So let's talk about Angel

[thebratqueen]

Let me preface this by saying I love David Fury. I think he's a solid B/B+ writer and I'm glad he's apparently jumping from Buffy to join the Angel staff full time. (Maybe they can fire David Goodman to open up a space). So don't think I'm ragging on David when I talk about him telling us what the thing is. It's actually done with affection. John Woo has his doves, David Fury has "the thing". For those of you who didn't read the "How to speak TBQ in these easy steps" entry, you'll see what I mean by the thing as we go on.

Mer, on the phone last night: And then we had that guy actually pointing to Angel and saying "You! This is all your fault!" and... how did I not figure out this was a David Fury episode?

The Good

This episode actually felt better watching it than it did when reading the live feed. I'm kicking myself for not noticing who directed it, but some of the jokes played better, some of the dialogue flowed more and so on.

Also mega props to the FX dept. for their work with the bugs. In fact, let me give a belated shout-out to the FX team this season because there were many times when something in the episode could have crashed and burned a horrible, firey death if it wasn't for the FX dept. being given the budget to do things properly. The McOracle from "Loyalty" was one, the bugs were another. I would have been rolling my eyes like I was watching Queen of the Damned again if it wasn't for the bugs at least looking creepy and realistic.

Some continiuty - yay! Leave it to David Fury to remind us that Fred is a PHYSICIST!!! Sorry - didn't mean to shout but I'm trying to make sure David Greenwalt hears me. It was nice to see her actually going full-stop and saying she didn't know shit about what they were talking about. Of course this flies in the face of her being able to do anything except shut up, but I'll take believable characterization whenever it comes along.

Also props on the tiny bit of continuity with Angel and his treatment of Fred when she was infected. I liked how it took no thought for him at all to remove that water and know it was the way to torture the invisi-slug.

And, of course, they do not pay Alexis Denisof enough money. God is he a phenominal actor. F/X is rerunning Buffy season 3 right now and it's amazing to see AD act out prissy Watcher Wesley and then compare that with Scruffy Bitter Jaded Wesley from last night. I also liked the believable conclusion that if Gunn came to Wes like this, Wes would still do the right thing by Fred but make it clear that Gunn could go fuck himself without the benefit of lubrication.

The middle ground

This isn't good or bad but I've got to admit I'm tolerating the Groo. Yes the "We have been warriors together... so therefore let me tell you paint color" joke was telegraphed from miles away with huge neon signs, but the actor playing the Groo has settled into a sort of likeable goofiness, case in point his joke about "It was my mother's name" which was done in an offhand manner without beating the joke over your head. I'm vaguely (key word "vaguely") reminded of Brendon Fraser and how he can take the stupidest concept for a movie and sell it to you because God Damnit he's just so likeable and earnest in the role. I'm not saying I love the Groo, I'm not saying we had to have him on the show, but since we apparently have to have him on the show, I prefer this version of him over the stilted "My princess" shit that has come before.

Sadly though, that covers the good and the middle ground. Now we have to deal with the bad and it comes in so many forms I'll break it down individually.

The Angel and Wesley situation

Let's just get this overwith right now, shall we? What the fuck?

I haven't read anybody else's LJ entry on last night's ep yet but I feel reasonably certain that we're all on the page of what the fuck. So rather than wasting time explaining what the situation is I'm just going to leap right into my comments.

This is a David Fury ep. David Fury always tells us what the thing is. Therefore when we get a line from Angel like "I was drunk on my kid's blood" said in a tone of explanation for why Angel was acting like an asshole, I can't help but feel like we're being told this is the official explanation. "Oh he was drunk, it's not his fault."

Dear God tell me that Tim "Hi I'm Tim Minear and I'm a recovering alcoholic" Minear will beat this idea to death with a shovel in "Benediction". What the Hell? And this from David Fury, the guy who's done Numfar's Dance of "Spike isn't good he's just like a serial killer who's locked away in prison" so often his feet bleed.

