Angel Season Four= Best. Season. Ever.

POSTED BY: Lexan
UPDATED: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 05:48
VIEWED: 9686
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Originally posted by Groosalugg:
It seems (based on watching the DVD special features) that Joss gave the other writers a starting point, ("Lessons") an idea of his planned ending point ("Chosen"), and left them to it (while he went off to work on Firefly), and on their own, they just couldn't figure out a clear, sensible way to get from A to B...

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There's certainly a case to be made for what you're saying...in fact you're making that case rather eloquently...I just feel that the bright and creative spots in season 7 more than make up for the 'hollow' or directionless aspects, and I like the season better every time I watch it (now on my fifth time).

Killer of the vam-pire Chrisisall

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Originally posted by Groosalugg:
Go back and watch the start of episode 7, "Apocalypse, Nowish". After a brief Angel/Lorne scene, it starts with Cordy and Connor, in his loft. He's bringing her food, she's watching TV, she's scared, he comforts her, blah-blah-blah. Suddenly you hear the Beast's voice, she gasps and looks up, and there it is, standing before her. It grabs her by the throat, lifts her up, and she wakes up. So I put this before the court: since she turns out to be the evil master in control of this thing, why is she having a nightmare about it?

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Now if that's not proofiness I don't know what is.

Season 4 started out with all this rising action and a real sense that there was something big going on. Then it was "eh there was no plan it was just pretty explosions and things to keep you distracted". Way to waste our time writing staff. Unacceptable. Besides like others have said there are easier ways to have a quiet birth. You think Angel wouldn't have listened to Cordy if she just told him she needed time to deal with returning after being a higher being and just left with Connor for a while? He'd have been like putty in her hands. Instead she goes all out and gets the entire city involved. There must have been a different reason for all that stuff at the start of the season.

Jasmine would have made a much better big bad of a whole different season. She had a good storyline of her own, but it just didn't mesh at all with the first half of the season. Which is why she's a very underrated character. She represents the weak payoff of all that rising action.

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I would say 'Cordelia's' dream about the Beast was just the writer's trying to throw the audience off... They can show a fake dream if they want... Doesn't necessarily make it real or of the canon.

I felt Jasmine’s arc and the rest of the season essentially meshed extraordinarily well. I admire the contrast between Jasmine and what we were expecting…Two completely separate and dissimilar entities. For the whole first part of the season, we were convinced something awful, destructive, sadistic and malicious was going to arise with monstrous intentions. What we ended up with was a demon goddess who was planning on constructing a world free of violence… This fits well with this season and its themes and also is a good lead into season five, which is also about making a distinction between what is good and what is evil when you are faced with characteristics and matters that fall directly in the middle…

Jasmine’s story really wouldn’t work in the context and didacticism of any other season…

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Agreed. That moment when Angel was about to kill Cordelia and instead drops his sword and tearfully bows before Jasmine is absolutely brilliant. You just couldn't get a more unexpected ending to that episode.

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Originally posted by Lexan:
I would say 'Cordelia's' dream about the Beast was just the writer's trying to throw the audience off... They can show a fake dream if they want... Doesn't necessarily make it real or of the canon.

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If it happens in one of the BtVS or AtS novels, it's not canon. If it happens in one of the comics (with the possible exception of Joss' upcoming BtVS S8 series), it's not canon. If it happens in a fanfic, it's definitely not canon. But if it happens on the show, it's canon!

I'm sorry, but they can't just make something up that doesn't in any way fit with their planned storyline, for the sole purpose of tricking the viewers. That's dishonest on their part, a 'cheat'. They're breaking faith with us, the audience. Basically, it's just lazy writing--not wanting to spend time trying to come up with something that can fool the viewers while still staying within the confines of the story.

But honestly, I feel that it's more a case of 'making it up as they go along', and that their unfolding storyline took them away from (and flat-out contradicted, in some cases) plot elements established earlier in the season. That's not underhanded or dishonest, thankfully--just incompetent (to have not planned it better during the summer, before ever rolling film on ep1).

