Rewatching old Angel episodes, again...
Dec. 4th, 2005 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIf you've got friends on your flist who watch shows you love for the first time, you get into rewatching. If you have friends who want fanfic from you, even more so. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
karabair wants me to write a Connor and Wesley post-Origin, pre-NFA-story, after I made the mistake of mentioning the idea to her, and I probably will. (I'll also probably do a big post of character love for Connor - as written and played on the show, just to make things clear - as hobsonphile has been wondering what I see in him, and my answer probably wasn't enough.)
In the meantime, thoughts upon rewatching some Angel episodes. For some reason, I started with Are you now or have you ever been...? in season 2, which I think manages to be a splendid stand alone and a continuity heavy ep at the same time. Also, Tim Minear deals way better with MacCarthyism than he does with the Nazis in Hero, so even if I hadn't loved him already for his flashback episodes at that point, I would have for this one.
Before I get into the continuity aspect, let me admire the shiny. I really believe this episode is set in the Fifties, and you quickly get out of fingers when you count the homages - Angel's red James Dean jacket (and James Dean hairstyle) which he wears at the Griffith Observatory when meeting Judy (who looks like Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause and has the name of her character); the P.I. with his Jack Nicholson in Chinatown (another retro homage to the 50s) look; the homosexual actor who is obviously styled after Rock Hudson; Judy having stolen money and ended up in a seedy public accomodation, like Marion in Psycho; and yikes, the bell boy with his hair cut and chewing gum.
Like I said, the real life background isn't nearly as heavy handed as in Hero. We catch a climpse of the McCarthy hearings on tv, and the actor accuses the screenwriter during an argument of being a "Commie", but no one makes a speech of how the Red Scare was a bad, bad thing. There is a parallel drawn between Angel's vampire lifestyle and the enforced hidden sexuality of gays, but again, no speech, just the scene in the hotel floor with him and the homosexual actor who has just said goodbye to his companion looking at each other before going into their respective rooms. Racism is a larger issue, due to Judy being a main character, but we're expected to catch the significance of the black family being told there were no free rooms without the camera lingering on what is just a very brief scene. Most importantly, the episode doesn't leave you with a self-satisfied "lord, the people in the 50s were prejudiced - aren't we so much more enlightened now?" feeling, and here we get into the significance of the episode in terms of series continuity.
Angel, in the 50s, is as cut off from humanity as he will be later that same season after Darla has become a vampire again. (And he nearly gets there again in season 5 due to what happened with Connor in season 4, but not quite.) He connects with Judy and tries to help her; in her fear, she turns against him and betrays him; Angel in turn reacts by telling the Paranoia demon: "Take them all." Which obviously foreshadows what he does with the lawyers at the end of Reunion, locking them up in a cellar with Darla and Drusilla. And it highlights Angel's capacity for vengefulness and cruelty with his soul fully intact.
The episode ends on a note of grace: Angel meets Judy again and forgives her unconditionally. (She is the first person he forgives, instead of being on the forgiving end himself.) That, too, is something he's capable of. (Not always. Ask Wesley.) It's the side of him that helps Faith, tries to help Darla, and is there for Connor. The Hyperion, that trap for fear, hatred and self-flaggelation, obviously an allegory for Angel himself, will be filled with life once again and gets another chance. Again, roughly what happens later in the season. More about the Hyperion which later on becomes a metaphor for the family Angel forms with his friends in a moment.
I next moved on to season 3, i.e. my least favourite season. However, the episodes I picked reminded me of how good it could be, and that safe one big issue (Cordelia, grrr, argh) I feel pretty mellow about most of my other season 3 complaints.
In my memory, Billy was sort of Cordelia's last hurrah as the character I had loved during the first two seasons and on BTVS. Upon rewatching, I found her in character in some of the later eps as well, but she is splendid here, especially in her scene with Lilah. *cue regretful sighs about the lack of Cordelia and Lilah interaction* And of course this is where we first get a taste of Wesley's dark side. If Are you now... prefigures Angel's arc for the season, Billy in a way prefigures Wesley's - he tries to connect with Fred and tries to save people and by the method he picks becomes a danger to his nearest and dearest, and ends up isolated, heartbroken and alone. Many layered details, down to Fred, while intending to comfort Wesley, being dressed up to her neck in the final scene in a clear reaction to his poisonous words earlier. And of course Wesley going for verbal humiliation first as opposed to everyone else who gets infected, in a clear venting of his inner Roger Wyndham-Pryce. The parallels and contrasts to Lineage in season 5, especially the respective final scenes with Fred, are fascinating.
