Unpopular Opinions III - Backers of Beer Bad and Bashers of Becoming

[MandaMeena]

I'm not sure if this is unpopular or not, but I really can't stand the season finale to Season 4 of Angel. Getting Connor out of the way like that was just stupid.

 

[dan k]

I'm not sure if this is unpopular or not, but I really can't stand the season finale to Season 4 of Angel. Getting Connor out of the way like that was just stupid.

For me the finale of season 4 with the whole Jasmine arc spoilt what before then was a very strong season.

I enjoyed the stuff with Holtz, Angelus flashbacks etc but as soon as Jasmine appeared it went downhill. The consistently strong episodes suddenly turned into ok episodes with a storyline which i thought was quite weak.

 

[Primal Slayer]

Everytime I watch Season 4, I like it better and better. A lot of fans think it is a bad season but I like majority of the episodes.

 

[TheVoid68]

I find the only thing wrong with S4 to be the handling of Cordelia and Connor. Cordelia's character was completely ruined, and Connor just spent the whole season hating his father, with no development or change.

 

[TheVoid68]

Joan the Vampire Slayer agrees: Oh. don't be so melodramatic. Spuffy wasn't THAT bad 😉

Oh, it was... I remember that awful day I watched "Wrecked".

"Who'd have thought the only thing better than killing a slayer would be fu-" *SPORK IN EYE* *SPATULA IN EAR*

😛

 

[TheChosenTwo]

I really think season four of Angel is great. Okay, the Jasminestuff was boring and evil Cordy didn't have much on either, but I loved the season. I think it had very enjoyable episodes (like Spin The Bottle and The House Always Wins) and Angelus and Faith, ofcourse. I never understood why everyone thinks it's so bad.

 

[Bungle Jerry]

I really think season four of Angel is great. Okay, the Jasminestuff was boring and evil Cordy didn't have much on either, but I loved the season. I think it had very enjoyable episodes (like Spin The Bottle and The House Always Wins) and Angelus and Faith, ofcourse. I never understood why everyone thinks it's so bad.

I'm not sure everyone thinks that - if nothing else, we could say it's a season that no-one is neutral about. Love it or hate it. A few things I could say about it:

• It is true that there are good standalones (I could add "Players" to that list too), but it would appear that generally a season is judged by its main arc, not by its standalones, or else there'd be much less hostility about BtVS S4 or S6, I think. No one can really argue against "Hush", "Restless", "OMWF" and "Tabula Rasa", but they appeared in weak seasons.
• My personal problem with the season is the extent to which it's given over to its main arc. The whole season spans, what, a week or something, and I'm just not sure that that's what the series is about. It's not "24", after all. Once the Beast opens its eyes, suddenly there's no sunshine at all in the season, just an unrelenting progress of the main plot and no chance to just kind of breathe and enjoy the characters we've grown to love down the seasons.
• It's also distinctly lacking in humour.
• Cordy is dealt with terribly. The "Beastmaster" and its annoying booming voice ("Angelus! I am not well pleased!") is as cheesy as the Buffyverse ever got. It's the destruction of one of the Buffyverse's best characters, and in this case I just don't think the end justifies the means.
• Cordy/Connor. Well, Connor throughout, really.
• I actually like the Jasmine mini-arc, and I'll concede that individual characters (Gwen, Faith, Angelus, Willow) are amazing in this season.

 

[Ruminator]

I really think season four of Angel is great. Okay, the Jasminestuff was boring and evil Cordy didn't have much on either, but I loved the season. I think it had very enjoyable episodes (like Spin The Bottle and The House Always Wins) and Angelus and Faith, ofcourse. I never understood why everyone thinks it's so bad.

I can't speak for everyone who dislikes it, of course, but speaking for myself I will say you just inadvertently came across why I (and my Buffyverse friends) dislike it. It was sooooooo scatter shot.

