Sigh.

I’m really not a brat. As exhausting as it might be, I wish I always felt as excited about these shows as I do at their best episodes. I don’t like writing bratty summaries. But -

What a waste of two things

1. Faith

and

2. Angelus

The benefit is that Faith still worked and still was awesome and now she gets to head off to Sunnydale where she is going to be absolutely mind-blowingly awesome.

Angelus was a disaster though. He was never that menacing, never felt that dangerous and spent the vast majority of his time in dive bars with trashy vampires. I find it impossible to believe that in permanent midnight that is how Angel would behave. I wish he’d tortured the cast more. I wish the show had gone darker as opposed to taking it as an opportunity to do too many cool fight scenes.

I love the concept of Faith poisoning herself to drug Angel. But it meant that he spent the majority of the episode passed out in real life - and thus not a threat. And the walk through Angel’s past? Useless.

Hal said during Season One of this show that he hates the distinction of Angel/Angelus. I don’t mind when “Angelus” is just another way of saying “Angel lost his soul” but during this arc they started to treat him like a totally different person who existed inside of Angel. Alter-ego. Sigh. That’s completely contrary to what these shows set up about Vampire-identity and the ramifications of having a soul. Also - sorry - I don’t want Angel to brush himself off and go back to normal right after his soul has been reinstated. We missed him dealing with it last time because he was in hell and then recovering from hell, but I’d love to see him struggle with his monster within again. On the other hand, he didn’t do anything “good” this time, so there’s not much for which to atone. Angel-with-a-soul locking Wolfram and Hart in the wine cellar blows away any of the crap he pulled this arc.

Rather than play a few headgames - Angel should have TORTURED the employees at Angel Investigations. They’re still playing with the group not feeling like a team. We should have seen them completely ripped apart and forced to come back together in order to defeat Cordelia or the monster within or whatever. And we should have had Wesley assuming a leadership position and trying to pull everyone together - the outsider now becoming the only one inside.

I’ve read some behind the scenes interviews now - and I probably should limit how much I do that - but they indicate that the show really doesn’t have anyone guiding the overall season arc. Tim Minear is on Firefly and David Greenwalt is doing Jake 2.0. I think that’s sense that you’re going somewhere has always been one of the strengths of both Angel and Buffy so that lack is profound. Right now, it feels like plot twist after plot twist for the sake of playing “destructo” - what big thing can be more surprising than the last big reveal?

Oh man. Remember when they just solved demon crimes?