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Weekend plans and season 5 of AtS revisited
Firstly, many RL things happened this week, and it's not going to get better, because this weekend I'm going to be at the FedCon in Bonn and will do my best to get a Stephen Furst autograph for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hobsonphile. (Which reminds me: must still write to muffinmonster, and to hmpf.) I haven't been to a convention for years (I think the last was one of the Redemptions (i.e. B7/B5), organized by the ever wonderfulwatervole). Should be fun to leave the mundane world behind in RL for a while, but will also keep me from the net.
Secondly, I did start rewatching Angel's fifth season. And for all my fangirling the two darkest seasons, 4 and 2, I must say I'm liking this one, too. Way more than 3, and possibly as much as 1. In retrospect, it's amazing how the network demands - more standalone episodes, Spike as a regular - were turned into assets. Regarding the Spike matter, I would have been absolutely content with letting his death in Chosen be final. It would have made a good ending for the character. But letting him be Angel's foil for the season turned out to work even better. At this point of Angel's story, mind; in any earlier season, Spike's presence would have been superfluous baggage. But after Home, after Angel sold out to Wolfram and Hart to save his son, imposed an invisible barrier between him and his friends by changing their memories, after losing Connor (as Angel believes for good)? Having someone from his past show up, a prodigal (grand-) son never acknowledged, another son who slept with a woman Angel loved, indeed another alter ego, in a way, a pretender to the throne and another vampire with a soul who robs Angel of his sense of uniqueness and is an ongoing mirror and alternative at the same time was perfect.
"What are you fighting for, dead thing?" Jasmine's priest asks Angel in Peace Out, and concludes Angel doesn't fight for his friends or the world anymore, but for his son. The son who symbolizes hope and humanity, who got torn and twisted and whom he finally put through death and rebirth to save him. I have no idea who would have been Angel's challenge, the one to highlight Angel's increasing loss of purpose and connection in the aftermath of Home, if the WB hadn't demanded Spike on the show. Gunn? (Not Wesley, I don't think so. Wesley was doomed, if not to death then to Fred-winning and loss and Illyria, and that wouldn't have worked as a contrast to Angel.) Anyway, I don't mind it's Spike.
Aside from any lofty thematical consideration, the ongoing bickering between the two is funny. And the occasional moments of truce and understanding, from the acerbic ("I never told anyone this but... I liked your poems" "You like Barry Manilow") to the heartbreaking ("So were we, once upon a time" "Once upon a time") are wonderful, too. And speaking of the funny, Spike isn't the only blonde vampire addition. There is Harmony. Who is just adorable, and I can see why Joss & Co. made the decision to move her up from peripheral guest star to main recurring to regular in this last season. Mercedes McNab has superb comic timic; Harmony can be used to undercut potential clunkiness - as at the end of the very first episode of the season, during the inevitable everyone reacts to Spike returning from the dead scene (Wesley, doom-ridden. "Spike." Angel, even more growling, "Spike." Harmony, thrilled: "Blondie Bear?") Her perspective of Angel as the grouchy boss from hell is certainly validated. And despite being mainly comic relief, she has her moments of true pathos, as when Spike is completely ignoring her. (Spike's treatment of Harmony from season 4 onwards being something that often gets overlooked in his favour; mind you, in season 5 of AtS he has actually times where he's nice to her, but certainly not at first.)
Season four had offered me some episodes during which I was interested in Gunn (Supersymmetry and Players, to be precise), but it took season 5 and the lawyer!Gunn thing to give him a storyline that actually fascinated me. In Home, Gunn had told Fred he'd make the deal with W&H even if everyone else said no. Conviction reemphasizes that Gunn wants this more than anyone; he's the only one who doesn't doubt they made the right decision in coming here, the only one who consciously allows his mind to be altered and embraces it. The one who wants the most (and wanting is important, as Destiny makes clear once again), and in the second half of the season will compromise, lose and pay the most, until the finale.
(Fred doesn't pay, she's taken; what happens to her is not related to something she did in that same Greek tragedy kind of way.)
