Angel S05 E01 – A new level of IDGI.

Previously: Season 4 happened and Angel got everyone’s memory wiped of Connor except our own. The Fang Gang now runs Wolfram & Hart LA because of reasons.
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Conviction

Sweeney: First of all, you should know that I’m writing this while watching The Oscars, so I think you should all play your very own Snark Squad Drinking Game of, “Spot the recap’s many inaccuracies.” It’ll be fun. I promise. Maybe.

Kirsti: It won’t be fun at all, because Kirsti The Eternally Anal Retentive will have fixed them all. But sure. Fun.

Lorraine: Well, that ruins the game before it started. Okay, guys. I guess you should now all be playing, “drink whenever you spot a place where an inaccuracy may have been!” HAPPY DRINKING.

Sweeney: That’s the most fun kind of drinking game.

The final season begins with a little classic Angel. A woman is being attacked by a vampire and Angel gets the full Batman treatment as he dramatically rushes in to save her. He stakes the vamp and then tells her not to understand, but just get home and out of dark alleys. He walks off as the Orchestra of Champions swells. It’s interrupted by a his very own private Wolfram & Hart SWAT team. An awkward, curly haired man informs Angel that the vampire he just killed was an employee of a client, but that’s a totally acceptable first week misunderstanding. Cameras flash and the rescued woman is given forms to sign. She’s horrified that Angel just did this for publicity. Angel anxiously tries to insist that he helps the helpless as the curly haired judgey assistant offers to get him some coffee.

K: Curly haired judgey assistant is TJ THYNE(!!!!!!) who I have an irrational love for. He’s like Seth Green – pocket sized and adorable. More so in Bones than here, however.

Sweeney: Electric cellos, now with added Ramen Noodle flavoring! (I’m excited to see where the full cast dramatic walk comes from this season!) Mercedes McNab is also going to be in this episode! Fun.

Lor: I had a bit of an uncomfortable freak-out seeing Spike all up in the credits, AND WITH SECOND BILLING TO BOOT. This is so weird.

Sweeney: I’m trying not to think about it until the episode makes me.

After the credits some children are talking about what stuff their parents will let them read. It reminds me of our high school Traumateer who informed us that this blog is blocked on school computers, because we’re only allowed to ruin your childhood retroactively.

K: When I was 27, my boss didn’t approve of my choice of reading material (the Sookie Stackhouse books) and asked if my mother knew I was reading something so distasteful. I laughed and laughed because my parents gave up trying to keep up with what I was reading when I was about ten. “You want to read Dickens? FINE, HERE’S A 1200 PAGE OMNIBUS. ENJOY.”

Sweeney: Cut to Fred, getting off an elevator with a box of stuff. She runs into Wesley and explains how overwhelming everything is in their new lives at Wolfram & Hart. She explains the contrivance of the S4 finale to Wesley and the audience. He tells her that the upshot is that her run-on sentences have gotten less pointless. “That’s so sweet! And a tad condescending.” (K: A+, Fred.)

This conversation is interrupted by the Whedon Hat Trick, and Wesley seems displeased by his boyish good looks and probable evil. WHT and Fred walk off so that he grumbles about it a bit to Gunn, but he doesn’t take the bait. Are we officially done with all that, then? Please say yes. I know, spoilers. Gunn has finally chosen his new office and he’s excited that he can see mountains from the window because it’s news to him that LA has mountains. This amuses me because it was one of the first things Lor noticed about LA. She spent our whole drive into the desert marveling at the presence of land formations taller than trash cans.

Lor: #Floridagirlproblems. I would then go on to describe LA to anyone who asked me at home as “Florida with mountains.” We even saw houses precariously perched at the tip top of some of these land formations and it freaked me the hell out. PEOPLE. WHAT ARE YOU DOING LIVING UP THERE?

Sweeney: I’m certain that even the people living up  there question their life choices a little.

Wesley jokes that feng shui means that people will fall for anything. He reconsiders, though, and decides that furniture placement may well be a BFD within Wolfram & Hart. They could all be one misaligned couch away from raising some new demon or other.

As Gunn says that they’re all a long way off from being comfortable there, we segue magic to Lorne, on the phone, telling someone how wonderful things are. He tells a client about a fabulous part he’s got for them while telling someone else to stop showing him heinous carpet suggestions.

