beginning | blinding torment | boils | lies | making me bitter | evil compounds evil | blah blah bity blah







 

 
























These people? Are here for no good reason.

 

Angel 5.6: The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco

 

I sort of watched this episode with one eye while my other eye concentrated on a crossword puzzle, and it was actually a rather difficult crossword that sort of kicked my ass, so at times my other eye’s assistance was needed, so I might have missed a bit of this episode, but I think I caught most of the important bits. For instance, there are people of Mexican decent in Los Angeles. Who knew? Also it seems, though I didn’t see the research in the episode to back this up, that the Aztec’s had a rather violent culture. Once again, color me shocked. Other than that, nothing much new. Fred fred-ed about, Gunn was all lawyerly and Angel moped around while signing contracts he didn’t bother to read with his own blood, which he didn’t know he’d donated to a pen while Wesley whispered lovingly to some books. And we wonder why he never gets laid.

 

It reminds me that only a fool would want to be a champion.

 

Other than that, I’m not sure much else happened. Oh, there was a fight where our good ole itchin-for-a-fight boys mixed it up like old times and there was a big bad this week—some Aztec-y demon dude who’s name I am not even going to attempt to spell who needs an amulet to become uber-powerful. He comes back every 50 years and eats the hearts of heroes. So of course, he skips right over Angel. *gasp* Dissed by an evil Aztec dude! Ouch.

 

Am I honestly supposed to believe that it had no problem sticking a sword in my stomach but then decided, "Oh, wait, his heart's not heroic enough"? Ha! I don't think so.

 

Anyway, that mailman you’ve seen around W&H if you’ve stayed awake through the episodes? That’s Numero Cinco, and he used to have brothers named Uno through Cuatro. They were Luchadores and loved each other a lot. They partied together, picked up chicks together, fought evil and protected their homies together and wore their masks 24/7 together. Which, one would think, would affect the number of chicks one could pick up, but apparently not. So 50 years ago, these hermanos numerosos went out and battled the evil Aztec dude. Uno through Cuatro died, and Cinco beat him. Somehow. I don’t know. I was stuck on 35 down.

 

Wes, did you ever hear that the devil built a robot?

 

Cinco, naturally, became bitter because he wasn’t as popular without Uno through Cuatro, so he sat alone and drank and still refused to take off his mask until W&H came a knockin’. They needed a goon, he needed a reason to be around when Angel’s crew showed up a job that would allow him to wear his mask—everybody won. Until Angel came around, making him get back into fighting because it's right, rather than because it pays well.

Angel, Cinco and the ghosts of Uno through Cuatro defeated the bad guy in a graveyard with much leaping and frolicking and pinning the evil dude to the ground with pipe or something. Though I am unclear if they defeated him forever, or just for 50 more years. Since I feel the writers are also unclear on this, I’m okay with that. Oh, and the all powerful amulet thingy the evil Aztec dude was looking for was in Cinco's possession all along. He desired to lure evil dude to him so he could just die already, but Angel wouldn’t let him kill himself in such a fashion and, anyway, Cinco just hid it in a coffee mug, I’m really not sure how that would prevent evil Aztec dude from finding it, but whatever. It led to the fight in the graveyard, so I thought that maybe I should mention it.

 

And poor Cinco died right after the fight, and the ghostsUno through Cuatro concentrated really hard, I assume (it's hard to tell through the masks) and picked up their fallen hombre. They then stood in front of their tombstones until they faded out. Yes, it was that dumb.

 

Angel, ever the sensitive brooder, begins to understand his own bitter jadedness through this man’s touching, touching story. And even though Angel’s heart is a shriveled, dead walnut, the Luchadores down in Luchadorville say that it grew 2 sizes that day. And so he learned to love again. And care about prophecies again. And, taking a page out of the book Wesley wrote on how not to get laid, he whispered lovingly to a book that he’d like to read the English translation of the Pergamun Codex or whatever, and broods his way through the Shanshu. Even though everybody knows, for fuck’s sake, translations are faulty and spotty at best, and since he did everything else in that 200 years he was moping or so, I’m amazed he didn’t find the time to squeeze in a few archaic language lessons just in case, you know, anything like this happened. Dumbass.

 

You are one strange man, Señor Angel.

 

Also this week:

-Spike hung about, whined and just generally did nothing.

-There was no Knox.

-Did I mention no Knox?

-Angel briefly brought up the whole “the father will kill the son” prophecy, only to remember that when Lilah said no one would remember anything having to do with Connor, what she actually meant was that nobody would remember anything to do with Connor, and changes the subject. It’s a brief line, but brings up tons of questions, ie if they’ve all been Connor-cleansed, what the hell do they think they were doing for the last two years? Because without bitter teen Connor there was no Justine for Wesley to lock in his closet—and I imagine that occupied a lot of his time there. There was no Angel to look for. There was no supremely evil Cordy sleeping with Connor—so did Cordy go evil for other reasons in their special world now? There was no Jasmine, which takes away the real reason for them being handed W&H. There was no horribly disturbing period of time where Angel cooed like an ass at the baby. There was no almost beheading of Fred when she took that one job to raise money for Connor’s eventual going off to college. There was no pregnant Darla. There was no Holtz trying to extract revenge by going after Angel’s child. Are you seeing my problem here? They erased two entire years of the series, and we get no inkling of how the empty space was filled, or if Angel’s head was also filled with the dual memories, so if anyone brings something up he can laugh along. It’s way worse than the Dawn debacle, that’s all I’m sayin’.

 

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