Angel: Hero

"Is this a private catharsis or can anyone watch?"

Before I say anything else, we all know what happens in this episode, right? I can't imagine there'll be anybody reading this who doesn't know about the massive elephant in the middle of this particular room, but if you don't… well, stop reading now.

We don't need to look far for the metaphor here; in fact, both the Scourge and the half-demon refugees have a very 1940s look, which is a nice touch. From the very moment we first meet the demon refugees, hiding as the basement as they often have before, the Anne Frank echoes are obvious; we're looking at Jewish people in Nazi-occupied countries, living in perpetual fear of discovery. We don't get to actually see the Scourge until quite late only, only being told about how terrible they are, which really works to build them up. The moment when they finally appear- and yes, they look like the Nazi demons they are- is all the more effective for that.

It's impressive that such a potent metaphor can be used so well and so effectively, mainly by the focus on the lives of the persecuted, especially as the episode is just forty-two minutes long and the character stuff takes precedence. But the other reason for the Scourge is to give Doyle something to atone for. Many years ago, he refused to give refuge to another of his people who needed shelter from the Scourge. There may be extenuating circumstances, but Doyle has essentially failed to shelter a fellow Jew from the Nazis, and this lead to his death. There have to be consequences.

Watching the episode in hindsight, the build-up to the inexorable moment is handled perfectly. The humour is front-loaded into the first ten minutes, as we begin with Cordelia directing a fantasy television advert for Angel Investigations, in which she critiques a good few tropes from this show's visual style. I love metatextual fun, as you know, and I also love Cordelia. This is a match made in heaven. And the use of the video recorded with Doyle is, of course, a piece of structural beauty.

Angel's feelings over Buffy are properly dealt with, as he tells Doyle everything. But there is deep dramatic irony here, too, as an admiring Doyle admits that he just isn't cut out to be as heroic as Angel. There's so much foreshadowing throughout the episode that it almost hurts to watch.

There's some more arc-related foreshadowing too, of course; it seems that the Soldiers of Darkness and the End of Days, mentioned last episode, are still on the horizon. But most of the foreshadowing is blatantly pointed at Doyle. And it becomes most painful when Cordelia is involved. Doyle's feelings for Cordelia, and his agonising over how she'll react to the fact that he's half-demon, have simmered throughout the whole series. But Cordelia obviously has affection for him. If she insults you, that means she likes you, and she's insulted Doyle an awful lot. It's all been rather sweet.

That last scene between the two of them is so heartbreaking, from the slap right through to the kiss. Cordelia's "Would you ask me out for dinner already?" tortures us with what could have been, and then Doyle goes to his nervous and heroic sacrifice. In the end, he's a better man than anybody thought he was, especially himself.

Beautifully, the rest is silence. A heartbroken Cordelia and a stunned Angel can't find the words, so it's left to Doyle himself. Where now?

Angel: I Will Remember You

"They get groiny with one another- the world, as we know it, falls apart."

This is a brilliant episode. Brilliant. Intense, heartbreaking, and brilliantly acted. And yet… I'm not sure it should have been done. Yes, it was brilliant (there will be gushing shortly), but it ends with a great big reset button. It never happened, and is therefore robbed of its meaning. It would have been much better as a one-off piece of fanfic, and I don't mean to denigrate the episode in any way; the distinction between fanfic and "official" stuff, in these days of serialised television drama, has nothing to do with quality or anything like that, just the kind of stories that can be told. And this episode is exactly the sort of story that doesn't work as part of a bigger, serialised narrative. The reset button pretty much admits that.

Right. Now that's been said, let the gushing commence. Both Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz are amazing here, both of them really, really giving us the simmering sexual tension that threatens to boil over for so much of this episode. It's fantastic, if completely unreal, to see them both being so blissfully post-coital with each other, and these scenes are really, really well-shot, too, deliberately going for a dreamlike quality. There's delicious comedy, too; I love the gradual change from tea and awkwardness to shagging on the table. All this is good.

Also good is Angel's reaction to being alive (with reservations, which I'll come to), and the various sensual pleasures it brings, not just sex but food and, um, both sex and food together. This is also good. Cordelia's reaction to this joyous moment for Angel's life is good, too. Naturally, it's all about her and her rapidly diminished future prospects. Doyle is more optimistic; no doubt he has a bright future ahead of him.

