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shadowkatWasn't going to post on Angel 5.12, because not a favorite. David Fury isn't one of my favorite writers and well other factors, I won't bore you with. But, a friend who loved the episode got me to thinking about it...actually about something that bugged me, last night after I'd seen it.
The more I think about it, the more You're Welcome, episode 5.12 reminds me of The House Always Wins - the only other episode in ATS these past two years written solely by Fury, which Fury, in case we don't get it, shouts out to. Actually more than once. There's a reason for that.
Here's the Two references to THAW:
1. Eve tells Lindsey that the "House Always Wins" - in response to Lindsey's comment about the senior partners. Actually Eve says two incredibly interesting things to Lindsey:
a)" But the House Always Wins" - reference to the senior partners investment in Angel and Lindsey's attempts to undermine them. It's also a very interesting commentary on two episodes:
Double or Nothing - the gambling establishment which almost takes Gunn's soul and resents the fact Fred has part ownership in it. Cordy comes back to help Angel outwit the head of the establishment. He bets the head - his soul and Gunn's based on cutting a deck of cards. Angel loses. The House Wins. The gang has to escape.
The House Always Wins - another gambling establishment this round in the Vegas. The person who needs saving is Lorne. Once again Angel inadvertently gives up a part of himself to save someone by gambling. He gambles his destiny instead of his soul. But like Double or Nothing - the game is rigged so the house will always win. No matter what you do. The mere act of playing by the House's rules, causes you to lose the game.
This harkens back to a bit of advice Lindsey gave in Dead End (which Fury also shouts out to in this episode with the discussion between Spike and Lindsey about cut off hands.) Here Lindsey advised Angel that when dealing with W&H, don't let them make you play by their rules - make them play by yours. In this episode, Lindsey is working to get W&H and everyone else to play by his rules. Except like Angel, he is distracted by one problem - his own obsessions. Leaving us with the question - is Eve right? Does the House Always Win? Is our fate pre-determined? Is it about destiny? Are we just puppets to destiny?
b)The flaw in Lindsey's planning. The second thing Eve says: "It's still all about Angel. After all this time, he's still the center of your universe."
meanwhile Angel has barely thought about Lindsey. Is this a shout out to Connor, whom Angel thinks about all the time, but no one else even
remembers, including Connor? Or a shout-out to Liam and Liam's continued obsession with approval? Lindsey didn't have to work that hard to manipulate Angel to feel jealous of Spike - after all Lindsey gets that, because he's jealous of Angel.
2. In the beginning segment of the episode, or the teaser, they do the exact same long distance shot that they did in House with Cordy watching everyone below, detached from it. That distance mapping shot - on Angel and his friends in the room discussing the sacrificed nuns, then camera goes way way up and we see the earth and city from a distance, then it swoops down again, and we see Cordy in white, jarring awake.
In House, Cordy notices Angel is losing his
destiny, she insists on interfering and saves Angel. Same thing happens in You're Welcome, she sees Angel quitting his destiny, and swoops in to push him on the path again. The only question is - why can't Angel do it himself? And does Cordy's interference, which saves Angel in the short term, really help him in the long term?
Oh back to the ritual in the beginning - this ritual reminds me of the ritual in Apocalyspe Nowish - which is done after Cordy comes back from high above. Several people are sacrificed in order to open a porthole or change something. In Apocalypse Nowish - it's rich people, the decadent
group sacrificed to block the sun. In You're Welcome - a group of religious celibate nuns are sacrificed to open a porthole. Right after this happens. Angel announces he's had it, he quits. It's at that moment we get the distancing shot and see Cordelia wake up, almost as if the ritual and Cordelia's return are linked. Just like the decadent sacrifice and rain of fire - results in Cordy sleeping with Connor.
You're Welcome feels like a *huge* mislead of an episode to me, just like THAW was. The typical ME tease - flipping you one way...then wham! Five episodes later.