It's been awhile since I watched the commentaries, so I don't remember specifically which one it was in (tho it had to be either "Orpheus" or "Underneath") but one of the writers (probably Bell or Deknight) mentioned that even a couple of episodes before Jasmine's first appearance, none of them knew yet exactly what Cordelia was going to give birth to--whether it was going to be a giant spider demon, or what. That seems to be a common theme throughout several of the Buffy and Angel audio commentaries: revealing that they sort of tended to let the seasonal arcs unfold on their own, as they went along. That's fine for, say, S4 of Buffy, where the arc wasn't too involved, but for what they did during S4 of Angel (or S7 of Buffy, for that matter), having it be so big and sweeping, it should've been planned out a little better ahead of time...

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Just out of curiosity, why aren't the comics and novels canon? I thought Joss and Co. accepted them as such.

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"I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life."

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Originally posted by deepgirl187:
Just out of curiosity, why aren't the comics and novels canon? I thought Joss and Co. accepted them as such.

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I'm not sure what the deal is with the comics--maybe some actually are considered canon. But I've read a few of the novels, and the ones written while the two series were still going on were completely contradicted on more than one occasion. Joss has said that he doesn't read the novels, and has no idea what's happening in them, because, according to him, if he ever did read them, he'd spend all his time re-writing them, and wouldn't get anything else done...

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Origonally posted by Groosalugg:
If it happens in one of the BtVS or AtS novels, it's not canon. If it happens in one of the comics (with the possible exception of Joss' upcoming BtVS S8 series), it's not canon. If it happens in a fanfic, it's definitely not canon. But if it happens on the show, it's canon!

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Not in the strictest sense. I mean, what we saw was most likely a dream of the real Cordy (remember Skip said Cordy was still in there, she just wasn' t the one driving). Here's what Cordy said to Connor before The Beast grabbed her throat in the dream:

‘No one's safe. Don't you understand that? It's coming, and no one can stop it. I wanna warn Angel, but the words won't come out. Why can't I tell him? I feel it. The thing in my dreams... It's real, and it's almost here.’

I, too, wondered why this dream about The Beast happened when Cordy was The Beast's master. However, upon re-watching, I realized it was actually exactly what Cordy says in the dream that infers it's the real Cordy. ‘I wanna warn Angel, but the words won't come out’. Evil Cordy would not be dreaming about this, only the real Cordy would. This is actually a reference to what happens in later episodes (the reveal of Evil Cordy). It' s pretty much the writers giving the audience hints through this ambiguous and indirect dream of Cordy's. Cordy wants to tell Angel what’s going on (about her being possessed) but she can’ t, because ‘she’ s not driving’.

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Origonally posted by Groosalugg:
I'm sorry, but they can't just make something up that doesn't in any way fit with their planned storyline, for the sole purpose of tricking the viewers. That's dishonest on their part, a 'cheat'. They're breaking faith with us, the audience. Basically, it's just lazy writing--not wanting to spend time trying to come up with something that can fool the viewers while still staying within the confines of the story.

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What I said above pretty much proves that it was within the confines of the story, unless you think I'm just making a rationalization, which I'm not, because it's actually a pretty obvious interpretation of the text. Saying that this season had lazy writing I think is an insult to not only this season but also all of Joss' shows. I really found the writing of the season to be most immaculate, probably more so than any other entire season. The writing of the season was superb and virtually unblemished, in that it just kept moving from one first-rate plot point to another without ever contradicting itself (I’d be interested to hear of another ‘contradiction’ in the season, of which you seem to think there are many). It also stayed true to characters (with the exception of Cordy) and referred to episodes as far back as Buffy season one.

Quote:

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Origonally posted by Groosalugg:
But honestly, I feel that it's more a case of 'making it up as they go along', and that their unfolding storyline took them away from (and flat-out contradicted, in some cases) plot elements established earlier in the season. That's not underhanded or dishonest, thankfully--just incompetent (to have not planned it better during the summer, before ever rolling film on ep1).

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If Joss and those guys were making it all up as they went along...God, they really are brilliant, aren' t they!

Quote:

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Origonally posted by Groosalugg:
It's been awhile since I watched the commentaries, so I don't remember specifically which one it was in (tho it had to be either "Orpheus" or "Underneath") but one of the writers (probably Bell or Deknight) mentioned that even a couple of episodes before Jasmine's first appearance, none of them knew yet exactly what Cordelia was going to give birth to--whether it was going to be a giant spider demon, or what. That seems to be a common theme throughout several of the Buffy and Angel audio commentaries: revealing that they sort of tended to let the seasonal arcs unfold on their own, as they went along. That's fine for, say, S4 of Buffy, where the arc wasn't too involved, but for what they did during S4 of

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