More AtS season 4, and a plea
Sep. 9th, 2004 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI found a great story about Connor's summer with Fred and Gunn, exploring that relationship I wondered about in my last review. Go and read.
Now, onto more AtS goodness:
Supersymmetry is the darkest episode since the season opener, and it is Fred-centric. More than a year later, Illyria will tell Wesley that Fred changed when her memories changed. The memory of what happens in Supersymmetry is certainly crucial for Fred's development for the rest of season 4, right until the mind wipe.
To start with the blatantly obvious, this episode marks the beginning of the end of the Fred/Gunn romance. Fitting with the way other romances in the Jossverse end, we therefore get to see her and Gunn sublimely happy in the teaser. We also see a hyper and energetic Fred initialising sex with Gunn, which incidentally josses a quite annoying fanon I remember from the time which postulated Fred and Gunn never have sex. Fred, whose article has just been published and who has been invited for a lecture, remains on a high right until a portal opens behind her. On the way, various subplots to become relevant later are set in motion; Gunn not comprehending what on earth the article is about and being just the slightest bit bothered by this, Wesley cold-shouldering Lilah who follows him to the lecture, Connor teaching Cordelia how to fight and rapidly falling in love with her.
Once the portal has opened, freezing Fred in Pylea-induced horror which results in a night of wall-writing, something she hasn't done since early season 3, it's clear where the focus is. All the AtS characters get confronted with their past sooner or later, and some on a regular basis, but for Fred that had not happened since Fredless, when the past wore a pleasant face. (Fred being the sole AtS character with a functional relationship with her parents.) Interestingly, right before she discovers her professor's infamy she does seem tempted by his offer to rejoin the scientific community. This will come into play much later, in Home.
I'm still trying to figure out why I find Angel's and Gunn's behaviour towards Fred here incredibly condescending while I completely approve of Buffy's towards Willow in Villains. Both Angel & Gunn and Buffy try to prevent someone from killing a human being out of vengeance, and Gunn and Buffy both use the argument that they do this for the sake of the would-be-murderer even more than for the principle of the thing. But maybe the difference is that Buffy does not try to save Willow by killing Warren herself. (Also, to be fair, Warren committed a non-supernatural crime for which he could easily have been arrested and convicted; they probably could have proven his responsibility for Katrina's death as well. Whereas no court would have accepted a story about a physicist sending his grad students to other dimensions.)
(There is also the slight ambiguity: could Seidel have survived in whatever dimension Fred was going to send him to? She did.)
"Charles doesn't have it in him," says Fred to Wesley in this episode. "That's why I love him." "If you kill him, I'll be losing you," says Gunn to Fred. The mutual falling of the pedestals is ensured. Fred falling for Gunn in season 3 was partly based on the fact that unlike Angel and Wesley, both of whose dark sides she had gotten an extended glimpse on, Gunn symbolized safety, complete goodness and that brave new world, home. He had made sure she knocked him out before he could go after her in Billy. So it's not surprising that she idealized him, just as he had idealized her as the little girl lost who in that new community where he felt low on the pecking order chose him, not one of the others.
Wesley's initial brush-off of Lilah in his apartment had nothing to do with Fred and everything with her recent betrayal, but events in Supersymmetry, but when Fred comes to him for advise on how to revenge herself on her professor, he takes the chance, the in this gives her back into her life. In earlier times, he might have sided with Gunn, but this is Wesley who has kept a girl in a closet for an entire summer. Much like Spike who in After Life tells Xander that if Buffy had come back damaged he still wouldn't have allowed Willow to let her die again, because any form of Buffy was better than no Buffy at all, Wesley here is willing to take a Fred with a murder (or at the very least an act which leaves another human being predisposed to be killed soon) over no Fred at all. His taking Fred's body with Illyria in it over nothing of Fred is a natural consequence. (Though he will come to see Illyria as her own person.)