Angel makes his dazed, lost entrance and it’s only under the bright office lighting that I see just how terrible his hair is. It looks like he’s replaced the standard vampire hair gel with some sort of vampire mousse. This was a bad decision. I think I’d take one of the terrible wigs over whatever he’s got going on right now. He’s also looking a whole lot less ageless, which is one of the unfortunate drawbacks of having mere mortals portray your ageless vampires. The constraints of the real world can be so cruel.

K: When his ridiculous hair first became apparent, I laughed and laughed and laughed because IT’S SO FUCKING TALL, YOU GUYS. And then I emailed Lor and Sweeney, because obviously.

Lor: Super tall. Practically another land formation, if you will.

Sweeney: It’s tall and yet floppy. I don’t even understand. I’ve never tried to understand the vampire hair gel decisions in the Buffyverse, but this is a new level of IDGI.

Anyway, he complains to Gunn and Wesley about the W&H ambush the previous night and Wes promises to keep that from happening ever again. Angel enters his office, declaring that everything must go, including the woman sitting on his desk. Her name is Eve and she’s there to be his liaison to the firm – she answers to the senior partners, but notes that it doesn’t mean she’s close enough to be useful to Angel in getting to them. Wesley notes that it’s still a pretty powerful position for a young woman and she sasses that he can’t be sure she’s either of those things. I like this line, even if I am otherwise inclined to dislike her for the basic reason that she’s trying to be a Lilah Morgan type but there can never be another Lilah Morgan.

K: #accurate. I dislike her too, but that’s because I can see the future. 

Sweeney: Eve explains that Angel’s just in charge of a corporation and while they have the option to shut the office (which is still but one part of the larger W&H machine) down but because CAPITALISM! evil will just go next door. She’s explaining the catch so that they don’t have to sit around trying to figure it out. In order to use their inside position to stop the worst of the evil from happening, they’re going to have to keep the business running – meaning that they’ll have to turn a blind eye to a whole lot of evil in the process. Everyone’s kind of somber, but Eve wants them to get pumped. She taunts Angel, asking if he’s scared, so he bites the metaphorically significant apple she gave him.

That night, the gang is going through files and are overwhelmed by the scope of everything. Angel wonders if he’s got a secretary he can ask to help them. Fred notes that in addition to the clients, they’re also going to have to comb through the staff to check out who might be plotting against them from within.

Gunn goes to grab his stuff and Eve is waiting in his office to note how much easier evil fighting was on the street. She confirms that he’s not backing out and he tells her that she wouldn’t be asking that question if she knew her. She hands him a card and walks off, promising that he’ll feel like a new man. Wesley stands in the doorway of his adjacent office asking what Eve meant by that. Gunn answers that the card is for a tailor but he hesitates so probably that’s not true. Wesley’s looking like he smells misinformation.

The next morning, Angel sits at his desk going through mail. He has some fun with his evil law firm’s evil phone system options. He calls his new assistant who is super ditzy but agrees to bring him a cup of blood. He gets a call from Wesley, who will be coming in shortly with an issue of some sort. Before that, though, we meet his new assistant: Harmony. She’s been working for Wolfram & Hart for a while now because the benefits are great. She tells Angel to cool it with threats of firing/death because she’s got vampire strength and is a total sycophant. (True, though.) She also mentions superhero typing skillz and she’s stealing one of our special skillz. Wait, does that mean we can get Wolfram & Hart jobs? Can we blog on the job?

K: God, I hope so. Although I’m not sure there are enough showers in the world to wash off the stench of evil that would stick to you after a day of working at Wolfram & Hart… In other news, HARMONY!!!!!!!! I am bizarrely excited to see her back. In other other news, ANGEL NEEDS TO DO UP MORE SHIRT BUTTONS OMG.

Lor: I was pretty excited about Harmony because I didn’t see her guest starting credit at the beginning of the episode.

Not sure how I’d feel about working at W&H, though. But I’m broke so the right amount of money could certainly tell me how I feel.

Sweeney: Wesley walks in and Harmony informs Angel that Wesley was the one who picked her. Wesley says that he figures that a familiar face will do the ratings some good. I mean Angel. It will do Angel some good. (K: Both the character AND the show.) Harmony brings up Cordelia and then everyone gets really awkward and sad because pre-character-assassination!Cordelia would actually do the show some good, but the show has decided to ship one of its better creations off to comaland and replace her with some second rate vampires. WHATEVER. Harmony has all the feelings because Cordelia was her role model and a sign of better times on this show.

