I was thinking after 'Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?', (up there with 'Never Kill a Boy on the First Date' as most justifiably acronymable episode title), about the beginnings of Seasons.
Buffy:
Season One: Welcome to the Hellmouth/ The Harvest
It's fine, but Joss admits he doesn't know much about directing at this point. There's a lot of ground to cover and establishing to do.
Season Two: When She Was Bad/ Some Assembly Required
Moderate followed by mediocre. The climax of this season is my favourite, but it sure had a slow start.
Season Three: Anne/Dead Man's Party
Anne was a story that needed telling, but the separation between the largely irrelevant Scooby Gang story and the oddly sagging Buffy in LA story left it a little undercooked. I ought to say a word for Dead Man's Party, which has been on some people's Bottom 10 list, but in my opinion is classic Marti Noxon angst.
Season Four: The Freshman/Living Conditions
I love 'The Freshman', largely because it relates well to my life. 'Living Conditions' is perfectly fine but a little tedious.
Season Five: Buffy vs Dracula/Real Me
The first amusing but apart from Dracula's repetition of Tara's line, monumentally pointless. The second interesting but lacking a touch plotwise.
Season Six: Bargaining
Don't like second half of Bargaining; depressing, slow and unfunny.
Angel:
Season One: City of.../Lonely Hearts
City of is a good premiere. Lonely Hearts had a few good moments, but suffered again from Furyitis.
And so we come to Judgement and AYNOHYEB, and I think to myself: truthfully, setting aside thoughts that Buffy is pretty much always superior, has there been a better Mutant Enemy first two in a Season? And, a tad reluctantly, I came to my conclusion.
No.
I read Rob's 'Get it Done' review, and I'd like to be able to convey about the same level of excitement with these two, but don't have great faith in my ability. But then, we may be brothers, so perhaps it's in the genes. Here goes...
2.1 'Judgement'
Part of the reason this is one of my favourite season-openers is that, unlike virtually every season of Buffy, the groundwork for the premiere was done at the end of the previous Season. Because AI's 'Shanshu' episode was, while scary, not apocalyptic, there was no season arc winding up to breaking point. So at the end of Season One, with the (distinctly average) 'War Zone' and 'Blind Date', we are introduced properly to Gunn, Lindsay and Lilah. And then we are left with a Greenwaltian cliffhanger, (because Joss 'doesn't do cliffhangers'), of Darla in her cage.
As a result of this, seeing Gunn, Lindsay and Darla, having the introduction of Lorne, the street bum of Merle, AND the major plot of the episode isn't overload. And that's a pretty mean feat. Because this episode is packed to the rafters with moments where you think 'That's an interesting development!', and also with moments where you think: 'Only Greenwalt could have written something that quirky'. Let me expand a little.
Summer hiatus. In Buffy, after the very first episode, we always see a scene of what we expect first. Willow and Xander being bored in Season Two, slayage sans Buffy in Season Three, Slayage and course choosing in Season Four, nocturnal slayage in Season Five, Willow-orchestrated slayage in Season Six, Buffy as Mother Slayage in Season Seven. Pretty much all of them subvert the simple demon-killing of the show in one way or another, but also, all of them re-inforce the primary tenet. Now, if you will cf (how's that for an unexpected verb?!) the beginning of 'Judgement':
A disconcerting green-skinned red-eyed demon, who we have never seen before sings 'I Will Survive'. And there I am, just sitting ready for a big serious Angel redemption arc, and I crack up like Faith when the Mayor says those two words: 'Miniature Golf'. What on earth is going on? It must be a new season of Angel!
Obviously once we're through that, it reverts to a superb and familiar formula of balancing humour with pathos. There are a couple of trademark parallels. Angel of course IS the monster whom he slays in trying to protect the pregnant woman. That is why he is so torn up about it. He realises that he has been judgemental of himself. As Wesley expresses, how can you expect a demon to suddenly change its modus operandi, and become a guardian? And then he, like Angel and the viewer, realises that is exactly what Angel is trying to do.
