Angel Season 5 Revisited (II)
Jul. 22nd, 2005 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI just finished rewatching the second half.
When the season was originally broadcast, most people seemed to love You're Welcome and dislike the very next episode, Why We Fight. I had the reverse reaction at the time. Some of my problems with You're Welcome have vanished upon rewatching, most notably Cordelia's lack of trauma regarding her Jasmine experience and lack of guilt regarding Connor. Given that Cordy was already dead and had one more day as a gift from TPTB at her disposal, it makes sense she'd concentrate on a few selected things, and besides, being dead presumably changes one's ability to deal with trauma. Another problem I had was regarding Lindsey, i.e. the "they brought him back for this"? reaction, which is also resolved due to the awareness of his later appearances.
Sidenote here: while I think Lindsey is an interesting character, I never was a big fan, and thought the "happy ending" he got in the season 2 episode Dead End (or something like that) was extremely fake. So I had no trouble buying he'd fall of the wagon with both his Angel and his power issues obsession and return to L.A. My problem was that the Doyle ploy never really went anywhere and his activities in You're Welcome were so very nebulous. But as I said, this particular problem got resolved by the awareness of the season as a whole. More about Lindsey and his overall role in it later.
Still, there were some remaining problems I had. You're Welcome is a valentine to Cordelia (it could be called "Everybody Loves Cordy") and Charisma Carpenter glows in the role like she didn't since Billy in early season 3. It's impossible not to feel charmed and touched by seeing the Cordy that was one last time. And I'm extremely grateful that in this episode, the writers finally remembered she cared about people other than Angel. It was lovely to see her "kicking it old school" with Wesley (and having the wish to do so for her last few hours on Earth, just as much as she wants to help Angel), and to tell him how sorry she is about Lilah. This was the first scene showing Cordelia and Wesley as the close friends they were since Waiting in the Wings (middle of season 3), and as bored readers of this journal will recall, the way Cordy just plain ignored Wesley's existence in late season 3 made me break with the character. Yelling at him "you dumbass, what were you thinking?" would have been fine with me. But telling Fred, after Fred asked her to intercede between Angel and Wesley, "the only feelings I care about are Angel's" just was beyond the pale and ooc for the Cordelia of old. Of course, the Jasmine retcon means we can explain it by Jasmine steering her in the Angel-only direction, but it left a very bad taste in the mouth nonetheless, and it was wonderful to see them as friends again, and see Cordelia's concern for him, in this last appearance of hers.
But as much as I enjoy the Cordy lovefest, I don't think the premise works out. So supposedly TPTB owed her (for the visions, for Jasmine) and granted her this last favour... to reinspire Angel. The effect of Cordelia's intervention was that Angel remained at W&H instead of calling it quits and, as we discover later, finds out about the Black Thorn Circle, so he can take it out. Okay, fine. I can see that working within the mythology of the show and the war between TPTB and the Senior Partners. But the way this inspiring works seems to be mainly via winning a slashy duel with Lindsey, and given Lindsey never was much of a threat to Angel (a foil, yes, but the most devastating blow Lindsey ever landed against Angel was bringing in Dru to sire Darla, and that plan seems to have been something Holland Manners had come up with), I don't quite see why this convinces Angel again he's fighting the good fight at W&H's. I suppose you could say that Cordelia's presence, her affection and honesty inspires him, but given she never says anything about W&H being a good idea (rather the contrary), I still don't see how this connects to staying at W&H. I suppose we really have to use the vision transfer and the awareness of the Black Circle as an explanation, and this news arrives so much later I can't tie it emotionally with the episode.
Why We Fight is a bleak little tale that seemingly stands alone but is actually quite connected to the overall season, and the show. Angel has been haunted by echoes of Connor ever since Home, but in a subtle fashion. The villain of the season opener being willing to sacrifice his son in order to achieve his aims, the lethal father-son combination played out by Wesley's father arriving (well, a simulacrum of same) - Wesley's father issues were always paralleled with Angel's ever since You've got me under your skin in season 1. Angel bringing up the father-kills-the-son prophecy to Wesley in The sad tale of Numero Cinquo. Cordelia asking about Connor. Even Spike, Angel's ongoing foil of the season, in his way. And so on. But Sam Lawson is the most obvious Connor avatar till the genuine article arrives, a nihilistic, despairing son (Angel adresses him as such not just in the flashback but in the present day as well) asking for... what? Well, that's the question. Death or a purpose? It's typical for Angel's frame of mind at this point that he never considers any other possibility than death.
In the flashbacks, the most revealing conversation between Angel and Lawson has Angel saying Lawson has his orders, that the means don't matter as long as the end is achieved, something which Lawson refutes. He can follow orders. But he needs to believe in a purpose, and he does not think you fight the good fight by using the same means as your enemy. I find it fascinating that Drew Goddard and Steve DeKnight, who wrote the episode, picked WWII as the time frame. Because the popular use of the WWII era in any genre, including and especially Sci Fi and Fantasy, is as the period closest to a traditional fantasy role playing game. Clear cut good versus evil. No shadow of doubt about who is right or wrong, and in most versions, no individualizing of the enemy. But that's not the way the period is used in this episode. The scene in which Angel gets "drafted" by the proto-Initiative (thanks, ex-Buffy-writers Drew and Steven for that tie-in!) starts to indicate as much, and in the big revelation scene later, we get it confirmed. Only the Nazis would use or think of using vampires/demons as their instruments, Lawson says in disgust. Wereupon the sole surviving German sailor laughs and says "da sind wir aber nicht die einzigen" (i.e. "we're not the only ones") and the penny drops; Lawson realizes his own government is doing the same thing. Not just by using Angel; they wanted the U-Boot and its content intact, after all. (Also, viewers of BTVS are aware of the later Initiative's activities, experiments, controlling demons with chips and all.) In short, the seemingly clear-cut conflict - good Americans/Allies versus bad Germans - becomes muddied by both parties using similar means. You could say the same thing about Angel versus the Senior Partners. Angel and his allies are able to take out the Black Circle in the end, but in order to do so Angel has to commit murder (Drogyn). (He also orders another murder, but as I said, we'll get to Lindsey.) And he has to persuade his friends to let themselves be used in a almost certain suicidal way; just as he bits and sires the unfortunate Lawson in order to keep the boat running. The end justifies the means. Does it?
How do you fight the good fight? It's an ongoing question. Anne's scene in the finale presents an alternative to the bloody showdown Angel & Co. finally decide on, but I don't think the show implies either way is the only one, which is what troubled viewers. Personally, I like that we don't get an anvil with "this is the right thing to do, and this is so wrong". Angel's actions in Why We Fight and in the finale are ethically murky, and they're entirely in character for Angel at this point.
However, Why We Fight isn't all doom and gloom. "I was Rasputin's lover" cracks me up every time, and so does Spike's "you're still a dick" (re: Angel's treatment of Lawson) and Angel's "yes, I still am" (at which point Spike realizes Angel is going to make him swim all the miles on shore as well). It's also telling for the Angel/Spike relationship that Angel doesn't stake him. (There is absolutely no reason to keep Spike among the undead - the human crew would have felt a lot easier if all three of the soulless vampires would have been taken out right away, and Spike assurely wasn't needed to keep the boat going.) I would have been perfectly fine with Spike's death in Chosen, but I really liked the way AtS' fifth season used him. Both the ongoing bickering with Angel and the quieter moments - as at the end of Why We Fight - of understanding produced by sharing much history and a unique situation made it worth it, and they got ample mileage out of the doppelganger situation.
