"I want to fight the dragon."

I am pretty swamped at work, so I brought my English Beat CD to play while I toil away the hours. Fun stuff that takes me back to days when I was funkier (and skinnier).

My wife and I watched the Angel series finale Wednesday night. I am sorry to see it go. It was one of the few TV shows I enjoyed. Many of Mutant Enemy's excellent writers are now off to other shows (such as Alias and Gilmore Girls), so we will be able to catch bits and pieces of that ol' black magic, but I think it will be a while before we see the likes of it again.

I think the finale made the best of a bad situation but the result was not very satisfying. Wesley's death is the best example of the weaknesses in this past season. I should mention that, although Wesley was one of my favorite characters (second only to Cordelia), I have no problem with the fact that the show's creators killed him off. I have a problem with the manner of his death.

First: he died confronting a villain I cared very little about. The show introduced the evil wizard only two weeks ago. We do not see him being particularly evil, nothing he does hits close to home. We acknowledge that he is evil because we are told that he is evil. I suspect this is because the show's creators didn't know they needed him until the last minute, when the decision to cancel the series became final. They wanted some Big Bads for the heroes to vanquish and shoehorned the wizard into the series to fit the bill. Unfortunately, the result was not very convincing. Wesley deserved a better villain than that.

This problem is a great example of a larger problem with this last season. The show's creators were good about designing an over-all plot for each season. The formulae was simple but appropriate for the genre: a major villain makes trouble and must be defeated by the heroes. The villains were often very effective ones and their schemes hit close to home and inflicted major damage. The villains also exemplified the major obstacle to realizing the theme of the season ("power corrupts" for example). The best examples of the use of the formulae can be found in the early seasons of Buffy: Adam, the Mayor, Angel himself. As the heroes struggled against the villain, they learned more about themselves and became stronger themselves.

There wasn't much of that this season. One presumes that the law firm was meant to be the "Big Bad" but its threat was never properly defined, its actions too diffused to hit close to home. I think the show's creators realized this when they introduced the "Circle of the Black Thorn" in the last few episodes of the show and it various powerful and evil members. But it was too little, too late to give the show its needed focus.

Second: Wesley is a sorcerer but I have never seen him use the magic fireballs he throws around in his death scene. His magic came from books, ritual and fetishes. He was not adverse to using knives, swords or guns. He was also supposed to be smart: if he had the ability to throw fire, he'd have done so much earlier. And seeing that they had little effect on his opponent, the Wesley from previous seasons would have pulled out a gun and shot the wizard down. Or use that cool tool he used to keep hidden up his sleeve.

I will say that I had no problem with his last request to see Fred again. He was always a fool for love and spending the last seconds of his life indulging in the lie that his last true love was still alive and cared for him was a decision entirely in character for him. That moment was the only part of his death scene that was consistent with the excellent character development that hallmarks Mr. Whedon's series. I wish there had been more of that this season.

Despite my problems with this past season, I will miss the series. I will miss the effective use of plot, theme and characterization. When it was good, it was very good. And there precious little of that on television.