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Post by tjaman on Apr 9, 2006 21:31:44 GMT -5
Well, I still have practically all of S1, and I've only reviewed like eight Buffies and three or four Fireflies, so I've got quite a few left, if we're being honest.
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Post by dEz on Apr 10, 2006 5:50:13 GMT -5
Nice review, as usual.
So what happens when we run out of episodes?
* starts to hum "Where Do We Go From Here" * Well there will be N/T starting up again ... ... and then there IS our dangling hope that Joss will pick up his pen and give us something new to review again ...
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Post by tjaman on Apr 10, 2006 12:49:11 GMT -5
True enough.
Most of my reactions to N/T eppies vanished with the 'Tome.
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Post by tjaman on Apr 19, 2006 1:36:28 GMT -5
S5x18 - ORIGIN
My parents are liars and I can never trust them, but it's cool.
In light of Angel's conversation with Connor in "Not Fade Away," it's all so obvious.
Most viewers took it for granted that Connor's memories returned when the Window of Orlon was smashed. I was misled, but in retrospect, Joss played very fair.
Never mind Angel's exchange with Connor in "Not Fade Away." It's spelled out perfectly (for the less gullible) in "Origin."
Connor: "You've got to do what you can to protect your family. I learned that from my father."
So who was Connor kidding?
Well, let's start with who Joss was kidding.
I've been asked how on earth I couldn't have known instantly that Connor's memories had been restored. After all, the fight went co-incidentally in his favor when Wes smashed the Window. Why was I so resistant to the obvious?
Vail had created a beautiful set of memories for Connor. Memories of love, hope and promises fulfilled. Like Angel, I was heartbroken at the idea that all of these memories were stolen from this boy, who was suddenly dear to me. Connor, at the end of S4x22 - HOME, was sweet and loving and genuinely happy. He hadn't been stolen from a loving father. He hadn't been tied to what passes in the Qor'Toth for a tree for five days by the only father figure he had and loosed himself to track him (a truly macabre version of hide-and-seek). His mind had not been systematically poisoned against the vampire who loved him, whose soul cried out to save him, who never gave up hope until it had shagged the only mother figure it had ever known, tried to murder its own father several times, run a fist through its own child's face and strung up a dozen innocents in a psychotic sacrifice of fear, who Angel had had to all but destroy.
And, finally, if we are the sum of our memories, did.
It's not until after this episode that Angel realizes what Illyria is doing is testing CYNTHIA!, not the other way around, and his mind could not have misplaced the memories of sparring with Connor as Connor learned his moves and readied himself to destroy Angel in S3x22 - TOMORROW.
If Angel resisted with every fiber of his being Connor's memories being restored, Wes could hardly do it fast enough.
I hadn't gotten that Vail hadn't teleported the Window into Wesley's hand -- that that was probably one of Illyria's time-stand-still things. But regardless of how it got to Wes, Vail could've called it back. Vail knew what memories he'd created for Wes and maybe he was less satisfied with the hours upon pleasurable hours of Jenga he'd sketched in for Wes (an aside from S5x13 - WHY WE FIGHT), so maybe his creative sensibilities weren't so offended if only Wesley's memories were in danger of flooding back.
That's part of what I forgot. The memories are restored. They are not replaced outright. As Connor explains in the series finale, the dark memories resurfaced. They did not entirely overpower. He had access to his fighting abilities.
He also remained, essentially, Connor. Connor was always stridently forthright. That wasn't always attractive for those of us who'd seen all three seasons up until his appearance in S3x20 - A NEW WORLD. But he was always fiercely loyal, even if it was a loyalty we as viewers might not have shared, even if we saw the manipulation involved, even when it made the character thoroughly unappealing.
He was Connor. He was always Connor.
A word about loyalty. Watching this series as an adopted person, I recognize Angel's difficulty in giving up a son he'd known for maybe a good part of a year, under drastically diverse circumstances. He'd gotten to share his life only so very briefly, and he recognized what that life entailed.