Smile Time is just wonderful and such a blast. It's funny, it's genuinenly scary (the child with the pasted smiles on might be pinched from Batman, but it gave me the shivers anyway), and they pull off the puppet concept with flair. Puppet!Angel isn't just cute, he also manages to work some things out Angel had been unable to (i.e. his relationship with Nina), and when he goes into game face, I'm on the floor each time. One of the great things about all three Joss shows is that this kind of thing happens to their heroes, and doesn't take from their ability to be tragic one bit.( And speaking of inter-show meta, David Fury has his last cameo on either show as the puppet-controlled puppetteer here.) Smile Time also manages to work in some important arc stuff, notably with Gunn. As I mentioned before, season 5 was the first time where Gunn didn't get my vote for "character I wouldn't mind to get killed off". In previous seasons, I found invidual episodes with him interesting (such as Players), but not Gunn himself, which changed in season 5. Home had established that Gunn was the one member of the A.I. gang who explicitly chose to accept the offer of Wolfram & Hart. It's open to debate whether or not Fred, Lorne and Wesley would have done so if Angel had not made the deal, but Gunn says he'll accept no matter what the others do before Angel returns to them post-Connor saving/mindwiping. And season 5 build on that; we saw Gunn thriving with his new W&H-given knowledge. In the opening scene of You're Welcome, Gunn is the one who passionately declares he believes they're doing good at W&H. So his decision in Smile Time to make a deal with no questions asked so he can keep his new abilities, his panic at the prospect of losing the, is all completely believable. This at last is a new conflict for Gunn, not the third or fourth repetition of "Gunn has to choose between A.I. and his old life" or the previous love triangle with Wesley and Fred, and it's one with a great impact on the rest of the season.
"Power corrupts" was an obvious theme once the show had established Our Heroes as accepting W&H's offers, but Gunn is actually the only character where this theme is played out. What happens to Fred is unconnected to how her position affects her (actually, it's not connected to any of her actions safe for touching the sarcophagus), Lorne's decision to help Angel one last time by committing a murder isn't because he was head of the entertainment division, and Angel's own loss of purpose and regaining it but with the perspective that the end justifies the means isn't an attitude he didn't have back in season 2. Gunn, otoh, makes the Faustian deal and reaps the consequences in classic fashion. When he tries to justify himself to Wesley in Shells, the progression sums up what happened to him perfectly: "I didn't think it would cause any harm... I didn't know it was one of us... I didn't know it was Fred". Once you accept that it's o.k. to sacrifice other people for your own benefit, the corruption is done.
Of course, this is not the end of Gunn's arc. He takes a terrible punishment on himself, and in due course, grace is given (through the form of Fred, now inhabited by Illyria, no less). For a passionate atheist, Joss sure loves his Catholic imagery of redemption through atonment and suffering. But back to chronological order.
If You're Welcome was "Everyone Loves Cordy", A Hole in the World was "Everyone Loves Fred". Unfortunately, fandom didn't (as opposed to Cordelia pre- St. Cordy and Pod!Cordelia), and so the reaction to the episode was quite different. Leaving that aside for a moment, A Hole in the World has to be seen in conjunction with Shells, just as Surprise has to be seen in conjunction with Innocence (only in the later case, Marti wrote the set-up episode while Joss wrote the delivery, whereas in the former, Joss wrote the set-up and DeKnight the delivery). This informal two-parter is framed by a flashback to Fred saying goodbye to her parents and leaving for the city of angels (and Pylea, and nervous breakdowns, and eventually getting consumed by an ancient demon), which opens A Hole in the World and closes Shells. In Fredless, Fred defined Cordelia to her parents as the "heart" of Angel Investigations. The show moved Fred to that position in late season 4 (you can see it in Sacrifice in her conversations with Gunn and Angel which prefigure much of her role in season 5 already), and confirmed it in season 5. As opposed to Xander as the heart of the Scoobies, however, the fact that Fred is female and in season 5 was the only regular woman (Harmony didn't get promoted to the credits until after Fred's death) gave this a faintly suspicious aura of sexism. Now I like Fred. And I think the scenes betwen dying Fred and Wesley showcase Amy Acker's acting power even before Illyria; I found them very touching and moving. But the overall concept of Fred as the heart would have benefited endlessly if the fact every other regular adored her had not been hammered down on us so verbally.
Oh, yeah, and the Fred/Wesley romance which drove Wes/Lilah - shippers beserk. That actually wasn't a problem for me. Wesley had put Fred on a pedestal and loved her from season 3 onwards. Doesn't mean he didn't have strong feelings for Lilah eventually, but the Fred adoration never ceased. Fred for her part kept her distance after getting a good hard look at Wesley's darker side on Billy, had her romance with Gunn, and bonded with Wesley over vengeance and murder in season 4, at which point she first was shown being capable of finding Wesley sexually attractive. Then the mindwipe happened, and what we got in season 5 in essence was a fast forward with some alterations through what happened before. Fred again got a good look at Wesley's darker side, in Lineage, only this time there was no closed door at the end between them, which proved to be foreshadowing; she again considered an alternative, but after some flirting with Knox decided he wasn't whom she wanted and gave it a go with Wesley. Do I think it would have worked out if fate (read: Joss) hadn't intervened? Absolutely not. For starters, Wesley had a Madonna/Whore complex, and Fred was the Madonna; he had her on a higher pedestal than Gunn ever did, and the Fred/Gunn romance crashed under the mutual falling of the pedestals. And Fred might have found being the thing that kept Wesley together too much of a strain, too. Besides, this is the Jossverse. No romance ever ends happily there. It's a law.
What does happen instead is Illyria. Which Joss says on the commentary came from the Shakespeare readings at his house, and specifically Amy Acker's and Alexis Denisof's performances during same, causing him wanting to write "a terrifying and regal and Shakespearean" character for Acker to play and Denisof to respond to. Given that this is a cause which has nothing to do with the themes of the show, it's nonetheless amazing how well Illyria ties into the Angelverse. From the beginning, she twists our expectations and is a counterpart to previous characters. Starting out with the conventional bad guy goal of wanting the rule world, she seems to be another Jasmine, an ancient and powerful creature who took over a human being... right until we get to her reaction when she sees her armies are dust. This would be a similar emotional point to Jasmine getting rejected by a horrified crowd upon the revelation of her true face in Peace Out. But Illyria does not respond as Jasmine does with a "well, then to hell with humanity" and a desire to destroy everything. Instead, she - in her disdainful, regal way - seeks to understand the new world.
Another character she seems to echo and yet does not is Lilah. When Wesley, upon realizing Fred is really gone, tries to behead Illyria with an axe, it brings his beheading of Lilah's corpse to mind. (That Wesley, knowing that the thing you bring along if you know your girlfriend is dying is an axe.) And of course the last time Wesley got separated from his friends (as he is emotionally from Fred's death onwards in season 5) the relationship with Lilah developed. But as it turns out, what happens between him and Illyria is something else altogether. Wes/Lilah had a classic film noir touch and was intensely sexual, full of power games. It also was Wesley living out the other end of his Madonna/Whore complex. Illyria, however, falls quite outside these two archetypes, and Wesley doesn't respond to her in either way. In fact, Illyria being female is simply because Fred was; A Hole in the World and Shells both refer to Illyria as "it", and she's called "God King" consistently. What Wesley does become for Illyria, imo, is ironically the post he trained for and failed at a long time ago; a Watcher. Her Watcher. (Mind you, this is speaking from Wesley's perspective. Between Illyria's use of "As you wish" in The Girl in Question - ah, Princess Bride homage, I appreciate you! - and her "I love you" when impersonating Fred, her feelings are another matter.) The scene in Not Fade Away where he puts bandages on her reminds me of Giles patching Buffy up in season 3's Helpless; there is care and great tenderness expressed in the gesture when the man can't bring himself to verbalize it, but it's not sexual in nature.
And lasty, Illyria reminds me, as I wrote in my original review of Shells, of another character Joss wrote in another universe altogether - cloned Ripley in Alien: Resurrection. The teaser of A Hole in the World shows Fred in an Aliens Ripley posture with her flame thrower. Illyria, otoh, is much like Ripley 8 (for all the flaws of the film a stunning performance by Sigourney Weaver precisely because this isn't the Ripley of old, and very well written by Joss). A, forgive the pun, alien creature - Ripley 8 isn't quite human anymore, starting with the body language - disconnected from the world around her, but during the course of the story connecting with one particular invidual, also an outsider, and ending up fighting for others despite not being that entranced with humanity. Someone who might look like a woman who died and has her memories, but, and this is important, is not this woman but a new creature, in a new world. True for both Ripley 8 and Illyria, and Amy Acker is really fantastic in the role. (And convinced a great many naysayers in the fandom who went on disliking Fred but stopped with the Amy bashing, henceforth differentiating between actress and c haracter, and even took back the accusation that she can't generate chemistry with Alexis Denisof, because Illyria and Wesley clearly have it.)
Fred being gone and Illyria established (and for all the Shakespearean grandeur with deadpan humour, unintentional on her part as it was, what with "my last Qua'ha'zan was bigger" ), Underneath, the episode the crew shot when they learned the show was cancelled, brought back Lindsey and continued the year-long themes. Gunn picking his gruesome atonment her as a consequence of his earlier actions brought his personal arc to a climax, while that first lawyer we met on this show was used in a far better manner than during You're Welcome. The 'burbs as hell idea wasn't new but superbly delivered (and with a far sharper satire than when Ultimate Drew took up the concept again for his Alias episode Welcome to Liberty Village), the fact Lindsey's fictional wife resembled Darla a lot was a neat touch, and what was hinted at by the cuddling in You're Welcome got further expanded in Eve's scen with Angel and Lorne - she is genuinly in love with Lindsey. (And the one who gets him out, because come on, what Lindsey eventually tells Angel at the end of the episode wasn't anything Eve couldn't have told him at the beginning - the whole "only Lindsey knows what the Senior Partners are up to" speech was her way of manipulating Angel into rescuing him.) To my surprise, rewatching the season gave me the impression that later season Eve has a genuine pathos going for her which works far better than the wannabe femme fatale efforts in the early season.
And so, Lindsey. You know, if I come across one more story in which Misunderstood!Lindsey was abused as a child, I'll scream. To my recollection, what Lindsey says about his father in season 1's Blind Fate was that a) he was dirt poor, and b) he didn't even stand up to the creditors taking their things away but was nice to them. There is no hint here, or in any subsequent Lindsey episodes, that the unknown MacDonald Senior was a child abuser or even the kind of strict parent Liam's father was. If I ever muster enough enthusiasm to write a Lindsey story, I'll include my idea on Lindsey and his father, which is basically Prince Hal and Falstaff - i.e. as soon as Lindsey went through college and got his glamourous job at W&H, he pulled a "I know thee not, old man", not because his father had ever done anything to him but because his father (or parents, if the mother was still alive) embarassed him in their white trash-ness.
Blind Fate was when Lindsey tried for the first time to take the higher road but eventually didn't. The folks there (read: Angel) weren't very nice, whereas he was still Holland Manners' golden boy and got offered a gigantic bribe. So he took it. In the season 1 finale, he was petty enough to try and burn the scroll even after it had fulfilled its function for him (resurrecting Darla), simply because he knew Angel needed it to save Cordelia. Which led to the loss of his hand. Then we got season 2 and the Darla arc, which was great and showed Lindsey being obsessed with Angel and Darla both, to the point where it got stronger than his ambitions, and then he was sent off in the "Let's show Christian Kane can sing!" episode. (Sorry to be snippy, but I really don't buy Lindsey the regular Caritas visitor; that came because of the actor, not out of the character.) All in all an ambiguos character who made a couple of bad choices and some good ones, but always made them on his own.
As far as Angel was concerned, though, Lindsey was the first embodiment of the Wolfram & Hart lawyers. Which makes it very appropriate for him to be back for the last Angel versus W & H round. Lindsey was also the character Angel never, at no point tried to save. (Not Lilah. Angel did have that fascinating conversation with her right after she spiked his drink with Connor's blood, which amazingly was not grrr, arggh on his part but "do you know what that does to you?" Okay, that was the only time, but still, Angel and Lindsey never had such a conversation.) Now whether or not Angel treating Lindsey the way he treated, say, Faith would have made a difference is open to debate, and as I said, Lindsey made his own choices. But still, the important thing is that Angel never tried. Which makes Lindsey an excellent way to highlight Angel's moral failures. Season 5 starts doing that in Underneath with Lindsey pointing out that "heroes don't accept the world the way it is, they fight to change it", and culminates in the finale. Using Lorne to kill Lindsey was, from a pragmatic pov, probably a sensible decision. Angel didn't believe he'd survive the showdown with the Senior Partners, and he had good reasons to believe that Lindsey stepping in to the Black Circle power vacuum wouldn't ultimately result in a kinder, gentler W&H. But that still doesn't make the action any less murder and betrayal. Again, going back to Why We Fight - if you use the same methods, are you still fighting the good fight, and even if you win, will that make a difference for the world, given that you adopted your enemy's behaviour already?
In his audio commentary for Home, the season 4 finale, Tim Minear said that they had originally planned a far darker fate for Connor, much more in the Mordred and Arthur mold. Going by other interviews, Cordelia would have been the one kill Jasmine, and Connor, fighting his father to the last, would have been killed by Angel for good. Then Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy happened (which made her unvailable for the last third of the season except for the coma shots), and, again according to the audio commentary for Home, the writers fell in love with the character of Connor and Vincent Kartheiser as an actor, and thus decided on a different thing - that Connor would be the one character of the show who'd get an actual happy ending. Thus Connor killing Jasmine and the mindwipe.
The mindwipe being done for the rest of the regulars, save Angel, had its own ethical problem, but let's stay with Connor for now. Who had committed his share of crimes before season 4 was over - notably, his decision to help sacrificing the girl in Inside Out, and of course helping Jasmine despite being not under her thrall - Connor was the one person whose love for Jasmine was voluntary. This naturally causes the question of how come he gets the happy ending, when he (as opposed to, say, Gunn) didn't even atone for what he did, and couldn't, due to lack of memory. Now obviously, by the time of Connor's complete breakdown in Home, he's in no shape to atone for anything. Angel's decision as far as Connor was concerned might have been ethically questionable but was understandable. That still made Connor's happy ending an artificial one; he's eerily resembling a Babylon 5 character, Brother Edward, who is a good, kind man, concerned for others etc., but finds out in the course of the episode he's the guest star of that he used to be a serial killer until he got sentenced to death of personality, mind wiped, and sent out to the world with a new set of memories. One of his anguished questions in the episode, Passing through Gethsemane, was how he could atone for something he couldn't even remember.
AtS doesn't really tackle that; but Origin and Connor's subsequent appearance in Not Fade Away change the nature of Connor's condition in a way that makes it possible for the character to do so in whatever future you imagine for him. By returning his original memories, Origin integrates the artificial happiness Angel bought for his son, the Connor Riley personality, with what I suppose you could call Stephen Holtz in lack of a better term. I'm not surprised that Connor's immediate choice (after killing Sahjahn) is to retreat into the Connor Riley personality; this is a character who when given a choice always desperately believed the lie (with Possessed!Cordelia as well as with Jasmine). However, he gives Angel a hint (and a sign of understanding and if you like absolution for the mindwipe) with his last sentence in Origin, "my father taught me that" (spoken not the upbeat tones he uses as Connor Riley but in the way he spoke in seasons 3 and 4). Some weeks later, in Not Fade Away, he's ready not just to tell Angel point blank he knows the truth but also to come, unasked, to his rescue at a crucial point. Which makes me confident that this Connor will eventually also have the strength to face his own atonment. As to whether or not he "deserves" getting hope and a life, I think we can go back to Giles' words to Buffy in season 2 - you don't deserve mercy. It is given.
Connor, child of two vampires, started out as symbolizing Angel's hope, his Shanshu given form. He then became the embodiment of Angel's misdeeds, getting abducted and formed by Daniel Holtz who was the nemesis Angel himself had created; you could say he became his father's tragedy and punishment. And then, in a last twist, he became hope again, and forgiveness.
The other side of the mindwipe was of course that it didn't just affect Connor (and the Rileys). It affected Wesley, Fred, Gunn and Lorne as well. "Fred changed the moment her memories did," says Illyria, but the character for which this was most visibly true was Wesley (for whom of course the existence of Connor had made the greatest difference), who ended up as an uneasy amalgan of his early season 3 self with occasional forays into the darker side of his personality, such as Lineage, until the loss of Fred and the return of his memories resulted in the final version of Wesley, which was a despairing one. "Intriguingly unstable," says Cyvus Veil, which given Wesley shooting petulant coworkers in the kneecaps, stabbing Gunn and shooting Knox is true enough, though I'd argue Illyria - or rather, seeing her as his responsibility - is actually a stabilizing influence. When she asks him whether his killing of Knox was justified and he says it wasn't, it was wrong, we get our first hint Wesley's moral judgment hasn't completely left the building post-Fred. In Time Bomb, he finds a way to save Illyria while simultanously lessening the danger she poses, instead of going for the killing solution Angel (completely in his the end justifies the means mindframe by then) wants; the Wesley of earlier seasons, who prided himself on taking the hardest, most painful way, wouldn't have done so. But being Illyria's Watcher isn't quite enough. It's not so much that I think Wesley deliberately tried to die in Not Fade Away as that he really had lost the will to live, and didn't much care either way. Granted, if the show wouldn't have been cancelled the character would have survived. But his death still felt organic to me, given everything that had happened up to this point.
The episode of the final bunch I don't really like is Time Bomb (boys and girls, Star Trek did that concept repeatedly, and sometimes better), but I adore the episode which splits the fandom into lines of love/hate, The Girl in Question. It's an odd thing, with the Wesley and Illyria B-Plot being tragic and dark and the Spike and Angel A-Plot being pure unadulterated farce. But personally, I had no problem going from angsting with Wesley and Illyria to laughing about The Clueless Vampires In Rome. As I said re: Smile Time, one thing I love about Joss shows is that they're not afraid of showing their heroes on occasion as absolute doofuses and/or dorks. Plus the whole A-Plot reminded me of Billy Wilder films such as One, Two, Three or Avanti, Avanti, and I love Billy Wilder films. Add to this that I'm always for some entertaining meta, and I'm sold. Joss shows occasionally riff on fanfic in a parody manner, such as the Spike and the Buffybot scenes of Intervention being a spoof of Spuffy fic written at the time ("Darn your sinister attraction!"), or Superstar doing entertaining things with the Mary Sue/Gary Stu habit by letting Jonathan Stu the Buffyverse for himself (and show why this doesn't work). The Girl in Question basically made the depiction of Angel and Spike as in Days of Our Unlives by Kita and Jessica canon, parodied Angel and/or Spike as the ultimate lover and glamorous ambiguos character by letting them both be outshone by the unseen Immortal (and he had to remain unseen in order for the gag to work) at every point, and refused to treat Buffy as an award which the better vampire ultimately wins by letting neither of them catch more than glimpse of her.
And then there was the firework of one liners. "I signaled her with my eyes" (Angel re: Becoming) will never stop being funny, and say what you want, Angel and Spike arguing about who stopped more apocalypses, is the greater hero and more deserving could be directly taken out of a flame war between B/A and B/S'shippers. Ditto for "nuns are your thing - everyone knows that nuns are your thing!" and Darla's "concurrently". (Incidentally, if you're complaining that Darla gushing about the Immortal is ooc - I always thought she was messing with Angelus. Not that she didn't really have fabulous sex with the Immortal and Dru (concurrently), but she was clearly having fun at the expense of her darling boy here.) And the brief black-and-white flashback to Dru and Spike in Italy in the 50s? "Ciao" will never sound the same to me.*g*
After that last breath of comic air, things get back to dire business in Powerplay. Which introduces the Circle a bit late in the day, though not its members. As an Angel versus the Senior Partners showdown was set up in Underneath which was written and shot (mostly) before the show got cancelled, I tend to believe Joss that the basic events of the finale would have happened if the WB would have greenlighted a sixth season, regardless. The problem is that we're not really told what exact difference taking out the Circle will make. "Throw a cog in the machine", sure, and we see the various Circle members all up specific evil deeds. But the Senator is hardly the only corrupt politician. Cyvvus Veil isn't the only sorcerer. Archduke Sebassus is a generic bad demon, and surely lots of those are around. The only concrete difference I can spot is the Senator's political opponent not getting framed as a paedophile and the baby not getting sacrificed, but other than that, I couldn't say what change this will make for the world, which doesn't square with the stated goal of wanting to make a difference, refusing to accept the status quo.
Now AtS, as opposed to BTVS, didn't always have a Big Bad who had to be defeated by the end of the year. But still, the other finales had an identifiable goal accomplished. Most recently, the season 4 final two episodes had wrapped up Jasmine and preliminary ended the Connor arc, as well as introducing a new status quo in form of the W&H deal. The results of defeating Jasmine, both good and bad, and the importance of it were obvious. So not surprisingly, the Circle looked somewhat vague in comparison.
However, Not Fade Away still rocks a finale. It did the usual trick episodes written or co-written by Joss do and gave every member of the ensemble something poignant and unique to do. The idea of the last day, and the way they chose to spend it, were pen portraits of the characters themselves. Angel with Connor, Spike at the poetry slam, finally uniting his William and Spike personas, Wesley with Illyria, and Gunn with Anne. Did I mention I love the Anne scene? The sole remaining clip in the credits by season 5 which isn't from AtS at all but from BTVS comes from the episode Anne, the BTVS season 3 opener (the clip in question is the girl standing on the street), which in some way prefigures AtS. Anne, aka Lily, aka Chanterelle, is an example of a character going from being a victim and weak to being a hero in her own right, saving people without martial arts heroics. Her reply to Gunn's question as to what she would do if he told her that what she did made no difference in the misery of the world sums up the optimism which goes hand in hand with darkness and despair on the Jossverse, both being presented.
I already wrote about what happens to Lindsey in regards to Lindsey and Angel; so let me say something about Lorne. I believe Lorne when he says that this is it for him. He can see Angel's reasoning, but it's still the one thing too many, and the disgust with himself at the end is palpable. Within show canon, this ties with his narration scenes from Spin the Bottle; now we know why he's telling the story to an empty room, alone. It's one of the most affecting things about the finale for me. Lorne was the demon Angel was closest to (and yes, that includes Doyle), and tended to symbolize irrepressible joie de vivre on the show. Choosing him as the assassin really brought home how noir the show was, and echoed, again, what Angel did to Lawson in Why We Fight.
On the other hand, irrepressible joie de vivre was amply presented by Harmony in season 5, and she does get to continue her unlife. With a reference letter, no less. I know where were complaints about Harmony betraying Angel & Co., but a) he was hardly the most endearing or loyalty-invoking of bosses that year, and b) this is Harmony, who as a human betrayed her best friend without a thought - she actually became far more likable as a vampire. Plus she got a touching scene earlier with Angel, when he asks her about her memories of being human. I really enjoyed Harmony in season 5, and her exist was fine by me.
Writing about this just reminds me how very, very much I miss the Jossverse. Why isn't it November already, when Serenity is released in Germany? Oh AtS, thou wert a great show, and went out in style. We'll hardly see thy like again.
When the season was originally broadcast, most people seemed to love You're Welcome and dislike the very next episode, Why We Fight. I had the reverse reaction at the time. Some of my problems with You're Welcome have vanished upon rewatching, most notably Cordelia's lack of trauma regarding her Jasmine experience and lack of guilt regarding Connor. Given that Cordy was already dead and had one more day as a gift from TPTB at her disposal, it makes sense she'd concentrate on a few selected things, and besides, being dead presumably changes one's ability to deal with trauma. Another problem I had was regarding Lindsey, i.e. the "they brought him back for this"? reaction, which is also resolved due to the awareness of his later appearances.
Sidenote here: while I think Lindsey is an interesting character, I never was a big fan, and thought the "happy ending" he got in the season 2 episode Dead End (or something like that) was extremely fake. So I had no trouble buying he'd fall of the wagon with both his Angel and his power issues obsession and return to L.A. My problem was that the Doyle ploy never really went anywhere and his activities in You're Welcome were so very nebulous. But as I said, this particular problem got resolved by the awareness of the season as a whole. More about Lindsey and his overall role in it later.
Still, there were some remaining problems I had. You're Welcome is a valentine to Cordelia (it could be called "Everybody Loves Cordy") and Charisma Carpenter glows in the role like she didn't since Billy in early season 3. It's impossible not to feel charmed and touched by seeing the Cordy that was one last time. And I'm extremely grateful that in this episode, the writers finally remembered she cared about people other than Angel. It was lovely to see her "kicking it old school" with Wesley (and having the wish to do so for her last few hours on Earth, just as much as she wants to help Angel), and to tell him how sorry she is about Lilah. This was the first scene showing Cordelia and Wesley as the close friends they were since Waiting in the Wings (middle of season 3), and as bored readers of this journal will recall, the way Cordy just plain ignored Wesley's existence in late season 3 made me break with the character. Yelling at him "you dumbass, what were you thinking?" would have been fine with me. But telling Fred, after Fred asked her to intercede between Angel and Wesley, "the only feelings I care about are Angel's" just was beyond the pale and ooc for the Cordelia of old. Of course, the Jasmine retcon means we can explain it by Jasmine steering her in the Angel-only direction, but it left a very bad taste in the mouth nonetheless, and it was wonderful to see them as friends again, and see Cordelia's concern for him, in this last appearance of hers.
But as much as I enjoy the Cordy lovefest, I don't think the premise works out. So supposedly TPTB owed her (for the visions, for Jasmine) and granted her this last favour... to reinspire Angel. The effect of Cordelia's intervention was that Angel remained at W&H instead of calling it quits and, as we discover later, finds out about the Black Thorn Circle, so he can take it out. Okay, fine. I can see that working within the mythology of the show and the war between TPTB and the Senior Partners. But the way this inspiring works seems to be mainly via winning a slashy duel with Lindsey, and given Lindsey never was much of a threat to Angel (a foil, yes, but the most devastating blow Lindsey ever landed against Angel was bringing in Dru to sire Darla, and that plan seems to have been something Holland Manners had come up with), I don't quite see why this convinces Angel again he's fighting the good fight at W&H's. I suppose you could say that Cordelia's presence, her affection and honesty inspires him, but given she never says anything about W&H being a good idea (rather the contrary), I still don't see how this connects to staying at W&H. I suppose we really have to use the vision transfer and the awareness of the Black Circle as an explanation, and this news arrives so much later I can't tie it emotionally with the episode.
Why We Fight is a bleak little tale that seemingly stands alone but is actually quite connected to the overall season, and the show. Angel has been haunted by echoes of Connor ever since Home, but in a subtle fashion. The villain of the season opener being willing to sacrifice his son in order to achieve his aims, the lethal father-son combination played out by Wesley's father arriving (well, a simulacrum of same) - Wesley's father issues were always paralleled with Angel's ever since You've got me under your skin in season 1. Angel bringing up the father-kills-the-son prophecy to Wesley in The sad tale of Numero Cinquo. Cordelia asking about Connor. Even Spike, Angel's ongoing foil of the season, in his way. And so on. But Sam Lawson is the most obvious Connor avatar till the genuine article arrives, a nihilistic, despairing son (Angel adresses him as such not just in the flashback but in the present day as well) asking for... what? Well, that's the question. Death or a purpose? It's typical for Angel's frame of mind at this point that he never considers any other possibility than death.
In the flashbacks, the most revealing conversation between Angel and Lawson has Angel saying Lawson has his orders, that the means don't matter as long as the end is achieved, something which Lawson refutes. He can follow orders. But he needs to believe in a purpose, and he does not think you fight the good fight by using the same means as your enemy. I find it fascinating that Drew Goddard and Steve DeKnight, who wrote the episode, picked WWII as the time frame. Because the popular use of the WWII era in any genre, including and especially Sci Fi and Fantasy, is as the period closest to a traditional fantasy role playing game. Clear cut good versus evil. No shadow of doubt about who is right or wrong, and in most versions, no individualizing of the enemy. But that's not the way the period is used in this episode. The scene in which Angel gets "drafted" by the proto-Initiative (thanks, ex-Buffy-writers Drew and Steven for that tie-in!) starts to indicate as much, and in the big revelation scene later, we get it confirmed. Only the Nazis would use or think of using vampires/demons as their instruments, Lawson says in disgust. Wereupon the sole surviving German sailor laughs and says "da sind wir aber nicht die einzigen" (i.e. "we're not the only ones") and the penny drops; Lawson realizes his own government is doing the same thing. Not just by using Angel; they wanted the U-Boot and its content intact, after all. (Also, viewers of BTVS are aware of the later Initiative's activities, experiments, controlling demons with chips and all.) In short, the seemingly clear-cut conflict - good Americans/Allies versus bad Germans - becomes muddied by both parties using similar means. You could say the same thing about Angel versus the Senior Partners. Angel and his allies are able to take out the Black Circle in the end, but in order to do so Angel has to commit murder (Drogyn). (He also orders another murder, but as I said, we'll get to Lindsey.) And he has to persuade his friends to let themselves be used in a almost certain suicidal way; just as he bits and sires the unfortunate Lawson in order to keep the boat running. The end justifies the means. Does it?
How do you fight the good fight? It's an ongoing question. Anne's scene in the finale presents an alternative to the bloody showdown Angel & Co. finally decide on, but I don't think the show implies either way is the only one, which is what troubled viewers. Personally, I like that we don't get an anvil with "this is the right thing to do, and this is so wrong". Angel's actions in Why We Fight and in the finale are ethically murky, and they're entirely in character for Angel at this point.
However, Why We Fight isn't all doom and gloom. "I was Rasputin's lover" cracks me up every time, and so does Spike's "you're still a dick" (re: Angel's treatment of Lawson) and Angel's "yes, I still am" (at which point Spike realizes Angel is going to make him swim all the miles on shore as well). It's also telling for the Angel/Spike relationship that Angel doesn't stake him. (There is absolutely no reason to keep Spike among the undead - the human crew would have felt a lot easier if all three of the soulless vampires would have been taken out right away, and Spike assurely wasn't needed to keep the boat going.) I would have been perfectly fine with Spike's death in Chosen, but I really liked the way AtS' fifth season used him. Both the ongoing bickering with Angel and the quieter moments - as at the end of Why We Fight - of understanding produced by sharing much history and a unique situation made it worth it, and they got ample mileage out of the doppelganger situation.
Smile Time is just wonderful and such a blast. It's funny, it's genuinenly scary (the child with the pasted smiles on might be pinched from Batman, but it gave me the shivers anyway), and they pull off the puppet concept with flair. Puppet!Angel isn't just cute, he also manages to work some things out Angel had been unable to (i.e. his relationship with Nina), and when he goes into game face, I'm on the floor each time. One of the great things about all three Joss shows is that this kind of thing happens to their heroes, and doesn't take from their ability to be tragic one bit.( And speaking of inter-show meta, David Fury has his last cameo on either show as the puppet-controlled puppetteer here.) Smile Time also manages to work in some important arc stuff, notably with Gunn. As I mentioned before, season 5 was the first time where Gunn didn't get my vote for "character I wouldn't mind to get killed off". In previous seasons, I found invidual episodes with him interesting (such as Players), but not Gunn himself, which changed in season 5. Home had established that Gunn was the one member of the A.I. gang who explicitly chose to accept the offer of Wolfram & Hart. It's open to debate whether or not Fred, Lorne and Wesley would have done so if Angel had not made the deal, but Gunn says he'll accept no matter what the others do before Angel returns to them post-Connor saving/mindwiping. And season 5 build on that; we saw Gunn thriving with his new W&H-given knowledge. In the opening scene of You're Welcome, Gunn is the one who passionately declares he believes they're doing good at W&H. So his decision in Smile Time to make a deal with no questions asked so he can keep his new abilities, his panic at the prospect of losing the, is all completely believable. This at last is a new conflict for Gunn, not the third or fourth repetition of "Gunn has to choose between A.I. and his old life" or the previous love triangle with Wesley and Fred, and it's one with a great impact on the rest of the season.
"Power corrupts" was an obvious theme once the show had established Our Heroes as accepting W&H's offers, but Gunn is actually the only character where this theme is played out. What happens to Fred is unconnected to how her position affects her (actually, it's not connected to any of her actions safe for touching the sarcophagus), Lorne's decision to help Angel one last time by committing a murder isn't because he was head of the entertainment division, and Angel's own loss of purpose and regaining it but with the perspective that the end justifies the means isn't an attitude he didn't have back in season 2. Gunn, otoh, makes the Faustian deal and reaps the consequences in classic fashion. When he tries to justify himself to Wesley in Shells, the progression sums up what happened to him perfectly: "I didn't think it would cause any harm... I didn't know it was one of us... I didn't know it was Fred". Once you accept that it's o.k. to sacrifice other people for your own benefit, the corruption is done.
Of course, this is not the end of Gunn's arc. He takes a terrible punishment on himself, and in due course, grace is given (through the form of Fred, now inhabited by Illyria, no less). For a passionate atheist, Joss sure loves his Catholic imagery of redemption through atonment and suffering. But back to chronological order.
If You're Welcome was "Everyone Loves Cordy", A Hole in the World was "Everyone Loves Fred". Unfortunately, fandom didn't (as opposed to Cordelia pre- St. Cordy and Pod!Cordelia), and so the reaction to the episode was quite different. Leaving that aside for a moment, A Hole in the World has to be seen in conjunction with Shells, just as Surprise has to be seen in conjunction with Innocence (only in the later case, Marti wrote the set-up episode while Joss wrote the delivery, whereas in the former, Joss wrote the set-up and DeKnight the delivery). This informal two-parter is framed by a flashback to Fred saying goodbye to her parents and leaving for the city of angels (and Pylea, and nervous breakdowns, and eventually getting consumed by an ancient demon), which opens A Hole in the World and closes Shells. In Fredless, Fred defined Cordelia to her parents as the "heart" of Angel Investigations. The show moved Fred to that position in late season 4 (you can see it in Sacrifice in her conversations with Gunn and Angel which prefigure much of her role in season 5 already), and confirmed it in season 5. As opposed to Xander as the heart of the Scoobies, however, the fact that Fred is female and in season 5 was the only regular woman (Harmony didn't get promoted to the credits until after Fred's death) gave this a faintly suspicious aura of sexism. Now I like Fred. And I think the scenes betwen dying Fred and Wesley showcase Amy Acker's acting power even before Illyria; I found them very touching and moving. But the overall concept of Fred as the heart would have benefited endlessly if the fact every other regular adored her had not been hammered down on us so verbally.
Oh, yeah, and the Fred/Wesley romance which drove Wes/Lilah - shippers beserk. That actually wasn't a problem for me. Wesley had put Fred on a pedestal and loved her from season 3 onwards. Doesn't mean he didn't have strong feelings for Lilah eventually, but the Fred adoration never ceased. Fred for her part kept her distance after getting a good hard look at Wesley's darker side on Billy, had her romance with Gunn, and bonded with Wesley over vengeance and murder in season 4, at which point she first was shown being capable of finding Wesley sexually attractive. Then the mindwipe happened, and what we got in season 5 in essence was a fast forward with some alterations through what happened before. Fred again got a good look at Wesley's darker side, in Lineage, only this time there was no closed door at the end between them, which proved to be foreshadowing; she again considered an alternative, but after some flirting with Knox decided he wasn't whom she wanted and gave it a go with Wesley. Do I think it would have worked out if fate (read: Joss) hadn't intervened? Absolutely not. For starters, Wesley had a Madonna/Whore complex, and Fred was the Madonna; he had her on a higher pedestal than Gunn ever did, and the Fred/Gunn romance crashed under the mutual falling of the pedestals. And Fred might have found being the thing that kept Wesley together too much of a strain, too. Besides, this is the Jossverse. No romance ever ends happily there. It's a law.
What does happen instead is Illyria. Which Joss says on the commentary came from the Shakespeare readings at his house, and specifically Amy Acker's and Alexis Denisof's performances during same, causing him wanting to write "a terrifying and regal and Shakespearean" character for Acker to play and Denisof to respond to. Given that this is a cause which has nothing to do with the themes of the show, it's nonetheless amazing how well Illyria ties into the Angelverse. From the beginning, she twists our expectations and is a counterpart to previous characters. Starting out with the conventional bad guy goal of wanting the rule world, she seems to be another Jasmine, an ancient and powerful creature who took over a human being... right until we get to her reaction when she sees her armies are dust. This would be a similar emotional point to Jasmine getting rejected by a horrified crowd upon the revelation of her true face in Peace Out. But Illyria does not respond as Jasmine does with a "well, then to hell with humanity" and a desire to destroy everything. Instead, she - in her disdainful, regal way - seeks to understand the new world.
Another character she seems to echo and yet does not is Lilah. When Wesley, upon realizing Fred is really gone, tries to behead Illyria with an axe, it brings his beheading of Lilah's corpse to mind. (That Wesley, knowing that the thing you bring along if you know your girlfriend is dying is an axe.) And of course the last time Wesley got separated from his friends (as he is emotionally from Fred's death onwards in season 5) the relationship with Lilah developed. But as it turns out, what happens between him and Illyria is something else altogether. Wes/Lilah had a classic film noir touch and was intensely sexual, full of power games. It also was Wesley living out the other end of his Madonna/Whore complex. Illyria, however, falls quite outside these two archetypes, and Wesley doesn't respond to her in either way. In fact, Illyria being female is simply because Fred was; A Hole in the World and Shells both refer to Illyria as "it", and she's called "God King" consistently. What Wesley does become for Illyria, imo, is ironically the post he trained for and failed at a long time ago; a Watcher. Her Watcher. (Mind you, this is speaking from Wesley's perspective. Between Illyria's use of "As you wish" in The Girl in Question - ah, Princess Bride homage, I appreciate you! - and her "I love you" when impersonating Fred, her feelings are another matter.) The scene in Not Fade Away where he puts bandages on her reminds me of Giles patching Buffy up in season 3's Helpless; there is care and great tenderness expressed in the gesture when the man can't bring himself to verbalize it, but it's not sexual in nature.
And lasty, Illyria reminds me, as I wrote in my original review of Shells, of another character Joss wrote in another universe altogether - cloned Ripley in Alien: Resurrection. The teaser of A Hole in the World shows Fred in an Aliens Ripley posture with her flame thrower. Illyria, otoh, is much like Ripley 8 (for all the flaws of the film a stunning performance by Sigourney Weaver precisely because this isn't the Ripley of old, and very well written by Joss). A, forgive the pun, alien creature - Ripley 8 isn't quite human anymore, starting with the body language - disconnected from the world around her, but during the course of the story connecting with one particular invidual, also an outsider, and ending up fighting for others despite not being that entranced with humanity. Someone who might look like a woman who died and has her memories, but, and this is important, is not this woman but a new creature, in a new world. True for both Ripley 8 and Illyria, and Amy Acker is really fantastic in the role. (And convinced a great many naysayers in the fandom who went on disliking Fred but stopped with the Amy bashing, henceforth differentiating between actress and c haracter, and even took back the accusation that she can't generate chemistry with Alexis Denisof, because Illyria and Wesley clearly have it.)
Fred being gone and Illyria established (and for all the Shakespearean grandeur with deadpan humour, unintentional on her part as it was, what with "my last Qua'ha'zan was bigger" ), Underneath, the episode the crew shot when they learned the show was cancelled, brought back Lindsey and continued the year-long themes. Gunn picking his gruesome atonment her as a consequence of his earlier actions brought his personal arc to a climax, while that first lawyer we met on this show was used in a far better manner than during You're Welcome. The 'burbs as hell idea wasn't new but superbly delivered (and with a far sharper satire than when Ultimate Drew took up the concept again for his Alias episode Welcome to Liberty Village), the fact Lindsey's fictional wife resembled Darla a lot was a neat touch, and what was hinted at by the cuddling in You're Welcome got further expanded in Eve's scen with Angel and Lorne - she is genuinly in love with Lindsey. (And the one who gets him out, because come on, what Lindsey eventually tells Angel at the end of the episode wasn't anything Eve couldn't have told him at the beginning - the whole "only Lindsey knows what the Senior Partners are up to" speech was her way of manipulating Angel into rescuing him.) To my surprise, rewatching the season gave me the impression that later season Eve has a genuine pathos going for her which works far better than the wannabe femme fatale efforts in the early season.
And so, Lindsey. You know, if I come across one more story in which Misunderstood!Lindsey was abused as a child, I'll scream. To my recollection, what Lindsey says about his father in season 1's Blind Fate was that a) he was dirt poor, and b) he didn't even stand up to the creditors taking their things away but was nice to them. There is no hint here, or in any subsequent Lindsey episodes, that the unknown MacDonald Senior was a child abuser or even the kind of strict parent Liam's father was. If I ever muster enough enthusiasm to write a Lindsey story, I'll include my idea on Lindsey and his father, which is basically Prince Hal and Falstaff - i.e. as soon as Lindsey went through college and got his glamourous job at W&H, he pulled a "I know thee not, old man", not because his father had ever done anything to him but because his father (or parents, if the mother was still alive) embarassed him in their white trash-ness.
Blind Fate was when Lindsey tried for the first time to take the higher road but eventually didn't. The folks there (read: Angel) weren't very nice, whereas he was still Holland Manners' golden boy and got offered a gigantic bribe. So he took it. In the season 1 finale, he was petty enough to try and burn the scroll even after it had fulfilled its function for him (resurrecting Darla), simply because he knew Angel needed it to save Cordelia. Which led to the loss of his hand. Then we got season 2 and the Darla arc, which was great and showed Lindsey being obsessed with Angel and Darla both, to the point where it got stronger than his ambitions, and then he was sent off in the "Let's show Christian Kane can sing!" episode. (Sorry to be snippy, but I really don't buy Lindsey the regular Caritas visitor; that came because of the actor, not out of the character.) All in all an ambiguos character who made a couple of bad choices and some good ones, but always made them on his own.
As far as Angel was concerned, though, Lindsey was the first embodiment of the Wolfram & Hart lawyers. Which makes it very appropriate for him to be back for the last Angel versus W & H round. Lindsey was also the character Angel never, at no point tried to save. (Not Lilah. Angel did have that fascinating conversation with her right after she spiked his drink with Connor's blood, which amazingly was not grrr, arggh on his part but "do you know what that does to you?" Okay, that was the only time, but still, Angel and Lindsey never had such a conversation.) Now whether or not Angel treating Lindsey the way he treated, say, Faith would have made a difference is open to debate, and as I said, Lindsey made his own choices. But still, the important thing is that Angel never tried. Which makes Lindsey an excellent way to highlight Angel's moral failures. Season 5 starts doing that in Underneath with Lindsey pointing out that "heroes don't accept the world the way it is, they fight to change it", and culminates in the finale. Using Lorne to kill Lindsey was, from a pragmatic pov, probably a sensible decision. Angel didn't believe he'd survive the showdown with the Senior Partners, and he had good reasons to believe that Lindsey stepping in to the Black Circle power vacuum wouldn't ultimately result in a kinder, gentler W&H. But that still doesn't make the action any less murder and betrayal. Again, going back to Why We Fight - if you use the same methods, are you still fighting the good fight, and even if you win, will that make a difference for the world, given that you adopted your enemy's behaviour already?
In his audio commentary for Home, the season 4 finale, Tim Minear said that they had originally planned a far darker fate for Connor, much more in the Mordred and Arthur mold. Going by other interviews, Cordelia would have been the one kill Jasmine, and Connor, fighting his father to the last, would have been killed by Angel for good. Then Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy happened (which made her unvailable for the last third of the season except for the coma shots), and, again according to the audio commentary for Home, the writers fell in love with the character of Connor and Vincent Kartheiser as an actor, and thus decided on a different thing - that Connor would be the one character of the show who'd get an actual happy ending. Thus Connor killing Jasmine and the mindwipe.
The mindwipe being done for the rest of the regulars, save Angel, had its own ethical problem, but let's stay with Connor for now. Who had committed his share of crimes before season 4 was over - notably, his decision to help sacrificing the girl in Inside Out, and of course helping Jasmine despite being not under her thrall - Connor was the one person whose love for Jasmine was voluntary. This naturally causes the question of how come he gets the happy ending, when he (as opposed to, say, Gunn) didn't even atone for what he did, and couldn't, due to lack of memory. Now obviously, by the time of Connor's complete breakdown in Home, he's in no shape to atone for anything. Angel's decision as far as Connor was concerned might have been ethically questionable but was understandable. That still made Connor's happy ending an artificial one; he's eerily resembling a Babylon 5 character, Brother Edward, who is a good, kind man, concerned for others etc., but finds out in the course of the episode he's the guest star of that he used to be a serial killer until he got sentenced to death of personality, mind wiped, and sent out to the world with a new set of memories. One of his anguished questions in the episode, Passing through Gethsemane, was how he could atone for something he couldn't even remember.
AtS doesn't really tackle that; but Origin and Connor's subsequent appearance in Not Fade Away change the nature of Connor's condition in a way that makes it possible for the character to do so in whatever future you imagine for him. By returning his original memories, Origin integrates the artificial happiness Angel bought for his son, the Connor Riley personality, with what I suppose you could call Stephen Holtz in lack of a better term. I'm not surprised that Connor's immediate choice (after killing Sahjahn) is to retreat into the Connor Riley personality; this is a character who when given a choice always desperately believed the lie (with Possessed!Cordelia as well as with Jasmine). However, he gives Angel a hint (and a sign of understanding and if you like absolution for the mindwipe) with his last sentence in Origin, "my father taught me that" (spoken not the upbeat tones he uses as Connor Riley but in the way he spoke in seasons 3 and 4). Some weeks later, in Not Fade Away, he's ready not just to tell Angel point blank he knows the truth but also to come, unasked, to his rescue at a crucial point. Which makes me confident that this Connor will eventually also have the strength to face his own atonment. As to whether or not he "deserves" getting hope and a life, I think we can go back to Giles' words to Buffy in season 2 - you don't deserve mercy. It is given.
