Monday, June 07, 2004

Its been an Angel weekend

Due to the normally inconvenient combination of me having a cold and it being a long weekend (Queens Birthday, that is), I was able to get through the Twin Peaks DVD (the pilot and episode one) in plenty of time to get into our newest batch of Angel episodes. I don't even know for sure which season we're on to now - Four, maybe?

Anyway, the two favourite episodes so far:
1. Spike becomes fully corporeal again. We find out more of why he and Spike hate each other so much (its a father/son kind of thing). Both realise that either one of them could be the champion mentioned in the Shan Shu prophesy, in which it is predicted that a vampire with a soul saves the world from an apocolypse and is given life as reward. Angel and Spike have a big fight, and Spike wins (more of the father/son thing). Now Angel has something else to brood about...

I like how this episode really brings the Spike vs. Angel rivalry to the fore. In a way, Spike really is a better person than Angel; firstly, because he was capable of feeling love even before he got his soul;secondly because when he does 'good' things it isn't because he wants salvation. On the other hand, I feel sorry for Angel because he really is cursed by his soul, and besides he never tried to rape Buffy.

2. A young woman with super-human strength and a large cleaver (this is not a typo and I didn't mean 'cleavage') escapes from a mental institution. She turns out to be a Slayer, one of the ones 'created' following Buffy and Willow's trick in the very last episode of Buffy (in which all potential Slayers become actual Slayers - I wonder if I can keep capitalising the 'S' in Slayer if there are lots of them?). I was overjoyed at the presence of a Slayer in Angel, albeit a mentally unhinged one. Geeky Andrew, along with small contingent of Slayers, has been sent by Buffy to claim psycho Slayer as their own. Angel realises that even Buffy doesnt trust him any more now that he's working for Wolfram and Hart.

I think it would be great to have more of a Slayer presence on the show; now that the Angel gang are corporate grey-area good guys, it might play out like a Buffy vs. The Initiative scenario (without the mad scientist). Plus it'd be good to have a powerful female on board.

Interesting that Fred is now not only a theoretical physicist, she's also a coroner. Like the Professor in Gilligian's Island, she's the architypal (and higly unlikely) super-polymath - hey, just because a person's really brainy and good at one thing doesnt mean she's good at everything else you know. It's not like they don't have the staff, is it? Surely such a big firm would have it's own supply of specialists, right? I was a little disappointed with this turn of events.

And now for something completely different...we've actually had sunny weather most of this weekend. Bitingly cold, yes. But sunny.

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