The one week late "Origin" (AtS) review
Apr. 28th, 2004 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThanks to the good and kind ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bimo, I have now watched Origin.
“What defines a person?” is an ongoing question in this show. “The past, she never goes away, does she?” Doyle asked, before his caught up with him, way back in season 1. Angel’s past catches up with him in very many guises; one of them was Darla, who herself had huge identity issues. “Am I? Am I Darla? “ she asked Lindsey, when she was human with the memories of a vampire. And you know, after she became a vampire the second time, the identity question was far from settled. Dru sensed her distress in Redefinition, arguably the high point of Darla’s second vampire existence from a power-and-menace point of view.
And then she became pregnant, and found motherhood redefining her, yet again. The last identity Darla chose was to be Connor’s mother, and the choice didn’t come easy to her – it was an ongoing struggle, long after the biological pregnancy had set in.
Connor, the child of two vampires, had his identity defined and redefined on a constant basis, starting with his name. He was baby Connor, Angel’s embodied hope for the future; he was Stephen, Holtz’ compensation for the family Angel had killed, and Holtz’ instrument of vengeance. (What would Darla have called him? Who knows.) He was “The Destroyer” to demons from Quartoth, he was Sahjan’s prophecied nemesis. He was Jasmine’s father and champion, and ultimately also her death. Only the “Champion” and “death” identities were ones Connor had chosen for himself, before he gave up on identities altogether and tried self-annihilation. The method Angel found to prevent this was another form of annihilation – all the memories that had shaped Connor were taken away, and a new identity build from scratch.
“I build your son,” Cyrus Veil claims, and the Frankenstein echoes are clear. There have been dozens of fanfics predicting what would happen if Connor regained his memories, or how new Connor would react when meeting his father. Excellent as some of those were, I like the solution ME came up with in Origin best, for it touches on this core question of identity. Connor 2.0’s happy, well-adjusted life might have been a lie when Angel watched him in the very last scene of Home, directly after the mind-wipe had taken effect, but these past nine months, it has been the genuine article. The Dawn parallels are obvious: the monks might have invented an entire childhood and early adolescence for Dawn, but it became real for Dawn and her family, and if Dawn, in Blood Ties, is able to return with Buffy in the end, even after the discovery of the truth has shaken her to the core, it is because those memories of a loved and loving childhood gave her stability.
But there had to be a choice. And Angel couldn’t keep making it for Connor (not to mention everyone else at A.I.). I love the entire episode, but the final scenes, starting from Vincent Kartheiser immediately switching body language the moment Connor regains his memories, to Connor’s final words to Angel in the office, are, for me, among the most moving of the show, ever. Once, Connor chose to believe the lie of Jasmine, because the truth was so horrible and because he was filled with so much self-loathing that he couldn’t believe his father would love him. This time, the memories of an alternate life, still existing and, as Illyria points out, as real as the other ones, help him to chose what might have started as a lie but became the truth with a very different emotional background. Moments of forgiveness and grace are rare in Whedon shows, but they do happen. When Connor tells Angel (and again, superb acting from VK as he switches from the somewhat different speech rhythm Welladjusted!Connor uses to the season 4 Connor pitch): “I learned this from my father”, it is such a moment.
Connor, to Angel, was what Fred was to Wesley: the obsessively, unconditionally loved person, on whose behalf any action becomes possible. Incidentally, I have to agree with butterfly about being irritated at fans who still complain that Wesley shouldn’t love/have loved Fred if he remembered Lilah. Excuse me, but it seems to me we have a case of too much fanfic colouring viewing perceptions. As far as the on-screen canon is concerned Wesley loved Fred throughout his entire relationship with Lilah, no matter what feelings he developed for Lilah as well. He loved Fred after the relationship with Lilah had ended. He loved her after the mindwipe. Now whether Wesley’s love for Fred was ever a good thing is debatable, but it has been portrayed consistently – and as consistent – on the show itself. So Wesley destroying the memory spell on the vague chance it might bring Fred back – and Wes getting the idea it would in the first place – is completely in tandem with said obsessive love.
“Fred changed the moment her memories did,” says Illyria, and later asks: “Are these the memories you needed? Are you Wesley now?” Alas, poor Wes. If Angel was the recipient of a (painful) moment of grace at the end of the episode, Wesley is still as damned as ever. His trust in Angel, the one thing able at the start of the episode to get him back to work from the Fred-mourning, is shattered. He now remembers his own well-intentioned, fatal betrayal, and everyone else abandoning him in turn. The alternate memories, he tells Illyria, make the real ones endurable. Gunn in the hospital, Gunn in self-chosen hellish exile; one wonders whether those parallels occur to Wesley now. And here’s an irony of fate: who would have thought that Connor, of all the people, reacted with more emotional stability than Wesley to such a fundemental revelation?
Funny bits and pieces:
“We’re not going to make love on this sofa any time soon.” Okay, I take it the Angel/Marcus Hamilton slash taking place on the desk is being written now?
“So do you make out with other vampires all the time, like in Anne Rice’s novels?” Again, the Senior Partners prove they have a sense of humour, or maybe Cyrus V. does, including Anne Rice in Connor’s reconstructed memories.
Angel, honey, considering your own Darla fixation, you shouldn’t be surprised that Connor’s thing for older women wasn’t “fixed”.
“Do I look 500?” Angel. Is. So. Vain. (And it’s endearingly consistent from his earliest BTVS days onwards.)
“Kid, you’re one big advertisement for the concept of free will. “ Thanks, Sahjan, we get it.
Not funny but heartbreaking:
“He can’t show me anything I haven’t already seen.” They deliberately played it ambiguous after the fight, but that sentence settled it for me even before the final one.
