Angel S04 Wrap-Up Post

Lorraine: We skipped out on the dance party during our season three wrap-up post, but hot damn do we deserve it this time:

Season four was an interesting experience. I think I felt a similar need to get out of a season back when we were doing Buffy season 6, but at the same time this was a completely different beast. Buffy season 6 made me angry. I understood the story, but I didn’t like the story. These are all things you’ve heard before. The point is that here, there was a lot less anger, but like exponentially more head scratching.

And bursts of laughter.

And questions. So many questions.

A lot of those questions were nicely answered by head canon and fanwank by you all in the comments, but that points to the big problem that we need so much head canon and fanwank to make this look like a remotely cohesive story. As I mentioned once in comments, regardless of if this story was thought up well in advance, it feels patched together. If you are watching something thinking, “huh. I wonder if they rushed this storyline?” whether they did or not is irrelevant. Because it FEELS that way.

Because of the consistency problems, it’s easy to forget that there were some highlights through the season, from the next entry into Faith’s arc to… well I’m having trouble thinking of another example. I did say it was easy to forget. In general, this is a season that does not at all stand up to scrutiny.

Cordelia Chase was not always my favorite. Far from it when we first met her on Buffy and it admittedly took me some time to even warm up to her here on Angel. But I did warm up to her, and her special brand of always saying true things. Lots of moments that stick out to me throughout this series so far are courtesy of Cordelia, from her kiss with Doyle to Phantom Dennis to the Cordelia sitcom. I don’t know if it was ever Cordelia in this season, and it makes me sad that we spent most of an entire season without her. Being a Snow, I do know that Charisma Carpenter will no longer be on the show, but I don’t know what that means for the rest of her story. Sad feelings all around.

Anyway, that all out of the way, here’s how I rank ’em:

1. Orpheus – Crossover magic and the fantastic line, “arf, arf psycho.” Top episode, easy.
2. Salvage – FAITH! Add ghost Lilah and touching Wesley moments and it’s not hard to see what it ranks high.
3. Soulless – At this point in the season, we’d been watching the characters engage in so much shit, it was almost refreshing to have Angelus around to call them on it. Plus, DB is good at playing Angelus.
4. Home – GOODBYE SEASON FOUR.
5. Spin the Bottle – Not exactly great, but it was one of only a few episodes this season that were solidly fun.
6. Ground State – Here is another for the “not amazing but entertaining” category. Gwen is admittedly a shallow character, but fun to watch.
7. Deep Down – I look back at this recap and laugh because we were SO STUNNED by certain turn of events. We were all, “GUYS, this is what you mean by crazy, right??” No. That was not what you meant. All things considered, this episode did a decent job of setting the stage for season 4, and for addressing the major cliffhangers we dealt with at the end of 3.
8. Habeas Corpses – The Wolfram & Hart zombie lawyers were pretty cool.
9. Release – This Faith episodes suffers a bit from boring bits with the Cordelia storyline and lots of villain speeches.
10. Players – The arrival of my favorite Magic 8 Ball of all time.
11. Calvary – A big death and big reveal but it kind of ambles it’s way to both those items.
12. Long Day’s Journey – More Gwen! I’m sure other things happened in this episode, but mostly: more Gwen!
13. The House Always Wins – Points for Lorne! but otherwise there wasn’t much of anything in this episode.
14. Inside Out – In a season where free will is a big theme, the idea of Jasmine influence events all along really sucker punched me. Still not a fan.
15. Awakening – I didn’t even really appreciate that the dream was a perfect happiness dream that was related to bringing about Angelus because I was so frustrated with the, “IT WAS ALL A DREAM” ending. This is probably something better appreciated on second watch.
16. Supersymmetry – A hard episode to rank because it wasn’t as bad as some of the bottom of this list but it was tough to watch, in an in story kind of way. And the fallout of Gunn killing Seidel was yick.
17. Peace Out – The highest of the Jasmine things because at least it was the end.
18. The Magic Bullet – This gains a rank because it focused on Fred a fair bit and Amy Acker is wonderful.
19. Slouching Toward Bethlehem – The characters refuse to communicate as a plot point and it frustrates us Snark Ladies. Plus: boob groping, ew.
20. Shiny Happy People – I…I just have no words.
21. Sacrifice – Contrivance saves the day and pretty much nothing makes any sense to me.
22. Apocalypse, Nowish – This is the episode that made us put everyone who suggested this show in the Shame Corner. So.

 

Sweeney: I understand that many of you give this show (and this season) high marks for the magnitude of what they attempt here. I was talking to someone about The Maze Runner recently. It’s one of the few books I’ve read in the last few years that still makes me irrationally angry when I think about it, but this friend loved it. I agreed with her basic reason for loving it and I think it’s part of why the book makes me so damn angry. For her, the originality of the concept attempted was enough for her to give it high marks. She respected the novelty of it. I get the sense that this is how many fans of Angel feel. The show attempts some unique things.

I can respect the place that opinion comes from. I just can’t say that I share it. On both counts, the execution has just been so unforgivably poor that I can’t even bring myself to give it credit for effort. It’s frustrating to see the potential of a thing and then watch it consistently fall short.

