hehe. Puppets.

I've been getting into Angel this season as a result of my now ex being into the show. I've actually been rather enjoying it, so I was disappointed to learn its being canceled after this season. Sure, its got its off days, but its generally one of the smarter shows on TV. It also employs the creator of the hilarious superhero spoof, The Tick, Ben Edlund. I love his subversive take on the often self-important genre of the supernatural. Suffice to say, he was firing on all cylanders for Wednesday's episode.

The show's hero, good-guy vampire Angel, marches off to fight an evil kid's show. It doesn't go so well, so he gets turned into a puppet. I know, silly concept. But, they basically let the whole episode be about what its like to be a puppet. They tweaked the character to make him more puppetish in his actions, which was a great touch. They also went all out on the puppets. All of them looked completely professional and convincing. Usually a show like this would just half-ass it, but they looked like something out of Nickelodeon.

I'm a total sucker for puppets gone bad. I loved Greg the Bunny on FOX a couple years back. It just cracks me up. Puppets are the paragon of innocence, so seeing them act in ways outside the norms of kids show is a real killer. I love it when the Muppets do "adult" material. Puppets for adults are a desperately underused comedic device. So, basically, this episode of Angel was going to work for me. Its just all the little commentaries on puppet behaviors. Just so brilliant and insightful and well appreciated by me. It reminds me of when you were a kid and you thought puppets were real. But if they were real, they wouldn't be innocent kid's show creations, would they? The questions asked in that just really amuse me. Just wanted to say that. Good night.