The deeper well
Feb. 27th, 2004 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI’ve been trapped in this outplacement seminar thing the past few days, and yesterday was especially difficult because all I wanted to think about was this episode of Angel. I didn’t believe that this season would give me new favorite episodes that I could put up there with I Will Remember You, In the Dark, and Dead End, but now I’ve got Damage, Smile Time, and A Hole in the World to add, all within the space of a few weeks.
The problem, though, is trying to make some sense of it; there was so much to ponder that I can’t figure out how to make linear sense of it all. So I guess I’ll just take it in chunks.
Mirror image
I’ve been watching Miami Vice again, and there’s a favorite story arc that came toward the end of the series. After killing the (ostensibly unarmed) man who killed his wife, Sonny gets hurt in an explosion and develops amnesia, which makes him think that he is the underworld alter-ego of his undercover persona. He becomes this ruthless, murdering criminal because that’s what he thinks he is, but eventually images from his own real life bleed over into his subconscious and he begins to understand who he was -- but even when he gets his memory back, he can’t really be who he was before; he’s far too damaged.
I was reminded of this last night, most notably with Gunn and the mirror image of himself in the white room, of course, but also in the scenes with Knox. Gunn has an image he’s projecting to everyone, including himself, that is as deep as a mirror’s surface -- it’s a thin, shiny façade, but there’s nothing underneath it except the true Charles that eventually comes through in crisis situations. For all the “rational thought is an acquired taste” polish, there is still the street fighter in him. This is reflected back at him from the conduit in the white room, where the conduit is so much of a mirror image that it beats him for taking liberties with his position. He’s reminded over and over lately that all this acquired polish is tenuous at best, and completely dependent upon the whim of something else, something larger that he can’t begin to fathom.
And did his fear of being found out, of having his reflected image broken in front of his friends, lead him to try to kill Knox, or was it simply the true Gunn breaking through the new image? You can take the thug out of the street, but can you take the street out of the thug? It’s hard to tell -- that scene plays out well enough that you could easily take it either way, and I find this incredibly intriguing.
Mirrors and reverse images also play a huge part in both the visual motifs of the episode and in the relational motifs, especially between Angel and Spike. When Wes brings Fred back to her room, we see him place her on the bed from a long shot in a mirror. This is an interesting choice, because it not only distances us by the focal length of the camera, but also distances us by putting the shot into reverse. This is the first time that Wes and Fred have had this level of intimacy, and yet the initial shot establishing us in this world is as far removed as it can be. Is it setting us up for what’s to come -- both Wes’s loss, and the audience/fans’ loss? Or is it hinting at some other kind of reversal? I could think about this for days.
We also see something with Wes that I’ve come to think of as his alter ego personality -- for good Sonny Crockett, it was bad Sonny Burnett, underworld player and drug dealer. For Wes, it’s that darker man who was released after countless personal blows, and who has yet to fully return to the subconscious of the former, more constrained Wesley. It comes out most in times of threat or crisis (killing his father, shooting the staff member). Even Gunn comments on it here, when he says that the older, civilized Wes is still there -- so Wes’s mirror image flickers and changes as circumstances dictate. He’s Book Man, he’s the confident killer, he’s Shotgun Wes, he’s the sweet, loving boyfriend... he has fragmented reflections, chaotic reflections, something that Fred can respond to because she clearly values and understands fragmented and mixed up things.
Angel, Spike, and Angel and Spike
Here, too, we see reflections of both a past and a present in these two characters (their pasts with each other, predominantly), and also a reflection of an accepted self and a rejected self in the other person. Angel sees the worst of himself in Spike, something that provokes him to yell and argue about a totally moronic concept for 40 minutes. He finally understands that this is the person he wants to reject inside himself, that he fights to contain (Spike as the id, again). Spike, on the other hand, sees the self he can’t yet become and is afraid of being with the soul: the brooder and the dully noble stoic. Yet Angel also represents something he wants, and a connection with his past, which his sad little “nowhere else to go” line amplifies. He needs something and someone to belong to, always has, and Angel, despite the annoying reminders of what he may or may not become, represents belonging in the most elemental way -- because Angel has another “family” around him, one Spike desperately wants to be part of.