However, I still don't have that high opinion of Billy as an episode. Talk about heavy handedness. So Billy awakens the woman hater within in every man (except for Angel, who already has a demon). Because every man has one. Please. Billy himself is one of those villains who aren't thought out at all, save for their function - I can take that "evil because they're evil" from the Gentlemen over at BTVS in Hush, because they're fairy tale monsters, but Billy is supposed to be a human monster, and with human monsters, I expect a bit more than "I hate women and I'm going to make everyone beat them up because I can!". Lastly, having Lilah shoot Billy was a cop-out. I'm all for Lilah finding the strength within, but in this case, it was clearly so Cordelia could be spared having to kill a human (plus some demon DNA, and we're never told how he got these). Having a villain kill another villain so one of the heroes doesn't have to just irks me.
The Darla trilogy - Offspring, Quickening and Lullaby - has some major plot holes (Angel not noticing the child Darla carries has a heart beat until he fights with her, and why on earth should the kid having a soul result in Darla craving children's blood? Angel didn't when he got ensouled) - but never mind, all is forgiven, because not only does my darling girl shine in her swan song but Holtz, of whom we up to this point only got a brief glimpse, gets introduced very well, too.
As opposed to Drusilla, he is the victim of Angel's (and Darla's) crimes who doesn't go insane, and certainly doesn't start adoring Angel by way of compensation. I'm hesitating to call him the best of Angel's arc opponents simply because I have a soft spot for Jasmine in her Galadriel-with-the-Ring-ness, but he's certainly the one with the most shades of grey. For starters, however you turn and twist it, his reason to hate Angel and Darla is pretty much solid. I've seen posts in which it was claimed that Holtz had only himself to blame for making them interested in him by pursuing them to begin with, but lest we forget, Angelus and Darla were merrily slaughtering left, right and center at the time. Holtz trying to put an end to them was no more wrong than Buffy's every day discharge of her duty, or later Wesley's rogue demon hunter act. I love how the complete story of just what Angelus and Darla did is spread over several episodes. In Hearthrob, we find out they killed Holtz' wife and children. In Offspring, we see them doing it, and there is a heavy hint in the torture flashback that Angelus also raped Caroline Holtz (him telling Holtz she was a screamer). We find out about his pact with Sahjahn. But not until Lullaby do we find out the final cruelty - that they sired Holtz' daughter, Sarah. (I suspect Darla did it, since she was the one who drank from the little girl, but it really doesn't matter.) And that he spent the night with his daughter, incapable of staking her, and then in the morning threw her out in the sunlight and watched her burn.
In retrospect, this already tells you just what Holtz starts to plan at the end of Lullaby when he comes across Angel and the baby. Because he knows that there is no greater cruelty than not just lose your child but having it turned into an enemy. Being forced to destroy it or be destroyed by it. "No," says Darla when Angel says Holtz couldn't have come at a worse time, "this is the perfect time." Because I think she starts to realize, too. In the flashback where she saves Angelus from Holtz, Angelus asks whether they shouldn't, you know, kill him, and Darla replies: "Ah, but he's so much fun to torment. He's family now."
Angel's and Darla's child as the payment for the children they took. Yes, I think she starts to suspect in her last hour.
Darla goes in this episodes from dispensing sarcasm left and right (I especially love "aren't I the luckiest vampire girl in the world?" and "They do now" when Fred says the cult vampires don't know the knife can't hurt her) to the increasing admittance to her feelings for the child she carries, and the realisation of what that means. Asrozk can confirm, I said in season 2 that Darla being staked by Angel (again) or anyone else would feel like a wrong end to her story, and that she was the one vampire I could see having the will power to stake herself. No theatrics a la Spike in Doomed or Angel in Amends for Darla - when she has decided to die so her child can live, she gets the job done without hesitation. At the same time, the writers never forget the twistedness of the Fanged Four concept of family. When Darla, Angel's hand on her belly, whispers "my boy, my darling boy", she could mean the unborn Connor or Angel or both of them. She always was Angel's mother in addition to being his lover. (Note to Angelus: talk about Oedipus complex, pal. You and your fixation on tiny blondes ever after.) And so it's fitting that Connor, like Angel, gets born in an alley, and Darla dies there.
On a flippant note: that special effect when Darla becomes dust and baby Connor emerges? Still my favourite use of special effects in the entire show.