First we are looking for Cordy, then we are trying to figure out why she is back but amnesiac, then the "Beast" comes along and Cordy is doing the naughty with Connor as we all scratch our heads, then we get Angelus and Faith for vague-ish reasons, then here comes Jasmine and Skip telling us how it's all connected as we scratch our heads some more, then boom they get to run Wolfram & Hart and we are lead to believe Angel "killed" Connor (and in a way, he did).

It just made no sense and went from one end to another. In truth, the season felt like a series of mini-arcs that were slapped together and shoe horned into supposedly having an over arching theme, which frankly, never materialized. I'll always remember watching that Skip rundown of how everything was planned from the beginning and hearing the laughter from a friend of mine being unable to help themselves. It was that ludicrous. It was a reach that they left as unexplained as possible so that the more incredulous viewers would hopefully just move on ("birth pains"? Really? C'mon).

Ultimately, these arcs crashed into each other in bad ways, specifically the Beast and Jasmine arcs. They tried to portray Jasmine as the ultimate middle gray between right and wrong, only in an effort to fuse these arcs together, she was portrayed as being responsible for the Beasts actions, actions that were unequivocally wrong. In other words, she was invalidated as a shade of gray from the get go. Only by forcing the terribly contrived concept of brainwashed masses could we get to the point where it was even realistic that people would follow her. It stunk.

And what sealed my dislike was when, after the season ended and people everywhere were taking them to task for it, they started laying the blame for it on Charisma Carpenter and her pregnancy. Not only did it feel like a big time cop out for the writing staff, it seemed unnecessarily harsh towards an actress that had been with them since the beginning of the Buffyverse. Her pregnancy most certainly did not convince them to go where they did, they made the choice and for whatever reason, refused to own up to it.

What ended up being so frustrating too was that these mini arcs, when looked at separately, were actually pretty good. I still think the four episode Angelus arc was the best work they ever did, a culmination of everything we've learned about Angel's nature since he first appeared in the Buffyverse. When placed together in an supposed unbroken string, however, they couldn't maintain cohesion.

 

[caitaintdead]

And what sealed my dislike was when, after the season ended and people everywhere were taking them to task for it, they started laying the blame for it on Charisma Carpenter and her pregnancy. Not only did it feel like a big time cop out for the writing staff, it seemed unnecessarily harsh towards an actress that had been with them since the beginning of the Buffyverse. Her pregnancy most certainly did not convince them to go where they did, they made the choice and for whatever reason, refused to own up to it.

Have not heard it said better for a long time!

 

[TheVoid68]

Spin the Bottle>>>Tabula Rasa.

 

[mrrout]

i never understood why the beast's master wanted angel to loose his soul in season four

 

[Chris2]

Spin the Bottle>>>Tabula Rasa.

Totally. I think Spin the Bottle handled the characters' memory loss and subsequent amnesiac personalities a lot more realistically (if that's the right word) than Tabula Rasa did. Take the treatment of the vampire characters for one example. Angel didn't remember he was a vampire, but he still obviously had a lust for blood. On the other hand, Spike, despite not even having a soul at the time, was acting like a white hat and never demonstrated any sort of

Other unpopular opinions (that I didn't include in my previous post on a thread like this):

Waiting in the Wings is a decent episode, but not a brilliant one. Same goes for A Hole In The World. These opinions are likely coloured by my dim views of Cangel and Fresley respectively.
You're Welcome isn't very good.
I saw Cangel coming from at least the beginning of AtS3, and I thought it could potentially work well until it actually happened. Then it just felt forced and weird.
Lindsay's entire arc in the final season of Angel sucks.
I didn't like the way Fred drove a wedge between Wes and Gunn.
I prefer Illyria to Fred as a character.
Buffy is my favourite character in the series, except for some parts of S6 and most of S7.
Spike's integration into the cast in S4 felt extremely forced to me. It was obvious that he was just there because he was popular and funny (they did do more with him later, but for just about all of S4 that's the impression I got). And that's coming from someone who likes him.
I sometimes get annoyed by how poorly defined the capabilities and properties of magic are in the Buffyverse. In particular, the frequent existence of spells that give the caster insane levels of power (like the spell in "Something Blue", if Willow had known how to actually use it). In my opinion, their existence is not compatible with the close-to-reality existence of the Buffyverse. (Obviously it's not close to reality in that there are vampires, demons, etc., but I'm referring to the way that the world is - or was prior to S8 - basically our world plus the secret existence of those things, to the point that many people in the Buffyverse don't even know about the supernatural) If these things are just lying around in spellbooks for anyone to use, they should be getting used all the time. The world should be ruled by magic-users who have made themselves perfect at everything ("Superstar"), or can make things come true by saying them ("Something Blue"), or can simply warp reality to their desires and control people's minds with the wave of a hand ("Smashed").

