Angel: Season 2 - Fallen Angel

This year, Angel really took off; like Season 1, the first few episodes were still episodic (I need a different word, because the phrase "episodic episode" sounds really stupid to me), but as the season goes on, the first real story arcs develop, one of which is one of the most incredible of the series. The season premiere "Judgment" takes place a few months after Angel, Wes, and Cordelia learned of the Shanshu Prophecy. The final two twists of Season 1 gave hope to Angel and surprise to the viewers. The Shanshu Prophecy was a scroll taken from the vaults of Wolfram and Hart which foretell that a vampire with a soul will become human again after it has redeemed itself. For the past few months, the Angel Investigations team has been keeping tabs of the good they do in order to see how much closer Angel is to regaining his humanity. The other twist saw the results of Wolfram and Hart's bizarre ritual: Darla, Angel's sire, has been brought back.

The last time we saw Darla in the present day, she was in Sunnydale working with the Master. When Darla tried to kill Buffy, Angel staked her. We never really saw much of her again on Buffy, except for a brief scene showing her bite Angel. Last year on Angel, we saw some more flashbacks showing Darla and Angelus' time in Europe, and these scenes showed us that Darla was much more deadly and cunning than her scenes in Sunnydale let on.

However, the spell W&H used brought her back as a human. The scenes at Wolfram and Hart during the previous season, that didn't involve our heroes showed us that Angel, or more specifically, Angelus, plays a significant role in the Senior Partners' apocalyptic plans. Since the last time Angel lost his soul involved him having sex, who better than the woman he spent half of his long life with to get him back into bed?

As Darla regains strength, Angel, Wes, Cordelia, and Gunn, a homeless vampire hunter introduced at the end of Season 1, continue helping the helpless through their detective agency. There are a few episodes at the beginning of the season that aren't quite as good as what will come, but there are a few stand-out stand-alones, most notably "Guise Will Be Guise", which follows Wesley impersonating Angel while he serves as a bodyguard to young woman (and also served as evidence that Wes may be shaping up to be more than just a geek). We are also are introduced to a demon known only as The Host for most of the season. His name is eventually revealed to be Lorne (short for Krevlornswath of the Dethwok Clan), and although he is a demon, he is one of the first in the Buffyverse to be completely benevolent. There were hints of good demons during Season 1 of Angel, but Lorne is the first completely non-violent demon. One of the central themes of Angel is the lack of black and white morality, and the importance of finding the shades of gray in life. That includes demons; while many of them are in fact evil and murderous, there are some that are no more evil than the average human.

Lorne owns a karaoke club that caters to both humans and demons, which is a safe haven due to a spell that prevents violence from occurring in the club. One of Lorne's abilities is that he can see a person's destiny when they sing, since a person bares their soul when they sing (a similar idea is used in the incredible Buffy musical).

Once the Angel Investigations team becomes aware of Darla's resurrection, Angel makes it his mission to save Darla, believing that by forgiving the person that made him a demon will earn him big points with the Powers That Be, and will help him earn the Shanshu faster. Unfortunately, the lawyers at Wolfram and Hart were banking on him wanting to save her. The twist is that, the first time Darla was human, she was dying of syphilis. Now that she is human again, the disease is back, and is so far advanced (there was no penicillin in the 17th century) that her death is imminent. Lindsay McDonald and the other lawyers believe that Angel will try to "save" Darla by turning her back into a vampire, which would unleash one of the deadliest vampires in history back in to modern day Los Angeles. Of course, Angel does not take this path, since it would only preserve her body, but doom her soul.

Of course, W&H planned for this contingency, and the ending of the episode, "The Trial", kicks off one of the greatest story arcs of the series. Known as the "Beige Angel" arc (personally, I'm not the biggest fan of that name, but it is what the creators use), which really delves into the whole "shades of gray" aspect. As I said in my previous post, Drusilla's role here in Los Angeles is much more exciting that her one-episode tale in Sunnydale. When Angel refuses to turn Darla, W&H send Dru in to do the job. This causes Angel to snap, and after he locks a room full of lawyers in a cellar with Dru and the newly revamped (bad pun) Darla, he proceeds to fire Wes, Cordelia, and Gunn, and begins taking a more aggressive approach to fighting in the name of good. Believing that since the bad guys don't play the rules, he begins to question why he should.

Sadly, the "Beige Angel" storyline only lasts a few episodes, and it is certainly at its best in the episodes that highlight his new methods. There are a few episodes that could have occurred anywhere else in the season, but their placement her did reflect Angel's new perspective. One episode, "The Thin Dead Line" carried a very interesting moral, or lack thereof, though. The story featured zombified police officers, who were all killed in the line of duty. Raised by their captain, they are turning their beats into crime-free zones at the expense of personal freedoms and rights. Throughout the episode, we sympathize with the people who are being terrorized by the undead cops, even though a few of them make it clear that they would be out terrorizing the populace if they didn't have to worry about being killed by the aggressive cops. However, when Angel puts a brutal stop to the zombies, Det. Lockley, his police contact, reports that the precincts the zombies operated went from having some of the highest crime rates in LA to having the lowest. The point is that each side has an argument. It was wrong (and hypcritical) of the police captain to put people's lives in danger in the name of public safety. But there were people on the streets who may have needed the to be scared off the streets. However, in this case, the zombies were too drastic a measure, and the bad they did definitely outdid the good.

The Beige Angel story ended with Angel becoming so fed up with his inability to make a permanent change for good, that in his despair, he sleeps with Darla. In a scene very reminiscent of when he lost his soul after having sex with Buffy, Angel ran outside screaming into a rainstorm. However, since he had sex in a moment of despair, his soul remained in tact, and it led to an epiphany, and one of the greatest lines on the show. Realizing that if nothing matters in the grand scheme of things, if there is no bigger picture, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.

Another big development this year was the move to the Hyperion Hotel. The old headquarters was destroyed at the end of the previous season, and they were obviously forced to relocate. Angel takes them to an abandoned hotel where he stayed during the days of McCarthyism. The hotel will serve as Angel HQ for the next three years, and in that time, will be the setting for some insane events.

The end of the season dealt with the backstory of Lorne. Many people found this storyline to be sort of lame; personally, I didn't mind the Pylea arc, but I would definitely have loved to see what was being planned. A few sources claim that the original ending involved more fallout with Darla, and possibly even Spike, but due to the unavailability of the actors, the Pylean story was created. Most likely, if Darla had shown up again, it would have been an earlier reveal of the twist ending of the Season 3 premiere, which would have served as a tantalizing way to keep viewers waiting for the upcoming year. But with Pylea, I think every fan can agree that if nothing else, the introduction of Fred in this storyline was worth it.

Up next: Evil nerds, drug parallels, and life sucks in Sunnydale...