Spin The Bottle has an audio commentary by Joss and Alexis Denisof, who sound as if everyone involved had the blast of a lifetime making this episode. The fans weren't quite that enthralled, which sometimes happens. (I remember a Highlander convention where the episode the team remembered most fondly was the one where Duncan imitates a French director, which was dismissed as somewhat silly and forgettable by the fans.) As for me, I liked it. Not as much as I like the BTVS take on the "everyone has amnesia" cliché, Tabula Rasa, but I do like it. First, some points from the commentary:
- Joss had the idea initially because he wanted to see old school season 3 of BTVS Wesley again, but also new school Wesley in the same episode, and because he wanted to do more with the no-fourth-wall thing and the life-as-show metaphor from Once More, With Feeling
- The joke of Liam not having an Irish accent came because they didn't want to force David Boreanaz to do one for an entire episode
- "I have to say it was a blast writing and directing Charisma as old Cordelia again. By that point of the show, she had become so noble and so tortured and so… it was such a relief!" (I'll comment on this statement later)
- Liam in the bathroom, putting his game face on and off in quick succession with Cordelia outside, was a masturbation joke ("I'm famed for my highbrow humour", quoth Joss)
- While Wesley's stakes were naturally ejaculation jokes
- AD and DB were giggling so often in when they were filming the scene where Liam returns to the hotel after having seen the cars outside that they were forbidden to look at each other lest they crack each other up again
- Connor meeting his father as Liam was meant to provide a little insight into Angel for Connor, and draw some obvious parallels; when Connor says "Wait" after Liam said "I didn't ask to be born", Joss comments "and we have a little bonding", whereupon Alexis says "Bondage? Joss, you're sick", and Joss, not missing a beat, replies, "no, no, that I cut out" (hands up who has Very Wrong Thoughts right now)
- Pre-spell Gunn wondering what his role in the team was, and coming to the depressed conclusion that he was the muscle, was Joss verbalizing a problem the writers had with him ("Jay was a great actor, but we had been asking us on and off what Gunn's role on the show was, and so we decided to make this doubt a part of his character)
- On a more serious note, Cordelia leaving at the end in blurry focus is meant as both Angel and the viewer losing sight of her. After this, she's essentially gone.
Which brings me to my comment inspired by Joss' wistful remark about writing and directing Charisma as old school Cordy. Because even taking such factors like whatever trouble Charisma was having in season 3 which caused her absence for three episodes, and her pregnancy in season 4 into account, I think there is the real reason for Cordelia's fate on the show. Her old flaws had all vanished in season 3, and the writers didn't quite know what to do with the sanctified version of Cordelia that was left. Let's not forget that David Greenwalt had meant her ascension as something quite sincere; it was Joss who retconned it into Jasmine's wiles.
Now I suspect that if Charisma had a) not been pregnant and thus available for the entire fourth season, and b) had managed to do what Amy Acker did a season later with Illyria, i.e. make Evil!Cordy into a compelling character, the writers would have found a way for her to remain on the show. But this didn't happen. As opposed to David Boreanaz, who had his breakthrough as an actor when playing Angelus the first time, or SMG, who was terrific as Faith-in-Buffy or the Buffybot, or Alexis Denisof who could be various incarnations of Wesley with complete conviction (not just in Spin the Bottle but also in Lineage), or Amy Acker who silenced everyone who had bashed her along with Fred by her performance as Illyria, Charisma Carpenter remained visibly uncomfortable with Not-Quite-Cordelia. When she was given the opportunity to play Real!Cordy again in You're Welcome, she glowed. Not so in season 4.
Apocalypse, Nowish (the DVDs restored the original title) is the first example of the Jasmine-fied Cordelia. Her opening dream is probably our last glimpse into the head of Real!Cordy, who is being suffocated, and in retrospect has massive clues to what is going on. She watches an old movie about "pod people" (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one presumes). She tells Connor something horrible is clawing its way up, and that she can taste the blood of everyone who is going to die on her own lips. And the she sees the Beast instead of Connor and wakes up to real Connor asking her worriedly what was going on. What is going on, from this point onwards, is quite deliberate manipulation, both of Connor and of Angel.
When Connor in what shows his feelings for Cordy aren't just hormonal goes to Angel to ask him to talk to her, swallowing his own jealousy, father and son find her sitting cross-legged, surrounded by candles, just as she will sit when preparing to give birth in Inside Out. She tells Angel that despite her love for him, they can't be together because she has seen just what he did as Angelus now. Thinking back to our glimpses at Cordy surrounded by light in the earliest episodes, this doesn't fit, and indeed it's a deliberate lie to confuse and hurt Angel and get him out of the way for the ongoing seduction of Connor, as Steven DeKnight says on the audio commentary.
Similarly, it's Cordelia who tells Connor that the alley they're wandering through is where he was born and Darla died, thus setting up the connection between him and the Beast he (and the A.I. team) will believe in for quite some time. She also reminds him again of this in Habeas Corpses while denying she is doing just that, and tells Angel for good measure. And of course there is the scene that sent fandom screaming for months (which Steven DeKnight mentions): the apocalyptic sex (with Charisma looking as uncomfortable as possible, which might be understandable but does not fit the Jasminified Cordy).
