Now you made me lose my shopkeeper
Mar. 13th, 2003 10:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynSpoilerin' for Angel episode 3/12, Release -- watch out!
I’ve had this pet theory all year that Buffy this season is about a search for identity. But I was never sure there were overarching themes to Angel, until just recently — and now it seems like it’s about identity as well, only the identities the characters are afraid of. Angel’s conversation with his master’s voice was really what nailed it for me — the discussion of burying Angelus inside Angel, how carefully the show has trod around that very concept all these years, how hard everyone is working to think of the two personalities as separate individuals with separate histories, and how afraid Angel has been of letting that dark side of him out, even just a little, even in a controlled way. He’s repulsed, when he has a soul, by what his dark side is capable of, but this story arc seems to me to not just be a big full-blown apocalyptic roller coaster ride, but also a way of showing Angel that you can’t hide the things that make up what you are, soul or no, and that to use yourself to the greatest effect, you need to know all sides of your character.
And so does Faith, and Wes, and... everyone. Faith was certainly getting her picture of herself, especially the recent identity of the atonement-seeking penitent, completely ripped to shreds. She’s really the only person who isn’t working overtime to see Angel and Angelus as separate beings. Even if she wants to, she can’t disconnect them from each other, because at one time, the darker half was what she wanted. The lighter half was good to her and was the only person who stood up for her, and so she sees them as a single entity more than anyone else, even more than Angel wants to see them. Faith knows her own dark side, she recognizes the things in Angelus that are much like her previous self, which adds a more frightening element to her quandary than simply how to take Angelus out. Every time she’s been confronted with her dark side, she’s either gone into denial or used it for very bad things; Angel was the only one who really saw that dark side and tried to show her how to overcome it.
So it’s got to smart that she’s suddenly looking at him and seeing not just her own failures, but the truly dichotomous nature of Angel — that he has no real control over who he is, and all his talk about overcoming the dark side is just that, talk. Just what a fine line it is to be friendly or loving to him. She’s been willing to pay for her crimes, she admits to them, but she can’t quite reconcile the reality of it with what she has to do as a slayer. She couldn’t go the extra step with drug-girl, she doesn’t want to see herself that way anymore, and Angelus knows it, and uses it against her. And losing to him is not only bad enough because it means she can’t be who she once thought she was, but now he’s attacked her in a way that may do the one thing she could potentially see as being worse than any crime she’s committed as a human. Whee. Plus, it opens up all kinds of Buffy possibilities with the line of slayers, and what happens if she dies... there’s tons of potential here. (I’ve always wished ME had done a better job of explaining just what a soul is in this world, and its importance. There’s just too much reinterpretation all the time, it’s very frustrating in stories like this when what we’ve learned so far is thrown out the window or disregarded.)
Wes is one of the few people there who’ve already confronted the identity they didn’t want to see or let surface. And he’s slowly coming to terms with that, which I think Faith responds to in many ways. But I don’t know that he can integrate his vision of Angel and Angelus — and in the future, he may need to do that, if there’s to be a successful relationship between the two in the future. Even though I can’t stand (gack) Connor, I was amused by him making faces in the mirror — again, trying to find the identity he’s afraid of possessing. Evil!Cordy, obviously, is quite at home with hers, and even though clearly Gunn and Fred are trying to figure their identities out too, their story is uninteresting to me. But obviously they’re looking at things they don’t like inside, as well.
Criminy, even Angelus is having identity issues. In the bar when we first see him, he’s preening and bragging. This is a very different Angelus than we saw in S2 Buffy — he’s more... uh, social, for want of a better word, and seems more like a good old boy than the scourge of Europe. But then suddenly he’s Evil’s bitch, and he does not know how to do that. He may have been willing to admit that the Beast is more powerful than he is, but I think he’d have a hard time admitting that in the end his most useful purpose may be as some evil being’s dog on a leash, and that’s going to really tip him over the edge. He goes to great lengths to verbally separate himself from Angel with soul, but it seemed like here he was confronted with just how much of Angel exists even in his unsoulled state. It’s interesting that he’s been far less dangerous here than he was in S2 Buffy, and I wonder if some of that isn’t just a little of his soul leaking into areas he doesn’t want them to.