Much as I dislike the use of the reset button, I have to admit that this is well-handled, too. It's a typically noble gesture of Angel (although also, and just as typically, a little narcissistic) to give up the prospect of happiness so that the End of Days is averted, mainly because this would also mean the End of Buffy. Aaaah. Even one of the Oracles is impressed.

The Oracles are cool, too- Greek, enigmatic, and a nice development of the infant show's mythology. We haven't heard much about the Powers That Be since City Of, but we're reminded of their importance to Angel's mission. They're also kept mysterious, though; the Oracles are a nice way of keeping the powers at arm's length so they can remain enigmatic. Of course, whether it's the Powers or their Oracle underlings, we're essentially looking at a great big metaphor for the godlike power of the Writer on this fictional world. Metatextuality can be such fun sometimes.

Reset button aside, there are a couple of little plot problems. Why does Angel being human mean the End of Days is coming? I don't think that's explained. And Angel seems rather more self-flagellating about being human than he did back in In the Dark. These things aside, though, I actually love this episode. It was brilliant. It was done well. But it's still an idea that probably shouldn't have been done at all.

Angel: The Bachelor Party

"Maybe Doyle does have hidden depths. I mean, really, really hidden. But depths."

Wow. Who'd have thunk it? Doyle has a past, and a first name to boot. And he used to be all responsible and stuff- a teacher, of all things. An entire backstory is hinted at- marriage to Harry at nineteen, only for his demon side to manifest itself at twenty-one, wrecking both his marriage and his successful lifestyle. Just a few lines, scattered throughout the episode, give Doyle a hinterland, and depth. The most shocking thing, somehow, is that he was once a charity volunteer.

It seems that Cordelia is beginning to see him differently, too. The episode quite pointedly contrasts Doyle with the rich and rather wet Pierce, Cordelia's usual type. But Pierce is incredibly dull, and not only is he a big scaredy cat when attacked by a vampire- to be fair, most of us would be- but he just leaves Cordelia to fend for herself, which isn't very gentlemanly. Enter Doyle, suddenly revealed as a knight in not-so-shiny armour. Their whole relationship seems to have turned a bit of a corner, although she doesn't quite find out about his demon side. Still, this is going to play out over the rest of the season, right? (Ooh, you can just smell the dramatic irony in that last sentence!).

Richard (played by Whedon favourite Carlos Jacott) is a great character, and I love the fact that his demon family are genuinely nice, in a very suburban sort of way. The casual reveal of the fact that they mean to have Richard eat Doyle's brains(!) is well funny, as is pretty much everything about it. Still, aside from that one minor fault, I think this is the episode where is becomes very firmly established that demons are not necessarily evil. We have a bit of fun with this idea; I love the fact that Angel gets accused of being racist!

There are a couple of minor criticisms, perhaps. It's a bit of a coincidence that Doyle happens to be around to rescue Cordelia. And I can't see a stag night having both a stripper and charades- one or the other, perhaps, but not both. I'm not American, and I could be wrong, but by the evidence of this episode there isn't really much difference between an American bachelor party and a British stag night, except that a bachelor party seems to take place at home, rather than in a pub or club. The hen night (I don't know what they're called in America) seems rather sober and polite, though, pornographic Pictionary or not!

The criticisms are very minor, though. This episode is very good indeed, and the show certainly seems to be on an upswing. The late Glenn Quinn, in particular, is superb here.

Angel takes a back seat in this episode, more so than in any other episode so far, but I suspect that will soon change. Doyle's vision makes it very clear that it's crossover time…

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.

Angel: RM W/A VU

"I'm from Sunnydale. You're not scaring me, you know!"

This episode is funny, smart, and generally bloody brilliant. It's also written by Jane Espenson. These two facts may be connected.

It's good to have a more light-hearted episode, not just for its own sake but for the way it really highlights the strengths of the three main characters and their inter-relationships. Also, it's nice to have a proper poltergeist episode, with lots of juicy tropes to explore- and also a nice evocation of Edgar Allan Poe with a flashback scene of a bloke being walled up by his mother. Er, lovely. She's not a very nice lady, and certainly not the best of mothers, but let's look on the bright side: she seems to be a fairly decent brickie.

