Angel 4.18 Shiny Happy People

[thebratqueen]

The Good:

I liked Angel's coat.

[long silence]

Um... Gina Torres did not fulfill my fear that she would be as wooden and incapable of reading a line as she was on Firefly?

[longer silence]

Yeesh.

Okay, here's the thing, I was bored. Seriously, phenominally, screaming "END!!!!!" at the TV bored. This was possibly the longest hour of TV for me since we were forced to watch an ep of nothing but Buffy and Riley getting it on. Eye surgery done without the benefit of some sort of pain-dulling medication feels like it takes less time than this.

BUT - I'm not sure how they could have done it differently.

Obviously we've got big, horking plot development here. And you've got to admit on a fundamental level it's nice to introduce this concept of an actual Power walking around on the show and combine it with a long-held fan suspicion that not all Powers that Be/Were were actually what we would call "good". Lord knows many of us have been thinking about that for a while now, and we're finally getting that in canon. So... sort of yay.

Plus once you've introduced the whole from beneath you it slouches idea, you wanna go whole hog and produce an AntiChrist (since that was the religious imagery that they started with anyway). So, props to the show for doing some follow through. They suggest AntiChrist, they give us AntiChrist. Can't blame 'em there.

Once you've got the whole Power-as-AntiChrist thing, you're gonna have exposition. And an AntiChrist isn't really useful unless it can do AntiChristy things so we need the brainwashing and the devotion and blah blah ding dong. Plus this sets up the conflict later (and here's me talking about obvious future plot points) when the gang will literally be fighting the world and that's interesting. So, again, no way I can see around this. Lots of exposition, the need for that mindless devotion, the need for the plot points - in full agreement.

But MAN was this dull.

Here's where I think it failed:

1) It broke the first rule of AUs (and Jasmine is essentially setting up an AU on the world itself, really, b/c she's changing everyone's reality): Make sure we recognize the characters.

Angel wans't Angely. Wes wasn't Wesy. Lorne was kind of himself but that was about it. So we had an hour of all the characters talking as though they'd just ODed on lithium and doing nothing that remotely resembled themselves. Who cares? I was fine for Jasmine not doing much emotion-wise since she was supposed to have a whole zen/Christlike thing going, but what was the excuse for the characters? Brainwash them into worshipping her, fine. But keep THEM. Because "the characters are brainwashed into being devoted to her" is a concept that gets conveyed in less than a sentence, case in point, so you gotta pad the rest of the hour out somehow.

We couldn't change some of Angel's cow-like dialogue into something interesting? Let's hear how Catholic boy has been brainwashed into putting this into his own beliefs. Let's get more about how he's so eager for forgiveness (instead of the quickie bit about why he's not getting perfect happiness, with a possible side-order of foreshadowing). How about Wes? We know he's got strong beliefs about good and evil and fighting on the right side therein. He can't toss us a few lines about how this is affecting him personally?

You see where I'm going with this? Everybody reacted the same so we had no character we could care about and moreover we're redundant on the information. And this is esp frustrating during a year in which the gang has been getting in touch with their dark sides. It would be an interesting plot point to show them reacting to Jasmine's unconditional love after all they've done in that year. Why aren't we exploring that? What a great one-two punch it would be to show them accepting that forgiveness only to find out that she was evil. Where is that? Is it next week? If so, why not this week? I'm totally at a loss here.

2) Fred was not the character to pick.

I'm fine for the fact that we don't know why Fred and that guy were able to see the truth as I assume we'll get the exposition on that next week. But Fred as savior? We don't care. And this is coming from someone who likes Fred this season.

Here's the thing - there is no narrative interest in Fred being the one to do this. This isn't connecting to anything she's done in the past. It's not putting closure on anything or adding a nuance to something. If anything, it's reminding us of the wrong thing, namely that she's the odd man out which is not something you want to do when she's only just proven to have some kind of unique role on the show instead of the girl who can do everything except shut up. And don't jeopardize that by making her Mary Sue girl now because that's pushing her luck.

And again - there's no narrative interest in Fred being the protagonist here. Where's the conflict? Thanks to the character-erasing brainwashing we're not getting it from Wes and Gunn hating her and if we assume they'd keep that trend no matter who they picked then we need to pick a non-brainwashed character who brings their own narrative conflict to the table. How's about Gunn (tie it in with his leadership vs muscle issues raised in Players, tie it in to him having to redeem himself after killing the professor - hell, tie it in to the fact that he's black if you've got nothing else to put on the table)? Wes (redemption for past acts, yet again having to fight with Angel and his friends over what he perceives is right)? Hell, even Lorne would be more interesting since he'd have those "I am a demon yet I'm fighting to keep my friends" issues.

Who knows? Again, maybe next week we'll get the details that we're missing but right now all we've got is this week and I'm bored, and all the ho,yay shout-outs in the world aren't going to fix that for me.

I'm fine for the fact that this is all part of an arc and therefore I have to be patient and watch it unfold. That's why I'm not really getting into the religious imagery that was all over the ep - I don't think it's fair to draw conclusions until we see where this is going. But regardless of arcs each individual ep has to be interesting and this was not an interesting ep. If I was showing season 4 to a friend I'd easily skip over it because anything they needed to know would've been covered in the last ep, namely Jasmine is an evil being who manages to look pretty and make people worship her.

So - disappointing. Not as painfully so as The House Always Wins or Orpheus, but dull all the same. Here's hoping the next few weeks are much better b/c this is such a far-out concept we need good writing, directing and acting to help stick the dismount and this ep was missing 2 out of 3.