"Even if I got rid of all my problems, I'd just go out and get new ones..."

Cancel Angel, please! Bring back Jake 2.0!
11:10 p.m. on 2004-05-30

Are you an Angel fan? Do you wish to remain spoiler free? Then look away...

1..

2..

3..

NOW.

Gone? Good.

I just watched the shittest episode of Angel ever. It's like, if someone took all the shitty episodes of BtVS from Seasons Sucks and Seven, and rolled them into a forty-five minute Angel time slot.

The A-plot revolved around Spicule and Angel going to Italy to retrieve the corpse of a demon leader, to take back to his LA folks so they could resurrect him and his liberal ways, preventing a demon war. Fair enough. But on finding out that Buffy was also in Italy, under the 'spell' of some demon called 'The Immortal,' Spicule and Angel decide to 'rescue' her.

The B-plot revolved around the Burkles, and their arrival at Wolfram and Hart, ignorant of the knowledge that their daughter is dead and a demon now lives in her body.

It's difficult for me to express just how truly dire this episode was. But I will point to the forty-odd pages over at TWoP of people going "WTF?!"

But here are some key points.

No 1: This the third episode before the end of Angel. The ultimate end. What we want is an episode which will build the story arc and prepare us for the showdown to come. What we get is an episode which, at best, is a comedy-mid-season filler ep.

No 2: You could argue that this ep is designed to shut all the Angel/Buffy shippers and the Buffy/Spike shippers up by having Buffy end up with someone else entirely (the Immortal). However, a), Angel has already moved on from Buffy, since he fell in love with Cordelia. So sod his whole 'but Buffy's not done baking' cookie dough speech, the guy fell in love with someone else. Buffy is in his past! Spicule's feelings were clearer, but then how can he truly think that he deserves a girl who, presumably by now, has discovered that her ex-lover has returned from the dead - BUT DOESN'T EVEN GIVE HIM A PHONE CALL?

And Buffy. Watching Season One and Two, I realised how promising this character was. She was likeable, intelligent - sure, not in the school way, but she had common sense. And now she's shacked up with a morally ambiguous demon who has already slept with Darla and Dru, two EVIL vampires.

Well... at least we can say she's consistent.

No 3: If you're gonna do a comedy plot, then fine. Do comedy. But don't interupt it with a B-plot which has the potential to be seriously creepy: Wesley being forced to watch as the demon who inhabits his dead girlfriend's body, takes on the persona of said girlfriend in order to appease her parents. Hear Wesley's voice break as he's forced to agree to this play-acting... and then flip to a comedy scene in which we see Angel and Spicule get stuck in a doorway together!

It's just... awful writing, right there folks.

No 4: The funny isn't even that bloody funny. It's downright awful. It's like the writers thought, "Hey, we've been cancelled, who gives a shit about this job now, we'll spend an hour cooking up a bunch of tired slapstick and some shitty Italian sterotypes, and then we'll all get rat-arsed. Except maybe not in that order." Seriously... watching Angel and Spicule share a wobbly moped? Watch them bicker about their shared love? Please! Okay, so there were a couple of funny moments - the scene in which the two compete as to "Who saved the world the most" stands out - but for the most part I wasn't just cringing, I was covering my eyes in shame.

No 5: The complete disregard for previous character development or, indeed, morality. A big thing of the producers, especially Joss Whedon, has been to expound upon the idea that these characters are walking the line between good and evil. But that seems to have all gone to hell. Now we have Andrew, a character from BtVS, giving moral lectures to Angel, when he himself murdered his best friend and participated in the attempted rape of a kidnapped girl - yet has shown no remorse for these actions except a couple of sniffles (which were only provoked at knife point).

Our hero Buffy is now shacked up with a morally ambiguous demon.

Meanwhile, we get a rather horrific scene in which the 'newly-souled good guy' Spike bemoans the loss of his leather jacket to an explosion. He protests that it has sentimental value, to which Angel points out: "You stole it off the body of a dead Slayer."

Yeah. This is our good guy alright. Still wearing the talisman from his ol' murdering days.

No 6: Back to the Wesley B-Plot. Yes, creepy. Very creepy. Wanna know what's more creepy? Fred's dying request to Wesley was that he tell her parents that she died bravely. Now it appears that not only has he not passed on this info, but he's not even decided to tell her folks that their daughter is dead. Not only that, but he's apparantly allowing the demon within Fred's body to pose as the dead daughter INDEFINITELY. I mean, presumably the Burkles will phone up their daughter for a chat, at some point. So the demon (Ilyria) will pose as Fred again, I guess. For how long? And why? Ilyria is supposed to be frikkin' evil!

Oh god. I could go on... I really could... and this isn't like I only just watched the episode, it's been like five hours, and I still need to rant! THAT'S how bad this shite was!

As some wise poster at TWoP pointed out, "This week's episode of Angel was brought to you by the writers of Charmed."

And as another poster pointed out, aren't we glad we signed that "Save Angel" petition now, huh?

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