It’s almost getting embarrassing how much better a series “Angel” is than “BTVS.” To make matters worse, Faith comes across as 110% more together, mature and adult than Buffy. Holy cow, kids.
Spoilers attached…
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Great episode for:
Lyla. Okay, yeah, she’s dead, although she did obviously get her wish to be the head of her firm. The sequences with her and Wes were incredibly haunting, especially when you compare them to the (rapidly getting old) First ragging on the Scoobies moments.
Faith. Large and in-charge. Okay…short and in-charge. My God, get her to Sunnydale and have her take charge of the Slayerettes. She was like a jolt of lightning into the show. Okay, yeah, it was pushing it a little that she and Wes went out a third story window and she was able to cushion the impact of both of them with her body. On the other hand, it was worth it for the exchange of her saying, “You okay?” and his response of “Five by five.” Later topped by Wes’ deliberately shoving her into the middle of a vamp fight and, when approached by a vamp, calmly points and says, “No, *she’s* the one you want.” And capped by Wes’ asking if Faith feels up to her old skills, and her response of “Like riding a biker.” God, I love David Fury scripts. “Angel” scripts by Fury are up there with BTVS scripts by Espenson.
Angelus. Okay…I’m getting a tad suspicious here. Is Angel really still Angelus…or is he pretending to be Angelus in order to draw out the enemy and find out what’s really going on? I don’t think he’s actually killed anyone, and he saved Faith’s life. And his fooling Lorne remains an unanswered hole.
Gunn. Contrary to expectations, not only does he not give Faith any major grief for coming in and taking over, but he obviously grooves on it. Gunn leads when he has to, but I think he really feels more comfortable when someone else is making the plans. And when it’s someone who’s got her act together as much as Faith does, he’s ready to go.
Not such a great episode for:
Conner. Face it, kids, he got figuratively pantsed by Faith. All things considered, he’d have been better off if Lorne had managed to brain him earlier on.
Cordy. Is that *really* Cordy, and the demon part of her took over? Or is it an imposter and Cordy’s still up on an ethereal plane somewhere? And after seeing her suck face with the Beast accompanied by the one misfired line in the script, do we really care?
Fred. Hi? Remember me? I used to be a fun character. What the hëll ever happened to me?
Gunn. Yeah, I know, he was mentioned above. But his escorting Conner back to the hotel was a transparent plot contrivance to get him out of there in order to focus on Faith and Wes. Conner needed an *escort*? Why? He was clearly leaving on his own, tail between his legs. Were they worried something horrible would happen to him on the way? And this would be a bad thing…why?
The Beast. Whoa. Wasn’t expecting that. The Beast goes bye bye and the sun comes out. I was worried for a moment there it was another dream episode.
Overall, great episode. Just wondering one thing: Whatever happened to Gru?
Comments?
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I don’t think that the long sequence with Wesley “talking” to Lilah was supposed to be The First. I’m almost certain that this was intended as a reference to the series Six Feet Under.
I dámņ near wet myself when Wesley used Faith’s tagline of “Five by Five,” and went into hysterical laughter when she said “Like Riding a Biker.”
Man, they’ve got to have more kickass lines of dialogue like that!
Yeah, I thought of six feet under right away during the Lilah scenes. I really liked them. Thought that AD did a really good job, all of Wes’s stuff was great last night.
My personal theory about “Evil Cordy” is that when she used her “Divine Powers”(TM) to tweak the Las Vegas slot machine into letting Angel win, she effectively misused her powers for personal reasons and so fell from grace and was kicked out of heaven. This resulted in an alignment inversion from good to evil. Evil Cordy then proceeded to use her memories of Angel’s entire life (gained while she was a higher being) to find and release the Beast as part of a “Machiavellian Plan of Ultimate Evil”(TM).
I think Wes went after Faith for help instead of Buffy because well … Buffy would’ve called them all idiots and been really mean to them. Remember Buffy’s only long term exposure to Wes and Cordy was back when Wes screamed like a girl and fainted at the sight of blood. Cordy was more worried about what she was wearing and how good she looked then saving the world.
With Faith he knew what Angel did for her. Also since Faith nearly tortured Wesley to death and now feels guilty about it she probably won’t give him a bad time now.
I like how Faith handled herself this episode. I think 3 years in prison calmed her down. I also think wanting to help Angel out was another thing that kept her focused.
after this epsodie of angel I wanted to see a series featuring faith and spike with spike back to his old personality
Just reading though these posts and previous threads that theres has always been something that caught my eye. Has anybody else noticed how both Btvs and Angel are basically running off the same plots just different versions?(like distruction of watchers and WR&H)
The stories were originally meant to mesh. In “Conversations with Dead People,” the Joyce apparition had a line about the sun being out in LA. This had to be cut, as did the vast majority of the “crossover” dialogue, because Buffy is running 4 eps ahead of Angel — result being that when the blackout was to be mentioned on BtVS, it hadn’t yet happened on Angel, and wouldn’t have made sense yet. Whether the ep differential has been on purpose to screw up crossovers, I don’t know, but now that Joss has explicit permission from WB for crossovers, I’m assuming they’ll be more helpful about scheduling. Wes not calling Buffy could have been because crossovers weren’t permitted then, but it doesn’t bother me much considering that Wes wanted Angel/us “salvaged” (in Faith’s words) and not killed. Historically, Buffy’s the wrong person for the job if you want to make Angel/us’ life a top priority — she’s much more likely to give up and sacrifice him than Faith is.
