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Angel - Season Two

“The writing really got strong in Season Two. I felt we had more great shows, and Angel’s journey became very interesting.” David Greenwalt

The second season of Angel has received a lot of praise but a fair few brickbats also. It has been accused of being unbalanced, of starting a storyline and not finishing it, of unbecoming frivolity and silliness. Why, say its critics, is the Darla/Drusilla arc not resolved properly? Why is Angel’s journey into darkness reversed midway through the season rather than at the end? Why oh why oh why did they produce the Pylea episodes?

It seems that at the start of the year Angel’s audience had very clear expectations. They thought the new year would have one complete and largely self-contained arc, concerning Darla, and that it would all be resolved at the end. In effect they believed they would be getting a season of Buffy modelled on the standard Sunnydale season pattern but much darker in tone, and for the first half of the year that was, it seemed, what they were getting. And they were well pleased.

However, Dru then disappeared, and although Darla hung around for a while she eventually skipped town too. There was no big showdown fight, no climactic staking, no conclusive apocalyptic battle for Angel’s soul played out in a final, two-part epic designed to leave a clean slate for the next year. There were, instead, a whole tangle of loose ends and a daft romp in Xena land. And some fans were mighty miffed. But should they have been?

While Angel is similar to Buffy in many ways, it is a far more organic show than its progenitor, more willing to bleed storylines and themes across multiple seasons rather than focusing on one overriding Big Bad each year. Unlike Buffy, two of its first three seasons end on cliff-hangers, and season two kind of did, although it was really only borrowing Buffy’s inaugural cliffhanging conclusion. The Darla storyline does, in the end, receive a stunning and fitting conclusion in Season Three, which wraps up both the straight narrative of the character and the emotional and thematic issues raised at the start of Season Two. But while the plots spill over from year to year the arcs of the characters throughout Season Two are far more coherent and focussed than they might at first glance appear, and the season forms a clear and coherent chapter in their lives that is definitely of a piece.

For example, compare the bumbling Wesley we find at the start of the season with the serious, hard-nosed military leader he becomes at the end. In ‘Guise Will Be Guise’ he masquerades as Angel and after a few sticky mishaps he makes a surprisingly good fist of it. He rises to the occasion and finds within himself a strength and determination he didn’t really believe he had. Plus he gets the girl, for a change. This incident gives Wesley’s confidence a huge boost such that when Angel goes off the deep end and fires everyone Wesley is driven by his own sense of duty, honour and purpose to assume Angel’s mantle as the leader of the gang, accepting responsibility for his co-workers and proving himself willing to make difficult decisions.

Through this baptism of fire, his brief but important relationship with Virginia, the shooting which leaves him in a wheelchair and earns him Gunn’s undying respect and friendship, the pratfalling comedy “rogue demon hunter” is replaced by a mature, believable, likeable character we can really relate to. The suits are replaced by sweaters and slacks, the slapstick by some competent ultraviolence, and the sloppy kisser of Buffy’s third season by a guy who can not only earn but keep, for a little while at least, the affections of an independent minded, attractive girlfriend. The Pylea episodes, and the difficult choices he has to make in them, showcase the new Wesley, demonstrating this new maturity to his friends and the audience at home. When he sends men to their deaths knowing full well it is the only way to save the most lives, this stage of his evolution is complete. It’s a fitting and necessary conclusion to a year’s worth of growth.

Cordelia and Gunn do not receive nearly as much attention this year. Instead Darla, Lila and Lindsey take the airtime that would normally have been devoted to the heroes. However, it seems right in the more morally ambiguous, adult world of Angel, that the villains, who after all will carry over into subsequent seasons unlike the majority of those on Buffy, get slightly more examination and evolution than those on its sister show. It adds a lot to the texture of the show, but this year two of the heroes do suffer slightly as a result. No matter, this will be redressed next season.

Another way in which Angel differs from Buffy is that it has one overarcing theme – addiction and redemption – rather than tackling a new main theme with each season. Angel’s character arc is tightly tied to the theme of redemption as expressed by saving and needing to be saved. He is finally given a chance to save Darla, to redeem her vampiric actions and help her come to terms with her renewed humanity. The scene at the end of ‘The Trial’ where she finally accepts her coming death, Angel accepts his powerlessness, and we realise that he has, after all, managed to save her, is poignant and true.

The subsequent entrance of Drusilla and the shattering destruction of their dream, the damning of Darla, and Angel’s anguished attempts to stake her before sunrise and thus save her in the only way he knows how, is heartbreaking. Unable to save the person he most wants to save, he starts to lose his grip, fires his team, and gets in touch with a dark side miles away from Angelus. It is Liam’s vengeance that emerges, it’s the demons carried by that poor, lost Irish lad that come to the fore when he sets fire to the mother/lover he so nearly helped redeem and then walks away to face his remorse.

Ironic then, that it is Darla who eventually saves Angel and frees him so that he can go and save Kate, whose own despair at her helplessness mirrors Angel’s and whose moment of perfect despair coincides exactly with his own. That he then goes on to save Cordy, Gunn and Wesley in the same night, is important too. His realisation, as expressed to Kate after the dust has settled, that there is no big finish, no master plan, no final climactic battle between good and evil, is key to both the character and the show. Because if this is the realisation that drives the hero it must also be reflected in the show – hence no big finale, no neat season-ending resolutions, merely loose ends and ongoing struggles. Which is as it should be.

“One of the things that keeps the show alive and interesting is that it is different from week to week.” David Greenwalt

Angel’s journey this year is primarily into the dark side of his human demons rather than his literal one. He confronts weaknesses of character and manages to sort himself out in the end. He evolves from the short lived ultra-confidence of ‘Judgement’, to the black-souled warrior of ‘Redefinition’, and then back to the guy who romps around in the Pylean sunlight like a happy puppy. From metaphorical darkness to literal sunlight, Angel’s journey takes him from the peaks of success, to the pit of despair and then allows him to build himself back up again, bolstered by a new understanding both of his mission and of himself. Finally, having dealt with his human demons he finally comes face to face with the full reality of the vampire inside him when it manifests in Pylea. When he has mastered that force his journey is fully complete.

So the Pylea episodes, written off by so many as inconsequential time fillers, are in fact an essential conclusion to the character arcs of both Wesley and Angel, while also providing bags of fun for Cordy, Lorne and Gunn, as well as introducing Fred (and for that last fact alone we should be forever grateful to Pylea). They put a cap on the characters’ evolution throughout the year and also serve to demonstrate that Angel is no monotone show, no endless stream of brooding rooftop shots and endless angst – it can also be deeply, wonderfully, silly. And would you really want it any other way?

Angel’s second season was a coming of age, it saw the show finding its own voice and its own way of constructing narrative that while inspired by Buffy was, nevertheless, quite different. It saw the central character explored in great depth and added a lot of extra players to the support team; it saw the show painting on a larger canvas, with flashbacks and big city storylines that Buffy can’t really do; it saw a new look, a new Wesley and, most importantly of all, a new confidence. It was in its second year that Angel really grew up.

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