Tuesday 29 April 2014

Angel, "The Ring" Review (1x16)

Brief Synopsis: “A routine missing person investigation leads Angel to an underground fight club involving captured vampires and demons that need to win 21 fights to be set free. When Angel is captured by the club and forced to fight, can he survive long enough to find a way to free himself and the other captives?”


"The Prodigal" (1x15) quick link here                                                                                                                                       "Eternity" (1x17) quick link here



Three quick notes before we get started...

1) This review will almost definitely contain spoilers for episodes after this one.
2) If you enjoy my reviews, please subscribe to the blog! Over on the right-hand side there's a little box that says "Follow Shangel's Reviews by Email!". If you put your Email address in there and click "Submit", then confirm your subscription, you will get each review sent straight to your inbox! No junk mail, no bullshit, just my reviews.
3) If you're going to be using Amazon (UK/USA) or eBay (pretty much anywhere) soon, please do so through my blog. It'll take you just a couple of extra mouse clicks, but they will pay me a small percentage of the money you spend, helping me find more time to write these reviews. Most importantly, it costs you nothing at all extra. Details of how to do this are located here (it'll take less than a minute to read!). Thank you very, very much!

With that being said, let’s get started, shall we?



“The Ring”, AKA demon fight club, is a truly terrific standalone episode that is forgotten about far too often by the fandom. While it doesn’t contain the emotional weight that an episode like “Five By Five” possesses, nor is it as memorable as “I Will Remember You” or “Hero”, it does tell a great story and have an odd charm to it. It takes some of the earlier episodes of the season, like “City Of”, “Lonely Hearts”, and “I Fall To Pieces”, and it flips them on their head. Now, Angel is the damsel in distress, so to speak. Angel falls into a trap and Wesley and Cordelia are without his leadership for the first time. Are they capable of helping the helpless without him? Instead of bickering (which I adore), can they function as a team and solve the case? In addition to addressing those questions, “The Ring” also reinforces the point that on “Angel” things are always shrouded in an area of grey. The villains of the episode, the McNamara brothers, are human. The soulless vampires and demons are the oppressed, enslaved victims. Not only is this an interesting change of pace, but it raises a moral dilemma for Angel Investigations at the end of the episode. In rescuing Angel and freeing the captives, what they’ve done is release a group of vampires and demons back into the city. Even though the McNamara brothers were exploiting and kidnapping these supernatural creatures for monetary gain, were they doing Los Angeles a favour by taking these monsters off the streets? Was Angel right to let them go? Ultimately, I think it comes down to two points. 1) Either way, the McNamara brothers were more evil than the supernatural creatures. Even after the vampires and demons are set free, I doubt they’ll cause as much damage as the now dead McNamara brothers were causing beforehand. 2) Not all of the enslaved appeared to be evil. Take Mellish for example, he seemed rather harmless. The only way this question could have been answered was by bringing one of the released vampires or demons back for an episode at a later date. That would have been great as Angel Investigations were the ones who set them free in the first place! Think of the moral conundrum that would have been on show! Angel doesn’t discriminate because someone is a human, vampire, or demon. For the most part, he treats everyone equally unless he’s given a reason not to. You only have to look at Angel’s reaction after he accidentally killed Baker in this episode. He just stared at the blood on his hands and regressed into a depressive slump.

The episode opens with Cordelia searching on the “demons, demons, demons” database. THERE’S A DEMON DATABASE?! WHY HAVEN’T THE SCOOBY GANG AND ANGEL INVESTIGATIONS BEEN USING THIS THE WHOLE TIME?! Sure, Giles is too stuffy and too much of a technophobe to use it, as he prefers the smell and feel of a book, but why not use a resource that is literally at your fingertips?!

It wouldn’t be an early “Angel” episode if it didn’t involve childish bickering between Cordelia and Wesley...

Wesley: “For your information, I lead a rich and varied social life.”
Cordelia: “Oh, I know. Every night it’s ‘Jeopardy’ followed by ‘Wheel Of Fortune’ and a cup of hot cocoa. Look out girls, this one can’t be tamed.”
Wesley: “I admit, it may not be as intoxicating as a life erected on high fashion pumps and a push-up bra.”
Cordelia: “Hey, if anyone’s wearing a push-up bra around here it’s...Angel.”

Around halfway through the second season, these two stop bickering and it depresses me greatly. The show gets so dark from season three onwards that a little bitchfest between Cordy and Wesley would have been a nostalgic comfort every now and then. I don’t think there’s a petty argument between these two that I don’t love.

Darin McNamara arrives at Angel Investigations with a severed finger in a box...how charming. He claims that his brother is in a large amount of gambling debt and has been kidnapped by something that’s not human. The next five minutes are your standard “Angel” episode, with Angel playing detective and trying to track down Jack McNamara. Incidentally, Scott William Winters (Jack McNamara) also plays a character called ‘Detective McNamara’ in “Dexter”. Perhaps he secretly survives this episode and goes on to become a police detective at Miami Metro. Angel’s detective work takes an unexpected turn when he sees Jack freely walking around the demon fight club area. He’s quickly tasered and captured by Darin and Jack...sneaky, sneaky.