But, like one of those odd mirages in a desert, or a Magic Eye picture, he is a significantly further away from his goal than he had once expected. The very fact that there is light at all, that obscure hope that he could become human, made the tunnel seem to be nearing its end. In reality, he has only just entered it.
Angel is made to learn a lot in this episode. His periodic meeting of vast numbers of different people in each case shows him some aspect of character that he wishes he had but doesn't. Gunn is the warrior he'd like to be, fighting to save his own, fighting as human in order to protect humans. Cordelia represents the empathetic side of humanity that Angel has problems finding in himself: Cordelia says that she will 'always be there for him'. (How glad I am that I didn't have to encounter mindless C/A 'shippers taking this as romantic when it is clearly platonic. I love this board). Anyway, Cordelia can say what Angel believes he cannot. He believes that as a broody vampire, he is deficient in empathy. He's not he just sets that upo for himself. Wesley represents how he believes he can never be clear-headed and logical, because of his need for blood. And of course, the demon itself represents all that Angel is ambiguous about in himself. Can he be a 'champion'? Is his redemption just about the crazy ancient law that his charge so despises? Or is it about something more human?
By the (apparent) end of the episode, he has realised something important. It's about saving who you can, one at a time, because it's the right thing to do. That's what Cordelia and Wesley have realised, even if Cordelia was somewhat reined in by the visions, and Wesley by his ex-Watcherness. I think it's one of those mulitple epiphany things. Angel learns it here, but he's going to have to re-learn it.
And Angel singing 'Mandy'? Wonderful. And admitting he likes it to Lorne? Priceless. The whole 'Caritas' idea is so wonderful, and I'm glad to hear that Lorne survives and becomes more important. I'm a sucker for good singers.
So that's the end of the review. Or is it? Well, actually no. Because, goodness, I was absolutely jaw-dropped again by the appearance of Faith, [probably the only person who will be this year ;)]. Eliza Dushku definitely wasn't in the opening credits. She just suddenly pops up. And I have to say that Angel and Faith's relationship is one of my favourite on either show, (with Buffy-Dawn, Buffy-Giles, Faith-The Mayor). They have such a deep understanding of each other. And the little scene clarifies and deepens Angel's journey so well. There's no great prize at the end of Faith's jail sentence. Just living. The hardest thing in this life. And this is what Angel needs to understand. The strangely ambivalent yet heartening 'We might', about redemption at the end of the show. This appearance is not a gimmick, but a wonderful ending to an excellent opener.
2.2 'Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?'
My heart expands, 'tis grown a bulge in't
Could I enjoy Tim Minear's episodes any more? I think not. Every single episode he's written so far has been a blinder for me (that's 'Sense and Sensitivity', 'Heroes', 'Somnambulist', 'The Prodigal', 'Sanctuary'). And this one as well. Many intelligent themes, several good jokes, and extremely well plotted. Let me go through a few of my especial likes in this episode.
There were several reference, I felt. There are probably a lot more which I missed, and even these three are, (certainly in one case), more my own than a deliberate homage by Minear. But I was reminded of a few things.
Firstly, I was reminded of the Season Three episode 'Gingerbread'. In this episode, (which I believe is an really under-rated gem), we see how a little bit of evil playfulness can harness untold depths of paranoia and prejudice in perfectly normal people. Joyce, an apparently average Mother, ends up heading a mob of confused parents scared of the Otherness of witchcraft. Of course the real evil is in trying to break people down, and is developed by people's fears of things they don't understand. In the Angel episode, this same idea is played out. The infection of the hotel means that everyone's worst fears are suggested to them, to the point where, by acts of small deceit, they end up apparently killing an apparently innocent apparent man, (bonus pay for the word 'apparent' in that sentence).
