tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post8497777234565836518..comments2024-03-28T02:30:08.913-04:00Comments on Not Just Movies: Angel — Season 4Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09078001374402400232noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-13332933333620663512020-02-24T17:42:15.156-05:002020-02-24T17:42:15.156-05:00Vampires is not at all like in the movies or books...Vampires is not at all like in the movies or books. Sure, I understand. You are young you have the whole world open to you. You can be anything that you choose if you apply yourself and try hard to work toward that goal. But being a Vampire is not what it seems like. It’s a life full of good, and amazing things. We are as human as you are.. It’s not what you are that counts, But how you choose to be. Do you want a life full of interesting things? Do you want to have power and influence over others? To be charming and desirable? To have wealth, health, and longevity? contact the Vampires Lord on his Email: Richvampirekindom@gmail.comJerome Samsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00886505335771600600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-82576644520026727102016-06-02T16:56:15.085-04:002016-06-02T16:56:15.085-04:00I wish Faith had returned in season 5 instead of S...I wish Faith had returned in season 5 instead of Spike, just imagine Faith/Wesley as a couple!okay maybe that's a bit weird butbi would love that!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08574698527827532351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-51821144508652444922012-02-03T09:37:02.192-05:002012-02-03T09:37:02.192-05:00I'm really enjoying your Angel/Buffy reviews, ...I'm really enjoying your Angel/Buffy reviews, and of course I understand that we all have our own opinions and tastes, but I'm repeatedly floored by your love of season five of Angel. I thought that was the single worst season of either show and the utter destruction of the entire concept of the series.<br /><br />It infuriates me how they ruined my favorite TV character of all-time, Spike, by essentially erasing all of the character development he went through in season seven of Buffy and regressed him to season four Spike (which was enjoyable at the time but appropriately over) who is little more than the wacky neighbor who swoops in for no reason, delivers a predictable joke to annoy the protagonist, and then either disappears or stands around for no reason with nothing to do.<br /><br />I was utterly heartbroken and thoroughly disgusted by the disservice done to each of the characters (aside from Fred who really comes into her own) and especially Angel by taking away his edge (and absolutely everything that made him interesting, until the very last few episodes) and turning him into the equivalent of the perpetually grumpy old man sending back soup in a restaurant.Raeahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03330456472264037518noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-85301652934744452282009-12-22T08:22:21.061-05:002009-12-22T08:22:21.061-05:00I assumed it was a joke, because no one in their r...I assumed it was a joke, because no one in their right mind could adore She.Jakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09078001374402400232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-36730801085613612542009-12-22T03:31:04.287-05:002009-12-22T03:31:04.287-05:00I didn't know that, but even if I did, you rep...I didn't know that, but even if I did, you reply to like, 10% of peoples' posts. I just wanted to say that I really wanted you to read mine.<br />And I wasn't going to do what I said I was if you didn't read the review. God, after reading your hysterical review of Twilight, I had misguided hopes that you would appreciate my cruel, dark sense of humor that cleary demonstrates the asshole that I am.(Though you already know that, don't you?)<br />I understand what you are saying, but it just doesn't make much sense for us to need to watch these characters' pain. You're right that maybe they made a difference, but the writing only allows us to consider that idea in the final episode.<br />I just feel like the series spent too long with a meaning could be explained in one episode. And besides, the show could've been about these things without being super-dark and basically nothing good happening.<br />And you do know I was joking about She, right?Spencerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03669266022229029181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-90444382685889695562009-12-22T03:09:44.566-05:002009-12-22T03:09:44.566-05:00Vampires are not evil simply because they have no ...Vampires are not evil simply because they have no soul, they are evil because they lose their own soul and a demon resides in them. Remember on Pylea when Angel tries to go vamp and turns into some strange monster that tore people apart? That was his full demon unleashed.