MaxC
Big Bad
ooh yeah
Posts: 198
|
Post by MaxC on Nov 4, 2005 11:05:23 GMT -5
The cyborgs were created from love, and also lack of attention to details.
|
|
|
Post by PyleansDontLeaveMe on Nov 4, 2005 11:05:51 GMT -5
Oddly enough, I'll buy that.
|
|
|
Post by quantumcat on Nov 4, 2005 12:12:41 GMT -5
I think every iconic cult sf/fantasy series is required to have cyborgs.
It's a rule.
Cyborgs,girls in catsuits and quaint British hunky types.
(You last longer if your lead wears hats)
|
|
|
Post by PyleansDontLeaveMe on Nov 4, 2005 15:52:30 GMT -5
Oddly enough, that makes ME last longer as well.
What?
What?
|
|
|
Post by tjaman on Nov 4, 2005 18:40:12 GMT -5
* ring ring ring *
"Hello? Joss? Explain yourself!"
* click *
He hung up on me!
|
|
|
Post by tjaman on Dec 28, 2005 1:46:44 GMT -5
S5x09 - HARM'S WAY
I liked this one. It was silly. ;D
Just like in "Life of the Party," Joss opens his story with one image -- the 1950s-style orientation video -- and morphs into another image -- how does a single girl vampire-on-the-go start her day? -- and then ... roll credits.
Following Lorne around on his frenetic morning was at least as interesting as following Harmony through her paces -- alarm goes off at 7 a.m., tuned to a pop music station. She checks her lack of reflection under a chirpy, self-motivating "Be Your Best!" heading, brushes both her corpse teeth and those of her demon manifestation -- harking back to her comment from "Conviction," i.e. "Who needs dental more than us?" -- selects an outfit -- so very Harmony -- and ... now, where did that other shoe go? Ah yes -- practical, real-world applications for her demon strength.
And then she dives into the sewers, because she's a vampire.
I really wish they'd shown her getting to work. Harmony trotting with confidence through the sewers in open-toed heels from her apartment to work would be interesting, at the very minimum.
Not to mention that dry-cleaning she picked up. Because a vampire coming up through the sewers into the dry cleaners would be bizarre at best. And then trucking it back into the sewers and getting it to W&H unmarred would be a job of work.
Backtrack a second, tho. Harmony had minions in Sunnydale. She had no minions in "Disharmony," but she was clearly something of a joiner. So to find her living all alone -- looking like that -- without an undead paramour ... I mean, she was so popular in high school. And just like Spike, I mean ... William was such a nebbish, weak, non-obtrusive spirit. This soulfulness, the inner torment of the poet, the weak mama's-boy non-extension of his personality -- seemed to shackle his demon once he was sired.
Such seems to be the case with Harmony. She was such a sheep, a nontrospective surface-dweller that when she was sired, her very dimness seemed to be a serious hamper on her animating demon. The demon was probably evil incarnate, but her very lack of depth seemed to make her ... unavailable to it. It was like having all the controls but they didn't seem to be hooked up to anything. She was still this sweet, vapid, sycophant seeking desperately for approval.
She kept telling us she was evil, but came down to it, she was only semi-evil. She was the margarine of evil. The best she could manage was treachery, and Angel saw that coming from miles away (though I suppose we can be happy for her that she got a little without going all bloody-eyed).
So Harmony is a vampire. She has a backstory with Spike, her Blondie-Bear, who does somehow still matter to her although he's cultivated this sick lust for a Slayer well beyond the sex games of their S4 relationship.
By the end of the episode, she's allowed maybe more of the subtext in their relationship to become text than maybe she meant to. Like Fred at the end of "Smile Time," she was giving a signal. That however badly Spike had treated her in the past, she still basically loved him.
Is that interesting to anyone else? The poetic, weak-kneed boy who was sired by a crazy girl and loved her at first sight but still couldn't run off with her without first siring his mother -- so as to end her suffering -- falls in, after whatever personality twists he gained from hanging with Angelus for any length of time -- falls in with a vampire who is so much the vapid high school bimbette she has to wear a T-shirt to remind anyone that she's actually a blood-sucking creature of the night?