The fact that they take opposite sides on the caveman argument, that they take opposite positions (id and superego) on everything, creates the mirror reverse image; in times of crisis, though, the two images become nearly one. Angel will always choose to sacrifice the world for one cause or one person (he did it as Angelus, and does it as Angel, over and over), and Spike, conflicted, has to follow along. It’s Spike who, when faced with a need to fix something, Angel calls upon to “save the day.” Angel knows that this is what Spike is (that Spike wants to be the champion, at heart), for all their opposition. He sees the reflected image as well as the reverse image, it’s just that most of the time, he doesn’t know what to do with either when he sees them in Spike. And it’s probably because of that connection that Spike can move him to tears -- Spike’s verbal abilities allow him to articulate feelings Angel never expresses openly, but clearly has.
The scene in the plane will probably be one of my favorite scenes from the show, forever. The two of them on opposite sides, both terrified of being in a plane for the first time (and I love Joss for actually thinking of this, for remembering not just the helicopter, but also that there wouldn’t have been a chance for the two of them to experience something so alarming to two very old guys, even if they’ve been mostly modernized), both terrified of not being able to save the ones they love. Angel couldn’t save Cordelia or Connor, Spike could, and did, save Buffy and the others. It’s Angel who doubts the outcome, and Spike who is so confident of success (because he has to believe, or crumble) that he expects them to go take in a show on the West End. And then the scene plays out with that shot of the sun arcing across their faces (something we would never otherwise get to see outside of W&H because of the necrotempered glass) -- the sun that is supposed to bring life and light, but for them, signals something totally different. And also says that time is running out. The scene was so exquisite and perfect that I’ve watched it now at least ten times, and will probably just keep hitting repeat for ten more.
And of course the obvious slashiness of the sight gag with the sword in Angel, of the hand-holding, and the closeness of their faces as they argued was a huge part of the joy of the episode. I adored it that Spike just made a cute little face when Angel asked him to hold his hand, as if “sure, why not?” in that very Spike-like way, and the mostly unspoken bit of history in St. Petersburg. Sheer perfection.
Knox, we hardly knew ye
I’ve been waiting for the reveal of Knox to be evil -- after all, this is the character Jonathan Woodward seems to be playing across all the Jossverse shows (though Tracey wasn’t evil, per se, just a fuckup who did some Very Bad Things). But the way in which he’s revealed to be evil was interesting, though I’m not sure of some of the details. He seems genuinely distressed and confused at first, which doesn’t make sense if he knew what was coming. And does his comment about coming to LA to prepare for Illyria’s return mean that he himself is a demon of some kind, or another type of supernatural being? We see a glimpse of him standing in the preview for next week, so perhaps he is -- Gunn seems to have effectively killed him, or at least, few people would be able to survive a blow with a canister of that size from a guy as powerful as Gunn. I don’t read spoilers, so I have no idea what the outcome will be, but I’m curious.
And even though I knew Knox would turn out to be evil, I’d expected, like others, that it would come out because he was angry over losing Fred. This puts an interesting spin, that he’s been waiting all this time. It’s also hard to lose him because I adore Knox (and Holden and Tracey), but I guess it was always coming. It seemed inevitable, since Knox is also a mirror image -- this time of Fred. She is the heart, the good, the soul; she brings humanity to science and to the team, and now we understand that Knox is the opposite of this, the dark side of all those things in Fred, the aspects that would have to exist within a scientist at W&H.
Fred
I never thought I’d like Fred at first. But over time, I’ve grown to like her more and more, and even though I wished that the Wes and Fred romance hadn’t happened (I always thought his carrying a torch for her that long, especially after Lilah, rang really false), it was handled pleasantly enough that I don’t begrudge it. And of course it would have had to escalate for this episode, because it’s that tenuous, unexplored connection that keeps her going as long as it did. Her absence will make a hole in Angel and crew’s world -- and this is important, because over and over the team has been split up since they joined W&H, they’ve had crises of conscience and felt directionless, agonized over their choices. Fighting for Fred brought them together as a circle, and now one set of hands is missing as part of that circle -- maintaining the group will be crucial to their next goal. But how can they keep the world together when they find out that it was Gunn’s desperation that brought this to pass? And can he live with himself?