Both make you think all is right with the world now - Angel's on his path again. He has his destiny back. He believes in the mission. His bestfriend and true confident, the one who provided him with the visions all this time, Cordy succeeds. But she also pays a price for her interference - in THAW she appears with no memory of anything, the higher being stripped her of them when she took the deal to interfere - foreshadowing of how Angel will strip his friends of their memories in Home - when he takes the deal from W&H to interfere in Connor's destiny. Note Cordy interfere's in Angel's - loses her memories and becomes a puppet to a higher being's PTB will (THAW - Inside Out), Angel interfere's in Connor's - strips away everyone else's memories and becomes a puppet to the senior
partners (Home - S5 ATS). In You're Welcome - it turns out she was a ghost - and had never *really* woken up from her coma, just died. Her ability to appear one last time and help Angel is her payment from PTB for hijacking her body last year and sacrificing her life. This foreshadowing may actually be worse than THAW's.
The last shot? Angel standing all alone in his office holding the phone, with the camera moving away from him, until he is just a figure shown from a distance with a phone hanging from his hand, the
office all dark, and we the viewers in the place Cordelia once had been. Not unlike the image in Home, when he's outside the windows watching Connor. Here all his friends have gone off together and he's alone. Also a nice contrast to Unleashed - where everyone is around him and they are ordering take out. Here, they have all gone out for a drink.
In both THAW and You're Welcome - Cordy makes a huge sacrifice to save Angel from himself. The question we're left with in both instances is should Cordy have done this? Was it the best thing to do? In either case? Is she just another puppeteer? Or a puppet herself? In both cases - it's Cordy's own arrogance and geniune desire to help, that causes her to do this and in both cases you wonder about the agendas of those who let her.
Or if Cordy herself even knows who they are. After all it's not the first time she's been hoodwinked: That Vision Thing S3 (where she's getting visions from something other than the powers), To Shanshu in
La S2 (again something other than the powers), Birthday S3 (Skip tricks her into becoming half-demon), Tomorrow S3 (tricks her into going up to the
PTB), The House Always Wins S4 (tricks her into helping Angel so she gets hijacked)...
The thing you need to pay attention to, I think, is once again Angel needs someone to remind him of his mission. He really is Sissyphus at the bottom of the hill, he falls down it, someone has to come along, pick him up and tell him he matters and he has a destiny and give him the rock. The writers are doing a great job of emphasizing that Angel
really doesn't make a choice, he follows what someone else says or where people push him. Whether it's Whistler, Buffy, Doyle/PTB, Cordelia/PTB, Lindsey/Eve, Senior Partners, or The Oracles. He needs someone else to give him a reason to fight. If it weren't for Cordy coming courtesy of the PTB then, well...he'd quit? Not a good sign. Very very bad sign actually. Angel is still very much a puppet. Spike meanwhile says he doesn't have a destiny. Keep in mind the show- runner is an atheist and believes we set our own destiny and Bell, the other show-runner, sees Angel as an anti-hero (The Offical Angel Magazine, latest issue, Interview with Jeff Bell). Also when this episode comes in the season? The first episode of sweeps, not the last. The question we'll be asking ourselves by the first of March may be the same one we asked after House Always Wins.
Lindsey is also used in an interesting way. Lindsey represents Angel's alter-ego here. Not Angelus, Liam. The boy who wants Daddy's approval and resents someone else getting it. Lindsey's comments to Eve are reminiscent of Angel's comments to Cordy about Spike. 'I'm not the champion after everything I've done for the PTB- Spike is. And I fought for it.' L:'I'm not the one leading W&H, after everything I sacrificed for the senior partners - Angel is.' They duel it out. But Angel doesn't win the battle on his own, like he thinks - he had help. Lots of help. Angel isn't a solitary hero here. If it weren't for Spike? He wouldn't have gotten there in time - the zombies Spike stays behind to fight, the information Spike provides
on Lindsey. If it weren't for Gunn, Fred, Wes, and Lorne - they wouldn't have stripped Lindsey of his symbols which protected him from the senior partners detection. If it weren't for Cordy - Lindsey would still be empowered by the crystal. If it weren't for these people? Angel would be dead. At the end, instead of moping, Spike goes out with the rest of the team to have a drink and he helps Angel fight off Lindsey, even though it's proven he no longer has a destiny. But is this true? Can a destiny be given and taken away? Who chooses our destiny? Us or someone else? Are we just puppets? Or our own individuals? Spike is a vampire who
against all odds searched out a soul and helped a slayer save the world. No prophecies told him to do it. No one expected it. Same thing with Buffy, as Whistler states way back in Becoming - "we
didn't see you coming, Angel was supposed to be the hero here..." Again who gave Angel the scroll on the Shanshue? In Blind Date - Lindsey is manipulated by Holland Manners into leading Angel to the scroll. I still wonder what would have happened it Angel didn't take it.