What is the depth of shallowness, Joss? Is it an evil unto itself? Is the quality of being self-involved at a Harmony level akin to the quality of self-consciousness we find in William the Bloody Awful Poet? Is it such that active evil can't gain any sort of foothold?
Never mind that. I'm still trying to get my head around any of the vamps Buffy battled straight out of the ground -- the ones who seemed to invariably pick up all those martial arts skills -- settling for scuttling around butcher shops after hours for pig's blood day after day and being proud of typing 80 words a minute and having very pleasant phone voices.
Again, Joss is slyly hinting that the events of S4 never took place -- or at least that Cyvus Vale's mind control extended well beyond CYNTHIA! Sambuca ...
Tamika: TAMIKA!
Whatever. Just like in "Life of the Party," where W&H's Halloween party wasn't anything like as good as last year's -- suggested that she'd been working at W&H for five years. Lilah said the Beast got everyone -- even those who called in sick or were having a day off. I.E.:
The Beast: DING-dong W&H Employee: Yes? The Beast: * kills them *
So maybe she only thinks she's been there for five years. Or maybe she only thinks that she has a very pleasant phone voice. I mean, who knows? If she has been there for five years, she must've played havoc with those vampire detectors everytime she reported for work, but then at one point, Lindsey made a distinction between reports of hostile vampires on the property, so they must be pretty well calibrated.
But can anyone imagine Holland putting up with that?
Holland: Tamika, where is that memo? Tamika: Type it your damn' self. * bites him *
The zero-tolerance policy was well illustrated. But Harmony is so frantic for approval she forgot that before Eli got beheaded, there was at least some cursory investigation. But with the pressures of the conference, Harmony (the "right-biter" -- G-d, that is such a fun aspect of vampire life to discover fully 12 seasons into the 'verse, isn't it? Some vamps must prefer the deoxygenated blood coursing down the jugular while others must get their jones on for that fresh gurgly carotid krovvy) testing positive for human and the at least circumstantial ties between her and the demon activist (um, Harm, no wonder he told you he was an astronaut. How can he explain his real job to most anyone he meets in a bar?) she was right to assume she'd fit in Monk's dustpan once he found out -- especially when the demon's were demanding an eye for an eye.
But it was so unfair. She'd done her homework! She was so ready with what they ate! I've gotta believe whoever she called was used to catering W&H affairs, tho.
Caterer #1: Now they need a camel. Caterer #2: Again? Caterer #1: Must be a board meeting.
Her grand swath of destruction -- the blood guy we've never seen before, Lorne (who looked positively malevolent under his duct tape) and Fred tied up in the broom closet -- was interesting, especially since she managed to abduct Fred from a reasonably busy lab situation. Before that, when she was demonstrating how she was a right-biter, it was so "Waiting for Guffman" cute.
And her bonding scene with Fred in the bar was so wonderfully Harmony (and set us up for the two rolls of electrical tape of Illyria's costume with Fred "not having a lot up front").
Joss must've been itching to set up a conversation between Harmony and Fred.
"What great ones do, the less will prattle of." -- Shakespeare
Ah, the ST:TNG "Below Decks" aspect of this show was one of my favorites. To have the staff hanging out in the conference room talking about our heroes the way we do in our chatty rooms was delicious. Especially:
Harmony: I think Wesley is totally crushing on Fred. W&H Employee: Mr. Wyndham-Pryce? Everyone knows he's ... muffins!
Yes. I was actually around for the original discussion of this ep on the 'Tome and everyone had grand fun commenting that PyleansDontLeaveMe was also totally muffins. Which he, of course, is.
The knock-down, drag out between Harmony and Tamika was cool -- nearly as cool as Gunn calling Angel a "man whore" in demonese. Why was W&H so interested in this again? Oh yeah -- reputation. You know what is reputation, yes? People talking. With Eli, however, Angel's reputation is not people talking. Angel's repuation is fact. To the point that people are ending up in broom closets with their autoclaves running. Did she ever get to turn it off? Not that it was on, so much, as it was near her -- what was she going for? A stake? A cross? A beaker of holy water? I don't remember Harmony ever smoking -- even in Sunnydale. It'd be an interesting look for her.
But I digress. Harmony was so bent on making this conference happen without a hitch that she bursts through the wall of the conference room -- again, is this entire law firm constructed just about as sturdily as a set in community theater? -- and stakes the real killer with chopsticks -- and after such a cool exchange of barbs and blows. The dust effect on Tamika was half-hearted at best, but it was fun to see. And Harmony did, ultimately -- and hardly meaning to -- saved the day.
Backtrack to her conversation with Angel at the very beginning. Generally, the camera is following Angel around so we've generally got all the context for what he's saying. Harm's exchange with him right at the beginning gave us a little insight into what life must generally be like for her -- people come up and they're speaking a completely different language. They mostly don't know who she is, and of course that's sad -- I for one, having watched this episode, am quite interested in what she's been up to since Cordy let her go at the end of "Disharmony." And yet there are seething jealousies among the staff. Harmony can't fit in -- she's almost certainly being paid more than all the other staffers so her saying she wants a raise doesn't impress anyone, and they all want her job or resent her presumptuousness. And they make fun of her look. That's so unfair. I think she does a fabulous job for a person with no reflection.
She's a complicated girl -- despite Spike telling her "Keep it simple -- it suits you." She doesn't have a soul, although that would've been so easy for Angel to arrange. She tries not to bite people although she got really wistful when that giraffe-necked lady walked by after she'd had some human blood. She mostly comes in, does her job -- sometimes with a little too much verve -- and otherwise deals with her very ordinary existence as a not terribly enthusiastically evil creature of the night.
One surrounded by unicorns.
I don't know that this episode merited her inclusion in the opening credits, but it was a big step toward getting her there. We saw glimpses of the treachery we would see in "Not Fade Away," tho again, for an evil being, she's not especially convincing. But for a Harmony-centered episode, Mercedes McNab carried it off brilliantly.
It's just, at the end of the day ... it was just the end of the day. The lives of the underlings have little impact, in the long haul, on the lives of the superiors. Things are unfair, demands are made, and for the most part, everyone goes home to brood.
That being said, however ...
Z'Rolf, get Harmony a little umbrella for her drink.
She's so totally earned it.
|
|
|
Post by PyleansDontLeaveMe on Dec 29, 2005 13:10:12 GMT -5
I.....AM...... MUFFINS! Brilliant! I adored this review, and not just because it said nice things about me. I do wonder how frustrated Harm's demon must have been once it realized...
|
|
|
Post by tjaman on Dec 29, 2005 13:50:05 GMT -5
Is that weird? Some vampires are beings of unbridled malevolence, and some worry about hair and makeup, about who's sitting at the better desk, about making connections with people from high school, and about their suffering mothers.
What a broadly varied bunch of animating demons, yes?
|
|
|
Post by tjaman on Jan 12, 2006 9:12:48 GMT -5
S5x11 - DAMAGE
Also known as "Depth Takes a Holiday," or "Breathing Room for Lindsey"
So what would happen, exactly, if a Slayer went crazy -- which, from everything we've seen, is kind of a short trip?
Well, when it happens to Buffy -- at least a couple of times, in "Earshot" and "Spiral" -- she retreats inward, becoming catatonic while she wrestles with the demons in her mind -- which are not inconsiderable, given what we saw in "Nightmares." In "Normal Again" and for part of "The Witch" (in which technically she's just under a spell) and "Beer Bad" (in which she's simply mystically drunk) she lashes out, in some instances violently. Or she just gets silly, as in "Something Blue," where again, under the influence of a spell, she imagines she is in love with Spike.
