NIGHTMAN: "DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?" (1998)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* 

There are many worse television shows than the two-season superhero NIGHTMAN, which producer Glen Larson adapted from the 1994 Malibu originally written by Steve Englehart. In fact, based on my recent reading of the first issue of the comic, the show might be better than its source material. (For once, the suit in a superhero TV show looks better than the one in the magazine.) Since this was one of the few episodes of which I had semi-strong memories, I decided to revisit it.

The gimmick with this particular superhero was that jazz saxophonist Johnny Domino (Matt McColm) got struck by lightning. This caused him to be able to sense evil intentions in the hearts of others, which in turn led him to become a costumed crusader. One minor sidenote was that Domino can't sleep normally-- hence, the "Nightman" designation-- though in this episode the hero's confidante Raleigh claims that Domino rests while awake, like an ever-moving shark, and experiences what the script calls "nirvanic nightmares," whatever those may be. Raleigh, a technician, supplies Nightman with a suit that lets the crusader fly and shoot laser beams, while in a few episodes of the first season, a parapsychologist named Walton (Patrick MacNee) renders sage advice. In some early episodes the show's opening replays a line from Walton's first appearance to explain to viewetrs Nightman's special proclivities: the hilarious line "You're tuned in to the frequency of Evil!"  

Most NIGHTMAN episodes were cookie-cutter fare, and they rarely extended over two linked episodes or recycled characters. "Magic" seems like a setup for something more ambitious, since the hero encounters a sorceress who seems to be a representative for "the forces of evil," testing Nightman because he has the effrontery to join "the forces of good." But if the writer meant to expand on that conceit, it never took place. 

Though the sorceress introduces herself at Domino's night club using the puckish name of "Lucy Devlin," she dominantly uses the name Selene, the same as that of the Greek moon goddess. This cognomen may have been selected because the witchy-woman specializes in all sorts of nightmares to plague both the hero and his support-cast. (The authentic moon-goddess is not associated with sleep or dreaming in any way that I could find.) I won't relate all of the evildoer's dream-illusions since most of them are jejune. But after placing two regular characters into dream-trances-- with Raleigh being able to awaken from his while a cop named Charlie cannot-- Selene challenges Domino. She messes around with a few prominent Tarot cards and claims that she can send her victims "into the deepest recesses of their minds, reliving their darkest hours." Intending to rescue the cop, Domino lets Selene send him into a dream-world. However, instead of finding the cop, Domino witnesses a scene from his past, when he was eight years old and his parents were quarreling. Selene has already explained that cancer took Domino's mother Betsy when he was a teenager, but it's not initially clear why this argument in front of eight-year-old Johnny was so traumatizing.

Further complicating the matter is that though Johnny sees himself as an adult interrupting the domestic scene, in the real world Raleigh and Walton see him talking to empty air. Then Mother Betsy approaches Adult Domino and tries to kiss him in an un-motherly manner. Domino fends her off and the dream-Betsy turns into Selene (though she's still wearing the mother's dress). From the sorceress' mouth sprouts a huge threatening snake's-tongue. The hero breaks out of that dream briefly, consults with his two buddies, dons his Nightman costume and finds a way to enter the cop's dream and to pull him back to reality. That done, he re-enters his own trauma-dream and smooths the waters between the two parents and the suffering kid. Selene doesn't seem to be control of the dream anymore, for this time dream-Betsy embraces him lovingly in the manner of a real mother. 

Then back goes Nightman to the real world (maybe), where Selene turns into a devil-horned creature and the two of them fight with energy-powers. They seem to fight to a standstill, at which point Selene reiterates that she and her Satanic buddies will keep watch on him. Then Domino apparently awakens in Really Real Reality, having maybe dreamed the entire sequence. For the closing moments Domino seems to re-experience his initial encounter with Lucy Devlin in the night club. The one difference is that, whereas in the first version he accepts Lucy's calling card and invites her to join a party at the club later, this time he tears up the card and does not invite Lucy-- which seems, vaguely to have the effect of banishing a demon.            

I don't mean to suggest for a moment that any of this "is it a dream or not" twaddle holds any value. But even though the writer's overt intent is to show that both Young Johnny and Adult Domino both want to see the parents stop quarreling and reconcile their differences, the scenario has a strong resemblance to one of Sigmund Freud's famous assertions. The psychologist thought, without much evidence, that when a male child watched his mother quarrel with his father, the son would inevitably sympathize with the mother due to his Oedipal complex and might want to see the father perish so that he the son would have a clear shot with the object of his affection. The script for "Magic" never suggests hidden Oedipal urges in Domino for his deceased mother, nor hostility toward his still-living father (who's a regular character in the first season, though he does very little in this episode). Yet a lot of popular fiction recapitulated the Freud scenario because such a transgression automatically grabbed audiences. I think it's entirely possible that this was the only reason the evil sorceress tried to (clumsily) seduce the hero with the image of his mother, not so much because the illusory seduction had a chance to work as because such a transgression would seem like the sort of dark thought that might come forth from the deep recesses of one's mind.        

DEMON SLAYER SWORD (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* 

This misleadingly titled offering on a couple of streaming channels must be the most obscure item I've reviewed yet. Not only did the 1995 TV-film-- originally entitled ONIMARO ZANSHINKEN-- not have any online reviews, it didn't even have any visual representations on the three major search engines, except the above placeholder. I assume SWORD only recently showed up on the service I watched.

The title is an almost complete fakeout: there's not even a mention of metaphorical demons, much less demons who can be slain by a magical sword. Rather, this is a story that might've been slightly compelling given its novel concept. In SWORD, an apprentice swordsmith must journey from town to town in Edo-era Japan, trying to recover the badly forged swords left behind by the apprentice's late master. I have no idea what the "Zanshinken" of the title means but "Onimaro," played by Hidekazu Akai, is the name of the apprentice seeking to erase the stain on his master's name by buying back, or even stealing, the inferior craftworks. But Onimaro doesn't only have to contend with sword-owners who have various reasons for not wanting to sell the bad swords. A gang of ninjas, belonging to the legendary Iga Clan, want to kill Onimaro because the clan-leader had some old beef with the deceased swordsmith.

The problem is that because this is a TV-movie, there's not much time spent explaining the various motives of the support-characters, and even Onimaro and his allies are underwhelming. The production values are pretty strong, as are the three major swordfights. But even though as a Westerner I've been exposed to SOME of the mystique surrounding Japanese sword-crafting, SWORD didn't communicate the slightest sense of what that mystique might consist of. Maybe the script would have been able to concentrate more on Onimaro's swordmaking aesthetics had it not saddled the hero with a little "family:" a sassy orphan boy and the daughter of the nasty clan-leader. The daughter of course falls for the hero and is played by Eriko Tamura of DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION fame.

There are two clearly uncanny incidents in the movie. One involves the bad ninjas-- who don't dress in the standard pajamas-- catching the orphan boy in the forest with a multitude of lasso-ropes. This carries an uncanny feel since one cannot see the rope-casters. The other comes at the climax. Several sword-wielders attack Onimaro, and apparently both the hero and his sword are so excellent that not only can Onimaro split the enemies' swords, he can also rapidly whittle the blades into tiny fragments. In any case, still no demons, nor any supernatural phenomena whatever.    

      

     

WARLORDS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (1982)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

WARLORDS, one of the earliest post-apoc adventures to show some (possible) influence from 1979's MAD MAX, is an adequate but not overly exciting formula flick on a roughly similar theme. Again, the world has fallen into chaos due to a lack of fuel resources. In contrast to the Miller films, director/co-writer Harley Cokeliss injects brief references to areas polluted by radiation after the conflicts that destroyed all centralized authority. I'm not sure why Cokeliss did so, since the radiation areas have no effect on the script. This one-off movie has no super-technology resulting either from the war or from mutation, and if it didn't take place in the future, the two armored-up vehicles in the story would only fall into the domain of the uncanny.

Both hero and villain descend from the disbanded armed forces of the U.S. (where the film is supposedly located, though not many modern viewers will fail to recognize the colorful, spacious scenery of New Zealand). Hunter (Michael Beck) lives alone on a small farm, the only remnant of his military life being a high-powered motorcycle. He has occasional communications with a nearby settlement with the idyllic name of Clearwater, but plainly he wishes to remain isolated from human contact.   

Hunter's opposite is Colonel Straker (James Wainwright), who has organized a small coterie of armed thugs with which to dominate all the settlements he can find. His main weapon is a huge armored truck, presumably one designed for some previous military conflict, and he can use this to ram the small buildings of setllers. Straker is utterly devoted to his mission of conquest, displaying his callousness in an opening scene where he approaches a trader with soft speech and then abruptly slits the man's throat. Straker seems to hold no ideal but pure power, though he's failed to make his most important convert in his daughter Corlie (Annie McEnroe). Early on it's clear Corlie is the merciful type, refusing to countenance her old man's enormities, though it's not clear how she escaped his influence, given that her mother is implicitly long deceased. Straker for his part does not punish his wayward daughter, but going by a late conversation between the two, he seems less motivated by love than by some belief in maintaining his "immortality" through blood succession.