I don't believe for a minute Angel is back on the right track or that things will be smooth sailing. I actually think Cordy may have hurt them more than helped by keeping them all at Wolfram and Hart.
I think the only way Angel can break free is to flip the tables - to remember Lindsey's advice, make them play by your rules. To stop playing Pinnoccio to the blue fairy (the PTB/the senior partners) and finally be his own man. When you choose your own destiny, find your own path, instead of having someone hand it to you - no one can take it.
The more I think about it, the more You're Welcome, episode 5.12 reminds me of The House Always Wins - the only other episode in ATS these past two years written solely by Fury, which Fury, in case we don't get it, shouts out to. Actually more than once. There's a reason for that.
Here's the Two references to THAW:
1. Eve tells Lindsey that the "House Always Wins" - in response to Lindsey's comment about the senior partners. Actually Eve says two incredibly interesting things to Lindsey:
a)" But the House Always Wins" - reference to the senior partners investment in Angel and Lindsey's attempts to undermine them. It's also a very interesting commentary on two episodes:
Double or Nothing - the gambling establishment which almost takes Gunn's soul and resents the fact Fred has part ownership in it. Cordy comes back to help Angel outwit the head of the establishment. He bets the head - his soul and Gunn's based on cutting a deck of cards. Angel loses. The House Wins. The gang has to escape.
The House Always Wins - another gambling establishment this round in the Vegas. The person who needs saving is Lorne. Once again Angel inadvertently gives up a part of himself to save someone by gambling. He gambles his destiny instead of his soul. But like Double or Nothing - the game is rigged so the house will always win. No matter what you do. The mere act of playing by the House's rules, causes you to lose the game.
This harkens back to a bit of advice Lindsey gave in Dead End (which Fury also shouts out to in this episode with the discussion between Spike and Lindsey about cut off hands.) Here Lindsey advised Angel that when dealing with W&H, don't let them make you play by their rules - make them play by yours. In this episode, Lindsey is working to get W&H and everyone else to play by his rules. Except like Angel, he is distracted by one problem - his own obsessions. Leaving us with the question - is Eve right? Does the House Always Win? Is our fate pre-determined? Is it about destiny? Are we just puppets to destiny?
b)The flaw in Lindsey's planning. The second thing Eve says: "It's still all about Angel. After all this time, he's still the center of your universe."
meanwhile Angel has barely thought about Lindsey. Is this a shout out to Connor, whom Angel thinks about all the time, but no one else even
remembers, including Connor? Or a shout-out to Liam and Liam's continued obsession with approval? Lindsey didn't have to work that hard to manipulate Angel to feel jealous of Spike - after all Lindsey gets that, because he's jealous of Angel.
2. In the beginning segment of the episode, or the teaser, they do the exact same long distance shot that they did in House with Cordy watching everyone below, detached from it. That distance mapping shot - on Angel and his friends in the room discussing the sacrificed nuns, then camera goes way way up and we see the earth and city from a distance, then it swoops down again, and we see Cordy in white, jarring awake.
In House, Cordy notices Angel is losing his
destiny, she insists on interfering and saves Angel. Same thing happens in You're Welcome, she sees Angel quitting his destiny, and swoops in to push him on the path again. The only question is - why can't Angel do it himself? And does Cordy's interference, which saves Angel in the short term, really help him in the long term?
