Angel 4.4: Slouching Towards Bethleham

[thebratqueen]

Decent ep. Not great, but not "Provider" either so let's take what we can get.

I really have this strong urge to sit ME down and explain to them in small words that no, really and honestly, it's blatently obvious when they're ignoring organic character arcs and plotline for the sake of bigger ideas to come.

Now for this season, knowing what those bigger ideas are, I'm okay with paying the price of admission but it's still obvious when it happens and it brings the story down.

Another thing I noticed about this ep was that it struck me as another version of First Impressions, where every single storyline revolved around the same concept. In FI the concept was that every single first impression in that episode, no matter how quick and seemingly unimportant, was wrong.

With STB the theme was trust. Every single relationship on the show had a trust moment. Some came out ahead, some failed.

I find that interesting from an academic standpoint but since I know ME deliberately does stuff like this I can't help but wonder how much of their energy went into this idea "let's do a trust episode" and not enough into smoothing out plot details.

For an ep which had a great deal of farce in it it wasn't that bad. But it would have been better if certain clunky things (the Angel/Cordy almost-kiss I'm looking right at you) had been taken out. I love farce. Done well it's hysterical. But you can't force it, and many moments ("Was I a nun?") were forced.

Again the lesson for the day is listen to your characters. Unfortunately since this is a TV show they don't have the flexibility of schedule or resources to allow for huge plot plinkage, so sometimes they do have to force the characters into a space, but even so you've got to try to make it seem as natural as possible.

Still, it was better than I expected. Credit to Skip (the man, not the demon) for a good directing job there, I think. When I read the wildfeed I was cringing at some of the scenes, but they were played better than they were summarized.

But beyond that what's to talk about? I don't even think this was an ep meant to generate talk, again beyond some possible discussion of Wes and Lilah and who has feelings for whom. A lot of people have called it a filler ep. I disagree. Filler eps don't do anything. Carpe Noctem was a filler ep - for the most part the characters ended up right back where they started. STB was a move ep. They needed to move the characters into certain places for the next things coming up. So this ep was sacrificed to do that. It wasn't a great ep, but it wasn't meant to be great either. It's just going through the necessary steps.

So - overall rating of a B. No Deep Down, but no House Always Wins either.

Next week is a Fred-centric episode written by two brand-new writers. Me? Worried? Why on earth would you think that?