Angel S3-20: The Short Review

'A New World'

Written by Jeffrey Bell

Directed by Tim Minear

"You just don't understand how this world works"

"I understand. Sunny was nice, and now she's dead" - Angel and Connor.

First, can I just say that the fight scenes in this episode were stunning? They were easily some of the best of the season, if not some of the best ever. I'm sure some people will complain about excessive use of slo-mo, but I (like Tim Minear, it seems) think it's great. I also like wrist-mounted stake-launchers, so slo-mo wrist-mounted stake-launching is pretty much always going to be a winner with me (inconsistent numbers of stakes fired notwithstanding). More than that, though, the fight scenes were effective because they complemented the story told - especially the opening melee, which told us about Connor's temperament, strength and agility, and feelings towards Angel, as well as Angel's dislocated reaction to Connor, in a nicely economical fashion.

Actually, I liked the feel of the whole episode. After last week's claustrophobic atmosphere, it was refreshing to see the characters get out into the open spaces of LA (even if the sun did come up awfully quickly between the end of 'The Price' and the start of this episode...) and Connor made an effective guide. I particularly liked his rooftop bus ride, although more for the concept than the execution, since some of the green-screen work was shamefully obvious. Sunny's story, meanwhile, didn't come across as too heavy-handed, because it was portrayed so matter-of-factly; not so much "drugs are bad" as "bad things happen".

The standout scene of the episode has to be the initial confrontation between Angel and Connor at Sunny's hideout. It works brilliantly - visually, aurally (thanks to the understated but still gorgeous scoring), and thematically. Here's the rebellious teenager who wants to kill his parents, made literal. Here's the frustrated father who can't understand what his son's life is like, made literal. Sure, there's nothing groundbreaking in the material - but for me, that's part of the reason it works so well. The situation has a wonderful resonance that stretches beyond these characters and this scene. And obviously, it helps that Vincent Kartheiser seems to have an immediate chemistry with David Boreanaz. Teenage Connor could so easily have been terrible - and may still be, in the long run; to all intents and purposes they've already killed him off once this season, and since I can't see them doing it again so soon, to my mind it's looking increasingly likely that he'll be around next year, which is something I have serious reservations about - but somehow right now he's working. It seems to me that the clever thing about Dawn, when she showed up on Buffy was that she was the epitome of the 'token teen' - and then ME cleverly subverted that stereotype. On the other hand, Connor is working for me right now because he's the antithesis of the token teen. He's not there for the demographics, he's the character he needs to be to get the story told - the fact that he keeps ears as trophies attests to that much. And I like it. When, at the episode's close, Angel tells Connor he's not alone, and Connor leaves anyway, it feels right and it feels earned. It seems the writers are definitely going somewhere with this story.

I have to say, however, that despite Holtz' reappearance, I don't have much of an idea as to where that might be. Like I said, I can't see Connor dying again this quickly, so that rules out most of the obvious possibilities. I also didn't see the closure of the fissure to Quor'toth coming. I thought for sure that we were building up to an apocalyptic universe-going-kablooie situation, which it now seems is not the case. Not that that's a bad thing; I quite like that I was caught out, actually, and apocalypses have always been more Buffy's thing, anyway. On the Wesley front, it's to the writer's credit that I don't find the idea of his signing up with W&H entirely implausible; given his current state of mind, it could actually work, and would make a hell of a story for next season. Something else that took me by surprise - for the first time in a long while, I saw the potential for Angelus returning. Oh, I still have problems seeing what metaphor they'd use; but in character terms, it suddenly occurred to me that it makes sense because, as Angel demonstrated when he talked to Connor, he has come to accept that side of himself. I'm not saying he's getting complacent, or that I see it happening this season; but I'm not writing the possibility off any longer.

All in all, 'A New World' is, despite being a little slow at times, another very solid episode, and another step in Jeff Bell's continuing maturation as a writer - although like 'The Price' it doesn't quite have that indefinable something that marks the best episodes out from the pack. In some ways, I find it reminiscent of 'The Shroud Of Rahmon' - both episodes, when you get right down to it, emphasise style over substance; but in both cases, the style is an awful lot of fun, and what substance there is is very nicely handled. And the episode does manage to neatly avoid the curse of the setup episode by having its own plot and its own issues to deal with, so it doesn't fall into the trap that, say, 'Over The Rainbow' did last year. Meanwhile, if anything it's manged to increase my anticipation for the last two episodes. Is it next week yet?