Angel reviews, and more pictures!
Mar. 11th, 2004 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThanks to the good and gracious ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bimo, I have now seen the last three Angel episodes. Am a happy fangirl indeed. Hear me ramble.
Smile Time: okay, Muppet!Angel was adorable. Angel had the odd moment where I felt lots of sympathy this season, as in the final scene of Damage, but those moments were few. That stint as a puppet did wonders for my Angel (the character) love - the last time it was so intense was during Home, for quite different reasons. Seeing Nina again was a surprise - I had been pretty sure she was a one-time guest character - and worked well. Good old Angel and his thing for blond(e)s, and their thing for him.
The Muppet!Angel/Spike fight was cute, too.*g*
The moment where I broke down in helpless laughter after quietly giggling before was of course when Muppet!Angel vamped out. Does anyone have a screencap of that?
Otoh, the grinning kids were every bit as chilling as in Return of the Dark Knight. And we even got the Joker named - that was the first Batman allusion since season 1, right?
A Hole in the World/ Shells: See, I can't treat them as separate episodes. That was a two-parter as sure as "Surprise" and "Innocence" in BTVS's second season were, the first episode all build-up, the second all pay-off, but both wrapped up and tied together. Having recently rewatched the Alien films, as patient readers of this journal whom I've bothered with my thoughts about them now, I couldn't help but seeing similarities and wonder whether Joss had a fit of nostalgia there. Starting with the scene where Fred torches the face-huggers/cocoons, err, the crystal spewers or whatever they were called, in the teaser.
Fred, like Ripley, whom at first glance you'd think she couldn't resemble less, is no soldier, yet became a warrior not because she wanted to be but out of necessity, due to what happened to her. After she encountered the monsters through her stint in Pylea (and Pylea hasn't gotten referenced that often on AtS since Gru left), she couldn't return home again, not really, even though as opposed to virtually all other Jossverse regular characters and Ripley she had a loving family who would have taken her back. In these episodes, she becomes host, then absorbed by an Alien creature, after being betrayed by a member of the Company, err, W&H who claims to care for her but really sees her only as the shell for what he wants to see born.
Angel, naturally, sees the parallels to Cordy and Jasmine first and foremost. BTVS viewers might also think of Ben and Glory. But in this case, the theme of human and Alien, err, divine demon creature, is played out slightly different. There was still a Cordelia left after Jasmine got herself born. Ben's and Glory's emotions might have started to blend into each other by the end, but they were still two distinct entities. But what is born, or rather re-born, from Fred, burning her up from the inside in the process, does not leave room for another being. Illyria has Fred's body and some of her memories, but is not Fred. You know whom she reminded me of - aside from Farscape's Chiana because of Amy Acker's great, great physical performance - ? Number Eight, cloned Ripley in Alien: Resurrection (scripted by you-know-who). Illyria's original body, as seen in the engravings, looks suspiciously like a H.R. Giger creature. But the human body she resents and has to feel her way into is affecting her as well, or maybe that's just me reading her. But still.
"I don't know which species is worse", Ripley says in Aliens, after learning about another human sell-out, and observes that the Aliens at least don't betray their own. Knox worships Illyria as avidly as Brad Dourif's character in Alien: Resurrection does the Alien Queen, and all the company men and scientists, safe the android Bishop, before him. She notices his betrayal of the human race and his insistence he does not belong with them; in Illyria's contempt for betrayal and deceit there we have another Ripley parallel. By the end of the episode, the distinction between her and those other goddesses, Jasmine and Glory, could not be larger. Jasmine, bereft of love and worship, wanted to lash out with her remaining powers to destroy the humans she could not bring peace to. Glory was to the end a spoiled brat of a goddess who didn't care whom she destroyed in her attempt to get home. Illyria, realizing that the world she knew is utterly and completely gone, is a stranger contemplating a strange world as surely as Ripley the Alien Hybrid at the end of Resurrection.
The name, Illyria, with its Shakespearean associations: What kind of place is this? Illyria, lady. Where gender is a fluid thing - Illyria is female solely because Fred was - and identity shifts all the time. It is not written in stone.
You're not my mother, Connor says in Inside Out. I have her memories, the being who might or might not be Darla replies. Isn't that what counts?
Speaking of identity, and how it is created: obviously a major theme this season. Gunn loved his new identity, his knowledge as sure as Willow loved her magical powers, and loathed his old identity, as sure as Willow loathed hers. "Who wouldn't want to be Super Willow instead of old plain Willow", she asked Buffy in Wrecked. Ever since Lindsey and Eve disrupted the contact to the Senior Partners, Gunn's legal knowledge has begun to fade. In Smile Time, he can't ignore it anymore, and makes his second Faustian deal. He wants to remain Super!Gunn. I can think of few more chilling sights than Gunn singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs early in A Hole in the World. And then he gets hit with the price. The twist with the knife is, of course, Gunn's admission, going from "I didn't think anyone would get hurt" to "I didn't think it would be one of us". Because that's what we've seen happening all season long, the corruption from within. Is Gunn now any different than, say, season 1 Lindsey? (Serving adult girls to rich vampires as sex-plus-dinner is acceptable, but killing children is not.) At the end, Gunn is where Wesley was in season 3, alone in his sickbed, cut of from his friends, and presumably those papers Angel had him sign were his resignation.
