Angel (Season 2)

Angel's second season feels like a massive improvement on the first that takes a more serialized turn, fleshing out the show's main villain, while also exploring its lead in some interesting new ways, despite a generally disjointed structure.

Season 2 of Angel is far more serialized than the first, exploring several storylines throughout the season. Most of the season focuses around Wolfram & Hart, which was initially a background villain in Season 1, but as of its finale, became a much stronger antagonistic force. The first ten episodes form a storyline about Angel discovering that Darla, a vampire from Season 1 of Buffy, has been brought back to life by Wolfram & Hart. It's probably the strongest stretch of the season, focusing on Angel's past as a soulless vampire and his relationship with Darla, balancing fun standalone stories and a compelling overarching plotline. It introduces Lorne, an incredibly likable side character with some strong comic relief, and culminates in a massive episode where Darla is sired by Drusilla and goes on a rampage, so Angel locks them in a room with the lawyers from Wolfram & Hart and fires all of his friends out of fear that he's falling into darkness. 

The next six episodes deal with the fallout, as Angel investigates on his own only to realize that using evil to combat evil isn't the best idea. It's not as strong of a storyline compared to that first arc, with some weak standalone episodes and Darla pretty much disappearing from the season, but it still has its general high points, some great development for Lorne, and some of the most thought-provoking themes in the show. However, the last few episodes is where my major gripes with Season 2 come in, that being its structure. The first arc is fine enough, albeit with a bit too many episodes entirely focused on flashback sequences, but by the time Angel rejoins with his team, there are six episodes left in the season. And after two decent episodes which tie up loose ends, we get a four-episode-long arc about the team visiting Lorne's home planet, Pylea. The Pylea arc is a decent stretch of episodes that introduces some important characters, particularly Fred, and fleshes out the cast, but coming after an entire, really dark, season focused on Wolfram & Hart, this arc just feels tonally disjointed. Angel's entire second season just felt segmented and without a main goal, which causes it to feel less than the sum of its really great parts.

There are a lot of great episodes in Season 2 however, pretty much scattered throughout the whole season:

Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been: I'm split on this episode. As a part of the season, this is just the second episode and we already get an entire flashback, and one that doesn't even impact the plot, at that. However, on its own merits, this is one of the best episodes of the whole show, telling an affecting and thought-provoking standalone story about Angel's past and sets up many of the themes that would be explored for the first two-thirds of the season.

Guise Will Be Guise: While Wesley was fairly annoying in his earlier appearances, Guise Will Be Guise focuses pretty much entirely on him and introduces his potential to be a really badass demon fighter. It's kind of like "The Zeppo" from Buffy, but this time, the development really starts to stick for the rest of the series. Coming here after watching the second half of Angel shows how much of the building blocks for Wesley's development was laid here.

The Trial: This was a very tense episode as Angel has to partake in three difficult trials to win Darla a second chance at life. I'm a big fan of these "three trials storylines", I know Indiana Jones does it a lot, and Angel's version of it is fun as well. I'm also a big fan of the ending cliffhanger where Drusilla appears and sires Darla.

Reunion: Easily Angel's best episode thus far, and probably the best episode it will have for the next season-or-so. It has pretty much everything, a crazy car chase, some shocking twists, and an absolutely mind-blowing ending that left me wondering if Angel had just killed off all of Wolfram & Hart right there and then.

Reprise/Epiphany: This two-parter of sorts is Angel at its most introspective, pretty much revolving around exploring Angel's motivations for trying to save humanity. The most memorable and impactful scene is Angel being taken on an elevator to hell only for the elevator to go pretty much nowhere (implying Earth is hell), but there's also his epiphany and subsequent reunion with the team, Kate's depressing sendoff, and the massive Reprise cliffhanger that leaves you wondering if Angel became Angelus again (thankfully, he didn't).

Pylea Arc: I already mentioned by issues with this storyline, but there are things I like about it. Cordelia and Wesley get some amazing character development after not getting much focus this season, Fred is one of my favorite characters and finally debuts here (even if her appearance isn't indicative of her role for the rest of the show), and I love that cliffhanger where Willow shows up to tell Angel that Buffy died. 

Overall, Angel is a definitive improvement over the first with its darker tone and serialized storyline, and at its best, it's some of the best Angel in the whole series. However, it suffers from a disjointed structure and a final arc that doesn't fit very well with the rest of the season.

4/5 Stars