Angel's fourth season is easily the most ambitious one yet, containing one long serial story with apocalypses, godlike figures, cults, subterranean armies, possession, zombie attacks, magic fights, and six episodes worth of Angelus. While this all sounds awesome, it really does not work in the slightest.
Season 4 starts off on a strong note with a well-written premiere that addresses the many cliffhangers of the Season 3 finale, which had Angel trapped under the ocean and Cordelia ascend to a higher plane. The first few episodes of the season weren't even that awful, a solid balance of plot progression and creative standalones. Wesley's darker characterization continues from Season 3 and it's probably one of the best parts of the season. It's the seventh episode where cracks start to show, however, with the season's initial villain named The Beast arriving and starting an apocalypse in Los Angeles. This is cool and all, but then the episode ends with Cordelia having sex with Angel's son Conner (who's even more annoying this season). Given the fact that Cordelia and Angel had feelings for each other back in Season 3, and that Connor is still pretty much a teenager, don't you see why that might be a bit of a problem?
The apocalypse storyline isn't nearly as compelling as it should be, as the depressing tone and overly angsty characters made it a chore to watch, at least until Angelus appears. Eventually, Angel decides to bring out Angelus to defeat The Beast, and this decision revitalizes the season, at least for a bit. The Beast is defeated and Faith and Willow appear for some time to help Angelus return back to normal, which is also pretty fun. Faith is an especially likable character here, as she finally manages to get over her self-hatred and redeem herself. However, throughout this portion of the season, Cordelia has been acting more and more out-of-character, sleeping with Connor, killing Lilah, and even doing magic. Cordelia had been one of my favorite characters, so it was horrible to see her completely lose everything that made her compelling.
Nearing the final third of the season, we learn that Cordelia was possessed the whole time so she could sleep with Connor and give birth to a goddess named Jasmine, and all of the events of Angel led to this sole event. As a plot point, this sucks. I despise these sorts of retcons since it feels like they removed the characters of all their agency throughout the last four seasons (seven if you include Buffy!). But then there's the context of why this plot was conceived to begin with. If you thought Daphne's fat camp in Frasier was a bad way to deal with a pregnant cast member, this was so much worse. But hey, Cordelia's not possessed anymore, so now she'll be back to normal self right? Nope! Cordelia falls into a coma after the possession ends, meaning that all of her that we saw this season was an unlikable and gross possessed version of her. Jasmine wasn't a great villain either, as we ended up getting an entire story arc about her brainwashing all of Los Angeles that felt way too overlong and dull. Thankfully, the last two episodes were a massive improvement, as the final battle with Jasmine was actually really exciting, and the finale pulled off an amazing twist that had Angel & Co working for Wolfram & Hart.
As you can see by this insanely long summary, I am very split on this season. I really like the start and end of Season 4, along with the Faith and Angelus arcs, but everything else is just so bad. What the show did to Cordelia is one of the worst character assassinations I've ever seen in a TV show, the retcon was probably even worse, and my god, poor Charisma Carpenter. The characters spent most of the season being depressed and angsty (especially Connor), which was fine in Season 6 of Buffy because it was about dealing with depression, but here it made the worst parts of the season feel like even more of a slog. As much as I like about this season, I can't help but look at it with spite. I love the Buffyverse, but Angel's fourth season was a massive misstep and easily the worst thing both shows ever did.
I'm going to do something different for my notable episodes list, as this season has just as many absolutely amazing episodes as it had unforgivably horrible, so I'm going to list them both. Here are the good episodes this season:
Spin The Bottle: One of the few fun episodes in the whole series. Similarly to Tabula Rasa, (though not as good) it wipes everyone's memory, but this time has the cast revert to their high school selves. It's a hilarious and loving tribute to the early seasons of Buffy and how much the cast developed since then, only for the show completely wreck several character arcs starting next episode. Yay.
Soulless: Angelus is a joy to watch in this season, but I think Soulless is his best usage of him. He spends most of this episode in confinement, toying with the other members of the team trying to get information from him. What results is an incredibly compelling psychological thriller that has Angelus pretty much manipulate the rest of the cast in devastating ways.
Salvage: Faith finally returns, having changed a lot from her time in prison, and lends the season some much needed energy. Her prison break is probably her finest action setpiece that doesn't have to do with Buffy, and the episode ends on a stunning note where Angelus actually manages to defeat The Beast, thus ending the apocalypse that has been dragging down the show these past few episodes.
Orpheus: And in case the Angelus arc just wasn't amazing enough, Orpheus has Willow arrive to help them bring Angel back to normal! I'm not a fan of Cordelia's arc this season, but even I can admit her magic battle with Willow is just plain amazing. Meanwhile, Faith and Angelus go on an exploration of Angel's development into a decent person, culminating in an awesome fight between Angel and Angelus, and Faith pretty much completing her redemption arc. This episode's just way too good for this season.
Home: This is one of the most genius moves I've ever seen a show take. Having the leads work for the bad guys? That's so cool! And it leads to one of my favorite seasons of any show ever. It also does a good job at course correcting the disastrous character arcs for Connor and Cordelia, and I thought the reveal that Angel and the team had screwed up the world so much by the end of the season that they got an offer to work at Wolfram & Hart was darkly hilarious.
And here are the awful episodes this season:
Apocalypse, Nowish: This is the episode where the troubles began. I actually really like Wesley joining the team again and the big action scene with The Beast, but that final scene sticks out in the mind as one of the worst scenes in the whole show. Cordelia and Connor sleeping together is gross, and the fact that an apocalypse was playing out in the background just made it even worse somehow.
Inside Out: Easily the worst episode in the whole Buffyverse. The reveal about everything all leading to Jasmine's birth completely invalidates the actually good first three seasons. Apparently this storyline was an overly complicated way of dealing with Charisma Carpenter's real life pregnancy, and wow, that is absolutely not how to address one of your actresses' pregnancies!
Shiny Happy People/The Magic Bullet: The Jasmine arc had a few goofy moments here in there, I think the light-hearted tone was a breath of fresh air, but it was just so overwhelmingly boring. It took three episodes for the whole team to finally break away from Jasmine's control when it should have been one.
The nicest thing I could say about Season 4 of Angel was that it's a mess. I can admire its ambition, and its pretty phenomenal Angelus arc, but so much of the season is occupied by my least favorite storylines in the series, some horrible character assassinations, and a retcon that single-handedly ruins the past three seasons. This isn't the worst season of television I've ever seen, but it was such a miserable viewing experience that I can easily call it one of my least favorites.
2/5 Stars
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