Wesley, going from finally getting the girl he has been obsessing about ever since Billy to losing her repeats the earlier plunge into darkness, but with several crucial differences. For starters, this time he isn't the (albeit well-intentioned) betrayer, but the betrayed. Secondly, even without the Connor-related memories his experience with the man he believed to be his father earlier this season already demonstrated, to him as well as to the audience, what he's capable of doing if Fred is threatened. Would Wesley, in Angel's place have made the decision of letting thousands die to save Fred? I don't know. The only thing which keeps me from saying "Yes" is that Wesley's "the greater good before the personal" conviction is the one consistent principle he held to from the season 3 BTVS episode "Choices" onwards to this day.
In any case, Wesley casually shooting the W&H guy in the knees for questioning Fred as a priority, stabbing Gunn because of Fred (echoes of holding a knife at Gunn's throat in A Spin of the Bottle, incidentally a Joss-written ep, and then it also happened because of Fred) and later killing Knox (thus cutting Angel's speech to Illyria about the superior morality of humans short in the most devastating manner possible) is well and truly in the realm of being a sociopath. He's lost it, and the one hope for Wesley which I see is paradoxically enough the salt in his wound, his final conversation with Illyria, because it shows he realises that what he did was not just, or justified.
(Wesley trying to behead Illyria in the teaser, with an axe. Of course it had to be an axe. Gives a whole new spin to the Lilah-dressing-up-as-Fred scene, doesn't it?)
The Wesley-Illyria relationship should prove fascinating to watch, and I eagerly await the next episodes.
Random points:
- David Fury's cameo in Smile Time is his third, after Guy Sacrificing Goat in Reprise and Mustard Man in Once More, With Feeling. Joss and Marti got only one respectively, as Numfar in Beyond the Looking Glass and as Parking Ticket Lady in Once More with Feeling. This seems unfair. Which other Jossverse scribe do we want to see in a cameo in the remaining episodes? Let's vote!
- I cried for Fred during the montage; sue me. I did not cry for Spike, or Anya, or Tara. Or Cordy. Or Doyle.
- Wesley reading to Fred got me, too
- Did I mention Amy Acker was fabulous as Illyria?
My other angel of mercy,hmpf, hosted some more photos of my Brazilian trip. So, look here:
Piranha!
Shut up. I know it looks pathetic. I did throw it back into the water afterwards, okay?
The most beautiful waterfalls of the world. Oh yes, they are.
Close-up of the "Devil's Gorge". Why they couldn't just go and call it the Hellmouth is beyond me.
The Aged Parent and yours truly.
In other news, since I acquired two icons since yesterday, my list of fanfictions-to-be-written reads like this:
1) Belated Mind War story, B5.
2) A certain threesome, also B5. But that might take time.
3) The story what will make several members of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ds9agogo no longer speak with me, DS9, for Sabine.
4) Lorne and Wesley having a conversation, forbimo.
bimo, I have now seen the last three Angel episodes. Am a happy fangirl indeed. Hear me ramble.Smile Time: okay, Muppet!Angel was adorable. Angel had the odd moment where I felt lots of sympathy this season, as in the final scene of Damage, but those moments were few. That stint as a puppet did wonders for my Angel (the character) love - the last time it was so intense was during Home, for quite different reasons. Seeing Nina again was a surprise - I had been pretty sure she was a one-time guest character - and worked well. Good old Angel and his thing for blond(e)s, and their thing for him.
The Muppet!Angel/Spike fight was cute, too.*g*
The moment where I broke down in helpless laughter after quietly giggling before was of course when Muppet!Angel vamped out. Does anyone have a screencap of that?
Otoh, the grinning kids were every bit as chilling as in Return of the Dark Knight. And we even got the Joker named - that was the first Batman allusion since season 1, right?
A Hole in the World/ Shells: See, I can't treat them as separate episodes. That was a two-parter as sure as "Surprise" and "Innocence" in BTVS's second season were, the first episode all build-up, the second all pay-off, but both wrapped up and tied together. Having recently rewatched the Alien films, as patient readers of this journal whom I've bothered with my thoughts about them now, I couldn't help but seeing similarities and wonder whether Joss had a fit of nostalgia there. Starting with the scene where Fred torches the face-huggers/cocoons, err, the crystal spewers or whatever they were called, in the teaser.