Oh back to the ritual in the beginning - this ritual reminds me of the ritual in Apocalyspe Nowish - which is done after Cordy comes back from high above. Several people are sacrificed in order to open a porthole or change something. In Apocalypse Nowish - it's rich people, the decadent
group sacrificed to block the sun. In You're Welcome - a group of religious celibate nuns are sacrificed to open a porthole. Right after this happens. Angel announces he's had it, he quits. It's at that moment we get the distancing shot and see Cordelia wake up, almost as if the ritual and Cordelia's return are linked. Just like the decadent sacrifice and rain of fire - results in Cordy sleeping with Connor.
You're Welcome feels like a *huge* mislead of an episode to me, just like THAW was. The typical ME tease - flipping you one way...then wham! Five episodes later.
Both make you think all is right with the world now - Angel's on his path again. He has his destiny back. He believes in the mission. His bestfriend and true confident, the one who provided him with the visions all this time, Cordy succeeds. But she also pays a price for her interference - in THAW she appears with no memory of anything, the higher being stripped her of them when she took the deal to interfere - foreshadowing of how Angel will strip his friends of their memories in Home - when he takes the deal from W&H to interfere in Connor's destiny. Note Cordy interfere's in Angel's - loses her memories and becomes a puppet to a higher being's PTB will (THAW - Inside Out), Angel interfere's in Connor's - strips away everyone else's memories and becomes a puppet to the senior
partners (Home - S5 ATS). In You're Welcome - it turns out she was a ghost - and had never *really* woken up from her coma, just died. Her ability to appear one last time and help Angel is her payment from PTB for hijacking her body last year and sacrificing her life. This foreshadowing may actually be worse than THAW's.
The last shot? Angel standing all alone in his office holding the phone, with the camera moving away from him, until he is just a figure shown from a distance with a phone hanging from his hand, the
office all dark, and we the viewers in the place Cordelia once had been. Not unlike the image in Home, when he's outside the windows watching Connor. Here all his friends have gone off together and he's alone. Also a nice contrast to Unleashed - where everyone is around him and they are ordering take out. Here, they have all gone out for a drink.
In both THAW and You're Welcome - Cordy makes a huge sacrifice to save Angel from himself. The question we're left with in both instances is should Cordy have done this? Was it the best thing to do? In either case? Is she just another puppeteer? Or a puppet herself? In both cases - it's Cordy's own arrogance and geniune desire to help, that causes her to do this and in both cases you wonder about the agendas of those who let her.
Or if Cordy herself even knows who they are. After all it's not the first time she's been hoodwinked: That Vision Thing S3 (where she's getting visions from something other than the powers), To Shanshu in
La S2 (again something other than the powers), Birthday S3 (Skip tricks her into becoming half-demon), Tomorrow S3 (tricks her into going up to the
PTB), The House Always Wins S4 (tricks her into helping Angel so she gets hijacked)...
The thing you need to pay attention to, I think, is once again Angel needs someone to remind him of his mission. He really is Sissyphus at the bottom of the hill, he falls down it, someone has to come along, pick him up and tell him he matters and he has a destiny and give him the rock. The writers are doing a great job of emphasizing that Angel
really doesn't make a choice, he follows what someone else says or where people push him. Whether it's Whistler, Buffy, Doyle/PTB, Cordelia/PTB, Lindsey/Eve, Senior Partners, or The Oracles. He needs someone else to give him a reason to fight. If it weren't for Cordy coming courtesy of the PTB then, well...he'd quit? Not a good sign. Very very bad sign actually. Angel is still very much a puppet. Spike meanwhile says he doesn't have a destiny. Keep in mind the show- runner is an atheist and believes we set our own destiny and Bell, the other show-runner, sees Angel as an anti-hero (The Offical Angel Magazine, latest issue, Interview with Jeff Bell). Also when this episode comes in the season? The first episode of sweeps, not the last. The question we'll be asking ourselves by the first of March may be the same one we asked after House Always Wins.
