Angel Feature from FofR v3.0

An old Angel fea­ture I once wrote:
Angel Sea­son 4 has finished. Well if you are Ame­ri­can or you down­load it off the net it has.

My conc­lu­sion? Bri­lliant. Not an artis­tic show, far from it in fact, nothing to the stan­dard of the movies I enjoy, but as a TV Show aimed at teens goes, it comes out pretty darn good.

I have long been a follo­wer of the Buffy Series — follo­wing it “as I have grown”. Only recently have I follo­wed the Angel series as well (sea­sons 3 & 4).

Series Four Synop­sis:
Angel res­cued from Ocean, Cor­de­lia comes back form above.
Lorne is saved from LA and then a big beasty demon shows up.
Ange­llus arri­ves, Faith comes along and things all get pretty messy.
That’s all Im saying, I don’t really like to give any spoilers.

I have just watched 4x22 Home, the last of the series. And I am rather impa­tiently wai­ting for the start of Sea­son 5 in the autumn… which looks like it could be mighty mar­ve­lous. Series Fina­les can often be pretty pants (Dark Angel :cough:) and having seen 4x21 and the events that had occu­rred I pretty much thought, “What Now” and was sure the final epi­sode would be a cop out. I was wrong (which is rare), the epi­sode was great, truly sho­wing how the cha­rac­ters have been deve­lo­ped and what lies in store for them in the future.
Angel as a whole is witty with some fan­tas­tic story­li­nes, often not fea­si­ble, but still fan­tas­tic. Any sci-fi fan should enjoy watching this after they have got­ten to know the regu­lars pretty well.

Angel: “How are you fee­ling?“
Faith: “Like I did mush­rooms and got eaten by a bear.”

“After three years of living in Sunny­dale, figh­ting along side his girl­friend Buffy, Angel moves to Los Ange­les to tell the tale of a vam­pire with a soul, see­king redemp­tion after many years of killing inno­cents. Aided by a few old friends and new, Angel must con­ti­nue to fight the dark for­ces that Los Ange­les has to offer. Only then, will he be for­gi­ven for all the pain he has cau­sed and some­day become human.

Spin the bottle (4x06) Epi­sode Review:
Gunn: “Oh, good. Sym­bols on the floor. That always goes well.” 

I loved this epi­sode so much that I didn’t even mind that it was part two of “Tabula Rasa.” I have no objec­tion to something being done again if it’s done this well. Retur­ning all of the cha­rac­ters to their tee­nage per­so­nas was ins­pi­red. Trust Joss Whe­don to think of such a thing. 

It was great seeing smart-ass Cor­de­lia back in the saddle again; couldn’t we keep her this way? She must have been six­teen or youn­ger, because Cor­de­lia met Angel at six­teen and she didn’t know him here. (Did you notice that the first thing Cor­de­lia said when she saw Angel was “Hello, salty good­ness?” That was the same thing Cor­de­lia said when she saw Angel for the first time back on BtVS.) 

It made per­fect sense, Wes figu­ring out (erro­neously) that they were being tes­ted a la Buffy’s eigh­teenth birth­day. Ale­xis Deni­sof pro­bably had a ball retur­ning to his old cha­rac­te­ri­za­tion of Wes­ley as prissy, clumsy head boy watcher-in-training (or as Cor­de­lia called him, “head cheese.”) I just loved the acci­den­tal emer­gence of his con­cea­led, um, wea­pons in particular. 

One of my abso­lute favo­rite sce­nes was when Wes­ley was duct-taping Lorne to the lobby sofa. Gunn: “I say we cut his head off.” Wes­ley: “Thank you very much, Marie Antoi­nette.” Gunn: “What you call me?” Cor­de­lia: “Hey, hey, you two wanna pause the homoe­ro­tic buddy cop ses­sion long enough to explain this? Woo­den sta­kes? A guy with horns?” 

Even Fred and Gunn were con­sis­tently delight­ful here, with Fred trying to score weed, tal­king about alien abduc­tions and govern­ment cons­pi­ra­cies, and Gunn back in his first year dis­trust­ful vampire-hunter per­sona. (It was also touching and sad in the begin­ning when grown-up Gunn was tal­king about just being the muscle. Gunn is afraid of losing Fred to Wes­ley, and I’m star­ting to think he might be right.) 

Angel’s Liam was very young and uncer­tain, pro­bably from before he began rebe­lling against his father. I thought Angel being una­ble to make him­self speak with an Irish accent was a total hoot. That morphing scene in the bath­room where he figu­red out he was the vam­pire they were all hun­ting was also pri­ce­less, and I loved the fake-out with the cross. (Although I thought the way Fred ran the cross over her­self like a metal detec­tor was even funnier.)

Wes­ley: “As far as evil plans go, it doesn’t suck.”

Lorne: “Do we fight sna­kes?” Angel: “Only if they’re giant. Or demons. Or giant demons.”