Say, what if Angel went bad? That’s never happened before. Let’s do it as the set up for the final episode. That’ll be interesting.

To their credit, it’s almost interesting. Though a little overwrought. Some earlier setting up of the Black Thorn would have been nice; some hint of the tremendous power and apocalypse-running before Lindsey had to tell us all in his second unconvincing bout of exposition for the season.¹ But no. This episode is pure, 100 percent exposition, with little in the way of entertainment value. If you’re sold by it, you’d probably love it. At the time, I was a little too leery of Angel going the way of Buffy to completely enjoy proceedings.²

The plot goes like this: Angel wants to find a way to strike a blow against evil, prevent the apocalypse, save the day, ra ra ra. However it’s trickier than it sounds. There’s a bunch of folk running it, but he doesn’t know who they are, so he pulls an “I’m all cynical and borderline evil” act for a bit until the big guys let him into their club — though sadly they make him kill the rather nice Drognan as a final challenge.³ Meanwhile, his friends get all antsy and work out that he’s being evil, only to be told by him at the last moment that they’re all stupid and that he’s pretending. At which point they relent, and agree to make one final stand against the darkness.

Watching ‘Power Play’ now, there are redeeming features. It’s particularly surprising (and nice) to see Spike sticking up for Angel — they’ve been through a lot together this season and it shows. Illyria remains the number one reason why I was upset that Angel finished this season — her Crash Bandicoot metaphor for life is brilliant and surprisingly convincing.⁴ I had forgotten about the brilliant Marcus Hamilton, also; at the time I hadn’t seen Adam Baldwin in Firefly, which adds a lot of extra fun to this performance. His demolishment of Illyria is brilliant: “Maybe you just aren’t… that… cool!” coupled with a particularly brutal camera angle.

The other regulars do less well, as the plot makes them jump through a few contrived hoops. Wesley was there when Angel did something damn similar to this, on a smaller scale in ‘Enemies’ five years ago, but all of them are only half-hearted in their suggestions that maybe Angel’s faking it. This would be more understandable if Angel’s “I need power” speech was as convincing as the script thinks it is. At least they’re quick to believe him at the end, and we don’t go through too much “Why should we believe you” crap.

Overall, lame — but I find it hard to condemn it completely because it sets the stage for ‘Not Fade Away’ so nicely. If one episode has to be bad so another can be awesome, is it worth it?

1. I mean, why not have Lindsey mention that something like the Black Thorn existed in ‘Underneath’? Why not have sprinkled the nifty thorn symbol amongst the last few episodes. Perhaps I’m being too harsh — the show was, after all, unexpectedly cancelled. ↩
2. It’s especially dangerous with Buffy writers spending too much time over here in Angel land. I’m not a huge fan of David Fury. Where’s bloody Tim Minear when you need him? Oh, that’s right, making yet another good show that got cancelled. ↩
3. If I had a dollar for every time a TV show has started with a main character doing something shocking, and then done the rest of the show in flashback to explain how we get to that point, I’d have maybe ten dollars. Actually, it’s not that I mind, but it’s more impressive if you can get the audience to spin 180 degrees and be on the character’s side the next time round, rather than thinking it’s maybe a bit bad both times. ↩
4. If a god fell to Earth in a human body, would our lives just feel like a game of Tetris? ↩

671

This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Sunday, October 9th, 2005. It concerns such pressing issues as Angel, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.