If I take out the squick factor of anything Cordy and Connor related, there were some really solid things in this ep — I didn’t get as bored by the fight scenes as I usually do, mostly because I was waiting to see if Faith could keep it together and find that part of her inside that was able to take him out. And I don’t ever remember laughing at Angel the Series as much as I laughed last night when Angel was sitting in the Alistair Cook Masterpiece Theatre room wearing reading glasses, and then the camera pulls out to show the guy writhing on the floor in terror and Angel screaming, “these aren’t helping at all!” Oh god, that was funny, and I seriously can’t remember anything on that show being so funny. And I really do love watching Faith struggle with both her picture of herself, and her picture of Angel and what he represents to her — as well as to Wes, and who she thinks he is and what he’s showing to her instead. She’s never had any respect for him, and now is being tested on that, finding she has to respect him, which confuses the hell out of her. And I loved that Faith still had the capacity to be surprised — she was always so been there done that about everything, and her “What the f—“ when she saw the drug/vamp den was a great way of showing that she isn’t totally blasé about everything.
One of the more annoying non-Connor aspects of the episode was the voice of Evil!Cordy inside Angel’s head. I had a hard time taking any of that seriously because he sounded like a bad commercial voice-over — as if at any moment he would start intoning about the virtues of frying with all-vegetable oil or all-wheel drive rack and pinion steering. Since they had Vladimir Kulak around, they should have nabbed him for the voice, since he’s got such a wonderful one — and it wouldn’t seem unusual for Angel to “hear” the Beast’s voice in his head, plus he’d sound different without the fifty pounds of makeup.
And now I want to beg for spoilers. I don’t think I can stand waiting till next week, so if you got ‘em (more than just the Will’s coming to town, I want details!), send ‘em to me. They have me hanging by a thread now.
I’ve had this pet theory all year that Buffy this season is about a search for identity. But I was never sure there were overarching themes to Angel, until just recently — and now it seems like it’s about identity as well, only the identities the characters are afraid of. Angel’s conversation with his master’s voice was really what nailed it for me — the discussion of burying Angelus inside Angel, how carefully the show has trod around that very concept all these years, how hard everyone is working to think of the two personalities as separate individuals with separate histories, and how afraid Angel has been of letting that dark side of him out, even just a little, even in a controlled way. He’s repulsed, when he has a soul, by what his dark side is capable of, but this story arc seems to me to not just be a big full-blown apocalyptic roller coaster ride, but also a way of showing Angel that you can’t hide the things that make up what you are, soul or no, and that to use yourself to the greatest effect, you need to know all sides of your character.
And so does Faith, and Wes, and... everyone. Faith was certainly getting her picture of herself, especially the recent identity of the atonement-seeking penitent, completely ripped to shreds. She’s really the only person who isn’t working overtime to see Angel and Angelus as separate beings. Even if she wants to, she can’t disconnect them from each other, because at one time, the darker half was what she wanted. The lighter half was good to her and was the only person who stood up for her, and so she sees them as a single entity more than anyone else, even more than Angel wants to see them. Faith knows her own dark side, she recognizes the things in Angelus that are much like her previous self, which adds a more frightening element to her quandary than simply how to take Angelus out. Every time she’s been confronted with her dark side, she’s either gone into denial or used it for very bad things; Angel was the only one who really saw that dark side and tried to show her how to overcome it.
So it’s got to smart that she’s suddenly looking at him and seeing not just her own failures, but the truly dichotomous nature of Angel — that he has no real control over who he is, and all his talk about overcoming the dark side is just that, talk. Just what a fine line it is to be friendly or loving to him. She’s been willing to pay for her crimes, she admits to them, but she can’t quite reconcile the reality of it with what she has to do as a slayer. She couldn’t go the extra step with drug-girl, she doesn’t want to see herself that way anymore, and Angelus knows it, and uses it against her. And losing to him is not only bad enough because it means she can’t be who she once thought she was, but now he’s attacked her in a way that may do the one thing she could potentially see as being worse than any crime she’s committed as a human. Whee. Plus, it opens up all kinds of Buffy possibilities with the line of slayers, and what happens if she dies... there’s tons of potential here. (I’ve always wished ME had done a better job of explaining just what a soul is in this world, and its importance. There’s just too much reinterpretation all the time, it’s very frustrating in stories like this when what we’ve learned so far is thrown out the window or disregarded.)