The plotty stuff's all very nice and creepy and all, but what makes this episode such fun is the characters. The scenes of Cordelia inviting herself over to Angel's pad, and becoming increasingly annoying, are top entertainment. And I love her refusal to give up the perfect apartment even after the word "die" appears on the wall. In blood. It takes a lot to faze this Sunnydale girl. There are hints of character development, too. Although not until a conversation between Angel and Doyle provides the exposition on her riches-to-rags backstory. It seems Cordelia feels that, ever since her dad got done for diddling his taxes, she's been punished for her past bitchiness. She, like Angel, seeks redemption. On the other hand, the very suggestion of this is then immediately undercut and left nicely ambiguous.

Doyle's past is obviously not detailed at all beyond establishing that he owes a lot of money to a lot of people. His backstory remains mysterious, but gets pointed at a lot, and he even gets a speech towards the end saying "Oh yes, one day I shall reveal all." The tease.

The conclusion is highly satisfying, both because of Cordelia's inner bitchiness being what ultimately kills the poltergeist and also because of the twist with Dennis, who ends the episode as Cordelia's friendly live-in ghost. Who, er, regularly gets to see her naked, a fact which the episode shies away from, probably quite wisely. No wonder he seems quite happy. He probably expected a much worse afterlife than this.

I enjoyed that: a bloody good story, oodles of funny and some nice character stuff. It's just a little unfortunate, watching this in 2012, that we get the line "How come Patrick Swayze's never dead when you need him?"

Angel: I Fall to Pieces

"What is stalking now? Like, the third most popular sport among men?"

"Fourth, after luge."

Is it just me, or does this episode's title mean that the song by Velvet Revolver is going through your head too?

It's interesting how much more coherent Angel feels when not crossing over with the parent show. There's a different directorial style, of sunsets, cityscapes and jump cuts. And the format of the show is different, with a much smaller ensemble of regular characters and a greater focus on the client of the week. This show pushes the private investigator angle much further; when Melissa visits the office it begins to feel more like Sherlock than Buffy. Angel's attitude to charging clients seems rather similar to Sherlock Holmes', too. Sherlock could probably do with a Cordelia.

This episode is very evocative of the late '90s, not only in the horrible office fashions but in the focus on stalking, an issue which had only recently started attracting media attention at the time. Here in the UK, certainly, it was only defined as a a specific criminal offence shortly before the 1997 election; I assume the concept was also quite zeitgeisty in the US. And this is a proper exploration of the subject; both Kate and Angel are given powerful and effective dialogue explaining the psychology of the stalker and the effect on the victim.

The main supernatural concept is gloriously creepy; a "psychic surgeon" who can detach and reattach parts of his body including, most disgustingly, his eyeball, which for some reason is also able to levitate. And then there are the disembodied hands under Melissa's bedcovers!!!  Most of all, I'm sure the idea of being watched all the time by a disembodied eyeball must be exactly what stalking feels like, and that's the point. It's just a slight pity that the in-universe explanation for this relies on a load of new agey bollocks, including that tired old false belief that 80% of our brains go unused.

Angel's handling of the case is clever and impressive, and its interesting how much psychological insight he seems to have, not only in his understanding of the stalker's thinking but also in his rather clever little deception. I'm not sure how well this squares with him not being much of a "people person", but perhaps this is an example of how "helping the helpless" is affecting him for the better. Then again, it might be inconsistent characterisation.

It's a good episode, well paced, and it deals with the issue of the week rather well. But I'd like to see a larger cast and more of an arc; one-off episodes are fine in themselves but characters need development. I find myself in the paradoxical position of liking the episode itself but disliking the concept of a series made up of one-off episodes like this one. Yes, there's a slight mention of Wolfram and Hart. But I'd like a bit more story arc.

Angel: In the Dark

"This is not a needle in a haystack. This is a needle in Kansas."

Yes, I know, this is a nice follow-up to the preceding episode of Buffy both literally and thematically, with even the episode's title being a nice link. But is it really all that healthy for a spin-off which is still trying to establish itself to be crossing over with the original series in only its third episode?