When W&H offered to save him, to set aside the darkness, anger and frustration inherent in the life Angel could offer him, to provide him with a loving family with loving parents, Angel took the offer.
Parents cannot bear their children to suffer, and from the life he'd won in S2x09 - THE TRIAL -- which is the only good explanation we've ever received for Connor's mystical parentage -- Angel recognized the suffering his child would face if he stayed. He recognized it as a magical gift to the world that he could only manage to save from itself -- and not completely.
Connor had a terrible lot in life. By giving him up -- completely -- Angel could improve it, make it better. Looking in from the outside at the life Connor could enjoy without him, Angel was secure in his determination that this was the best choice.
Was it?
Was it .. for everyone?
Part of the deal, struck during that wash to white in S4x22 - HOME -- entailed the attachment of Lorne, Wes, Fred and Gunn to W&H. And at the end of their tours, they were all convinced W&H was a good move. At the beginning of S5x01 - CONVICTION, Fred outlined how quickly they'd all decided.
But all of them had gotten into that limo. All of them were open to the possibilities W&H was showing them. All of them felt, at some point, that they were making a good decision.
The day Wesley couldn't remember so terribly well. And which he could no longer trust. Angel gave him sort of a pep-talk at the beginning of this episode, telling him to regain his own life in the wake of losing Fred.
Now, tracking down the articles of incorporation signed in Angel's blood, he couldn't be so sure that Angel wasn't the one responsible for her loss.
Vail's got some powerful mojo. Even an ancient demon-god-thing couldn't suss out the overwritten memories. If Illyria had been able to fix a cold, ice blue eye on Fred's true past, he could've set Wesley's mind a little easier.
As it was, Wesley smashed that Window out of grief. And in no small measure, to perhaps restore Fred in some measure to the intractible artifact walking around in her skin. His was an act of aggression which led to an overload of regression.
He couldn't bear it. He knows at the end that his memories were not created so he could forget his past, but to endure it.
Alexis Denisof has some amazing scenes coming up.
That Window has some far-reaching effects. With its destruction, Lorne's memories of Connor seem to have been restored, as are those of Fred, who is no longer, as are Gunn's, who is located in another dimension entirely. An aside, but one wishes he'd given Hamilton a little longer to outline exactly what it was the Senior Partners wanted from him in exchange for his freedom, but it was clearly enough to send the newly minted Liaison to the Senior Partners into the suburban dungeon to make the offer in the first place.
That was simply an illustration of Gunn's willingness to pursue his penance regardless of cost. Noble, really.
It shouldn't have surprised me that Connor's memories were restored. He was only on the other side of a barrier, however mystical.
I just ... wish he could just have continued to be the completely loving, perfectly self-possessed spark of light he'd become. Artifice though it may well be, he'd earned a lifetime of good karma, and the happy denial he navigated was much happier and far less morally ambiguous than the life he'd finally been given some reprieve from.
Can't deny it was fun seeing Sahjahn again. Can't deny it was fun meeting Cyvus Vail. Really enjoyed Connor in this episode. A Stanford student, a mostly not-violent, incredibly sweet-natured boy with a plucky indestructibility.
Vail had given him what Angel could not -- his innocence.
And it survived, on some level.
"He can't show me anything I haven't already seen."
Connor's restored memories allowed him to save his own life and fulfill his destiny.
A clue I'd been hanging onto by the molecules at the tips of my fingernails was Connor's ability to fight in the parking lot at the hotel. His body remembered how to fight, I reasoned, even if he himself could not.
He was fighting to save his family.
He fought less well to save himself, to fulfill a prophecy he'd only just learned of -- one which nicely wrapped up a storyline left over from S3x17 - FORGIVING, in which Sahjahn reveals the grand plan behind his manipulations of Holtz et al. as having been his own, rewriting ancient prophecies so they'd have a happier ending (for him) but which doesn't change the thrust of a prophecy (although you can't believe everything you're foretold).