For like a minute. Then it’s back to her don’t-fire-me pitch, so Wesley sends her to be productive elsewhere. With her gone, it’s time to introduce the case of the week. One of the evil guys who pours a lot of money into the firm needs to get off. The man who will present their first major moral dilemma is there to growl and attempt to be menacing, along with his bumbling W&H lawyer. (We’ll be seeing a bit of him next season on Veronica Mars!) The only important takeaway from this scene is that Bumbling Lawyer mentions that the DA has a shaman or two of their own, which is delightful. Moral Dilemma #1 blah blahs about his lack of fucks given for Angel’s soul and helpfully scales back the amount of dilemma involved by suggesting that he can blow up the entire state of California if he gets convicted.

Elsewhere, Lorne confronts evil in the face of a room full of shitty singers. (K: I found his feigned enthusiasm oddly adorable) Fred, meanwhile, explains what’s going on to Whedon Hat Trick in their lab. After mis-remembering your hate for Whedon Hat Trick helpfully enabled me to guess that he was not dead (yet) on Firefly, I can now apply your actual hate to the prediction that he’s evil. Also that he’s going to screw over Fred in some significant way, since they’re setting up this fliration. It figures, since the show keeps setting up Fred pairings that I hate. Actually pairings, in general. Ironically, the hatesex shit show that was Wes/Lilah is the best pairing this show has put forth. Aside from Cordelia/Doyle. That was the actual high point of this show and relationships. And then he died. So. That’s that.

K: Still not over it.

Lor: I followed Sweeney’s long logic trail from “Knox is evil,” to “and then Fred dies.” I want to take unthink all those thoughts.

Sweeney: Well, fuck. That was the worst came of “AND THEN SHE DIES” ever.

Any-tangent-way. Fred explains to Whedon Hat Trick that she’s the “running away from things type” because this show wants to keep annoying us with its dismissal of what a total badass this girl is and always has been.

Angel’s Office. The Fang Gang tries to figure out what to do about Moral Dilemma #1. Their first order of business is to investigate the possibilities (magic? virus?) behind this Californiasplosion. Harmony comes in with an address for Angel so that Lorne can join everyone else on the, “Hey, Harmony’s here!” train.

Angel’s off to a place he can’t get to by sewer, which allows him to review the garage’s many vehicle options. Again with all the damn convertibles. I’m just going to assume these cars have also been retrofitted with Contrivance Glass™ to keep the sunlight away. As Angel is giddily inspecting the spoils, the SWAT team that crashed his helpless-helping party earlier shows up to say that they heard Angel wants someone brought in and they can take care of that. Angel gives them the brush off.

Angel and his tragic hair arrive at his guy’s apartment. He answers the door in a wife beater and has a nickname that involves spanking. This scene is weird and pervy. He explains that the job he did for Moral Dilemma #1 involved creating a magical vessel of some sort. I had to pause this to watch Idina Menzel sing so I’m not really sure if we learned anything else. Pervy Magician tries to make Angel pass out, but Angel drops the vampire bomb and beats him up because, and I quote, “I’ve got no problem spanking men.” Even on pre-DVR first air, I’m sure several hundred slash fic writers immediately stopped watching and got to work.

K: Accurate.

Sweeney: Gunn Plot. He’s at his not-a-tailor appointment. He gets ushered into a room with lots of creepfiying medical equipment and announces that he’s well past the point of being terrified. He still won’t disclose what went down with Bagheera in the finale, though. Top secret.

Wolfram & Hart Science Center. Fred and Whedon Hat Trick are on her floor investigating possible leads into the Californiasplosion. Whedon Hat Trick finds a potential lead which might confirm Fred’s plague theory. She steps back at the realization that she now works with the people who commissioned and designed those things. Whedon Hat Trick defensively insists that they did more containment that deployment.

She calls Angel to share the news. He angrily informs Fred that he did find out where the plague-bomb is hidden. This segue magics us to the little boy we saw earlier, whose parents won’t let him read Snark Squad. The zoomy cameraman zooms inside his body because he’s the Californiasplosion vessel.

K: Guys, I think this officially gives us a new Worst Parent In Traumaland. Hank Summers, you’re off the hook because all you did was flee the country and forget you had children. You didn’t turn them into plague-carrying disasters waiting to happen.

Lor: Good call. That, plus, they won’t let him read Snark Squad. Evil.