For one thing, it feels a little strange to see Oz, of all people. He doesn't seem to belong in this show, as even the dialogue seems to concede with the comical awkwardness of him and Cordelia "catching up". Spike is a much more natural fit, and his first scene is well funny but, again, he's a recurring villain from the parent show. Is this healthy?

Such worries aside, though, on its own terms it's a brilliant episode, and a superb examination of Angel's character, and how profoundly shaped he is by the desire for atonement, forgiveness and brooding opportunities. The physical tortures he suffers are more or less a metaphor for the mental tortures he forces upon himself every day through his self-flagellating instincts. He can't allow himself to have the Ring Amarra, in spite of all the good it would do, because he feels he doesn't deserve it. This isn't the reason he was sent back from Hell. Better to brood, in the dark. A lot.

Oh, and to help people. We get a nice example in this episode, where he helps a battered woman escape from her abusive lover, and from her own irrational but all-too-common urge to go back to him.

Spike is fun, and gets all the best lines, but what I love about him here is that he's such a people person, even getting to briefly exchange small talk with Cordelia, something which Angel has manifestly failed to do. We have to remember he's evil, though, although not as evil as the horrible, horrible torturer, with his Heinrich Himmler looks, his hints of paedophilia and, oh yes, the torturing. From the minute we see him we know he has to die before the episode ends; he's just too evil to be allowed to survive, however impressed we might be by his quoting from Hamlet.

As for Cordelia and Doyle… well, they've developed a rapport, but it looks as though Cordelia has Doyle firmly in the friend zone, which is bad new for him. The two of them are great together, although it's looking as though their cultural differences regarding alcohol may be a problem: Cordelia, being American, is rather more abstemious than northern Europeans such as Doyle and, well, myself…! Oh yes… and there's the demon thing. Of course we, the viewers, rather suspect that Cordelia probably won't bat an eyelid when she finds out. But Doyle doesn't know her as well as we do. Oh, and bless her for being so excited about the invoice.

But still, all this reliance on the parent show doesn't bode well. There are some promising signs of independence, most notably in a visibly different directorial style, with jump cuts and all, but the show needs to try and avoid these sorts of crossovers for a bit, until it learns to stand on its own two feet.

Angel: Lonely Hearts

"The socialising thing is brutal."

Well, after a great first episode… I'm not really feeling this one, people. It felt rather so-so and by the numbers. I don't thing the theme was developed particularly well; yes, it's hard being in a big scary city amongst strangers, even harder to meet someone to be with, but we need to be shown this in relation to characters we care about. That didn't happen and for me, well, the episode sort of failed to make a connection.

It doesn't help that I just don't like the character of Kate Lockley. It's nothing to do with Elisabeth Rohm, but the character as written comes across as chippy, brittle and profoundly unlikeable. There's nothing wrong with having characters like this, but it's an odd choice of characterisation for someone who's intended to be a series regular, and one of the good guys. It doesn't help that I really, really hate to see dramas resorting to that tired old cliché of the hero being misunderstood by authority figures such as the police; it's frustrating to watch, and it's pretty much always little more than a crude way of padding out the running time for a bit; the plot can hardly advance when this sort of thing is happening. If dramas are going to resort to this then they damn well need to think it through and use it to develop the characters. That didn't happen here; the plot just got pointlessly held up. Plus, even worse, the episode ended with Kate having no idea that there was a supernatural element to the murders or that Angel was a vampire. It's all going to happen again isn't it?

The central idea- a parasite serial killer which seduces people and takes their bodies- is actually a pretty good one, but the fact that there was never any threat to a character we know diluted the idea considerably. The ending is a little awkward, too, with a conveniently placed fire. What was done well was the depiction of how horrible and desperate these places are; everyone hates these places, but it's the only way to meet someone in the big city. What makes it worse is that these people have the misfortune to be in the late '90s. I mean, what do people think they're wearing?

It's interesting, I suppose, that the burrower demon only kills people after sex. I'm not sure there's a metaphor here beyond the literal making a connection, but you have to feel sorry for the poor bloke whose last embarrassed moments are spent apologising for his bad sexual performance.