Wes is one of the few people there who’ve already confronted the identity they didn’t want to see or let surface. And he’s slowly coming to terms with that, which I think Faith responds to in many ways. But I don’t know that he can integrate his vision of Angel and Angelus — and in the future, he may need to do that, if there’s to be a successful relationship between the two in the future. Even though I can’t stand (gack) Connor, I was amused by him making faces in the mirror — again, trying to find the identity he’s afraid of possessing. Evil!Cordy, obviously, is quite at home with hers, and even though clearly Gunn and Fred are trying to figure their identities out too, their story is uninteresting to me. But obviously they’re looking at things they don’t like inside, as well.
Criminy, even Angelus is having identity issues. In the bar when we first see him, he’s preening and bragging. This is a very different Angelus than we saw in S2 Buffy — he’s more... uh, social, for want of a better word, and seems more like a good old boy than the scourge of Europe. But then suddenly he’s Evil’s bitch, and he does not know how to do that. He may have been willing to admit that the Beast is more powerful than he is, but I think he’d have a hard time admitting that in the end his most useful purpose may be as some evil being’s dog on a leash, and that’s going to really tip him over the edge. He goes to great lengths to verbally separate himself from Angel with soul, but it seemed like here he was confronted with just how much of Angel exists even in his unsoulled state. It’s interesting that he’s been far less dangerous here than he was in S2 Buffy, and I wonder if some of that isn’t just a little of his soul leaking into areas he doesn’t want them to.
If I take out the squick factor of anything Cordy and Connor related, there were some really solid things in this ep — I didn’t get as bored by the fight scenes as I usually do, mostly because I was waiting to see if Faith could keep it together and find that part of her inside that was able to take him out. And I don’t ever remember laughing at Angel the Series as much as I laughed last night when Angel was sitting in the Alistair Cook Masterpiece Theatre room wearing reading glasses, and then the camera pulls out to show the guy writhing on the floor in terror and Angel screaming, “these aren’t helping at all!” Oh god, that was funny, and I seriously can’t remember anything on that show being so funny. And I really do love watching Faith struggle with both her picture of herself, and her picture of Angel and what he represents to her — as well as to Wes, and who she thinks he is and what he’s showing to her instead. She’s never had any respect for him, and now is being tested on that, finding she has to respect him, which confuses the hell out of her. And I loved that Faith still had the capacity to be surprised — she was always so been there done that about everything, and her “What the f—“ when she saw the drug/vamp den was a great way of showing that she isn’t totally blasé about everything.
One of the more annoying non-Connor aspects of the episode was the voice of Evil!Cordy inside Angel’s head. I had a hard time taking any of that seriously because he sounded like a bad commercial voice-over — as if at any moment he would start intoning about the virtues of frying with all-vegetable oil or all-wheel drive rack and pinion steering. Since they had Vladimir Kulak around, they should have nabbed him for the voice, since he’s got such a wonderful one — and it wouldn’t seem unusual for Angel to “hear” the Beast’s voice in his head, plus he’d sound different without the fifty pounds of makeup.
And now I want to beg for spoilers. I don’t think I can stand waiting till next week, so if you got ‘em (more than just the Will’s coming to town, I want details!), send ‘em to me. They have me hanging by a thread now.
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Date: 2003-03-13 11:48 am (UTC)Wasn't that great! LOL. I'm no Angel fan at all (just Wes and Faith) but that scene had me in tears. All I could think of was Andrew in Storyteller... "Hello, gentle viewers..." And saw Angelus there instead.
And for spoilers, go here: http://spuffyonline.com/crumblingwalls/viewforum.php?f=6
There's a spoiler thread there with all the scoop. You'll have to go a few pages back once your in it to get the next episode.