Angel commentary

[thebratqueen]

Tim, honey, pookie - I am your bitch. I adore you in all things. LET THE SLOW MO GO!!

Let me put a dissenting opinion out there by saying I can see why they did it sometimes. Some of the stunt double work was very interesting and they wanted to A) show it off and B) show how Connor is skilled enough to match Angel. Okay. But never, ever, EVER do the slow-mo talking, let alone TWICE. Tim, what were you smoking?

I think one scene and one scene alone was worth it, and even then with a caveat. Staketime plus axetime was interesting if only for the camera angles. But it should have been a little faster and should not have had Angel screaming. And it shouldn't have been the entire damn teaser.

This, by the way, is what I mean when I say I watch the eps for a lot of things. I'll notice camera angles and take pleasure in them even if the things they're shooting suck ass.

So, hum. Goodness...

Wes. Drool. Hummana. Pretty, pretty Wesley. Alexis still not paid enough.

Casting. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that Vincent looks like he could be related to Boreanez. He's even got the brow. Plus he and David actually had some chemistry. I will be very surprised if there aren't people writing Angel/Connor slash right now.

Once again Groo surprises me by being palatable. Someone referred to Groo as the Anya of Angel and I've got to say in that regard I like him. Again I enjoy his eagerness about things, and his dopey puppy like quality. I could suffer if Groo hung around, I honestly could. And boy if I hadn't heard that Groo and Lorne were dating offscreen could I tell it with the "Do you need someone to protect you?" line. Hee!

On the side of the bad there is the slowmo. And god do these guys need a lesson in fuzzy-tigering. First we had painful ep after painful ep of "We can't call Cordy because... um, we can't." and now we're getting "We can't call Wesley because... um, we can't." Don't get me wrong - I'm glad somebody is bringing up the Wes thing, but we need better dialogue than the characters bringing it up and then just staring at each other. This week's Throw Me A Line winner goes to me saying they should have put more emphasis on Gunn's comment of "I already saw Wes and he told us to fuck off, so waste of time trying to talk to him now".

As far as the overall story goes I know a lot of people didn't like it but as I said about the wildfeed this is obviously an episode that's setting up things to come. A definite letdown when I was hoping for another Forgiving, but oh well.

I know a lot of people are complaining about Angel's "we don't use violence, we talk" speeches but actually I was fine with them. Reason being? It was obvious to me that Angel was making it up. You could tell by the way he kept trying to give Connor these paternal looks, and by the way the speech was stilted in a manner that's not because Boreanez often can't act his way out of a paper bag. Tim's a good director, slow-mo aside. If Boreanez was doing a stilted Angel it's because that's what Tim wanted. So I read Angel's "we don't do violence" speech the same as his "I would never sleep with Darla" speech from last year.

I also liked seeing how violent Angel got with Connor. I think we can start to see that one of Jeff Bell's strengths is in writing violence and gore and may I just say - yay! But I liked how Connor's violent reactions definitely showed him to be Angelus's child and how Angel treated Connor in much the same way that we can all imagine Angelus treating Spike and Dru in the early years.

The Connor and Sunny storyline just left me going "Um, kay." I'm not sure why it was there, I'm not sure what it was supposed to be doing. I also had a problem with Sunny doing the "this is medicine" speech. What modern kid would think another modern kid doesn't grok the concept of drugs? She thought Connor was from Mexico (or was it New Mexico? She was mumbling) and asked if he went to movies and malls. We had no transition from that to her realizing she had to be "You Tarzan, me Jane" about it.

Wes and Lilah - I so want Wes to go evil. I want him to join W&H and become CEO within a year. He'd be so good at it. But my drooling issues aside... ;)

Bad direction on Lilah's "Oh what was that name again?" speech. Gah! WE GET IT!! Did the episode just run short this week? Is that why we kept padding it out?

I'm okay with some parts of Lilah's proposal, not so okay with others. I know a lot of people have problems with her bringing up the betrayal thing when Wes really didn't betray the gang, but my reading on that was that Lilah knew that the word betrayal was a hot button for Wes. After all she came in and reminded him that the gang is treating him like crap - in other words they've betrayed him. So she was happy to push any button that worked. I have a feeling if you asked her she'd be on board the fact that Wes didn't betray anybody.

Also props for the fact that somebody did research to find out that the Divine Comedy wasn't written in Latin or Italian. I also liked the subtle implication that when Wes said he'd read it several times, he meant in the original Tuscan (also good directing on a subtle act. How fucked up is Wes right now? He tossed the old book aside like he didn't give a crap about it.)

However as a job offer "Keep up with the betrayal because you'll end up in the last circle of Hell" lacks a certain thingness, you've got to admit. I'm wondering if the real meaning of that was supposed to be "Look how much society doesn't understand you - even this famous book thinks you should be punished. On the other hand we at W&H understand that you did what you had to do."

I agree though with whoever said that it would be interesting to find out if all of this was a mind-fuck on W&H and the fans and Wes is secretly working on a plan of Angel's or some such. Either way it's interesting to note that there are no Wesley spoilers for the last two eps. There's the rumor that he sleeps with Lilah (which is just a rumor, not a confirmed spoiler) but beyond that nobody knows. He's not even mentioned in the TV Guide summaries, for all that his is the most compelling storyline so far. It makes me think they've got something good cooked up for him. And yay!

Finally, as I said in my post about the wildfeed, it's nice to see the symmetry of Angel's out of fucking nowhere love for Cordy being matched by Cordy's out of fucking nowhere love for Angel. Allow me to say a big "Whatever".