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Date Posted: 12:25:02 05/20/04 Thu
Author: wwolfe
Author Host/IP: 161.149.63.107
Subject: The Last Freakin' West Coast Review.

Unless I write another one sometime.

**"ANGEL": The dreams and wishes you wish in the night when lights are low.

One good Buddy Holly quote deserves another.

I was absolutely giddy at the end of this episode. For me, it fulfilled all that was good about the show to such a degree that it raised my opinion of the whole thing, all five seasons, by a significant amount. I think I could even claw my way through the lunacy of Season Four now. It didn't undo past mistakes - the lynched lawyers, Goofy Angel, petulant Connor, Cordy's Shaft o' Light, hiring Timothy Leary as head writer for Season Four - but it gave a sense of purpose to the whole five-year endeavor that allowed the show to transcend its failures, just as the ending of "Chosen" did for "Buffy."

Things that pleased me:

- Gunn walking right into the Senator's office and splitting her skull with the hatchet. So very Gunn. (I thought for a second he'd been vamped when he showed up at the end and was glad he hadn't been.)

- Angel's great line to Hamilton - something like "Can you pick the one word from that sentence you shouldn't have said?" - just before he evened the odds in their fight by sucking Hamilton's super-charged blood.

- So glad that soul-less Harmony was shown to be incapable of morality, but equally glad that her betrayal wasn't nearly as dark as the spoilers had suggested. Plus, the powder blue bra and panties: excellent acting by Mercedes at that moment. I completely believed she was a gorgeous young woman with a knock-out figure.

- I was impressed by the way Connor handled his new knowledge of his dual past. Remarkably mature and believable. And I liked Angel's line to him about how he wouldn't be dead as long as Connor was alive.

- Each death of the Black Thorn honchos that we saw was unique and witty. I particularly liked the one in the bathtub who drank the poisoned blue demon blood - it somehow reminded me of some famous painting of some famous person who'd died from drinking poison. (Socrates, maybe? Right after he said, "I just drank what??")

- I loved that Spike used the word "effulgent" in his poem. Joss at his best is a stickler for the defining detail.

- I also loved that the shot at the end when Angel walked into the alley was a near-duplicate of the last shot in the opening credits. Nice full circle feeling there.

- Nice to hear a mention of Doyle. Nice that they never stopped mentioning him, when appropriate.


The only very minor glitch for me was the scene between Eve and Lindsey on the couch, and that was only a problem because of the incompetence of the actress. That also robbed her final line ("Go where?") of its poignancy - my thought was, "Hey! Eve is gonna die!"

It seems that the two most common concerns I've read about the episode was Illyria offering Wesley the illusion of being with Fred, while saying that he'd be with the real Fred soon, and the fact that Lorne killed Lindsey. To repeat what I posted in Kuzibah's Live Journal, dealing first with Lorne.

I think it had to be Lorne who killed Lindsey because he was the one member of the Fang Gang Lindsey never, ever would have suspected. Angel understood that, and I'm sure Lorne did, too. I liked how this scene, perhaps more than any other, perfectly expressed this season's theme of using immoral means to achieve moral ends. I've thought Angel's use of Wolfram & Hart was reminiscent of our nation's use of the CIA - ugly, but often needed. In this sense, Lorne's murder of Lindsey struck me as an exact parallel of one of our agent's eliminating some enemy agent, which, as I said, was an ideal realization of this year's subject. (I also liked how this scene echoed Giles' killing of Ben in "The Gift," both for its similar moral arithmetic and for the difference in effect the act will have on each of the two perpetrators: Giles was fine with what he'd done, while Lorne was probably destroyed.)

Regarding "Fred" and her statement to the dying Wesley: Illyria is the perfect example of an untrustworthy witness. As Audra pointed out after the show ended, why should we take the word of a hell-god that Fred's soul was burned up? Does Illyria even understand what a soul is? And, even if she does, wouldn't it be perfectly in character for her to sow misery and discord by lying about what had happened to Fred's soul? These struck me as very reasonable questions. If I were sitting on a jury and I were instructed to vote based on the available evidence as to whether Fred's soul had been destroyed, I'd vote "No," because the only evidence we have was Illyria's statements, which I in no way find credible. In fact, as I said, I find it much more in character for those statements to have been calculated lies.

For that reason, the death scene with "Fred" and Wesley didn't bother me at all. In fact, it affected me in very much the opposite way: I'd rate it as among the loveliest in either show's history, and - unless I'm forgetting one - the best death scene Joss has pulled off.

