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Post by Zarnium on Jul 2, 2017 19:08:07 GMT -8
Spike's presence is often pretty extraneous, but he does have some good material once he gets an episode to himself and his post-ensoulment behavior is more clearly contrasted with Angel's. I'd say it would be better if he was just left alone after "Chosen," but supposedly his presence was mandated by the executives, so it's at least not the writing team's fault.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 2, 2017 19:26:43 GMT -8
(For instance, I often compare elements of Angel to a show like Law and Order. But you know what? Law and Order is a fun {or at the very least, competent} show because of its relentless forward momentum. Now look at the choppy half-baked legal drama of "Conviction," which is like all the crappy jargony parts of a legal drama with none of the plus sides.) For a moment, I thought the "Conviction" you were referring to was the show with Hayley Atwell. Then I thought it might be the show with J. August Richards. Then I realized it was the Angel episode with J. August Richards. Legal dramas need to stop calling themselves Conviction, is what I'm saying. Anyway... wow, here I thought we ACPers had been a bit harsh on early S5. You're taking no prisoners, Bosqui.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Jul 3, 2017 12:25:05 GMT -8
I know Fred doesn't really have any personality to speak of. Most sex objects don't. (And that's really all she is, it's just that her appeal is calibrated towards people who think they're above sex objects.) So it's understandable that her world seems to revolve around Knoxy. But why the hell is she so devoted to Spike? She jokes that she's not a schoolgirl falling for his charms but that really is the only explanation for why she seems to be devoting her career to recorporealizing a dude she barely knows. It becomes even more noticeable once you see other shows that do put Amy Acker's considerable talents to good use, like Alias. She's just a wet blanket on Angel.
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Quiara
Grade School
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Post by Quiara on Jul 3, 2017 20:34:48 GMT -8
"Life of the Party" [5x05]Writer: Ben Edlund Director: Bill Norton Before I begin this review, it occurs to me that I should delve into Lorne's character some. I think this video analysis courtesy of one Benjamin F. Chang offers a concise explanation of Lorne's various character traits. Reading the comments on Mike's review, I chanced upon a comment by the dearly departed Pathbeyondthedark positing that Lorne is soulless and thus has the emotional depth of a dog. I'm not sure Lorne is soulless-- he fell for Jasmine after all-- but it's telling that we can argue this. But let's take it one step further: what if Lorne is a dog? Angel likes dogs, after all. Piss joke enthusiasts beware, you're in (urine) for a lot of jokes about Gunn going peepee. Also, Angel and Eve having lots of sex. And extended scenes of Wesley on the bottle in lieu of character development. (Just like Season 3!) There's also a BDSM demon guy who subsists on Dobby blood who factors in to the episode for some reason? And of course, Lorne-Hulk. I just. Who okayed this episode? Seriously, it's like if all the Tracey Forbes-penned episodes from Buffy Season 4 had a supernaturally-influenced three-way, and this is their crack baby. What the shit. I can't even. So instead of evening, I'm going to come up with my own spate of Season 5 openers. The first five episodes are focused on the principal cast: Angel, Lorne, Gunn, Fred, and Wesley. Spike never shows up. Knox exists but as a hopeless suitor to Fred rather than a serious love interest. "Conviction" has a similar plot, but Angel is isolated from his friends and we have no exposition. He's shepherded away by a gaggle of W&H flunkies and security led by Eve, who in this fantasy is not a sexy five-year-old. He finds that the entire cast sans Wesley has adapted astonishingly well to their positions-- or at least so it seems. There is a clear and concise explanation of how the memory wipe worked, given by Eve to taunt Angel and draw him under her control, since she's the only one he can freely talk to. We then have three standalones focused on our three leads, all of whom have adjusted nicely to the corporate world, or so it seems. Lorne has a farce involving W&H's public image, attempting to throw a big gala on Angel's behalf that goes haywire. Gunn has a legal drama built around a character who resembles the old Gunn-- maybe a member of his old gang?-- showing not only how much he's changed, but how much he doesn't care that he's changed. Now, the Fred/Gunn/Wesley love triangle is brought up, but this time Wesley is completely outclassed-- Gunn is her intellectual equal as well as a smooth-talker. Fred is butting heads with Knox, the displaced head of the science department, and it's obvious her staff resents being led by a girl, especially one as bubbly as Fred. This stress leads her to Eve, who begins grooming her as a protege. Wesley feels completely useless, because his knowledge is largely irrelevant in the context of W&H's vast mystical archives. He asks out Fred and is rejected b/c she's not really looking for a boyfriend at the moment, and besides, Gunn is so much smarter. Which leads to some serious self-reflection on his part, at which point he starts noticing cracks in his memories of the past couple of years... I mean, that's not awesome or anything, but surely it's better than this shit? 30/100
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Post by Jay on Jul 3, 2017 20:56:27 GMT -8
I think that "Life of the Party" was one of the few Angel episodes that Mikejer refused to let me watch with him.