Arguably the apocalyptic narrative's usual emphasis on the conflict between settled communities and roving raiders is de-emphasized in favor of a conflict of a "heavy father" interfering in the romance of his daughter and the male of her choice-- though in this case, there's no sense that Straker has any particular successor in mind to ensure him his genetic perserverance.  Granted, Hunter doesn't exactly prove a Lochinvar. When Corlie flees her father's camp, Hunter rescues her from her old man's enforcers, but the hero tries to palm Corlie off on the Clearwater residents because Hunter just prefers his solitude for whatever reason. Hunter and Corlie do eventually get together but he doesn't renounce his "lone ranger" tendencies in favor of a pipe and slippers.

Still, the back-and-forth battles are decent and the settlers are more pro-active here than in many Miller imitations, with one inventor providing Hunter with his own armored automobile. Unfortunately Hunter's so underwritten that actor Beck can't do anything interesting with the character. McEnroe and Wainwright get all the decent lines and consequently both thespians can hold the viewer's interest better. Kevin Peek's brooding score sometimes reminded me of Cameron's for the 1984 TERMINATOR, and on the trivia front, a pre-CHEERS John Ratzenbeger plays the aforementioned inventor.    

BLONDE IN BLACK LEATHER (1975)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* 

On this blog I generally review either metaphenomenal films or isophenomenal films that are in some way relevant to metaphenomenal tropes. For that reason, I've hesitated to review my favorite film by Italian actress Claudia Cardinale, who passed away this week. Zany as it is, I'm not sure how much I have to say about the comedy-western THE LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING, wherein Cardinale teamed up with French legend Brigitte Bardot (as of this writing still among the living). However, four years later Cardinale teamed with another major female star, French actress Jeanne Moreau, for an Italian film originally called "Here Begins the Adventure." The English title for this comedy-road film, BLONDE IN BLACK LEATHER, may be better in that it suggests the allure of adventure that Moreau's leather-clad motorcyclist holds for homebody Cardinale. However, director/co-writer Carlo di Palma does bring in elements of irony here, given that Cardinale's character is in some ways much more dynamic, even though BLONDE is primarily one of the many knockabout comedies that the Italian film industry so often produced.     

For the first ten minutes BLONDE almost does look like a precursor to the over-fifteen-years-later drama THELMA AND LOUISE. Claudia (Cardinale) works in a laundry while her barely-seen pig of a husband sits on his ass. Later there's a line about how Claudia's husband beat her, but the English translation doesn't say this right away. Claudia encounters the leather-clad, motorcycle-riding blonde Miele (Moreau). After hearing some of Miele's stories about her adventurous life, Claudia begs Miele to take her away from her drudgery. Miele, preoccupied with making a rendezvous with her fiancee up north, initially takes Claudia a little way, leaves her flat, and then changes her mind, rescuing the laundress from a lothario.

It's soon evident to the viewer, though not to naive Claudia, that Miele is a complete bullshitter. The next half hour is pretty boring, as the two women tool around the Italian countryside. Miele carelessly loses the motorbike and whines ceaselessly about making her appointment. The ladies try to steal a car and end up almost kidnapping a kid, but that action quickly peters out. 

Still on the way to the northern city, the girls stop in Naples, where the film's best scenes take place. The heroines help an old woman get back her money from one of the local gangsters. In return she gives them a magic charm that may or may not have real power. A few scenes later, the girls end up at a casino-- one where, curiously, the gangster-owner punishes his subordinates with an electrical torture machine. The girls break the bank, which sounds like the charm at work, though technically, Claudia is shown invoking the power of the charm AFTER the ladies start winning. However, the casino's gangster-boss lures them into another game. The girls lose but accuse the gangster of cheating and try to leave with their dough.

Now, the charm is never mentioned again, but it would be the only explanation for what happens next. As gangsters surround Claudia, Miele tells her that since her husband used to beat Claudia, Claudia ought to do the same to the thugs. And so the slim Cardinale proceeds to slug her way through a dozen men as if she had become Bud Spenser, the bulky colossus from the TRINITY films. (This might have been an intentional reference since one of those films is seen airing in a theater at the film's climax.) Miele, supposedly the big adventuress, does little to contribute to the fight, but though the girls get free they lose their money and are reduced to hiking north once more. They have another adventure on a train (where the director briefly emulates a silent movie with B&W photography and undercranking). They both have Edenic dreams wherein Claudia hooks up with a devil while Miele does the same with an angel, and both beings are played by the same actor. They eventually quarrel and part, only to come together to get Miele to her goal. Only after parting again does Claudia find out just how much of a fake Miele is. Yet Miele redeems herself by kicking her own bad boyfriend to the curb, and the two hit the road again, getting more of a happy ending than Thelma and Louise.

BLONDE is too whack-a-doodle to be credited with strong sociological intent, feminist or otherwise. But I was never completely bored, given that even the slow first half-hour spotlights the stunning looks of the two costars. BLONDE certainly doesn't deserve to be listed with the many more serious movies in Cardinale's repertoire. But in contrast with her LEGEND-ary costar Bardot, I never felt that Cardinale's vivacity was best served by sober dramas. She possessed one of the screen's most infectious smiles, and so I tend to like her comedies better than her serious stuff. And as I said, BLONDE is also one of the very few times Cardinale dabbled in any kind of fantasy-story.          

ANGEL SEASON 5 (2003-04)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*

The final season of ANGEL goes through some odd mutations as it shifts from "film noir mystery" to "working from within to take down the evil company." Further, according to a recent interview with James Marsters, when his character of Spike was resurrected for this series, this exigency may have caused the producers to cut Charisma Carpenter from the cast. This means the character arc for Cordelia is never really brought to a satisfying conclusion, at least in the teleseries. Still, in Season Four the writers had written themselves into a corner with respect to that character, so maybe they couldn't have done much with her anyway. And one more season of Spike, being brought into continuous conflict with his old hell-mate Angel, was probably a decent trade-off.            

CONVICTION (F)-- Season Four dropped the Fred-Gunn romance in a contrived manner so that by Season Five one can hardly tell they were ever together. This set up more unrequited agony for Wesley, who still loves her but can't seem to make a play. Gunn, for his part, gets super-charged with legal knowledge so that he can function as one of W&H's lawyers, just so he has a more definite function in the series than busting heads. Harmony is invited-- by Wesley, no less-- to become Angel's new secretary, but the Senior Partners also send Angel a new advisor, name of Eve, who serves as Hell's liaison. The main plot, about the team trying to prevent LA from being blown to hell, is just filler. The episode ends with Spike appearing in the offices of W&H, but as an insubstantial phantom.

JUST REWARDS (F)-- Not only is Spike a phantom, he also can't leave the evil law offices and so sticks around to bug Angel as much as possible. At the same time, Angel demands that W&H stop supplying a client named Hainsley with grave-derived corpses. Hainsley, a necromancer, threatens to take Angel down, and tries to get Phantom Spike to betray the noble vampire. The expectation set up is that Spike, who betrayed the Buffy team a few times, will do anything to get a body again, but it's no great surprise that Spike is not so much loyal to Angel as disloyal to the necromancer.

UNLEASHED (F)-- This is a decent filler episode in which the Angel Team protects a brand-new werewolf, name of Nina, from becoming the main course for a bunch of gourmets hungry for werewolf flesh.

HELL BOUND (F)-- Scofflaw though Spike is, he knows that all the things he's done in his vampire persona should doom him to eternal perdition. For the first time, the second "vampire with a soul" is faced with that fate, as a being called the Reaper, whom others at W&H cannot see, continually torments him. The existential confrontation with damnation, however, is circumvented when it turns out that the Reaper is the ghost of a sorcerer who's found a way to preserve his existence by sacrificing other spirits-- even though, technically, Spike is not exactly a ghost. James Marsters gets all the good scenes here, but the story is only adequate.

LIFE OF THE PARTY (P)-- And here's the first crummy episode of Season Five. Lorne arranges a Halloween party at W&H as a means of cementing the firm's relationships with its many demonic and sorcerous clientele. But Lorne has overextended himself by not getting enough sleep, and so he unintentionally starts commanding the other members of his group to do things against their will, much as Willow unintentionally did in "Something Blue." The foremost of these incidents is that Lorne's suggestion that Angel and Eve "get a room" causes them to have sex, though this doesn't have much overall effect upon the series as a whole. During the big bash, a Hulked-out version of Lorne shows up and tries to bash everyone to bits, and once the monster's defeated, Lorne vows to get some sleep.           

THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF NUMERO CINCO (F)-- This episode isn't all that good, but I give it props for trying to write a love letter to luchadores movies. Angel has a violent encounter with Numero Cinco, the W&H mailroom-guy, who walks around in a wrestler's mask-- but this is just a prelude to learning that Cinco is the only one who can stop a demon that feeds on heroes' hearts. The most significant subplot is that Spike, despite still being a phantom, hears some details of the Shianshu Prophecy, and wonders if it might apply to him, not to Angel.