Angel is thrown into a new environment. He’s a slave. He has a wrist cuff attached to him with the Roman numerals for “21” (XXI). It’s later revealed that in order to be set free from their prison, they must compete in and win 21 fights. We never see anyone achieve 21 kills, so we don’t know as to whether or not the McNamara brothers would actually release them (as opposed to taking them out back and killing them), but it’s a good incentive to encourage the slaves to fight hard for the audience. Angel wakes up next to his rather ugly cellmate and we discover that Angel speaks a lot of languages. In that scene alone he speaks English, Spanish, Belarusian, and Italian. Clearly someone paid attention in languages class at school.

It’s very in character for Angel to try and escape his bonds and try to free everyone else alongside him. First and foremost, Angel is a survivor...ugh. I just typed ‘survivor’ and now I have Destiny’s Child stuck in my head. Curse you, brain! It’s going to be there all day! Angel is a champion and he helps the helpless, regardless of whether or not they’re human. Do you think Buffy would have saved the other vampires and demons that were in prison with her? I don’t think she would have. Angel is a supernatural being. He understands vampires and demons more than Buffy ever will. He knows that not all demons are ‘evil’. These particular ones have been torn away from their homes, torn away from their lives, and are being forced to fight in order to recapture their freedom. Regardless as to whether or not they have souls, they’re victims. Therefore, Angel will try to help them because that’s who he is. However, Angel is receiving resistance from his fellow captives. Simply, the other captives’ primary concern is staying alive, not escaping. They’re scared. Some of these creatures, like Trepkos, must have been in there a long time in order to rack up 19 kills. Trepkos feels like he doesn’t need to try to escape because he’s so close to being freed anyway. Angel’s new to the system, he isn’t scared of the McNamara brothers yet, not has he become jaded yet. He has only recently lost his freedom so it’s perfectly natural that his first instinct is to try and get it back. It’s a unique way of looking at how an oppressive system works for those that are being oppressed. Often they’re too scared to rise up against those who have enslaved them because they’re scared of being tortured, maimed, or killed. Let’s not forget, Darin kills his brother rather than free Angel. It’s sending a powerful message to the other creatures wearing wrist cuffs – you will never leave this place without achieving 21 kills. I will kill my brother before I let even one of you leave. It was a shocking moment that I wasn’t expecting at all, but it worked terrifically. Angel’s heroic act of bravery was nullified due to the fact that he didn’t expect Darin to allow his brother to die...let alone kill him!

The interesting attitudes of Mellish, Trepkos, Baker, and Cribb adds another dimension. Mellish (played by Marc Rose, who also starred in “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” season four’s “Fear Itself” as Josh) appreciates Angel’s desire to see everyone free so he decides to help Angel. Not help Angel escape, of course, as he’s afraid of doing anything to rock the boat. Instead, he tries to adjust Angel’s attitude to one that will fight to survive rather than fight to escape. Mellish seemed like the nicest (and smallest) of the bunch, so of course he was quickly annihilated in a fight against Trepkos. We couldn’t have a nice character surviving in an environment like that, could we? No, no, no.

While all of this is unfolding, Cordelia and Wesley are frantically trying to find out where Angel is. In doing so, Wesley receives his first genuinely badass moment of either “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” or “Angel”. He shoots a crossbow bolt into Ernie’s hand, removes his gun, and raises it towards Ernie’s three mobster friends before they can even react to what has just happened. Epicness! Good on Wes, he’s learning. This is the same man that less than a year ago was knocked out by a clothesline during the “Graduation Day” brawl and remained incapacitated for the remainder of the fight. The man that asked for morphine after waking up from that fight. The man that shrieked as Cordelia touched his shoulder in “Doppelgangland”. Let’s also not forget that just two episodes ago Wesley was questioning how valuable he was to Angel Investigations. In Angel’s absence, Wesley is forced to take on a leadership role for the first time ever and he realises that he excels at it. It’s no wonder he becomes the head of Angel Investigations in the next season. It’s not just Wesley that excels in this episode, Cordelia shines too! She’s convincing enough at pretending she’s a police officer to get two tickets to the demon fight show, she steals a wrist cuff without anybody noticing, and she’s the person who figures out how to open the wrist cuff. It turns out that Cordy’s privileged upbringing was useful for a few things. She discovers that horse hair is the key to the wrist cuff because she has a lock of it around her wrist belonging to the horse she used to own before her daddy lost all his money. What a convenient piece of continuity.