What happens with Wesley throughout the season is in a way all put together in the first episode which centres on him, Lineage. He keeps shifting between his past season selves, because the removal of the Connor memories affects him more than everyone else. With no knowledge of having abducted Connor or of the way he and Angel managed to come to terms with each other in late season 4 he has no way of becoming unified. Lineage has his supposed father reducing him to clumsy first season Wes, but clumsy first season Wes had Angel's acceptance and support to cling to and grow besides, whereas fifth season Wes has to deal with Angel behaving in baffling (and often rebuffing) ways. By the end of the episode, he's gone through the Ruthless!Wes phase (when he tortures the Cyborg, as fourth season Wesley tortured the vampire groupie), ending in Psychotic!Wes (we had this in Billy and will have it again in Shells) who empties his gun into his "father". In a parallel and contrast to Billy, Fred shows up in the end to talk with him about it. In Billy, Wesley didn't let her in, and as she went away, we heard him sob through the door. In Lineage, they do talk, and Fred offers a way to deal with what happened which Wesley rejects as a lie (i.e. the idea that he did know on some level it wasn't his father). Come Origin, though, and come Not Fade Away, Wesley will tell Illyria who has Fred's memories but is not her that some lies are needed to make life bearable.
(And in something only possible in the Jossverse, the bitterness and pathos of Wesley's storyline is balanced by the vampire boys trying to console him by reminscencing about killing their parents. I remember that after the original broadcast, there were some complaints that this was inappropriate and undercut how serious Angel and Spike took their respective parenticides. Given that Angel made a joke about his as early as season 1 ("let me tell you something about my parents - they tasted like chicken", he says in "Sense and Sensitivity") and Spike never knows when to shut up anyway, I don't quite see the problem. Besides, this is what Jossverse characters do. Buffy quipped about coming back from the dead, and boy was this a serious issue for her.)
For a supposedly "lighter" season, season 5 offers plenty of darkness in between. Angel kills a human in the very first episode. ("What about mercy?" "You've seen the last of it.") Serial killer and ghost Matthew Pervaine in Hellbound makes Penn look like a well-adjusted chap, and the imagery (chopped fingers, blade like thing in eyes) is as graphic as this show ever gets. And of course, there is Dana in Damage, that DeKnight/Goddard cooperation which brilliantly uses BtVS backstory for a quintessential AtS episode. Dana doesn't just channel other past Slayers on an in-story level, she does so on a meta-level as well; if her physical appearance resembles Faith's, it's impossible to see her in her asylum garb and not think of Buffy in Normal Again. And get the chilling feeling that Dana is what Buffy might have become in that "Normal" universe. Drew Goddard also co-wrote Lies My Parents Told Me, and there are a lot of ties there as well (the brief moment in which Dana channels Nikki making it clear that Nikki wanted to live, and very much loved her son). Spike and Angel at the end reflecting about their past both reflects the different types of monsters there were (Spike being there for the rush, the party, never considering the victims, and Angelus getting the greatest kick out of the victims), and their first unsarcastic and unhostile moment of understanding and comradery for the season.
Of course, another thing I personally love about Damage Andrew: The Return. From his hobbit hair (looks awful on him) to hugging Spike (note one of the major differences between soulless and souled Spike - the soulless version wouldn't have permitted it, and made some deeply wounding remark; souled Spike, for all his embarassment, doesn't shove Andrew aside or is unkind to him), to calling Wesley "Pryce" and telling him "Mr. Giles may have been wrong about you" (cue priceless Wesley look), to confronting Angel over Dana at the end, I was ecstatic to see him again. Incidentally, I also happen to think he (and Buffy) were right. Leaving Dana with Angel would have left her with Wolfram and Hart. Angel was CEO now, but the moment that changed, the institution itself, which had a past record of trying to use unstable superpowered people as their tools (Faith in season 1, Bethany in season 2, for example) would have had all the liberty they wanted to transform Dana into their toy. Maybe her condition was permanent anyway, maybe it wasn't, but with her sister Slayers, she didn't have that to fear and had a chance.