LINEAGE (G)-- Finally one of the stories turns up the drama to eleven and does so in such a way as to reveal the psychological depth of the Wesley character. The opening scenes give the impression that the team is faced with just another new foe: a horde of cyborg assassins. Fred gets injured in these scenes while Wesley, who still has yet to make a romantic pass at her, becomes very guilty at having put her in harm's way. The script still plays it coy as to whether Fred reciprocates his feelings, because the focus here is not on Wesley's future but his humiliating past. His father Roger Wyndham-Pryce is trying to rebuild the Watcher organization that was wiped out in BUFFY's last season, and he wants his son to join him. Wesley, however, wants his independence, even if it does involve working for a hellish law office. The matter becomes irrelevant when it turns out that (a) Roger is a mole, trying to steal a weapon from the office, and (b) Roger is a cyborg, which Wesley only finds out after being forced to shoot his "father" dead. Though the real Roger Wyndham-Pryce is still alive and unaware of all these events, Wesley is once more put through a dark night of the soul, his third following Angel trying to kill him and his loss of Lilah.  

DESTINY (G)-- Up to this point Phantom Spike has been no more than an annoyance to his former pack-mate Angel, but a strange box arrives at W&H and it turns Spike to a solid being again. However, the same magic that works on Spike starts breeding chaos in the law offices and spreading to the outside world The Angel Team gets the info that they can cancel out the magic if the destined champion of the prophecy drinks from a magical cup. Naturally each of the two ensouled vampires thinks he's destined to receive the honor, and they end up having one of the series' best fight-scenes at the climax. This is also one of the last times the show flashes back to the period when Spike had been newly turned by Drusilla, and Angelus, the "big dog" of the vamp-pack, puts Spike to the test. More importantly, Young Spike is sincerely in love with the wayward Drusilla, and his first big quarrel comes about when Angelus, on the outs with Darla, seduces Drusilla. So this provides the genesis of the long rivalry of Angel and Spike, and from then on, their continuing love/hate affair bedomes the final season's best feature. The story also brings back evil lawyer Lindsey (Christian Kane), who's running some conspiracy with his lover Eve, W&H's link to the senior partners.

HARM'S WAY (F)-- This makes a good counterpart to "Disharmony," being a focus on how Harmony copes with being Angel's secretary. At the very time that the team is trying to manage a difficult summit between rival demon tribes, Harmony is framed for murder. She blunders about trying to prove her innocence and nearly kills some of the regular cast. One of the better funny ANGEL episodes. A minor development of the Spike story is that he stops talking about seeking out Buffy for a time, possibly fearing that if he sees her again, she'll reject him.

SOUL PURPOSE (F)-- "Hell Bound" put Spike through a hallucinogenic wringer, so now it's Angel's turn, reflecting his loss of confidence after being defeated by Spike. Many of Angel's delusions involve his seeing Spike taking over his position as champion and being feted by the other members of the team while Angel himself becomes the mail-boy. Meanwhile, Lindsey launches the next part of his hard-to-follow plot. He takes the name "Doyle," formerly that of the half-demon psychic who passed on his powers to Cordelia in Season One and convinces Spike to play vigilante.   

 DAMAGE (G)-- Here's a good callback to the history both Spike and Angel had with vampire slayers, as they encounter an insane young woman with Slayer strength. Dana (Navi Rawat) has been in an insane asylum for years following suffering abuse, but thanks to the spell that unleashed all Potential Slayers in BUFFY Season Seven, she comes into her power and breaks loose. Unlike Buffy and Faith, Dana's memory somehow taps into those of the last two Slayers-- the ones whom Spike killed-- so she's out to give Spike grief. The episode loses points for pointlessly bringing back the unfunny BUFFY character Andrew, though the climax does involve his command of other Slayers who take custody of Dana at the end.

YOU'RE WELCOME (F)-- And now it's time to say goodbye to Cordelia Chase as well. Angel, in the midst of contemplating defection from W&H, gets a call about Cordelia awakening from her coma. This may have been mystic flummery, for by the episode's end we learn that Cordelia's body never awakened, though something that looks and feels like the living Cordelia greets the Angel Team. She follows them back to W&H and has brief interactions with Harmony, Gunn and Lorne. She asks after Connor and finds out that Angel agreed to work for W&H in exchange for remolding reality to give Connor a happy life. Cordelia is not shy about telling Angel that he's gone down a bad road, though as in all the other Season Four episodes, she never reveals any details about how she got hijacked by Jasmine. The team learns that Eve has made an alliance with Lindsey to get revenge on Angel, though his actual plot never made much sense. Cordelia aids Angel in defeating Lindsey and sending him to some hell-dimension. The story concludes with Cordelia shuffling off the mortal coil to become a vision-thing of some sort. It's hard to believe the story was conceived as a guest-shot for Buffy.

WHY WE FIGHT (F)-- If nothing else, this one's a good change of pace, as most of the story is a flashback to Angel's years in the US during World War Two. In short, Angel, Spike and two other vampires get trapped in a submarine at the bottom of the sea. The frame story concerns how one of the mortals menaced by the vamps comes back to gain vengeance on Angel.

 SMILE TIME (F)-- I must admit that though there's nothing exceptional about the story, "the one where Angel gets turned into a puppet" remains one of the most memorable ANGEL tales. Spike's huge amusement at Angel's humiliation alone makes the episode, though he takes a back seat to the boss vamp's temptation to romantically pursue werewolf-woman Nina. In between the puppet-hijinks, Gunn begins to lose his downloaded talents and makes an unwise deal, while Fred finally breaks the ice with Wesley. Both lead to bad ends.

A HOLE IN THE WORLD (G)-- Fred is infected with the essence of an Old God named Illyria, which destroys her body and soul despite everything the team can do to prevent it. Even more than the BUFFY episode "The Body," "Hole" shows the utter inability of even super-powered mortals to stave off death, which I assume is the "hole" referenced in the title. A special perk is that for once writer Josh Whedon expands on his quasi-Lovecraftian universe in a fully mythopoeic manner, as Angel and Spike delve into a subterranean domain, "The Deeper Well," only to learn that even attempting to oust an Old God from her chosen vessel will cause untold destruction. Denisof and Acker ratchet up the waterworks to give Winifred Burkle a send-off, while introducing a new character for Acker, that of an incarnate god who has little patience with the fatuities of mortals.                      

   SHELLS (G)-- Wesley has not even a moment to mourn Fred, for he must immediately deal with Illyria, an Old God in human form. She remembers nothing of Fred's existence but is aghast to learn that the world has now been overridden by humans, who were a nugatory species on the level of pond scum. Angel and Spike return from England, having failed to reverse Illyria's possession of Fred's body. They question the W&H scientist Knox, who conspired to give Illyria her new form. Then Illyria abducts Knox, casting aside all opposition. On a minor note, Gunn learns that the process that gave him a permanent download was also involved in Illyria's incarnation, though this seems out of left field. Wesley does not react well to Gunn's accidental betrayal and stabs Gunn, albeit non-fatally. Illyria, with Knox's aid, successfully opens a gateway to a pocket dimension, from which she plans to revive an army of conquest. However, to her great consternation her soldiers have all perished over the centuries, and on top of that Wesley kills Knox. Despite the conflict between Illyria and the Angel Team, the former goddess shows up at W&H once more, having nowhere else to go.

UNDERNEATH (F)-- Eve wants the Angel Team to protect her from the senior partners, who already have Lindsey. None of them knows that for whatever reasons, Lindsey's captors have put him into a suburban paradise with a pretty wife and a child, though his familial pleasures are regularly interrupted by torture sessions with a S&M demon. Eve convinces the team that Lindsey can solve their problems with his insight into the minds of the senior partners, so Angel, Spike, and Gunn invade the holding-dimension to rescue Lindsey. In their absence-- during which time Wesley is still babysitting Illyria-- a hulking man in a suit (Alec Baldwin) invades W&H, trying to find Eve. However, though the hulk (name of Hamilton) is from hell, he's only here to take Eve's place as a new liaison to the firm, so she's not harmed. Gunn isn't so lucky. In order to expiate his guilt for having indirectly caused Fred's death, he takes Lindsey's place in the otherworld so that Angel and Spike escape with Lindsey.

ORIGIN (P)-- Naturally the writers don't really want Connor totally sidelined, since he causes Angel all sorts of grief. So one day Connor's parents bring their son into the W&H offices to find out how their son was able to survive being run down by a car. It doesn't make a lick of sense as to why Connor would still be half-demon if his entire timeline has been rewritten. The writers choose not to explain this, even though they make up a special demon, name of Vail, who's credited with having accomplished the rewriting. And yet there's some balmy prophecy that insists that Connor is the only being who can destroy Vail's enemy, the scheming Sahjhan from Season 4. The only good part of this mess is the scene in which Spike tries to "test" Illyria's powers, which makes for some decent face-smashings.

