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Angel - Season 5 (New Edition)
ReviewsUntimely End to A Fantastic Show Review date: 2008-03-21 Rating: 10 out of 10 'All good things must have an end' and unfortunatly, this is Angels. Possibly the best season yet, you'll be laughing, crying and cursing the network that cancelled this gem. The stand out episodes for me were Hellbound, Harms Way, Smile Time and Not Fade Away. Ones to watch even if you haven't really got into the rest of the season - Especially Not Fade Away, which unfortunatly leaves us on a cliffhanger (I believe Joss didn't know that the show was going to be cancelled when it was written) and wishing that it was carried on an extra episode, at least. One small gripe I had with the last four or five episodes is that I never really got along with Ilyria - I really liked Fred as a character. However, if you don't cry in Wesleys final scene of Not Fade Away, then I don't think you are human. ;) BDW, I have been assured by a friend who reads the comics that Angel did get his dragon :D Best. Ending. Ever. Review date: 2008-02-23 Rating: 10 out of 10 Rarely have I been as disappointed to learn that a show had been cancelled as I was with Angel, it was easily one of the best shows in the genre and by season 5 it was eclipsing it's parent show Buffy on a regular basis. But all good things must come to an end, and when they do try to make them end like this. OK, so at the end of season 4 we saw Angel and co join and agree to run their evil enemy, the law firm Wolram&Hart. Now it's obvious to both the characters and the audience that this is an attempt to corrupt them and bring them onto Wolfram&Hart's side for real, this is handled very well and actually quite subtely in the show so that you start noticing little differences long before the major plot points show up around it. There's lots of interesting thematic examinations around the concept of how far you can go into the darkness before it gets to you, something we've already seen Wesley go through in previous seasons but which is equally interesting now since all the characters are effected differently, with different consequenes for the group and themselves. As this is the final season of the show it's where we get to see everyone's character arcs get wound up, and it's a compliment to the writers that they manage to make the same set of events provide material for the show's conclusion but also keep everyone's personal arc seperate and distinct. Wesley, unsurprisingly, remains the most tragic story in the series with this season pushing him even further than season 4, his concluding scenes are an act of nihilistic tradgedy that act as the perfect antithesis of his orginal clown-like role and are by far the saddest moments of the series. The final season also contains the return of some of the series' best characters, most of whom are a major plot reveal and so I won't spoil them for you, but since James Marsters is in the opening credits it's not mutch of a spoiler to say that Spike is back in town. Spike forms a major part of the show this season, acting as a great irritant to Angel whilst also carrying a couple of episodes on his own ('Hell Bound' and 'Damage' are two of the series' scarriest episodes by far and both rest heavily on Marsters). This season of Angel is, as previosly stated, the last. Thankfully the writers were aware of this and have managed to give Angel a proper ending rather than the sudden death of Firefly. The final episode, appropriatly named 'Not Fade Away', gives a definite and satisfying conclusion to all of the character arcs and provides the series as a whole with a pretty solid finale both in terms of plot and thematcally. The end of Angel feels like it comes all too soon, but that doesn't stop it being one of the best endings of any television show in recent memory. Why was this cancelled? Review date: 2007-12-13 Rating: 10 out of 10 The only thing wrong with this series is that it's the last one. Having more or less tied up a three-year story arc the season before, Angel took off in a new direction with the gang's takeover of Wolfram and Hart, a scenario incredibly rich in potential of which just one series could barely scratch the surface. It's so frustrating because there's clearly at least another year's worth of good material here. But at least they went out on a high, with a series reminiscent of the glory days of Buffy - the traditional emotional rollercoaster, in which silly comedy changes to horror at a stroke; and full of constant surprises, drama, cool fights and unexpected deaths. And the final episode is all of that, distilled into just 40 minutes - it puts you through the wringer and spits you out devastated, and screaming to know what happens next. Acting honours go to Amy Acker, who is absolutely brilliant in a dual role - the subtle change in expression and body language with which she signifies the change from one to the other is extraordinary. A season of two halves. Review date: 2007-10-05 Rating: 10 out of 10 Or to put it more accurately a series of 4 so-so episodes and then the rest is good, indeed many of the 18 episodes after the uninspiring first 4 rank among the show's very best, and so the outstanding quality of a large percentage of the episodes that make up this climactic season easily merits a five star rating overall, and I can guarantee that by the grand finale you'll have long forgotten its mediocre opening. I read somewhere (possibly on these very pages) that the creators had to accept budget cuts to keep the show afloat for another year, and this is certainly apparent, most obviously in the return to a format based more around stand-alone episodes than long-running story arcs, to an extent not seen since the first season (though this is not to say that the series is entirely void of continuous plot threads and season-long character arcs). However, this need not be a cause for concern, as the standard of episodes on offer here is more than high enough to make up for the lack of an obvious central storyline, and in many respects it's a welcome break anyway after the occasionally gruellingly dense plotting of series 4 (not that I'm knocking it, as that was an excellent series too). My personal favourite stand-alones are Life of the Party (hilarious), Lineage (one of Wesley's best episodes), You're Welcome (two familiar faces make a return) and Smile Time (easily the show's funniest ever episode). Moreover, although the series lacks a plot arc as obvious as that of season 4, the moral dilemmas of their new job fronting Wolfram & Hart provides an undercurrent of consistent unease throughout the show and, like the return of Darla in season 2, gives the writers a way to explore some of Angel's potentially darker tendencies without having to resort to yet another "return of Angelus" plotline. The cast is also on excellent form (as ever I suppose), with the indefinite departure of one long-term team member made up for by the arrival of "Blond Bear" Spike, easily the best thing about Buffy in its later seasons and now added to its sister show as the perfect comic foil to the (sometimes annoyingly) broody Angel; his (entirely platonic) relationship with Fred is for me one of the season's many highlights, and his reaction to Angel's "predicament" in Smile Time is just one of many moments of comic brilliance he provides. The darkness which dominated the character of Wesley from mid-season 3 to the end of 4 goes into a sort of remission for the first half or so of the series, but then he descends once more into the far more rewarding, if depressing, "dark Wesley" character following the tragedy which strikes mid-season. The only character I don't like in this series (and I get the impression that it's the writers' intent to make him less likable) is Gunn, who becomes a very different person this time round, in more ways than one, although he comes good in the end. It's one of this season's greatest strengths that it can pull off comic genius like Smile Time and then follow it with an episode as tragic as A Hole In The World, or follow The Girl In Question (Spike and Angel gadding about in Rome) with the darkness of the final two episodes, Power Play and Not Fade Away. For my money, Not Fade Away blows Chosen clean out of the water, being a far darker and more depressing conclusion to the series than its Buffy counterpart, although I suppose in this respect both episodes are well-suited to their respective shows, and although it is a bit of a downer (to say the least) I think it's a perfectly fitting end to everything that's gone before it, even if another season or two would have been nice. Product Details/SpecificationsActor(s): James Marsters J. August Richards Alexis Denisof David Boreanaz Andy Hallett Creators: David Boreanaz (Primary Contributor) Alexis Denisof (Primary Contributor) Recording label: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment EAN: 5039036022903 Binding: DVD Number of items: 6 Format: PAL, Widescreen, Release date: 2006-05-08 Aspect ratio: 1.78:1 Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Region code: 2 Running time: 911 minutes Language: English (Subtitled) Language: Swedish (Subtitled) Language: Norwegian (Subtitled) Language: Finnish (Subtitled) Language: Danish (Subtitled) Language: English (Original Language)
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