Angel 5.5 Life of the Party

[thebratqueen]

Four word summary: good writing, bad direction.

That's Ben Edlund and Bill Norton respectively.

Here's the thing, what we had here was a very funny ep. Good kind of funny, not beat us over the head with Mandy funny. And funny is what Ben Edlund can do. Plus, to Ben's credit, this was the first time that I actually saw some depth to the characters. It wasn't "Bookish guy says something, Muscle bound but stupid hero makes response, action happens." like we've seen from him before.

But even so it was frustrating. The pacing was just off. I'm left at the end of this feeling like I watched a lot of clips that happened within a few seconds of each other but didn't actually mesh into a story. It's the narrative flow equivilant of me writing a sentence where I randomly remove the letters. Yeah, sure, you can see what I meant and all but damn if it doesn't look weird.

It's especially strange because some things had tension. Like we had a bit of dramatic buildup with people dying and us not knowing why. So it makes it weirder that we had zero dramatic tension on everything else. That's why I'm tempted to blame the director more than I am Ben. Ben would have been able to write in those scenes of the mysterious deaths. The director would, I think, have been responsible for trying to work within the time constraints to show the characters puzzling things out. But then on the other hand "Boy things are weird, hey Spike can you convienently tell us when this all started in under half a second? Thanks" was all dialogue. So it's a toss-up.

I've been debating the whole quick-fix understanding thing and why I don't like it. Because on the one hand I hate idiot plots (as defined by Ebert as being any plot which could be solved in two seconds if all the characters involved were not morons) but on the other I didn't like the fix being that damn fast. I think it's twofold. 1) there was no dramatic tension. At least a second or two of the characters looking like they needed to puzzle it out instead of everyone automatically knowing the answer as soon as they were asked would've helped. We don't want idiots but we do want a story. 2) If the point was that it was easy to solve, then that needed to be played up instead. Do it like last week with Wes and Gunn's reaction of "Of course" when they found out Spike was going to Hell.

Because when we do have the scenes that are leading us to a whodunit type situation, then we want the mystery solved accordingly and not a "Oh duh it's Lorne" kind of reaction. So either keep the tension and deliver a payoff, or remove it and go for the joking. This was just meh.

Although I will give a shout-out to the fact that this is the first time in forever that Wes was actually allowed to do something. I was stunned. He researched and found the answer. What were the odds?

Still, as I say, there were good bits. Gunn especially had a good tone throughout the piece, and I naturally loved the referback to s1 Wesley dancing (though Wes canon whore me would like to point out that in s2 Wes managed to dance somewhat well. Which I say for fanfic writers as in terms of knowing how to write Wes in general. I'm fine with drunken Wes dancing stupidly). It was also cute watching drunk Wes and Fred - I gotta admit "You walk ALONE!" was one of my favorite lines of the ep. Plus, thank God, we had a scene of Wes acting on his supposed attraction for Fred where he did not come off like Chester the Molester and I don't think I can sacrifice enough chickens accordingly.

Of course the flip side was Eve and OH MY GOD MY EYES.

What? What? WHAT?? For the love of chocolate and masturbation what the Hell was that? What are they even trying to do here? Sexual tension? Are you kidding me? Please tell me Lorne was saying that sarcastically. Because if we're meant to believe that there is any I want the written apology from Mutant Enemy right now.

Plus Eve continues to annoy. I don't like her Mary Sueing her way through a conversation with Angel about jerking off. I'm sorry but no. Spike could have that conversation. Judges would also allow Lorne and maybe even Gunn. But Eve? She's making cutesy comments about the characters on a meta-level that makes no sense for actual motivation for her character. Aren't I adorable style jokes are a classic hallmark of a Mary Sue and I've already bitched about this before so I'll try to hold myself back here.

See here's the thing: why? Why did Eve do that? Why did she go up to Angel's private apartment, sit on his bed, cutely lie about how she got in there while happily confessing that she had a key, then hand the key over without a fight and then go into cutesy jokes about Angel being femmy and, again, jerking off? What's going on in Eve's head? What is she that she would do this or think it would be appropriate?

I'm fine for her probably having another set of keys so it's not the giving over of the key that bugs me so much as the whole thing makes no sense. What's she gaining out of this?

Let's make a comparision. And I'll even ignore all the Lilah issues. Let's say this was Gavin. If Gavin did the exact same thing that Eve did we would at least know where he was coming from. We'd know he was doing macho posturing with Angel and showing off how he's always going to be able to do things that Angel can't keep track of - like making the keys. Start to finish, exact same dialogue, it would make sense.

But with Eve it doesn't because right now she's a nothing, and the one thing she had going for her on the cool factor was just thrown out the window tonight by the admission that she went to UC Santa Cruz. Funny line. Shame it completely destroyed the concept of "How do you know I'm either of those things?" because now we do. Unless UC Santa Cruz has been around for longer than we thought and/or Eve's had a sex change operation.