Speaking of DeKnight's audio commentary, he and director Vern really go into the Vincent Kartheiser eloges there. "Best listener of the show," the director says, and DeKnight adds that if someone else's close-ups didn't work out, they knew that they could always use a cut to Connor instead because "with Vincent there were always about twelve different things going on behind his eyes". They both point out there is a single tear running down Connor's cheek when Cordelia kisses him, and the only other thing they gush about as much as VK throughout the episode is the big fight sequence with the Beast, which DeKnight insists is the coolest ever.
(I don't know. I'm not a particular fight sequence afficiniado, but I have a soft spot for the Angel vs Penn one from Somnabulist, the Angel vs Faith one from Five by Five, and the Angel vs Spike ones throughout Destiny.)
DeKnight also praises Stephanie Romanov for conveying Lilah's vulnerability under the sexy veneer in the scene where Wesley asks her to keep the glasses on. The Fred disguise was her idea, but "you can see how much this is hurting her. Wesley is a cad." Well, yes. But though I'm flagging a deceased equine here, the way fans reacted was another example of a double standard. Can you imagine what the reaction would have been if Spike had shown up in Angel drag to tease Buffy and Buffy had told him to "keep it on" during sex? She would have been even more bashed than usual. Wesley, though, got applauded for his hotness. The ones blamed were the writers, for making him fancy Fred, and Fred herself.
Mind you, I like Wesley. But that scene, which would be the last time he and Lilah were to have sex, is a good illustration why he couldn't have a functional relationship with either Lilah or Fred.
It's worth noting that the words Wesley deciphers from the W&H prints of Lorne's reading are "shrine of flesh", "heat" and "fallen". They think the shrine of flesh refers to where the Beast shows up, an old actor's club on a skyscraper, but in retrospect they all seem to be Jasmine references. With "shrine of flesh" being Cordelia. Poor Cordy.
Habeas Corpses, aka AtS Does Zombies, is as creepily effective as ever. In retrospect, it's also perfectly clear why the Beast goes after W&H first (the entrails of the little girl in the White Room aside), and why the firm doesn't come back until after Jasmine is dead, in Home. "I don't get it," Gunn says, "the Beast is evil. Wolfram & Hart is evil. Why hit on your own team?" (The assumptions that all villains would work for the same aims is of course completely naïve. Clearly, Gunn has never watched Babylon 5 where we have, say, a visiting villain like Bester who is nonetheless firmly opposed to the show's main villains, the Shadows and thus has a temporary alliance with the heroes.)
Angel thinks it's to take out the competition. Both assumptions are based on the idea that the slaughter the Beast commits is the point, and that its aim, as a good villain, is the apocalypse. Which is not the case. The chaos produced by the Beast is merely both distraction and preparation from the saviour to come, the bringer of world peace, not the end of the world - Jasmine. And both loss of free will (no more souls signed away) and world peace is the last thing W&H wants.
Wesley saving Lilah is answered by her telling him about Connor (instead of, as she seems to be about to for a moment, that she loves him - which either her pride or the sense that this would commit him more than he's able to keeps her from doing). Highlighting that the emotional connection they formed persists, it's also a contrast to the breakdown of communication between Angel and Cordelia in this episode. He both misunderstands what she's telling him and never wonders about her motives. Jealousy is ugly and consuming, and doesn't exactly help thinking. It also leads Angel to making a crucial mistake with Connor.
Their reunion and team-up at W&H is probably the (unfeigned) warmest scene they had since Benediction. Both for the spontaneous hug on Angel's part and the fact Connor does not show any hostility. His teasing Angel about the zombies sounds good-natured instead of aggressive (and is one of the very few instances when pre-mindwipe Connor makes a joke), and after they're back at the Hyperion, he makes a step towards his father, saying "Dad", probably intending to thank him for the rescue. Or perhaps offer a talk. We'll never know, as Angel turns his back on him, goes back to his office and tells Cordelia to take her new boyfriend and get out of his house.
When Cordelia later tells Connor that Angel is jealous of him and really hates, not loves him, events such as these will come in handy.
Switching fandoms: B5 fans, more volunteers for the Londothon are needed! Come on, you can do it. He is a good muse, I promise.
Now, onto more AtS goodness:
Supersymmetry is the darkest episode since the season opener, and it is Fred-centric. More than a year later, Illyria will tell Wesley that Fred changed when her memories changed. The memory of what happens in Supersymmetry is certainly crucial for Fred's development for the rest of season 4, right until the mind wipe.