Then, of course, there’s Cordelia. During S2, I loved this girl to bits and pieces and she was  one of my favorite Buffyverse characters. It gives me a major sad to see a great character so badly used.

The finale left me cautiously optimistic, though, that show might get back to the stuff it used to do moderately well. Fingers crossed.

1. Orpheus – Arf, arf, psycho. Faith. Willow. My ranking comments will be a series of sentence fragments, because that’s all I feel this season’s plot fragments deserve. (Also because lazy.)
2. Salvage – Because Faith.
3. Ground State – GWEN. Points for minimal S4 relevance.
4. Deep Down – One of our titular character’s best episodes of the season.
5. Spin the Bottle – Teenage selves were campy fun.
6. Soulless – In spite of being one of the most serve-plot-interests-over-character-consistency characters in the bunch, Angelus was one of the better contributions to this season.
7. The House Always Wins – My snarky prophecy was fulfilled. That’s the entire reason this episode is all the way up here.
8. Players – I think this is the only time I liked Gunn all season. Because Gwen.
9. Habeas Corpses – I wish zombies were the most ridiculous thing that happened this season. This episode gets bonus points because the Angel/Connor gif makes me giggle.
10. Long Day’s Journey – Gwen showed up and was awesome. Fake Cordelia was annoying.
11. Release – Faith was in this episode.
12. Calvary – Remember when Lor kept shouting “Cordy did it!” That was fun.
13. The Magic Bullet – Fred was the highlight of Jasmine’s nonsense for me.
14. Inside Out – Darla was in this episode.
15. Awakening – Wanted to give this points for the Angelus laugh, but I’m still so angry about the dream sequence – especially because of how badly I wish it had been real.
16. Home – IDK why any of this happened, but it means S4 is over.
17. Peace Out – See above.
18. Supersymmetry – #meh
19. Slouching Towards Bethlehem – YAY FAILURE TO USE WORDS -_-
20. Shiny Happy People – Why?
21. Sacrifice – Bad.
22. Apocalypse, Nowish – This fucking show.

 

Kirsti: Ooooof. It’s no secret that we’ve been on the struggle bus with the Buffyverse for a while. This season really didn’t help the situation. Even when I knew going into it that it was a cracked out shitstorm of a season, I wasn’t entirely prepared for just how batshit crazy things were going to get. Apparently I’d blocked large parts of the season out of my mind. It’s a self preservation thing, you know?

1. Orpheus – No surprises here. One of the few episodes of the entire series that I actually remembered in detail. And there are many good reasons behind that, including Disco!Angel.
2. Home – Probably only ranked this high because I can see the future. This episode really is a major turning point for the end of the series we’ve come to know so far, and I’m oddly excited to start season 5 as a result.
3. Ground State – It was all I could do not to constantly call Superhero Backstory/X-Men shots. And you guys know I loves me anything superhero related (unless it’s from DC. Then I’ll watch it and mock it silently).
4. Salvage – FAITH!!!!!!!!! Nothing more need be said. Except that I found Cordy’s Beastmaster voice to be COMPLETELY HILARIOUS.
5. Peace Out – Sure, it was a million metric tons of contrivance and WTF-ery from start to finish, but we finally got an end to the Jasmine storyline. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
6. Spin the Bottle – One of the few episodes that was actually fun this season. Especially the Wesley parts.
7. Long Day’s Journey – I think I only liked this as much as I did because a) Gwen, and b) OMG SHIT IS FINALLY HAPPENING.
8. Release – More Faith. YAY. Lots of villain speeches. BOO.
9. Awakening – Sure, I was super pissed about the “And it was all a dream!” laziness of the writing. But it was kind of Indiana Jones-esque, so…yeah.
10. Calvary – The big reveal was way too long in coming, but it was pretty spectacular when we finally got there.
11. Sacrifice – A million tons of “What a crazy random happenstance!”, but I didn’t nearly die of boredom watching it, so…yeah.
12. The House Always Wins – Lorne + Fred actually doing stuff + Angel reminiscing about the good old days in Vegas? Almost enough to overcome the stupid plot.
13. Soulless – Angelus Angelus-ing. Meh.
14. Habeas Corpses – LOL, zombie lawyers.
15. Players – MVP? Definitely the Magic 8 Ball.
16. The Magic Bullet – Yay, Fred got to do stuff!
17. Slouching Towards Bethlehem – The beginning of the Episodes That Make Kirsti Go “UGH”. This one only tops that list because of the sweet scene between Lilah and Wes.
18. Deep Down – Still not convinced that rescuing Angel was actually a good plan, given the trainwreck of a season that followed. Plus, Wes and his Cupboard o’ Torture. No thanks.
19. Supersymmetry – Murdery Gunn and general douchebaggery. Pass.
20. Shiny Happy People – Everyone’s shiny and happy except those of us who had to sit through this tripe.
21. Inside Out – As you may have gathered, I’m not a fan of retcon. EVER.
22. Apocalypse Nowish – Even writing the title makes me want to reach for what’s left of our brain bleach… #traumatised4lyfe

 

Tell us how you rank them or what your top season moments were in the comments. And feel free to join our dance party.