Fred, like Ripley, whom at first glance you'd think she couldn't resemble less, is no soldier, yet became a warrior not because she wanted to be but out of necessity, due to what happened to her. After she encountered the monsters through her stint in Pylea (and Pylea hasn't gotten referenced that often on AtS since Gru left), she couldn't return home again, not really, even though as opposed to virtually all other Jossverse regular characters and Ripley she had a loving family who would have taken her back. In these episodes, she becomes host, then absorbed by an Alien creature, after being betrayed by a member of the Company, err, W&H who claims to care for her but really sees her only as the shell for what he wants to see born.
Angel, naturally, sees the parallels to Cordy and Jasmine first and foremost. BTVS viewers might also think of Ben and Glory. But in this case, the theme of human and Alien, err, divine demon creature, is played out slightly different. There was still a Cordelia left after Jasmine got herself born. Ben's and Glory's emotions might have started to blend into each other by the end, but they were still two distinct entities. But what is born, or rather re-born, from Fred, burning her up from the inside in the process, does not leave room for another being. Illyria has Fred's body and some of her memories, but is not Fred. You know whom she reminded me of - aside from Farscape's Chiana because of Amy Acker's great, great physical performance - ? Number Eight, cloned Ripley in Alien: Resurrection (scripted by you-know-who). Illyria's original body, as seen in the engravings, looks suspiciously like a H.R. Giger creature. But the human body she resents and has to feel her way into is affecting her as well, or maybe that's just me reading her. But still.
"I don't know which species is worse", Ripley says in Aliens, after learning about another human sell-out, and observes that the Aliens at least don't betray their own. Knox worships Illyria as avidly as Brad Dourif's character in Alien: Resurrection does the Alien Queen, and all the company men and scientists, safe the android Bishop, before him. She notices his betrayal of the human race and his insistence he does not belong with them; in Illyria's contempt for betrayal and deceit there we have another Ripley parallel. By the end of the episode, the distinction between her and those other goddesses, Jasmine and Glory, could not be larger. Jasmine, bereft of love and worship, wanted to lash out with her remaining powers to destroy the humans she could not bring peace to. Glory was to the end a spoiled brat of a goddess who didn't care whom she destroyed in her attempt to get home. Illyria, realizing that the world she knew is utterly and completely gone, is a stranger contemplating a strange world as surely as Ripley the Alien Hybrid at the end of Resurrection.
The name, Illyria, with its Shakespearean associations: What kind of place is this? Illyria, lady. Where gender is a fluid thing - Illyria is female solely because Fred was - and identity shifts all the time. It is not written in stone.
You're not my mother, Connor says in Inside Out. I have her memories, the being who might or might not be Darla replies. Isn't that what counts?
Speaking of identity, and how it is created: obviously a major theme this season. Gunn loved his new identity, his knowledge as sure as Willow loved her magical powers, and loathed his old identity, as sure as Willow loathed hers. "Who wouldn't want to be Super Willow instead of old plain Willow", she asked Buffy in Wrecked. Ever since Lindsey and Eve disrupted the contact to the Senior Partners, Gunn's legal knowledge has begun to fade. In Smile Time, he can't ignore it anymore, and makes his second Faustian deal. He wants to remain Super!Gunn. I can think of few more chilling sights than Gunn singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs early in A Hole in the World. And then he gets hit with the price. The twist with the knife is, of course, Gunn's admission, going from "I didn't think anyone would get hurt" to "I didn't think it would be one of us". Because that's what we've seen happening all season long, the corruption from within. Is Gunn now any different than, say, season 1 Lindsey? (Serving adult girls to rich vampires as sex-plus-dinner is acceptable, but killing children is not.) At the end, Gunn is where Wesley was in season 3, alone in his sickbed, cut of from his friends, and presumably those papers Angel had him sign were his resignation.
Wesley, going from finally getting the girl he has been obsessing about ever since Billy to losing her repeats the earlier plunge into darkness, but with several crucial differences. For starters, this time he isn't the (albeit well-intentioned) betrayer, but the betrayed. Secondly, even without the Connor-related memories his experience with the man he believed to be his father earlier this season already demonstrated, to him as well as to the audience, what he's capable of doing if Fred is threatened. Would Wesley, in Angel's place have made the decision of letting thousands die to save Fred? I don't know. The only thing which keeps me from saying "Yes" is that Wesley's "the greater good before the personal" conviction is the one consistent principle he held to from the season 3 BTVS episode "Choices" onwards to this day.
In any case, Wesley casually shooting the W&H guy in the knees for questioning Fred as a priority, stabbing Gunn because of Fred (echoes of holding a knife at Gunn's throat in A Spin of the Bottle, incidentally a Joss-written ep, and then it also happened because of Fred) and later killing Knox (thus cutting Angel's speech to Illyria about the superior morality of humans short in the most devastating manner possible) is well and truly in the realm of being a sociopath. He's lost it, and the one hope for Wesley which I see is paradoxically enough the salt in his wound, his final conversation with Illyria, because it shows he realises that what he did was not just, or justified.
