‘Angel From Hell’ not quite heaven-sent
Lynch gives the show wings, but the manic pace is exhausting
Comedy, or every urban dweller’s worst nightmare? You decide.
Put yourself in the place of Allison ( Psych’s Maggie Lawson), a sweet, successful skin doctor. While visiting a market, she’s accosted by a seemingly intoxicated street magician who palms her necklace, insults her boyfriend, then begins following her. Everywhere she goes. All the while telling Allison things about her private life she can know only through serious cyberstalking or divine intervention.
Amy — Glee’s Jane Lynch, with the “in-your-face” switch set to high — claims the divine route in Angel From
Hell. She says she’s Allison’s guardian angel, breaking the rules against direct intervention because she thinks Allison needs a new path in life. And while Allison doesn’t believe her, she does invite Amy into her home and agrees to become her friend.
Which leaves you to ask which one of them is actually crazier.
There is, of course, a long comic tradition of pairing a too-sensible person with a fun-loving partner: One learns how to relax, the other learns about responsibility and boundaries. Making one of them an angel (well, maybe — that part is left intentionally vague) is a stretch, but nomore so than making one of them a genie or a witch.
Those who remember I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched, however, know they were born of more conservative TV times, when fantasy women were expected to be easily lovable.
Lynch’s Amy is closer to the man/dog in Wilfred: insulting, unsettling (“I can’t believe I’m in your house, and you’re awake”) and a tad vulgar. She’s not pro- fane, but that’s only because she’s on CBS.
Lynch is a gifted comic actor who knows how to sell outrage and outrageousness, and her hard-sell approach generally matches well with Lawson’s more laid-back performance. In support, they have Kevin Pollak and the always welcome Kyle Bornheimer, a talented actor whose presence alone is reason to hope Angel can find a better balance between funny and creepy.
Because right now, that balance is seriously off. It’s not just that too many scenes make you think Allison should run when she sees Amy coming; too many make you think we should run, too.
Angel is heavily reliant on a kind of no-stops, all-out aggressive performance from Lynch, and while there’s some fun to be had from it, that style can quickly become tiresome. And in this increasingly competitive TV age, tired viewers tend to turn elsewhere for entertainment.
Which is every TV programmer’s worst nightmare.