Lindsey is also used in an interesting way. Lindsey represents Angel's alter-ego here. Not Angelus, Liam. The boy who wants Daddy's approval and resents someone else getting it. Lindsey's comments to Eve are reminiscent of Angel's comments to Cordy about Spike. 'I'm not the champion after everything I've done for the PTB- Spike is. And I fought for it.' L:'I'm not the one leading W&H, after everything I sacrificed for the senior partners - Angel is.' They duel it out. But Angel doesn't win the battle on his own, like he thinks - he had help. Lots of help. Angel isn't a solitary hero here. If it weren't for Spike? He wouldn't have gotten there in time - the zombies Spike stays behind to fight, the information Spike provides
on Lindsey. If it weren't for Gunn, Fred, Wes, and Lorne - they wouldn't have stripped Lindsey of his symbols which protected him from the senior partners detection. If it weren't for Cordy - Lindsey would still be empowered by the crystal. If it weren't for these people? Angel would be dead. At the end, instead of moping, Spike goes out with the rest of the team to have a drink and he helps Angel fight off Lindsey, even though it's proven he no longer has a destiny. But is this true? Can a destiny be given and taken away? Who chooses our destiny? Us or someone else? Are we just puppets? Or our own individuals? Spike is a vampire who
against all odds searched out a soul and helped a slayer save the world. No prophecies told him to do it. No one expected it. Same thing with Buffy, as Whistler states way back in Becoming - "we
didn't see you coming, Angel was supposed to be the hero here..." Again who gave Angel the scroll on the Shanshue? In Blind Date - Lindsey is manipulated by Holland Manners into leading Angel to the scroll. I still wonder what would have happened it Angel didn't take it.
I don't believe for a minute Angel is back on the right track or that things will be smooth sailing. I actually think Cordy may have hurt them more than helped by keeping them all at Wolfram and Hart.
I think the only way Angel can break free is to flip the tables - to remember Lindsey's advice, make them play by your rules. To stop playing Pinnoccio to the blue fairy (the PTB/the senior partners) and finally be his own man. When you choose your own destiny, find your own path, instead of having someone hand it to you - no one can take it.
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Some interesting questions
Date: 2004-02-05 01:26 pm (UTC)He's back to believing in himself, that he can do good at W&H, but the question still remains, should he even BE at W&H? Because at first, Cordy's all over him about the wrongness of that.
I'm starting to wonder where ME is going with this. Because back in "Home" this W&H thing was supposed to be "a new direction" for the show. But all we talk about this season is corruption, and how being at W&H is bad for them in the long run.
I assumed up until now that by the end of the season, they'd be gone from W&H. Which leaves the question, what would season 6 be about (if they have one). Where would they be in they weren't at W&H still? Will they have a "New direction for the show, part 2"? And I'm also starting to doubt they'll leave W&H because they'd have to uproot the whole solution to the Connor thing, which is part of the deal Angel made, as he reminds us last night. And I don't think ME are prepared to really uproot the Connor thing. If he comes back, it'll be for a single one-off episode that doesn't really resolve much, IMO.
So now I'm thinking they'll find a way to stay where they are.
Am I getting cynical, or does this sound right?
Re: Some interesting questions
Date: 2004-02-05 02:01 pm (UTC)Not at all. I'm having some of the same questions. This episode seems to contradict itself half-way through. We have Cordy telling Angel to leave W&H, then telling him to stay - that he can help within the belly of the beast? It felt like we had two Cordy's - the one from S1-Billy in S3, then the one from Birthday onwards. Although that could just be me.
I assumed up until now that by the end of the season, they'd be gone from W&H. Which leaves the question, what would season 6 be about (if they have one). Where would they be in they weren't at W&H still? Will they have a "New direction for the show, part 2"? And I'm also starting to doubt they'll leave W&H because they'd have to uproot the whole solution to the Connor thing, which is part of the deal Angel made, as he reminds us last night. And I don't think ME are prepared to really uproot the Connor thing. If he comes back, it'll be for a single one-off episode that doesn't really resolve much, IMO.
