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Like any TV show, a discussion of the particulars of the show involves some background knowledge of the show in question. If you've never watched Buffy: The Vampire Slayer or Angel, I highly recommend you queue up Seasons 1 and 2 of Buffy in your Netflix account to see what we're talking about. If you think you'd enjoy a good fantasy-ish epic show, they definitly deserve checking out. That being said, if you're interested in the show, I wouldn't recommend reading this article as it includes spoilers and references to previous seasons of the show. On with the review.

Put simply, Season 4 of Angel was absolutely amazing. Although the season ended a little flatly on the action side of things, like Buffy Season 2, it ended on a more emotional note. As I discussed in a previous article, the continuity in these shows is a huge part of their appeal. These shows were made for DVD. I certainly am not able to sit down at the same time every week and watch these kinds of shows and I don't own a TiVo or DVR. All I can do is buy the DVDs, however that doesn't do much to keep the show on TV (or put it back on in Angel's case). It greatly saddens me that I am not able to support great shows such as this by watching them on TV on a regular basis.

Season 4 has an epic feel to it. Those familiar with the series will remember that the end of Season 3 saw Angel being imprisoned in a coffin at the bottom of the ocean by his Connor, his own son, and Justine, a woman bent on revenge on all vampires no matter what their alignment. All the previous loose ends from previous seasons of Angel find themselves being tied up in this season of the show.

This season deals with (what else?) the Apocalypse. A mysterious being known as The Beast emerges from the earth and sets about initiating a series of events that, according to the gurus at Wolfram & Hart, indicate a coming Apocalypse. As expected, Angel is rescued from his coffin at the bottom of the ocean by an old friend, Lorne returns from his Las Vegas gig with the help of the Angel Investigations team, Connor's existence is explained and Cordelia returns to the show after a short stint as a "Higher Being."

As always, action sequences and special effects in Angel are top notch. It's always impressive what Whedon was able to accomplish on a limited budget on this show. There's an especially impressive battle in the middle of the season with The Beast on the top of a building that includes some great slow-mo and impressive fight choreography and wirework. There's also a sequence with the sky raining fire that is quite breathtaking.

The focus in Whedon's work, though, has always been in character development and he again comes through in spades. Continuity is a key factor in this season as there is not a single stand-alone episode. It allows the characters to develop more completely and equips the audience with a background of knowledge about the character. In fact, the show has more than once been called a 'vampire soap opera,' including by its own characters. They fall in love, triangles form, they break up and get back together again all in this season. Specifically, Fred and Gunn hit the rocks, Wesley continues sleeping with Lilah (the evil lawyer from Wolfram & Hart) and Angel tries to patch up with Cordy. All of these events are lent even more weight by the Apocalpytic events surrouding them, once more giving the show a more epic feel. Angel and Buffy have also always had a neat tounge-in-cheek way of telling their stories and Angel never seems to drop the ball in this regard either. This goes double for Angel, as Season 4 further explores the dark sides of each character, including an incident between Fred and Gunn, as the grey area becomes even more indiscernable from the rest of the story.

These questions come up often in Season 4. Buffy was always a very black-and-white show. There were always demons and/or vampires to kill, they were invariably evil and it was Buffy's job to kill them. Part of the appeal of Angel is that it has always tried to explore the grey and dark areas of its characters' psyche. The ultimate grey area is exposed in Season 4 as the team wrestles with the price of world peace in a slave state versus free will and chaos. Is world peace worth the loss of our freedom of thought? Would the world really be a better place if we were forced into being nice all the time? Season 4 asks all these questions but leaves the answer up to the audience to decide.

All things said and done, Angel's fourth season represents the apex of the series thus far, as most remaining plot threads from previous seasons are tied up by the end of this season. The season finale hints at more to come in Season 5 but doesn't expound upon a particular direction the show might be headed for. Season 4 ties up so many plot threads, you kind of have to wonder what they're going to do next. It's that complete, and it stands as a testament to the show, to its creators abilities and their overall vision. If I were Ebert, I'd give this season two thumbs way up.

Read on for a more in depth dissection of Season 4's events but be warned...

!!! SEASON 4 SPOILER ALERT - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!

Lorne makes his return this season. It seems like he's been stuck into the comic relief role this time around and that is fairly disappointing. What good is having a zen master living at your place if you don't even use him? Admittedly he did produce the brain-exploding prophecy of The Beast but that's about the only useful function he exercised this season. It wasn't even that useful since the AI team got their asses kicked when they found him anyways.

Probably the most interesting side development of this season was the developing love triangle between Wesley, Fred and Gunn. It was an admittedly typical setup: Wesley's boning Lilah but really wants to be with brainy and innocent Fred. Gunn loves Fred, but Fred stops loving Gunn because Gunn kills her old evil professor. Angelus announces the fact that Wesley is deeply interested in Fred and they both act out their impulses. Now Gunn is boning the unelectrified Gwen, Wesley dumps Lilah because he sees an opportunity with Fred and Fred seems to caught in between, unawares. Welcome to the jungle - it gets worse here every day.

