Angel ep by ep; ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN?

S

saturn5

Scooby
Joined
Sep 13, 2009
Messages
937
ARE YOU NOW OR EVER HAVE BEEN?

The Good;
Very good allegory of the McCarthy age and we get an idea of what Angel got up to after 'Why we fight?'.

The Bad;
According to the commentary Angel sends the money back to the bank. I wouldn't, they're a bunch of racists, I'd have given it to charity or something.

Best line:
DENVER; "No other cat but me"

Jeez, how did they get away with that?
Seeing Angel lynched is nasty in the extreme.

Apocalypses: 4

Angel Cliches

Damsel in distress; 16,

Inverting the Hollywood cliche;
Angel doesn't save the inhabitants of the hotel, just leaves the demon to feast upon them. When he finally returns to rescue Melissa it's to let her die.

In disguise; 4

DB get's his shirt off; 7

Cordy's tattoo;3

Cheap Angel;
4

Fang Gang in bondage:
Cordy: 5
Angel: 8
Wes: 2

Fang gang knocked out: yep, Angel
Cordy: 9
Angel: 11
Wes: 5
Doyle; 1

Kills:
Cordy: 3 vamps, 1½ demons
Angel; 1 demon for Angel so 16 vamps, 17 and 1/2 demons, 3 humans
Doyle; 1 vamp
Wes; 1/2 a demon
Kate; 3 vamps
Faith; 16 vamps, 6 demons, 3 humans.
Gunn; one more vamp so 4 in all.
Fang Gang go evil:
Cordy: 2
Angel: 2

Alternate Fang Gang:
Cordy: 2
Angel: 6

Characters killed:
25

Recurring characters killed;
4;

Total number of Angel Investigations:
3, Angel and Cordy and Wes

Angel Investigations shot:
Angel: 8,

Packing heat;
Wes; 2
Doyle; 1
Angel; 1

Notches on Fang Gang bedpost:
Cordy: 2 ?+Wilson/Hacksaw Beast
Angel: 1;Buffy

Kinky dinky:
The starlet is obviously supplementing her income through prostitution. Nevertheless she refers to Melissa as a slut as an insult.

Captain Subtext;
The leading man is obviously gay and hiding it Rock Hudson style.

Know the face, different character; 2

Parking garages;
4,

Guantanamo Bay;
The McCarthy era is a strange one as after the fall of communism it was revealed that many of those he persecuted were indeed Soviet agents (it's an interesting paralell of George Bush/Barack Obama being pressured to release some the Guantanamo inmates only for 1 in 7 going back to terrorism) but the important point here is that we rail against all lynch-mobs and witch-hunts which are inherently evil no matter their justification, Angel season 2 of course was during the War on Terror and the point is well made.

Buffy characters on Angel; 11
Wetherby, Collins and Smith. Angel, Cordy, Oz, Spike, Buffy, Wes, Faith, Darla

Questions and observations;
2nd appearance of the Hyperion which is also in Judgement and 'I fall to pieces' under a different name . Presumably Angel must be pretty rich just to be able to give the money away like that. After this we presume he must go into his hedonistic phase, henceforth to be known as 'The Manilow Era'. He does return to hotel later however as he's in the picture when the police arrest the bell-hop (who goes to the electric chair despite being innocent of the charges against him). First apprearance of Denver who'll crop up again later. In an ep about the 50s Cordy's dress seems very sixties? If this ep is 9 minutes over as the commentary says, why not Special Edition DVDs with the footage restored?
Marks out of 10; 8/10
 
Its not bad but nothing special. Its kinda slow and drags on a bit. And i like to think Angel didn't give the money back too, i think thats just Tim Minears opinion that he did.
I'd give this a 5.5/10.
 
Anya2012
Anya2012
[No message]
This is my second fav of Angel episodes(You're Welcome is the first, always). I like to see flashback that not so long ago like this. There's so many emotional scenes. Like when he left the hotel and the last scene.

I always thought he used that money to buy the hotel. Now I've learned he gave it back. Oh Angel, you're too nice. 😀

P.S. I couldn't believe Angel can be more broody than usual. 😛
 
E
Eleftheria
[No message]
W
Wesley
Yeah I always figured that as well. Hotels are not cheap to purchase or maintain. He needed to get the cash from somewhere.
Angel in his post 'trying to get back Darla' phase but not yet in his hedonistic phase (also known as the Manilow years)
 
Really? I always thought this was one of the most acclaimed episodes of Angel. I'm surprised it's getting such low marks. Although to be honest I am only at about a 7/10.
 