I can see several ways of ending S5 -the one's you mentioned above and a few others you haven't mentioned:
In Angel the Series - ME always seems to start Angel off with one group of allegiances and certainities, only to flip it the opposite way at the end. Last season Angel desperately wanted Connor and Cordy - by Home he'd sacrificed all hope of that. In S3, Angel wanted Buffy and the certainity of being the champion and wasn't thinking about Darla by Tomorrow - he was in love with Cordy and wanted his son, and found himself at the bottom of the ocean. So where is Angel in Conviction and Unleashed? He's ignoring Spike (whose on the outside) and with the AI gang who he's still close to. This leads me to think by the end of the season - Angel will be either:
1. On the outside with Spike - and all his friends on the inside. Basically Angel and Spike vs. Gunn, Wes, Fred, and etc.
or
2. On the outside all alone, just Angel vs. everyone who is left.
I have this sinking feeling that Angel will either just have Spike with him at the end or worse No One at all. They are going to a lot of trouble to show us how much he needs his friends in each of these episodes. And Soul Purpose is full of imagery about distrust and the loss of friends and corruption from within.
The third option?
Angel sacrifices himself to get another re-set, this time wiping himself from everyone's memories, so he never existed at all and is forced to start again. The shanshu happens just not like we expect. He does to everyone what he did to Buffy in IWRY. I'm praying they don't do this, but I wouldn't put it past them. I hate resets and memory wipes as much as I despised the temporal anomalies on Star Trek. If the writers bothered to address the philosophical and psychological issues involved - I wouldn't mind it. But they just use it as a convienent device to write themselves out of a hole. (Sorry, I'm just annoyed at how ME is dealing with the mindwipe.)
From the pattern of the last four seasons? I don't foresee Angel being happy at the end of this one. That much I'm certain of. I honestly think he's going to lose everything, before things start to turn around.
Every time any one on this show is happy or gets comfortable - I start to worry.
Yeah, but they gotta be thinking...
Date: 2004-02-05 02:17 pm (UTC)I'm much less cynical than you that things will get better at the end, and that they'll get worse after this in the middle.
Re: Yeah, but they gotta be thinking...
Date: 2004-02-05 02:22 pm (UTC)That season ended more or less on a happy note, if you ignore Willow's arrival at the end to inform them Buffy has died.
Oh and S5 BTVS? Whedon expected that to be the final, Buffy's death. Also you could argue that they half expected it to get cancelled with Home...
My best guess? We'll get something in between, angsty but not depressing - sort of like There's No Place Like Plrz Grlbzt or Home, which is dark in the middle but lighter at the end. As opposed to something like Tomorrow or To Shanshue in LA.
Re: Yeah, but they gotta be thinking...
Date: 2004-02-05 02:53 pm (UTC)I guess I live in a blissfully ignorant land. The only season I was aware of Angel being uncertain about its renewel was the end of Season 4 into Season 5. Every other season, I assumed it'd be back and never heard otherwise.
The upside of not caring about the behind-the-scenes aspects of the show, I guess! ; )
no subject
Date: 2004-02-06 03:34 am (UTC)I was very dissatisfied with the episode. It just seemed wrong, as if it was contradicting the whole point of this season. The reintroduction of assistace from TPTB, Lindsey's abrupt departure, and especially the (to me) extremely cheesy moment when Angel had this year's epiphany-I am Angel! It seemed very odd that some reminders from Cordy and Lindsey of who Angel had been reinvigorated him, and the result was that he rededicated himself to working at W&H.
After I read cjl's comment about Greenwalt, however, I rewatched the teaser. God isn't here right now, Wes says, and "Greenway" has left the building. Is this a hint that Angel doesn't really have the gods on his side, as it seems? I very much agree he needs to stop looking for affirmation from others. As you say, the other thing we've been told all year is that Angel's been a puppet for whomever can pull his strings.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-06 09:03 am (UTC)some interesting contradictions.