Faith just goes really, really dark, falls into a coma, and lashes out in a twisted "suicide by vampire" attempt. Fortunately, Angel is able to bring her back to a stable enough sense of reality that she is able to at least turn herself in.
Dana, who up until this point has nothing but pain and shared Slayer visions, reacts with all the rage of the past 10 years played out on a wet red canvas. Mind you, any psychiatric wing worth its salt would have tranq guns handy, but from what we see on those tapes and from what we know from "Restless" about visions of the Primative, we can expect every drop of blood shed in her wake.
Is she evil? No. But her private pain just got really, really public.
Enter the vamps, or as Angel rightly points out, the last people who should be confronting her. We know Angel gets tipped off by an upwardly mobile nurse with an eye on career advancement. But how is Spike there again? The ersatz Doyle got a vision? "Doyle" doesn't get visions, because even in a coma, Cordy wouldn't let him anywhere near her for smooches and the Powers That Be aren't really talking to him. So Spike's initial presence remains, much like the seven-letter word for "in a mellifluous manner" (my guess is "harmony," but I'd need to see the other letters) an unsolved mystery.
But this isn't what this show is about. This show is about getting Spike's hands cut off. This show is about exploring Spike's actual pain. It's about bringing him face to face with his past in an important way. Not that much is done with this, but Spike starts to feel the weight of the soul he won with more reflection than the time he spent brooding sack-of-hammers in the basement of the high school at the beginning of BS7.
But mostly it's about the hand thing. Because that's going to tip off the people who need to be tipped off in the next episode. Whereas Spike gains a little focus in this ep, "You're Welcome" is about providing the same moment of clarity for Angel.
So the rest of it is just Tom Lenk being hilarious. Starting with "We saved the world -- well, Buffy helped," watching nearly every scene with him in it, there's this steady compulsion to say "ANDREW!" in a reproving way, not that he listens at all.
GUNN WATCH revisited
We also get the most glancing exploration of where Gunn is right now -- "Nine holes of golf instead of a jury of your peers, just the way the Founding Fathers intended."
This line by Fred is the reason I instituted the Gunn Watch in the first place. The Senior Partners, in giving Gunn the legal upgrade, very subtly manipulated his moral center, which in this context of this show, is pretty much CYNTHIA!s moral compass.
Gunn, until now the figure least troubled by mystical influences, now sees expediencies and loopholes. It's not obvious by any stretch of the imagination, but very subtly, I believe Gunn has slowly been going dark. He's still cheerful, he's still fighting that good fight, and he's doing it his way, but his way can no longer be understood as the unalloyed "Force of Good."
He was largely indiscriminate in "War Zone," unconvinced that a vampire, even one with a soul, could be a righteous man. He was a bit more nuanced in "That Old Gang of Mine." But at this point, good and evil have become moiré patterns and I'm afraid he's strayed from the path. And when the pattern starts to fade, he can no longer handle it and signs whatever is put in front of him to maintain it.
Gunn has, in my opinion, golfed his way cheerfully into the rough, whistling the Rogers and Hammerstein catalogue.
Don't take my word for it. Check Buffy's assessment. CYNTHIA! is no longer trustworthy. Despite her own canoodling with The Immortal, the assumption is that they've all gone bag and baggage over to the dark side. While it seems no one will agree with me about Gunn, from a perspective exterior to the show, the perception is the whole lot of them have strayed, and are entirely the wrong people to rehabilitate a Slayer.
So Angel has some soul-searching to do as well. As Spike suggested in "Soul Purpose," their moral compass is in a tailspin. They think they're doing the right thing, but meanwhile the "right thing" has involved representing terrible people and doing a number of distasteful things to stay profitable, and their stated goal of using the L.A. branch of Wolfram & Hart as a tool for good is a little like using a throwing star as a coaster. It'll keep your lemonade from making a ring on your coffeetable, but it's still a weapon of violent, ugly death.