To start with the blatantly obvious, this episode marks the beginning of the end of the Fred/Gunn romance. Fitting with the way other romances in the Jossverse end, we therefore get to see her and Gunn sublimely happy in the teaser. We also see a hyper and energetic Fred initialising sex with Gunn, which incidentally josses a quite annoying fanon I remember from the time which postulated Fred and Gunn never have sex. Fred, whose article has just been published and who has been invited for a lecture, remains on a high right until a portal opens behind her. On the way, various subplots to become relevant later are set in motion; Gunn not comprehending what on earth the article is about and being just the slightest bit bothered by this, Wesley cold-shouldering Lilah who follows him to the lecture, Connor teaching Cordelia how to fight and rapidly falling in love with her.
Once the portal has opened, freezing Fred in Pylea-induced horror which results in a night of wall-writing, something she hasn't done since early season 3, it's clear where the focus is. All the AtS characters get confronted with their past sooner or later, and some on a regular basis, but for Fred that had not happened since Fredless, when the past wore a pleasant face. (Fred being the sole AtS character with a functional relationship with her parents.) Interestingly, right before she discovers her professor's infamy she does seem tempted by his offer to rejoin the scientific community. This will come into play much later, in Home.
I'm still trying to figure out why I find Angel's and Gunn's behaviour towards Fred here incredibly condescending while I completely approve of Buffy's towards Willow in Villains. Both Angel & Gunn and Buffy try to prevent someone from killing a human being out of vengeance, and Gunn and Buffy both use the argument that they do this for the sake of the would-be-murderer even more than for the principle of the thing. But maybe the difference is that Buffy does not try to save Willow by killing Warren herself. (Also, to be fair, Warren committed a non-supernatural crime for which he could easily have been arrested and convicted; they probably could have proven his responsibility for Katrina's death as well. Whereas no court would have accepted a story about a physicist sending his grad students to other dimensions.)
(There is also the slight ambiguity: could Seidel have survived in whatever dimension Fred was going to send him to? She did.)
"Charles doesn't have it in him," says Fred to Wesley in this episode. "That's why I love him." "If you kill him, I'll be losing you," says Gunn to Fred. The mutual falling of the pedestals is ensured. Fred falling for Gunn in season 3 was partly based on the fact that unlike Angel and Wesley, both of whose dark sides she had gotten an extended glimpse on, Gunn symbolized safety, complete goodness and that brave new world, home. He had made sure she knocked him out before he could go after her in Billy. So it's not surprising that she idealized him, just as he had idealized her as the little girl lost who in that new community where he felt low on the pecking order chose him, not one of the others.
Wesley's initial brush-off of Lilah in his apartment had nothing to do with Fred and everything with her recent betrayal, but events in Supersymmetry, but when Fred comes to him for advise on how to revenge herself on her professor, he takes the chance, the in this gives her back into her life. In earlier times, he might have sided with Gunn, but this is Wesley who has kept a girl in a closet for an entire summer. Much like Spike who in After Life tells Xander that if Buffy had come back damaged he still wouldn't have allowed Willow to let her die again, because any form of Buffy was better than no Buffy at all, Wesley here is willing to take a Fred with a murder (or at the very least an act which leaves another human being predisposed to be killed soon) over no Fred at all. His taking Fred's body with Illyria in it over nothing of Fred is a natural consequence. (Though he will come to see Illyria as her own person.)
Spin The Bottle has an audio commentary by Joss and Alexis Denisof, who sound as if everyone involved had the blast of a lifetime making this episode. The fans weren't quite that enthralled, which sometimes happens. (I remember a Highlander convention where the episode the team remembered most fondly was the one where Duncan imitates a French director, which was dismissed as somewhat silly and forgettable by the fans.) As for me, I liked it. Not as much as I like the BTVS take on the "everyone has amnesia" cliché, Tabula Rasa, but I do like it. First, some points from the commentary:
- Joss had the idea initially because he wanted to see old school season 3 of BTVS Wesley again, but also new school Wesley in the same episode, and because he wanted to do more with the no-fourth-wall thing and the life-as-show metaphor from Once More, With Feeling
- The joke of Liam not having an Irish accent came because they didn't want to force David Boreanaz to do one for an entire episode
- "I have to say it was a blast writing and directing Charisma as old Cordelia again. By that point of the show, she had become so noble and so tortured and so… it was such a relief!" (I'll comment on this statement later)
- Liam in the bathroom, putting his game face on and off in quick succession with Cordelia outside, was a masturbation joke ("I'm famed for my highbrow humour", quoth Joss)
- While Wesley's stakes were naturally ejaculation jokes
- AD and DB were giggling so often in when they were filming the scene where Liam returns to the hotel after having seen the cars outside that they were forbidden to look at each other lest they crack each other up again
- Connor meeting his father as Liam was meant to provide a little insight into Angel for Connor, and draw some obvious parallels; when Connor says "Wait" after Liam said "I didn't ask to be born", Joss comments "and we have a little bonding", whereupon Alexis says "Bondage? Joss, you're sick", and Joss, not missing a beat, replies, "no, no, that I cut out" (hands up who has Very Wrong Thoughts right now)
- Pre-spell Gunn wondering what his role in the team was, and coming to the depressed conclusion that he was the muscle, was Joss verbalizing a problem the writers had with him ("Jay was a great actor, but we had been asking us on and off what Gunn's role on the show was, and so we decided to make this doubt a part of his character)
- On a more serious note, Cordelia leaving at the end in blurry focus is meant as both Angel and the viewer losing sight of her. After this, she's essentially gone.