Sweeney: Evil!

Not A Tailor. Gunn is hooked up to a bunch of machines and not exactly loving it. They’re not done with him yet, though, and he tells his non-tailor to hurry the fuck up.

Wolfram & Hart, Fred and Wesley share their mutual lack of progress. Fred doesn’t have nearly enough information to create any sort of antidote and Wesley doesn’t know where to begin his search for the magic word, because that’s the kind of high level plots this show is up to now. “WHAT’S THE MAGIC WORD?” Murdering Moral Dilemma #1 might also be the actual magic word. Struggles.

Fred and Wesley have awkward silence times charged with, “It’s not time for our romantic plot to advance yet,” energy.

Angel is in his office having all the feels because Moral Dilemma #1 has tipped the scales back on the side of, “Helping you is bad for my redemption narrative,” by injecting his son with a lethal virus. That’s some aggressively bad parenting. It gives Angel paternal feels. Eve is there to assure him that Connor’s life is peachy and to remind the audience about his convenient plot disappearance. Eve says that if every case hits him this hard, he’s not going to last a week.

W&H Science Center. Whedon Hat Trick is still running tests and Fred goes off on him for sitting around pretending to run an Evil Radio Shack. This is amazing and is the new official nickname for the W&H Science Center. (K: I love it when the characters name stuff for us.) She’s also got to give a srsbsns speech about how the team doesn’t have time to be tired because HELLO, lethal virus. She storms out. Whedon Hat Trick seems a lot more sleepy than evil, but I’m not ready to recant my theories.

Lor: Because maybe he’s sleeping because he’s evil. And, you know, it’s making him… tired.

*cough*

Sweeney: I hear evil is super exhausting.

Moral Dilemma #1 Trial. Lorne steps out to chat on the phone with Angel about how things aren’t going very well for Moral Dilemma #1 right now. Lorne says his read on MD1 means he knows it’s about to go south and then he’s getting ready to say the magic word.

K: Lorne also has THE WORST DISGUISE OF ALL TIME. I mean, he’s wearing gloves and a hat. But his face is still exposed. And yet no one bats an eye. Okay, show. Whatever.

Sweeney: We are so far past those kinds of logical considerations here in season 5.

Angel’s unwanted black ops team is listening to his phone call and they’re ready to show how good they are at their unwanted work. They’re going to prevent the virus by killing the kid. In theory. Except they have no idea how it works. Their shoot-first-questions-later approach is all so incredibly Initiative-like it’s bananas.

Angel’s office. Wesley and Angel are discussing how fucked they currently are. Harmony comes into inform him them Initiative 2.0 has already left and called for “the cleaners” which the other girls tell her means it’s a big job. Like murdering schoolchildren.

Moral Dilemma #1 Trial. Wesley joins Lorne in the back of the courtroom. Their master  backup plan at this point is that Wesley has a gun. That he was able to carry into what appears to be (based on the packed house) a fairly high profile trial? I know this doesn’t take place today but ten years ago metal detectors were already a thing and this is California, not Texas.

K: Which of course sent my brain to an “AS IF! I’m only sixteen, and this is California, not Kentucky!” place. Obviously.

Sweeney: Elementary School for Abused/Abducted Children. Initiative 2.0 enters the kid’s classroom to find everyone gone and Angel there waiting. Thanks to the writers giving themselves the gift of an unending money supply that puts Angel’s big bag o’ racist money to shame, he’s got a helicopter now! Suck on that, Initiative 2.0! No child murder for you today. Angel tells them that they’re fired, so they start shooting him? Angel ducks and then takes them out one by one. This scene is ridiculous. I don’t know why any of this is happening.

K: His new hair has magical powers? IDK, that’s literally the only explanation I have.

Lor: Just look at that hair twirl through the air and deflect bullets! LOOK AT IT.

Sweeney: Moral Dilemma #1 Trial. The judge is trying to bring this thing to the end when Gunn struts in with a fancy suit, saying the defense isn’t quite done yet. Wes and Lorne exchange DAFUQ? looks. Gunn is there to request a mistrial because of her. The judge gets super pissed, but Gunn pulls out records that she’s got financial ties to Moral Dilemma #1. She insists that there’s no way she could have known, but Gunn continues his Elle Woods turn, laying down legal speak for, “Tough shit,” and generally making her look bad.

