Watching Season Five for the first time...

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TheVoid68

Favourite Worst Nightmare
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So, I'm watching S5 of Angel for the very first time, and I thought it would be fun if we had a thread where I give my episode-by-episode thoughts, so we can discuss the episodes and you can all have a good laugh when I predict plot twists that turn out to be completely wrong.

I watched 'Conviction' earlier today, and I liked it. First off, good opening with the classic Angel-style damsel-in-distress scene, juxtaposed with the W&H employees that soon join him. I notice that James Marsters has second billing, which is a shame, J. August has been in the show a hella lot longer. Sad to see Charisma no longer there either. 🙁

I was wary about the gang taking over W&H at first, but I think the show is handling it well. There are a lot of sticky moral questions being asked with no easy answers. It's interesting.

What I have noticed already is the return to the close-knit AI group. It had been so fractured since the middle of S3, but it's really started to come back together, and it feels good. Wes and Gunn seem to be on good terms again, which is brilliant, love their bromance.

"Can we drop all 'Y's from peoples names?"
"Does that mean I have to call you 'Westle?" :lol:

A new introduction first, we have Eve. I'm not sure how I feel about her at the moment. She's somewhere between awesome, annoying and average. I want to find out more about her, but at the same time I want her to appear a little less frequently.

Also Harmony! I wasn't expecting her this early in the season, but here she is. And she's entertaining as ever but... I think she needs to be less of a jokebook if she's gonna be a permanent character. I hope the show will explore her character at some point, give her some depth.

And then we come to our final new entrace... Spike. Now... I'm giving Spike a chance. You may have noticed that I'm not fond of his character in S6 or 7, and I was quite happy when he was on fire. I already gave him a second chance before S7, and since he's moving shows I'm giving him another one, but he's on his last life. Hopefully he'll impress.

On to the second episode!
 
MinwaraYana
MinwaraYana
Go you. :D
I watched "Angel" season 5 for the first time last summer. I really loved almost the whole season, with the exception of a couple episodes that I thought were a total waste of space. I actually liked Eve. Most people I know said they thought she was annoying (including my hubby) but I liked her a lot. 🙂
 
crazysoulless
crazysoulless
The only thing I didn't like about her was that she got to have sex with Angel.
Glad you are enjoying it thus far. I remember my first time watching it was so new. This season actually had a lot of great moments to me and can't wait to hear your opinion. 🙂
 
Have fun. 😀 I so agree about Eve. I don't know if I like or hate her anymore. And Spike. I love him on Ats S5 more than on latter seasons of BtVS. 🙂
 
HisMrs said:
I actually liked Eve. Most people I know said they thought she was annoying (including my hubby) but I liked her a lot. 🙂
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I think the main problem was what Cordy actually pointed out, Eve was like Lilah junior. Eve herself wasn't a bad character, but compared to Lilah, she was watered down to say the least.

I think Riley's a victim of a similar mindset. I thought he was actually a pretty good character, but when compared to Spike or Angel, he's such a nothing.
 
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TheVoid68
I was actually wondering while watching it why Lilah wasn't in her role. I can't see any reason why it couldn't have been Lilah
So, little hiccup, I won't be updating any more for a while... my sister wants me to wait so we can both watch it - she started watching the show after me, so we've been watching the series all the way through together - just gotta get through the whole of S4 then we'll be onto S5. But for the time being, I did watch episode two, which largely focuses on Spike.

OK, so we start off with a clip from "Chosen". Wasn't expecting that, and I'm not sure why it wasn't just in the "Previously" bit. Actually, is that the first time one of the shows has flashed back to the other? Anyway, Spike turns up, confused and pissed. And I await with eagerness, for a Spike I will like...

...I was disappointed. Sorry, I tried, but I'm still no fonder of him than I was before. He had a couple of decent lines I think, not that I can remember them. They were mostly just generic insults at aimed at Angel. I gotta say, one character insulting my favourite character probably isn't going to help me like them any more - I wouldn't mind whatsoever if his insults were clever and funny but... well as I said, I couldn't remember any of them.

Oh, and there's mentions of Spuffy. Thanks guys, I thought I'd scrubbed that from my brain... oh and Angel and Spike have a little Bangel .vs. Spuffy argument. My joy knows no bounds... 🙄 Harmony perhaps sums up my feelings best.

"You... and the slayer? Eww! I mean... eurgh! I know you had that creepy obsession with her but to actually... eww!" 😀 I love her!

Which brings me to my major sticking point with Spike - his treatment of Harmony. It's plain not nice. I think that we can all agree that he treated her badly - he used her for sex, beat her up, insulted her and then left. He was downright horrible to her, which I could understand when he was evil, but now he has a soul I expect better behaviour from him. Yet when Harmony offers to talk about their relationship, or awaits an apology from him (which she deserves), he completely ignores her and acts as though she's just an oversensitive idiot. What a douche. And you'd think he'd be aware of how she feels, since he himself was has a little experience of being beaten up and used for sex by someone he cares about. Goddamn double standards, goddam Spike...