SAHJAHN: You're making a pretty good case for free will.
Exploring that: In "B-S1x12 - PROPHECY GIRL," Buffy brings about the fulfillment of her confrontation with the Master by choosing to go to him.
Sahjahn could've ignored the prophecy and remained incorporeal forever. He could've spent Connor's entire lifetime living it up comfortably in the 1800s. By pushing events, by being proactive, Sahjahn becomes corporeal -- and therefore, mortal -- and then trapped until confront the man predestined to destroy him.
But rather than this simple, straightforward destiny, Connor gained the totality of his experience. And with his much more positive self-image, it strengthened him.
Wesley regained the totality of his own experience. And it devastated him.
Angel has an exchange with Wes, in S5x07 - LINEAGE, in which he commends Wes for making the tough calls, the decisions no one else can make -- a truth he'd never completely grasped before. Wes is unable to fathom the full meaning of that statement, but it is, in fact, Angel's apology for trying to murder him in S3x17 - FORGIVING.
There's so much good in this episode, but the question remains -- in Connor's cryptic conversation with Angel, who is Joss trying to kid?
He's trying to kid Angel.
My gullibility was incidental. But in order for Connor to live up to the complete sacrifice he's only just beginning to comprehend Angel has made on his behalf, he needs to protect Angel from the truth of his own reality.
Axe still dripping with Sahlahn's essence, Connor clumsily admits to having gone a little hardcore, that he'd gotten "really cranky," that he doesn't know where his burst of amazing fighting abilities came from.
In Angel's office, he's a lot smoother. His objective, to protect his family. And he knows to what depths that includes Angel.
And he can't let him know, because Angel has lost too much for Connor to be the same person who nearly destroyed dozens lives, including that of the woman he loved.
Angel's lost too much for him to come right out with it.
Far too much good to talk about with this one. I'll let Nick or someone else talk about Wesley and Illyria and Spike a little bit more. As for me, time to stretch out for awhile.
Great, great eppy.
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Post by tjaman on Jun 17, 2006 15:25:29 GMT -5
S5x21 - "POWER PLAY"
Drogyn joins the ranks of people Angel cannot save.
After engineering his arrival, Angel accomplishes his execution. "I had to make them believe someone that good and that pure was my enemy."
In fact, had he become Angel's enemy?
Unwittingly, perhaps. Or more to the point, he became the means by which Angel could save the world.
With the transfer of the Visions to Angel, in Cordelia's dying moments, the Powers That Be set out a long, thudding warning bell -- to wit: These are the people who are bringing about the Apocalypse.
Sadly, however, the Powers That Be couldn't manage to transmit an image of them without their masks.
So the only way for Angel to track them all down was to infiltrate them.
And how is a simple, garden variety vampire with a soul going to manage that?
Well, how did he manage to plant whatever evidence it was that Drogyn found in the Deeper Well?
Angel's actions transferred meaning to the deaths of Cordy (by acting on the Visions) and Fred (by claiming entre to the Circle of the Black Thorn, a secret society).
Gunn: I've never heard of it. Lindsey: That's because it's secret.
The reveal of the Circle -- ultimately, powerful baddies Angel has encountered throughout the season -- gave a nice justification for Lindsey's reappearance: Trying to be part of the Circle.
Good, bad, they're past all of that. They're interested in Power. Power to bring about wholesale destruction.
And we heard an echo from "Conversations With Dead People," where Cassie is taunting Willow -- "I'm done with the whole good, bad thing, I'm over it." -- nota bene for the purists -- all quotes are from best recollection: I'm at my parents' house and it's dialup so I'm not looking all of this stuff up.
It's sad they wouldn't consider amassing their great powers to end world hunger or to build communication between the races. But Lord Acton's axiom -- as partially quoted by Lorne -- rang true: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. A recent rerun of "Law & Order" cited "The Third Man," in which Orson Wells looks down on a fairground from a Ferris wheel and refers to the people as "dots." And if one of those dots were to stop moving, what would you care, really?
