In alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer Arbitrar Of Quality <tsmtsm@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> ANGEL
> Season Four, Episode 1: "Deep Down"
> Writer: Steven S. DeKnight
> Director: Terrence O'Hara
Certainly the best of the AtS season openers. Though really, Judgement is
the only one I have serious problems with. Random thought: Judgement, the
worst AtS season premiere, is the one least burdened with exposition to
reintroduce the characters and situation. Deep Down, on the other hand,
is one of the most exposition-heavy premiere (though next year's will
probably equal it), yet it's also the best.
> I had to watch this one one extra time to justify the fact that it's
> always been a Good rather than an Excellent to me. I mean, what's
> wrong with it? Doesn't it have a nicely shot opening that sets the
> stage for the whole year? Doesn't it convey a good mood of
> perseverance in the face of listless depression, and keep surprising
> the viewer with where characters have ended up? Isn't it a great
> Wesley episode, making us realize that, unexpectedly, his eyes are
> more focused on what has to be done then ever? (It also gives us the
> amazing intensity of the Wes/Justine sequences and some killer lines
> like his response to the accusation that he doesn't care.) Isn't it
> uplifting to see Angel on dry land and speechifying in an interesting
> way again? Doesn't DD have no major flaws (at least in this
> reviewer's opinion)? But when I watch it, it's clearly Good. I
> suppose Excellence requires a little something extra, more than merely
> being a very solid episode that lacks many problems.
Not even a notorious ME-coddler like me would argue that simple lack of
major flaws is enough to merit rating an episode Excellent. (Sure, I
might have done it once or twice, but I'd never claim that it's the right
thing to do.) For me, a lot of the scenes in Deep Down are striking
enough to make it a candidate for Excellent. BTW, almost all of these
scenes involve Wesley. Until the last five minutes or so, it's really
Wesley's episode, not Angel's.
> Rating: Good
You know, I feel like calling it an Excellent, despite the lack of one
truly amazing moment. I think a consistently solid episode with many
small moments of excellence can achieve the same rating as a Major
Episode with a Big Moment.
> Season Four, Episode 2: "Ground State"
> Writer: Mere Smith
> Director: Michael Grossman
..
> The final entrant in the series' big run of Good-to-Excellent
> episodes, and few will accuse it of being on the same level as the
> others. Electro-Gwen has never really worked for me as a character,
> especially given how erratically she drops in and out of the show.
Agreed that the main problem with Gwen is that the show never made good
use of her after this episode. I won't count that against Ground State,
but it does count against S4. The scene when Gwen meets her buyer at the
restaurant remains a favorite of mine, for obvious reasons; but I really
remember the character for her no-touching dilemma and for the moments
when her cool facade slips a little. "I'm not slow, I know it's a -- shut
up!"
The Dinza scene is creepy when it's happening, but completely forgettable.
No one ever seems to mention it, and whenever I watch GS I think "Oh,
yeah, that's in this episode" when Wesley fisrt mentions her.
> As
> another example of the ever-popular heist show, GS entertains even
> when it doesn't wow.
Way too popular, in my opinion. This is a thought that nags at me even
when I'm thoroughly enjoying an excellent heist. Well, they beat trials
suddenly overturned by a last-minute surprise witness, I guess. And car
chases, they beat those too.
> Rating: Good
Like AOQ said and I snipped, the best parts of GS are mainly the character
moments to one side of this week's plot: Fred's breakdown, Wesley and
Angel's happy reconciliation, Angel and Lilah's joyful reunion, and so on.
And stealing the Axis rovides a competent enough excuse for those moments
to happen. Last time I hesitated between Decent and Good, but now I'll
unhesitatingly say Good too.
> Season Four, Episode 3: "The House Always Wins"
> Writer: David Fury
> Director: Marita Grabiak
..
> We went back and forth a little bit about the driving force of every
> individual having a single "destiny" that can be taken away. It's a
> premise that still makes me a little bit angry and consider throwing
While I'm not quite angry about it, it *is* a very stupid premise. It's
also contrary to the spirit of AtS, in my opinion. Sure, the idea of
destiny is im****tant to the series, what with the Shanshu and being a key
player in the coming apocalypse and all. But it's not THAW's kind of
destiny. Characters on AtS can and do get into situations where all their
possible options are bad, but they still have free will. (Well, unless
they're possessed. That's another issue.) Leaving aside questions of
quality and just looking at it thematically, does the destiny market in
THAW really belong in the same series as Not Fade Away?
> Instead, it remains one of the tedious few that're almost completely
> devoid of anything that is in any way interesting to me. I suppose it
> helps if one likes shticky musical performances,
Or if Lorne's stage routine is so alien to your musical tastes that you
can enjoy it as a sort of travelogue from another world. That might just
be me, though.
> but even that only
> covers a few minutes, and I remain oblivious about what's allegedly so
> amusing about Fred as a Lornette.
