Back in black
Jan. 30th, 2003 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynSpoilers for Angel episode 1/29, Awakening
I’ve been thinking a lot about Angel last night. I missed last week’s so some of the stuff leading up to Big Beasty and Angel being connected I wasn’t clear on.
But overall it was a pleasing episode, despite the stuff with Connor, who at this point I simply want dead, dead, dead. I was faked out — I’d asked some people to explain last week’s to me and they’d told me that he had his soul removed by someone creating in him a dream of pure happiness with Cordelia and all his friends and family, and I kind of balked at that. But when it didn’t happen, I was bitching like most people probably were — after all, we’d been promised Angelus for a while (at least, those of us who read info about upcoming seasons), and I love DB when he does Angelus, or plays the almost-Angelus version, like when he set Dru and Darla on fire. It was kind of fun to be faked out, but the payoff of having Angel whisper Buffy’s name at his dream moment of transition was worth any pain of Connor or Cordelia.
I have this weird thing about Angel and Buffy, I’m confessing right now. It makes no sense and is a total double standard, but there you are. Basically, I’ve always felt that Buffy was allowed to get on with her life and have new relationships (especially, ahem, Spike), but Angel was not. The only way I can articulate it is that to me, part of what Angel’s curse was about, what made him Angel, was that he remain isolated and miserable, and work to atone for what he did before the soul. Loving someone he couldn’t be with without risking death and destruction was a huge part of that, and knowing that to be with her physically and emotionally meant true happiness that would result only in death and destruction was a nifty addition to his misery and suffering. And it was focused completely on Buffy, the one person he said he’d loved in... what was it? 247 years? Having him be alone and without love for all time because he couldn’t be with the one he truly loved fits with the curse and his eventual goal of atonement; but having him able to love someone else, and dismiss Buffy as just his old girlfriend as he did earlier this season, mitigates a lot of what I enjoy about Angel as a character. So illogically, I feel that Buffy can move on, but not Angel and that’s how it should be for eternity.
I also never felt like there was the least bit of heat between Cordy and Angel. A good working dynamic, but no sexual heat, the way Buffy and Angel had. I was very into (still am) the whole B/A ship earlier (but not in a psycho way, as I’m not psycho about B/S, just into it), and partly it was because I did feel such heat and passion from the actors. I’ve never gotten that from these two in the least — hell, I feel way more heat between Wes and Angel as a general rule, and there’s all that great angst between them. So having Angel whisper Buffy’s name felt right — because there are so many tantalizing possibilities. Was it because Buffy was the one connected to his previous transitions (losing and regaining the soul)? Was it because Buffy really is his one true love, and even having sex with Cordelia, it’s still Buffy he connects to emotionally? Is it that he associates Angelus with Buffy now? And on and on... tons of fun stuff to speculate on, but I’m not sure they ever will. They don’t seem to spend a lot of time delving into this.
It was also interesting last night that they work so hard to separate Angel from Angelus. On BtVS, they never really did that — they didn’t constantly refer to him as Angelus as a separate identity, even when he was wreaking havoc, and it struck me as overdone and a bit off-putting that they continually had Angel talking in the third person about “him” and “he,” when in the past they didn’t really split him that much. On Buffy they seemed to accept that he was both personalities, and that it was only the curse that separated the two; here it felt like they were trying to create two completely distinct characters so that we can... I dunno. Forgive Angel completely for this other part of him? Like him more? Make him a better dad? I’m not sure why the focus has shifted so much on the name as a way to separate the identities; frankly, I like that he has this inside him and struggles to deal with it, and by trying to sever it, I feel they’ve lost some of what makes him unique (because Spike, with his soul, has such a different set of challenges in many ways). It doesn’t matter what you call it or how you try to disconnect it, it’s still there. (It’s long been a bigger fan trope than something they used on the show, which may be why I dislike the constant, hammering repetition of Angelus as a way to make the characters discrete — it reminds me too much of fandom, and I prefer it when the shows write the canon and don’t veer into fannish conceits.)
Anyway. Outside of those things, the ep was enjoyable and it was fun to be faked out. I liked the dark mystic guy, the rapprochement between Wes and Angel even if it was a dream, the tunnel of stakes, all of that. And for some reason I got a kick out of Wes telling Fred to go get tea for the mystic — it was probably not meant in any way to be this, but in some small way I wondered if he was doing it as a sort of dismissive thing, as if she’s nothing more than the girl Friday and her role is reduced to research and getting tea/coffee. It’s probably nothing more, but I enjoyed it nonetheless because it almost seemed like Wes is capable of seeing her that way the longer she stays with Gunn and acts like his appendage. The final laugh went on a bit long for me (okay, got it, he’s bad), but it was lovely to hear it again, and I’m hoping for sparks to fly, as they do when old Big Bad Angel is around.
I’m falling hopeless farther and farther in love with Wesley. How weird is that? In a million years I could never have expected it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Angel last night. I missed last week’s so some of the stuff leading up to Big Beasty and Angel being connected I wasn’t clear on.
