Angel - Season Four (Slim Set)
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DVD Cover Information Actor: David Boreanaz Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed) Format: Box set, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen Picture Format: 1.78:1 Running Time: 990 minutes DVD Release Date: 2006-11-28 Audience Rating: Unrated Studio: 20th Century Fox |
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Movie Reviews of Angel - Season Four (Slim Set)
Movie Review: Brilliant but flawed - but still essential
Summary: 5 Stars
Warning: Multiple SpoilersOf the seven seasons of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and the five seasons of ANGEL, the former's seventh season and the latter's fourth season were the most frustrating, and most flawed. Many things were spectacularly well done, but there were also ill judged story arcs that threatened to undermine all the good things in the season. It would not be wrong to say that Season Four contained many of the best things ever witnessed in either show, as well as some of the worst things.
What went right? The year started with perhaps the most extraordinary episode in the history of the series, "Deep Down." At the end of Season Three, Connor had taken what he imagined to be revenge on Angel for the death of his foster father Holtz by locking Angel in a heavy metal cage, and dropping it into the Pacific Ocean. The new season begins with a fantasy sequence in which Angel imagines himself to be at a dinner with all his friends, Connor included, only to awaken to realize he was still on the bottom of the ocean. Luckily, his estranged colleague Wesley has undertaken the search for Angel, and eventually manages to locate where he has been dropped. Throughout the season we get the same conflicted, tormented, alienated Wesley we saw at the end of Season Four, and his character is far and away one of the finest things of the season.
What else went right? The season was far less episodic than any of the five seasons of the show. TV execs hate long story arcs, but there is no question that from an aesthetic point of view long arcs make a better show. There is a sense in which Season Four was one long story. Additionally, there was a great new and underutilized character in Alexa Davalos's Gwen Raiden, an outstanding bad guy in "the Beast" (impressively played by towering Czech actor Vladimir Kulich), and a fantastic three-episode arc featuring Eliza Dushku as Faith. The special effects were as good as anything ever seen in television, including some eerie sequences in which it literally rains fire from the sky and the sun is blackened out in L.A. We also witnessed what may have been the funniest episode in the history of the show (with the possible exception of Season Five's "Smile Time"), the outrageously funny "Spin the Bottle." And Angelus returned for a few episodes. The high points were very high indeed.
In the light of all these delights, what was it that made it a flawed season? First and foremost, an extraordinary error in concocting the character widely known as "Evil Cordy." For whatever demented reason, it was decided originally to make Cordelia the "big bad" of Season Four, a plan that had to be scraped when Charisma Carpenter became pregnant in real life. Since her baby was due at about the time when she would have been required to fight Angel, keeping the original story arc was clearly impossible. Fans will recall that at the end of Season Three, Cordelia had been made a "higher being." In Season Four we would have found that she had been more or less duped, and would be hijacked by evil entities that would return her to do battle with Angel. Instead, they changed the story by having her have sex with Connor ("yeeecccch") and becoming pregnant with his child, who turned out to be not a child but a full grown goddess with a penchant for eating people. For me this very nearly killed all the good things in the season, since I absolutely loved Cordy's transformation from school snob early in BUFFY to heroine who made extraordinary sacrifices in her willingness to fight the good fight. I thought this a horrible misuse of her character. A second major problem with Season Four was Connor, a character that was never very well conceived and never well written. He never really gelled with the rest of the cast, and most of his scenes felt like interruptions in the action. And on top of all this, he had sex with Cordy ("yeeecccch"). It was no surprise when he was nudged out of the show at season's end. The third major flaw in the season was the character of Jasmine (played by the usually marvelous Gina Torres, who I loved in Whedon's Sci-Fi Western that year, FIREFLY). I and many other ANGEL fans found the episodes featuring Jasmine to be utterly unpleasant. Everyone becomes a mindless automaton, blindly serving her needs unless accidentally contaminated with her blood, Fred first, and then Angel, and eventually the others. This was a story line that was developed in the wake of the discovery of Charisma's pregnancy, and it did have the feeling of something that was grafted onto the season, and not an integral part of it.
So, of all the years of ANGEL, this is the one with more fantastically great and horribly wretched elements. Nonetheless, it still was one of the three or four best shows on television this particular season (2002-2003), matched in my opinion by BUFFY (which suffered its own most flawed season), the prematurely cancelled FIREFLY, and the also tragically cancelled FARSCAPE. Which is to say that warts and all, it remains essential viewing.
The Season Four set, which has been previously released in most of the world's regions, contains the largest set of special features yet.