And I do hope this isn't going to become a trend - Harmony being treated as just a stupid person who we're always supposed to side against and laugh at, and never see her point of view - because I am totally on Harmony's side in this episode. I hope for either an apology from Spike or, preferably, a slap to him from Harmony soon. Harmony, if she is to become a full-time character, deserves more than what she's got so far.

Oh, and Spike's whinging because he's all incorporeal and stuff. OK, fair enough I guess, he is about to fall into hell and all... but I'm not entirely sure I care. I'm not sure how I can. I'm trying to forget Spike's behaviour in the latter seasons of BtVS to give him another chance, almost treating him as a new character - and in that case why on earth should I care for this new character that as of yet hasn't done anything but insult everyone semi-humourously. The show relies on the viewer to be already familiar with and attached to Spike, but I have to ignore his previous otherwise I'll just be predisposed to hate him. I could just try to remember the episodes where I liked him before, but I can't just filter out all his bad deeds, that's not fair, I have to take it all or nothing... I can't just focus on his actions in Intervention and ignore those in Seeing Red, I don't filter the actions of any other character so why should I with Spike? I'm sorry, I'm really trying to like him, but Spike is just such a hard character to like nowadays...

Anyway, forget about Spike. This episode has a plot, I think. It's alright, perfectly functional for the episode. The idea of the necromancer and his bodies-for-hire could be really creepy in another episode, but that's not its point here, its function is to show that Spike isn't a complete bastard. The constant switching between suggesting that Spike will betray Angel and suggesting he's not causes a little whiplash... but in the end it's a clever move from Angel and Spike. It's a perfectly servicable plot, but there's not much to talk about.

Actually, to be honest there's not much in this episode that's not about Spike... nothing else to talk about really. Angel killing his 3:00 was fun. Fred, Wesley, Gunn, Lorne... they didn't really do anything. I understand, this is Spike's intro episode. I hope he doesn't become more of a main character than those four though, I love them and want to see them a lot, I don't want Spike to do what he did in S7 - eat up screentime and marginalise all the other characters.

In conclusion, this was an OK episode, 6/10 (Conviction gets 8/10, forgot to post that). I'm still not fond of Spike, and I love Harmony.

"Oh! Excuse me, Mr. Brainy. Thank you so much for sharing. Wow. What a breakthrough." 😀
 
Well "City Of..." has flashbacks to BtVS during Doyle's opening monologue, doesn't it? But I think that's the only time we get an actual scene, with dialogue, from BtVS. It's again a sop to the theoretical "Angel fan who wasn't a BtVS fan" that i don't think ever actually existed, as much as they kept hoping it would.
 
TheVoid68 agrees: I was actually wondering while watching it why Lilah wasn't in her role. I can't see any reason why it couldn't have been Lilah
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I've been told here that Stephanie Romanov just didn't want to commit to a 5th season. Take that with a grain of salt though, because I've never seen that mentioned by anyone who was actually involved with the show.

It does make sense though, since I have trouble thinking of a reason why it wouldn't be Dead!Lilah...
 
^That's the only possible reason I could think of too.

Bungle Jerry said:
It's again a sop to the theoretical "Angel fan who wasn't a BtVS fan" that i don't think ever actually existed, as much as they kept hoping it would.
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My sister loves Angel and hates BtVS.
 
W
Wesley
I also love Angel and find BtvS mediocre at its best moments.
I've heard the reason for no Lilah was that as has been stated thusly. Joss was ordered to bring over Spike or there would be canceled. Not only that but the budget for the show was also being cut. So with the budget being cut and a highly paid actor coming on he had to cut multiple other salaries off the payroll. Those included Charisma Carpenter, Vincent Kartheiser and Romanov.

The rumor was that after cutting Romanov he had Morena Baccarin on schedule to play Eve but she had to drop out as well.
 
Wesley said:
I've heard the reason for no Lilah was that as has been stated thusly. Joss was ordered to bring over Spike or there would be canceled. Not only that but the budget for the show was also being cut. So with the budget being cut and a highly paid actor coming on he had to cut multiple other salaries off the payroll. Those included Charisma Carpenter, Vincent Kartheiser and Romanov.

The rumor was that after cutting Romanov he had Morena Baccarin on schedule to play Eve but she had to drop out as well.
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I'm pretty sure that's inaccurate. I've seen both Joss & Charisma give reasons for Cordy's departure, and none of them had anything to do with money.

Vincent hated his character, and generally disliked Whedon's work. Not to mention no one really liked Connor either, Vincent did a big interview last year saying how much he detested working on Angel.

I can't imagine that Stephanie was a more expensive actor than Christian Kane, so I doubt money had anything to do with that decision either.

And as for the budget in general, according to Boreanaz & Whedon, the set and stunts were far more expensive than ever before in AS5. The offices alone were initially constructed in the seven-figures, and they were one of the only network shows in history that utilized two full sound stages full-time. In reality, Boreanaz says that the main W&H set was 2x the size of the entire town of Sunnydale.
 
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