"An ant with the best intentions or the most diabolical schemes, is, in the end, no more or less than just an ant."
Angel's rant belied his true nature, which he outlined in an earlier season: "If what we do doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is what we do." Or something like that.
Anything to break the stranglehold of W&H's insidious hold over people -- "The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Angel does something. In a whole world full of good people doing nothing, he wants to do something. To look out for the downtrodden, to hear the voices of the dispossessed -- he rejected the Gem of Amarra specifically to stay connected to the people who needed him the most.
To help the hopeless.
So ... enter Drogyn.
Well, in order to help the hopeless, to turn the tide against evil's all-but-inevitable triumph (given the attractive corruption of power), Angel needs to be in a position to blunt the most direct attack, the agency of the apocalypse, the Circle of the Black Thorn in everyone's side. Against the Senior Partners' relative holding pattern of "keep fueling man's inhumanity to man until everything falls apart," he can bring down their functionaries in this dimension.
And we hear an echo of Wesley from Pylea: "If you try to save everyone, you end up saving no-one."
Wesley should've understood intuitively what Angel was up to. Using the strategems of The Senior Partners against them -- attend to the raft of "projects" that breeze in through the front door -- The Fell Brethren's sacrifice, Senator Bitca's opposition, etc. -- to lull them into a false sense of security while he uses his position as the head of the L.A. branch to shove a gigantic spanner in the works.
Yes, Angel took Drogyn's life to accomplish his ascension. Drogyn was one of those dots that stopped moving around so much.
But to get to the place he needed to be -- to save everyone -- Drogyn became a person Angel couldn't save.
Nina was a person he could.
And despite the way that scene was written, I believe that an post-shoop Angel joining her on the beach would hardly be unwelcome.
Angel knows full well that if the apocalypse comes and he can't stop it, Nina could be a few blocks over from it or she could be in Switzerland. The end of the world is the End of the World.
But at least her last hours would be spent with her family enjoying the day.
He couldn't tip his hand too much, or the final moments of the episode wouldn't have had as much meaning for us. Such a different vibe from the earlier meeting, Angel lets them in on it.
But never mind a mildly confused Hamilton standing outside Angel's office. Wouldn't the Senior Partners see right through a glamor?
Well -- they can't be everywhere at once.
To my understanding, Drogyn became the Season Five version of Tina.
In "City Of," the Powers That Be sent Doyle a vision about Tina, a girl in trouble who Angel tried to save from a powerful and very connected vampire who'd been victimizing a string of young naive girls for his own nefarious purposes.
He couldn't save Tina from Russell Winters, which I choose to see as a motive force throughout the series.
But his efforts put him in touch with Cordy. Who did grow to care about him enough to reach out with her last efforts to show him who the Big Bad was.
He had respect for that objective. He had no illusions of doing anything so prosaic as winning. But as the only being with insight into the Circle with knowledge of what they were up to and with a will to put a stop to it, he knew he had to try.
And no time like the present. His loyalty to the Circle is confirmed by his associates' fears and suspicions of him. The tattoo is on his chest and the plan is set.
Angel has seen the enemy.
He's got a big sword and knows where to point it.
Let the slashing begin.
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Post by tjaman on Jul 5, 2006 9:09:03 GMT -5
S5x22 - NOT FADE AWAY
Goodbye, yellow brick road.
Consider the purpose of a series finale.
For a show like "Angel," where so very much has happened, a lesser writer might look at the 42 minutes he has and use it to try to wrap up absolutely everything that's ever happened in the series.
Cram in guest appearances, visit the lab where the ninja cyborgs are made, reference every battle ever fought, show what the ultimate purpose of the Shanshu prophecy entails, try to squish an epic battle between the Powers That Be and the Senior Partners in, turn all the vampires human or ensoul the lot of them, closing with Angel, now human, standing astride the apocalyptic wreckage, bathed in sunlight and kissing a now somehow infatuated Buffy.
