ANGEL
S5x14 –
Smile Time
Review by Terry J. Aman
"The one
with the wee little puppet man," or "So you think you're
having a bad day."
One thing that is so satisfying about this series is the fact that Joss paints
long, long story arcs. There are at least two references to Angel being
nothing more than a puppet over the course of the series. One was a mention of
Angel as being a puppet for the Powers That Be back sometime I think in S4, and
another, more recently, of Spike calling Angel nothing more than a corporate
puppet.
Joss being the "show don't tell" genius that he is, takes this one
step further with "Smile Time."
The episode explores relationships between Angel and Nina, and between Wesley
and Fred. It also focuses a laser on two characters whose powers seem to be
deserting them.
Or three, if you count Spike getting the stuffing beat out of him in an
elevator by a wee little puppet man.
Gunn's upgrade is failing him. And this is one of those things I think we can
securely blame on W&H, not the Senior Partners.
The Senior Partners, whatever else we know about them, are interested in
keeping W&H profitable. They know there's a trust issue in giving over the
L.A. branch to Team Angel, so they put one of the Team in charge of legal
affairs.
How has that worked out? Well, Corbin Fries' check cleared, and W&H almost
certainly had an executorial windfall with Hainsley's death. Fred's gone a
little over budget in the past, but all in all, Gunn knowing his stuff has
certainly kept the meatgrinder primed, stocked and more than operational. He's
playing golf with the same D.A.s that employed shamans to tamper-proof the
juries, and as recently as "Harm's Way," W&H still owned the L.A.
police department (a lovely political jab post-Rodney King). There was a bit of
a setback with that guy killing five nuns and jumping bail, but everyone still
seemed to be doing alright.
If things were going so badly, they'd have deployed that monster in the
basement well before now.
So Gunn's been doing the task they set him on. But that sarcophagus was almost
certainly going to be hung up in
exactly the way it was. While I imagine anyone in legal affairs could have
signed for it, it was just too
delicious an irony to force Gunn to do it, so I'm guessing that Knox got
together with Sparrow as soon as that hot chick finished her White Room session
with Gunn, and told him to install the trial version.
With no liaison, with no White Room, the Senior Partners are completely cut
off. It's a different world from where everyone seemed to be terrified of them
in S2. Eve was openly unreliable, corporate employees are making their own
deals, and Gunn -- no less than, I'm guessing, the Senior Partners (who seem no
more in favor of Illyria running loose than anyone else, given the complaints
they relay through Hamilton a few eps from now) -- is being terribly played.
Let's explore an alternate path. Gunn's engrams are fading, but he's always
been so much more strategy than finesse, and has always had a clear vision of
right and wrong. He retains his position as legal adviser, directs the
operation of his department -- I've said before I'm certain he's not the only
lawyer in the firm -- and Fred stays alive -- or, if she doesn't, it's no one's
fault except Knox and some red-shirt from legal.
This, however, doesn't make for as gripping a story. Gunn's role in Fred's
demise is much more tragic. But he's not evil and he hasn't gone dark. He's
just scared. He says himself that these powers they've given him are his way of
contributing to the mission -- missing the fact that no one asked him to lawyer
up, and no one has been relying on his being a legal eagle.
Except in this case.
Gunn and Lorne go to visit Framkin. During that exchange, Framkin, appropo of
nothing, bursts into song. Gunn's clearly at a loss, but the member of the away
team who shouldn't be is standing one flashy suit to the right.
What the hell happened to Lorne? One episode from now he can read Fred
with his back turned. When Framkin starts in on "Courage and pluck /
Courage and pluck" Lorne should be right there saying "It's not him.
He's being controlled, possibly by demon puppets. Someone should check the
Library of Demonic Congress, see if there's been a deal of some sort. But at
least he finally got the mustard out."
Lorne could've been the day-saver if Gunn was never given the upgrade.
Either way, they did, ultimately, focus on the right target.
When Polo is drawing out the children's life force, he sounds incredibly
naughty -- especially with his hat shoved down giving him a frowny face -- nice
transformation. "Come over here and touch it. Oh! Oooh yeah."