Did Cordelia really tell Angel to trust in the PTB?
Or did she say something else? Something closer to what Doyle had said? Which is - you can't rely on me or someone else or fate to tell you to do the right thing or who you are - you have to figure that out for yourself. All I can do is tell you who you were.
The show reminds us of Doyle's act in Hero. Doyle wasn't the prophesied one in Hero, Angel was. What Doyle does in Hero is very similar to what Spike does in Chosen, neither were destined to do it. They just did it because it was the right thing to do and they didn't want the "hero" to die. Cordelia is watching that video to get inspiration - so she can do with Angel what she has to do.
She doesn't tell him to stay with W&H. What she tells him is people are worth saving. He used to believe that. Even if they appear to be rats. "Our *rats* are low." And he is worth saving too. That's why she appeared. That was Angel's problem and why he was struggling so much, after what happened with Connor last season, Angel no longer saw himself as worth saving or redemption and as a result didn't see people he identified as being like him, worth saving either. It's important that Angel get that desire to reclaim souls back - including the desire to reclaim his own, it's what he had when he helped Faith and it's what he'll need to help others in the coming months. I think that's the point.
I also think that SP/PTB are one and the same, and Angel could very well end up giving both the finger before the end and going back to being just Angel, someone struggling to reclaim his own life and others lives as well.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-06 10:24 am (UTC)Hope you don't mind me getting in on this late. I have been thinking this for some time and am in agreement. I think that the name PTB encompass much for than they let on and in fact some of them are the SP. I think Angel, as puppet, is the front for a behind the scenes apocolypse happening between the ptb and the sp. I am not sure if they will let Angel give them the "finger". They are not done with him yet. Hopefully, whatever Cordy's message to Angel about the powers that be really was, he will find the ability to find himself again. He won't be able to do anything before that.
Don't mind at all ;-)
Date: 2004-02-06 11:57 am (UTC)I'd agree. I think Angel has to first acknowledge they are trying to and possibly have been using him for their own ends. In some respects it reminds me of the story of Job, where the devil and God make a bet and use Job as the game. Bablyon 5 dealt with a similar theme - with the shadows and vorlons. These two groups - disagreed on how the universe should be managed. One group believed in interfering with the development of the younger races. The other believed in guiding the younger races not interfering. Both interfered, they just disagreed on how. Before long their little disagreement in philosophy and universe management became a full-fledged war, pulling every race and species into the conflict and almost destroying the universe in the process.
The question the shadows asked was: what do you want?
The question the vorlons asked was: who are you?
I think that may be the same issue going on with the SP and the PTB.
The PTB are asking Angel - who he is - hence his answer to Lindsey: "I'm Angel, I save lives, including my own" - that's how I define myself.
The SP are asking Angel - what does he want? HE answers - I want a destiny, I want to matter.
The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, they bracket each other. But I think the conflict is partly in how we interpret them. Does "what we want" necessarily have to interfer with "who we are?"
I'm wondering if Whedon may be playing with the same questions in ATS. In which case Angel may have to come to grips with the same solution the younger races in Babylon 5 did - which is who I am and what I want is for me to determin, not you. I am not your puppet. I am my own person. But to do that, Angel must first realize that they are trying to use him in this way. Then break free from it.
great stuff!
Date: 2004-02-06 11:41 am (UTC)Certainly making your destiny is much better, in the Jossverse, than waiting for someone to hand it to you.
Cordelia woke up at precisely the right moment to keep Angel working at W&H, which is what the Senior Partners want - and they are very evil. We know this. But it may be that Cordelia is right, and that this is nevertheless a good place for Angel to be, because he can do a lot of good there. At least, by the end of the episode she isn't doing anything to persuade him to leave. Why not? One wonders. If this is such a corrupting place, then why didn't she try to get Angel to leave - as he originally meant to? Did she manage to lose her focus too, in the one day on earth she was allowed? Or is W&H where Angel needs to be - even though this is also what the Senior Partners want?