Which brings me to my comment inspired by Joss' wistful remark about writing and directing Charisma as old school Cordy. Because even taking such factors like whatever trouble Charisma was having in season 3 which caused her absence for three episodes, and her pregnancy in season 4 into account, I think there is the real reason for Cordelia's fate on the show. Her old flaws had all vanished in season 3, and the writers didn't quite know what to do with the sanctified version of Cordelia that was left. Let's not forget that David Greenwalt had meant her ascension as something quite sincere; it was Joss who retconned it into Jasmine's wiles.
Now I suspect that if Charisma had a) not been pregnant and thus available for the entire fourth season, and b) had managed to do what Amy Acker did a season later with Illyria, i.e. make Evil!Cordy into a compelling character, the writers would have found a way for her to remain on the show. But this didn't happen. As opposed to David Boreanaz, who had his breakthrough as an actor when playing Angelus the first time, or SMG, who was terrific as Faith-in-Buffy or the Buffybot, or Alexis Denisof who could be various incarnations of Wesley with complete conviction (not just in Spin the Bottle but also in Lineage), or Amy Acker who silenced everyone who had bashed her along with Fred by her performance as Illyria, Charisma Carpenter remained visibly uncomfortable with Not-Quite-Cordelia. When she was given the opportunity to play Real!Cordy again in You're Welcome, she glowed. Not so in season 4.
Apocalypse, Nowish (the DVDs restored the original title) is the first example of the Jasmine-fied Cordelia. Her opening dream is probably our last glimpse into the head of Real!Cordy, who is being suffocated, and in retrospect has massive clues to what is going on. She watches an old movie about "pod people" (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one presumes). She tells Connor something horrible is clawing its way up, and that she can taste the blood of everyone who is going to die on her own lips. And the she sees the Beast instead of Connor and wakes up to real Connor asking her worriedly what was going on. What is going on, from this point onwards, is quite deliberate manipulation, both of Connor and of Angel.
When Connor in what shows his feelings for Cordy aren't just hormonal goes to Angel to ask him to talk to her, swallowing his own jealousy, father and son find her sitting cross-legged, surrounded by candles, just as she will sit when preparing to give birth in Inside Out. She tells Angel that despite her love for him, they can't be together because she has seen just what he did as Angelus now. Thinking back to our glimpses at Cordy surrounded by light in the earliest episodes, this doesn't fit, and indeed it's a deliberate lie to confuse and hurt Angel and get him out of the way for the ongoing seduction of Connor, as Steven DeKnight says on the audio commentary.
Similarly, it's Cordelia who tells Connor that the alley they're wandering through is where he was born and Darla died, thus setting up the connection between him and the Beast he (and the A.I. team) will believe in for quite some time. She also reminds him again of this in Habeas Corpses while denying she is doing just that, and tells Angel for good measure. And of course there is the scene that sent fandom screaming for months (which Steven DeKnight mentions): the apocalyptic sex (with Charisma looking as uncomfortable as possible, which might be understandable but does not fit the Jasminified Cordy).
Speaking of DeKnight's audio commentary, he and director Vern really go into the Vincent Kartheiser eloges there. "Best listener of the show," the director says, and DeKnight adds that if someone else's close-ups didn't work out, they knew that they could always use a cut to Connor instead because "with Vincent there were always about twelve different things going on behind his eyes". They both point out there is a single tear running down Connor's cheek when Cordelia kisses him, and the only other thing they gush about as much as VK throughout the episode is the big fight sequence with the Beast, which DeKnight insists is the coolest ever.
(I don't know. I'm not a particular fight sequence afficiniado, but I have a soft spot for the Angel vs Penn one from Somnabulist, the Angel vs Faith one from Five by Five, and the Angel vs Spike ones throughout Destiny.)