Some observations:
Dana's ramblings sound a little like River's.
The seer they call in to help is very cool.
Andrew tasting the random penny he found lying on the docks is hilarious.
Fred's demand that the shamans not use a donor hand for Spike's surgery was a nice bit of continuity from "Dead End."
All in all, a decent installment, but a little like a placeholder. Even so it was nice to get some answers to some of those unanswered questions from "Buffy," like "Hey -- what's everyone up to these days?"
* suddenly interested in a bit of closure on that ... other Sunnydale alumn *
Well, I'm sure they'll get to that shortly.
Well done, people. Well done.
|
|
|
Post by Aunt Arlene on Jan 12, 2006 9:41:20 GMT -5
Wow, as usual.
I wonder if the difference in their craziness was because Dana was crazy before she became a slayer.
|
|
|
Post by tjaman on Jan 12, 2006 10:01:16 GMT -5
Possibly -- of course, Faith saw stuff no one should ever see, too.
Is it wrong that Fred is the one who knows distilleries smell like molasses? Is it just because she's from the South?
|
|
|
Post by Darkchylde on Jan 12, 2006 10:04:46 GMT -5
Is it wrong that Fred is the one who knows distilleries smell like molasses? Is it just because she's from the South? I think that might just be because she is a scientist.
|
|
|
Post by tjaman on Jan 12, 2006 10:19:02 GMT -5
Could well be.
|
|
|
Post by tjaman on Jan 20, 2006 14:01:54 GMT -5
And now, for the 'Fraudless ...
S5x12 - YOU'RE WELCOME
"Wake Up Sleepyhead" or "Vail, You Missed a Spot"
Consider a few highlights from the short but eventful life of Miss Cordelia Chase.
She's the most popular girl in school. Like everyone else, she knows that life in her sleepy little burg is ... unusual, but she gets by. The one day, a short blonde girl -- one she'd even been nice to, if you can believe it -- shows up and attacks her with some sort of stake.
"Excuse me. I have to call everyone I have ever met."
She tries out for cheerleading and goes blind. Invisible girls take revenge upon her face. She invites a tall dark stranger into her hot little "Queen C" car and he turns out to be a vampire. She finds herself drawn into the strangest situations, not least of which dating a geek. Not only does this hurt her socially, but physically, when she falls on a piece of rebar and it goes through her (Joss do love him a nice sucking gut wound).
Her surgeons apparently do some astonishing work, as we see in "Belonging" and elsewhere. One wonders if defaults in the medical bills tipped the fragile financial house of cards her parents were maintaining and the IRS descended upon them like vultures. Because along with who is going to be homecoming queen, suddenly she needs to worry about being poor and working retail. And then on her graduation day, the speaker turns into a giant scary demon guy, her best friend goes and gets herself sired and her school blows up.
Enough of that. ENOUGH! Los Angeles and inevitable stardom beckons. As do cramped apartments and roaches. How fortunate to bump into ... hey, are you still, "grr"? Yep, there ... isn't actually a cure for that. OK, fine, I'll come work for you. And room with a ghost. And fall for yet another -- oh, your being a demon is so far down the list. And star in commercials except for this whole seizure visions thing (whaddya know -- you can get it from kissing) and hey, while I'm at it, pick up not one, not two, but three mystical pregnancies (the third-eye demons' means of procreation which you'd think would've come to the attention of at least one doctor by now).
Yep, she's vision girl, no one will hire her, woe is she, until she's sucked into another dimension where they go from forcing her to muck out the stables to worshipping her as a princess and this gorgeous hunk of manmeat offers to be her love slave and release her from the head-splitting visions. She declines, instead choosing to hold onto them so that she can contribute to the mission she now seems wholly committed to.
The visions just get worse, but that's mostly because she's being targeted by a high-power law firm. And she's still good to go toe-to-beautifully-shod-toe with a high-power lawyer from that firm. Ultimately, in a very comic "It's a Wonderful Life" sequence, she sees how her life could've gone if she'd never hooked up with Angel in L.A. -- and what could happen to her if she has one more vision -- and again she chooses the visions, mostly to save Angel.