<br /><br />As for the show being dark, there are moments of happiness, none of them lasting and none allowed to last as long as they did in Buffy. But this is the story of a man responsible for unspeakable crimes, crimes that spanned over a century, and it's all about his struggle to live with himself. It's a show about guilt, the crippling, destructive nature of it: Angel feels guilty for his actions, Gunn for leaving the streets to work with (no, <i>for</i>) someone who was technically his enemy, Wesley had shame instilled in him by his abusive father. Hell, even Doyle felt ashamed of his half-demon heritage. The two people who weren't hampered by guilt, the major women, had hangups of their own: Fred bore the scars of her time on Pylea, and Cordelia suffered the indignity of her life falling apart (while still on Buffy), losing all of her family's money and giving up on college to desperately pursue an acting career to make money quickly. <br /><br />These were all people individually fated to die ignominious deaths, but together they found a certain solace in each other. Yes, people died and it was sad, but Joss' skill is to make us care about these deaths, because we'd become a part of this screwy family too. But without these people to mourn Angel would have been a sloppy, soulful vamp who would have gotten staked in a supernatural equivalent of a barroom brawl one day and that'd be the end of that. With a group of tormented people relying on each other they could slowly piece together their lives, to the point that they could go on when someone fell. Not Fade Away isn't hopeless; sure, it looks like they're all going to die, but at last Angel realizes that he <i>has</i> made an impact on the world, having dealt a blow against evil even if it means little in the end and even reconnecting with his son. We also see definitively that some part of Fred remains in Illyria. Not Fade Away shows a group of individuals who would never have fought the battle they do when we first met them (and that includes Illyria, introduced only a few episodes prior); it's a testament of their commitment to each other and the moral fortitude they gained with each other's help. Is it as uplifting as Buffy's end? Hell no. But it's absolutely right for the series and gives these characters a glimmer of fire even at the end (what you would call ending where it started I would call "coming full circle").<br /><br />Anyway, I'll probably revisit these reviews, since they're old and I hadn't worked out a proper format yet for TV reviews. Plus, my writing's improved over the last year and I've noticed new things in Buffy and Angel to boot. I imagine I'll incorporate some of this into them.<br /><br />Oh, and I get alerts when people comment, so you don't need to waste time writing in newer posts for me to check out older ones.Jakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09078001374402400232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-32348176986989344492009-12-22T01:31:00.120-05:002009-12-22T01:31:00.120-05:00In Not Fade Away(granted, it's a great episode...In Not Fade Away(granted, it's a great episode), Joss flawlessly shows everything that the series was saying. The fight doesn't ever end, no matter who dies, and everything sucks. The question is, how does that apply to us? No, a more important question: Why do you need to make an entire series(or most of one) off of that one meaning? One episode would be fine, but if you make a five-season show that can be completely summed up in one sentence, you're making a crappy show.<br />*Spoilers*<br />And what's the deal with eveyone dying? How's THAT realistic? Sure, the main characters can last four or five seasons because they feel like it, but they all have to die at the end. What about Gunn's pointless fate in the last episode.<br />I bet Joss was thinking, "Uh-oh, this is the end and Gunn is still alive. I better make him mortally wounded!"<br />I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon. In fact, I wish I haven't watched any of his shows because his writing's so good that I'm starting to not enjoy many other shows and movies as much. That should show that he has some freakin talent.<br />Of the four shows that he's made, Firefly was the only one that didn't depress me.(Serenity did), but I can't deny Buffy's greatness, even within it's flaws, and I've forced myself to accept that Dollhouse is just another LOST, only good.<br />One of the things about this show was that there were about 20 episodes that I thought were actually realistic.(City of, Reprise, Guise will be Guise, Darla, Redefinition, Lullaby, Somnambulist, Hero, I Will Remember You, Five by Five, You're Welcome, A Hole in The World, and Not Fade Away, to name most of them. Oh, and She. DEFINATILY She.) And those episodes are better than anything on any show. It's like The Body, only 20 episodes. The problem is that there's just not enough of them.<br />The dark themes in the series are over-the-top, to put it simply. It didn't need to be darker than Buffy, and the fact that it is is what really hurts the show to me.