I am still confused after last night if we’re left with Angel, Angelus, or some mixture of the two. But unlike my recent experiences watching Buffy, I ultimately don’t care so much what’s really going on, as long as getting there is this much fun.
As for Angel pretending to be Angelous… to me, it seems like they’re trying to avoid showing him doing anything particularly evil; because if he kills an innocent, the audience might recoil. I figure when he gets re-ensouled, we’ll learn that he did a bit of feeding.
Sort of like on Buffy, when they decided to make Spike a recurring villain, they almost completely defanged him. He comes on, acts all evil and stuff, but never does anything worse than offing an extra or two… so the audience doesn’t complain too much when Spike is allowed to go driving off into the sunset singing along to Sid Vicious.
There’s only so far you can take it, if you expect the audience to “forgive” the character. I remember it taking me a good bit of time to forgive Angel for killing Ms. Calender and torturing Giles.
I can easily forgive Angel for what he did to those two, since he wasn’t Angel at the time. I have a much harder time forgiving Giles for what he did in “Helpless”, since he was himself at the time, not acting under any outside influence that was beyond his control. (Personally, I would’ve given the Council the finger in his position, but that’s just me…)
Its 12:03am central so I don’t know if anyone will read this but I want to add my bit.
First off yes let us kill off the term “jump the shark” I’ve been saying this since Buffy S5.
As for this episode of “Angel” I can only say good things, with the exception of one. Conner. He just really annoyed me. I don’t know if it was the actor or not but everything he did came off badly.
Faith:Oh yea….We really do need a Faith show. I wonder too if there is something afoot with that other show. Plus it was said to be made by the people who made “Fastlane”…and well, I’ll stop there.
The best things about this episode were the two most important things in any action/adventure. Dialogue and fight sequences. Its like someone at “Angel” said, “Remember what the fights on BTVS used to look like? Let’s try that”. Only one detraction: slow-motion is best used as an effect, not every other second. It was used once too much.
To be a bit base, because I am a redblooded straight american male,it was nice to see a woman on one of these two shows who has a nice body and doesn’t look like she needs to eat!
Finally let me say that I would watch a Willow show, a Xander show or a Ripper Show….Heck, I’m all for a Clem’s Playhouse! Clem rules!
Col
I agree that Angel is a better show than Buffy and has been for a fairly long time. Faith was really awesome and deserves her own show or possibly to costar with Angel every week. The show also could use some more guest stars. People like James(Spike) Marsters, Bruce Campbell and Tiffani Thiessen(the best part of Fastlane.) would be a good place to start. By the way, Angel never jumped the shark. Buffy however, literally drowned the poor fish in tartar sauce at the beginning of this season.
I came into ‘Angel’ late. Real late. Once-it-moved-to-Wednesdays-this–season late! But, as I said on this very board a few weeks back, I’d watch repeats of the first three seasons of ‘Buffy…’ on fx, and whenever Charisma Carpenter was on-screen, I found myself asking….sometimes aloud, to no one in particular….” Why the hëll aren’t I watching ‘Angel’, again??”!
I don’t have too much to add, comment-wise, vis-a-vis Wednesday’s night’s episode that hasn’t already been said.
Except for this.
During one of the Conner-gets-dressed-down scenes, I was annoyed and distracted by Conner’s / Vincent Kartheiser’s constant smirking throughout. But looking at the episode again, I’m hard-pressed to pinpoint where exactly it was. I just remember, at the time, thinking: “Geez, this kid smirks so much, he’s making George W. Bush look like Buster Keaton!!”!!
Hooper
As far as repeating plots goes, this season of Angel had that annoying memory loss episode which might have been a little more entertaining had it not been done on Buffy last season
Angel is faking Angelous, and I’m guessing he knows about Cordy- in one of the earlier episodes of the season (when they were trying to get her back from the divinity or whatever) Angel mentioned to Gunn and Fred that he could somehow “sense” Cordy. If that’s the case-he’d HAVE to know “Cordy” isn’t Cordy- at least from Las Vegas on. He’s been piecing it together since. It adds up- whose idea was it to trigger Angelous? The only people who knew where Angel’s “soul” was being kept and also knew the safe combination were Wes and Cordy. Cordy cast the “re-souling”, and also let him out. The final bit of the puzzle comes when Angel comes upon Lilah’s body- he’s the only one who knows Lilah was killed (and dropped the hint to Wes, who probably figured it out during all that time in the basement).