TIME BOMB (F)-- Though Wesley persuades Illyria to crash into the hell-dimension and to rescue Gunn, the team worries that Illyria's powers will soon build to a crisis point and she'll explode, destroying lots of Earth real estate in the process. Wesley devises a ray-gun to disperse her power, though for most of the episode the viewer is led to believe that he intends to kill her. While this goes on, Angel also has to deal with a legal matter about a sacrificial cult trying to take possession of an unborn baby from its mother. The episode's best feature is a series of time-distortions resulting when Illyria becomes "unstuck in time." Presumably the script was written when the staff hoped to be able to continue for a sixth season, which would have included Illyria becoming a regular, less reluctant team-member.

THE GIRL IN QUESTION (F)-- This is another silly concept. Angel and Spike journey to Italy to protect the decapitated head of a demon-clan master while simultaneously trying to pry Buffy from the clutches of a mysterious, never-seen seducer known as The Immortal. Naturally, since Sarah Michelle Gellar did not choose to come back for what would have been a cameo role, Buffy is only seen from a distance and is never involved in any story-action, any more than is the mysterious man she's now dating. In this comedy both Angel and Spike are played for fools, and even the perpetually uncool Andrew is allowed to shine. The only redeeming virtue of the episode is the writers are still able to keep up the great rapport between Angel and Spike, allowing the viewer to see glimpses of the amity they once shared before either of them got a soul. Flashback scenes also show their wenches Darla and Drusilla having been seduced by the ultra-manly Immortal, which seems like gilding the lily a bit too much.   

POWER PLAY/NOT FADE AWAY (F)-- There are some good moments in this concluding two-parter, but the myth-discourse is palliated by the attempt to shoehorn in all of the subplots, such as the overrated Shianshu Prophecy. (There was even talk of having Buffy make one last guest appearance, but though Gellar might have been willing, the idea was dropped.) In the first part, Angel begins acting evil, as if completely corrupted by running Wolfram and Hart. The rest of the team run around worrying, except for Illyria, who bonds a little with Spike in running around fighting evil. The subplot with Lindsey belatedly takes shape, though he doesn't do much beyond providing bits of info. Angel seems to be auditioning for membership in an elite convocation of demons, the Circle of the Black Thorn, who are the means through which the senior partners work their will upon the mortal plane. Not surprisingly, Angel's running a scam to deceive both the watchful Hamilton and the duplicitous Lindsey. In essence, the hero has realized that there's no point in seeking to use W&H "to change things from within," because the power of the senior partners will always be used to keep humans down. The best that heroes can do is to shake things up, to inflict substantive damage on the lords of Hell, even if they themselves perish. The two-parter finds time to work in character moments for minor figures like Connor and Harmony, and all the major players get to have big action-scenes taking out demonic forces, with Angel squaring off with Hamilton. Lorne, though not a fighter, gets an uncharacteristic final moment that nevertheless sums up his place in the world of champions. The final scene, in which the Angel Team takes arms against an irresistible tide of monsters, does much to redeem all the weak moments of this uneven but still important teleseries.                                     

  

        

  

THE BEST OF THE TOM AND JERRY MOVIES (2017?)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I didn't see a date on this DVD collection of eight STV "Tom and Jerry" movies, but since the latest of them came out in 2017, I'll use that as a default date. All eight of the films appeared long after the properties of Hanna-Barbera had been absorbed by other companies. Nevertheless, though the scripts only range from decent to poor, the quality of the animation is quite good, especially compared to a lot of the DTV movies with H-B franchises (like some of the Scooby-Doo movies). The basic premise of all eight involves sticking the duo into some generic situation, sometimes horning in on some other iconic story, and adding the usual violent pratfalls to the mix. In order of appearance, rated either P for Poor or F for Fair.

TOM AND JERRY: SHIVER ME WHISKERS (2006) (P)-- Cat and mouse show up in the era of piracy and get caught between a devil (a ghostly apparition warning them of a treasure and its curse) and the deep blue sea (represented by two warring pirate brothers). This one has no crossovers, though Tom's perpetual enemy Spike the Bulldog appears in a support role. Mark Hamill voices the ghost.

TOM AND JERRY MEET SHERLOCK HOLMES (2010) (F)-- This seems to be the first of the STV films in which the cat and mouse overtly team up with a major fictional icon. This story adds the wrinkle that for regular human beings are okay interacting with walking, sometimes talking anthropomorphic animals, including not just Tom and Jerry but also a trio of thug-cats who serve the main villain. Said villain is of course Professor Moriarty (Malcolm McDowell) -- who else would a routine team-up flick pit against the Great Detective (Michael York)? The plot seems somewhat derivative of the 2009 live-action Holmes film starring Robert Downey Jr. In addition to support-characters Spike and Tyke, the script also works in Droopy and his frequent antagonist Butch. A battle between Holmes and Moriarty makes this a combative comedy.

TOM AND JERRY AND THE WIZARD OF OZ (2011) (P)-- This is easily the worst of the eight, being little more than a straight retelling of the 1939 film with the cat and mouse shoehorned in. Butch, Droopy and Jerry's cousin Tuffy are present as well.       

TOM AND JERRY: ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRIE MOUSE (2012) (P)-- Again, it's just the standard Robin Hood story, with the addition of Tom, Jerry, Spike and Droopy. The only asset is that the flick revives the character of Red Hot Riding Hood, infamous from the memorable MGM cartoon directed by Tex Avery. This time Red doubles as Maid Marian, but she still sounds like the Red of MGM as voiced by animation stalwart Grey Griffin. Red has a fine moment escaping a trio of guardian wolf-dudes by making them jealous of one another. Also a combative comedy, with Robin, Richard the Lion-Hearted joined by cat and mouse in battling Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham.

TOM AND JERRY'S GIANT ADVENTURE (F)-- Thanks to the script of the peerless Paul Dini, this retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk allows more space for original gags than the previous flicks. Cat and mouse work at StoryLand, a nearly bankrupt amusement park based on a fairy-tale theme. It's run by young Jack and his widowed mother, but the usual evil banker threatens to foreclose on the park, The mother asks Jack to sell their cow for money, but an odd fellow named Farmer O'Dell (read "Farmer in the Dell") convinces the young boy to accept magic beans in trade. Of course the beans grow the usual stalk, but this time Jack and his animal-buddies ascend and find a whole kingdom of fairy-tale icons. Most of them have only minor gags-- Mother Hubbard and her two dogs (Spike and Tyke), Humpty Dumpty, Simple Simon and the Pieman (played by Meathead and Screwy Squirrel), Old King Cole (Droopy), Barney Bear (playing no one in particular), and best of all, Red Hot Riding Hood's return, this time as a generic fairy. The fairy-kingdom is menaced by a giant named Ginormica who continually robs the residents, but Farmer O'Dell brought Jack to Fairy Land to fulfill his destiny to defeat the giant. The story's standard but is made more tolerable by the gags, particularly another sexy/funny song from Red. No combative mode.

TOM AND JERRY: THE LOST DRAGON (2014) (P)-- Tom and Jerry are raised in some medieval town by a good elf-girl, Athena. The three of them find a baby dragon and thus get on the bad side of dragon-hating townsfolk. In addition, Athena's evil aunt Drizelda has insidious plans for the baby dragon and for pretty much everyone else. No crossovers and no combative mode. It's not actively bad but just ordinary.

TOM AND JERRY: SPY QUEST (F) (2015) -- Frankly, this movie is the only one that urged me to check out this collection, as I'd never heard that anyone had attempted a teamup between the cat-and-mouse and the cast of JONNY QUEST. The animators and scripter Jim Kreig render yeoman service in trying to find a happy medium between the funny antics of the dueling duo and the "straight" adventure of the Quest team. For the most part they succeed, though I certainly could have done without villainous Doctor Zin having the three cat-thugs-- Tin, Pan and Alley-- as his henchmen. (Maybe Moriarty wanted to sabotage Zin by giving the trio a good rating?) Overall SPY QUEST feels sort of like a dual homage to William Hanna and Joe Barbera for both their wacky animal comedies and their brief but brilliant plunge into high-adrenaline adventure. Oh, and original Jonny-voice Tim Matheson has a small role here, while Tia Carrere contributes her version of the sultry Jezebel Jade. And yeah, Droopy's there again and is wearing out his welcome. Combative comedy all the way.

TOM AND JERRY: WILLIE WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (P) (2017) -- This isn't as ill-advised as the OZ crossover, but it's still very unnecessary, as it's just another reprise of the classic movie adaptation of the Roald Dahl tale with the cat and mouse worked in. Oh, and at least Droopy's time is brief, though unfortunately that of Cousin Tuffy is not.      

    

         

         

REBIRTH OF MOTHRA III (1998)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological,metaphysical*

After REBIRTH II scored high in the mythicity department, the third and final nineties Mothra movie returns more or less to the level seen in the first film-- though, to be sure, the script for REBIRTH III is more venturesome than that of the first film in the series. But again, the disparate elements of the script don't quite cohere well enough to make a pleasing whole.

