People ask, between my writing and my family, when do I sleep? Answer is…never! It’s 5 AM, I just finished the script for “Fallen Angel #12” and I figured, hey! I’m semi-coherent! Close enough for the round-up! Spoilers follow…
SMALLVILLE: An episode in which the whole gloriously exceeds the sum of its parts. In terms of the latter, it’s another Freak of the Week, and Adam is kind of weird (which we knew) and Lex is poking around into things (which is SOP), the fact that Clark’s saving the coach changed Lana’s possible future (and that he was behind the kidnapping) were pretty obvious, and Jonathan has a heart attack (which we saw coming). But it all came together so beautifully that, dámņ, it was fantastically compelling. I was watching it on video tape and I couldn’t speed through the commercials fast enough. The psychic kid was great, the story pacing was seamless, I just LOVED that eerie future shot of the flapping Superman cape heading into…well, kind of looked like a Boom Tube, actually. Plus there’s fascinating ambiguities. “I think Adam died.” Well, if he’s really who we think he is, then in a sense, that’s true. Young Bruce Wayne, the innocent boy, died in the alley as he watched his parents’ lifeblood seep away, and something else was born…something that wouldn’t receive its real name until years later when a bat flapped through a window. And Jonathan’s protest of “Not now, it’s too soon”…a frightened man simply protesting his impending mortality? Or something more? The culmination of the mysterious deal he cut with Jor-El, perhaps? Bottom line, the series continues to fire on all cylinders.
ANGEL: Ðámņ. I mean, ÐÃMN. I had to say it, I just HAD to go and say it. People who watched it, you know what I’m talking about. People who didn’t, I can’t bring myself to say it. The episode itself–a superb 100th episode. Everything, from its nods to the show’s earliest days (including the Doyle video from “Hero,” giving us a look at the tragic Glenn Quinn) to the (for now) resolution of the Lindsay storyline to the snappy dialogue (“Harmony, if she moves, you can eat her.” “Really?!” or WES: We should come with you. ANGEL: No. I’m not going to risk the life of somebody I care about. SPIKE: I’ll come. ANGEL: Great, let’s go.”) to the returned Cordelia’s helping Angel recapturing the sense of heroism it all worked. You had to love Cordy feeling she’d woken up in a bizarro world; too bad she doesn’t remember the first time that happened back in BtVS. They played scrupulously close to continuity, right down to Conner. In every way, the episode worked not only as a smooth summary of what had gone before (notice the effortless exposition, as opposed to last week’s painful info dump from Andrew) but a powerful sense of what’s to come. But…aw, ÐÃMN IT, Whedon.
WEST WING: Okay, finally. This one had everything. Toby, deciding he’s going to try and fix Social Security, almost singlehandedly derails his own career and the Bartlet administration. No good deed went unpunished, and every best laid scheme gang agley (as they aft do). I’m still wrestling with how I felt about the ending. If you take the episode to its most reasonable outcome, Toby’s resignation is accepted, he’s gone, there’s some shouting on Capitol Hill for a while, and then everything settles down to non-business as usual while Social Security sinks slowly into the mire that no one is working to save it from. That’s what would have happened. Instead, once Toby started working with Josh (as opposed to working at cross purposes with him) they actually managed to sort things out, strike a deal, and save the program…although Bartlet had to keep quiet about how they brought it all about so his “legacy” remains barren (but, on the other hand, Toby gets to stay.) But you know what? That’s what “West Wing” is *supposed* to be about. An idealized government where things get done and nobility and self-sacrifice are the order of the day, instead of self-interest and ášš-covering. Perhaps it’s so long that we’ve seen that–either in our own government or in Bartlet’s–that it’s hard to accept it when it’s there. So yeah, I’ll give ’em the ending, unlikely as it seems. You know why? Because I haven’t slept.
Baby’s crying. Gotta go.
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Now that’s a cross-over I’d have loved to see. But who would Sam have leapt into? Spike would be extremely entertaining.
The important question: What would he see in the mirror?
I dunno Scott, going through all the trouble she went to to obtain the spell and the components, I wouldn’t say bringing Buffy back from the dead was “unintentional”. 🙂
An while it may not have been intentionally evil, I’d have to say pulling someone out of Heaven is evil, despite ignorance of the true position of one’s soul Heaven-\Hëll-wise… You’d think Willow would have tried to find out where Buffy’s soul had gone first…
Cordy has already been to “Heaven”, what season was that, hopefully two or three since it’s a while before Angel S4 comes out on DVD…
Actually, I was thinking maybe Cordy was working on a whole new level, extra-dimensional when I mentioned ” a new form” for her. Sort of the TPTB “graduated” her from the human world to a “higher” spiritual level.
Although I’d love to see her in a bizarre Al Calavici-like role, as she moves around helping convince random people to join the battle against evil. Cordy the hologram/ghost with her attitude and style trying to convince everyday people to do the unusual and fight the evil man was not meant to know….
Quantumn Leap meets Buffy/Angel…
Now that’s a cross-over I’d have loved to see. But who would Sam have leapt into? Spike would be extremely entertaining.
“Al, why don’t I have a heartbeat? And what’s with these fangs?”
What I meant was that Willow had no intention of pulling Buffy out of heaven. She genuinely believed that Buffy was in hëll. And,while I certainly agree that Willow wasn’t behaving in a very smart manner,evil to me has always implied certain,definite malicious motives which Willow didn’t have. One has to have a clue to be evil (which I guess explains why Harmony isn’t.).
Cordy was complaining about the peace and quiet of heaven in the first couple of Season 4 episodes when she was a floating head ( I think we can assume that that was,in fact, Cordy and she had not yet been possessed by Jasmine. Floating head Cordy had no idea how to get back to Earth and Jasmine did.).
Cordy as Al? While I’d want her to get solid eventually, I must admit that does sound like it would be fun for a while if for no other reason then to see her struggle to figure what to do when she can’t just whack Angel upside the head for being too broody…
Best wishes,
Scott
Scott, I know Willow thought she was pulling Buffy out of “some horrible hëll dimentsion” was I think how she described it, but with all the trouble Willow went through to obtain the sacred, one of a kind artifact of Osiris and researching the ressurection spell, she never once thought of trying to find a spell that would let her try to find out if Buffy was in “Heaven”, “Hëll”, or “Limbo”?
Also, if Willow holds any true religious belief, wouldn’t ressurection be rather evil whether you were pulling the person out of heaven or hëll? The disturbing of the “eternal soul” from its final resting place? (and all this soul talk from an atheist no less)
Won’t get to see Angel 4 till they release it on DVD. When FX finally got off its butt and showed Once More with Feeling from Buffy S6, I had already downloaded it off the net and seen it. I dunno how much the episode was hacked on the D/L, but the version FX showed was hacked to hëll, so I can’t really watch the repeats on TV anymore…
It’s officail Joss told the cast and crew Angel is ending source zap2it
With the ratings since Jan 1 I expected it.
The WB has confirmed it.
http://thewb.com/PressRelease/Index/0,8341,156980,00.html
It’s seems that the WB is interested in reviving “Dark Shadows”, probably as a night time soap. I don’t want to sound cynical, but the reasoning might be that a new, relatively cheaper show might be more profitable.
On the other hand, perhaps it might be time to suggest that recasting the role of Buffy Summers for a fairwell appearence on Angel is not as unconceivable as it might have been yesterday.