After this trilogy, I moved on to Loyalty and Sleep Tight, having not many good memories about the episodes in between but very good memories of these two. Two major differences upon rewatching: I wasn't irritated by Angel's "Mr. Dad" cuteness with baby Connor which I thought the first time around was saccharine enough to make me scream. Because of the knowledge of what is to come, it somehow is poignant and sad instead. And: I have a good deal less empathy with Wesley. The first time around, I was all "poor Wesley, oh God, poor, poor Wesley!" This time, I still feel sorry for Wesley, but mixed in between is a great deal of "Wesley, you idiot, stop with the stoic martyr number and TALK to someone (other than Holtz) about the freakin' prophecy already, you KNOW you've misread prophecies before and that prophecies can be twisted anyway". (I also remembered that Billy actually has a scene in which Cordelia, Fred and Wesley talk about just this - Wesley originally misreading the Shanshu prophecy, and how easy mistaking a prophecy is.)
karabair, in email, said that Wesley was afraid he'd deal with Angelus soon - as Angel was pretty damm near to perfectly happy with the baby - and that due to Cordelia's closeness to Angel and the Fred/Gunn pairing, they weren't, to him, an option to talk with, plus that he thought this way the family would be kept intact except for him and Connor, whereas if he had told someone else they'd have been implicated as well. Which is probably exactly what Wesley was thinking (though I wish the writers had thrown us a verbal hint about the Angelus suspicion), but that doesn't make his decision the right one. (And oh, irony, Wesley was the one who berated Gunn earlier this season for not sharing info with the group and going for the stoic man alone act instead, plus of course there was that conversation with Angel in season 2 after Angel repented and came back.) It's entirely in character and for the best of motives, but it's frustrating as hell because it was so avoidable. What are the chances that Angel, being told about a prophecy in which he would kill his son, would continue to be dangerously happy around baby Connor? And Fred, who knows about shifting dimensions, might or might not have been able to figure out Sahjahn's involvement in the entire prophecy business - if she had had the chance.
Instead, we get an unrelenting tragedy unfolding. Like I said, images like Angel and Wesley at the doctor with the baby, or Angel presenting the tiny hockey equipment he bought for Connor to Gunn all are poignant now. By the way, Angel and Gunn fooling around with the hockey has to be one of the last light hearted family moments the gang has in the Hyperion.
What I never noticed before: Angel seems to be staying in the same room he did in the 50s, 217... right until the earthquake strikes and wrecks it and Wesley thinks the prophecy comes true. The Hyperion was home and family for a while, but now it's getting wrecked and dysfunctional again and will never truly provide shelter. Just as the friends and family it harbous will never be entirely together again. They'll reconcile, but they won't be as close and happy again, and one member or the other will always be missing.
And oh, the irony in Angel's outburst after drinking his spiked-with-Connor's-blood drink: "Connor needs to grow up!" Ouch, ouch, ouch.
Lilah's conversation with Angel in the bar reminds me that they had their own great chemistry, though I'm glad the show went the Wesley/Lilah route instead. It also reminds me that as opposed to Lindsey, Angel actually makes an attempt to get through to Lilah here, at the least likely moment - you'd expect him to do nothing but issue threats after that stunt with Connor's blood, but instead he tries for an actual attempt at conversation and, dare I say it, saving her. When watching Salvage in season 4, the one wrong note in Wesley's imagined conversation with Dead!Lilah, to me, is Lilah saying he tried to save her from her wicked ways. Because he truly didn't. He saved her from the Beast, and he will try to save her soul in Home, but at no point ever during the Wes/Lilah relationship does he try to convince her to be, in lack of a better term, not evil anymore. (I think much of the attraction is that Lilah is the Bad Woman, the whore to Fred's madonna in his eyes.) The only one who ever tries that, and only this one time, is Angel.
Holtz and Justine: I think he did intend for the three of them to live in Utah. Holtz does have feelings for Justine. But her primary function to him is still as a weapon, and a weapon can be discarded if necessary. Do either Justine or Holtz regret what they do to Wesley? I don't think so. Justine might have a moment before hand - it's ambigous. But once it's done, she certainly doesn't. The little moment of mutual recognition about self loathing she and Wesley have on the sidewalk reminds me that both Justine and Holtz can be seen as mirroring Wesley in different ways. Justine because her loyalty to Holtz is certainly blind, but then so is Wesley's to Angel. (I don't think Wesley realized Angel's capacity for being a bastard with his soul intact, despite the season 2 stint, until later events.) Holtz because his "means justify the end" policy certainly fit with what Wesley was taught as a Watcher and comes to practice in season 4 and later. Wesley, in season 4, doesn't resemble Angel in season 2 during his "beige" phase as much as he does Holtz in season 3 (Holtz would have thoroughly approved of the Orpheus method with Faith and Angelus) - without, of course, vengeance as his primary motivation.
And so it ends, in Sleep Tight, with "Quortoth, darkest of the dark dimensions" as Sahjahn puts it, and Holtz making that jump. Before, he tells Angel that Connor will "never even know who you are". Which is one of the few outright lies we hear Holtz speak, because seriously, who ever assumed he'd keep that pledge? What he had planned was probably a childhood in Utah and then, since Angel wasn't getting any older as a vampire, for adult Stephen/Connor to show up with the vengeance bill in Los Angeles.
