[Spoilers ahead, for the three people who both care about remaining unspoiled about Angel and haven’t yet seen it.]
Jonah Goldberg’s unimpressed but hopeful after seeing last night’s Angel.
I watched the series finale last night and struck me as a rushed season finale. Considering the show’s popularity and the WB’s relative lack of same, I really think the network suits should be ashamed of themselves to let the show die the way they did. My hope is that Joss Whedon left it as such a cliff-hangery show precisely because some other network might pick it up. I said this was my hope, not my expectation. Though such things have happened before. Remember “Taxi” switched networks.
Am I wrong or did the final scene seem perfectly set-up for the cavalry-like arrival of the slayer army?
I’m impressed but not hopeful. That is, I thought the episode was very good. It was certainly much better than the Buffy finale (which I didn’t hate as thoroughly as most people did but which certainly wasn’t great), and better than most of the last couple of seasons of Angel, but it was also just very good, regardless of comparsion– a fitting ending to the series, one that showed some recognition of who its characters were and what world they lived in. The overall closing arc was rushed, of course, because the show got cancelled when most of the season had already been produced. (And Jonah’s certainly right about the WB’s foolishness or worse.) We just shouldn’t find out about the age-old world-spanning evil circle, sans foreshadowing, in the penultimate episode.
But I didn’t think the pacing of this episode was that bad. The only thing that felt rushed was the hits on the bad guys. But I thought that was thematically fine. Our heroes haven’t ever been great at strategic planning, but give them an enemy whose name and location they know and they can pretty efficiently take them out. The episode centered on the anticipation and the consequences of the strike, not the hits themselves.
And no, I don’t think the slayer cavalry is a-comin’. I don’t think Willow’s going to suddenly show up and open a portal that will suck the army in. I don’t think Illyria’s violent temper and Angel’s temporary supercharge are going to win the day. They’ve won the battle they set out to. They’re going to lose this one, and they know that. If somehow they defeat the first few thousand bad guys, there will be more. I think it’d be hard for any movie or renewed season on another network to finesse a victory out of that fight. And I don’t think they should. That was a very fine moment and tone to end on.
It’s not a proper geekpost without some quibbles, of course. Since when can one alter prophesized events by signing the prophecy away, even in blood? The piece of paper isn’t the prophecy itself; it’s just the report of the prophecy. (Buffy, Season 1 finale: “Oh, so if I prick my finger and write “Buffy” in the book then I won’t die! Cool! No, Giles, I don’t care about how much the bloodstains will ruin the centuries-old tome.”) And I can’t quite sort out when Angel could have told Lorne what his real mission was. But such is life.
I’m sorry to see Angel go and sorry to see Whedon’s universe go. But it ended well.
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