A lesser writer would have no sense of scope.
Joss, however, somehow knew exactly what he needed to do.
He needed to say goodbye.
In the spring of 2004, it's entirely possible that there was all kinds of excitement among cast and crew and maybe a few executives here and there for additional projects. At that time, maybe it felt like there were going to be all kinds of television movies and even big screen wrapups.
And it's very true -- Joss cleverly sowed sufficient seed over the course of S5 to take the project Somewhere.
But the realist in him suspected that would probably not come to fruition. Already, the WB had indicated in practical and implicit ways that they honestly didn't get it any more -- if indeed they ever had -- and that Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy were coming off their collective speed dial.
So he basically needed to say goodbye.
Consider all the ways he'd been saying goodbye up until that point.
In "Conviction," CYNTHIA! said goodbye to the hotel. It was a big move, and commented on briefly in "Underneath" where Fred could see it from Angel's suite (its having been purchased by Scientologists was somewhat intriguing) and "The Girl in Question," where the Burkles commented that the law firm was "a couple of steps" up from the Hyperion.
In "You're Welcome," he said goodbye not only to Cordelia, who got the sweetest possible sendoff -- she was the undisputed star of that episode, and the key to the season finale. If her demon infusion protected her brain from the Visions, and also gave rise to Jasmine, then when Jasmine left her a comatose shell of her former self, one more Vision -- the one that pointed Angel in the direction he needed to go -- probably blew the back of her head out, if the sequence in "Birthday" can be believed, and I personally believe it.
"You're Welcome" was much nicer as goodbyes go than our having to witness the back of Cordy's head exploding.
It was also a farewell to Doyle. The tape he made in "Hero" was the only thing left to bring back, the only way they could legitimately feature his goodbye without a cheesy clip or a vulgar recasting. Lindsey's reintroduction as Doyle in "Soul Purpose" with the ice cream headache visions would've been crass if they hadn't been planning to air "That's it? Am I done?" one last time.
So by "You're Welcome," we had full circle on the visions, undisputable and relevant ties to the first season, strong themes on where we've been and where we're going -- Lindsey's line at the end of "City Of" suggests that W&H and the Senior Partners are a series arc Big Bad and certainly Angel has tussled with them in the past.
We had a lovely farewell to Fred at the end of "Shells," with her little smile as she headed off toward Los Angeles. And we had a lovely farewell to Darla in "Why We Fight" ...
* needle scratch *
Whaaaaa ... ?
It just occured to me this a.m., watching "Darla" on TNT, that Angel can't have sired Darla in S2.
Lawson's appearance in "Why We Fight," his very ambiguity, made it necessary for someone who wasn't Angel to sire Darla. The fact that they ran Drusilla to earth and brought her in to do it was just icing. But if Angel had sired her, there'd be this question as to what effect his ensouled status might have had on her. If there was that question running behind the lifeforce he earned in "The Trial," Connor might have seemed to project entirely from his doing -- parthenogenically, as it were -- and Darla's appearance in "Inside Out" might have been less interesting somehow. The fact that she and Angel were their own entities when Connor was conceived makes it a little cooler for me -- that Darla had all the more to do with it than merely the oven for his bun.
Darla and Dru's flashback appearance in "The Girl in Question" was very cool as well, but this view seemed to give all the more importance to "Why We Fight" than it had had before, so ... maybe it's just me, but I enjoyed that.
The fact that W&H brought her back specifically to corrupt Angel and Angel did everything in his power to redeem her may have been behind her willingness to sacrifice herself for Connor's birth in the first place.
Angel and Darla's destinies were absolutely intertwined through all of that.
Connor's conversation with Angel in "Not Fade Away" -- oh yes, I'm still discussing this episode -- was an excellent goodbye to his character. He was complete. He had the terrible childhood, he had the instant therapy of Vail's fake memories, and he had the direction he was going in -- college student, Stanford. And willing to pitch in on the whole Apocalypse thing.
