Arbitrar Of Quality <tsmtsm@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> ANGEL
> Season Three, Episode 1: "Heartthrob"
> Writer: David Greenwalt
> Director: David Greenwalt
..
> "Heartthrob" is one of those episodes where talking about it feels
> more like describing one of those essays analyzing a character than
> like commenting on a TV show. I am one who thinks that the idea of
> Angel being able to move on after the show ended with him learning
> about Buffy's death, and thus trying to get his head around the
> associated survivor's guilt, is a reasonable story.
The summer break allowed ME to conveniently fast-foward past most of
Angel's grieving. Now, before this episode even begins, he's dealt with
the survivor's guilt, and his real issue in Heartthrob is instead
discomfort over not feeling more guilt and depression. I largely agree
with something OBS says later in the thread, about Cordy and the others
assuming Angel must feel more distress than in fact he does. But I do
think there are a few signs of the discomfort Angel still feels: the
simple fact that he doesn't want to talk about Buffy, for instance. It's
just enough so that Cordy's later claim that she can tell something isn't
right because she knows Angel so well doesn't feel totally out of the
blue.
> James and his one-
> sided conception of Troo Wuv are just enough to serve the episode, no
> more or less.
James and Elizabeth's uber-romantic love, which might have been shown as
positive on a lesser series, is actually just as twisted and vampiric as
Angelus and Darla's (at least from my biased human perspective). James's
problem is not just that he invested all his being in his love. Equally
im****tant is that he invested all that love in just one person. I think
one major reason Angel is able to survive the loss of Buffy is that he
still has his Jossian created family. Good thing he didn't permanently
alienate them during his beige period!
Of course this season premiere had a mission: to acknowledge the
im****tance of Buffy's death to Angel, *without* making it im****tant to the
series. That mission was probably the determining factor in how AtS
handled Buffy's death. Don't get me wrong -- Angel's mental state here
does fit his character. But Heartthrob focuses on the elements that best
serve to separate AtS from BtVS, rather than the whole of Angel's reaction
to Buffy's death.
> good guys during these scenes isn't as snappy as it ought to be. I
> think the reason the episode drags in parts is quite simply that
> there's less than a tight-episode's worth of content here, even with
> the intro, the Holtz flashbacks, and the surprise ending.
> Rating: Decent
I'd agree with all that. Nothing in Heartthrob strikes me as seriously
weak, but the main story is a little too thin to carry the episode. Last
time around I put Heartthrob on the Decent/Good borderline, but today I
think I'll just say Decent.
> Season Three, Episode 2: "That Vision-Thing"
> Writer: Jeffrey Bell
> Director: Bill Norton
..
> _Angel_ is very much a series about a flawed hero. The show is big
> about pointing out ways in which Angel is misguided or compromised. A
> fair amount of our hero's corruptibility comes at the hands of Wolfram
> & Hart; symbolically, they're the corrupt adult world that won't
> suffer the idealist's more simplistic world view. Like a Whedon
> writer, they also like to go after what helped the most last time. In
> Season Two, Angel got out of his hole by rediscovering and making
> amends with the people he cared about - this year his enemies will use
> them to get at him, starting this week with an impressive ruse. The
> way the good guys win the fight but still lose the battle, and accept
> this compromise as a calculated investment towards the war, is an
> example of the kind of thing that's this show's bread and butter.
Angel's compromise is the heart of the episode. It would make a good
compare and contrast with Buffy's refusal to consider killing Dawn early
in The Gift. Both characters will do anything to save their loved one,
even if leads to a victory for the forces of evil. The two situations
play out in different ways appropriate to the two shows. Buffy's
determination to save Dawn at all costs leads her to different and
mythically perfect solution. On the other hand, Angel's determination to
save Cordy at all costs leads him to morally ambiguous actions resulting
in a safe Cordy safe but also a new mess which Angel will have to solve --
with some ironic help from one of his enemies. Come to think of it, you
have a lot of the difference between the two shows right there.
