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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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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.