The Reactionary Take of Temporada Cinco

"Conviction" [5x01]
Writer: Joss Whedon
Director: Joss Whedon


Previously on Angel: in the last five minutes of "Home," Angel makes an "executive decision" and sells the Fang Gang out to Wolfram and Hart. Strangely, not only do they all seem to consent to this, but they also seem to forget who Connor is in the process! This might seem odd, given the lack of explanation. Was there a mystical whammy involved? Were they all brainwashed? Why would Angel of all people consent to this?? Luckily, "Conviction" offers a potential explanation, because minutes into the episode, it becomes obvious that Angel has gotten a lobotomy.

In one of the few moments where Joss Whedon's directoral presence is felt throughout "Conviction", much of act one is dedicated to a long, cutless take of the Fang Gang acclimatizing to W&H. We see Wesley, back to happily collaborating with the gang and still desperately crushing on Fred, but otherwise retaining his gritty S4 patina. Fred has been retooled as an attractive yet ditzy young career woman whose ostensible amorality is overshadowed by her cloying cutesiness. Hearkening (read: regressing) back to the days of yore, they are once again relegated to a love triangle, as Fred now making heart eyes at the affably dorky Knoxy. Wesley then meets Gunn, and they squabble over feng shui and blah blah blah and we pan out to see Lorne, whose ethical scruples about working for a multidimensional paranormal paralegal cabal are outweighed by his desire to kibitz with celebs and pick out furniture. We then see Angel get out of an elevator and meet up with Wesley and Gunn, loudly declaring his intent to take out W&H from the inside out!

I synopsize in such detail because there's a lot to take in. Okay, that's a lie, the main thing of note is that the character dynamics are back to how they were circa "Fredless," except minus Cordelia. But mostly, I just want to delay talking about Eve.

Ok. So, Eve. In theory, Eve is a fascinating quasi-antagonist in the vein of Lilah Morgan, personally connected to the senior partners and pointing out hard truths the Fang Gang is unwilling to acknowledge. In practice, Eve is an attractive yet ditzy young career woman whose ostensible amorality is overshadowed by her cloying cutesiness. And she gets some of the worst dialogue in the entire series.

Holy shit. And this isn't even the worst line in the episode.

She's just awful in so many ways, and yet the episode seems unaware that her antics are cloying and not clever. See, she makes a funny joke about how she's named Eve, like that Eve, get it, and she tosses Angel an apple because she's so self-aware about how's she's a lady in red with her legs crossed, tempting our heroes to the dark side with her feminine wiles. Except... didn't this show have an episode two seasons back where they point out the misogyny inherent in invoking Eve-the-temptress as a trope?

Now, far be it from me to accuse Angel of sexism. (What am I, some sort of feminist critic??) But Eve is an amalgamation of cliched feminine archetypes which run the gamut from infantilizing to outright misogynist, with no actual character traits, and not even the benefit of a Stephanie Romanov to make her shit dialogue soar. Although, honestly, I'm not sure even Stephanie Romanov could convincingly ask "what would you like passing through my lips?" Heck, I'm glad that Morena Baccarin didn't get the part; Eve's dialogue was about as nuanced as the firefly episode about the space hookers. Girl deserves better than that.

But wait, there's more! Harmony is back! How exciting! Not merely the soulless cultist we left behind in Season 2, she's now an attractive yet ditzy young career woman whose ostensible amorality is... you know. She is fun, though.

I've refrained from mentioning the plot of the episode, not because it is awful, but because it is boring. This might seem like an odd reason to single "Conviction" out, because Seasons 3 and 4 were full of boring episodes with dumb plots, even ignoring the stinkers like "First Impressions" and "I Fall to Pieces" scattered throughout seasons 1 and 2. But, you know, even something crappy like "The House Always Wins" had what makes Angel (and every Whedon show) special-- a genre mashup. Outside of Angel not using his windpipe, "Conviction" seems to eschew the supernatural entirely after the first act, turning the show into a drab procedural. I mean, honestly, mystical window dressing aside, the third and fourth acts are entirely built around a bomb threat and the world's shittiest Law and Order episode. Not that the attempts to add color to the Corbin Fries stuff work, because Fries himself is so cartoonish that it goes from dumb to perversely funny to dumb again. Oh, and they don't actually defuse the bomb, they'll do that offscreen a couple episodes later because of course they do. And there's an entire plot about Angel's SWAT team, which then tries to kill him because... um... uh...

And Spike shows up because why the hell not.

Booooooooooo.

40/100

Aw, thanks Bean.

Watched the second episode (I can't remember the name, to give you an idea of its quality) and "Untouched 2: Lycanthropic Boogaloo." Were they good? The answer may surprise you!