Etc. Eww.
As for the rest of it, tho, I get the feeling Joss would write one hell of a
children's show. Groofus: "I've been working on a song about the
difference between analogy and metaphor." Personally, I'd love to
hear that song. "There's a little bit of math in everything" was a
great song, as was the theme for "Smile Time" itself.
In our secret
backyard / We can make your day more fun and less hard
No more
frowning, let’s get learning / ABC’s and 1234
Everything from
words to weather / We’ll discover them together
Time to strap
your thinking cap on / Thinking things are gonna happen
Every day’s a
new beginning / All your friends are here and grinning
’Cause it’s
smile time / That’s right! You’re on smile time!
That
disturbingly bursty manic sun and all the wonderful puppetry. And those poor
kids doing their best Jack Nicholson (the "Joker" reference from Knox
was great). And that office. If all the puppets are demons, one wonders
what that poor little puppet hanging from the doorknob did to secure his fate.
Polo, Flora, Groofus and Ratio are just wonderful characters, and I'm sure that
was Mr. Fish-n-Chips on the table in from of Framkin -- who got started in his
garage with two old couches and a glue gun -- wild.
Most enjoyable, of course, was puppet Angel.
Now, as love interests go, puppet Angel is certainly charismatic. It's a basic
illustration of how he feels at W&H, however -- at a loss, certainly
unheroic. At the beginning of the episode, he tells Wesley he feels emotionally
useless -- the guy in the corner with the blood habit and the 200 years of
psychic baggage.
See? Even Angel has no idea how old he is. He seems already to have
forgotten that 100 years spent in hell, in which I'm sure he picked up a little
more baggage because he throws some of it at his son in "Deep Down."
He and Nina are extremely cute together -- even when his nose does come
off. Which reminds me.
Fred got puppet fired. 
And Puppet Angel got mauled. That nude scene with Nina the following morning
was incredible, where she plucked puppet fluff from her lips with the dawning
horror that she may have eaten him. Shadows from the following morning where
she asks Puppet Angel what puppets eat. Naughty! 
Beyond everything else in this episode, Puppet Angel stands out as being one of
the most adorable predicaments he gets himself into. He's wonderful. It's
incredible to me that someone in the building didn't choose that moment to pull
some sort of coup.
Oh wait. Someone in the building does.
And surprisingly enough, it's not Spike.
Wesley himself is the walking illustration of one of my favorite lines from
"Dangerous Liaisons":
Mme de
Mertieul: "Like most intellectuals, he is intensely stupid."
Fred basically
tells him three or four times, out loud, that she's interested in him --
something we saw bubbling up in "You're Welcome," and a huge
shift from where she was in "Life of the Party."
It's incredible to me that solving Angel's little problem doesn't become a
higher priority than solving the epidemic, but since both are related, no harm
done. And nice final fight on this ep, including Fred reading the Latin for the
nest egg while Wes fights with Ratio. Killer.
Ultimately, this is a nice, light, fun storyline heading into the Coming
Darkness. The incredibly cute puppet Angel bops around for the episode being
adorable (and saving Boreanaz's bum knee a little bit more), and Team Angel mounting up led by Puppet Angel with
the big ass sword is a fantastic image -- nearly as good as Puppet Angel
vamping out in his fight with Polo.
But somehow, this is a weird place for Angel and Nina to deepen their
relationship. It's a weird place for Gunn to be so secretive about what's going
on with him, opening another window, were it needed, on the absolute, ongoing need
for people to communicate with each other better. It's a weird place for Knox
to be trying to renew a romantic relationship with his intended victim. It's a
weird place for Wes to just be picking up on Fred's signals -- although
I kind of understand (well, not really -- Wes had given up his pursuit
of Fred since she seemed more interested in Knox because his heart couldn't
take the pain, although he himself never pursued other interests, which is
probably why the typing pool thinks he's … muffins) and it's a really
weird place for Lorne to not be able to read Framkin and figure out what's
going on.
So it's kind of a weird place for "Angel."
But if any episode was a good place for that weird place to be ... this one was
it.