I think Angel killing Fez was a vital step to setting up Lilah's fling
with Marcus-Angel in CN. Lilah got what she wanted in TVT, so her hatred
of Angel wasn't stirred up again. But at the end Angel re-established
himself in her mind as a serious enemy to be respected, not a tamed lapdog
to be treated with contempt. I don't think she would have felt any
attraction to him at all if she had broken him completely.
When I watched TVT again the other day, I was struck by all the human and
demon faces embedded in the walls of the hell dimension. My theory is
that they were people bad enough to be sent to Skip's domain, but not
quite bad enough to merit the fire treatment.
> Rating: Good
I'll stick with Good too.
> Season Three, Episode 3: "That Old Gang Of Mine"
> Writer: Tim Minear
> Director: Fred Keller
..
> this goddamn episode?" That sums it up for me. There are some good
> ideas mixed into the stew, with Gunn having created this monster that
> enjoys death and mayhem, but as Chris so aptly put it, Gunn's "whole
> dilemma just feels a bit flat. It's just not dilemma-y enough."
I still feel the same way. The early parts where Gunn doubts that they
should worry about murdered demons aren't bad, and his final confession
that the idea of friend****p with Angel still weirds him out is actually
pretty good. But the stuff in between, with Gio, fails to achieve the
emotional impact it's trying for. And that's before we even get to the
overlong hostage scene. A big part of the problem is that Gio himself is
written too obviously villainous, and is an enemy of Gunn from the moment
he shows up, so it's hard for the viewer to see Gunn being torn in any
way. By the time he's threatening to kill the humans in Caritas, Gio is
so clearly as bad as any vamp they ever sent to dustville that it's hard
to believe that Rondel and the others don't turn on him, let alone believe
that Gunn might still have any thought in his head other than "must kill
Gio." I think the episode would have worked better if Gio had been
written more subtly: if he had been friends with Gunn at first, for
example, and if he only turned to threatening humans at the very end. It
also would have helped if they had cut the whole hostage section by half
or more, of course. Alternatively, they could have done away with Gio
altogether and used a story where Gunn and his old friend Rondel come into
conflict (preferrably about something less black-and-white than thrill
killing) to explore Gunn's departure from his old gang.
> Rating: Weak (down from Decent)
I'm going to stick with Decent. There's a lot of good stuff outside of
the hostage scenes. I really like Fred's appearance at Caritas. (Wes and
Gunn both seem as charmed as I was, an early hint of their later rivalry.)
Her later moment of badassery is great too. And the final conversations
Gunn has with Wes and Angel are both very good. But yeah, those hostage
scenes do drag the episode down, don't they?
> Season Three, Episode 4: "Carpe Noctem"
> Writer: Scott Murphy
> Director: James A. Contner
>
> This episode exists.
Umm ... agreed?
My feelings for Carpe Noctem are a lot like my feelings for Lonely Hearts.
Both are episodes that I got really enthusiastic about in the early days
of my AtS fandom. Since then I've become more aware of their flaws, as
well as more aware of other superior episodes, but both remain among my
personal favorites even if I no longer rank them among the best of the
series.
So what is Carpe Noctem's flaw? Mainly that it's just not that
significant. It contributes little to the show's overall story, and while
we see Angel from a slightly different angle, not much new or interesting
is revealed in the process. Granted. But on the plus side, CN is a hell
of a lot of fun. Marcus-Angel's little talk with Wesley is a
never-failing source of humor for me. His sleazy seduction of both Fred
and Lilah is also great to watch, as are both women's reactions. And it's
just generally fun to see DB play an evil character who is not Angelus,
just for a change of pace. CN is certainly among my all-time favorite
examples of this stock fantasy plot (#24, is it?), the body-switching
character who must improvise to fit into the new body's old life. (Though
BTVS's Who Are You? still has it beat.)
> Rating: Decent
Carpe Noctem remains a solid Good in my book.
Probably not getting to BTVS S6D1 tonight,
Chris
______________________________________________________________________
chrisg [at] gwu.edu On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog.
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