nixsight

Let’s go quickfire rounds, yeah? Trying to catch up with “Lost” before the internet turns into spoiler city in a couple of days… It’s already happened with “BSG”!

Got two weeks to get through, though… I have been a bad blogger!

Buffy Season 4: 20-22

0420 – The Yoko Factor: Spike’s secret power is that he’s smarter than everyone else – sneak-smarts, anyway. Seeing him work the Scoobies in this episode, on Adam’s behalf, is just a joy. Oh, and Angel turns up briefly, following the run in he has with Buffy in the episodes I’m… uh… about to mention in a minute.

0421 – Primeval: The fall of the Initiative, and Buffy’s first real encounter with the innate supernatural force of the Slayer line. There are some nice effects moments, and some nice character moments, but I don’t know if many people were really sorry to see the Initiative go, so the final showdown between the demons and the soldiers lacked a certain amount of audience investment.

0422 – Restless: … And the oddest of Buffy seasons, the red-headed stepchild of them really, closes on an odder note, having finished off what was arguably the season’s main arc an episode early, and instead running with a surreal episode mostly composed of pitch-perfect dream sequences, as the core gang of Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles meet the malevolent spirit of the first Slayer.

It’s a really enjoyable episode, but it’s also oddly placed – though in some ways it’s the perfect finish to this season, because it’s actually a bridge between the awkward dischord of this season, and the major themes of the next. In fact, the last few episodes of season four have been building towards setting up the themes of self-discovery and identity that will dominate season five, which is a shift in structure for the show. It’s almost as if Whedon realised that the season arc was never going to end perfect, so he decided to cut his losses and use it as a springboard to the following year’s fun.

And though I’ve mentioned it before, I never realised quite how much Whedon seeded the ‘sudden’ arrival of Dawn.

Angel Season 1: 16-22

0116 – The Ring: It’s “Gladiator”! Only with demons! A fun enough wrinkle on the show’s exploration of the hero archetype, as Angel fights by not fighting. Another new Wolfram & Hart employee appears, too.

0117 – Eternity: A stupid actress does a stupid thing, and brings out Angelus temporarily. It’s big fun seeing the psycho again, but though there’s obviously a lot of effort to make us see how difficult the aging process is for her, we don’t sympathise with her.

0118 – Five By Five: This was the year that Faith went from an interesting idea that sometimes felt a little overcooked, to being a 360 degree character. After a really solid two-parter over in Buffy, in which Eliza Dushku did a great job of selling some complex characterisation as Faith got in touch with her inner self-hatred, she turns up in LA, and is taken on by Wolfram & Hart to assassinate Angel. She tortures the fuck out of Wesley, but Angel manages to find her, and when he refuses to fight her, it becomes obvious that Faith was planning a suicide-by-vamp. Dushku takes her from defiant to helpless in a few beautifully convincing and moving seconds.

0119 – Sanctuary: Angel finally manages to make some headway with Faith, and then of course Buffy turns up and is all indignant up in his face. Buffy is a pain in the arse at times like this, but Gellar acts up to the slightly different tone of this show this time out, and things unfold at quite a rate. The fight coreographers always do an awesome job when working with Faith and Buffy fights, so the action is pretty solid, by TV standards. Wesley gets to be a badass, too. All in all, these and the two over in Buffy are probably the four most solid Faith episodes they ever did.

0120 – War Zone: Heh. Gunn turns up. It’s fun enough to see some black street kids in the show, but as much as the character is sometimes pretty well written and J.August Richards does a likeable job with him, I still kind of cringe every time I hear his name – it’s obviously a quite laughable riff on “Blade” but it doesn’t work for me!

0121 – Blind Date: I didn’t really remember this episode until it got going. Not surprising, really – it’s a Lindsey episode, and it’s easy to forget his part in this series. But actually, Lindsey, and Angel’s relationship to him, are pretty important to the show. Lindsey’s journey runs from the first to last episode of “Angel”, but this is the first story where we really see how complicated and layered Lindsey really is.

And it’s interesting, because this is also the first time he tries to do something good, but it’s his actions here that lead him onto the path that will see him through to the end of the show.

