I taped the last two episodes of Angel, preferring to watch The O.C. “live.” One, because I like it better and two, because I figure if I’m going to be ranting about Angel, it’s a good idea to have it taped in case I need to refer back to it. Sounds good, right?

Wrong. The problem with taping is that I’ve come to absolutely dread watching the show. With a track record of “Boring,” “Boring and Annoying,” “Excruciating,” and “Slightly Less Horrible than Last Week,” my hopes of seeing an actual worthwhile episode were diminished and, as a result, I didn’t want to watch my fucking tape. So I put it off for a few days, and suddenly it was Wednesday again, and I hadn’t watched the last episode, and I wasn’t going to watch the current one, so I taped again, and then the weekend rolled around, and I had two fucking episodes of this godawful show waiting on my reluctant ass, and I found myself sitting on my sofa on what was a relatively pleasant Sunday afternoon trying to force myself to push fucking play and just sit through the next 88 minutes so I could get to the part where I bitch about it, because I actually like doing that.

So I did it. And then came the dilemma: The last two eps weren’t that bad. “Life of the Party” was kinda funny, and its focus on Lorne enabled me to figure out who it is that he’s been reminding me of: Jambi from Pee-wee’s Playhouse. I kept waiting for him to bust out with a “Mecca lecca hi, mecca heiny ho.” Sadly, he did not.

Angel made me giggle. Several times. He also made me nauseous because EWWWWW to him fucking Eve, but the bit where he delegated a bunch of jobs to everyone and then told Eve to stay there so they could keep having sex? Hee!

Even Gunn’s ‘peeing on everything’ storyline, which I was spoiled for and preemptively grossed out by, didn’t bug me that much. Except when he peed on Wesley’s shoe. The implications of that (especially given that Fred witnessed it) were not lost by me and it made me verray angry. Wes deserves better.

But he might be getting that! Or at least something worthwhile to do, assuming Angel’s little slipup and those lingering camera shots meant something. *prays*

Spike’s presence was much less glaring in both eps, too, which went a long way toward making them palatable to me. While I’ll never be happy with him there, he’s a lot easier to take when they manage to involve him without stopping all the action every time he opens his mouth.

Knox is evil. And annoying. I liked him much better when he was flipping Buffy shit. When he’s up in Wes’s face (and it turns out that he’s wrong), it’s time for him to die. And take Fred and Harmony and Eve with him.