REBIRTH III makes abundantly clear that the series doesn't take place in the Toho Studios Godzilla-verse. Though the first film had the crusading moth contend with a critter with a name that sounded like "Ghidorah," this time Mothra must fight King Ghidorah himself-- sort of. In the Toho-verse, King Ghidorah is a rampage-happy dragon, unleashing destruction for no particular reason. But when this multiversal version of Ghidorah comes to Earth, the big three-headed hydra suddenly has a new mission in life. While it's not entirely clear whether or not this incarnation is intelligent, this monster now captures and drains the souls of both humans and fairies to gain its sustenance, imprisoning his intended victims (many of them kids) within a membranous dome. Further, Ghidorah possesses enough sentience to exert mind-control when it encounters Moll and Lora. Ghidorah causes Lora to choke her sister, though Moll is able to escape while Lora falls into the confinement dome. This development reduces Moll's ability to send power to Mothra.

Belvera, oddly, isn't the evil provocateur this time. There's an early scene in which the three fairies seem to contend over some special fairy-tech upgrades to their respective daggers. But once Lora gets enslaved, the other two sisters are forced to bond to defeat the mutual threat of Ghidorah to both humans and fairies.

The most unusual element in REBIRTH III, though, is that there's just one youthful protagonist, a kid named Shota, and he's a preteen rather than a grade-schooler. He has a reasonably happy family-- two parents and two siblings, none of whom play important roles in the story-- but he has some vague conflict about going to school. Possibly the English dub left out something that the translators didn't think would play outside of Japan? As the dub has it, there's just one scene where Moll tells Shota that he's overly "sensitive" to the rigors of school life, but that this isn't anything to be ashamed about. The sentiment is admirable but the character of Shota remains unfocused. Shota does have one good moment where Moll needs his help and as a good kid, he has to gird his loins and grow some courage.

There's not really any reason for Moll to involve Shota, except that his siblings are inside the Ghidorah-dome and he wants to help rescue them. The kid's sent into the dome to deprogram Lora but this doesn't entirely work out, so Moll also comes up with a complicated plan to beat Ghidorah back in the prehistoric past, with a Mothra of the past-- I think. I didn't follow the plot's contortions very well, but the actors said their lines nicely, the two big monsters bashed each other about a lot, and the three fairy sisters enjoyed a reconciliation. So the series ends with more closure than kaiju movies usually get, and the writers wisely don't mention the issue of world pollution for a third time. So III is probably the weakest of the three Mothra-flicks, but it's still watchable.             

REBIRTH OF MOTHRA II (1997)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological,metaphysical*

Though the same writers worked on both REBIRTH I and II, there's a much better integration in II's script between all the disparte elements-- the two good Elias and their monstrous protector Mothra, vengeful Belvera and her desire to eliminate humankind, humanity's short-sighted abuse of the planet, an ancient civilization that unleashed a demon-creature (albeit out of good intentions), and happily, a new set of kids to be the viewpoint characters. There are practically no human adults in the story except a couple of fishermen whom Belvera brainwashes into becoming her flunkies.

I liked this set of kids because the script gives them a few scenes at school, enabling them to take on a modicum of personality. Grade school boys Yoji and Kohei are mischief-making scamps, and they get in trouble with the school authorities when their female classmate Shiori rats on them. This sets up a brief conflict in which the boys try to get even with their betrayer. However, Shiori happens to come across a weird little furball called Ghogo, and then all three kids get dragged into the hunt for an arcane treasure by the three Elias fairies. None of the fairy-girls know exactly what the treasure is, except that it can ward off a new monster-menace. Said menace is Dagahra, who plagues the already polluted oceans with dangerous starfish-creatures, the "Barem," whom Dagahra spawns from its own reptilian body.

Moll, Lora and the three kids journey to the area where the city of Nilakanai sank beneath the waves. More covertly, Belvera and her henchmen show up in the area as well. Dagahra, originally designed by the Nilakanaians to consume pollution, surfaces from the ocean and tries to attack the Elias. The fairies' protector Mothra flies in and battles the reptile creature, almost overcoming the beast. However, Dagahra unleashes the parasitic Barem onto the kindly moth, and drains Mothra's energies. Just then, the lost city of Nilakanai rises from the waves, making possible for Mothra to land on the island. Further, the island's defenses repel Dagahra, allowing both of the competing contigents to land as well.

After some minor scuffles between the kids and the mesmerized fishermen, the last surviving Nilakanaian, Princess Yuna, rises from some centuries-long sleep. Yuna challenges the two groups as to why either of them should possess Nilakanai's treasure. Not surprisinigly, Yuna finds in favor of the group linked to the human kids, who are "the hope of the future" or something like that. The treasure turns out to be Furball Ghogo, who holds the key to re-energizing Mothra so that the giant arthropod can rise again and defeat the destructive monster. Nilakanai returns beneath the waves with the body of Daghara and his spawn, and Belvera escapes for yet another sally in the third film.             

REBIRTH I seemed a little predictable re its visuals, but I liked Number Two's combination of traditional models, suitmation, and animated energy-effects as much as any of the best seen in Toho's Golden Age. REBIRTH II is a rare example of a sequel outpacing the original.  

   

REBIRTH OF MOTHRA (1996)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological,metaphysical*

The continued popularity of Mothra with Japanese audiences through the giant moth's appearances in Godzilla films spurred Toho Studios to make three films centered on the beneficent behemoth, largely if not completely independent of the Godzilla series.

One reviewer whose name I don't recall alleged that Toho sought to appeal more to female viewers with the series, but all three films seem centered on kids-- though of course the producers may have wanted the series to be appealing to any mama-sans escorting their munchkins to the theaters. The first REBIRTH isn't clear as to whether humans in this series have ever seen the Mothra phenomena before, but this is a small hurdle to leap over, since two kids, Taika and Wakaba, are largely the viewpoint characters.   

Centuries ago, an invading dragon-creature, Desghidorah ("Death Ghidorah," more or less) invades Earth, threatening the lives of the faery-people, the Elias. A primeval version of Mothra, the protector of the Elias, fights the invader and manages to imprison it beneath the eatth with a mystic seal binding the creature therein. I don't know if humans are around at the time of the battle, but in any case, the human race soon proliferates across the globe while the Elias remain hidden. In REBIRTH I we only see three, though it's not clear that they're the only ones in existence.

Construction workers dislodge the seal and one employee gives the odd object to his kids. This initiates Taika and Wakaba into the world of monster-battles, for the seal briefly possesses Wakaba, Damian-izing her so that she tosses her brother around with telekinesis. I think this may have brought about by Belvera, an evil fairy who hates humans and wants Desghidorah to ravage the earth. However, Belvera's two good sisters, Moll and Lori, seek to protect humanity, much like the two Shobijin sisters who often appeared in the "official Mothra" movies. Once Lori and Moll intervene, the two kids get to have a ringside seat to witness the evil monster's clash with the current Mothra. As is often the case, the older Mothra lays an egg from which its successor hatches, and after the older moth dies in battle the offspring succeeds in re-imprisoning the apocalyptic beast. However, Belvera escapes justice so that she can appear in the sequel.  

Though REBIRTH I is not outstanding, the cycle of death and life for the Mothra-monsters never quite loses its appeal, and that's why I give it a fair mythicity rating, There's a subplot about keeping the Earth clean that I didn't think quite fit the main story, but it's not overly preachy and the actors, adult and juvenile, sell the fantasy nicely.    

CAPTAIN AMERICA BRAVE NEW WORLD (2025)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

BRAVE NEW WORLD made me miss THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER. 

I found that MCU series deeply offensive with its reverse-racism (a new iteration of White Captain America must perforce be evil) and its championing of terrorism (if the rebels check the right boxes). However, at least FALCON made me angry. BRAVE was just boring.

Reputedly the script was reworked many times to make it less polarizing in a political sense. The touchups didn't help BRAVE's box office, which only made back about twice what the film cost. But it seems what the screenwriters sought to do, before the edits, was a more extreme version of the general scenario in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. Instead of the hero confronting the excesses of the military-industrial complex, which got turned against the Americans who paid for it, this time Cap Falcon must go up against the excesses of a President steeped in duplicity and immoral conduct.

Yes, of course it's Trump, or the screenwriters' reframing of Trump into the established character of General Ross. The general was first established in live-action films in the HULK movies and initially portrayed by William Hurt, whose death forced a recasting in the form of Harrison Ford. The writers' fantasy-version of Trump is both emotionally unstable and a practiced criminal conspirator, and these contradictory traits are the characteristics they transplant onto the Ross character to serve a rather formless polemic. In previous appearances Ross was established as being a hardass military-man/politician, though hardly a master planner, but since becoming President of Marvel-Earth, he apparently ups his game. In the comics, Ross' life takes an ironic turn when he, like his perennial hulking nemesis, becomes the recipient of a gamma-curse, becoming "the Red Hulk" in 2008 (oddly, the same year as the second HULK feature film). I know little about the crimson goliath of the comics, but in BRAVE, I suppose Ross "Hulking out" is supposed to signify his temperamental inability to lead the country. 