There's a bit more amusing development of Angel's awkwardness with people and his reluctance to socialise, and David Boreanaz is great with all this. Also, it's interesting to watch Doyle gradually and nervously inch towards asking Cordelia out. But there's not much here regarding characters or the series arc, and the episode is, well, a bit rubbish, and it's worryingly early for this sort of thing. I hope the next episode is better.

Angel: City Of

"Look, high school's over, bud."

Spin-offs are always a bit awkward, and this has the potential to be more than most. Unlike Buffy, who's witty and cool, Angel is brooding, fairly humourless and definitely not a people person. Worse, Buffy has established itself as an ensemble show, whereas the theme music to Angel (which rocks, by the way, and so does the tune) features only three regulars. Still, one of them is Cordelia (yay!) and she's outgoing, self-centred, funny and definitely a people person. And, going by the first episode, this really, really works. Even the fact that we begin in a bar, with the title character drinking alcohol, is something that has never so far happened in Buffy.

I love the title, although I must admit I've always had a penchant for terrible puns. It highlights the fact that there's a fourth regular character for this show: Los Angeles. Whereas Buffy has just started to explore the experience of moving from high school to university and the adjustment to a much bigger and more uncaring world, Angel expands these themes to an older demographic and the biggest possible scale: a city notorious for attracting people with hope and dreams and then cruelly disillusioning them.

Everything in the episode is about this. The fact that Russell, the baddie here, is a vampire acts as a rather neat metaphor for the way that this city, with its mirages of stardom and its uncaring harshness, sucks all the hope and life out of people. These themes are brought home all the more by the fact that they're happening to Cordelia, whom we all know and love, or bloody well ought to. We saw her lose all her money in the last season of Buffy, and so here she is, in the big city, desperate for some very unlikely success, living in a dump and wasting her time with some very Californian self-help twaddle. This is a great use of the character. Frankly, the new season of Buffy, being all about a new and unfamiliar environment, has no need of a secondary character originally designed as a queen bee type. But putting her in different circumstances, in a different show, as a primary character seems a great and promising move. It helps that Charisma Carpenter is amazing.

Then again, it may be great that Cordelia's an old friend of ours, and that she knows right away that Russell's a vampire and is blasé about it because, hey, she's from Sunnydale, but we know that no real harm or tragedy is going to befall her, at least not in the first episode. So enter Tina, who isn't so lucky, and who is so, so tragic. Unlike the slightly heightened character of Cordelia she feels like a real, brave, frightened person and we see enough of her to be devastated at her death.

She's also the catalyst for Angel, of course. He's withdrawn into himself, and just wants to help the occasional person and be left alone to mope in his mysteriously acquired Batcave. But the Powers That Be (mentioned in the very first episode, and it's already tempting to see them as the fictionalised alter ego of the writers, or basically Joss Whedon, which is fun and metatextual) have other ideas. So up pops Doyle who, aside from the facts that he's half-demon, has painful visions and is played by someone with a genuine Irish accent (the late Glenn Quinn), which has a real potential to embarrass the otherwise excellent David Boreanaz in flashback sequences, is still a complete mystery at this point. Suffice to say he's been called forth by the Powers That Be, and his first task is to recite Angel's backstory for the benefit of anyone who hasn't seen Buffy. I believe that over on TV tropes they refer to this sort of thing as "As You Know, Bob". Still, at least the script has the grace to give Angel a line that admits this. And it's all good ammunition for my "Powers That Be=Joss Whedon" theory.

Angel has to get out there and mix with people, is the message.  He needs to start caring about people, so that he can do good for its own sake rather than for the sake of his own tortured conscience. The Powers That Be / Joss Whedon definitely have a plan for him. And it gives him a character arc.

Angel is a little off-guard in the big city, interestingly. At first he doesn't manage to defeat Russell, but retreats. He simply isn't the big shot in LA that he is in Sunnydale. He's still a somebody, though, a "new player in town", and he wins out in the end, in a rather cool manner.

It's only the first episode, but already we're introduced to evil and mysterious law firm Wolfram and Hart, and also to Christian Kane, whose character is as yet unnamed. Even the "Senior Partners" get a mention, which surprises me. Already the format is taking shape, and we end with the formation of Angel Investigations and Cordelia, naturally, employing herself.

This first episode is much better than I remembered. I'll be honest and admit that I didn't really get into Angel until Season Three, but this is certainly a great start.