I am enjoying the new season of :Angel: because the writers have maintained a good sense of mystery, and a hint of knowing where they hope to go with this season. At this early stage, there remain plenty of questions: how did Spike's amulet get from the bottom of the Hellmouth into Angel's office? What is the amulet, actually? Was what it did to Spike actually intended for Angel and, if so, why also hand Angel the keys to the Los Angeles branch office? Is there dissent between the Senior Partners as Wesley suggests?
What would really cap things off for me is if the writers go back and link up elements of mystery to the remaining questions of season four. As I've mentioned before, though I felt that Angel season four was the best of the program, its success was a happy accident; the writers used the turmoil behind the scenes to lend season four a frantic energy that ended up revitalizing the show. The audience didn't know what would happen next, and they were only a few steps behind the writers. Now that Joss Whedon is fully focused on :Angel:, there is a hope of a more coherent approach to season-long storymaking.
With the fourth episode of season five, :Angel: has started to make links back to the fourth season. We visit the White Room, which was the heart of this branch of Wolfram and Hart and the connection between the office and the Senior Partners. As you will recall, until the middle part of the fourth season, the White Room was staffed by this creepy little girl. Halfway through season four, when the great stone beast was laying waste to this place, it was revealed that the little girl was part of a five-party organization, a wheel of elemental forces, some representing order and good, and others representing evil and chaos. The little girl represented pure evil. She was pretty close to a panther-like creature that doesn't appear to be evil, but is probably chaos.
Now that Wolfram and Hart has been restored, the panther, NOT the girl, mans the White Room. What does that mean?
It suggests that the focus of this branch of Wolfram and Hart has shifted, away from being a purely evil organization to something uncontrolled or uncontrollable. And what does it mean that Gunn seems to have a strong affinity with the Panther? Only time will tell.
And I'm confident that time will tell. Returning to the White Room raises questions that were first asked in season four, and reminds us of the whole Jasmine arc, and the suggestion that she may have been a rogue "Power that Be", which ties back into Wesley's suggestion that the Senior Partners are themselves split on a controversial question.
Dissention among the Heavens and the Underworld? That's fodder for an interesting story.
We have switched our clocks back an hour for daylight savings time. Can anybody please explain to me why we can't just set the clocks back a half-hour instead so we don't have to do this dance again next spring?
Anyway, Erin and I have spent our anniversary weekend at home, painting. The public areas of the second floor are now completely painted, as well as a nasty, ten-foot-tall wall in an inaccessible portion of the stairwell. Let me just say that painting on a stepladder is scary! The results look really good, however.
I'm not sure why, maybe we were especially masochistic, but we also decided to wash our cat Gus yesterday. Gus is now fluffy, clean and smells nice, and we have our new home improvement task before us: replacing the torn-out portion of our tub-surround.
Take note, anybody who's looking for home renovation tools: wet and scrabbling cats make excellent linoleum removers, though as paint-strippers, they can be a little spotty.