Off to watch more episodes...
karabair wants me to write a Connor and Wesley post-Origin, pre-NFA-story, after I made the mistake of mentioning the idea to her, and I probably will. (I'll also probably do a big post of character love for Connor - as written and played on the show, just to make things clear - as hobsonphile has been wondering what I see in him, and my answer probably wasn't enough.) In the meantime, thoughts upon rewatching some Angel episodes. For some reason, I started with Are you now or have you ever been...? in season 2, which I think manages to be a splendid stand alone and a continuity heavy ep at the same time. Also, Tim Minear deals way better with MacCarthyism than he does with the Nazis in Hero, so even if I hadn't loved him already for his flashback episodes at that point, I would have for this one.
Before I get into the continuity aspect, let me admire the shiny. I really believe this episode is set in the Fifties, and you quickly get out of fingers when you count the homages - Angel's red James Dean jacket (and James Dean hairstyle) which he wears at the Griffith Observatory when meeting Judy (who looks like Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause and has the name of her character); the P.I. with his Jack Nicholson in Chinatown (another retro homage to the 50s) look; the homosexual actor who is obviously styled after Rock Hudson; Judy having stolen money and ended up in a seedy public accomodation, like Marion in Psycho; and yikes, the bell boy with his hair cut and chewing gum.
Like I said, the real life background isn't nearly as heavy handed as in Hero. We catch a climpse of the McCarthy hearings on tv, and the actor accuses the screenwriter during an argument of being a "Commie", but no one makes a speech of how the Red Scare was a bad, bad thing. There is a parallel drawn between Angel's vampire lifestyle and the enforced hidden sexuality of gays, but again, no speech, just the scene in the hotel floor with him and the homosexual actor who has just said goodbye to his companion looking at each other before going into their respective rooms. Racism is a larger issue, due to Judy being a main character, but we're expected to catch the significance of the black family being told there were no free rooms without the camera lingering on what is just a very brief scene. Most importantly, the episode doesn't leave you with a self-satisfied "lord, the people in the 50s were prejudiced - aren't we so much more enlightened now?" feeling, and here we get into the significance of the episode in terms of series continuity.
Angel, in the 50s, is as cut off from humanity as he will be later that same season after Darla has become a vampire again. (And he nearly gets there again in season 5 due to what happened with Connor in season 4, but not quite.) He connects with Judy and tries to help her; in her fear, she turns against him and betrays him; Angel in turn reacts by telling the Paranoia demon: "Take them all." Which obviously foreshadows what he does with the lawyers at the end of Reunion, locking them up in a cellar with Darla and Drusilla. And it highlights Angel's capacity for vengefulness and cruelty with his soul fully intact.
The episode ends on a note of grace: Angel meets Judy again and forgives her unconditionally. (She is the first person he forgives, instead of being on the forgiving end himself.) That, too, is something he's capable of. (Not always. Ask Wesley.) It's the side of him that helps Faith, tries to help Darla, and is there for Connor. The Hyperion, that trap for fear, hatred and self-flaggelation, obviously an allegory for Angel himself, will be filled with life once again and gets another chance. Again, roughly what happens later in the season. More about the Hyperion which later on becomes a metaphor for the family Angel forms with his friends in a moment.
I next moved on to season 3, i.e. my least favourite season. However, the episodes I picked reminded me of how good it could be, and that safe one big issue (Cordelia, grrr, argh) I feel pretty mellow about most of my other season 3 complaints.
In my memory, Billy was sort of Cordelia's last hurrah as the character I had loved during the first two seasons and on BTVS. Upon rewatching, I found her in character in some of the later eps as well, but she is splendid here, especially in her scene with Lilah. *cue regretful sighs about the lack of Cordelia and Lilah interaction* And of course this is where we first get a taste of Wesley's dark side. If Are you now... prefigures Angel's arc for the season, Billy in a way prefigures Wesley's - he tries to connect with Fred and tries to save people and by the method he picks becomes a danger to his nearest and dearest, and ends up isolated, heartbroken and alone. Many layered details, down to Fred, while intending to comfort Wesley, being dressed up to her neck in the final scene in a clear reaction to his poisonous words earlier. And of course Wesley going for verbal humiliation first as opposed to everyone else who gets infected, in a clear venting of his inner Roger Wyndham-Pryce. The parallels and contrasts to Lineage in season 5, especially the respective final scenes with Fred, are fascinating.
However, I still don't have that high opinion of Billy as an episode. Talk about heavy handedness. So Billy awakens the woman hater within in every man (except for Angel, who already has a demon). Because every man has one. Please. Billy himself is one of those villains who aren't thought out at all, save for their function - I can take that "evil because they're evil" from the Gentlemen over at BTVS in Hush, because they're fairy tale monsters, but Billy is supposed to be a human monster, and with human monsters, I expect a bit more than "I hate women and I'm going to make everyone beat them up because I can!". Lastly, having Lilah shoot Billy was a cop-out. I'm all for Lilah finding the strength within, but in this case, it was clearly so Cordelia could be spared having to kill a human (plus some demon DNA, and we're never told how he got these). Having a villain kill another villain so one of the heroes doesn't have to just irks me.
