Geoff's Comments about Angel, season 4

Last updated: 16 July 2004

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4.1 Deep Down (8)

Picking up from where 3.22 Tomorrow left off, this is perhaps Angel's best season opener yet, containing everything a good episode of Angel should: menace, humour (especially in Cordelia's all-too-brief appearance at the end!), conflicting loyalties, and plenty of surprises. It looks both backwards, efficiently cleaning up the mess, and forwards, with interesting hints of what's to come (see, for example, Lilah's latest wheeze).

4.2 Ground State (6)

Proof that an eyecatching woman in a latex costume does not necessarily a good episode make. The beginning is promising, but it's soon abandoned as the storyline loses its way; and it all ends up as not much more than a continuation of the first episode.

4.3 The House Always Wins (7)

Or, Angel does Vega$. A big-budget excursion to Nevada is faced with the task of piecing the core cast back together, with some fairly obvious metaphors about the gambling industry thrown in for good measure. Andy Halett is very convincing as a Vegas entertainer, and the whole thing is carried off with flair, even if it's not particularly great.

4.4 Slouching Towards Bethlehem (7)

Cordelia returns at last in a much more downbeat and atmospheric episode (the first of many this season), noticeably a different shape due to her real-life pregnancy. Indeed, it's almost too atmospheric, with the unfortunate consequence that it tends to drag in places. Nevertheless, its basic premise is eventually and surprisingly turned into an intriguing new dynamic in the core cast.

4.5 Supersymmetry (7)

An entirely average episode of Angel. Fred gets to show several sides of her character, providing the excuse for further quasiscience, but while the various storylines are moved on, it all feels a bit perfunctory.

4.6 Spin the Bottle (8)

You can always rely on Joss to brighten things up. This deconstruction of Angel, while not quite of the same calibre as 3.13 Waiting in the Wings, is still both amusing and penetrating, and interesting in the way the characters' teenage selves end up reproducing the same tensions as their grown-up ones. Wesley in particular is well-portrayed; we've all known people like him at school. The episode is also notable too for its setting within a story, which gives Lorne the chance to break the fourth wall; and isn't it good to be reminded of how bitchy Cordelia used to be?

4.7 Apocalypse Nowish (9)

Season four hits its stride here. Dark and broody like much of the season to date, it takes a while to builds up its tension, but finally breaks with a finely-executed but ultimately futile fight with a particularly nasty and oddly familiar-looking baddie. And the end few scenes, with fiery debris falling everywhere, are really rather beautiful.

4.8 Habeas Corpses (8)

Another awful pun masquerading as an episode title. This one starts out a bit flat after its predecessor and has a rather too-convenient denouement, but in between is a masterpiece of controlled terror. Skulking around a building full of dead lawyers while trying to avoid a relentless killing machine may look at times like a sci-fi B-movie, but in this context it rewrites Angel brilliantly.

4.9 Long Day's Journey (8)

Touchingly dedicated to Glenn Quinn, this sees That Woman In The Rubber return for more substantial fare than 4.2 Ground State. Indeed, such is the sense of growing menace that the story can afford to let the fighting take a back seat to character interactions, and get away with giving the bad guy a very undramatic exit. Note, too, how amusingly human Angel likes to make its disposable higher beings.

4.10 Awakening (8)

While this episode might justly be accused of stretching the story a bit far, it's still replete with everything which made the preceding few so memorable, even if Gwen's disappearance is unsatisfyingly convenient. It's also not a little confusing, especially at the end, but it's worth it for the realisation that Angelus is back.

4.11 4.12 Soulless / Calvary (7 and 7)

A pair of episodes which, while undeniably tense, dark, threatening and in parts unpleasant, would better have been combined into one; Angelus wreaks all kinds of havoc with words alone, but there's way too much talking and the plot seems stretched. Note, too, that 4.12 Calvary has three writers, the first episode of Angel to do so. That said, Sean "Sam Gamgee" Astin does a creditable directing job on 4.11 Soulless, and the very end - while predictable - is no less shocking for it.

4.13 Salvage (8)

In which the ever-watchable Eliza Dushku crash-lands into the plot-line and gets a right kicking for her troubles. Faith can always be relied on to shake things up, and her effects are palpable; this is a further tightening of the tension but with a greater physical payoff and plenty of black humour. Meanwhile, Connor twice gets his comeuppance, the second time being a fortuitous capitalisation on real-world events, and the season is once again pointed in a new direction.

