There's No Place Like Plrtz Glrb
As individual episodes, these were hard to talk about mainly because they pretty much built on what came before. As a 4 episode arc, I actually enjoyed that quite a bit. It was so different from anything I've seen doing this watch through the Buffy-Verse, but it was fun, and this season finale actually tied up a lot of what this season was about. For example, a lot of this season focused on Angel's struggles to balance the Demon and Man. He even said the reason he fired the crew was because he felt like the demon side would have consumed him, mainly because he couldn't redeem Darla, or himself. This was taken literally here where he's in a place where it was either or, either the human side was dominant or the demon side was dominant. When he was able to change back to human during the fight with Groo, it was basically the show taking Angel's entire arc and admitting he's finally able to balance each side. That's good character development, and it's because of that why I think these 4 episodes work, despite them feeling detached from what came before.
As for the rest of this arc, it was fun. We learned a lot about Lorne, to see everyone together at the end (Angel, Cordy, Wesley, Fred, Lorne, and Gunn) actually made me smile, even though I'm a little worried "Team Angel" might suffer from "Team Arrow" or "Team Flash" next season. You keep increasing the cast size and you start to wonder if that's a detriment to the show itself. Anyway, I enjoyed going to Pylea, Cordy decapitating Silas, and Gunn's reciting of history post the American Civil War.
I do say this with one coveat though. There's been a number of times in this thread where you guys have told me I should rewatch episodes of Buffy to get the full arc. Well, in watching this episode and seeing Willow at the end, I was going back to when these episodes originally aired. I don't think I would have liked this episode very much after having just seen "The Gift". I know it's been brought up of "Buffy's Big Four" with Hush, Restless, The Body, and Once More With Feeling. Well, I wish we could make it The Big Five because The Gift is honestly one of the best episodes of anything I have watched in 2019. The plan, that score (I listen to "Sacrifice" quite a bit), Buffy's "Hardest thing in the world" speech, and then it ends with a little bit of hope, and Buffy has achieved her "gift". I'm actually getting teared up a little just thinking about that episode again, that's how insanely good that thing was. It was a literal shock, awe, sadness, and a little bit of hope all rolled into one. I don't think that would have carried over with this Angel episode. In fact, I would tell anyone who was watching Buffy for the first time to watch "The Gift", wait a few days, and then watch the Angel episode. Let you come down from the emotional high that that Buffy episode will take you on.
As for this season, I think the best thing I can say about this season was there was a lot of great character work and there was a lot of variety. Shows like Arrow and Flash get bogged down so much because they have to stretch arcs to the end, yet I look back at Angel season 2 and think a lot of things happened this season. A lot of it was good, some of it was bad (The stretch where Angel is by himself and we didn't see Darla for 3 or 4 episodes really didn't work for me), but a lot of it was great character work and development. Every character got a chance to shine this season, the characters got closer together and I'm excited for what is in store for season 3.
As for Angel, Season 2 favorite 5 episodes:
Darla
Dear Boy
Epiphany
Are You now Or Have You Ever Been
Reunion
Time to further get to know Wilfred now.