The Darla trilogy - Offspring, Quickening and Lullaby - has some major plot holes (Angel not noticing the child Darla carries has a heart beat until he fights with her, and why on earth should the kid having a soul result in Darla craving children's blood? Angel didn't when he got ensouled) - but never mind, all is forgiven, because not only does my darling girl shine in her swan song but Holtz, of whom we up to this point only got a brief glimpse, gets introduced very well, too.
As opposed to Drusilla, he is the victim of Angel's (and Darla's) crimes who doesn't go insane, and certainly doesn't start adoring Angel by way of compensation. I'm hesitating to call him the best of Angel's arc opponents simply because I have a soft spot for Jasmine in her Galadriel-with-the-Ring-ness, but he's certainly the one with the most shades of grey. For starters, however you turn and twist it, his reason to hate Angel and Darla is pretty much solid. I've seen posts in which it was claimed that Holtz had only himself to blame for making them interested in him by pursuing them to begin with, but lest we forget, Angelus and Darla were merrily slaughtering left, right and center at the time. Holtz trying to put an end to them was no more wrong than Buffy's every day discharge of her duty, or later Wesley's rogue demon hunter act. I love how the complete story of just what Angelus and Darla did is spread over several episodes. In Hearthrob, we find out they killed Holtz' wife and children. In Offspring, we see them doing it, and there is a heavy hint in the torture flashback that Angelus also raped Caroline Holtz (him telling Holtz she was a screamer). We find out about his pact with Sahjahn. But not until Lullaby do we find out the final cruelty - that they sired Holtz' daughter, Sarah. (I suspect Darla did it, since she was the one who drank from the little girl, but it really doesn't matter.) And that he spent the night with his daughter, incapable of staking her, and then in the morning threw her out in the sunlight and watched her burn.
In retrospect, this already tells you just what Holtz starts to plan at the end of Lullaby when he comes across Angel and the baby. Because he knows that there is no greater cruelty than not just lose your child but having it turned into an enemy. Being forced to destroy it or be destroyed by it. "No," says Darla when Angel says Holtz couldn't have come at a worse time, "this is the perfect time." Because I think she starts to realize, too. In the flashback where she saves Angelus from Holtz, Angelus asks whether they shouldn't, you know, kill him, and Darla replies: "Ah, but he's so much fun to torment. He's family now."
Angel's and Darla's child as the payment for the children they took. Yes, I think she starts to suspect in her last hour.
Darla goes in this episodes from dispensing sarcasm left and right (I especially love "aren't I the luckiest vampire girl in the world?" and "They do now" when Fred says the cult vampires don't know the knife can't hurt her) to the increasing admittance to her feelings for the child she carries, and the realisation of what that means. As
rozk can confirm, I said in season 2 that Darla being staked by Angel (again) or anyone else would feel like a wrong end to her story, and that she was the one vampire I could see having the will power to stake herself. No theatrics a la Spike in Doomed or Angel in Amends for Darla - when she has decided to die so her child can live, she gets the job done without hesitation. At the same time, the writers never forget the twistedness of the Fanged Four concept of family. When Darla, Angel's hand on her belly, whispers "my boy, my darling boy", she could mean the unborn Connor or Angel or both of them. She always was Angel's mother in addition to being his lover. (Note to Angelus: talk about Oedipus complex, pal. You and your fixation on tiny blondes ever after.) And so it's fitting that Connor, like Angel, gets born in an alley, and Darla dies there. On a flippant note: that special effect when Darla becomes dust and baby Connor emerges? Still my favourite use of special effects in the entire show.
After this trilogy, I moved on to Loyalty and Sleep Tight, having not many good memories about the episodes in between but very good memories of these two. Two major differences upon rewatching: I wasn't irritated by Angel's "Mr. Dad" cuteness with baby Connor which I thought the first time around was saccharine enough to make me scream. Because of the knowledge of what is to come, it somehow is poignant and sad instead. And: I have a good deal less empathy with Wesley. The first time around, I was all "poor Wesley, oh God, poor, poor Wesley!" This time, I still feel sorry for Wesley, but mixed in between is a great deal of "Wesley, you idiot, stop with the stoic martyr number and TALK to someone (other than Holtz) about the freakin' prophecy already, you KNOW you've misread prophecies before and that prophecies can be twisted anyway". (I also remembered that Billy actually has a scene in which Cordelia, Fred and Wesley talk about just this - Wesley originally misreading the Shanshu prophecy, and how easy mistaking a prophecy is.)
karabair, in email, said that Wesley was afraid he'd deal with Angelus soon - as Angel was pretty damm near to perfectly happy with the baby - and that due to Cordelia's closeness to Angel and the Fred/Gunn pairing, they weren't, to him, an option to talk with, plus that he thought this way the family would be kept intact except for him and Connor, whereas if he had told someone else they'd have been implicated as well. Which is probably exactly what Wesley was thinking (though I wish the writers had thrown us a verbal hint about the Angelus suspicion), but that doesn't make his decision the right one. (And oh, irony, Wesley was the one who berated Gunn earlier this season for not sharing info with the group and going for the stoic man alone act instead, plus of course there was that conversation with Angel in season 2 after Angel repented and came back.) It's entirely in character and for the best of motives, but it's frustrating as hell because it was so avoidable. What are the chances that Angel, being told about a prophecy in which he would kill his son, would continue to be dangerously happy around baby Connor? And Fred, who knows about shifting dimensions, might or might not have been able to figure out Sahjahn's involvement in the entire prophecy business - if she had had the chance. Instead, we get an unrelenting tragedy unfolding. Like I said, images like Angel and Wesley at the doctor with the baby, or Angel presenting the tiny hockey equipment he bought for Connor to Gunn all are poignant now. By the way, Angel and Gunn fooling around with the hockey has to be one of the last light hearted family moments the gang has in the Hyperion.
What I never noticed before: Angel seems to be staying in the same room he did in the 50s, 217... right until the earthquake strikes and wrecks it and Wesley thinks the prophecy comes true. The Hyperion was home and family for a while, but now it's getting wrecked and dysfunctional again and will never truly provide shelter. Just as the friends and family it harbous will never be entirely together again. They'll reconcile, but they won't be as close and happy again, and one member or the other will always be missing.
And oh, the irony in Angel's outburst after drinking his spiked-with-Connor's-blood drink: "Connor needs to grow up!" Ouch, ouch, ouch.
Lilah's conversation with Angel in the bar reminds me that they had their own great chemistry, though I'm glad the show went the Wesley/Lilah route instead. It also reminds me that as opposed to Lindsey, Angel actually makes an attempt to get through to Lilah here, at the least likely moment - you'd expect him to do nothing but issue threats after that stunt with Connor's blood, but instead he tries for an actual attempt at conversation and, dare I say it, saving her. When watching Salvage in season 4, the one wrong note in Wesley's imagined conversation with Dead!Lilah, to me, is Lilah saying he tried to save her from her wicked ways. Because he truly didn't. He saved her from the Beast, and he will try to save her soul in Home, but at no point ever during the Wes/Lilah relationship does he try to convince her to be, in lack of a better term, not evil anymore. (I think much of the attraction is that Lilah is the Bad Woman, the whore to Fred's madonna in his eyes.) The only one who ever tries that, and only this one time, is Angel.
Holtz and Justine: I think he did intend for the three of them to live in Utah. Holtz does have feelings for Justine. But her primary function to him is still as a weapon, and a weapon can be discarded if necessary. Do either Justine or Holtz regret what they do to Wesley? I don't think so. Justine might have a moment before hand - it's ambigous. But once it's done, she certainly doesn't. The little moment of mutual recognition about self loathing she and Wesley have on the sidewalk reminds me that both Justine and Holtz can be seen as mirroring Wesley in different ways. Justine because her loyalty to Holtz is certainly blind, but then so is Wesley's to Angel. (I don't think Wesley realized Angel's capacity for being a bastard with his soul intact, despite the season 2 stint, until later events.) Holtz because his "means justify the end" policy certainly fit with what Wesley was taught as a Watcher and comes to practice in season 4 and later. Wesley, in season 4, doesn't resemble Angel in season 2 during his "beige" phase as much as he does Holtz in season 3 (Holtz would have thoroughly approved of the Orpheus method with Faith and Angelus) - without, of course, vengeance as his primary motivation.
And so it ends, in Sleep Tight, with "Quortoth, darkest of the dark dimensions" as Sahjahn puts it, and Holtz making that jump. Before, he tells Angel that Connor will "never even know who you are". Which is one of the few outright lies we hear Holtz speak, because seriously, who ever assumed he'd keep that pledge? What he had planned was probably a childhood in Utah and then, since Angel wasn't getting any older as a vampire, for adult Stephen/Connor to show up with the vengeance bill in Los Angeles.
Off to watch more episodes...
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Date: 2005-12-04 02:40 pm (UTC)And the Loa verified it for him, which was really the nail in many coffins. I tend to think the Loa was talking about Angel 'killing' Connor in Home - though I bet I read that idea somewhere else first, maybe even from you?