4.14 Release (8)

After Faith's ever so slightly pornographic shower scene, this episode showcases Angel's ability to get deep down into some very dark parts of human nature. Much of it concerns Faith's redemption, ably goaded on by Angelus in the extraordinarily intense fight sequence at the end. And what a cliffhanger, too.

4.15 Orpheus (9)

Even better yet, this is far more than just an excuse to raid the costume department for some flashbacks. The parallel storylines are superbly interwoven, culminating in the masterstroke of Angel and Angelus fighting it out in one of Angel's best pieces of psychological self-therapy, in the process finishing off the rehabilitation of Faith begun in the previous episode. Alyson Hannigan drops by to get things done, brightening up the mood somewhat, but it's ultimately the little touches - Angelus's "What are you doing in my flahback?", the choice of music on the jukebox (see 2.1 Judgement), Aly's "Marlboro Man" greeting to her real-life Significant Other - which make it so memorable. Even after she leaves at the end, when it's all smiles, there's still room for a further twist.

4.16 Players (7)

A bit flat after the preceding feast of Angel goodness, probably due to the third appearance of three writing credits this season. The main story-of-the-week sees Gwen's third appearance, but it's ultimately little more than a rather hollow big-budget costume extravaganza which is only just rescued at the end by the rather poignant fulfilment of its purpose.

4.17 Inside Out (8)

A surprising and not totally successful retconning of the entire show. Picking up on the previous episode's subsidiary storyline, it takes a while to get somewhere, needing a visit from Darla and the amusingly mundane preoccupations of last season's demon Skip to do so; but it's eventually delivered with a suitably impressively psychedelic special effect. Two things in particular stand out: the penetrating stare of to dead victim, and the heavily pregnant Charisma Carpenter's unnerving ability to make Cordelia look creepy and sinister.

4.18 4.19 Shiny Happy People / The Magic Bullet (7 and 7)

It'd be interesting to see what an episode titled, say, "Binky the Doormat" would turn out... anyway, it's an appropriate title for something inspired by certain pseudo-religious cultic organisations, which is exactly the kind of subject that you'd expect Angel to do a perceptive eposide about. The direction is terrific - especially at the end of 4.18 Shiny Happy People - and gives both episodes just the right eerie feeling of being not quite right. Unfortunately the script isn't; aside from a couple of fine monents of moral ambiguity, such as the guy in the mental ward (is he mad, or is everyone slse?), it feels clichéd and predictable; and for every potientially great moment there's an equal and opposite one of ponderous clumsiness. So, 5 for content, but 9 for execution.

4.20 Sacrifice (6)

Oh dear. Aside from a lot of running around in underground tunnels, not a great deal happens here, and the viewer is treated to the uncomfortable sight of the season limply unravelling. The three-legged monster is cool, and there's a decent cliffhanger, but the rest only goes to show up the flaws in the storyline. Interestingly, and perhaps not coincidentally, at about the same time Buffy's seventh season also showed signs of running out of steam.

4.21 Peace Out (7)

As with Buffy's fourth season, the end of the main story-arc is brought forward by one episode, and again it's something of a relief. This one is better as philosophy - there are some nice bits in there about free will and the value of lives, for example - than as the conclusion to something big. Part of the problem is that most of the cast just stand around and pontificate, but much of it has to do with the fact that it doesn't seem to have been throught through properly.

4.22 Home (9)

Wow. Completely wrongfooting the viewer, this is in an altogether different league from its predecessors and more than justifies ending the preceding storyline early. Most of it is one huge temptation - deftly presented by Stephanie Romanov in her finest half-hour - within which the central characters' flaws are mercilessly exposed; you know they'll give in, but you still want to watch them trying to resist. Added to this is the tense stand-off with Connor, which raises the misunderstood child cliché to a new (and possibly slightly overblown) level; it's brought to a brutal end, not just once but twice with the final shattering scenes managing to be among Angel's most upsetting.

The DVDs

Again, a not entirely satisfactory selection of featurettes. The by now traditional season overview does at least try to follow the main story threads sensibly rather than going through them one episode at a time. The others consist of yet another all-too-brief outtakes reel; a last look at the Hyperion Hotel which really should have been a proper look at the production design; a character feature ("Fatal Beauty and the Beast") for Vladimir Kilich and Gina Torres, and another ("Malice in Wonderland") for Stephanie Romanov. Plus eleven trailers, many of which have already appeared on previous box sets.