DeKnight also praises Stephanie Romanov for conveying Lilah's vulnerability under the sexy veneer in the scene where Wesley asks her to keep the glasses on. The Fred disguise was her idea, but "you can see how much this is hurting her. Wesley is a cad." Well, yes. But though I'm flagging a deceased equine here, the way fans reacted was another example of a double standard. Can you imagine what the reaction would have been if Spike had shown up in Angel drag to tease Buffy and Buffy had told him to "keep it on" during sex? She would have been even more bashed than usual. Wesley, though, got applauded for his hotness. The ones blamed were the writers, for making him fancy Fred, and Fred herself.
Mind you, I like Wesley. But that scene, which would be the last time he and Lilah were to have sex, is a good illustration why he couldn't have a functional relationship with either Lilah or Fred.
It's worth noting that the words Wesley deciphers from the W&H prints of Lorne's reading are "shrine of flesh", "heat" and "fallen". They think the shrine of flesh refers to where the Beast shows up, an old actor's club on a skyscraper, but in retrospect they all seem to be Jasmine references. With "shrine of flesh" being Cordelia. Poor Cordy.
Habeas Corpses, aka AtS Does Zombies, is as creepily effective as ever. In retrospect, it's also perfectly clear why the Beast goes after W&H first (the entrails of the little girl in the White Room aside), and why the firm doesn't come back until after Jasmine is dead, in Home. "I don't get it," Gunn says, "the Beast is evil. Wolfram & Hart is evil. Why hit on your own team?" (The assumptions that all villains would work for the same aims is of course completely naïve. Clearly, Gunn has never watched Babylon 5 where we have, say, a visiting villain like Bester who is nonetheless firmly opposed to the show's main villains, the Shadows and thus has a temporary alliance with the heroes.)
Angel thinks it's to take out the competition. Both assumptions are based on the idea that the slaughter the Beast commits is the point, and that its aim, as a good villain, is the apocalypse. Which is not the case. The chaos produced by the Beast is merely both distraction and preparation from the saviour to come, the bringer of world peace, not the end of the world - Jasmine. And both loss of free will (no more souls signed away) and world peace is the last thing W&H wants.
Wesley saving Lilah is answered by her telling him about Connor (instead of, as she seems to be about to for a moment, that she loves him - which either her pride or the sense that this would commit him more than he's able to keeps her from doing). Highlighting that the emotional connection they formed persists, it's also a contrast to the breakdown of communication between Angel and Cordelia in this episode. He both misunderstands what she's telling him and never wonders about her motives. Jealousy is ugly and consuming, and doesn't exactly help thinking. It also leads Angel to making a crucial mistake with Connor.
Their reunion and team-up at W&H is probably the (unfeigned) warmest scene they had since Benediction. Both for the spontaneous hug on Angel's part and the fact Connor does not show any hostility. His teasing Angel about the zombies sounds good-natured instead of aggressive (and is one of the very few instances when pre-mindwipe Connor makes a joke), and after they're back at the Hyperion, he makes a step towards his father, saying "Dad", probably intending to thank him for the rescue. Or perhaps offer a talk. We'll never know, as Angel turns his back on him, goes back to his office and tells Cordelia to take her new boyfriend and get out of his house.
When Cordelia later tells Connor that Angel is jealous of him and really hates, not loves him, events such as these will come in handy.
Switching fandoms: B5 fans, more volunteers for the Londothon are needed! Come on, you can do it. He is a good muse, I promise.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 09:59 am (UTC)It's good to share.
A bit unfair to Charisma
Date: 2004-09-09 09:01 am (UTC)Re: A bit unfair to Charisma
Date: 2004-09-09 10:07 am (UTC)SMG as Faith: well, she had to do more than copy EDs mannerisms - she had to sell Faith's crucial breakdown and turnaround, and she had to play Faith playing Buffy in a manner that did not look as if it were Buffy in "When she was bad" mood.
Similarily, an episode like Bargaining II required her to be both the cheerful Buffybot with its odd vulnerability and the deeply traumatized, nearly non-verbal resurrected Buffy. And she played them both utterly convincing. I can't recall Charisma pulling of a similar feat as an actress on either show.
Re: A bit unfair to Charisma
Date: 2004-09-09 11:33 am (UTC)I would say that Charisma seemed uncomfortable in the role of Evil!Cordelia, until Inside Out, which is the first time I sensed her actually enjoying her role as villain, as she embodies it much more convincingly. Her lines, particularly in the scene with Connor and Darla, have a fire to them lacking in her almost monotone reading of lines in earlier scenes with Connor (the "We're different, Connor" speeches) and the Beast. Unfortunately, she just began getting the swing of the character on her last episode before she spent the rest of the season as a comatose prop!
By the way...
