season 4 and the last half of season 3. He's cool, calm and solid. The pillar supporting the show. Old DB doesn't get many emotional moments in this season (there is nothing comparable to seeing Conner and Cordy celebrating the end of the world) and it is a shame but Spike brought out some vulnerabilities in our Dark Avenger as he saw how another vampire dealt more successfully with having a soul.
Shanshu
I have mixed emotions over the season 1 elements. Like
Buffy 7 which claimed to be going back to the beginning, season 5 referred to
Angel's first and second season. Part of me adored these nods to the past, pats on the back to the long-term fans. Part of me wonders whether it is really relevant anymore.
Things I loved included Holland Manners turning up in
The Cautionary Tale and the mention of how he tried to persuade Angel that Hell was literally on Earth. My jaw dropped when "Doyle" came back and for a shameful five or so minutes I wondered whether it really was him.
But somehow, the Shanshu prophecy (as it is officially called apparently *rolls eyes*) didn't work. This was an idea raised in the season one finale, continued in the season 2 opener and then dropped. It was dropped for a reason. Angel learnt in
Judgement and more obviously in
Epiphany how little it mattered. He learnt that he had to fight each day as it came, not for some big prize at the end but just because he could. He learnt to make each day better and give up on his grand idea of redemption. Why was Wesley shocked to discover that Angel didn't believe in the Shanshu anymore? Possibly because Wesley had a huge chunk of his memory missing and didn't realise that Angel was fighting for something or someone else. Angel clung to the prophecy only as a way to justify all that he had given up but he didn't believe or need it.
Given that all this is true (and trust me... it is and it is confirmed in the finale so there) why was it such a big part of the first half? Just because Spike was there. Spike needed to be the great hero, going out in a pillar of flame or being crowned the ptb's champion. I guess that was interesting but I don't care about Spike so the incessant whining about this prophecy just annoyed me.
Oh, and I think that the fans that are into discussing the Shanshu stuff are all pathetic shippers. Who would want to become mortal anyway? I like my heros cold blooded, thank you.
Angel's Avengers
Oh, they so should have been called this. The team for this season was, as I said, disconnected. Well, actually that is Angel's word but I like it. They didn't work together as well. Instead of a family, they were colleagues in a large firm.
Wesley was a bit of an odd one given that he had lost a huge chunk of his memories of how he betrayed Angel and kept a girl chained in his closet and yet still sported the Marlboro Man look and had had a relationship with Lilah. I wonder how that came about in the false time-line. So, it was difficult to know what Wesley should be like and difficult to tell whether he was portrayed and carried on sucessfully or not. That he was able to kill his father was not a surprise (though it was a great disappointment that it wasn't his dad after all- quite an unnecessary and weak twist) but in the rest of the first half he didn't display his usual strength. His infatuation with Fred felt a bit silly the longer it went on and I would have preferred it if Wesley had been the one to act and not Fred. I guess I should have known something was up when those two finally got together (seemingly out of sheer boredom of behalf of the writers "oh, please don't make me write wesley looking all puppy-eyed again!"). After Fred's *sob* death, Wesley became a hell of a lot more interesting and his relationship with Illyria was wonderfully complex and bitter.
So... Fred. The only person that came out looking good in the move from AI to W&H and they killed her!