Angel has killed people!!! One of them is currently in a pile in your lobby!!! HELLO??

I was fine with some of it. Fred still being there - she takes the simple solution for everything and obviously believes that Wes will come back when things get sorted out. So fine. Cordy had her line of "I've got demon DNA so I have to stick around" - fine. If you wanted to sell me on the idea that they all understood that Angel went temporarily evil again because of extreme circumstances but now he's in recovery and trying to move on so they will too - fine.

Except you didn't.

Angel very obviously isn't in recovery. He even told us he didn't feel bad. The guy just died and Angel point-blank told Lorne he'd do it again in a non-existant heartbeat.

You can't do it like this guys. He went evil with the soul. He tried to kill Wes as Angel. He's responsible for the guy in the lobby being dead and for whoever Sahjhan killed while he had a real body. AND he's not even taking responsibility. Quite frankly this makes him worse than Spike. At least Spike has never claimed to be one of the good guys. He does evil shit when he can because he likes it and if that surprises you then maybe you should have paid closer attention to the part where he was a soulless evil vampire.

Angel on the other hand is pretending to be one of the good guys. So either he's hiding how dark he went (like he did when he didn't tell anybody about Darla) in which case good and please make this a clearer plot point, or everybody in the AI gang knows it and apparently doesn't care.

WHAT??

I assume you're all on this page with me by now so I'm going to stop ranting and move on to the other things to rant about.

Why is Cordy not more sympathetic to Wesley? I'm fine with her being sympathetic to Angel, especially because she wasn't there to actually see Angel snap and try to kill Wes so it's believable to me that she'd be in denial about how bad that was and fuzzy tigering her way through that by saying Angel had it rough.

However Cordy can be sympathetic to Angel and Wesley both and she wasn't. She point blank said she didn't give a shit about Wes's feelings. Why? No, seriously, why? Ditto for Gunn. The one person in that office who has a legitimate beef against Wes is Lorne, and Lorne's already forgiven him even if he's not adding him to his Christmas card list. Beyond that the only "crime" Wes committed was not letting the rest of the gang in on the loop and you know what? He was the leader and as the leader he doesn't have to.

But I'm not even going to get into the argument of whether Wes not telling them is excusable because I want to swing the spotlight back on the fact that not telling the gang was Wes's only crime. He was trying to save Connor. He wasn't stealing Connor to put him into white slavery, he wasn't giving him over to Holtz, he wasn't snapping the kid's neck and putting him back in Angel's bed (TBQ waves hi to wolfling), he was saving the kid's life.

Wes was trying to save Connor, Angel has killed people as of today and not cared.

Seriously - I'm not joking - explain to me why Wes is the bad guy. At the very least throw me a fucking bone and explain why Wes is the only bad guy.

Cordy

Hands up, how many of you thought Charisma was wearing that bandanna over her head to cover up her ugly hair don't? Yeah I thought so.

On the plus side Cordy wasn't as character raped as she was last week with her unnecessary stupidity and out-of-character win-one-for-the-Gipperism. However if they're trying to sell me on a Cordy that A) sides with killer Angel over Wes and B) might even be in love with this guy - oh fuck you. The real Cordelia would never do that. Or if she would it would again be a - say it with me gang - PLOT POINT. Show her feeling guilty, show her feeling ashamed, show her being angry with herself for not being able to stop her feelings about a SADISTIC KILLER and maybe we've got a deal. But not this "I'm by his side no matter what" shit. God! They're making me point to Buffy/Spike for believable story development over here! How sad is this?

And oh look - Cordy's demon powers. You know I was rolling my eyes during the preview because it's just so fucking predictable that when Cordy's demon powers emerge they're pretty. Yeah, no horns or a tail, she just floats sometimes and turns into a beautiful being of pure light. I am so buying the assertion that this demon choice was harder for her than keeping the visions.

You know as a quick side-note I really hope these demon powers having an ugly side becomes a story. Like do it next year or something. Start up Angel/Cordy because obviously we're going to, and then sometime next year have her face and body become covered in scales and do a story about Angel loving her anyway or some shit. Something! Anything!