And yes, you should write that Wesley and Connor post-Origin, please please. :)
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Date: 2005-12-04 04:49 pm (UTC)I'm mulling it over.*g*
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Date: 2005-12-04 05:47 pm (UTC)I tend to think of prophecies and destinies (sp?) and all that in Jossverse like you're in a boat, and you're rowing yourself along, but there are ripples and things under the water pushing you along. If that makes any sense. Jasmine was a strong current under a number of people's boats (mostly Connor's) but there is more than one current happening. And maybe the Loa saw more than one when he/it was predicting for Wesley.
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Date: 2005-12-04 09:33 pm (UTC)Sandy's idea of "worrying about being wrong" is intriguing, because Wesley may have initially seen the abduction as a way to buy some time; if it turns out he's wrong, no harm done. [I grrr over lack of canon on where Wesley was planning to go with the baby, which leaves a lot of interpretion open -- though on the flip side, happily, lots of possibilities for AU scenarios]. Maybe he's secretly expecting a last second reprieve. . .and now I begin to have thoughts about Abraham and Isaac and the Council as a fundamentalist religion and how that might actually explain Wesley going to Holtz and. . .
I need a brain break; great post and will hopefully have more thoughts later.
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Date: 2005-12-05 12:41 am (UTC)What they did come back to in s3 was Wesley's fear of being wrong, which is why I assumed that he was worried about it. Fear of disappointing Angel, hope he wasn't right. Also, dumbass move, sadly for Wesley. And he may indeed have seen the idea as buying time to fix what he could.
It's all horribly ambiguous, darn it! :)
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Date: 2005-12-04 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 10:09 pm (UTC)I think the scene in the alley with Darla and Angel is one of the most moving ones in the series; Darla has that strength of will to make the sacrifice for her "darling boy" and do it without hesitation or histrionics. That final scene with Angel holding baby Connor and looking straight at Holtz? Amazing.
Thanks for a fascinating look at a show I adore.
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Date: 2005-12-05 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-04 10:48 pm (UTC)Holtz's responsibility for his family's deaths - well, I don't think he can be held to have provoked Angel and Darla into doing it, but I think that the ease with which they gained entry to his home leaves open an argument for inadequate explanation and training. (Does the "he provoked them" argument come from people who also think Spike and Nikki Wood were morally equivalent?) One might say that his failure to share troubling information with his family in that case parallels Wesley's.
Wes being afraid Angel would lose his soul - doens't convince me, because I don't think the writers would want to draw attention to how much they'd ignored the happiness clause in that arc. See in particular the scene at the end of Provider (?) with Angel, Cordy and baby Connor lying on the bed.
Wes trying to save Lilah - I think that conversation is signalled as Wes's fantasy/hallucination rather than any kind of actual supernatural communication, and I think Wes by that time feels the need to believe he tried to save Lilah.
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Date: 2005-12-05 05:50 am (UTC)Holtz and responsibility: I've seen the same people use that argument, yes, but not exclusively. (Sidenote: Holtz, of course, spelled "Holz" means "wood" in German.) Point taken about his fault being not sharing troubling information. (Well, little Sarah seems to know she's not supposed to let strangers in, but she's so easily tricked that Holtz can't have warned her and her mother that the strangers might do more than just commit robbery and that this is really lethally serious.)
Oh, I definitely agree we're supposed to take that conversation as Wesley's fantasy. You're right, it makes psychological sense that Wes would need to believe he tried.
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Date: 2005-12-05 12:34 pm (UTC)And I'd better avoid comparing the two plotlines before I start ranting, but I prefer the Holtz episodes because, despite Holtz's quite appalling and disgusting actions, the series never argues that he doesn't have a right to be pissed off.
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Date: 2005-12-05 12:14 pm (UTC)I can indeed...
more thoughtful thoughts
Date: 2005-12-05 08:07 pm (UTC)[Billy]
Many layered details, down to Fred, while intending to comfort Wesley, being dressed up to her neck in the final scene in a clear reaction to his poisonous words earlier.
Oh wow, I never thought of that -- I'm almost glad he didn't open the door to see that.
, but Billy is supposed to be a human monster, and with human monsters, I expect a bit more than
The commentary does explain that Billy was conceived as the offspring of a demon who was raped by a human -- so it was demon side that allowed him to spread the infection but that the evil actually came from his human side; which is a cool ironic reversal, but doesn't actually make it into the episode. .