(Wesley trying to behead Illyria in the teaser, with an axe. Of course it had to be an axe. Gives a whole new spin to the Lilah-dressing-up-as-Fred scene, doesn't it?)
The Wesley-Illyria relationship should prove fascinating to watch, and I eagerly await the next episodes.
Random points:
- David Fury's cameo in Smile Time is his third, after Guy Sacrificing Goat in Reprise and Mustard Man in Once More, With Feeling. Joss and Marti got only one respectively, as Numfar in Beyond the Looking Glass and as Parking Ticket Lady in Once More with Feeling. This seems unfair. Which other Jossverse scribe do we want to see in a cameo in the remaining episodes? Let's vote!
- I cried for Fred during the montage; sue me. I did not cry for Spike, or Anya, or Tara. Or Cordy. Or Doyle.
- Wesley reading to Fred got me, too
- Did I mention Amy Acker was fabulous as Illyria?
My other angel of mercy,
hmpf, hosted some more photos of my Brazilian trip. So, look here: Piranha!
Shut up. I know it looks pathetic. I did throw it back into the water afterwards, okay?
The most beautiful waterfalls of the world. Oh yes, they are.
Close-up of the "Devil's Gorge". Why they couldn't just go and call it the Hellmouth is beyond me.
The Aged Parent and yours truly.
In other news, since I acquired two icons since yesterday, my list of fanfictions-to-be-written reads like this:
1) Belated Mind War story, B5.
2) A certain threesome, also B5. But that might take time.
3) The story what will make several members of
ds9agogo no longer speak with me, DS9, for Sabine.4) Lorne and Wesley having a conversation, for
bimo.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-11 01:56 am (UTC)(completely ignoring the rest of the post, which I did read, for outrage.)
I knew it.
Date: 2004-03-11 01:58 am (UTC)Re: I knew it.
Date: 2004-03-11 02:02 am (UTC)I will graciously step in and take the blame for the K/Du, as I stand by that pairing world without end and also am, um,
And nobody gets attention tonight, because I am *so* damned distracted and it is time. To get to work. Work!
Those waterfalls are astonishing, also.
It's done.
Date: 2004-03-11 01:15 pm (UTC)Read and find out. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/selenak/68921.html)
about playing the Prefect...
Date: 2004-03-19 09:33 pm (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/community/theatrical_fen/140635.html?mode=reply
Re: I knew it.
Date: 2004-03-11 02:03 am (UTC)Re: I knew it.
Date: 2004-03-11 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-11 02:52 am (UTC)More gorgeous photos. I now see what you mean about those waterfalls, they look simply stunning. That piranha looked plenty big enough to me!
Kernezelda...
Date: 2004-03-11 03:39 am (UTC)Re: Kernezelda...
Date: 2004-03-11 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-11 03:12 am (UTC)These are from
Too early in the morning for good comments, other than general enjoyment of your travelogues/photos and the DS9 Julian story.
you're a peach!
Date: 2004-03-11 03:38 am (UTC)Re: you're a peach!
Date: 2004-03-11 08:37 am (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/users/wisteria_/309331.html
no subject
Date: 2004-03-11 04:38 am (UTC)*sighs*
Date: 2004-03-11 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-11 09:43 am (UTC)I also eagerly await what you're writing, especially now that I've seen enough B5 to understand your B5 fic.
How much did you watch?
Date: 2004-03-11 01:17 pm (UTC)Re: How much did you watch?
Date: 2004-03-11 01:39 pm (UTC)And why should I kill you? *I'm* not anti-Dukat-apologist, pre-S7, and if anyone can do it without turning him into a Misunderstood Good Guy, it's you. :-)
Re: How much did you watch?
Date: 2004-03-11 01:49 pm (UTC)And thanks for the vote of confidence. I promise not to write Misunderstood Good Guy!Dukat.
surfed over from mutant_allies
Date: 2004-03-12 12:57 am (UTC)I also loved your Dickensian reference to the Aged P.
moi
Re: surfed over from mutant_allies
Date: 2004-03-12 08:43 am (UTC)Re: surfed over from mutant_allies
Date: 2004-03-12 04:19 pm (UTC)moi
Re: surfed over from mutant_allies
Date: 2004-03-13 08:23 am (UTC)Re: surfed over from mutant_allies
Date: 2004-03-13 08:31 am (UTC)moi
no subject
Date: 2004-03-12 06:02 am (UTC)Thanks!
Date: 2004-03-12 08:41 am (UTC)Re: Thanks!
Date: 2004-03-13 08:32 am (UTC)moi