I liked the fact that when the light started she was scared. If they'd kept that maybe I wouldn't be rolling my eyes so hard at this. But then we cut to her in the lobby bouncing and being called a goddess. ARGH! Writers take note - herein lies rampant Mary Sueism. A) Her power is pretty B) Her power was the deus ex machina to save the day C) Her power was FAR more powerful than it needed to be and D) Her power didn't have any negative effects on her whatsoever.

Show her tired, show her scared, show her shakey - Something!

Plus what the Hell? What did it do? What was it? The entire building lit up. Um - through the walls??? She was in the ktichen. There were walls and closed doors and floors between her and all the windows. So either we've totally forgotten the fact that light doesn't travel through solids, or we're trying to say that her light was so bright that it did. In which case why wasn't the AI gang at least temporarily blind? Why wasn't Angel, creature of the night who was right there temporarily blinded?

And how did this stop the slug problem? The slugs didn't react negatively to light. They didn't run from it whenever the gang flicked a switch on and we were in fact told that the better solution for the problem was to turn the lights off (Yes, I know, to see them but the point is this is the direction that the narrative led us in. If you want to give us light=weapon in some way then show the slugs reacting to light in response to the flashlights or something.) So what did she do? And again how did the light affect the slugs that were hiding in pipes or the walls? Sigh.

Wolfram & Hart

Interesting banter, kinda wondering what the point was. I'm holding off on calling it a complete waste of time though because I suspect that this is leading to upcoming storylines. I'll give props to Stephanie R. for her handling of the spider though. If that was her hand ;)

Gunn

Do I even need to explain what was wrong with Gunn?

The Host

I see that we're continuing the trend of muting the Host's outfits. Sigh. I've heard rumors that Andy will be in the credits next season and God I hope they're true, but at the same time I can't help but wonder if making the Host less flamboyant was a WB edict as a part of that, again esp in light of Andy giving interviews where Lorne's sexuality is supposed to be "ambiguous". Yeah and also hidden, apparently. Not that we're homophobic. Stuff like this almost makes me wish Joss had more of a role with Angel. We really need one of his classic "I can't do this at all? Well then I'll do something worse in extremes" reactions here. Like you want to make the Host's outfits more normal? Fine, but then he's going to spend every episode talking about how he sucked off his boyfriend the night before.

The thing.

Ahh, David Fury and the thing. I think I lost track of how many times he did it. Just off of the top of my head I can remember "I want everything back the way it was" "This is your fault!" "I did what I had to do" Cordy's oft-repeated comments about being a demon, and much, much more. Marti Noxon, take note - David's episode here used a metaphor to show the consequences of Angel's actions with the black magic. This was a plausible metaphor because it stayed magic related. David did not suddenly end the episode with Angel getting into a car crash because that has nothing to do with it. Yes, your metaphor is related to the thing, but the metaphor and the thing can never meet.

Msc

How many kidlets do you think are currently writing Groo/Fred stories?

Throw me a line!

We had two TMaL contenders this week. The first is a hard one because you've got to accept the stupid premise that Gunn would totally turn his back on Wesley. However once you're there, here's the problem and the line:

The problem: Fred comments that it's weird seeing Angel at Wes's desk. Gunn launches into a speech about how to him it's "right". This flies in the face of the entire series wherein Gunn never liked or trusted Angel and has had even less reason to do so now.

The line: "Yeah I know Angel's been a little whacked lately but you know what? Man put his soul on the line for me. I'm willing to cut him some slack."

The next one isn't as hard to swallow.

The problem: When all is lost thanks to the invisi-slugs, Cordy's demon powers emerge, create a near sunburst of light and.... we have no idea what that does to solve things.

The line: When Cordy and Angel return to the lobby, one of them could have said "Yeah those little creepy-crawlies just shriveled up like you put salt on 'em!"

Sigh. I'm sure there's more, but I've talked enough for now. Out to you guys!