To be sure, there's a loose explanation as to how Ross became an insidious master planner: he drew upon the talents of the one MCU villain whose evil career never got off the ground. The creation of "The Leader," a perennial Hulk antagonist in the comics, was only suggested at the end of INCREDIBLE HULK. However, at some point Ross got access to the man who would become the Leader, and had him incarcerated in a "black site," just so Ross could use Leader to guide his political career. However, Ross also developed heart failure-- as well as becoming estranged from his daughter, the woman who loved Bruce Banner-- and so The Leader started slipping his jailer medication that would bring out Ross' inner monster. This was really a good enough revenge by itself. But because the writers wanted to emulate WINTER SOLDIER, the Leader is also responsible for an absurd Rube Goldberg scheme that involves mental enslavement and the deaths of many people who never harmed the supervillain.        

Harrison Ford doesn't succeed in making Ross interesting, though I think he tried harder here than he did with his reprise of Han Solo in FORCE AWAKENS. Still, even though the intertwined destinies of Ross and The Leader don't offer much beyond cross-comparisons, that's more than any other character did. My biggest critique of Anthony Mackie's version of Captain America is not that it's bad because Original Cap Was White and Always Should Be. It's that he's not a Black character who has any clue about why he ought to represent America. As far as I can tell from this film and from the miniseries, America is just a big bundle of dirty laundry, and Sam Wilson's gonna be the guy who airs all the nasty odors, like the usual suspect of "systemic racism." Further, all the charm Mackie projected in the role of The Falcon is gone, replaced by a dour Black Captain who makes occasional lame jokes in between big serious speeches. Speechifying, by the way, is the way this Captain "defeats" Red Hulk. He pretty much has to, as the main hero has nothing capable of taking out such a monster. So why oppose the two in the first place? It's like the film's writers never read any of the comic books they're supposedly adapting.

I have no idea what the early script meant to do with the character who was somehow both a former Black Widow AND a Mossad agent, though the filmmakers did elide any Mossad references after certain groups didn't like them. Whatever they meant to do, she's dull, the "Falcon trainee" is dull, and "guy who was the super-soldier guinea-pig" is dull. Tim Blake Nelson, who also played the proto-Leader in INCREDIBLE HULK, does reasonably well projecting an implacable, icy hostility, but I for one didn't care about another story where the US is the bad guy and all the other countries (mostly Japan this time) are square shooters. The "brave new world" championed by these filmmakers seems to be one in which America and its worst representatives are prosecuted for all their crimes, but no one else is. But for such a world, "brave" is not the correct adjective.         

ANGEL SEASON 4 (2002-03)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*

ANGEL's fourth season came out concurrently with the final season of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, though the final episode of Season Four was broadcast before the finale of BUFFY. The concluding episode of Season 4 placed in Angel's hands a mystic doohickey, and the hero passed this object on to Buffy so that her writers could wrap up one of her plot-threads. In addition, Angel's brief appearance served to acknowledge, for the pleasure of viewers, how important Angel had been to the Buffyverse. (This sign-off stood in marked contrast to Wesley, who had been so thoroughly absorbed into the Angelverse that he barely interacts with one of the two BUFFY characters who guest-starred in Season 4). 

Though on the Season 4 DVD one of the directors opined that it was their best Season ever, I'm tempted to say it was actually the worst of the five seasons. Both of these Whedonverse shows were at their best when they alternated self-contained episodes with short arcs. ANGEL's season 4 attempted to loosely tie all the major events into one overarching plotline-- and the result ended up devolving to a game of "Plot-point, plot-point, who's got the plot-point?"

DEEP DOWN (F)-- The cliffhanger at the end of Season 3 ties into the longest follow-up in history, because three months pass between Connor and Justine sinking Angel into the Pacific Ocean and his being rescued. During that whole time, Fred and Gunn have sought to find Angel and the equally absent Cordelia, though Connor does what he can to subtly impede their progress. Meanwhile, Lorne rather uncharacteristically leaves for a gig in Vegas. Slowly starving for lack of blood, Angel has extended hallucinations. However, the hero's salvation comes from the man he cast out: Wesley, who forces info out of Justine. After treating Angel with his own blood, Wesley delivers him to the hotel and leaves. Angel, Gunn and Fred expel Connor from their company. The heroes then debate what may have happened to Cordelia, and the episode fades out on showing that up in the cosmic domain of the Powers That Be, Cordelia's bored out of her mind.

GROUND STATE (P)-- This is largely a "connective tissue" episode, noteworthy for introducing a short-lived recurring character, Gwen Raiden (Alexa Davalos). Wesley, in addition to having figured out Angel's situation, has also come to the conclusion that Cordelia has ascended to another plane of being. Purely because of his emotional connection to Cordelia, Wesley informs Angel that he alone can find out the disposition of Cordelia from an oracular goddess, but only if he gets hold of the Delphic Tripod (not what the script calls it, but that's what it is), Angel, Gunn and Fred attempt to heist the needed object, but professional female thief Gwen beats them to it. Gwen, who possesses a mutant-like power of emitting electricity, fights with the Angel Team and escapes with the prize. Later, with the help of Lilah-- currently sleeping with Wesley in an attempt to suborn him-- Angel tracks down the man to whom Gwen plans to deliver the Tripod, and he ends up teaming up with her when the employer tries to kill them both. A mild suggestion of romance appears between Angel and Gwen, but the episode's biggest strength is their fight-scenes. The episode ends with the revelation that Cordy wants out of her bargain with the Powers That Be.

THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS (F)-- This one's a relatively clever take on Vegas's reputation as a Sin City, where gamblers are bound to lose, eternally. Angel, Fred and Gunn journey to the city that never sleeps to see Lorne's act and catch up with him. However, the Pylean performer has been captured and enslaved by his boss, whose real operation is to destroy the lives of his customers-- I suppose for the usual Satanic-bargain reasons, though nothing is specified. There's an arresting sequence in which Angel becomes a victim of the head man's spell, so that he almost gambles his life away. Cordelia, though in theory shut off from the mortal world, is able to influence one aspect of reality to save her friends, though none of them are aware of her intervention. However, they are more than aware of her sudden physical return to their LA home base, even though she apparently no longer remembers who she is or how she transitioned back to the mortal realm. For the rest of the season, Cordelia alternates between her normal persona and the persona of the season's Big Bad, who returned her to Earth but inhabits her body to further the usual insidious schemes.

         

SLOUCHING TOWARD BETHLEHEM (F)-- The lofty Yeats quote of the title was originally meant to suggest the Christian Anti-Christ, sometimes called "the beast from the sea" in Revelations. This evildoer would team up with "the beast from the earth" in order to tempt all people into apostacy. In the Angelverse, this simply connotes yet another apocalypse-- which will eventually address one of the mysteries left unsolved from Season 3: the never-answered question as to how two undead vamps, Angel and Darla, gave birth to Connor, a living child, albeit one with some indeterminate "demon nature." Anyway, because the recrudescent Cordelia doesn't know her own name or recognize anyone, the Angel Team tippy-toes around the reality of their business in order to avoid frightening her-- although Lorne does try to read her future and sees something that even he can't fathom. Soon Cordy ceases to trust the gang anyway and takes shelter with Connor in his (presumably deserted) loft. While the team is absent from the hotel, Lilah has her goons break in and suck Lorne's vision of the future out of his head, so that by the time the heroes get back even Lorne doesn't remember what he saw-- a very convenient contrivance for the writers.

SUPERSYMMETRY (P)-- Apparently all the episodes in which Fred was writing equations on the hotel walls (and on her cave in Pylea) weren't just idle gestures. In between slaying monsters, Fred completed a theoretical paper on the titular physics phenomenon, so she's thrilled to pieces when her paper is scheduled to be read at a physics conference. Angel and Gunn dutifully accompany her, where they meet her old teacher, Professor Seidel. Somehow Wesley also finds out about the paper and attends her reading, though he really doesn't have much to do in the story (any more than do Cordelia and Connor). While Fred is at the podium, snaky demons pop out of a portal and try to kill her, until Angel and Gunn save her. In due time the group figures out that the assassination attempt came from the same person who sent the girl genius to Pylea in the first place. There's only one suspect, and Fred wants to kill him, but to protect her from the ultimate sin, Gunn kills Seidel before Fred can. The actors are good, but the presentation of the moral problem is shallow.

SPIN THE BOTTLE (P)-- What was fresh when BUFFY did it as TABULA RASA becomes something of a drag this time around. Lorne brings the group a memory-spell to restore Cordy's memory. But it just so happens that the spell needs a bunch of people to participate-- including Wesley, who's a little more back in the fold since rescuing Angel. Why? So that when the spell goes awry it can make everyone revert to their teenaged years, mentally at least. (In Angel's case, he imagines himself as a young Irish adolescent, though he's not conscious of being a vampire until later.) Connor stops by, looking for Cordelia and of course gets into a fight with his father, who doesn't recognize his son but is rather enjoying his vampiric powers. Eventually everyone gets back their correct memories, including Cordelia-- except that she never comments about her experiences in the realm of the Powers That Be, and no one asks her about the transition. The writers clearly want viewers to assume that she's unable to access that memory. However, they confuse things when they have Lorne claim (in a frame story) that the team didn't know it at the time, but they awakened something sleeping within Cordelia when they used the memory-spell. But why would the Big Bad possessing Cordy be asleep if the former caused Cordy to return to the mortal world in the first place? At least the actors look like they were having fun.

APOCALYPSE, NOWISH (F)-- Reversing the order of appearance in Revelations, the "beast of the earth"-- usually just plain "Beast"-- slouches his way out of some hell-portal beneath Los Angeles. Fake Cordelia claims to experience visions of an apocalypse that begins when a great horned creature emerges from the pavement. Not long after that, Cordelia goes walking with Connor, and they "happen" to venture near the very spot where Darla staked herself and simultaneously birthed Baby Connor. When the horned demon erupts from the ground, Connor tries to fight it. Yet despite a strong resemblance to Satan, The Beast is not a devious plotter or tempter; he's just a stone-bodied juggernaut who knocks Connor aside with ease. While the Beast's presence brings about apocalyptic phenomena-- birds going mad, fiery meteors bombarding the city-- the Angel Team seeks to learn the monster's vulnerability. Most of their detective work serves no purpose in the overarching plot, just building up to the team's attempt to directly assault, who simply kicks them all to the curb. But Angel gets a taste of Oedipal horror when he seeks to check on Cordelia and Connor at the loft, only to find them having sex.

HABEAS CORPSES (P)-- Although there was no official relationship between Angel and Cordelia-- much less anything that might have given pause to Connor-- Angel is seething with rage when he returns to the office. The usual soap-opera relationships-- Fred and Gunn, Wesley and Lilah--ramble on, until the heroes learn that (1) The Beast is for no fathomable reason slaughtering everyone in the offices of Wolfram and Hart, and (2) Connor has become trapped in that building. So the team invades the building, but though they avoid meeting the Beast, some apocalyptic magic causes the dead lawyers to rise again as murderous zombies. Zombies aren't on the menu in any other Season 4 episodes, so obviously they were just a make-work menace for the good guys to battle. Given that the Big Bad inside Cordelia is the source of all the malign magicks plaguing LA, it makes no sense for the evildoer to unleash anything that might harm Connor, since she needs him in a future episode. But thanks to the team Connor survives, as does Lilah, the only W&H employee to do so. There's also an incident in which The Beast slays one of W&H's supernatural allies, which takes place so that the heroes get an ambiguous clue that ultimately does them no good.

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (P)-- Cordelia claims to be still getting visions from the Powers That Be. But given that the entity inside Cordy seems to have been a member of that august company, that claim seems dubious. In fact, the scriptwriter includes a POV shot of the possessed female seeing herself talking to the Beast, as if Cordy was still in control of the body. But since it's later stated that the entity compelled Cordelia to sleep with Connor, this makes zero sense. Anyway, the Beast's next little chore concerns taking out members of a vague white-magic sect who might threaten him, and both Lorne and Gwen Raiden testify as to his new course. The team manages to protect the last member of the sect for a little while, but when he's killed at the hotel, the alleged detectives must deal with the possibility of a traitor in their midst. They lay plans to get rid of The Beast with a portal, but Angel providentially decides to involve Connor. For reasons unknown to anyone but the writers, The Beast shows up at the loft and tosses Connor out a window. (How sure was his master that this would not kill Connor?) The Beast then activates a device that blots out the sun's light, presumably plunging the world into darkness. (I guess it must have affected Sunnydale too, though I don't remember when or where.) The Beast escapes being banished and throws in a new clue for the clueless: he once had contact with Angel in his previous identity of Angelus.

AWAKENING (P)-- Gwen, despite having contributed her fair share of tough-girl beats in the previous episode, takes her leave while the team debates the prospect of "de-ensouling" Angel so that they can interrogate Angelus. Fake Cordelia encourages this maneuver, though I'm not sure what good Angelus ever provides for her Big Scheme. They make a cage to confine Angelus while Wesley brings to the hotel a mystic who can remove Angel's soul and bring forth Angelus. The next twenty or so minutes are a big fakeout for the audience, because in the process of soul-removal, Angel hallucinates his having triumphed over The Beast. Then we see the reality, Angel's soul in a glass jar while Angelus celebrates his return.

SOULLESS (F)-- Though the entire "return of Angelus" subplot seems designed mostly to burn up time, I must admit that Boreanaz does a good job of capturing the essence of Evil Angel. Given that Season 5 was given a short run of episodes, the scripts of Season 4 provided Angelus with his "last hurrah" as far as his live-action incarnation. The team's attempts to cull info from Angelus also block their understanding of the oracle they received from the supernatural being at W&H, who told the detectives of their mole in their midst. Angelus renders no intel, preferring to sow discord between the heroes with his knowledge of their foibles. Cordelia appears to get information on The Beast's previous association with Angelus, which leads the team to seek out a trio of witches who once banished The Beast. However, this trail also leads nowhere, for The Beast has eliminated the potential threat of the witches. There's a curious moment in which Fake Cordelia offers Angelus her body in exchange for information. This makes little sense for the possessing entity's grand plan and was probably only inserted as a bit of irony: "what if Evil Angel got to bump uglies with Cordelia before Good Angel did?" Possibly Connor, who also got there first, identifies with Evil Angel, briefly calling him his "true father," though nothing more comes of this assertion.

CALVARY (P)-- I'm not sure who might be the Jesus-analogue here, though in the last episode Angel undergoes a sacrifice of sorts. Lilah surreptitiously enters the hotel, seeking to find in Angelus an ally against The Beast, who in theory still after all W&H employees. Wesley captures Lilah and from her, he gains info about some arcane erasure-spell that may've been used to wipe Angelus' memory of The Beast. (Those erasure-spells sure were convenient for the Whedon-writers.) Angelus does reveal one bit of information: that The Beast is just a servant of some greater entity. (Back in The Day, when this show was airing concurrently with BUFFY, I thought maybe the mystery entity was The First Evil, but the producers kept the arcs separate.) The team, having decided that Angelus can do them no further good, goes through assorted rigors to begin the return of Angel's soul to his body. The ritual fails for reasons that never make much sense, though Fake Cordelia certainly acts as if she believes Angelus has been turned back, and also acts more like Real Cordelia than seems logical. A few minutes of episode-time later, Fake Cordelia finally reveals herself as the disguised Big Bad to Lilah, whom she kills.

SALVAGE (F)-- After Angelus escapes the hotel-- leaving the heroes with the impression that he killed Lilah-- Wesley has a nice dramatic moment taking the responsibility of cutting off her head to keep her from rising as an undead (as it turns out, an unnecessary action). Faith, still in prison, fends off a mundane assassination attempt, though I've no idea why The Beast himself didn't just show up to do the job for his master, given that no human power could have stopped him. Somehow, the weapon Fake Cordelia used to slay Lilah-- a knife made from one of the bones of the near-invulnerable devil-creature-- finds its way to the Beast's hiding place, because Angelus locates the hideout by tracking the scent of Lilah's blood on the knife. As in their centuries-ago first meeting, The Beast invites Angelus to join the plans of the mysterious master, and again Angelus refuses. (I never have figured out what benefit Angelus was supposed to be to the Big Bad's ultimate plan, and I don't think the writers knew either.) Wesley gets the idea to enlist Faith to contend with Angelus, and such is Faith's bond with Angel that she instantly breaks out of prison. At the hotel she takes charge of the effort to overcome Angelus and re-ensoul the body of Angel. She butts heads with Connor, but some of his opposition is a subtle attraction to her that others will comment on. Faith locates The Beast but it beats her down much as he did the other heroes. However, Angelus, still unwilling to share power, uses the bone knife to kill The Beast, incidentally ending the darkness-spell on the sun. The episode ends with Fake Cordelia's revelation to Connor that she's pregnant with his child (the real actress was also preggers at the time). Wesley's mourning for Lilah and Faith's relationship to Angel give this episode a fair mythicity.