(Actually, I thought they were both awful, so, um, no surprise there)

Oh, dear, I'm only now realizing that it's been nearly five years since I reviewed "Just Rewards."

Way to make me feel old, Quiara.

"Just Rewards" [5x02]
Writers: Ben Edlund and David Fury
Director: James A. Contner


Angel has lost its purpose.

Weirdly enough, the clearest sign of this is not Spike's nonstop heckling of how Angel has been reduced to making boardroom calls, nor the random insertion of Spike into the narrative to begin with. No, it's a little line of dialogue espoused by the monster of the week, expressing sympathy for Spike's


For a split second, Spike's apparition starts looking less like a transparent S1-style ratings grab (e.g. "In The Dark") whose incorporeality is more than a plot device meant to reduce Spike to pithy quippage with no tangible impact on the plot. Suddenly we realize that in his sojourn over to Angel, Spike has mutated into a liminal character.

As you will recall, throughout Season 2 I would refer to refer to the liminality of the Fang Gang, how everyone on Angel's side was stuck between two worlds. Spurred on by the parallel drawn in "Are You Now..." and the racial subtext throughout "Hero," I'd often refer to Angel as a tragic mulatto story, where the psychology of the protagonist is defined largely by their struggle to conceal, compartmentalize, or come to terms with a dichotomous background. Most of our regulars is stuck in such a conflict: Vampires in Buffyverse lore are a hybrid between human and demon, Doyle is "half-demon on his mother's side" and hides it to score with Cordelia, who also becomes half-demon in "Birthday." You also have Gunn the cultural mulatto, Fred and Lorne who each have one foot on Earth and the other in Pylea... etc. Angel the show is about coming to grips with this, and having a healthy relationship with one's dichotomous background.

At least, it is during Seasons 2 and 3. Sometime either before or during Season 4, all the interesting contradictions are erased. Fred no longer has to deal with the disconnect between her Earthly scientific background and spending five years in Xena: Warrior Princess; now she's cute science girl! Gunn's struggle to navigate between his two gangs is replaced by some half-assed plot about "being the muscle" or something? Anyway, where are we in Season 5?


Well, it seems we've evolved from sympathy towards the liminal character towards viewing them as predatory infiltrators. Uh... what? Seriously, what the hell. Setting aside the metaphors of Season 2, how does Angel-- a demon who passes as human-- say something like this with a straight face?

It would be unfair to dock points here just because "Just Rewards" doesn't comply with my pet lens. Luckily, I can instead dock it for being an overall piece of shit.

Being the twelfth and final season of the combined Buffyverse, we have plenty of episodes we can compare "Just Rewards" to. The double fakeout here reminds us of "Enemies," or possibly the B-plot in "Players." Spike being neutered against his will hearkens back to "Doomed." And of course, being season 5 episode 2 reminds us of "The Real Me," which also had to introduce a character inserted into the story in the last few seconds of the season premiere. The main thread connecting these four episodes is that they are not exactly Buffyverse classics, but they're all unfairly maligned bordering on good. And they provide useful points of comparison. To wit:

"Enemies" and "Players" used their fakeouts to expose a major character's duplicity, and in the case of the former, to give us a glimpse into Faith's psyche and fantasies. But even "Players" understood that the mark is the real focus of the episode, because they're the one that isn't acting; hence why we describe it as a Gunn-centric episode, not a Gwen-centric one. "Just Rewards" is built around a con that is 1. not surprising and 2. has a shallow villain as the mark, meaning the episode has zero long-term relevance. Which would be fine if it was thematically on-point, but, uh, we've been over that.

Also note that Spike is not given any time to interact with the rest of the cast! "The Real Me" had a minimal-bordering-on-nonexistent plot so that we could get to see how Dawn fits into the character dynamics. This episode does not have that-- Spike has some interactions with Fred at the very end, but for the most part he's confined to haunting Angel. We know that Spike doesn't like Angel, damnit! Tell us something new about the guy! Oh, and he still doesn't care about Harmony.

The main thing the episode has going for it is that some of the gore is rather funny-- bucket-o-lawyer, for instance, or Angel killing the butler with a teaspoon. But when I'm singling out Bucket-O-Lawyer as a highlight of the episode, you know we're in a dire sitch.

40/100

Don'tcha love when you sit down to watch a horror comedy, only to find a horror episode that isn't scary and a comedy episode that isn't funny? It's like, ironic or whatever.

Isn't something that is on the surface one thing but on closer inspection is in fact the opposite of that one thing the textbook definition of situational irony?

My main problem with "Just Rewards" is that it is boring as hell. I really don´t care for the episode. For me, one of the worst of season five and the whole series.