Date: 2004-09-09 11:51 am (UTC)Re: A bit unfair to Charisma
Date: 2004-09-09 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 09:12 am (UTC)Jay was a great actor, but we had been asking us on and off what Gunn's role on the show was, and so we decided to make this doubt a part of his character
I find it interesting, that they had the same problems with Xander as with Gunn. Which makes me wonder if Joss can write interesting story arcs for “normal” characters. Memo to self: must see Firefly, where as far as I have read, most of the characters are normal.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 10:13 am (UTC)Well, none of them save River have something like superpowers. They all have different functions on the ship, too, and in the emotional family that forms. I recently wrote a Firefly analysis (http://www.livejournal.com/users/selenak/102452.html) which goes into how Joss characterises them and how this connects with his earlier shows and the characters there.
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Date: 2004-09-09 09:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 09:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 10:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 09:26 am (UTC)*resists*
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Date: 2004-09-09 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-10 12:19 am (UTC)*goes to sign up, then*
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Date: 2004-09-10 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-10 01:50 am (UTC)*stomps off to locate S5 DVD to complete her B5 collection and YES DAMMIT I GAVE IN AND BOUGHT THE FIRST FOUR SEASONS*
Do you know a good source of screencaps or other pics? I need some pictures to fuck around with, make some wallpaper and icons or something.
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Date: 2004-09-10 02:55 am (UTC)Screencaps are to be found here (http://www.visi.com/~wildfoto/b5pix.html).
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Date: 2004-09-19 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 09:49 am (UTC)Now I suspect that if Charisma had a) not been pregnant and thus available for the entire fourth season, and b) had managed to do what Amy Acker did a season later with Illyria, i.e. make Evil!Cordy into a compelling character, the writers would have found a way for her to remain on the show.
I wonder if the whole Illyria plotline was a way to retry something that didn't totally work. Joss does like to turn his women demonic but Willow got redeemed, Cordy got a coma and eventual death, so only Illyria/Fred stayed demonic to the end.
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Date: 2004-09-09 10:41 am (UTC)Anyway - this could have been one of the reasons for the Illyria plot line, yes.
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Date: 2004-09-09 11:47 am (UTC)There was some definite (and, I believe, deliberate) parallels between Jasmine and Illyria. For starters, we have the irony that the force for control and peace emerged from the part-demon character, whereas the force of chaos and destruction came from the scientist. They are both morally ambiguous, although, interestingly, we as an audience were encouraged to dislike Jasmine, due to her stripping of peoples' free will (in essence, what makes us human), whereas Illyria, on the other hand, we were gradually encouraged to like. They were both former powers of different kinds, but Jasmine exerted her will to mold people into how she wanted them to be, whereas Illyria eventually had to adapt herself to attempt to fit into this strange, new world. I wouldn't exactly call Illyria an attempt to retry something that didn't work before but rather a deliberate comment on/counterpoint to the plotline of the previous year. Jasmine forces humanity into stripping itself of its identity. She may truly care for humans, as she claims at the end of Peace Out, but her good intentions are warped by her own narcissism and desire to be followed blindly and unquestionably. Illyria, on the other hand, makes a journey from not caring about humans at all, and seeing them as mere bugs to be squashed (shades of Glory) or ignored all together, to having deep feelings for one human in particular, Wesley, and finding herself influenced by the remnants of a human soul which has ironically infected her, the exact opposite of the Jasmine/Cordy situation.
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Date: 2004-09-09 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 04:39 pm (UTC)*greets you in that
RomanCentauri forearms way*no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 10:42 am (UTC)mm, commentary
Date: 2004-09-10 02:16 pm (UTC)She would have been even more bashed than usual. Wesley, though, got applauded for his hotness. The ones blamed were the writers, for making him fancy Fred, and Fred herself.
You know, I don't really think this is a fair assessment. Which isn't to say there isn't an unreasonable amount of sexism in fandom or Buffy-bashing (I don't like her much, but it's ridiculous in a fandom named after her). It's just that as outwardly similar as the Spike/Buffy and Wes/Lilah relationships are I don't think that comparing Buffy's emotional and verbal smack down of Spike (the arena where she holds all the power) to a nasty verbal trick in a relationship based entirely around nasty verbal tricks and mind games. The power dynamic is similar, because I think Wes has the emotional power too, but these tricks have been a consistent and mutual part of the relationship and I don't think there is much indication that Wes is aware how how much power he holds there, as opposed to Buffy who very much does.
Lilah as-Fred/Spike-as-Angel may have the same supposed emotional resonance for the characters, but for fan reaction? A better comparison would be Spike-as-Riley. In which case I think Riley bashing would have broken out and much yelling at the writers to Just Let It Go.