I think he sent it back. I always figured Angel was like Duncan/Connor McCloud from Highlander, he had loads of little bank accounts lying around the place earning interest and tapped into them when he needed to
 
Just a technical point on the money. Number one, any statute of limitations on the crime had almost certainly expired by then, the money had been replaced by the Federal Reserve, so it wasa pretty much finders keepers. Granted, Angel was the one who hid it in the first place, but that's beside the point. He was under no obligation to turn the money back in. Unfortunately, currency issued at that time was silver certificates, not the modern Federal Reserve Notes, so trying to spend that large a quantity of outdated currency would have at the very least attracted quite a bit of attention, something that Angel tried to avoid at all times and at almost all costs. (All of which I'm certain that Wesley was well aware of) The best that Angel would have been able to do with that large a quantiyt of outdated paper currency would be to sell it off in small quantities to collectors over an extended period of time. In other words, he was probably still sitting on the majority of the bank money at the time that he took control of Wolfram & Hart. After that, it really didn't matter.
 
S
Spike Angelus
Make sense.
I think this is an essential episode for Angel as it shows he wasn't simply rubbing rat filth in his face for 90 odd years. It shows that a hero lies beneath the surface, even before he met Buffy. It also makes sense of his statement to Faith.

Angel: Time was, I thought humans existed just to hurt each other. But then I came here. And I found out that there are other types of people. People who genuinely wanted to do right. And they make mistakes. And they fall down. You know, but they keep caring. Keep trying.

He wasn't simply brooding over past mistakes nor was he apathetic but perhaps he was a little cynical. It would be dull if he simply got a soul and suddenly turned into Captain America. It's not enough for him to simply do good, he has to know why he's doing it. It little wonder why he literally defines what it means to be a champion.
 
PassionBecoming
PassionBecoming
[No message]
saturn5 said:
I think he sent it back. I always figured Angel was like Duncan/Connor McCloud from Highlander, he had loads of little bank accounts lying around the place earning interest and tapped into them when he needed to
Click to expand...

But in season 1 Cordy said something about him having lived 200 years and never made an investment portfolio.
 
saturn5 said:
I think he sent it back. I always figured Angel was like Duncan/Connor McCloud from Highlander, he had loads of little bank accounts lying around the place earning interest and tapped into them when he needed to
Click to expand...

I had thought about that, too, at various times, for both Angel AND Spike, who also seemed to have perpetual empty pockets (remember chipped Spike cornering helpless young girls in alleys, flashing his fangs, and growling, "Give me money."), but on further thought, it came to me that, although Whedon's vampires and Widen's Immortals were both...well...immortal, the vampires would have never had any real reason to save money or invest it, since their victims were not only a ready supply of blood, but also a source of money. It wasn't until Angel, and later Spike, started having to subsist on animal blood that money became an issue for either of them.
 
saturn5 said:
Guantanamo Bay;
The McCarthy era is a strange one as after the fall of communism it was revealed that many of those he persecuted were indeed Soviet agents (it's an interesting paralell of George Bush/Barack Obama being pressured to release some the Guantanamo inmates only for 1 in 7 going back to terrorism) but the important point here is that we rail against all lynch-mobs and witch-hunts which are inherently evil no matter their justification, Angel season 2 of course was during the War on Terror and the point is well made.
Click to expand...

Actually, season 2 occurred before the War on Terror, which kicked off after Sept 11, 2001 (season 3).
 
This is one of my top 10 in the entire series. I thought the story was so heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time... Wonderful stuff. I love how the writers took this opportunity to show us the worst possible side of the human race.
 
I just rewatched this ep today & reaffirmed why I place it at the top of my list. The story is just immpecable. Well structured, insightful & as a previous poster said, touching. This is one of the few times we get to see Angel post-curse-pre-Buffy & I think it really helps develop the character. It helps give weight to the speeches Angel gives to Darla in eps to come about having a soul. The episode itself, imo, is not about Communists or terrorists or any other 'ists for that matter, that is fairly evident, but rather it's about belonging. Paranoia comes from a longing to belong to something. We are all different, very different and paranoia is the fear that those we identify ourselves with find out that we are not really like them at all. The setting of the hotel is very significant, a place where people live, but no-one really belongs. For the first time we see Angel, with a soul but with no great quest, reach out & connect to someone on an emotional level. The fact that Judy is mixed-race seemed a little ham-fisted to me but at least it gave Angel a chance to identify with someone. I also love the fact that the MOW is dealt with fairly swiftly & that the hunting & killing of it doesn't dominate the episode in a procedural sort of a way. I hope at least some of this made sense & I hope you get how much this ep means to me.
 
U
Ulrikke
[No message]
I really love this Angel episode! I love anything that is to do with his past and this was particularly interesting as we hadn't seen Angel in this period before. I thought it was a really clever and moving story. It shows people the harm that paranoia can cause. I also thought it was very clever that he leave the people to die just like he does with The Wolfram & Hart lawyers later in the series.
 
Wow - what a polarising episode. I'd also thought it was almost universally acclaimed, so I'm happy that I'm not the only one who finds it slow-moving, boring and more than a little pointless. Yeah, it's good to see something of Angel post-Romania and pre-Sunnydale, but it just doesn't move me. At least it's better than "Why We Fight", the other attempt at bridging this time-gap. I love historical Angel episodes, but these two do nothing for me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom