Sons, Fathers and Daughters: Peace Out
May. 2nd, 2003 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakDavid Fury is doing excellent work this season. Yes, "Showtime" was only an avarage action episode, but I loved "Salvage" on AtS, and "Lies My Parents Told Me", which Fury not only co-wrote with Drew Goddard but directed. (My favourite shots were the transitions between Spike and William in the first flashback.)
(Between Spike and his mother and Connor and practically everyone from his messed-up sort-of family, he also seems to have a kink for incest, but hey, that's true for everyone at ME. Why should fanfic writers be the only ones to indulge?)
Vincent Kartheiser carried this episode, with Jasmine and Angel as secondary leads, and the Fang Gang present only in cameos (though well-done ones - loved Gunn's Galaxy Quest quote - "never give up, never surrender" indeed). He was brilliant, from Connor's anger and frustration around the AI crew to his uneasiness and competing desperate need around Jasmine to his soliloquy to Cordy in the church to his final decision. All of which leads me to a little pondering about Connor and love. The "Keeper of the Word" tells Angel Connor will never love him, but actually? I think he had already started to do so, despite himself.
In "Habeas Corpses", Connor teasing Angel about zombies is downright good-natured, and at the end of this episode, after they are safe at the hotel, he approaches Angel with "Dad..." We'll never know what he wanted to say, because Angel, still smarting from the C/C discovery, withdraws. In "Soulless", what really gets to Connor isn't Angelus' crack about Oedipal issues (I doubt Connor, who has no memories of Cordy before meeting her in "Benediction", ever thought of her as his mother), but Angelus' claim that none of his three parents - Darla, Holtz and Angel - wanted him, that he drove two of them to suicide. (Not coincidentally, when Connor finally meets what appears to be Darla, he asks her "Why did you leave me - did you hate me that much?" - thus revealing he believed Angelus.) In "Inside Out", Cordy's claim that Angel does hate him seems to hurt Connor, who also shows that, adolescent attitude aside, he did listen to Angel's champion speeches and had started to believe him.
That's not to say I'm sure Connor killing Jasmine was about Angel. It may have been, or he may have heard the last part of what she had said and thus known it wasn't just Angel's life which was at stake. Or it may have been a form of self-annihilation. "I know what she is", he tells Wesley early in the episode, "she's mine." And when talking to the unconscious Cordy, he reveals that yes, he knows Jasmine is a lie, but a better lie than the other ones his life has been build on. This is fascinating not just in regards to how Connor feels about Jasmine. Precisely what other lies is he talking about? Holtz' death, and in fact Holtz' presentation of Angel-as-Angelus, would be an obvious choice. Personally, I think that just as Connor had seen Jasmine's true face from the start, he has realised quite a while ago that Holtz had set him up with his death. Didn't stop him from continuing to love Holtz. His desperate questions to Cordy - "this is what you wanted, isn't it? Isn't it?" - and "that is why you came to me" - would indicate he's also aware that Cordy didn't sleep with him because of an impulse, or because of love, or to "give him something real". (Though I don't think he has realised Cordy would have been Jasmine-influenced at the time. After all, he never was in Jasmine's thrall himself.) But he continues to love her. And I believe him when he tells Jasmine, just before he kills her, in reply to her question whether he loves he still: "Yes." All the people whom Connor loves have in their way used him and brought pain.
But Holtz is dead, and Cordy might as well be, and with killing Jasmine, he might have tried to destroy his own capability to love altogether, so that he can "rest".
Some additional thoughts:
Jasmine: I'm so glad they played her straight, as Galadriel-who-took-the-Ring, rather than as Saruman. A villain who sincerely believes she's doing the right thing not just for herself but for everyone is so much more interesting. Incidentally, Mr. Fury clearly has been brushing up his Anne Rice. (Or rather, the entire ME team has.) If William's decision to save his mother by turning her was echoing Lestat and Gabrielle from "The Vampire Lestat", Jasmine echoes Akasha in "Queen of the Dammed", who wants to justify her (and all the vampires') existence by creating world peace...via killing off two thirds of the male population, keeping just enough men as are necessary for breeding purposes. Jasmine and Akasha have the same mixture of sincerity and self-absorption, and they're both equally and sincerely hurt that anyone could reject them. They also share the need to be worshipped. (BTW, loved Jasmine's "although a temple would be nice", and kudos to Gina Torres for the delivery.) Even their deaths are nearly identical - their brain gets dashed out by the person they hurt most in the past.