Also I don't disagree with you on anything Fred that seems to be mentioned earlier. She was always frustratingly underdeveloped to me.
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Noah
Newbie
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Post by Noah on Jul 3, 2017 21:37:43 GMT -8
I think Quiara is being a bit generous.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 3, 2017 22:29:30 GMT -8
Wait, Law and Order is "fun"? I've found just about every episode I've ever watched to be an utterly formulaic bore. Seen one episode, seen 'em all.
Anyways, as you were.
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Post by Zarnium on Jul 4, 2017 3:24:07 GMT -8
I think I covered this already, but yes, Fred is a criminal waste of Amy Acker's talents. 50% of why I watched Person of Interest was just to see a show that utilized her better.
Also, I never doubted that Lorne had a soul. It's never confirmed one way or another, but he doesn't really act in a way that suggests he doesn't and no one treats him or talks about him as though he doesn't, so I don't see a reason to assume he doesn't. It's a little difficult to sort out, since Angel features a lot more "good" or "harmless" demons than Buffy, while also placing much less emphasis on the soul vs. no-soul dichotomy.
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Quiara
Grade School
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Post by Quiara on Jul 4, 2017 16:09:15 GMT -8
Wait, Law and Order is "fun"? I've found just about every episode I've ever watched to be an utterly formulaic bore. Seen one episode, seen 'em all. Fun might be the wrong word: it's kinda dry, and it is very much a formula-driven show. But it's a really, really good formula. Seriously, I get that it's not your cup of tea but the pacing on L&O is amazing.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 4, 2017 16:31:58 GMT -8
Law & Order was actually something of a prestige drama back in the early '90s. Dick Wolf designed it as an anti-serialization show, to combat the rise in serialized TV arcs that had developed during the '80s. He wanted to prove that there was still merit to completely stand-alone storytelling.
This has been today's Random TV Tidbit.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 5, 2017 15:36:48 GMT -8
Wait, Law and Order is "fun"? I've found just about every episode I've ever watched to be an utterly formulaic bore. Seen one episode, seen 'em all. Fun might be the wrong word: it's kinda dry, and it is very much a formula-driven show. But it's a really, really good formula. Seriously, I get that it's not your cup of tea but the pacing on L&O is amazing. When that show was in its heyday, I was already sick to death of traditional cop, courtroom, and hospital shows. That Season 3 of BtVS was occasionally shunted off the schedule in Vancouver due to L&O only exacerbated that.
I just found it to be a lifeless bore, way more focused on plot than character. And I hate the formula, and continue to want to get as far away from it as possible. So, yeah, different strokes...
Anyways, I haven't watched the fifth season of ANGEL in ages, so I barely remember how I responded to the first handful of episodes. I will say that even though Spike's involvement was network-mandated, I did feel there was still plenty of story to be told between Spike and Angel, certainly beyond the former just heckling the latter off in the corner. I didn't much care if it was at the expense of Fred and Gunn, because I never found them to be particularly interesting characters anyways. Though the traditional approach may be to focus on making the original core characters more engaging, as long as the characters they are emphasizing are interesting to me (as Spike was, partly because Marsters is a really good actor), I'm fine with it. I remember thinking Lineage (ep 7?) was quite strong, and by all accounts, the second half of S5 is where the show really got cooking. But if you want more of a notable female presence on the show, overall, you might be barking up the wrong tree. Of course, Acker's pretty great in the final run; I don't know if her character would still qualify as a "sex object", by your standards, when it gets to that point.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Jul 7, 2017 17:00:59 GMT -8
"The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco" [5x06] Writer: Jeffrey Bell Director: Jeffrey Bell
After four-point-twenty-five seasons of Angel, not to mention a full seven seasons of Buffy, we finally have an answer to the most pressing question raised by the Buffyverse: where the fuck are the Latinos? Now we have an answer: they were all watching a bunch of luchadores in a smoky bar while salsa music played in the distance. Glad we got an explanation on that front.