Secondly, I was reminded of 'Lord of the Flies' where the thin veneer of civilisation is slowly nibbled away by the wildness of the surroundings and the scariness of the night and the lack of grown-ups. Here of course, there actually is no corporeal or intrinsic evil in the island at all, it's just the psychological insecurities of the boys. In the America of the 1950's, the same could be said, and hence the hotel becomes an apt metaphor for deeply paranoid and divisive times in America. Where Minear shows black people being turned away from the Hotel, and the sly reference to the McCarthy-ised writer with his disgraced actor friend, he both gives clever depth to the portrayal of 1950's America and shows that the hotel's haunting is merely a metaphor to the insecurity of living alone.
Thirdly, I was reminded of Stephen Poliakoff's 'Shooting the Past', a beautiful piece of drama by one of Britain's leading television dramatists. In it, Timothy Spall's character and his helper have to convince the man sent to close a photography collection down that there is a valid reason for the photos remaining together. They do so by piecing together the story of a young Jewish girl who feld the Holocaust, all contained in the extensive pictures they have. The story is exceptionally beguiling, and it is no simple happy ending that the photo collection is saved to tell of the 20th century, full of tragedy and pain and a little joy. But Cordelia and Wesley's piecings had that same effect- a tricksy narrative device to break the story slowly, and a testament to research and the power of vision.
Other points about this episode:
We get to see that the monsters aren't just living in LA, they're part of ordinary people. Part of the woman who dtole the money, part of the hotel staff, part of Angel. And this is the whole point of Angel picking the Hyperion as his new base- he IS the reborn formerly evil Hotel. Once he had a streak of unfettered hatred. Then he went through a phase which he perhaps hates even more, a phase of passivity and torment, where he made morally reprehensible decisions because he couldn't be bothered to fight, like leaving the Hyperion's residents to waste away. Now he feels purged, and wants to purge the Hotel as well.
There is a lack of the usual smash montage cuts in the entrance to the flashback scenes. This is because Minear and Semel want to show the immediacy of the experience of 1952 to the Angel of today, and was a smart, subtle move.
Genius episode. Makes me veer wildly towards Masq in claiming that Angel is becoming a most compelling character to me. As compelling as Buffy, Dawn and Giles to me personally, (but this is just my irrelevant opinion). Angel episodes at there best are as powerful as anything. Think 'Amends', 'Sanctuary', and this new one. Brilliant.
2.3 'First Impressions'
Now I wouldn't want ot throw away this ebullience too lighly, and I don't have anything angry to say about 'First Impressions', but it was just a perfectly average episode after two top-drawer ones.
Just a couple of notes. Angel's sequence at the beginning appears initially to be real, and then we see Darla, and we're still wondering, and then they dance, and then it becomes clear it was a dream beforehe wakes up. Completely unlike the end of 'Out of My Mind' for Spike at about the same time, where in the dream sequence we believe he is kissing Buffy all the way. Don't know whether this is just poor writing by debutant Shawn Ryan, or whether it has a deeper meaning.
Gunn is developed nicely here. I though J August Richards did a good job, although I don't have any 'involuntary empathy' for him. He isn't very similar to me, so for the moment I'm not that viscerally interested. Only on a passing cerebral level. The Gunn-Cordelia axis was amusing and somewhat powerful. It showed how Cordelia is beginning to harness her immense willpower and put it to good use.
I'm a little puzzled by the Denzel speech. OK, it was a bit funny, and led onto the funnier speech between our main Three, but isn't it a little careless to go introducing a black chracter and then immediately suggest he has a chip on his shoulder about the white majority? I realise that the Denzel incident was controversial, (and they made up by giving him the Oscar last year for a much inferior effort), but I just wonder whether they oculdn't have avoided a cliched writing of the first black regular in the Buffyverse. Maybe that's just me. No offence intended to anyone.
Darla- well that's the most intriguing part for me. I had yet another 'Wow' moment when it turned out she was really there with Angel, and not just in his dreams. Ah, the joys of being unspoiled.
OK, that's it for now. Probably not worth repeating how much I loved the first two, but I really did. Gives 'Angel' the springboard for a great Season.