I'm just tickled by Amy Acker's rendition of a mediocre actress struggling
with her cover story. Nothing for a best-of disc or anything, but I think
it's cute. It's also interesting to see Fred in that showy, Vegas-style
***y costume, because it points up how extremely attractive she is in her
everyday casual outfits and hairstyles.
Maybe ME got a taste for casinos in Double Or Nothing? THAW does have
some decent visual spectacles in Vegas, but DON has stronger character
moments. Given the relative im****tance of spectacle and characterization
in the Buffyverse, I think ME should have quit while they were ahead on
the whole casino thing.
> Rating: Bad
Eh. It won a few laughs from me, and while the basic concept sucks and
destinyless Angel was annoying and uninteresting, Lorne's enslavement was
an okay plot for a filler episode. I thought the villain of the week gave
a good performance, too. I'll put it on the high border of Weak. On days
when I'm feeling generous, I might even go to a low Decent, but that's not
today. (Though I've already been writing this in bits and pieces for a
couple of days; who knows how I'll feel by the time I post it.) [Nope,
still Weak.]
> Season Four, Episode 4: "Slouching Toward Bethlehem"
> Writer: Jeffrey Bell
> Director: Skip Schoolnik
There's been some discussion about Angel and sidekicks lying to Cordelia,
whether or not they could have handled the situation any differently. I
would agree that there was no way they could reveal everything at once,
and it's understandable that they would want to start with the less scary
parts. But their fatal error was in not immediately telling Cordy
something substantial, *anything* substantial. Instead Angel's chosen
approach (after launching a coverup) is to show Cordy her old stuff,
hoping it will jog her memory. He openly tells Fred the reason: he wants
Cordy to remember Angel the man, before they have to explain Angel the
vampire, as well as vampires in general. And why does he do this?
Because he's hoping that she'll remember she was in love with him, of
course. So in a way, it all boils down to Angel putting his romantic
hopes ahead of Cordelia's best interests.
I do like the abruptness with which Cordy learns Angel is a vampire.
They're in the midst of a long melancholy conversation, one where Angel is
actually answering her questions honestly, when Cordy suddenly plops the
rosaries into Angel's lap without the least bit of warning. It's fun
because although we already know what Angel is, the revelation still
happens fast enough to surprise the viewer almost as much as it surprises
Cordy.
> "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" (hereafter "Slouching," since "Spin The
> Bottle" seems to "own" the STB acronym) starts off as a story about
> Amnesiac Cordy, full of continuity **** and reminiscing about what she
I'm doubly happy whenever later seasons of AtS, after the big crossover
eps of S1 and S2, still reference evetns from BtVS. They could just as
easily have forgotten the earlier series altogether in their effort to
establish AtS as its own show.
> means to everyone (as if we haven't heard that five hundred times).
> It's weird and kinda pointless, but at least I'm entertained. Then
> Connor shows up to complicate things,
Mel made a good point in the S3D6 thread. The "soul colonic" Cordy gave
Connor set up the bond between the two of them in S4. Connor likes Cordy
in part because she had no hand in puni****ng him in DD, and they're both
alienated from Angel. But it's also because Connor remembers that moment
when he was (briefly) purged of his gloomier side. "You were nice to me
once" is all he says, so it's not definite, but I believe he was referring
to that incident.
> I'm curious how much
> people's feelings about this episode mirror their feelings about the
> year as a whole. For me, "Slouching" (similar to S4) feels unwieldy
> in places, but damned if it doesn't end up working pretty nicely.
Unwieldy it is, but I actually like S4 a lot -- more than most people
here, if I'm not mistaken. However, Slouching isn't that significant to
me. I remember it mainly for Lilah and Wesley's bet. It's not a bad
episode by any means, but it's mostly im****tant to me as necessary
groundwork for the Beast/Jasmine arc.
> Rating: Good
Last time I only gave it a high Decent. After viewing it again I'll
change that to a low Good.
> Additional comments on S4D1: I continue to maintain that the way
> Fred's recklessness in her attack on Connor is entirely in character.
> Lulling him into a sense of security before attacking him with the
> same weapon he used on Angel is very much her style. Especially in
> light of "Supersymmetry."
I second that. Whether or not it's the *best* thing she could have done
is another question, of course; but it was indeed in character. I guess a
vindictive streak is just one more thing Fred has in common with Willow;
too bad they didn't get to bond over that in Orpheus.
> I immediately commented that the disappearance (so to speak) of Dennis
> from the series didn't bode well for Cordelia-based storylines. I
> hope someone thought to fill him in on the story sometime - he seemed
> really worried about her.
We can hope that Cordy was able to finagle one good deed out of the higher
powers before she returned to earth, and they helped Dennis move on.
> Okay, I know ME isn't big with such things, but I spent a little time
> fruitlessly trying to work out the chronology involved in this year.
Maybe the answer is simply that time has no meaning in LA.
--Chris
(who is not quite far behind enough to start skipping threads)
______________________________________________________________________
chrisg [at] gwu.edu On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog.
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