Okay, snark over. This was a pretty decent standalone, with a solid thematic through-line and atypically enjoyable fight scenes. And cultural sensitivity aside, it certainly never felt generic (a big problem of this season so far). The parallels are as abundant as they are obvious. Numero Cinco is a stand-in for Angel the hasbeen hero. He has a talisman imbued with the powers of the sun, just like Spike did. There's a recurring joke about a monster of Biblical proportions that no one remembers because everyone forgot about Jasmine. These are clever and show much more dedication to continuity than the rest of the season.
But it does remind me of why I don't especially care for this show: it's a lot more macho than Buffy ever was. It's telling that Angel is compared to a luchador here, because I can't imagine a profession more rooted in machismo. Often it feels like the show is siding with Angel the vigilante crimefighter over Angel the ennui-stricken CEO not because he's lost a sense of purpose, but because he doesn't get as many opportunities to punch stuff. I get that signing contracts doesn't make for riveting television, but as Gunn says, Angel does more good in the ten seconds he spends signing said contracts (in blood, which he barely notices because it's so abstracted-- another one of those "metaphor" things writers are wont to use) than he did in all of the past two seasons, more or less.
I know Wolfram and Hart as a concept is predicated on the idea that law firm = evil, but I think it would be very mature-- not to mention applicable to the lives of the average viewer-- for Angel to try to balance a corporate job with do-gooding. That doesn't take away from the fun of this episode, but it's a serious missed opportunity.
75/100
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 7, 2017 19:23:11 GMT -8
I'd say a construction worker job is probably more rooted in machismo, because more than a few pro wrestlers over the years were known to cross-dress and/or act effeminate. Heh.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Jul 16, 2017 18:54:20 GMT -8
"Lineage" [5x07] Writer: Drew Goddard Director: Jefferson Kibbee
Hope you don't mind a little "Ted" quote here, since that's the episode that most people think of when they're trying to find reference points for this. But I think the better comparison is with "Hell's Bells," an episode where the subtext becomes text, and unexpectedly, to the show's benefit! Despite appearing for barely twenty minutes, and not even as himself, having Roger Wyndam-Pryce onscreen for an episode retroactively explains a lot of his neuroses.
Of course, the Giles quote is relevant in other ways: this is not a subtle episode. Did you get that Wesley makes hard choices so other people don't have to, even if they resent him for it? Better have Eve, Fred, and Angel all say that out loud, just in case you missed it. It's also an episode where Fred is mostly there to put Wesley into trigger-happy protector-guy-mode, and also, there are fucking cyborg ninjas.
But I can kinda forgive this, because beyond retroactively adding much-needed depth to Wesley's character, "Lineage" has two things going for it. First, Roy Dotrice is very good at playing a stuffy patronizing Brit, a character type that was quite common on Buffy with the Watchers' Council but hasn't been seen as much on Angel; the tension between him and Wesley is palpable and is what makes most of the character beats work. The second is that while I've previously chastised this season for taking the form of a procedural but not the forward propulsion, this episode splices together a lot of genres in a way that's cohesive, well-paced, and interesting. You start off thinking it's going to be a character piece about Wesley, but then Roger gets involved and it becomes a buddy cop film, until you realize, oh wait, it's a heist, until you finally realize it was about Wesley all along.
There are some interesting points to be made about fatherhood here, and especially its antagonistic relationship with absurdism:
The Watchers' Council as a whole symbolized patriarchy, but I'd hesitate to call Roger a misogynist, and besides, Angel doesn't really care about feminism. (That would require the show to have more than one woman!) Rather, his main villainous act here is imposing his will onto another... sort of like what Angel does to his crew for Connor. Roger and Angel both impose their morals and values onto their sons by force, as did Holtz, literally grooming Angel's son in his image. This is a big no-no if one adheres to a philosophy that values choice and personal agency above all else... and it seems to be the one thing that unites the three as fathers. Which raises the very serious question: is fatherhood anathema to free will?
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I could really use some cyborg ninjas right now.
92/100
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 16, 2017 19:55:08 GMT -8
I'd previously gotten my episode titles mixed up. For some reason, I thought Lineage was the one where Angel and Spike's interactions really come to a head. But that's the next one.
This season went to winter break much sooner than most years, but the benefit of that is the stronger second half is, well, much more than half a season. I have no idea where you'll fall on the Harmony comedy episode, though: I remember thinking it was cute and amusing.
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