Why didn't she want to leave the elevator?
Cordelia believes uncritically in good Powers That Be. I would have thought that she would be the very first person who would know that wasn't always the case.
The one thing I am sure of was that Cordy wasn't evil, here. She thought she was doing the right thing. But as you point out, she's been duped often enough before.
Re: great stuff!
Date: 2004-02-06 12:23 pm (UTC)Re: great stuff!
Date: 2004-02-08 03:21 pm (UTC)I agree, had some of the same misgivings regarding Cordy. Also don't see her as evil. After re-watching the episode I've come to the conclusion that two things are going on:
1. SP (Senior Partners) want Angel to stay at W&H and want to know what's going on with Eve and the whomever is behind her. So they may have given Cordy the vision, or perhaps the PTB did in collusion with SP, because they also had problems with what Lindsey was up to. The question is - what was Lindsey up to? What was in that container?
What can destroy Angel and no one else? My guess is Angelus. It's evil*higherbeing*posssessed Cordy who gets Angel to become Angelus in S4 and that almost undoes him. In each season the part of Angel that keeps cropping up, that threatens his whole mission and everything is Angelus - the demon raging inside, who did *not* have a choice. Who did *not* choose the soul. And cannot accept this path.
2. Cordelia doesn't at any point tell Angel to stay or leave W&H. What she tells him is it is up to him to define who he is, not anyone else. He needs to find his own way, she can't do it for him. That is after all what Doyle does in Hero, Doyle comes to terms with the demon side of him, the part he hides, shows it to Cordy and uses it to save half-demons like himself, and chooses to be a hero. He's not prophesized as one or destined. It's in a way very similar to Spike's act in Chosen. Angel still wants that destiny, he hasn't realized yet he's being used. But he's close to getting it - in this episode he says to Lindsey, his metaphorical shadow: "I'm Angel" - this is who I am. I define myself not you. Now, he just has to do it to the SP and PTB and he's on his way.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-06 01:03 pm (UTC)Well, you know how I feel about the ep. And part of why I love it is that I never got the impression that anything was a done deal. Epiphany schpiphany! Nothing is a foregone conclusion. Every action or line that appears to be a step forward is matched with a step backward or more.
Angel says "I am Angel. I beat the bad guys," to Lindsey, in the heat of battle and applying the smackdown on the Tiny Texan.
But he tells Cordy, "Lindsey wasted a lot of energy trying to make me doubt myself. I know it's not even close to over." So, he's got a glimmer of confidence back, but as soon as he admits that, he pays the price for it. He loses Cordy. He's just been bitchslapped with the reminder that everything comes at a price. And when you're dealing with TPTB/SP, those are sucker's rates, with interest rates that the Mafia could only dream of.
It's deliciously complicated and all designed to make Angel the tool of his own destruction. Or salvation. Where's the fun in just offing the guy? Nope, gotta make it hurt and make it his own doing.
David Fury has posted at the Bronze about whether it's Cordy's body in the bed when "Cordy" pulls the curtain over her:
"You can interpret it anyway you want, honestly... But my intent was that that was Cordy's body." Interesting that he's leaving the interpretation up to the viewer. See, I don't think ME wants anything to be too obvious, but it's natural for some fans to jump to certain kinds of conclusions. But does the text/show bear out your conclusions? Or are there built-in contradictions designed to confound your expectations?
And here's where your film studies background might help ('cause I ain't ever had that kinda schoolin'). How do we differentiate between information we receive via dialogue (which is explicit but not always true) vs. the visual and narrative story told (which is implicit and maybe truer to the storyteller's intent)? How do we process those kinds of information and how does that affect our interpretations? We all have different reactions to these shows, but sometimes the reactions seem so extreme to me that I wonder how some people got from A to B when we're watching the same show.
Have you ever done psych tests to see if you're more verbal or visual? Somebody made me do one of those in college and most people are usually skewed towards one or the other. I can't even remember what it involved, but it'd be interesting to see how different posters test as.
punkinpuss