Whenever people have told me their favorite episodes from the first season of 'Angel',
'Hero' inevitably makes the short list.
Which makes me feel...
...a little gunshy going into this review,
as other than for a very specific 6 or 7 minutes in the episode,
which may be some of the best in the series,
I don’t think 'Hero' works.
Just remember, a frequent comment I used to get while reviewing the first season of 'Buffy' was,
'it sounds like you don’t even like the show'.
Trust me, we’ll get there.
"I get...visions."
"We do things a certain way in L.A."
"I'M BAD. I'M BAD."
Cordelia is pitching a commercial for Angel Investigations to the team
and decides to use Doyle.
“Our rats are low--”
--“Rates…”
"It says 'rats'."
Angel is still grieving over the events of 'I Will Remember You'
and confides in Doyle what happened.
“I just don’t have that strength.”
“You never know your strength 'til you’re tested.”
I wonder if Doyle’s strength is going to be tested this episode?
Not the last time this one will be on the nose.
Doyle decides it’s time to tell Cordy about his unusual family tree
but right before he does OF COURSE he has a vision.
On the streets, we see two young gray demons
running from the clacking bootfalls of some unseen force.
Angel and Doyle investigate and find a group of Lister demons hiding under a trapdoor.
The Lister demons say they are hiding from a group of pureblood demons called the Scourge.
They share a story about a promised one who would be sent to save them
and instantly believe Angel is it.
Doyle tells Angel he’s heard of the Scourge before.
We find out in flashback they’re fascist purity demons
who slaughtered most of his kind.
Angel stalwartly says they’re going to get the Listers out of L.A..
And the episode's plot begins to unravel into the ludicrous.
Angel is owed a favor by a shipyard lowlife who forges documents to protect the demons.
The doubter Lister boy from earlier runs off.
Doyle goes after him.
The angsty teen segways from the impending fascist demon holocaust
to complaining that he’s unable to walk down the streets without being stared at,
paralleling Doyle’s feelings about being Brachen.
On the way back to Camp Angel,
the boy and Doyle are headed off by a Scourge platoon.
Angel saves them and manages
to get the Scourge to let him join?
Wait, why do they...
...whu….
...ugh...
At their Riefenstahl demon party,
the ship yard worker Angel previously scared reveals the location of the fleeing Listers.
The Scourge use a lantern purity bomb on him and go to attack the demon refugees.
At the ship, Cordy has found out that Doyle was half-demon
and gives this episode a MUCH needed moment of levity.
"I wanted to tell you."
"I thought if I did, you’d reject me.”
“I rejected you WAY before now.”
The Scourge set off the bomb.
Angel kills the leader and the rest of the Scourge conveniently disappear.
Angel tells Doyle and company to flee.
Doyle steps in.
And he and Cordy have a final moment together.
Something passes between them.
Doyle jumps on the bomb.
Saves everyone.
And we end on the only redeeming part of this episode,
the bookend.
Where to start?
Well, the episode certainly goes full Nazi holocaust.
The fascist Scourge are all clad in Nazi style officers' uniforms
and spend their time patrolling with heavy goose-step-like footfalls.
And they're after racial purity.
Their Nuremberg purity lantern party looks like it was lifted straight from newsreel.
And of course, the disgusting rotting look for the Scourge
works as commentary against the very idea of racial purity.
The Lister demons as the victim of the Scourge evoke Holocaust imagery.
They are designed to look somewhat emaciated.
They hide under trapdoors in the floor.
They appear powerless against the militarized Scourge.
With the interplay of their savior prophecy there is some,
perhaps inadvertent, Jesus dying for their sins stuff
going on that I don’t know what to make of.
In the end, Jesus Doyle finds his redemption metaphorically stopping the holocaust,
though most of the Nazi Scourge get away.
Talk about going top shelf for your metaphors.
This kind of thing is VERY difficult to pull off without coming off
as either silly
or tacky,
and 'Hero' has heaps of both.
The episode literally has Nazi soldier demons running down the middle of L.A. streets setting things on fire.
Where IS everybody?
Because of the friction between budget and ambition, the episode somehow feels claustrophobic
in one of the biggest cities in the United States,
The demon in 'I Will Remember You',
and the story here, mostly exposition,
spend its time suggesting that the Scourge are some sort of global apocalyptic threat,
and yet their big plan is a lantern party that will kill everyone in a range of
...3 blocks was it?
The gravity and the scope they try and give this would've been more fitting for a season arc.
In a one-off, it feels suffocatingly heavy-handed
and mostly doesn’t make a lot of sense.
It also undermines some of the previous lore.
Giles says in early 'Buffy' episodes that demons on Earth have been tainted by humanity,
"Of all the demons we've faced--"
"You've never seen a demon."
"All the demons that walk the Earth are tainted, are human hybrids like vampires."
And to unleash a real demon on Earth requires something tantamount to opening the Hellmouth
or 100 years of planning leading to an Ascension.
So how can the Scourge be pure blood demons?
Yes, hey look a little like the guard demon from 'Anne', but that's never really explained.
Why did the Scourge let Angel come and join their lantern club?
Where do all the Scourge demons go in the boat after the bomb starts?
Why was Doyle’s story built up slowly and methodically in the first few episodes?
The episode just feels rushed,
hacked together,
and other than the opening and closing scenes between characters we already love,
lame.
There are a couple lovely moments of character.
The aftermath of Doyle’s death hits a perfectly emotional note,
which is downright shocking given the 30 minutes leading up to it
I spent rolling my eyes
as Angel dons an SS officer’s uniform
and jumps on a World War II Nazi motorcycle.
'Hero' feels like an idea that wasn’t allowed to properly germinate
because of a last minute decision by the showrunners.
In a Mutant Enemy writers reunion from Nerdist.com (39 minutes in),
David Greenwalt said that the decision to kill off Doyle started to formulate around Episode 2 of 'Angel',
"When uh I told uh Glenn Quinn,"
"bless his heart and rest his soul,"
"uh 'If you don't come to the set knowing your lines, you will not be laughing on my set"
"while I got guys from Simi Valley who work 18 hours a day."
"You will know what you're gonna do.'"
“And he just couldn’t...you know."
"He had some problems, he just couldn’t."
"...and..."
WE'D decided we're just not gonna stand for it, you know.”
Glenn Quinn was in a downward spiral with drugs and alcohol,
that over the following years would have him see many stays in rehab
before ending with his death a little over 3 years after the episode aired.
Mutant Enemy didn’t go public with the actor’s on-set struggles,
instead saying that the death had been planned since the beginning
and they were were planning on bringing in another 'Buffy' cast member.
"--people were mad."
"I got letters,"
“ Dear, Mr. Greenwalt, if in fact that is your name,.”
But the troubled actor's life is not really fodder for what I choose to do here on this channel.
Still, the departure of Doyle from 'Angel' felt like a big loss in this early struggling season.
He brought an easy sweet charm which elevated the dour and broody Angel,
and his struggle with his own inner duality played well with Cordy’s feelings as to how she measured her self-worth.
A bright star in a murky opening,
impressive even more for the fact that Doyle wasn’t even supposed to be a character on 'Angel'.
It was supposed to be Whistler from 'Becoming (Parts 1 and 2').
In the end, and as always, I’m willing to forgive a swiss cheese Nazi episode plot,
as long as the writers find a way to have their beloved characters discover something meaningful about themselves
and the search for something greater.
That's probably one of the things that keeps us coming back to the Buffyverse.
"Is that it?"
"Am I done?"
Sources Mutant Enemy Writer’s Reunion http://nerdist.com/nerdist-writers-panel-183-mutant-enemy-writers-room-reunion/