And, worth repeating:
“I learned that from my father.”
bimo, I have now watched Origin. “What defines a person?” is an ongoing question in this show. “The past, she never goes away, does she?” Doyle asked, before his caught up with him, way back in season 1. Angel’s past catches up with him in very many guises; one of them was Darla, who herself had huge identity issues. “Am I? Am I Darla? “ she asked Lindsey, when she was human with the memories of a vampire. And you know, after she became a vampire the second time, the identity question was far from settled. Dru sensed her distress in Redefinition, arguably the high point of Darla’s second vampire existence from a power-and-menace point of view.
And then she became pregnant, and found motherhood redefining her, yet again. The last identity Darla chose was to be Connor’s mother, and the choice didn’t come easy to her – it was an ongoing struggle, long after the biological pregnancy had set in.
Connor, the child of two vampires, had his identity defined and redefined on a constant basis, starting with his name. He was baby Connor, Angel’s embodied hope for the future; he was Stephen, Holtz’ compensation for the family Angel had killed, and Holtz’ instrument of vengeance. (What would Darla have called him? Who knows.) He was “The Destroyer” to demons from Quartoth, he was Sahjan’s prophecied nemesis. He was Jasmine’s father and champion, and ultimately also her death. Only the “Champion” and “death” identities were ones Connor had chosen for himself, before he gave up on identities altogether and tried self-annihilation. The method Angel found to prevent this was another form of annihilation – all the memories that had shaped Connor were taken away, and a new identity build from scratch.
“I build your son,” Cyrus Veil claims, and the Frankenstein echoes are clear. There have been dozens of fanfics predicting what would happen if Connor regained his memories, or how new Connor would react when meeting his father. Excellent as some of those were, I like the solution ME came up with in Origin best, for it touches on this core question of identity. Connor 2.0’s happy, well-adjusted life might have been a lie when Angel watched him in the very last scene of Home, directly after the mind-wipe had taken effect, but these past nine months, it has been the genuine article. The Dawn parallels are obvious: the monks might have invented an entire childhood and early adolescence for Dawn, but it became real for Dawn and her family, and if Dawn, in Blood Ties, is able to return with Buffy in the end, even after the discovery of the truth has shaken her to the core, it is because those memories of a loved and loving childhood gave her stability.
But there had to be a choice. And Angel couldn’t keep making it for Connor (not to mention everyone else at A.I.). I love the entire episode, but the final scenes, starting from Vincent Kartheiser immediately switching body language the moment Connor regains his memories, to Connor’s final words to Angel in the office, are, for me, among the most moving of the show, ever. Once, Connor chose to believe the lie of Jasmine, because the truth was so horrible and because he was filled with so much self-loathing that he couldn’t believe his father would love him. This time, the memories of an alternate life, still existing and, as Illyria points out, as real as the other ones, help him to chose what might have started as a lie but became the truth with a very different emotional background. Moments of forgiveness and grace are rare in Whedon shows, but they do happen. When Connor tells Angel (and again, superb acting from VK as he switches from the somewhat different speech rhythm Welladjusted!Connor uses to the season 4 Connor pitch): “I learned this from my father”, it is such a moment.
Connor, to Angel, was what Fred was to Wesley: the obsessively, unconditionally loved person, on whose behalf any action becomes possible. Incidentally, I have to agree with butterfly about being irritated at fans who still complain that Wesley shouldn’t love/have loved Fred if he remembered Lilah. Excuse me, but it seems to me we have a case of too much fanfic colouring viewing perceptions. As far as the on-screen canon is concerned Wesley loved Fred throughout his entire relationship with Lilah, no matter what feelings he developed for Lilah as well. He loved Fred after the relationship with Lilah had ended. He loved her after the mindwipe. Now whether Wesley’s love for Fred was ever a good thing is debatable, but it has been portrayed consistently – and as consistent – on the show itself. So Wesley destroying the memory spell on the vague chance it might bring Fred back – and Wes getting the idea it would in the first place – is completely in tandem with said obsessive love.
“Fred changed the moment her memories did,” says Illyria, and later asks: “Are these the memories you needed? Are you Wesley now?” Alas, poor Wes. If Angel was the recipient of a (painful) moment of grace at the end of the episode, Wesley is still as damned as ever. His trust in Angel, the one thing able at the start of the episode to get him back to work from the Fred-mourning, is shattered. He now remembers his own well-intentioned, fatal betrayal, and everyone else abandoning him in turn. The alternate memories, he tells Illyria, make the real ones endurable. Gunn in the hospital, Gunn in self-chosen hellish exile; one wonders whether those parallels occur to Wesley now. And here’s an irony of fate: who would have thought that Connor, of all the people, reacted with more emotional stability than Wesley to such a fundemental revelation?
Funny bits and pieces:
“We’re not going to make love on this sofa any time soon.” Okay, I take it the Angel/Marcus Hamilton slash taking place on the desk is being written now?
“So do you make out with other vampires all the time, like in Anne Rice’s novels?” Again, the Senior Partners prove they have a sense of humour, or maybe Cyrus V. does, including Anne Rice in Connor’s reconstructed memories.
Angel, honey, considering your own Darla fixation, you shouldn’t be surprised that Connor’s thing for older women wasn’t “fixed”.
“Do I look 500?” Angel. Is. So. Vain. (And it’s endearingly consistent from his earliest BTVS days onwards.)
“Kid, you’re one big advertisement for the concept of free will. “ Thanks, Sahjan, we get it.
Not funny but heartbreaking:
“He can’t show me anything I haven’t already seen.” They deliberately played it ambiguous after the fight, but that sentence settled it for me even before the final one.
And, worth repeating:
“I learned that from my father.”
