We're All Back....Sort of

Ok, so I didn't bring my usual title related pun to the beginning of this post, but I felt that for our return, I could be excused, just this once. Kudos to Brian's wonderful review below of Conviction. If only I could be so optimistic.

There are a few problems that I had with last night's offering; some directly related, some not so much:

1) A TV GUIDE ARTICLE THAT I READ RE: ANGEL said that one of the caveats of the show's return was the mandate that more humor had to be introduced to the show. I have no problem with humor in our Joss-related shows, (some of my favorite episodes have been funny,) but to make it a founding point for the show is a bit extreme. I enjoyed most of the comedic moments of last night's episode, but my problems stem into number two:

2) THIS SHOW IS NOT A JUMPING ON POINT FOR NEW VIEWERS. The new season was supposed to present a jumping on point where you didn't need to know too much about the show's past to get involved. Conviction did not fulfill this requirement. As someone who has watched the show since the beginning, does this really matter to me? No. But it does matter to those who wish to come onboard anew, and who will be turned away by the lack of exposition. To be honest, I was afraid that too much exposition would be present, and thus make the episode unwatchable, but at the same time, having tried to see it through the eyes of a newbie, I feel that we may have lost a few last night. BTW, the link between this and number one was that some of the humor (certainly not all, but some) falls under the category of "you had to be there."

3) WHAT IS UP WITH GUNN? I realize that his charcter has always been the one to ask "what am I doing here?" but what happened? It seemed terribly out of character for him to do what he did to join the firm. I think he also lost his ability to be the ears of the street. I also am afraid the he will be seen by certain groups as a sellout, and for some reason (although I shouldn't care) I almost feel that Joss himself will take a lot of heat for taking a character of Gunn's disposition and changing him completely. How did the angry black man become "conformist guy?"

4) WHY DID EVERYONE'S HAIR GROW? OK, technically not a big issue, but for a guy who can't use a mirror, Angel applied a liberal amount of hair gel to his hair and had it nicely styled. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?

5) HARMONY. A wonderful source of humor, but something just seems amiss. Even when Xander was used exclusively for comic relief, he always seemed to have another purpose. Harmony didn't seem to have any such provision.

6) SPIKE. Not what we were promised, which I blame the WB more than anything for. They made it seem like he was coming in early on, but in true Joss style (which I predicted by the end of the opening sequence) he was saved for the last 10 seconds of the show. Also, and no offense to James Marsters, but I feel that giving him second billing under David Boreanaz is a bit of a mistake. I realize that his tenure on the show is greater than anyone elses, save David, but as a newcomer to the show, he should have been given the honorary status of being last billed with an AND on it.

7) LET'S KILL EVERYONE. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I thought, since he got his soul back, Angel has been averse to taking a human life. I don't seem to remember him doing it very often, if at all. And yet, I'm assuming that the head of the "wetworks" squad was a human being. That's just a bit bizarre and ill fitting for me.

8) TRIANGLE GOES FLAT. What happened to the Gunn/Fred/Wesley love triangle? I mean, yeah (as Brian pointed out) Wesley still had the hots for Fred, but when did she become so oblivious?

Well, here's my final summation. I really liked the episode. I enjoyed it a lot. Unfortunately, I watched it with a feeling of foreboding. I may have said this before, but I have never had such conviction in my feeling. I feel that we are looking at the last season of this show. I will be most interested to see where we go from here. Kudos to Joss, David and the gang for a deliciously wonderful hour of entertainment. I only wish I had higher faith in the audience to keep this show alive past this season.

  posted by J @ 13:28