So. Loved it.

I’ll say this right now - I wish they moved Spike to Angel seasons earlier. I get that it was the Buffy writers who loved him and there’s some huge payoff in dealing with their issues now - but he’s so much better used here.

I feel like I see Spike the way the Angel writers are playing him right now - a vampire with serious “daddy” issues, women issues, self-identity issues and all of them kind of justified. With each flashback, it becomes easier and easier to see how the poet became William the Bloody. What’s nice about the fight between Angel and Spike is that they’re both kind of assholes but Angel’s an asshole with just a LITTLE bit more perspective (and also just a LITTLE bit more entitlement.)

We had two cop-out endings in a row but this one deserved a cop out. The fight between Angel and Spike is NOT a fight between two champions. Not yet anyway. It’s a fight between two boys who haven’t worked out their competitive streak.

Angel is driven by an unindentifiable sense of suffering and redemption - not only to undo his wrongdoing but to legitimize it. If he atones for his sins that means he had an epic past to atone for, not just a series of meaningless violent acts. Does that make sense? In making his past epic it becomes part of a tragic story he gets to play in. I think that’s why he struggles so much with the mission - a struggle which was a constant focus on the show well before this Wolfram & Hart turn - because he knows that his Good, like his Bad, is ultimately only as important as he convinces himself it is.

I swear to gosh that I’m on to something coherent and mind blowing there.

Gunn is great. They pulled a bunch of kooky moves this season, but they’re all paying off. Street-Gun had definitely done his time. Those particular issues and that particular arc were one step beyond played out.

They’re really using Harmony well. Not too much, but enough to be satisfying.

So. In the back of my mind I knew/suspected that Lindsey did/might come back. I think I read somewhere about Kane being a cast member for awhile on Angel but I tried to not give it much thought. In fact, I was pretty close to totally forgetting Lindsey ever even freaken existed except the other day I was remembering how great Season Two was.

It’s great. It’s so great. Whatever it means, it’s perfect.

Also, it’s weird how everyone pretends like Fred and Gunn never dated. Just a thought.

Season Four was weird. Really weird. I stayed with it though because you guys said it got good, and it’s basically like that season never happened except all of the good things carried over. But that reminds me, if we’re making a wish list for the end of season five - and why not - I really want them to deal with Cordelia. Again, I hated where they took her, but we deserve more than that loose end.

So here’s what I want for Season Five:
Resolution for Cordelia
To never mention Connor again
Shannshu to come true or be proven bullshit
Some revisiting of Angel’s soulless self. Actually, I might not really want that but I hated last season’s use of it, so I kind of want one last soulless harrah
A continuous arc of Spike not sucking
A return for Drusilla
“Anne” to come back
A return for Darla - somehow, some way - so that her last appearance on the show isn’t to stupid dumb Connor
Wesley to go completely over the edge into darkness or to step up and really own being a dark anti-hero. I want Wesley to have the same sense of aggressive self-identity he had when his friends abandoned him. He’ll never be all lightness and good. Wesley is not going to mature into Giles (even though Giles does kill people).
Death

I thought that list would have more concrete guesses and predictions but I realized I basically have NO idea where this season will go. Especially with Lindsey reintroduced.

Edit: Don’t GD respond to that list with … anything. I don’t want to know “Three of those things happen” or even “Oh man. Just wait.” Watch it.

Edit edit: The return of Kate. Yeah. I said it.