<br />I wish I could love it, and sometimes I try my best to love it, but I can't. That's pretty much my opinion of the show.<br />(And just for the sake of saying it to piss you off, I actually didn't have much of a problem with Connor and Cordelia screwing eachother. Cordelia(or whoever the hell the demend-whatever was) was just trying to get in bed with Connor from the start, so you gotta be impressed with how elaborat she was. I knew that Angel and Cordelia's relationship wouldn't have a happy ending, so I was just waiting for Cordelia to die anyway. And they couldn't kill her in this season, otherwise the seventh season of Buffy would have to deal with it. And Connor...well, the guy's gone through Book's special hell. Just think about all the bad things that have happened to him. He doesn't even have much of an understanding of women. It makes perfect sense for him to fall in love with this woman and want to bang it off.<br />Plus, I give them credit for having the sexiest newborn babie I've ever seen.)Spencerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03669266022229029181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-78471168569277420612009-12-22T01:30:15.196-05:002009-12-22T01:30:15.196-05:00The main problem with this show is that it's t...The main problem with this show is that it's too dark. Whedon was trying to make this darker and more mature than Buffy, and he suceeds in doing it. Making the show more mature than Buffy was is one of those thank god-ish things, but making it darker? No. Buffy was dark enough, you said it yourself. The only way to make the show darker than Buffy would be to have nothing but bad things happpening and no reward or chance of a happy future, you know, everything being hopeless, and everyone dying, and that's exactly what Whedon does with the show.<br />It's almost immature. I can understand Whedon for what he was trying to do, but when he was making the show, he should've realised that it was a mistake and changed things in the second or third season. <br />That being said, this show does have character developement. (If character developement is bad things constantly happening to the characters.)<br />Wesley was the only character that actually worked with it. With the rest, it didn't feel realistic. The characters end up being so hopeless that when a writer makes a happy episode, it feels contrived.<br />The problem with Angel(the character) is that other than having a moody personallity where at some point in every season he's like "I love everything. No wait, I hate everything! Wait a minute, no I don't.", he doesn't develope.<br />In "City of", he goes from being a depressed, hopeless(what a suprise) vampire with a soul that keeps fighting endless vampires and demends while everyone around him dies, to being a depressed, hopeless(are you suprised yet?) vampire with a soul that keeps fighting endless vampires and demends while everyone around him dies, but now cares about people. Isn't that what the episode was about? My question is: so what? It doesn't change him, or make his life(if you can call it that) any better or easier, nor does it do such to anyone else around him. So what's the point? I'll continue this in the next post.Spencerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03669266022229029181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-36161038505151335912009-12-22T01:20:15.145-05:002009-12-22T01:20:15.145-05:00I rewatched the first few episodes of this season....I rewatched the first few episodes of this season.(Yes, I've seen it before) I remembered really liking the first episode, and I liked it even more this time. <br />The second episode was ok. I thought it had a little bit of nice developement for Fred and Gunn's relationship, and Gwen was a decent enough character. (And she doesn't die. That's right, Joss actually doesn't kill a character on this show. I feel sorry for him.)<br />I skipped the 3rd episode, which was about Lorne and Vegas or some shit like that, because I knew it wasn't exactly your favorite episode and I should probably stay away from it. If you ask me, they should've ended Lorne's story with season 3. In the next two seasons, he does nothing but occasionally be a plot device and an unfunny comic relief.<br />The fourth episode.(The one where Lilah uses Wesley, and Lorne is actually important, so of course it should stand out in your memory!), and yeah, it was ok.<br />The main problem with this season is the same as the rest of the show. For one thing, the series doesn't go anywhere. It stays the same in the first episode as it does in the last.<br />It's about a guy that can never have a girlfriend but pointlessly tries to anyway, is really moody, and hopelessly tries to redeem himself(even though he can never redeem himself, according to him) because of things he wasn't responisble for. Oh, and good things never happen, only bad things. Oh, and everyone has to die at some point. Even though I don't believe that losing your soul would make you a different person.