 

[Kana]

Totally. I think Spin the Bottle handled the characters' memory loss and subsequent amnesiac personalities a lot more realistically (if that's the right word) than Tabula Rasa did. Take the treatment of the vampire characters for one example. Angel didn't remember he was a vampire, but he still obviously had a lust for blood. On the other hand, Spike, despite not even having a soul at the time, was acting like a white hat and never demonstrated any sort of

What happens in Tabula Rasa is slightly different. The group have their memories but they don't have full access to them.

This explains why the characters still have an instinctual tap into their personality. Anya for example still has feelings of vengeance etc.

This explains why Spike doesn't want to bite Buffy and why he's continuing his acts of heroism. It could also be the chip as well. Through conditioning he's used to not biting people. Whereas in Spin the Bottle, literally Liam is transported into Angel's vamp body if you will, so he has no instinctual learned experience that Angel has unlike soullessSpike in Tabula Rasa, who still remembers on an unconscious level he's not acting like a normal vampire.

 

[Thursday]

I sometimes get annoyed by how poorly defined the capabilities and properties of magic are in the Buffyverse. ).

I agree; the Buffyverse's magical mythos was never very consistent, but then again I don't think Joss is much a world builder. I like Buffy so much because of the character/emotional drama, not the magic.

 

[Bungle Jerry]

Things I completely agree with in bold:

Waiting in the Wings is a decent episode, but not a brilliant one. Same goes for A Hole In The World. These opinions are likely coloured by my dim views of Cangel and Fresley respectively.
You're Welcome isn't very good.
I saw Cangel coming from at least the beginning of AtS3, and I thought it could potentially work well until it actually happened. Then it just felt forced and weird.
Lindsay's entire arc in the final season of Angel sucks.
I didn't like the way Fred drove a wedge between Wes and Gunn.
I prefer Illyria to Fred as a character.
Buffy is my favourite character in the series, except for some parts of S6 and most of S7.
Spike's integration into the cast in S4 felt extremely forced to me. It was obvious that he was just there because he was popular and funny (they did do more with him later, but for just about all of S4 that's the impression I got). And that's coming from someone who likes him.
I sometimes get annoyed by how poorly defined the capabilities and properties of magic are in the Buffyverse. In particular, the frequent existence of spells that give the caster insane levels of power (like the spell in "Something Blue", if Willow had known how to actually use it). In my opinion, their existence is not compatible with the close-to-reality existence of the Buffyverse. (Obviously it's not close to reality in that there are vampires, demons, etc., but I'm referring to the way that the world is - or was prior to S8 - basically our world plus the secret existence of those things, to the point that many people in the Buffyverse don't even know about the supernatural) If these things are just lying around in spellbooks for anyone to use, they should be getting used all the time. The world should be ruled by magic-users who have made themselves perfect at everything ("Superstar"), or can make things come true by saying them ("Something Blue"), or can simply warp reality to their desires and control people's minds with the wave of a hand ("Smashed").

I definitely agree about Fred/Wes/Gunn - Wes and Gunn had a really cool friendship and it was busted to pieces to fit TV clichés about love triangles.

And I do completely agree that not just with magic but with any deus ex machina that shows up, they'll use it once and then never return to it. That's why the rare exceptions (Xander's military knowledge, Olaf's hammer) and so nice. I hate in "Showtime" when suddenly - and for once and once only - Buffy, Will and Xander are teleconferencing telepathically. Like, what a useful thing. Why weren't they doing that, like, every week?