I had complained the previous episode that Kate was becoming an expository throw-in
...and, uh...
Hey,
...that’s my bad, guys.
My bad.
"Angel."
"I get...visions."
"We do things a certain way in L.A.."
"I'M BAD!"
*'Sense & Sensitivity'
Kate is running down an Italian stereotype.
After a bit of unnecessary force,
...she brings him to the station to try and find the whereabouts of a man named Little Tony.
Kate can’t get the information from the man and loses her edgy cop temper.
“He’s not gonna talk.”
“Then Little Tony is as good as gone.
"We can’t find him"
"...and I don’t know anyone who can.”
While Doyle is being violated by a tentacled monster,
Cordelia goes on a quick rant about how
...Angel uses his heroic facade to keep the people closest to him at a distance.
Kate shows up and hires Angel to track Little Tony.
At work we meet Kate’s Dad, a grizzled retiring police officer.
The scene is played pretty well as both actors wear their desire to traverse the gulf between them,
...as well as their total inability to figure out how.
Angel has found Little Tony’s location
...but before Kate can get there
...Tony shows signs of leaving.
“Herb Saunders, Baltimore.”
"It's Herb Saunders."
Angel keeps Little Tony there,
...getting Kate in trouble for enlisting an outsider and souring things with him.
Little Tony calls his Wolfram and Hart lawyer,
Evil Bazinga
who gets Kate enraged enough to have to go to sensitivity training.
In the said training, the speaker makes each cop individually hold a talking stick and share their feelings.
Kate is made to handle the talking stick and her hard cop exterior begins to dissolve.
Turns out the sensitivity trainer was a witch doctor hired by Evil Bazinga to cause chaos at the police station.
Kate recruits Angel to come to her Dad’s retirement and support her while she gives a speech.
"Picture your audience in their underwear?”
“Way ahead of you.”
Meaning Kate has been picturing Angel in his underwear.
It’s almost a throwaway but paired with her tension over Angel’s closeness in a previous episode
...it seems like the writers were toying with the two of them hooking up.
Kate’s Dad expresses his relief as he was starting to wonder whether or not Kate was a lesbian.
Kate’s speech
...slowly
...painfully
...agonizingly dissolves
...into a tearful confession
...of her painful relationship with her father growing up.
The speech causes the room of police to descend into violent chaos
...as all the officers who were at the sensitivity training are behaving strangely.
Angel tracks down the sensitivity witch doctor, who tricks him into handling the talking stick,
while one of the sensitively drunk cops
let's out the prisoners,
...including...Little Tony.
Angel makes his way back to the police station.
Only problem:
"It's time for you to get all vampy."
"GRR!"
“You both withdraw when I go vamp."
"I feel you judge me.”
Sensitive Angel interrupts Tony’s plans for Kate.
And the next day,
...Evil Bazinga cuts Tony loose
...and Kate’s Dad cuts their ties as well.
'Sense & Sensitivity' has some funny dialogue going for it
...aaaaaaand
...that’s about it.
We’re still very much in the warm up season for 'Angel'
...and we'll be there for quite awhile.
It took 'Buffy' around twenty episodes to find its voice
...and there were some serious landmines on the path to getting there.
But I can't decide if I prefer
the offensive badness of something like...
...'I, Robot... You, Jane'
or the tepid waters of episodes like...
'Sense & Sensitivity'.
I did complain the previous episode that Kate was becoming expository throw-in
But this was not what I had in mind.
This episode attempts to develop her as a character
...but MAN is it awkward and uneven.
Her Dad,
played by the great character actor,
John Mahon,
...is a tedious grizzled cop cliché.
The scene at his party where Kate breaks down is well acted by Elisabeth Röhm
but CRUSHINGLY awkward to watch,
...and humiliating for Kate’s character
...with zero catharsis by the end of the episode.
There is some parallel here between
...'Sense & Sensitivity'
...and 'Band Candy'.
But the difference is...
...Buffy’s characters had EARNED the right to 'Band Candy'.
Because we were so familiar with who
...Joyce and Giles were as characters by the time the episode came out,
...them being deconstructed into teenagers
...was joyful and fun.
But we don’t really know Kate
...so WE may as well be a stranger standing at her Dad’s party
...watching someone we just met unload their most private details in a public setting.
We don’t like her enough to care yet.
This is supposed to GROW Kate’s character for us,
...but it’s served in such a painful, odd way
...that it becomes hard to relate to.
Equally troubling is I’m not entirely sure what the episode is supposed to say.
It’s all very heavy-handed
...but in a way that feels internally contradictory.
It is SUPPOSED to be about Angel’s character.
Cordy opens the episode by saying Angel uses his inner torment to keep people at bay
...and that's true.
But then the talking stick pushes everyone into ecstasy, huggy drunk town
...and the episode then seems to be telling us that too much sensitivity can be a bad thing.
Kate humiliates herself.
Angel won’t vamp out
... and the cops nearly set all the criminals loose on Gotham.
So then is the episode going the other route
and saying that a hard world requires hard people to keep it safe?
If so, then the episode inadvertently validates Kate’s father’s douchebaggery.
It’s all incredibly muddled,
...but forgivable.
It's early yet.
If you’re new to the series,
...shake it off and keep going.
Greatness
...isn’t far away.