Stoic, clad in black, Angel (David Boreanaz) sinks into the deep shadows of Greenwalt’s Scorsese-inspired alleyways, the decrepit buildings and gutters belching up hellish plumes of smoke. With the brooding self-laceration of Bruce Wayne, Angel claims a desire to “help the helpless,” when he truly seeks rebirth through pain. The pain of his enemies, and of himself. When a hero’s true goal is redemption, are the people he helps anything more than hash marks? Names on a list? By the end of this season, Angel learns that he's a key figure in an apocalyptic prophecy, which tosses aside the show's presentation of a hero dedicated to others. Don't worry, Greenwalt promises us, this show is about Angel's importance, not his selflessness.
Angel stares down a lackey from villainous law firm Wolfram & Hart.
Rest assured that the cult spinoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer features plenty of the same comic book action of its parent. This ranges from the stock martial arts battles to invasive cross-overs. Familiar faces like Oz (Seth Green) and Spike (James Marsters) appear just long enough to threaten Angel's identity as a distinct show with its own purposes. Permanent imports like the ditzy Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) and clumsy Wesley (Alexis Denisof) feel less offensive; the writers give these two the opportunity to develop into characters more appropriate to Angel's mission. They levy his self-flagellation with irreverence and nobility.
Doyle and Cordy grow closer; if you're a Whedon show, this is unacceptable.
Angel's mission, inevitably centered in Los Angeles, grows personal not just through apocalyptic prophecy, but through his recurring battle against the scheming Wolfram & Hart, a rogue's gallery of enemies masquerading as a law firm. Their schemes run deep, which suggests a group capable of machinations subtle and clever...and also buys the writers time to devise a mythos for their show. The final episodes reveal the broad strokes of this plan, but until then, Angel offers the same type of detective stories that made Buffy's first season tedious to a fault.
Even a reveal of the inept Wesley is bathed in shadow.
Angel mitigates this problem by building on its central idea of a demon as a protagonist. "The Ring" and "Hero" show a variety of demons with strikingly human personalities. "Rm w a Vu" features Cordelia befriending a ghost in a new apartment. Jane Espenson, who wrote that episode, contributed to Battlestar Galactica, which similarly built the wall of "othering" its enemies before breaking on through to the other side. The blurred line of human and demon implies the confusion of racial identity, although the late-season arrival of token black man Charles Gunn (J. August Richards) proves that some themes are better left suggested.
Persecuted demons weigh their options while under the command of selfish humans.
His introduction carries an "edgy" attitude to which the show wants desperately but cannot commit. The very idea of Angel as a character promises all manner of ambiguities, but, by the end of Season One, he's essentially crowned a champion. Still, the show feels heavy, with the demonic Angelus as the monkey on Angel's back, and with the bleaker setting of Los Angeles. Although sound-stages dominate most of the action, the references to and use of real-world locations add a genuine sense of place to the series. So even if Angel hasn't quite determined its identity - as a bleak detective show or an elaborate fantasy saga - it has a place to stay while it figures these things out.
RATING: B-
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