Angel: Sense and Sensitivity

"Oh, she thinks you're insensitive and, not to bring up the irony but, heh, consider the source…"

It's becoming a bit of a pattern with Angel; a good episode, which I like, which nevertheless highlights a couple of problems with the series so far. The episodes are far too "story of the week" and lacking in continuity from episode to episode. There's nothing wrong with having episodes being essentially standalone, but there have to be some elements, however subtle, that carry on from episode to episode, or you just end up with a big fat reset button and not a lot of character development. Also, I don't like the increasing focus on the "police procedural" style, partly because it encourages this very tendency. Much as I can see the attraction of the character of Kate, having her as a semi-regular is pushing the show more into this sort of format. Yes, I get that the show uses the supernatural as metaphors for life in the big city, in much the same way as Buffy does with the experience of growing up, but the show needs a bigger cast and more continuing elements. Fortunately, with the increased foregrounding of Wolfram and Hart, we seem to be getting the beginnings of that. And now they're very much aware of Angel's presence in LA.

All that said, though, this episode is very good indeed. It deals very cleverly with its very Southern Californian theme of therapy, psychobabble, obsession with "issues" and the absurdity thereof. There's a nice parallel between the early scenes, where Cordelia criticises Angel for being repressed and insensitive, and the rather hilarious later scenes, where she wishes he would be rather more repressed and insensitive. The second half of the episode, which shows us the consequences of a police department getting too far in touch with its feelings, is enormous fun. The episode takes a clear stance against this sort of thing, and I, being British, naturally approve. A certain amount of repression is needed so that people can function, and too much unnecessary obsessing over personal "issues" makes people retreat from the world into the self, with chaotic consequences for society.

One of the more illustrative scenes, perhaps, is the policeman refusing to help Doyle and insisting that the station is closed. It's tempting to see a political subtext here, that there's a link between all these hippyish notions of "letting it all hang out" that arose in the '60s and the right-wing individualism that has so dominated politics in the decades since. People in the 1950s may have been more buttoned-up, but they were solidly behind the welfare state and paid their high taxes without much blubbing. There's a political price to be paid for people getting too much in touch with their feelings.

Having said all that, though, there is such a thing as being too repressed, and Kate's father is there to remind us of that. We need to be wary of an overreliance on quacks and trendy psychobabble, but there's still a balance to be struck.