0122 – To Shanshu In LA: This whole episode builds around Wolfram & Hart’s attempt to “raise” something – and the demon who is performing the mysterious ritual goes quite effectively about dismantling Angel’s team to stop him interfering. Wesley and the offices get blown up, and the bad dude does something particularly nasty to Cordelia.

It’s a strong climax to the season, with a new mission set up for Angel, and a real sense that anything can happen in the next season. And finally, we find out why the show has spent so much time dwelling on Angel’s history with Darla. One might have thought it was just to fit in with the “immortal protagonist” aspect of the show – it’s a rule in western TV drama that if you’ve got a character that lives forever, you have to have endless period flashbacks just to, y’know, press home the idea that this is a character that lives forever.

But when it turns out that the thing being raised is Darla, who Angel killed way back in the first season of Buffy, it’s clear that the real reason we’re being reminded of why Darla is important is that she’s going to be a major part of the second season.

Criminal Minds Season 4: 05-12

0405 – Catching Out: Bubbles from “The Wire” guests as a transient serial killer. Big fun, because it means that Morgan gets to have a train-top fist-fight.

0406 – The Instincts: A bluff episode – a child abduction case draws the team to Vegas, because the real motive of the episode is to get Reid near the place where he grew up and dreaming about his childhood, a thread which leads into the following episode…

0407 – Memoriam: A complicated but nicely stitched together drama, as Reid tries to piece together the truth about his childhood, and his father’s desertion.

0408 – Masterpiece: This episode starts on a movie moment – an eccentric man arrives at a lecture given by Reid and Rossi, and tells them that he has murdered several people, challenging them to find his latest victims before they expire.

It’s a bit of a “Saw” by way of “Hannibal” episode, but it’s fun, though the killer isn’t one of their more believable unsubs…

0409 – 52 Pickup: Spree killers are always fun, but the really cool thing about this episode is that JJ has her baby, and asks Reid to be the godfather.

Man, we like these characters far too much.

0410 – Brothers In Arms: Ah, well, a bit of a blah episode… these come along every now and then. Not a lot to say about it, which is rubbish, I suppose…

0411 – Normal: An awesome episode – basically, it’s like “Falling Down”, but without the cop-out ending, with some truly brutal stuntwork and motivation, and an unsub that the audience finds itself uncomfortably sympathetic toward. One of the few truly shocking episodes, too.

In this case, the middle-aged, emasculated man is played with beautiful understatement and convincing bubbling rage by cult TV favourite Mitch Pileggi.

0412 – Soul Mates: An odd episode, which seems to have been written by someone who had a cool idea for a murder story – or in this case, a serial rape/murder story, and just loosely camoflagued it as a case for this particular team of FBI investigators.

In fact, the “Criminal Minds” regulars don’t really do much in this episode, and the whole thing is carried somewhat by a charming and measured performance by Michael Boatman, the favoured suspect from before we’re even invited into the story.

The Office 0508 – Frame Toby

Heh… Michael Scott is so delightfully irrational when it comes to Toby that there are some great moments of complete bewildered rage from Carrell’s character.

Even if Michael doesn’t like him, it’s good to have Paul Lieberstein back as the permanently monotone HR guy – though it does seem like a particularly cruel twist for Michael, to have his soul mate so unceremoniously swapped out for his arch-enemy.

It’s still not entirely clear what exactly it is that Toby ever did to earn his wrath, though. Just quietly enforcing the rules, but happily caving when Michael goes too far doesn’t seem like it’d even get the ridiculous office manager’s attention.

Elsewhere, the cosy romance of Jim and Pam almost looks like it is going to be derailed when Jim makes the ill-advised purchase of his parents’ house, but it seems like the showrunners think the terrible anxiety that we feel whenever it looks like this couple’s bliss is going to be ruined is enough for now. I’ve made myself clear on this, mind – much as I know a lack of conflict makes for boring TV, I’d be happy if these two are just left to actually have a nice, heart-warming love story, after the trauma of their near-misses and glancing hits of the first few seasons.

Let the other characters fall out and fuck around, I say!