RELEASE (G)-- The first mythically-good episode of the season gains much of its symbolic complexity from ingeniously extending the Faith-Angel dyad as articulated in FIVE BY FIVE. Fake Cordelia, speaking remotely to Angelus, again tries to enlist the evil vamp to her cause, despite his destruction of the Beast. She tells Angelus she has the soul of Angel and tries to extort the vampire into serving her. Wesley and Faith explore a demon bar looking for info on Angelus. There they make the discovery of a sadomasochistic cult like the one seen in Sunnydale in the BUFFY episode INTO THE WOODS, but with a new wrinkle. Here, not only do humans gain pleasure from being non-lethally bitten by vampires, the bloodsuckers derive pleasure from a special drug, "Orpheus," in the bloodstreams of their victims. The two crusaders track Angelus to his museum hideout. Angelus attacks, felling Wesley, The Slayer and the vampire engage in a battle that mirrors the one in FIVE BY FIVE, wherein Good Angel saved Faith from her self-destructive spiral. Evil Angel mocks Faith's connection to his good self, beats her down, and overcomes her with a cliffhanger bite to the neck.

                                     

ORPHEUS (G)-- Unlike Christ, Orpheus does not himself rise from the dead, but he almost succeeds in restoring the life of his lost love Eurydice. This is more or less what Faith does for her surrogate daddy Angel, for as soon as Angelus drinks from the Slayer's neck, he collapses. Acting with unusual far-sightedness, Faith availed herself of the drug "Orpheus" from the S/M club, shooting herself up with it. Both of them fall into a dream-coma in which they can talk to one another as Angelus re-experiences certain key incidents in Angel's life after he regained his soul. Wesley takes both of them back to the hotel. Connor, still concealing Cordelia's pregnancy from the others, confers with his false lover, and finds that she's jealous of his interactions with Faith. (So if Real Cordelia fits the bill of Connor's "mommy," does that make Faith a "sister?") Though the group now has Angelus in its power, they still don't know how to re-ensoul Angel without his "soul-in-a-jar." Fortunately Fred put in a call to Sunnydale for just such an emergency, and up pops Willow. To be sure, she's not only there to take care of Angel's recovery, since at the end of this episode she will take Faith back to Sunnydale to play a role in the Buffyverse Apocalypse. Willow thinks that she can re-ensoul Angel without the jar, which upsets Fake Cordelia, but she can't do anything except to plan a magical counterspell. Meanwhile, Dream-Faith watches with amusement while Dream-Angelus suffers as he watches his other self, attempting to be good. Back in reality, the magical duel begins, but by a lucky break Fake Cordelia is distracted, and Willow successfully restores Angel's soul. This proves timely because Fake Cordelia talks her malleable swain into trying to stake his dad for the sake of Connor's unborn child, but Faith's conscious and doles out a beating to Connor with suggestions of a "punishing mother." An extra cute bit is Willow getting turned on by the equally bubbly Fred, despite the fact that the former already has a lesbian steady.

PLAYERS (P)-- And with the leavetaking of Willow and Faith, we're back to the same old crap. The whole team learns of Fake Cordelia's pregnancy, but no one sees the hand of their enemy in this development. Meanwhile, Gwen Raiden shows up to make her final appearance in the series, talking Gunn into helping her with a heist that also involves (supposedly) rescuing a little kidnapped girl. The burglary story is forgettable, so the best part comes at the end, when the heroes belatedly reveal that they've finally deduced the nature of their hidden enemy.

INSIDE OUT (F)-- Fake Cordelia confesses her Big Badness, but before the team can interrogate her, Connor blunders in, unaware of the revelations, and spirits away the mother of his child. Wesley suggests to Angel the possibility of contacting the Powers That Be, but the writers contrive an excuse for the heroes not to take this rational action. Angel seeks out Skip, a demon who works for the Powers, and soon learns that the demon was in on the whole plan to send Cordelia to the cosmic realm so that one of the Powers could hitch a ride with her back to the mortal world. Angel overcomes Skip and imprisons him at the hotel for interrogation. Meanwhile, Cordelia plans to talk Connor into completing a ritual that will cause their child's magical birth, but it involves the murder of an innocent woman. Some entity, possibly the Powers, send the ghost of Darla to intervene, trying to talk Connor into rebelling against his demon lover. While Connor resents Darla for being another parent who wasn't there for him, he can't kill the sacrifice, so Fake Cordelia does it. By the time Angel arrives, intending to kill Cordelia before her demon spawn slouches into existence, the ritual succeeds and from Cordelia's body the true Big Bad is born.

SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE (F)-- The new Big Bad proves to be a fully-grown woman who eventually takes the name Jasmine. As soon as anyone sees Jasmine or hears her voice, that person immediately becomes her bond-slave, enthralled by her presence and indifferent to anything else, even personal survival. Cordelia survives Jasmine's birth but remains in a coma for the rest of the season, but the heroes, as well as Jasmine's "father" Connor, are all joined in celebrating Jasmine's new reign. All the normal humans fall down in worship of Jasmine, though one aberrant human attacks her, only to get beaten down and hospitalized. By dumb luck, Fred is exposed to Jasmine's blood. and that contact dispels the illusion of Jasmine's mesmerizing beauty, revealing her as a maggoty corpse. Fred visits the hospitalized attacker and learns that he saw the same thing she did. Fred, deciding that Jasmine must be evil, attempts to assassinate her, but Angel blocks the shot. Fred is forced to go on the run from everyone else in the world.

THE MAGIC BULLET (F)-- Fred's still on the run from everyone, including all of her best friends. Jasmine uses her mental powers to fill everyone on Earth with the image of Fred, so that she will have no place to hide. By luck Fred stumbles into the underground lair of a diminutive demon, who serves to give Fred an update on what Jasmine is doing to the demon world to give her slaves someone to scapegoat. Then the demon attacks Fred, who kills him. Fred figures out a way to spread her apostacy to others, so she arranges a situation where she shoots through Jasmine's body and into the form of Angel. This strategy infuses Angel with Jasmine's blood, and he's freed from her mental spell. Fred and Angel escape but now must devise some way to free the other heroes. Meanwhile, Jasmine reveals that she restores herself by consuming mortals, apparently converting them to pure energy for her sustenance. Angel and Fred sneak into the hotel and remove blood from the sleeping Cordelia, which they use to free Lorne, Wesley and Gunn. However, it has no effect on Connor, because he's always seen his "daughter" as she is, and he calls down the faithful on the heroes' heads.

SACRIFICE (F)-- Jasmine isn't too closely modeled on "the beast from the sea" of Revelations, and though she does influence a world into becoming her acolytes, she seems to sincerely believe that she's bringing the mortal world true peace, as against the normal chaos. The heroes hide from their pursuers in the sewers, where they discover a small band of teenagers who took shelter there during the sun's darkening. None of them have ever seen or heard Jasmine, so they're free of her control. Wesley is taken prisoner by a demon called "The Zealot," who reveals that his kind worshipped Jasmine before the birth of humans. This demon serves only to reveal to Wesley Jasmine's only weakness-- and the heroes need this intel, for Jasmine's agents access the sewers, thus spreading her influence to the teens. The heroes can't get away, except that Wesley can open a gateway to the zealots' world, though only Angel can survive that dimension.

PEACE OUT (F)-- And at last, it's time for the big final fight with the Big Bad. While the rest of the team is imprisoned at the hotel, Angel seeks Jasmine's true name at a Zealot Temple-- which naturally means he has to throw down with various protectors. Jasmine prepares for a worldwide TV conference that will bring the entire mortal world under her sway. However, during the conference, Angel portals his way back into the hotel, accompanied by a Zealot whom Angel forces to reveal Jasmine's secret name. Instantly the whole world sees her corrupt appearance, so she ceases to have power over anyone. Angel pursues Jasmine, intent on finishing the matter. Jasmine considers herself almost Christ-like, since she sacrificed her own immortal existence in order to redeem humanity-- but now she wants to use the rest of her energy to annihilate the Earth. Angel gets beat down by Jasmine, but she's undone by Connor, who unexpectedly attacks and kills her. But Connor didn't turn on his "daughter" in defense of Angel, but because he's gone somewhat crazed by the threat Jasmine posed to still-sleeping Cordelia. While the good guys compare notes at the office, Undead Lilah appears and congratulates them on ending world peace.

HOME (G)-- This concluding episode presents the new paradigm that would rule the heroes for Season Five. Because the world has returned to chaos, Lilah tells the heroes that Wolfram and Hart's senior partners have chosen to cease operations in Los Angeles, thus putting its maintenance squarely in the hands of Angel Investigations. Lilah offers the good guys an extended Faustian Bargain, giving them the power to fight evil with the resources of W&H. After years of having striven with their only paltry powers, all five are tempted by the firm's boundless riches. Angel seems the least impressed, but Lilah finds his weakness, revealing that the maddened Connor has taken hostages at a local store and threatens to kill them. Angel runs to prevent Connor's final corruption, though in actuality this is Angel's final act as a father. In a reverse of the Christian myth, Father sacrifices his life-- or a part of it-- for the Son's welfare. W&H somehow rewrites reality so that Connor never experienced any of his terrible burdens but grew up as a normal kid with a normal family. Only Angel remembers, for the rewrite erases everyone else's memories of the youth. (Presumably this would also be true of Cordelia, but she remains in her torpor and does not emerge until one episode in Season Five.) And so HOME ends on an intriguing question: can the righteous really use the weapons of the unrighteous without becoming contaminated?