Connor, child of two vampires, started out as symbolizing Angel's hope, his Shanshu given form. He then became the embodiment of Angel's misdeeds, getting abducted and formed by Daniel Holtz who was the nemesis Angel himself had created; you could say he became his father's tragedy and punishment. And then, in a last twist, he became hope again, and forgiveness.
The other side of the mindwipe was of course that it didn't just affect Connor (and the Rileys). It affected Wesley, Fred, Gunn and Lorne as well. "Fred changed the moment her memories did," says Illyria, but the character for which this was most visibly true was Wesley (for whom of course the existence of Connor had made the greatest difference), who ended up as an uneasy amalgan of his early season 3 self with occasional forays into the darker side of his personality, such as Lineage, until the loss of Fred and the return of his memories resulted in the final version of Wesley, which was a despairing one. "Intriguingly unstable," says Cyvus Veil, which given Wesley shooting petulant coworkers in the kneecaps, stabbing Gunn and shooting Knox is true enough, though I'd argue Illyria - or rather, seeing her as his responsibility - is actually a stabilizing influence. When she asks him whether his killing of Knox was justified and he says it wasn't, it was wrong, we get our first hint Wesley's moral judgment hasn't completely left the building post-Fred. In Time Bomb, he finds a way to save Illyria while simultanously lessening the danger she poses, instead of going for the killing solution Angel (completely in his the end justifies the means mindframe by then) wants; the Wesley of earlier seasons, who prided himself on taking the hardest, most painful way, wouldn't have done so. But being Illyria's Watcher isn't quite enough. It's not so much that I think Wesley deliberately tried to die in Not Fade Away as that he really had lost the will to live, and didn't much care either way. Granted, if the show wouldn't have been cancelled the character would have survived. But his death still felt organic to me, given everything that had happened up to this point.
The episode of the final bunch I don't really like is Time Bomb (boys and girls, Star Trek did that concept repeatedly, and sometimes better), but I adore the episode which splits the fandom into lines of love/hate, The Girl in Question. It's an odd thing, with the Wesley and Illyria B-Plot being tragic and dark and the Spike and Angel A-Plot being pure unadulterated farce. But personally, I had no problem going from angsting with Wesley and Illyria to laughing about The Clueless Vampires In Rome. As I said re: Smile Time, one thing I love about Joss shows is that they're not afraid of showing their heroes on occasion as absolute doofuses and/or dorks. Plus the whole A-Plot reminded me of Billy Wilder films such as One, Two, Three or Avanti, Avanti, and I love Billy Wilder films. Add to this that I'm always for some entertaining meta, and I'm sold. Joss shows occasionally riff on fanfic in a parody manner, such as the Spike and the Buffybot scenes of Intervention being a spoof of Spuffy fic written at the time ("Darn your sinister attraction!"), or Superstar doing entertaining things with the Mary Sue/Gary Stu habit by letting Jonathan Stu the Buffyverse for himself (and show why this doesn't work). The Girl in Question basically made the depiction of Angel and Spike as in Days of Our Unlives by Kita and Jessica canon, parodied Angel and/or Spike as the ultimate lover and glamorous ambiguos character by letting them both be outshone by the unseen Immortal (and he had to remain unseen in order for the gag to work) at every point, and refused to treat Buffy as an award which the better vampire ultimately wins by letting neither of them catch more than glimpse of her.
And then there was the firework of one liners. "I signaled her with my eyes" (Angel re: Becoming) will never stop being funny, and say what you want, Angel and Spike arguing about who stopped more apocalypses, is the greater hero and more deserving could be directly taken out of a flame war between B/A and B/S'shippers. Ditto for "nuns are your thing - everyone knows that nuns are your thing!" and Darla's "concurrently". (Incidentally, if you're complaining that Darla gushing about the Immortal is ooc - I always thought she was messing with Angelus. Not that she didn't really have fabulous sex with the Immortal and Dru (concurrently), but she was clearly having fun at the expense of her darling boy here.) And the brief black-and-white flashback to Dru and Spike in Italy in the 50s? "Ciao" will never sound the same to me.*g*
After that last breath of comic air, things get back to dire business in Powerplay. Which introduces the Circle a bit late in the day, though not its members. As an Angel versus the Senior Partners showdown was set up in Underneath which was written and shot (mostly) before the show got cancelled, I tend to believe Joss that the basic events of the finale would have happened if the WB would have greenlighted a sixth season, regardless. The problem is that we're not really told what exact difference taking out the Circle will make. "Throw a cog in the machine", sure, and we see the various Circle members all up specific evil deeds. But the Senator is hardly the only corrupt politician. Cyvvus Veil isn't the only sorcerer. Archduke Sebassus is a generic bad demon, and surely lots of those are around. The only concrete difference I can spot is the Senator's political opponent not getting framed as a paedophile and the baby not getting sacrificed, but other than that, I couldn't say what change this will make for the world, which doesn't square with the stated goal of wanting to make a difference, refusing to accept the status quo.
Now AtS, as opposed to BTVS, didn't always have a Big Bad who had to be defeated by the end of the year. But still, the other finales had an identifiable goal accomplished. Most recently, the season 4 final two episodes had wrapped up Jasmine and preliminary ended the Connor arc, as well as introducing a new status quo in form of the W&H deal. The results of defeating Jasmine, both good and bad, and the importance of it were obvious. So not surprisingly, the Circle looked somewhat vague in comparison.
However, Not Fade Away still rocks a finale. It did the usual trick episodes written or co-written by Joss do and gave every member of the ensemble something poignant and unique to do. The idea of the last day, and the way they chose to spend it, were pen portraits of the characters themselves. Angel with Connor, Spike at the poetry slam, finally uniting his William and Spike personas, Wesley with Illyria, and Gunn with Anne. Did I mention I love the Anne scene? The sole remaining clip in the credits by season 5 which isn't from AtS at all but from BTVS comes from the episode Anne, the BTVS season 3 opener (the clip in question is the girl standing on the street), which in some way prefigures AtS. Anne, aka Lily, aka Chanterelle, is an example of a character going from being a victim and weak to being a hero in her own right, saving people without martial arts heroics. Her reply to Gunn's question as to what she would do if he told her that what she did made no difference in the misery of the world sums up the optimism which goes hand in hand with darkness and despair on the Jossverse, both being presented.
I already wrote about what happens to Lindsey in regards to Lindsey and Angel; so let me say something about Lorne. I believe Lorne when he says that this is it for him. He can see Angel's reasoning, but it's still the one thing too many, and the disgust with himself at the end is palpable. Within show canon, this ties with his narration scenes from Spin the Bottle; now we know why he's telling the story to an empty room, alone. It's one of the most affecting things about the finale for me. Lorne was the demon Angel was closest to (and yes, that includes Doyle), and tended to symbolize irrepressible joie de vivre on the show. Choosing him as the assassin really brought home how noir the show was, and echoed, again, what Angel did to Lawson in Why We Fight.
On the other hand, irrepressible joie de vivre was amply presented by Harmony in season 5, and she does get to continue her unlife. With a reference letter, no less. I know where were complaints about Harmony betraying Angel & Co., but a) he was hardly the most endearing or loyalty-invoking of bosses that year, and b) this is Harmony, who as a human betrayed her best friend without a thought - she actually became far more likable as a vampire. Plus she got a touching scene earlier with Angel, when he asks her about her memories of being human. I really enjoyed Harmony in season 5, and her exist was fine by me.
Writing about this just reminds me how very, very much I miss the Jossverse. Why isn't it November already, when Serenity is released in Germany? Oh AtS, thou wert a great show, and went out in style. We'll hardly see thy like again.