(On a similar note, before the show started, we were all making predictions as to who would die. There was a vote for Gunn and a couple for Wesley. I voted for Rona. As the Beach Boys sang, be true to your school.)

I never thought I could be so powerfully affected by this show. "Buffy" was always my favorite of the two, by miles and miles, so I'm suprised and pleased that "Not Fade Away" moved me nearly as deeply as the best of "Buffy." Now I'm really excited about buying the DVDs of all five seasons. And I'm happy Angharad and I are doing a companion music series for "Angel" to go along with our "Buffy" epic.

Alan Freed was the great, even heroic, disc jockey who first applied "rock and roll," the rhythm and blues slang expression for sex, to the revolutionary new music of the mid-1950s; more importantly, hewas the one who first brought black and white teenage audiences together in his Moondog Reviews in Cleveland in the same year as Brown vs. Board of Education. He had a lovely sign-off that he used to close his nightly broadcasts and I think it fits here, at what seems to be the close of the JossVerse: "It's not goodbye - it's just goodnight."

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Replies:

[> Bravo! -- jojo_342, 15:09:11 05/20/04 Thu (24.161.12.44)

To you, for your last review.

As for the show, I liked it.

I only started watching Angel again for these last 6 episodes or so and I'm very very impressed with the quality of writing of the episodes I saw.

Despite this, I feel gipped. The next season would have kicked so much ass, I truly believe. Just as I was getting back into Angel, the shows over. I can only imagine how they would have gotten out of the mess, but I do think they would have won through some magical means (maybe the blood Angel drank made him SUPER!SOMETHING) and tore down Wolfram and Hart.

What would be interesting to see is how the characters dealt with the loss of control wolfram and hart had over things. Stuff would have been NUTS! NUTS!

I wonder if killing Wesley was something they always planned for the end of the season or if it was a change they made for the series finale.


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[> The Last One! *sniffle* -- Maye, 22:16:27 05/20/04 Thu (24.177.125.24)

"Unless I write another one sometime."

LOL

I did enjoy the finale, though the ending was a little Butch and Sundance for me. But it stayed true to how Angel has always been a show with darkness at its core.

I think my favorite scene was actually between Gunn and Anne, where he's asking her what she'd do if she knew nothing she did mattered, and she replied she'd get the truck packed before it rained. I thought that pretty much summed up the episode, if not the series- whether you win or lose, the fact that you stand up and fight for something means it DOES matter.

I'm feeling all nostalgic. 5 years I've been posting here, 5 years Angel's been on the air....*sigh* I'm going to miss disecting the eps with you.


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[> [> Re: The Last One! *sniffle* -- wwolfe, 13:28:52 05/24/04 Mon (161.149.63.110)

Yes, I'm very nostalgic, too. Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of my first post. Sigh.

On the other hand, the fact that I've been friends with so many people for five years is nothing but a good thing.


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[> Re: The Last Freakin' West Coast Review. -- shk24, 15:40:03 05/26/04 Wed (208.17.34.25)

first off, thanks for the all the reviews, i always looked forward to your perspective on the shows...

as for the finale...i too was very happy with the way they wrapped things up, while still leaving room for interpretation. i was actually more satisfied with this ending than with buffy because oddly enough, in my mind, it felt more optimistic than buffy.

there was a certain sadness when buffy and the scoobs were standing over the hole in the ground that used to be sunnydale. it was if all of their hopes and dreams were swallowed up and they were staring at a very uncertain future. conversely, even though angel, spike, ilyria and gunn were facing what appeared to be insurmountable odds, i felt like they were going to live on to fight another day.

as for the individual story lines, they were all handled well enough to feel complete. and most importantly, everyone played a significant part in the end which i appreciated. angel always seemed to be more of a group effort whereas buffy was clearly the dominant player with a very helpful supporting cast.

wesley's death was undoubtably the hardest part of the show, followed by lorne's agonizingly difficult task of killing lindsay. the wesley/ilyria death scene was fine, although i would liked for angel to have been there for him considering all they had been through...

to sum it up, i couldn't have said it better than your assesment "it fulfilled all that was good about the show to such a degree that it raised my opinion of the whole thing" - so i'll just leave it at that...


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[> [> I'm glad you liked it. -- wwolfe, 08:48:07 05/27/04 Thu (161.149.63.100)

I'll really miss doing this, in equal parts because of the writing and the feedback from everyone. Joss needs to do another show.


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