It's Been Ages Since I Had a Good Comshok

Angel Season 2 Part 2

So when we left off in part 1, we were watching Angel slowly lose it and turn to the dark side. Part 2 is unusually structured, since the big climax of the 'Angel going bad' plot thread comes only a few episodes in, rather than at the end of the season as you would expect.

I've noticed that both Buffy and Angel have similar structures for the seasonal story arc. There's always a big climax shortly into the second half of the season, for example in Buffy season 5 it was the death of Buffy's mum. In that case it was something that wasn't related to the main arc, but which altered the direction of the story thereafter. Angel season 2 kind of reverses this scenario, as the main story arc is actually ended in the mid-season climax, and they start a whole new 4-episode arc for the end of season climax. This confused me the first time around (when I was watching it on TV), but this time I think I understood a bit more what the writers were up to.

I never quite bought Angel's decision to turn away from the path he was on and go back to his friends in 'Epiphany'. Even though it makes sense that having sex with Darla didn't turn him evil (since she didn't make him 'truly happy') his emotional about-turn is a bit too sudden and convenient for me. What I'm saying is that while I buy the reason behind it, I think they rushed the execution a bit and they should have spent a bit more time on his decision not to give in to despair. Instead we see several episodes of Angel trying to earn back the trust and friendship of his former allies, which is OK but I thought it missed the real point.

The last few episodes are plot-wise unrelated to the rest of the season. The characters discover portals to another dimension and travel there, where they confront a host of demons both metaphorical and physical. As this was the second time I'd watched this stuff, I saw how what happened to Angel there reflects what was going on in the earlier episodes thematically. His demon and human aspects are more clearly separated in the other dimension than they were on Earth, so when he goes demon his evil side is well and truly exposed for all to see. However despite this, Fred (a new character who has 'innocence' written all over her) recognises the hero in him and judges him "a good man", tidily answering the unresolved issues left over from the earlier story arc.

They also try and do similar things with the other three characters. Wesley and Gunn's stories (Wesley learns to be a leader, Gunn accepts that he's left his former crew behind) are a bit thin and uninteresting. Cordelia's is entertaining enough, but seems to me to be one last attempt to completely separate her current strong-willed competent character from the self-centred ditz she was back on Buffy.

While I think they dropped the ball a bit when it came to the character development, the writing is still pretty good and this collection of episodes marks the occasion when I could finally say that Angel attained the honour of being almost as good as Buffy.

Best episodes: 'Disharmony' - definitely the funniest of the collection, with both Harmony the bimbo vampire cameoing from Buffy, and the baddies being a gang of vampires led by a pyramid scheme promoter/ self-improvement guru.
'Reprise' - the last episode of Angel in crazed vigilante mode, has cool climactic encounters with both Darla and the evil lawyers, and some very sad scenes involving Detective Lochley, who I think leaves the show shortly after this, which is a pity because she was one of my favorite characters. Her relationship with Angel was convoluted, but still always logically consistent. There were many characters who disliked and mistrusted Angel, but she was one of the only ones whose motivations really made sense.

Bad episodes: 'Happy Anniversary' - a scientist is in danger of involuntarily ending the world with his time freezing machine. Yawn. Although I did find the scene where the demons surreptitiously help him with his physics equations quite interesting, it gave me all sorts of cool ideas about scientific knowledge among demons.

DVD extras: Again, I haven't listened to the commentaries, but the rest is very average.