But overall it was a pleasing episode, despite the stuff with Connor, who at this point I simply want dead, dead, dead. I was faked out — I’d asked some people to explain last week’s to me and they’d told me that he had his soul removed by someone creating in him a dream of pure happiness with Cordelia and all his friends and family, and I kind of balked at that. But when it didn’t happen, I was bitching like most people probably were — after all, we’d been promised Angelus for a while (at least, those of us who read info about upcoming seasons), and I love DB when he does Angelus, or plays the almost-Angelus version, like when he set Dru and Darla on fire. It was kind of fun to be faked out, but the payoff of having Angel whisper Buffy’s name at his dream moment of transition was worth any pain of Connor or Cordelia.
I have this weird thing about Angel and Buffy, I’m confessing right now. It makes no sense and is a total double standard, but there you are. Basically, I’ve always felt that Buffy was allowed to get on with her life and have new relationships (especially, ahem, Spike), but Angel was not. The only way I can articulate it is that to me, part of what Angel’s curse was about, what made him Angel, was that he remain isolated and miserable, and work to atone for what he did before the soul. Loving someone he couldn’t be with without risking death and destruction was a huge part of that, and knowing that to be with her physically and emotionally meant true happiness that would result only in death and destruction was a nifty addition to his misery and suffering. And it was focused completely on Buffy, the one person he said he’d loved in... what was it? 247 years? Having him be alone and without love for all time because he couldn’t be with the one he truly loved fits with the curse and his eventual goal of atonement; but having him able to love someone else, and dismiss Buffy as just his old girlfriend as he did earlier this season, mitigates a lot of what I enjoy about Angel as a character. So illogically, I feel that Buffy can move on, but not Angel and that’s how it should be for eternity.
I also never felt like there was the least bit of heat between Cordy and Angel. A good working dynamic, but no sexual heat, the way Buffy and Angel had. I was very into (still am) the whole B/A ship earlier (but not in a psycho way, as I’m not psycho about B/S, just into it), and partly it was because I did feel such heat and passion from the actors. I’ve never gotten that from these two in the least — hell, I feel way more heat between Wes and Angel as a general rule, and there’s all that great angst between them. So having Angel whisper Buffy’s name felt right — because there are so many tantalizing possibilities. Was it because Buffy was the one connected to his previous transitions (losing and regaining the soul)? Was it because Buffy really is his one true love, and even having sex with Cordelia, it’s still Buffy he connects to emotionally? Is it that he associates Angelus with Buffy now? And on and on... tons of fun stuff to speculate on, but I’m not sure they ever will. They don’t seem to spend a lot of time delving into this.
It was also interesting last night that they work so hard to separate Angel from Angelus. On BtVS, they never really did that — they didn’t constantly refer to him as Angelus as a separate identity, even when he was wreaking havoc, and it struck me as overdone and a bit off-putting that they continually had Angel talking in the third person about “him” and “he,” when in the past they didn’t really split him that much. On Buffy they seemed to accept that he was both personalities, and that it was only the curse that separated the two; here it felt like they were trying to create two completely distinct characters so that we can... I dunno. Forgive Angel completely for this other part of him? Like him more? Make him a better dad? I’m not sure why the focus has shifted so much on the name as a way to separate the identities; frankly, I like that he has this inside him and struggles to deal with it, and by trying to sever it, I feel they’ve lost some of what makes him unique (because Spike, with his soul, has such a different set of challenges in many ways). It doesn’t matter what you call it or how you try to disconnect it, it’s still there. (It’s long been a bigger fan trope than something they used on the show, which may be why I dislike the constant, hammering repetition of Angelus as a way to make the characters discrete — it reminds me too much of fandom, and I prefer it when the shows write the canon and don’t veer into fannish conceits.)
Anyway. Outside of those things, the ep was enjoyable and it was fun to be faked out. I liked the dark mystic guy, the rapprochement between Wes and Angel even if it was a dream, the tunnel of stakes, all of that. And for some reason I got a kick out of Wes telling Fred to go get tea for the mystic — it was probably not meant in any way to be this, but in some small way I wondered if he was doing it as a sort of dismissive thing, as if she’s nothing more than the girl Friday and her role is reduced to research and getting tea/coffee. It’s probably nothing more, but I enjoyed it nonetheless because it almost seemed like Wes is capable of seeing her that way the longer she stays with Gunn and acts like his appendage. The final laugh went on a bit long for me (okay, got it, he’s bad), but it was lovely to hear it again, and I’m hoping for sparks to fly, as they do when old Big Bad Angel is around.
I’m falling hopeless farther and farther in love with Wesley. How weird is that? In a million years I could never have expected it.
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-30 03:34 pm (UTC)Buffy made a distinction because she wanted to. She *had* to in order to love him, esp. after he came back from Hell. She does the same with Spike now, cuts him slack because he has a soul, and she fucked him- even though all he has ever shown remorse for really was hurting *her*.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-30 06:10 pm (UTC)Since he climaxed, looked around in panic, and then said her name, I'd say this was the reason. I didn't even hear it at first, actually. Regardless of ship opinion, what they show you on screen is not him saying Buffy's name in a moment passion.
It's an interesting point you're making on about Buffy being allowed (encouraged, even?) to move on, and Angel being stuck and unable to love again. I don't necessarily agree, but it's a thought worth playing with a bit, for sure.
I also agree with Kita that Angel doesn't seem to separate himself from Angelus the way everyone else does-- in this episode and last he makes several points of saying that he and Angelus are not two separate entities with two separate sets of memories. They have one mind and think the same thoughts; the presence of the soul just dictates how that thinking goes.