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Thursday 13 March 2014

Review: ANGEL (Seasons 2-5)

Angel
Seasons 2 to 5
Starring David Boreanaz.
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: dvd box set

About Angel:
At the start of the series, Angel has just moved to Los Angeles. He is soon visited by Doyle, a messenger sent to him on behalf of The Powers That Be. Doyle receives visions that can guide Angel on his mission as a champion of humankind. Angel also encounters Cordelia Chase, who is trying to launch an acting career. The three group together to form Angel Investigations, a detective agency that hopes to "help the helpless." When Doyle dies in the episode "Hero", he passes on his 'visions' to Cordelia with a kiss. Shortly thereafter, the ex-Watcher, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, joins the group. Meanwhile, the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart pay increasing attention to Angel. They tempt him toward darkness when they resurrect Darla, Angel's ex-lover and sire — killed by Angel in the first season of Buffy in the episode "Angel".
Source: Info in the About Angel was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_%28TV_series%29 on 25/02/2013.

Review:
I struggled with the first half of the first Season of the Angel show but because I haven't got any better to watch, I eventually got through the first Season. And by the end of Season 1 I was an Angel show fan. Despite the annoyances along the way, I continued to be an Angel show fan. Until almost to the end of Season 5, that was. Okey so good and evil is very flexible in this world which I think made the fantastical world of Angel more realistic in the sense that it mirrors very closely what is good and evil in us humans. This made the show easy to identify with by the audience which in turns draws more followers in which I was one of them. Some shows carry this ambiguous presentation of good and evil with aplomb and sometimes not. In the Angel show, the creators almost got away with it. But I think they tried too hard or something and the cracks were showing. That I didn't like. In fact it dialed down my Angel show fan-hood almost to nothing. In a way that was good and in a way it was not. It was good because there were no more Angel shows. It was bad because I would have rather keep my fantasy bubble. Anyway, The "cracks" first appeared when they tried too hard to make Cordellia one of the good guys and a bigger role. That didn't sold. It didn't tally that a selfish, superficial bitch could care that much for people she didn't know and could not give her money or anything else but pain and suffering which is what was suppose to be her motivator. There is a huge inconsistency in the character development there. Sure a person could change, but not that much. Not a 180 degrees turn around. No matter that Charisma Carpenter portrayed the character really well. Then the creators sort of contradicted themselves by taking out Lindsey McDonald as a bad guy in the end. As I recon it, Lindsey McDonald is more consistent to become good than Cordelia Chase ever did. And I was royally annoyed with that inconsistency! It burst my "fantasy bubble" which I would have preferred to keep. By the end of Season 5, I was not much of a fan anymore. I would say that the Angel show could have been made better if given the chance to continue into further seasons as a TV series rather than cut off abruptly but they way it is now, I would rate it a 3.5 out of 5.

Empirical Evaluation:
Cinematography = 3
Acting = 4
Character development = 3
Story itself = 3
World building = 4
Attention to detail = 3.5

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 cherries

3 comments:

Melissa (My World...in words and pages) said...

Oh man. It's been ages since I watched these. I liked this spin off, but at the same time wasn't as taken with it. I liked when they took over the firm though. The world was always amazing.

Anne said...

I was a big fan of Angel, and accepted/believed in Cordelia's redemption. However, later on there were several episodes I thought were clunkers and I wasn't thrilled with the Connor storyline (maybe that whole season). I loved the Wesley/Fred episodes with what happened to Fred and the blue situation and cried a couple of times and the last show was great. OMG! The ending. A little Spike is great with anything too.

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