Cordelia and Wesley working as a team without Angel’s leadership for the first time is another of my favourite things about “The Ring”. It’s interesting that Angel, who arrived in Los Angeles as a broody loner that wanted to distance himself from all humans, is saved by his two human friends. Much like Cordelia in “Expecting”, Angel knows once and for all that he has two people in his life that he can rely on and can trust with anything. Without Angel’s presence, Cordelia and Wesley prove that they’re not only useful to Angel Investigations, but they’re needed. Cordelia validates herself and Wesley has finally found a place in the world where he belongs (after typing that sentence, my mind flashed forward to season three of the show and my heart just broke into a million pieces). Also, I will never, ever get tired of watching Wesley being blasted off of his chair while trying to decipher the wrist cuff. I swear, this is the second thing that left me giggling like a little girl today. Here's the first...




DON'T MAKE ME LOOK AT IT ANYMORE, I HAVE BELLY PAINS!


Angel’s attempt to escape lands him in front of Wolfram & Hart’s Lilah Morgan. Lilah freed Angel from the fight club under the proviso that he forgets that it exists. Obviously, Wolfram & Hart are aware that Angel is scheduled to play a major role in the apocalypse so they don’t want him dead, they want him dark. Lilah is arguably my favourite villain on “Angel”. She’s complex, interesting, and she’s evil because she likes it. There’s no hidden agenda, no dark past, she just loves living the high life and is willing to do anything for power. Yes, her mother has what I’m assuming is dementia and doesn’t recognise Lilah anymore, but I don’t feel that’s why Lilah is working for Wolfram & Hart. The resources and opportunities for power and notoriety are. Look at some of the things Lilah does over the years for no other reason than to mess with Angel! Plus, she survives for three whole seasons, which is incredibly rare for a villain in a television show. The scene in “The Ring” is an interesting introduction for Lilah because of the sexual undertones in the conversation. I wonder if at this point the show was planning on Lilah trying to sleep with Angel and remove his soul at some point down the line.

Angel, of course, rejects Lilah’s offer and decides to return to the fight club. How noble...and stupid. Why does Lilah allow him to return if there’s a chance he might die? Why bring him out to save him if you’re just going to let him return? Are they testing Angel? Seeing what type of ‘man’ he is? Seeing if he’s willing to suffer hardships to try and help other vampires and demons? The reason is never revealed, but it’s certainly an interesting talking point.

In returning, Angel has to fight Trepkos in Trepkos’ 21st fight. The fight scene is phenomenal and easily in the top five or six that “Angel” produces in 110 episodes. It’s expertly choreographed, superbly directed, and has a high level of intensity and emotion. I’ve also got to mention how much the vampire and demon makeup has improved since the first couple of seasons of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. Trepkos looks completely realistic, as do most demons and vampires by this point outside of the humongous CGI ones. Angel is skewered through the ribcage by a wooden spike. Ouch. There’s a lot of symmetry between “Angel” season one and “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” season four in relation to skewering, isn’t there? Were the writers craving shish kebabs at the time or something?

Cordy and Wesley arrive, the key is used to release the hostages from their wrist cuffs (after Cribb stole it from Wesley), and Darin is killed by his own technology. Poetic justice at its finest. I know he was a human, but he was an asshole and deserved to die.

Angel: “You both did great. And I think we did a good thing here tonight.”
Wesley: “Yes, we set the captives free.”
Cordelia: “Well, actually, didn’t we set a bunch of demons free?”
Wesley: “Well, technically, yes.”
*They all look a little depressed as the episode fades to black.*

I like that ending. I like that ending a lot. It’s bittersweet and hilarious.


Quote Of The Episode

Cordelia: “We’re trying to do you a favour, Mr. Winslow.”

Wesley: “Something’s going down tonight, something with the man!”

Mr. Winslow: “A raid?”

Cordelia: “We’re not at liberty to say.”

Mr. Winslow: “But, we could just go on home?”

Cordelia: “I think that would be a wise thing to do, sir...you almost blew it!”

Wesley: “What? I saved us!”

Cordelia: “Ugh, ‘something’s going down with the man’...you idiot.”


I defy anyone to watch Wesley say “something’s going down tonight, something with the man!”, watch his facial expression, and not laugh. It’s one of the funniest faces he ever pulls and he pulls a lot of funny faces over the years.


FINAL SCORE: 7.5/10


What are your thoughts on "The Ring"? Did you enjoy this episode? Dislike it? Let me know all your thoughts in the comments section below!

If you've enjoyed this review, please use the conveniently placed buttons just below to share it on Blogger, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, or email it to a friend! It is greatly appreciated!

2 comments:

  1. Haha I was hoping you would pick that for your quote of the episode, so bloody funny “Something’s going down tonight, something with the man!” l love Wes and Cordy in the earlier season's too.
    Great review Shangel :) always look forward to reading them. Christina

    ReplyDelete
  2. I adore this episode! I love Lilah - and her introduction really shows of her character.
    I completely agree about the demon make-up. I think the make up of the demons in this episode are some of the best in the Buffy/Angel-verse.
    The fights are fantastic.
    Cody-Wesley bickering is so funny and again the scenes with Alexis trying not to get electrocuted and failing are pant-wettingly funny

    ReplyDelete