Or I suppose there's option C: she was lying and possibly that was the intent of her facial expression as she walked out the door. It's hard to say because the directing was so off. So I'll try to be fair and say that maybe in a future episode they'll clear this up more but in the meanwhile all I've got to go by is what I see and what I see is what I saw in episode one: A misplaced former student body president who thinks she's cuter than she actually is and who to all appearances is in Wolfram & Hart on the internship program with sadly fuck-all to do.

'cause here's the thing too - and I know I'm getting off on a rant here - but as long as I'm going back to episode one I've got to go back to Eve's own assertion that she has to make an impression. Okay, again I say: why?

Somebody, I forget who, responded to my comment that Eve apparently does nothing except sit around in offices waiting for people to show up with the suggestion that maybe she could teleport in when the time was right. Which is entirely possible. However Eve did not give a teleportation impression. She gave the impression of somebody who sat perched on Angel's desk until he showed up, then sat in the dark in Gunn's office until he showed up. She is, supposedly, actively making the attempt to impress an image of herself onto our gang and the image that she chose for herself is that of somebody with a severe lack of better things to do that don't involve staring at the walls. Why?

Again today. What's the imrpession she's trying to make? What was she hoping to accomplish in that scene with Angel fresh out of the shower? What image of herself was she trying to project?

And, frankly, why does she have to make an image of herself? The Archduke in tonight's ep didn't bother making impressions. He just was. He was the embodiment of the fact that if you are hot shit you don't have to brag about it. Eve made sure to tell us about it. What does that say about her?

Which really just goes to further my theory that all in all she isn't anybody powerful and in an ideal universe she's not meant to be because God knows they're not writing her that way. (Or dressing her that way either - eeesh) I want to see this season pan out where we find out that Eve was just a working nobody like Knox. Possibly a moment where she gets taken down a peg and reminded that people would actually enjoy being with her (and the audience watching her) if she didn't come off as so agressively trying to insist that we all notice how significant she is.

Random thoughts:

Angel, hon, the couch itself is actually more comfortable.

Did David cut his hair?

Bad sound yet again. There was one moment where Eve's words didn't match up to her mouth movements.

Nice little back and forth dance with Lorne and Spike in Angel's office. Shame it was irrelevant since Spike's a GHOST. (My guess? They didn't have the FX budget to immaterialize Spike after they blew it on Lorne's aggressive side)

I enjoyed seeing friend!Angel, esp. with his concern for Lorne.

Liked the depth of Lorne having to "mmmkay" himself through difficult situations. Then again I've always liked how he managed to deal with both good and evil characters equally.

Music at the beginning was distracting during the conversation with Angel. That needed to have been handled better. Again I blame the director because the conversation having a different feel to it would have made it mesh with the music more for the effect they were going for.

Interesting echo back to Couplet with Wes and Angel at the end, though hard to read given how stupid the whole non-existant sexual tension between Angel and Eve was. Still, interesting.

I like how we have this slow buildup of how the job is affecting Angel. Stupid conversation with Eve aside, clearly Angel's swallowing a lot and doing a lot of things he's not happy about. Looking at this through the eyes of the metaphor, I'm seeing a man who sold his soul to corporate life because practically speaking he had to, even though the nature of the job itself is killing him. Makes me wonder if Angel will solve this by either making the job adapt to him or by doing the equivilant of quitting corporate life at age 50 (read: end of season) to go raise goats somewhere (read: go back to helping the helpless).

I'm taking Angel's ability to block his office windows as a shout-out to me since Lord knows I need to give the boy privacy to have sex in there.

Also Lorne's Hulk self was clearly also a shout-out to me, since M-sis worked on that movie.

(What? Shut up. I make my own fun.)

Not that this is directly related to the show but since this commercial aired while it was on: who the hell does KFC think it's kidding with that "we're a health food" bullshit? Is that even legal?

It was nice seeing Spike simply being a member of the gang. Also nice seeing him actually exchange a few words with Gunn. I live in fear of them forgetting that they can pair off multiple characters (heh) and therefore we get no scenes of, say, Spike that don't involve him talking to Fred or Angel. It'd make me happy to see lots of interchanges.

obshallow: Can someone please, please get Eve a cream rinse? Her hair physically pains me.

obnitpick #1: Once they figured out that Lorne was affecting people, why didn't he tell them to stop doing what they were doing? Even just to try it to see if it would work?

obnitpick #2: Why would Lorne have told Gunn to "stake his territory"? How did that make any kind of sense in the context of the request he was making? (Unless this was meant to be foreshadowing to something later on this season - which I honestly don't know, I'm just speculating)

As always, I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff.

ETA: Oh yeah, notice how we finally pushed the timeline up to mesh with real life. We started out just a scant week from "Home", which presumably took place in the beginning of summer, then fuzzy tigered our way up to Halloween. Again this is not a nitpick, it just amuses me.