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Date: 2004-09-13 09:37 am (UTC)Wheeee, I wrote an entire essay about Gunn and Xander in which this was my main point. I...am...vindicated!
::does a little dance::
And these reviews are brilliant. Giving me a totally new perspective on some episodes, which I will now have to go watch again...oh the pain...;)
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Date: 2004-09-13 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-13 09:55 pm (UTC)*snerk* Now someone clearly needs to write a fic where part of his lawyer training included watching B5.
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Date: 2004-09-13 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-14 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-14 12:26 am (UTC)Supersymmetry
Date: 2006-04-20 08:15 pm (UTC)I dislike "Supersymmetry" on a lot of levels -- first of all, I don't like Amy Acker's performance, partly for eccentric and personal reasons (as a portrayal of women in academia it's so close-to-interesting-but-just-a-
little-off that it bugs me, with the bonus of reminding me of somebody I know and don't like) but also because I think the shift from cute flighty Fred to OMGSODARK!FRED is a little over-the-top (as you mentioned re: happy-couple-to-breakup episodes, the shift b/t extremes is a common Jossian thing, but here it feels like too much).
But beyond that, the internal logic of the episode makes no sense to me. first, as you point out:
(There is also the slight ambiguity: could Seidel have survived in whatever dimension Fred was going to send him to? She did.)
Yes, exactly. Fred sending Seidel to another dimension as tit-for-tat works for me with her character; the way that everybody starts equating it with murder -- up to and including Gunn deciding he might as well break the guy's neck since Fred is sending him anyway -- just feels weird. And I honestly don't see the final act being in character for Gunn -- I can't think of anything in the past that foreshadows it; it just felt like one twist too many just to make the audience gasp. And it ends up making Gunn look like an ass for his later hostility towards Wes -- if what we had actually gotten was Charles watching Fred do the killing, and not been able to talk her out of it, then his getting angry at Wes makes a lot more sense. Ditto Angelus' later taunt that Gunn's not dark enough -- the way the episode plays with Gunn as the killer almost puts the writers in collusion with angel & Gunn as far as not wanting to send Fred over the edge.
Now what I do really love is Wesley -- who less than a year ago was lecturing Holtz on the futility of vengeance -- saying, "Vengeance? Sounds good." I don't even know that it's an equivalent of saying "I'd rather have killer!Fred than no Fred," so much as that his moral compass is so off at this point that he really thinks he IS (as he later tells Gunn) giving her what she needs, and Gunn can't give her.
The Joss/Alexis commentary on "Spin the Bottle" is the best thing ever. Then, I'm sure you're shocked I'd say that.
Re: Supersymmetry
Date: 2006-04-21 05:56 am (UTC)also because I think the shift from cute flighty Fred to OMGSODARK!FRED is a little over-the-top
I see three stages of Fred in this episode, actually: cute flighty Fred early on, then shell-shocked Fred (aka Return of Immediate Post Pylea Fred), complete with wall writing), and then Dark!Fred, looking for vengeance. Like I said in the review, this made sense to me. And again I say, look at Fred going from maternal/big sisterly and concerned!Fred to Taser!Fred with Connor in Deep Down in the space of a heartbeat because she found out what he did to Angel and that he had been lying to her and Gunn. (With the first tasering a sensible way to incapacitate a superpowered being when you're yourself without superpowers, but the second clearly meant to hurt, and nothing else.)
Fred sending Seidel to another dimension as tit-for-tat works for me with her character; the way that everybody starts equating it with murder -- up to and including Gunn deciding he might as well break the guy's neck since Fred is sending him anyway -- just feels weird.
In fairness to Gunn, he heard Fred announce she's looking for painful ways to kill the guy in the Hyperion, before she faked giving in and went to Wesley for advice. So the conclusion that the dimension she's sending him towards is of the lethal kind is not a bewildering one for Gunn to make.
Re: Gunn's hostility to Wesley later - well, I always took that to be two-fold because blaming Wes was easier than blaming himself, plus to his mind, if Wesley hadn't supported Fred, Gunn wouldn't have been in a position to commit that murder. That and plain old jealousy because Fred did go to Wesley.
Now what I do really love is Wesley -- who less than a year ago was lecturing Holtz on the futility of vengeance -- saying, "Vengeance? Sounds good." I don't even know that it's an equivalent of saying "I'd rather have killer!Fred than no Fred," so much as that his moral compass is so off at this point that he really thinks he IS (as he later tells Gunn) giving her what she needs, and Gunn can't give her.
Which reminds me again of my theory that later s5 puts Wesley in fast forward through what he experienced the first time around again, because this also ties with him telling Illyria about the sanctity of human life after having killed Knox (and admitting there is a little contradiction there...)