(Technically, it doesn't make sense for vampires to have no soul and want to kill people, because if you have no soul, wouldn't you not even want to be evil?) But in the series, when someone loses their soul, they become a different person and have no control over it.(unless they're a contrived vampire, like oh, Spike in Buffy seasons 4-6) Angel had no control of what Angelus did, and if did, he wouldn't have done of those things. And yet he always blames himself, when he never learns that they weren't his fault. One of the best lines the latest season of a show that I like went something like this; "No matter what we do, sometimes we have no control over losing people that we care about. Sometimes we want to blame ourselves so we can make sense out of it.) This line can easily apply to Angel. You would think that the show would end with him finally realizing that, but the fact that he doesn't is freakin ridiculous. I know I'll make this post too big if I don't stop, so I'll continue this in another post.Spencerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03669266022229029181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-49842496925474014272009-07-04T04:54:04.521-04:002009-07-04T04:54:04.521-04:00For some reason, I interpreted Season 4 as politic...For some reason, I interpreted Season 4 as political- the depiction of an old order (perceived as corrupt) being torn down and replaced by a new order (perceived as being ideal). It seems to be something similar to something like the Iranian Revolution, or the French Revolution, or even the bringing down of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Whenever an older order perceived to be corrupt is torn down, it is followed by chaos and anarchy. Often, ordinary people are even more terrified by the state of disorder during this time than life under the old order. I felt the beast and the blotting out of the sun, allowing creatures of the night free reign, represented that chaos. <br /><br />The wiping out of WR&H seemed to symbolize striking out against perceived centers of corruption by revolutionaries. Cordelia and Connor seemed to represent two types of revolutionaries- with Cordelia as a visionary and Connor as a foot soldier (with his difficult past, something like the poor, tribal, uneducated men that may have supported the Taliban or the Iranian Revolution because they have never seen anything better). Cordelia was martyred for the cause. Jasmine at the end represented the new, supposedly ideal, order. <br /><br />Most religious idealogies subscribe to the concept of predestination- meaning that their superiority and supremacy is part of God's plan (e.g. Iranian revolutionaries once they seized control of Iran or the Taliban while they ruled Afghanistan). Most of the claims that Jasmine's arrival was planned or predestined came from Skip or Jasmine herself, who seem to be representing a religious idealogy. The "free will" gang in Angel in the end chose to oppose her, so I think the show leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether he or she buys into "predestination" or "free will." <br /><br />It is interesting that it is Jasmine's intention to make the world a better place- this is generally the intention of religious or ideological revolutionaries. But, the show demonstrates that there is always a cost to making the world a better place through this type of approach- whether it is the giving up of freedom of choice, private ownership, personal privacy, etc..<br /><br />Sorry for the long comment...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-9645436823375533432009-02-03T19:07:00.000-05:002009-02-03T19:07:00.000-05:00Check out this for a more pretentious version of t...Check out this for a more pretentious version of the above:<BR/><BR/>http://dollhousehothouse.blogspot.com/2009/02/buffy-spin-off-angel.htmlI.V.P.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17167362896416316361noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-66481654406756816252009-02-03T19:05:00.000-05:002009-02-03T19:05:00.000-05:00Season 4 suffers from what I like to call 'continu...Season 4 suffers from what I like to call 'continuity clusterfuck'. The season arc completely takes over the plot, twists pile up onto each other, and you get the feeling that the writers have no idea where the whole thing is going. Steven S. DeKnight had the unenviable task of sorting out two seasons' worth of mess in one episode (4.17 'Inside Out'). He does an amazing job. But still. Turns out Jasmine conspired to get Darla pregnant, then sent her son Connor to hell, then got him back, sent Cordelia to heaven, then got her back, so that they could have sex, and so Jasmine could be born... Huh?<BR/><BR/>This is pretty much why I prefer Buffy to Angel. Although Angel uses all this craziness to say something quite interesting about determinism, divine intervention and free will. Its thematic strength doesn't make up for the failure to deliver on the nuts and bolts plot/character/dialogue front.I.V.P.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17167362896416316361noreply@blogger.com