Not Fade Away

If you haven't seen season 5 of Angel and still plan to, don't read any further.

I am specifically looking at Jenni, here, but if this applies to someone else, heed my advice.


Now that those people are gone, we can begin. Man, how great is the last episode of Angel? I mean, season 5 as a whole is excellent, but that last episode is just amazing. What made me think of it again, you ask? I was over at Frank's the other night and he's been making his way through season 2 on DVD, and we watched that great episode with Lindsey's evil hand. That's also the episode where Lindsey leaves before coming back in season 5, and before he drives away he warns Angel "Don't play [Wolfram and Hart's] game, Angel." Cut to two seasons later and Angel is totally playing Wolfram and Hart's game, but he's had just about enough of their rules.

Angel has always had a strong theme of redemption, and it's really impressive how the second half of season 5 has all the characters do something they want to set right. Angel and Spike, of course, are trying to atone for their multitude of past sins as a vampire duo of evil, but everyone else gets a motivation, too. Wesley remembers his betrayal of Angel in season 3, Gunn realizes his selfishness led to Fred's death, and Illyria struggles to come to terms with her past a demon goddess from Hell, while learning WHAT IT IS TO LOVE. Only Lorne isn't dragged down with the rest of them, which is for the best. It's why he gets to live at the end.

And how cool is that final scene with Lorne and Lindsey? "You kill me? A flunky? No! Angel kills me!" Doesn't it just make you pity Lindsey for never facing up to his villainous inadequacy? Lindsey should have thought of a better answer when Angel asked why he was willing to fight with them. You just know that's the moment when Angel decides to do away with him.

Then there's those two heartbreaking scenes. The first one is when Wesley dies, and as he bleeds to death he says to Illyria, "It's good that you came." Aw, he got the horrible beast who possessed his true love's body to prove her worth to the side of good! This is particularly sweet considering his failure with Faith over on Buffy. The other moment is when Conner comes to help Angel fight Hamilton, and Angel tells Conner to run before the wrath of the Senior Partners comes down on them, and Conner says "They'll destroy you!" and Angel responds, "As long as you're alive, they can't." No, I didn't cry. But ALMOST.

And they all meet in the alleyway, and the apocalyptic army of demons are coming for them, and Angel says "Let's go to work." Annnnnd SWORDSLASH! The end! Because Angel realized that the fighting is what's important, not whether you win or not. You can't just complacently run hell's lawfirm on earth and expect to change them from the inside. Angel's true job is to fight them, any way he knows how. "Let's go to work," indeed.

Emory and Leslie will occasionally mention that maybe the cast survived the fight (Mostly they contest Illyria's line about Gunn not lasting more than ten minutes. Did she mean ten minutes no matter what because he was mortally wounded, or ten minutes in the big fight?), because I suppose they're hoping for TV movies or whatever. Personally, I like to think they all died fighting.


Whew! Just had to get that off my chest. Reeeeeeally dull day at work. Thanks for indulging me.