Fine and fair enough. Make with the demon essence infusion. But while this makes her more powerful than she ever was, it probably begins to change her, subtly, opens her to influences she wasn't subject to before. No matter. Wherever Jasmine comes from -- that higher plane bubble world or the deal she makes in "Birthday" -- Jasmine does, ultimately, take control. She does ascend to a cloud of light made of pure joy on the eve of professing her big undying love for Angel and then for about four months she's floating around bored out of her mystical skull.
Until she makes her big inexplicable comeback. There's some trippy amnesia, there's smooching with the Beast as the Beastmaster, there's ...
Our lives are different from other people's.
... there's mojo she's accessed that is never explained, there's sleeping with a teenage boy whose diapers she was changing just a few episodes ago, there's the stealing of Angel's soul, there's the fake vision that unleashes Angelus on an unsuspecting populace, then there's murdering Lilah, among others, there's booming voices in Angelus' skull, there's murdering entire families to keep her Beast from being banished, there's blocking of the sun -- oh, yes, all of these things are harbingers -- birth pangs -- as Jasmine brings herself into being and she falls into a coma.
.
And, one complete transformation of her world later, she wakes up.
.
Others have suggested the Powers have been subtly working around the influence of Jasmine to maintain the course of their champion, identified in Season 1 as Angel. They worked the slot machine, they sent Darla as some sort of ghost/angel/vision to Connor, etc.
But it would seem that they did retain some communication with this conduit, and whereas they had something to say like every other episode, they saved the best for last. They show Cordy what Angel needs to do to get back on track -- Ethan Lindsey's reign of dark comic tomfoolery as means to access ...
Excuse me, but isn't he snogging the liaison to the Senior Partners? What more access to everything does he think he needs, anyway?
And I defy anyone to tattoo themselves and chant a mystical chant and become invisible to lasers and security cameras.
Never mind. She's got the coma vision, she's got the wakeup call, and, since all her demon-infusion would seem to have left her with the birth of Jasmine, she just got the back of her skull blown out, like poor Tammy in "Birthday."
But that isn't necessarily gonna help the Powers, so instead of just murdering her and letting that last important vision be the weapon, she's fitted with a corporeal spirit with great hair and lousy wardrobe (she so needed to go shopping) and a call to the CEO of Hell Incorporated later, she's on her way to do something about it.
"Cause I'm not ready to go back to the hotel just yet."
Oh right -- the hotel. There was a memo about that ...
The nun thing was a complete waste of episode. The nun thing was a nonstarter. Some nothing for Lilah Jr. to talk about. The reveal that she and Angel had been briefly intimate was clumsy but allowed for a great line -- "I thought Darla was rock bottom" -- and Cordy's instant dislike of her mirrored my own so I was pleased by that exchange.
Part of the fun of this episode was Angel putting the pieces together on Lindsey's influence on events. It put a button on Spike's extracurricular vigilantism -- "Here I was thinking I had some sort of destiny" -- well, there went that theory. Although I'll grant that for awhile, engineered as the situations indeed were and not supported by anything, it's a perfectly legitimate notion that Spike could be a candidate for the Shoop. As could any vampire with a soul. I mean honestly, given how not-difficult it seems to be for a vampire to be ensouled -- a novice can do it from a hospital bed -- there must be a few walking the night.
Most disappointing was Fred's greeting of Cordy, because it's the briefest, and funniest was Harmony's, because she's so openly joyful, despite being, technically, evil.
Spike's attack of Cordy was fun, mostly because we learn that being evil makes a person's blood a little astringent, sort of oaky. Spike drank a little of her, so she's very corporeal -- not just aa solid projection, but blood, flesh and bone. The Powers did excellent work. And Angel's throwdown with Spike in the hallway was fun, too.
