Second Impressions

Angel Season 5. Damn! I mean... Damn!

A little rushed toward the end, perhaps, but you can see why this would be, Joss says in a commentary that they were confident of being renewed at the beginning, and forgive it to some extent. Some of the comedy just wasn't funny and The Girl In Question was the worst offender in this regard (and what they did to Andrew at the end was unforgivably out-of-character just for the service of a lame joke, luckily his earlier appearence in the season made up for it). The lower budget showed a couple of times too, but I think the direction in most episodes made up for it. Oh, and what the heck happened to the Cyborg Ninja storyline?

In the overview featurette they say that season 5 was more episodic than Angel had been for a while -- well, season 4 was Angel Does 24. It didn't particularly feel that way though. Yes, each episode wrapped that episode's main story line up but managed to have bits in that when seen has a whole. Boreanaz seemed to get just a little more beleaguered with each episode until his eventual seeming capitulation became not just believable, but inevitable. As for the Wesley arc... Damn!

I could go on, but I'll just say after the last episode I felt that Angel Season 5 had just done enough to pip Firefly as the finest work in Whedon's oeuvre. As they say over at DVDVerdict: "If brutal sword fights, homicidal puppets, werewolf girlfriends, undead wrestling matches, giant monsters, vampires drinking otter blood, robots made by The Devil, and general apocalyptic wackiness may be things that may interest you, Angel: The Complete Fifth Season represents the best value in entertainment you could find"