Angel was good. It was well played, with David Boreanez giving Angel a hard edge different from Angelus that was delightfuly smug and condescending. It was full of amazing & extreme moments, such
as the sacrificing of Drogyn, the Nintendo scene, and the finale in the office, as they are monitored by Hamilton. It sets up great stuff for the series finale, and brings the idea that Cordelia's final kiss gave Angel her visions...a twist-so-obvious-you-can-kick-yourself worthy of The Sixth Sense.
That said, it still felt incredibly rushed, as if they were cramming a good many weeks worth of set up into one episode. Which, to be fair, is true, given the sudden announcement of the cancellation of the series. But it certainly makes the episode long on momentum, and a bit short of deeper characterization. It's got people popping up all over the place -- at times, it felt like a combo of Angel Season 5 reunion special and a madness best described as let's-introduce-ALL-our-new-characters-in-the-span-of-one-hour! And the girlfriend thing? Aside from it feeling like it came out of left field, it did absolutely nothing for me.
So, all in all, very good...but not great. That said, I'm more than optimistic for next week's swan song.
The West Wing, on the other hand, was simply stunning. How can I do justice to an episode where (a) a long-running character is killed; (b) the White House is in emotional turmoil over it's inability to salvage the situation in the Middle East, and (c) the issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are presented with the succinct yet razor sharp focus, wit, sympathy, and righteous anger that this season of The West Wing has recaptured so beautifully?
Then there's Donna -- the heart and soul of the series -- brilliantly played by Janel Moloney. Her greatest strength is the empathy she brings to her character, and the way it allows the audience to vent their feelings through her words and deeds. When the suburban she was in exploded, I nearly dropped the bowl of cereal I was eating...and the resulting numbness only increases as the episode slowly unfolds in flashbacks. Everything was moving so fast, the emotions in play so powerful, that I was barely able to catch my breath watching this thing of beauty and terror.
This is an episode I will use in history and civics classes, not only because it manages to be fair and balanced, while at the same time visceral in its anger. Because this is television as literature: full of emotion, heartache, spectacle (I don't know if they actually filmed in Isreal, but the visuals were extremely convincing) and a lesson in coming to terms with the helplessness of reality. Network television these days doesn't deserve to have something as good as The West Wing on its schedules. I hope NBC realizes this when they fill next season full of ridiculous, empty-headed reality show excrement.