Cordy's interaction with Wes was nice. There was a little vibe there, an echo of their fondness for one another, nothing romantic. They'd tried that, and it hadn't worked. No chemistry, although Wes still works the best mojo in town.
Cordy and Angel ...
She starts with what Angel has done everything in his power (well -- many things. He could've signed on for the mindwipe as well) to forget -- Connor. She reminds him of who he is -- a loving father as well as a champion of the helpless. She takes us back to an extraordinarily nice homage to the real Doyle -- first soldier down -- and binds what was to what is. She is, herself, reminded of the work that they've done, and while she is deeply offended by the status quo, in the end, she does come to acknowledge that while Angel has gotten himself into a terrible situation and woefully off track, he is and remains a force of good, and just needed her guidance -- and the Powers -- to focus himself for the final fight.
So all that remains -- beyond a comment on how fun Harmony's attack on Eve in those magnificent Manila Blahniks (one of the most expensive costumes we never see), and Fred's seeing Wesley in a new light as he works his mojo -- is the smackdown between Angel and a Tiny Texan.
Montana? Oklahoma? Recently of Nepal, the Hellmouth and points west? Never mind. Clearly Lindsey gets around. His instincts are good, though -- if the Senior Partners find him in L.A., they'll invite him in for a chat.
The switchblade vs. katana fight was going to be fun, but Lindsey's so mystical he can create a sword. His mojo is already better than most of what the Trio could put together, and his ability to go in for the vivisection was at least somewhat mystical. His getting his ass handed to him by Angel in the wake of his gloating was sweet, and in the end, Angel does indeed remember who it is that he is: "I'm Angel. I beat the bad guys."
Stitch it on a pillow, Angel.
Cordy's kiss with Angel at the end, on the cusp of a grand reveal, is ... very satisfying. Not dream Cordy who lives in Angel's fantasy, not manipulative Jasmine-entralled Cordy no one could really trust, but instead, the Cordy on her way to meet Angel the night she ascended to Boredom on High. The smooch some of us have been waiting for her to plant for 1-1/2 seasons. The honest affection of a woman who's been through so much with this man-pire that it's not even a means to an end, not even physical, but rather a kiss from a soul to a soul.
I completely get people being upset that the story was moving to a place where Angel and Cordelia would hook up. I get the true-and-forever Bangel love that people are angry to see even acknowledged. But for one brief moment, a last expression of affirmation, we got to see what was so rudely interrupted by too many forces.
Who knows what would've happened? It's not like every time Cordy kisses someone she falls in love. She and Wesley knew immediately back in Sunnydale that there was no chemistry between them (despite their mutual attraction and, afterwards, appreciation). It could've happened that way for them, too.
But for this moment -- remembering how comfortable and couply they were caring for Connor together, remembering how angry I felt about her dense superficiality in "Waiting in the Wings," and her refusal to trust her own heart afterwards despite doing everything in her power to turn Groo into Angel -- I choose to believe that they would've made each other very happy.
And, naturally, the visions pass once again, an unbroken line from Doyle to Cordy to Angel (or, not discounting not-deeply-explored alternate realities, from Doyle to Angel to Cordy).
That was ... quite a kiss. And a tour-de-force of a guest appearance. And a towering episode, one which fully acknowledged Cordelia's place in the Angel'Verse, showcased her at her very, very best and reminded us all of what it was we'd been missing so very much.
Thank you, Joss.
You're welcome.
|
|
|
Post by Aunt Arlene on Jan 20, 2006 18:03:17 GMT -5
Wow, tj. I mean your reviews are usually in depth, but damn!.
My mom and I were watching this one around Christmas. No one else was interested, but people were in and out of the room quite a bit. When Lindsey stabbed Angel with the sword and was doing his little taunting victory dance, Angel's reply got a laugh from everyone. "It could have been made of wood, dumbass." ;D
Watching this episode during its original run made me happy because the whole Lindsey thing was finally out in the open. The sneaking around bit was getting on my nerves.
|
|