And the topic of the day: in a less metaphorical sense, whether or not security and peace is worth giving up our freedom and making human sacrifices is a quite real question these days, isn't it?
(Between Spike and his mother and Connor and practically everyone from his messed-up sort-of family, he also seems to have a kink for incest, but hey, that's true for everyone at ME. Why should fanfic writers be the only ones to indulge?)
Vincent Kartheiser carried this episode, with Jasmine and Angel as secondary leads, and the Fang Gang present only in cameos (though well-done ones - loved Gunn's Galaxy Quest quote - "never give up, never surrender" indeed). He was brilliant, from Connor's anger and frustration around the AI crew to his uneasiness and competing desperate need around Jasmine to his soliloquy to Cordy in the church to his final decision. All of which leads me to a little pondering about Connor and love. The "Keeper of the Word" tells Angel Connor will never love him, but actually? I think he had already started to do so, despite himself.
In "Habeas Corpses", Connor teasing Angel about zombies is downright good-natured, and at the end of this episode, after they are safe at the hotel, he approaches Angel with "Dad..." We'll never know what he wanted to say, because Angel, still smarting from the C/C discovery, withdraws. In "Soulless", what really gets to Connor isn't Angelus' crack about Oedipal issues (I doubt Connor, who has no memories of Cordy before meeting her in "Benediction", ever thought of her as his mother), but Angelus' claim that none of his three parents - Darla, Holtz and Angel - wanted him, that he drove two of them to suicide. (Not coincidentally, when Connor finally meets what appears to be Darla, he asks her "Why did you leave me - did you hate me that much?" - thus revealing he believed Angelus.) In "Inside Out", Cordy's claim that Angel does hate him seems to hurt Connor, who also shows that, adolescent attitude aside, he did listen to Angel's champion speeches and had started to believe him.
That's not to say I'm sure Connor killing Jasmine was about Angel. It may have been, or he may have heard the last part of what she had said and thus known it wasn't just Angel's life which was at stake. Or it may have been a form of self-annihilation. "I know what she is", he tells Wesley early in the episode, "she's mine." And when talking to the unconscious Cordy, he reveals that yes, he knows Jasmine is a lie, but a better lie than the other ones his life has been build on. This is fascinating not just in regards to how Connor feels about Jasmine. Precisely what other lies is he talking about? Holtz' death, and in fact Holtz' presentation of Angel-as-Angelus, would be an obvious choice. Personally, I think that just as Connor had seen Jasmine's true face from the start, he has realised quite a while ago that Holtz had set him up with his death. Didn't stop him from continuing to love Holtz. His desperate questions to Cordy - "this is what you wanted, isn't it? Isn't it?" - and "that is why you came to me" - would indicate he's also aware that Cordy didn't sleep with him because of an impulse, or because of love, or to "give him something real". (Though I don't think he has realised Cordy would have been Jasmine-influenced at the time. After all, he never was in Jasmine's thrall himself.) But he continues to love her. And I believe him when he tells Jasmine, just before he kills her, in reply to her question whether he loves he still: "Yes." All the people whom Connor loves have in their way used him and brought pain.
But Holtz is dead, and Cordy might as well be, and with killing Jasmine, he might have tried to destroy his own capability to love altogether, so that he can "rest".
Some additional thoughts:
Jasmine: I'm so glad they played her straight, as Galadriel-who-took-the-Ring, rather than as Saruman. A villain who sincerely believes she's doing the right thing not just for herself but for everyone is so much more interesting. Incidentally, Mr. Fury clearly has been brushing up his Anne Rice. (Or rather, the entire ME team has.) If William's decision to save his mother by turning her was echoing Lestat and Gabrielle from "The Vampire Lestat", Jasmine echoes Akasha in "Queen of the Dammed", who wants to justify her (and all the vampires') existence by creating world peace...via killing off two thirds of the male population, keeping just enough men as are necessary for breeding purposes. Jasmine and Akasha have the same mixture of sincerity and self-absorption, and they're both equally and sincerely hurt that anyone could reject them. They also share the need to be worshipped. (BTW, loved Jasmine's "although a temple would be nice", and kudos to Gina Torres for the delivery.) Even their deaths are nearly identical - their brain gets dashed out by the person they hurt most in the past.
And the topic of the day: in a less metaphorical sense, whether or not security and peace is worth giving up our freedom and making human sacrifices is a quite real question these days, isn't it?