Whereas before, he was the Destroyer. He was willing to take a whole lot of lives with him to end his pain in "Home," now he was willing to throw in with the whole "saving the world" biz.
Angel's conversation with Harmony after renouncing his dream of recapturing his humanity was interesting, because it was a nice goodbye for her. Harmony packed into a couple of sentences who she'd ever been and who she had become. Her character arc from "Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest" to that conversation in Angel's office was a nice little farewell to the 'Verse as well. The two people left who'd been there all along.
Gunn ... Spike ... Gunnn ... Spike ...
Both could legitimately come next. Read them in whichever order you'd like.
Gunn's farewell was a series arc farewell. He was the only human left at the end and he was fading fast. His appearance in the alley was where Joss was in his battle with the WB. He'd been a part of Angel's life since S1 and he went out slaying vampires, with a note of railing against the injustice of the world, articulated by Anne, who also represented a maturity and a wisdom born of eleven seasons in the 'verse.
Keep fighting the darkness. Don't let it win. Even if it's going to. Keep fighting.
And Spike's farewell seemed to be a farewell to Buffy as well. His final day was spend reciting his poetry, a celebration of the creative and the person he'd been. And his final fight referenced his contribution to the events of "Chosen" -- no amulets. ;D It put a nice little bookend on his appearance in S5 and tipped a hat to the series finale of Buffy.
There are significant farewells in Wesley, who had been mourning Fred since her death, whose life had in many real ways ended in "A Hole in the World." Wes spent his final day tending to Fred's grave, in the person of Illyria, and discussed the person he'd been through the entire series. Sending Wes to meet with Vail was like Wesley meeting with Holtz. Only this time Angel was in on the "betrayal." It was a great farewell and his final moments let us mourn Fred one last time as well.
Lorne's farewell got crowded out a little, but his regrets were like those of people whose dreams had died a little, whose lives were not going the way they wanted them to, who had to pull the trigger on something significant.
I think Joss spent as little time with Lorne in "Not Fade Away" as he did because he was the one who had to write the gunshot to the heart. And it was no less painful and distasteful to him than it was for Lorne.
And Angel.
Angel's battle with Hamilton, assisted by Connor, put a tangible face on the Senior Partners -- a way that they could be respresented. Hamilton came right out and said he was their representative, and how was he brought down?
Angel ate him.
It was the coolest way for us to end his storyline. Would he be human? Would he win? Would he bring down W&H once and for all?
Probably they could rebuild in the blink of an eye. Evil is always there to fight. But what he could do, as a vampire with a soul, was live on through his son and fight the darkness where he found it.
And in "Not Fade Away," he was able to take a big cracking swing at it.
Hell ...
I wanna slay the dragon, too. ;D
Nicely done, people.
Nicely, nicely done.
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MaxC
Big Bad
ooh yeah
Posts: 198
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Post by MaxC on Jul 5, 2006 11:33:18 GMT -5
That was very nicely written Tj. I'd like to bring something to the table - on the question of 'why we fight'. Why Angel fights. It seems that in Season 3 of Buffy, in the episode 'Gingerbread' (btw, very good eppy), Buffy and Angel had a little discussion. Buffy was doubting about the effectiveness of her slaying (with good reason), and whether the fight was pointless because the eveil just keeps coming. It didnt seem to make much of a difference.. Angel answered that it wasn't pointless, and it was the reason why he continues the fight - because that is what he learnt from Buffy. Angel even gave up being human to continue the fight for Buffy. It might not be like that anymore in Season 5 of Angel, but although Angel inspires everyone else around him, to die for him, this all stemed from Buffy herself. Did Buffy have the same effect on Spike? Edit: After watching 'Amends', it looks like Season 3 is what made Angel who he was in the series. The setup to be a hero, the question about being back (which Buffy ask herself in Season 6) from hell, the strength and the reason to fight. Season 3 is a lot better than I remembered it.
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