Elementary School for Murdering Your Employees. An Initiative 2.0 guy comes in to villain speech about about how Angel’s a total mudblood and he, Initiative Agent Malfoy, is a pureblood who believes in evil. Also, mudblood’s gonna lose because purebloods have CONVICTION and also gold stars.

Angel says that there’s something more powerful than conviction and that’s mercy. So he kills pureblood and tells his cowering comrade that he just saw the last of it before strutting off while the orchestra of champions congratulates him for his work. I’m still not sure what I just watched or why Angel’s being congratulated. But I guess I’m just supposed to shut up and roll with it because a banner in the hallway reads, “Respect: learn it, know it, show it.”

K: Right there with you on the confusion, Sweeney. I mean, Angel’s traditionally been pretty big with the “they’re evil but still human so I won’t kill them. I’ll maim them instead!” But he just splattered the walls of an elementary school with this guy’s brains. So…yeah.

Lor: I mean… I guess he tried to fire them and they were all, “no we’re going to shoot you!” And then he fought them. And then this guy insulted his conviction. I get that part. But the blowing out the brains was oddly violent for Angel. A little CrAngel in fact.

Sweeney: Super CrAngel.

Wolfram & Hart. Eve explains that Gunn agreed to undergo Wolfram & Hart mind enhancement. Wesley gets all sassy with his, “Without asking us?” which Fred helpfully corrects to “telling.” (Though she’s probably the only one who could have fairly gotten away with the former verbiage, directed at Gunn, at least.) Gunn promises that all they stuck in his head is the law and a lot of Gilbert & Sullivan. (“Great for elocution!” Eve adds.) Gunn says that he knows it’s legit because he talked to Bagheera and Bagheera don’t lie. Eve says that Gunn had the most unused potential and while his degrees are all forged he’s going to be a supergood evil lawyer.

Nothing in this episode makes sense and we haven’t even gotten to the part where we (once again) resurrect a dead vampire.

Gunn offers to sing for Lorne and Eve chimes in that Gunn managed to save the day without resorting to violence. She leaves so that they can sit around to weigh the big morality problem. Fred asks if fighting their own clients is going to actually leave time for doing any good. Angel promises that they will, so long as they just ride it out and do all the work their way.

That’s going to start with him opening a package Angel receieved earlier. After everything else we saw this episode, I’m not sure what I expected for this moment, but the show is full on acknowledging that it just does what it wants, sense be damned. A necklace (MELTED DOWN TACKY  NECKLACE?) (L: Plucked from the big black hole that was Sunnydale and mailed by The Great Contrivance Spirit??) flies out and then explodes into a sparkling tornado. WATCH IT AGAIN. TELL ME THAT DESCRIPTION IS WRONG. From the sparkling tornado emerges a corpse which fleshes out into your beloved Ramen Noodle Head.

K: It’s kind of like Voldemort’s ridiculous death in Deathly Hallows Part 2, but in reverse.

Sweeney: “Ramen Noodle Head?” says confused Wesley. “Ramen Noodle Head.” says angry Angel. “Blondie Bear?” asks excited Harmony.

To be continued…

Harmony’s line made me LOL. I have no idea what to say about the rest of it. This episode felt like a pilot. “I know you just saw four seasons of a show by the same name with the same actors, but probably forget about it because we’re gonna do this other thing now instead.” The last season was so terrible that I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. I’m not ready to call it a good thing yet either. It’s definitely better than the last season, but this show still isn’t good.

K: Truth. But then again, being poked in the eye with a sharp stick would be better than last season, and we all know how much I like eyeballs.

Sweeney: This whole show is just so fucking ridiculous and adheres to no discernible internal logic that holds up to any degree of scrutiny. I’ve enjoyed the way this show has done crossover magic with Buffy, but I want to add a giant qualifier for Buffy fans that they should watch this show quickly and severely inebriated.

That said, as hard as it is to recap a show with no concern for consistency or following any sort of logic known to this world or its own, I like how much lighter this feels than S4. This show was always darker than Buffy, though somewhere late in S3 it took a turn for the dark and also ridiculous and also terrible. This episode had more of the Batman-like elements that I found endearing about the original pilot. I like that they’re setting us up for a much-needed new beginning.

Mostly, I’m just glad that I got what I can safely bet is the least Spike-centric episode of the season.

Lor:

Next time: Kirsti tells me her notes describe the episode as strangely homo-erotic. Decide for yourself on Angel S05 E02 – Just Rewards.