Angel 4.3: The House Always Wins

[thebratqueen]

Memo
To: David Fury
From: TBQ
Re: Your episode.

Dear David. You are working in a medium we like to call "television". This thing involves both sound and pictures. While we appreciate your trying to accomodate those members of the audience who are somehow tuning into the show via radio, really, honestly, you don'thave to narrate everything we just saw via the dialogue.

Cheers and thanks a lot.

Sigh.

B. I'll give it a B. The Wes scene kicked ass, of course (and I'll take the Vegas odds that it was written by someone else anyday). Liked Angel narrating over Connor. And the concept of the gang doing a road trip to Vegas had lots of fun potential.

Hide in plain sight spoilers still abounded which was nice, and the Lorne stuff was okay.

But beyond that... meh.

Fault here lies square with Fury. This was just not well written.

Don't get me wrong. Fury has done some fine work. Disharmony, for starters. But boy needs an editor who's not afraid to use a red pen.

Some of Fury's hallmarks: telling us what the thing is. AKA every fucking line out of Fred's mouth. Boy was it bad in this episode. Pardon me as I make a sculpture in the form of the words "WE GET IT" and send it to Fury's house. I was half-waiting for the moment of Fred saying "This is Vegas, a place where gambling occurs. Gambling is when you wager money in order to...." Gah! We're watching the show! We don't need this narrated for the benefit of the blind! Move on!

Another hallmark: funny over sense making or characterization. Granted, Mere Smith is much worse at this, but painful running gags like Angel's name-dropping would be one such example. Granted, I wouldn't have minded this if it was far more clearly Dork!Angel doing it, but it was handled so badly it came across as serious at first so I was too busy calling no way over the continuity errors of Angel's Are You Now backstory over what he was saying.

Also, IMO, it's way too clear when Fury's got a problem with his material. He doesn't like Fred, he doesn't grok the constant presense of demons on the show and he obviously doesn't have any kind of handle on Gunn. Now in and of itself these are not bad things - for example, Tim Minear can't stand Fred either. But that shouldn't be obvious in the text. You hate Fred? Fine. But we're stuck with her onscreen so fix her and make her tolerable. Don't just leave her hanging out there because you don't like her. Because now she's annoying and wasiting screen time.

Plus - a nitpick. I won't this against Fury as much as the other stuff b/c I realize this is a me thing. But if you're doing an episode about casinos, please try to educate yourself about how they work. I won't call myself an expert but I know enough to know that what we had here was completely nonsensical and nothing like how real casinos work. Because when you don't I start calling no way on the little stuff, and when I do that it makes me call no way on the big stuff, like the entire concept of how, by definition, can you steal a destiny?

But again - that's me being nitpicky.

Like I said - on the whole, a B ep. Vegas and road trip fun, Dom!Wes which is always nummy, and a couple of nice moments. But other than that - meh. I just couldn't care enough about it.

Here's hoping next week is better. And that Angel burns that shirt.