[Holtz]
For starters, however you turn and twist it, his reason to hate Angel and Darla is pretty much solid. I've seen posts in which it was claimed that Holtz had only himself to blame for making them interested in him by pursuing them to begin with,
Oh, no, the interesting thing about Holtz is that, pre-timewarp, he's more or less a "good guy"; the Watcher's Council might have frowned on him as a dangerous vigilante, but would have basically chalked him up on the side of the angels (if not Angel, sorry for pun). The thing about Holtz is that he's not able to adjust his world-view to an Angelus who isn't Angelus anymore -- or perhaps, he simply doesn't want to. The obvious parallel is Hugo's Javert, for whom the pursuit becomes more imprortant than the crime -- though unlike Javert, he has something significant, and personal, to avenge --
[info]karabair, [Angelus theory snipped]
Which is probably exactly what Wesley was thinking (though I wish the writers had thrown us a verbal hint about the Angelus suspicion), but that doesn't make his decision the right one.
This is the point where I have to step back and make sure I realize what I'm talking about, so I don't get what's canon confused with what I try to fill in as a writer to help this make sense:
The canon has a couple significant gaps -- exactly how did Wes think the prophecy was going to play out and what was he going to do after he took off with Connor? However, I agree that the canon does -- in all the ways you mention -- support the idea that Wes made the wrong choice: though Fred and especially Gunn's reactions are annoyingly inconsistent (and Cordy bizarrely ignores the issue altogether) Fred's remarks to him in the hospital can stand in for what everybody was thinking. Plus, we know how the morality of ME is weighted -- going at it alone NEVER = good idea; sometimes it's necessary, but the hero always comes back to the group in the end. Wesley, in most cases, is the most vocal advocate for that POV, as you mentioned. And I think the mixture of sympathy and frustration is to some extent what we're supposed to feel about him -- though it is easy for the show to look like it's weighted to Wesley's POV, because AD is so damn good at TEH PAIN. (As it always amuses me that Wesley, who probably gets as much on-screen action as the rest of the crew COMBINED still manages to come off as the lovelorn one in a lot of fanon.)
It's entirely in character and for the best of motives, but it's frustrating as hell because it was so avoidable.
Making the whole issue more "Romeo & Juliet" than "King Lear," perhaps? :) Of course, to quote Dire Straits, "Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start --" -- because ME needed somebody to be the odd one out in that scenario and (are my biases showing here?) Wesley suffers the prettiest.
Now stepping away from canon into the process of trying to figure out what's going on in Wesley's head is going to require me to think more about cognitive psychology, game theory, and religious fundamentalism. Which. . .is gonna have to wait until after exams. Poke me about it later, if this seems interesting at all. . . Pulling on just one of these threads (game theory), Wesley pretty consistently plays not to lose -- as opposed, most notably, to Buffy, who always plays to win [their differing approaches are spelled out explicitly in the BtVS ep "Choices," but there are numerous examples for both]; Angel probably falls somewhere in the middle, but more on Buffy's side.
Re: more thoughtful thoughts
Date: 2005-12-06 04:48 am (UTC)He did see. I also remembered the scene as being played out entirely with the closed door between them, but Wesley does in fact open when she knocks and they have some conversation before he closes the door again and starts to cry. So yes, he sees she's entirely covered now.
Billy's background: that is a cool reversal, and I wish it had made it to the screen.
because ME needed somebody to be the odd one out in that scenario and (are my biases showing here?) Wesley suffers the prettiest.
At the start of season 3, I was speculating that Gunn was going to betray the group, because he clearly needed something to do, but in retrospect, it being Wesley definitely had the greater impact, plus yes, AD suffers very prettily indeed.
Brilliant observation about Wesley playing not to lose whereas Buffy plays to win.
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Date: 2005-12-05 08:09 pm (UTC)When watching Salvage in season 4, the one wrong note in Wesley's imagined conversation with Dead!Lilah, to me, is Lilah saying he tried to save her from her wicked ways.
Oh, I could never figure out what bugged me about that scene, but it's that. Though as somebody said downthread, he is projecting, and he's probably actually thinking more about Angel/Angelus and (though he doesn't realize it yet) Faith -- that scene is really looking more to the upcoming interaction with Faith than back on the relationship with Lilah. I s
I think much of the attraction is that Lilah is the Bad Woman, the whore to Fred's madonna in his eyes.)
The madonna/whore dichotomy doesn't quite work for me, re: Wesley, so I'd put it slightly differently -- at the point when Wesley meets Lilah, he feels like he's poisoned everything he tried to care about; everything he touches breaks; in Lilah he sees someone he can't possibly do any damage to, because she's completely corrupt, evil, emotionally invulnerable, what have you, and, well. . .that worked well, huh, Wes, as you're up to your elbows in her blood? When he says, "You didn't love me, you couldn't," it's a thing he needs to believe, though he's already protesting a bit too much.
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Date: 2005-12-05 10:34 pm (UTC)I think that Wesley's behaviour with regards to Lilah as S4 progresses can be explained as driven by the increasingly desperate desire to pretend that that wasn't what he was thinking at the beginning.