So you’ve got Angel faking Angelous, with Wes and Faith probably now in on it (or will be sometime during next week’s episode) to draw “evil Cordy” out, SAVE the real Cordy, and shut the big bad down.
“I was annoyed and distracted by Conner’s / Vincent Kartheiser’s constant smirking throughout.”
Connor doesn’t usually smirk at all — generally he’s pretty dour and depressing. My guess is his impossible-to-wipe-off grin/smirk had something to do with a growing crush on Faith, not to mention a bit of respect at someone being willing to take charge in such a manner.
Paul F. P. Pogue
With respect to whether Angel is faking being Angelus, I firmly believe he isn’t. The purpose of Willow’s upcoming visit is to restore Angel’s soul. If he was just faking, Willow wouldn’t be coming to LA. Also, as others have mentioned, I believe that they tend to imply Angelus’s evil deeds rather than show them directly on screen.
Jez wrote: Didn’t Dubya say something about a “Faith based program” a few years ago? I would watch it.
Very good play on words… like that.
Re: everything above.
a) if you have a Faith spin off, just use the one word: Faith.
b) Angelus is Angelus… he just doesn’t have Buffy to torture and focus on. Faith is not as major of a concern. Now he’s just having fun.
c) I don’t think Buffy ever went on a downward spiral (though last year was close)… The ratings, though, peaked in season three and they’ve never since been as high.
d) I’ve had this idea running in my head… who is cordy? who is cordy? Okay, the demon dude who Holtz pulled through… “The Father will kill the Son.” Which still hasn’t been totally negated. I mean, a major power confirmed it. Even if it was in the form of a fast food drive through ordering board. What if the “Father” is still Angel, but the Son, is the child of “Cordy”/Conner? Just a thought. And Cordy? Seriously, who knows… might even be… DARLA! Who else would want Angelus back? But then the whole incest thing would be too gross.
e) Faith. Faith. FAITH. Eliza D. love her… and the chemistry between her and wes was brilliant.
My thoughts.
Travis
Now, before I say this, let me say that I really hope that this is all a hoax, and there really will be a Faith show. But what would be the point of “throwing everyone off the sent” as it were? Wouldn’t it be in their favor to say that there would be a new show? The only that I could see for not telling would be that it might give a major clue the the finale of BTVS.
What does everyone think?
I don’t see why Fox would be involved with a cover-up of a new show. UPN should have first crack at a replacement for Buffy, and if they didn’t get it then they wouldn’t have any reason to go along. (Not to mention that the entertainment press would have picked something up if Joss had been sniffing out other networks–we had a pretty good idea of what was going on when Buffy left the WB.)
Anyone dreading the idea of a time shift where conner/cordy’s baby ends up being rocky.
“the give mama…” and “forever” lines just make me oh so wary.
Now I know the REAL reason the women’s prison facility here in Stockton was closed down about a month ago: the security breaches were getting too scary for them!
– Frank
Ah, good, good episode. Angelus and Faith rock.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I’m starting a Buffy and Angel rp at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OptimumBuffy/, and I’m in need of players. Any takers?
My main concern with the two series is timing. Angel is supposed to be running six new eps, ending about the second week in April. Then for sure, both Faith and Angel are supposed to be in May’s Buffy grand finale.
But will there be any more Angel eps after these six? And more importantly, will Angel even have a next (2003-4) season?
-Maybe Cordelia isn’t having a baby. Maybe that’s where the soul is hidden.
Let’s see — The beast told Angelus that his master had his soul stolen, etc…so this means Cordy took it and has hidden it somewhere. According to the previews, Cordy uses her “power” against Angelus next week. Guess she is kinda pìššëd that he killed her beast and let the sun out. Next week should be interesting…
Xyon
The schedule they have up at TV Tome has Faith’s appearances on Buffy starting April 22–her last appearance on Angel being March 19.
If that’s correct, then Angel should be well ahead of Buffy. Tentative release dates from the same source has Angel’s season finale on May 7th. Buffy’s on May 20th.
With a BTVS spinoff surely in the works, ANGEL may someday be looked back upon as the DEEP SPACE NINE of the Whedonverse.
Here are my theories:
Angelus is really Angelus. I doubt he’d go on a foodfest if he wasn’t.
I think that this is all build-up for a few things:
1. Willow or Niles restoring Angel’s soul and getting Faith back for the last throwdown on Buffy.
2. It is possible that the baby inside Cordelia could be a demon that is controlling her or that the reliving of Angel’s past deeds thoroughly corupted her… I’m hoping its neither because both theories are fairly predictable.
You also have to love some of the other lines..
Faith: (To Gunn) I hear you can fight?
Gunn: I hold my own.
Faith: That’s a shame ….
Paul wrote: With a BTVS spinoff surely in the works, ANGEL may someday be looked back upon as the DEEP SPACE NINE of the Whedonverse.
Fine with me. I loved DS9. Everything after that was blah. Blah blah blah.
But if it’s the Wheedonverse, then I doubt anything else would be blah.
Travis