So, next week (I hope, I hope) - bring on the second half of season 5.
ETA: I won an award! Look at the pretty:
hobsonphile. (Which reminds me: must still write to muffinmonster, and to hmpf.) I haven't been to a convention for years (I think the last was one of the Redemptions (i.e. B7/B5), organized by the ever wonderfulwatervole). Should be fun to leave the mundane world behind in RL for a while, but will also keep me from the net. Secondly, I did start rewatching Angel's fifth season. And for all my fangirling the two darkest seasons, 4 and 2, I must say I'm liking this one, too. Way more than 3, and possibly as much as 1. In retrospect, it's amazing how the network demands - more standalone episodes, Spike as a regular - were turned into assets. Regarding the Spike matter, I would have been absolutely content with letting his death in Chosen be final. It would have made a good ending for the character. But letting him be Angel's foil for the season turned out to work even better. At this point of Angel's story, mind; in any earlier season, Spike's presence would have been superfluous baggage. But after Home, after Angel sold out to Wolfram and Hart to save his son, imposed an invisible barrier between him and his friends by changing their memories, after losing Connor (as Angel believes for good)? Having someone from his past show up, a prodigal (grand-) son never acknowledged, another son who slept with a woman Angel loved, indeed another alter ego, in a way, a pretender to the throne and another vampire with a soul who robs Angel of his sense of uniqueness and is an ongoing mirror and alternative at the same time was perfect.
"What are you fighting for, dead thing?" Jasmine's priest asks Angel in Peace Out, and concludes Angel doesn't fight for his friends or the world anymore, but for his son. The son who symbolizes hope and humanity, who got torn and twisted and whom he finally put through death and rebirth to save him. I have no idea who would have been Angel's challenge, the one to highlight Angel's increasing loss of purpose and connection in the aftermath of Home, if the WB hadn't demanded Spike on the show. Gunn? (Not Wesley, I don't think so. Wesley was doomed, if not to death then to Fred-winning and loss and Illyria, and that wouldn't have worked as a contrast to Angel.) Anyway, I don't mind it's Spike.
Aside from any lofty thematical consideration, the ongoing bickering between the two is funny. And the occasional moments of truce and understanding, from the acerbic ("I never told anyone this but... I liked your poems" "You like Barry Manilow") to the heartbreaking ("So were we, once upon a time" "Once upon a time") are wonderful, too. And speaking of the funny, Spike isn't the only blonde vampire addition. There is Harmony. Who is just adorable, and I can see why Joss & Co. made the decision to move her up from peripheral guest star to main recurring to regular in this last season. Mercedes McNab has superb comic timic; Harmony can be used to undercut potential clunkiness - as at the end of the very first episode of the season, during the inevitable everyone reacts to Spike returning from the dead scene (Wesley, doom-ridden. "Spike." Angel, even more growling, "Spike." Harmony, thrilled: "Blondie Bear?") Her perspective of Angel as the grouchy boss from hell is certainly validated. And despite being mainly comic relief, she has her moments of true pathos, as when Spike is completely ignoring her. (Spike's treatment of Harmony from season 4 onwards being something that often gets overlooked in his favour; mind you, in season 5 of AtS he has actually times where he's nice to her, but certainly not at first.)
Season four had offered me some episodes during which I was interested in Gunn (Supersymmetry and Players, to be precise), but it took season 5 and the lawyer!Gunn thing to give him a storyline that actually fascinated me. In Home, Gunn had told Fred he'd make the deal with W&H even if everyone else said no. Conviction reemphasizes that Gunn wants this more than anyone; he's the only one who doesn't doubt they made the right decision in coming here, the only one who consciously allows his mind to be altered and embraces it. The one who wants the most (and wanting is important, as Destiny makes clear once again), and in the second half of the season will compromise, lose and pay the most, until the finale.
(Fred doesn't pay, she's taken; what happens to her is not related to something she did in that same Greek tragedy kind of way.)
