Angel DVD Club #1. 'City of...' Open spoilers for Angel & BTVS.

Cafe Society
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Okay. The time has come!

[thread=366506]Angel DVD discussion.[/thread] This week: “City of…”, the series premiere.

Spoiler ground rules have not been established firmly, but so far I’m proposing…

  • There will be unboxed spoilers about anything in ‘Angel’ or ‘Buffy.’ You have been warned.
  • Please use spoiler boxes if you want to refer to Firefly, Serenity, any other movie or cultural reference that would require them.
  • Please label what your spoilers are about so that readers can decide whether to look in the box

Summary blurb: Angel starts his quest in Los Angeles, meets his first companions, and his first charge; a waitress who’s being harassed by a millionaire sadist vampire.

I’ll add a few thoughts in the next post, and try not to go overboard with my notes.

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I just LOVE the opening of the episode. From Angel’s abortive ‘hard-boiled gumshoe’ voiceover in the very first few seconds, which quickly segued into his fake drunk act at the bar… showing off DB’s comic flair, and foreshadowing such memorable gambits as 'Herb Saunders from Baltimore. You know, come to think of it, when did Angel stop using goofy disguises and silly characters to throw his enemies off track? I can’t think of an example after ‘the Shroud of Rahmohn.’

Doyle! Glenn Quinn in the credits, how I’ve missed him.

List of major canon points first mentioned in this episode: Atoning for past sins. Champions. The mysterious ‘powers that be.’ Painful visions. Wolfram and Hart, the defenders of evil.

So many little moments I loved. “Now I feel underdressed.” Oliver the manager trying to recruit Angel. Tina commenting on the weapons on Angel’s wall. Angel refusing to claim ‘droit de comfortador.’ The segue from Angel saying ‘there’s nobody left I care about’ to Cordelia meditating on her bed with relatively lame affirmations.

Cordelia’s first reunion with Angel in the party. Been a long time since I’ve seen this, I guess. It immediately strikes me that she’s not only pretending that she’s doing well with the acting… she’s pretending she doesn’t care much about it. Which I guess is supposed to be her assuming the ‘LA cool’ vibe. Of course, the “Are you still, um, Grrr!?” line is hilarious, especially with Angel’s deadpan response.

Some relatively big surprises in the second half of the episode, compared with what we viewers might have expected… Angel blundering with Tina and driving her into Russell’s arms to be killed. (Learning experience!) Killing Russell at the end of the episode, where it might arguably have looked like he was going to survive and be ‘the big bad’ of the first season, with Wolfram and Hart’s lackeys behind him.

Best power shots of the episode: When Angel left the bar at the beginning. Coming back into his base-ops with Doyle after Tina died, determined to take Russell on direct. Angel looking down from the rooftop at the end.

Good intro to Lindsay, in Russell’s mansion, kissing some butt.

The bit with Doyle and Angel trading wisecracks as he gets ready to go was full of little laughs. ‘Not counting Vietnam - they never declared it.’ “You’re driving.” The messenger and the message. Cordy had some great lines in Russell’s place too. “Not afraid to emphasize the curtains.” 'I finally get invited to a nice place with no mirrors, and lots of curtains… Hey, you’re a vampire! I’m from Sunnydale, we had our own hellmouth. I think I know a vampire when I’m alone with him, in his fortress-like home…" “You don’t know who he is, do you? Oh, boy, you’re about to get your ass kicked!” And then, the little squeaking sound that Cordelia made when she realized that the fight wasn’t going that well on Angel’s side.

You know… I almost expected a grappling hook gag that wasn’t there. Angel throws the grappling hook up at Russell’s house - it doesn’t catch, or it breaks off on something not nearly strong enough to hold his weight… or it catches on a patrolling security guard.

Just love the boardroom scene at the end all over. The ‘I believe we’ve located him’ gag, Lindsay’s spiel about how Russell has never been accused of a crime. Russell’s ‘the way we do things’ speeches… and Angel’s best comeback line ever!

So, there’s my initial contribution. What does anybody else have to say about ‘City of…’??

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First off: DOYLE!!! Much as I enjoyed the later seasons of “Angel,” Doyle always remained one of my favorite characters, despite his short run.

What really sold me on the series, I think, was the moment when Angel jumps into the wrong car. While we got a little bit of humorous-Angel on “Buffy” (the “Willow’s dead” scene in “Doppelgangland” springs to mind), he was mostly relegated to being the brooding dark mysterious guy, and I wasn’t sure how well that would translate to being the leading man of his own series. The loosening up of Angel’s character in “City Of…” went a long way to assuaging those fears. Plus, it turns out that David Boreanaz has nearly as good comic timing as James Marsters.

Great introduction to Lindsey, one of the best baddies in the history of the Buffyverse. It’s very cool to see him back at the beginning, when he’s just a promising evil lawyerling on his way up… his character arc is nearly as twisty and cool as Wesley’s (but that’s a discussion for another day ;)).

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Loved the ep. but didn’t like Doyle. He just never sold me, as, well, as a person really…or demon for that matter. He was just there.

Loved the jumping into the wrong car bit…made me want to come back for ep 2.

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I loved the bit where Doyle tried to ram the gates with the car. It is such a cliche that gates get knocked open when the hero’s car rams into them that when the ramming happened here, and the gates repulsed the car that the suprise struck me as being very funny.

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“Good gate!”

I’ll third the bit about Angel jumping into the wrong car. That was in the portion of my notes that I cut out, because I didn’t want to ramble on forever and ever. Also - considering how much time Angel wasted, how did he manage to circle around at get in front of Stacy, before he’d left the garage, to do that head-on chicken thing? It was cool, but it didn’t make sense. Maybe I don’t understand LA parking garages. :smiley:

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One thing I liked in City Of, and which I don’t feel was treated enough in the series as a whole, was Angel’s constant temptation. It’s not just that he’s guilty over what “he” had done in the past. Part of his burden is knowing there’s no guarantee he won’t find himself down that road again someday, soul or no.

I haven’t actually watched it recently, but I’ll second the applause for Angel in the comic role. Boreanaz, IMO, is a sold actor with a couple rough spots, but the one thing he does as good as anyone is comedy. There’s much more to come in this vein of course (he he, I made a pun!) – I’m currently watching S4 and much is made, in asides, about Angel’s fascination with a certain voice of the '70’s; this first shows up, I think, early in S2.

Anyways, S1 was up and down in my view and is IMO the least of the five seasons of the show. But there’s a lot of potential running around.

–Cliffy