Holtz wants his revenge on Angel. Who is Holtz? A vampire-hunter mentioned briefly in Season Two, played by Keith Szarabajka. Why does he want revenge? Because once upon a time, Angel was the vampire Angelus, and he took great pleasure in the torture of innocents, and destroying Holtz's family was one of his cruelties. The fact that Angel is no longer a soulless villain doesn't matter to Holtz. Forgiving Angel on behalf of a soul would be like paroling John Wayne Gacy for good behavior. Szarabajka makes Holtz weary and soft-spoken, a man for whom vengeance is necessity instead of pleasure, and his reasoning is sound enough that Holtz ceases to feel like a villain. Instead, he becomes tragic bastard of fate.
His plans for vengeance center around Angel's son Connor, a child born of the pregnant Darla (Julie Benz), whose vampirism technically should've prevented her menstrual cycle from kicking in, but hey, who's counting at this point? Connor's babyhood isn't for long. By the end of the season, he's broken past the boundaries of space and time and grown to the size of Vincent Kartheiser. Kartheiser's board-school diction serves him much better in period drama Mad Men than it does here, where his stilted acting style clashes with the sass and irreverence of Angel's dialogue. Meanwhile, an ominous prophecy warns everybody that "The Father Will Kill the Son," although not much ever came of that Shanshu Prophecy, and how many damned prophecies can this universe have, anyway?
On the hero side, Wesley (Alexis Denisof) is a small revelation, although his character was emergent in previous seasons. As the de facto leader of Angel Investigations, Wesley struggles with one tough decision after another, and his largest undoubtedly occurs in wham episode "Sleep Tight," where he makes a very bad decision involving a cute little baby whose name just might be Connor. Denisof, similar to Szarabajka, communicates his role through subsumed emotion, gravelly voice, and many looks of concern. This could quickly become dull, were he not so endearingly childish in seasons past. But the key difference is that Holtz is unflappable, and Wesley second-guesses himself constantly.
The other members of the team mostly satisfy, as the increased screen time for Lorne (the late Andy Hallett) and Fred (Amy Acker) gives the show a boost of cheerfulness. "Mostly" is meant to exclude Gunn (J. August Richards), who continues to exist in this universe for reasons unknown. Although Gunn provides occasional moments of levity and ethnic diversity, the writers continue to do nothing with him. Late in the season, "Double or Nothing" attempts to focus on his upbringing on the streets, and the use of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" in the background is laughably inauthentic. Reading over my review of Season Two, I realize that I never mentioned Gunn. The episode with him and a group of plucky kids at a homeless shelter fighting zombie-cops felt like Saved By the Bell as directed by George Romero.
Except that would be cooler.
As I complain, though, I recognize that certain virtues of Angel tend to escape my attention because they're such a given. Like the strong makeup work that allows for a rogue's gallery of villainy, all of them more interesting than the usual satyr-inspired cliches. This season features two key standouts: unstuck-in-time Sahjhan and spirit guide Skip. The former is gray and weathered, a long-haired mess. The latter is a black-skinned tank of a beast. Despite the Buffyverse's ostensible foundation of Victorian horror, these creatures feel more like comic book villains than Hammer nightmares. Less Dracula, more Darkseid.
Elements like makeup, and lighting, and the series-long emphasis on controlled camerawork (a dying practice in the modern age of cheap handheld camerawork) provide ballast for the action and, more importantly, the drama. Action and scares in this series occur, but they're never the emphasis. Instead, the show is always about Angel. The friends he gains, the enemies he makes, and the choices that fall upon him. David Boreanaz is closer to understanding who Angel is this time around, mostly because the scattered ambiguities that shape his life crystallize in his son, Connor. And there's an instant sympathy to Angel's dual nature that wasn't there before, because his nature ties into the key question that all fathers ask of themselves. Am I giving this child the best of me, or the worst?
RATING: B+
Former Buffyverse Reviews:
Buffy, Season Six: B
Buffy, Season Five: A / Angel, Season Two: B-
Buffy, Season Four: B / Angel, Season One: B-
Buffy, Season Six: B
Buffy, Season Five: A / Angel, Season Two: B-
Buffy, Season Four: B / Angel, Season One: B-
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