What happens with Wesley throughout the season is in a way all put together in the first episode which centres on him, Lineage. He keeps shifting between his past season selves, because the removal of the Connor memories affects him more than everyone else. With no knowledge of having abducted Connor or of the way he and Angel managed to come to terms with each other in late season 4 he has no way of becoming unified. Lineage has his supposed father reducing him to clumsy first season Wes, but clumsy first season Wes had Angel's acceptance and support to cling to and grow besides, whereas fifth season Wes has to deal with Angel behaving in baffling (and often rebuffing) ways. By the end of the episode, he's gone through the Ruthless!Wes phase (when he tortures the Cyborg, as fourth season Wesley tortured the vampire groupie), ending in Psychotic!Wes (we had this in Billy and will have it again in Shells) who empties his gun into his "father". In a parallel and contrast to Billy, Fred shows up in the end to talk with him about it. In Billy, Wesley didn't let her in, and as she went away, we heard him sob through the door. In Lineage, they do talk, and Fred offers a way to deal with what happened which Wesley rejects as a lie (i.e. the idea that he did know on some level it wasn't his father). Come Origin, though, and come Not Fade Away, Wesley will tell Illyria who has Fred's memories but is not her that some lies are needed to make life bearable.
(And in something only possible in the Jossverse, the bitterness and pathos of Wesley's storyline is balanced by the vampire boys trying to console him by reminscencing about killing their parents. I remember that after the original broadcast, there were some complaints that this was inappropriate and undercut how serious Angel and Spike took their respective parenticides. Given that Angel made a joke about his as early as season 1 ("let me tell you something about my parents - they tasted like chicken", he says in "Sense and Sensitivity") and Spike never knows when to shut up anyway, I don't quite see the problem. Besides, this is what Jossverse characters do. Buffy quipped about coming back from the dead, and boy was this a serious issue for her.)
For a supposedly "lighter" season, season 5 offers plenty of darkness in between. Angel kills a human in the very first episode. ("What about mercy?" "You've seen the last of it.") Serial killer and ghost Matthew Pervaine in Hellbound makes Penn look like a well-adjusted chap, and the imagery (chopped fingers, blade like thing in eyes) is as graphic as this show ever gets. And of course, there is Dana in Damage, that DeKnight/Goddard cooperation which brilliantly uses BtVS backstory for a quintessential AtS episode. Dana doesn't just channel other past Slayers on an in-story level, she does so on a meta-level as well; if her physical appearance resembles Faith's, it's impossible to see her in her asylum garb and not think of Buffy in Normal Again. And get the chilling feeling that Dana is what Buffy might have become in that "Normal" universe. Drew Goddard also co-wrote Lies My Parents Told Me, and there are a lot of ties there as well (the brief moment in which Dana channels Nikki making it clear that Nikki wanted to live, and very much loved her son). Spike and Angel at the end reflecting about their past both reflects the different types of monsters there were (Spike being there for the rush, the party, never considering the victims, and Angelus getting the greatest kick out of the victims), and their first unsarcastic and unhostile moment of understanding and comradery for the season.
Of course, another thing I personally love about Damage Andrew: The Return. From his hobbit hair (looks awful on him) to hugging Spike (note one of the major differences between soulless and souled Spike - the soulless version wouldn't have permitted it, and made some deeply wounding remark; souled Spike, for all his embarassment, doesn't shove Andrew aside or is unkind to him), to calling Wesley "Pryce" and telling him "Mr. Giles may have been wrong about you" (cue priceless Wesley look), to confronting Angel over Dana at the end, I was ecstatic to see him again. Incidentally, I also happen to think he (and Buffy) were right. Leaving Dana with Angel would have left her with Wolfram and Hart. Angel was CEO now, but the moment that changed, the institution itself, which had a past record of trying to use unstable superpowered people as their tools (Faith in season 1, Bethany in season 2, for example) would have had all the liberty they wanted to transform Dana into their toy. Maybe her condition was permanent anyway, maybe it wasn't, but with her sister Slayers, she didn't have that to fear and had a chance.
So, next week (I hope, I hope) - bring on the second half of season 5.
ETA: I won an award! Look at the pretty:
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