Wesley's character arc has probably been the most interesting overall. When you first see him in Buffy Season 3, he's a sniveling English prat. He hasn't changed much by the time we first see him in Angel Season 1. However, he finds his true place during Season 2 and hasn't moved from it since. Wesley usually performs the role of the bookwormy Watcher. However, during the many rigors of his work at Angel Investigations, he's also transformed himself into a formidable fighter. He has also grown more similar to Angel in that he has come to the realization that he has his own demons to fight. The dark side of Wesley was an interesting plot thread in Season 3 and its just as satisfying in Season 4 when he finds his way back into the light.

Speaking of finding your way back into the light, Faith makes another appearance this season as well. I started watching Angel before I saw Buffy, so the Faith character has always fascinated me. She follows the rocky path to redemption as well as Angel and, to a lesser degree, Wesley. Faith reminds us of this path and that "with great power comes great responsibility."

Angelus shows his ugly face this season, making this his third outing since the beginning of Whedon's Buffyverse. He has always excelled at sowing discord among friends and this time out he puts the whammy on the entire team at the same time - all from the confines of his 9x10 cell. Whenever Angelus comes out to play, David Boreanaz has an absolute field day with the character. He curses Angel's goodness, breaks confidences and uses it all as ammunition in his assault and torture on his former compatriots' minds. I thought it was an very nice touch when Evil Cordelia used Angel's soul as leverage to control Angelus. Threatening to put Angelus "back in his box," EC and the writers demonstrate Angelus' only vulnerability other than the sun and wooden stakes to the heart. Also, the way he was brought forth was breathtaking. Fooling Angel into thinking he had achieved perfect happiness seems like the perfect way to extract his soul and made up the coolest episode of Angel I've yet seen.

SEASON 5 SPOILER ALERT! Up until Season 4, I had really liked what they had done with Cordielia on the show. She had a place and purpose on the show, she was always evolving and she was beginning a relationship with Angel. However, the little bit I know about Season 5 is that Cordielia never comes out of her coma - she gets written straight out of the show. I don't know if this is simply a conflict with her real life pregnancy during the shooting of Season 4, Charisma Carpenter decided to devote all her time to her new baby or if they simply decided the character needed the big ugly axe. Any way you slice it, it pisses me off that they so lightly trashed all the great development that they put into this character.

There was lots of quality developments going on with Connor too, but this was another character that they decided they'd throw away rather than deal with. Or, perhaps more accurately, Angel decided that he simply couldn't handle raising a son with such a fucked up sense of right and wrong. Instead, they simply wiped his brain and quite literally threw him off the show. I really would have enjoyed seeing Connor develop from a vessel for an ill-concieved world domination scheme into an actual fully fledged member of the cast. Alas, it just wasn't in the cards.

Angel has finally seem to become a moral rock - and that happens to be a bit boring. I liked the edgy, brooding, unstable Angel better. Nowadays he is a bit more cavalier about his exploits and that's sure fun to watch too but if history is any indication, that won't last for long. Buffy's lightly demented sense of humor was what gave it a lot of its charm and Angel seems to have fallen into that groove as well. He's too comfortable right now and I'm sure that another moral curveball is right around the corner. Watching the way he reacts to these issues is the reason we watch the show.

Since it's all about taking over the world, Jasmine is the McGuffin of these previous two seasons of the show. She is the answer to most of the unanswered questions from seasons 3 and 4 and a facinating character besides. A fallen Power, or at least claiming to be, Jasmine manages to quietly chomp up the screen whenever she's on it. I can't remember who plays her, but this woman definitely deserves props for a fantastic performance as the passive-aggressive world dominator. Putting on a facade with a message of 'Love and happiness for all,' she manages with her powers to enthrall anyone who sees her into doing her bidding. Not only that, she actually becomes one with her followers, feeling what they feel and knowing what they know. While she seems to want world peace, we can see after a couple of episodes that she's really just in it to be worshipped as a god and to conquer the world with her powers of domination. I seriously doubt she ever had the people's best interests in mind. If she had, she would not require that people build her massive temples or, when she loses her powers, claim that she'd simply kill every last person on the planet if they wouldn't do her bidding. The fact that she eats people to maintain her power is also a deplorable trait and indicative of her true motives. She is a simple parasite, existing to fulfill herself on the love and energy of her followers. My guess is that in previous worlds she had been to, she had exhausted her supply of followers and had to move on to the next. An alternative explaination of why she left is becuase other worlds simply did not have the technology to spread her 'word' the way she would have liked. In other words, Earth is a nice easy meal.

Is world peace worth losing our autonomy? That's a such a hard question to answer that I don't really think there is a wrong answer. Each idea has its merits. On the one hand, you have world peace: everyone loves each other (especially Jasmine), there is no more killing or violence, and everyone is perfectly happy. On the other, there is no more ability for creative thought other than worshipping Jasmine. Accordingly, the arts would suffer horribly and our entire culture would be wiped out and replaced with an image of Jasmine. Arguably, the merging of all cultures is a prerequisite of world peace, but building that kind of world on top of that prerequisite is definitely a high price to pay.

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