Damsels don’t always do so well on Angel -- where men fared badly on Buffy, women seem to always be one thing or another on Angel. Reverse images, again -- the strong bitches with the soft core, like Lilah and Faith and to some degree the egregious Kate, or the softer, seemingly delicate outside with the steel rod inside, like Fred and Cordelia. And the latter kind are always imperiled. So at the beginning of the episode, we see the one image of Fred -- in danger, as she promised her parents she wouldn’t be, but doing something deadly and effective. By the end of the episode, it’s the reverse -- she is broken, hollowed out, dying because of the nature of the work she chose. I can only hope that the maxim of how no one really dies in the Buffyverse is true, and that Fred will come back to us as Fred. I feel like she’s needed in this circle, that the group can’t be effective without their heart.
And the rest
Joss has become such a technically proficient director. I remember his jokes about his first episodes and how awkward he was behind the camera, and I think this episode is a perfect example of how far he’s come, and how much he excels now at the directorial duties. I loved the red of Fred’s room (heart, blood, passion) and the centered shots he often used, the sense of available light from the windows (it seemed as if he picked up a lot from the outstanding directors and set designers they had on Firefly). The beauty of the airplane scene. The way he set up the gag with Angel and Spike coming through into the room, Angel with the sword in him, and the blocking all the way over across the room, was perfect. A tiny throwaway that amazed me was when Fred sings, and suddenly Lorne turns around, the slightly overhead angle making his eyes look redder and more fearful, the speed of his turn -- was one of the most thrilling things they’ve done.
He did some wonderful things with Lorne in this episode, also -- the way Lorne seemed to expand and grow more beefy and dangerous, the lowness of his voice, as he threatened Eve (and man, doesn’t she look better like that?), and how he seemed to be smaller and look different when he said he wanted to pray. Color and size played a huge part of this episode, I noticed, something they rarely do -- the dramatic shifts in set colors create a tone for each scene that tell us a lot about what’s happening to the characters inside (the cool icy blue of the lab, the warmer tones of the airplane, the hearth and fire quality of Fred’s room, the empty darkness and white light of the Deeper Well). And Lorne seemed to embody that, as if his greenness shifted during scenes with different feelings (mood Lorne!).
I could go on and on with the script and the direction, but I’m already far too long on this thing. Suffice to say that small touches -- Spike’s hand over his heart on “are you saying we should annoy other people?”, the way he walks over furniture, the fight with the swords and the undercranking of the camera, Gladiator-style, for a few seconds, the blocking of the two-shot with Spike and Angel above the well, and maybe the loveliest scene of all, Angel's quiet "Wes and Fred?" and Spike's gentle, not even remotely goading "You didn't know?" ... all were beautiful, deft touches that I enjoyed. Joss is all growed up as a director!
I can’t believe they want to take this story away from me. I just can’t.
The problem, though, is trying to make some sense of it; there was so much to ponder that I can’t figure out how to make linear sense of it all. So I guess I’ll just take it in chunks.
Mirror image
I’ve been watching Miami Vice again, and there’s a favorite story arc that came toward the end of the series. After killing the (ostensibly unarmed) man who killed his wife, Sonny gets hurt in an explosion and develops amnesia, which makes him think that he is the underworld alter-ego of his undercover persona. He becomes this ruthless, murdering criminal because that’s what he thinks he is, but eventually images from his own real life bleed over into his subconscious and he begins to understand who he was -- but even when he gets his memory back, he can’t really be who he was before; he’s far too damaged.
I was reminded of this last night, most notably with Gunn and the mirror image of himself in the white room, of course, but also in the scenes with Knox. Gunn has an image he’s projecting to everyone, including himself, that is as deep as a mirror’s surface -- it’s a thin, shiny façade, but there’s nothing underneath it except the true Charles that eventually comes through in crisis situations. For all the “rational thought is an acquired taste” polish, there is still the street fighter in him. This is reflected back at him from the conduit in the white room, where the conduit is so much of a mirror image that it beats him for taking liberties with his position. He’s reminded over and over lately that all this acquired polish is tenuous at best, and completely dependent upon the whim of something else, something larger that he can’t begin to fathom.
And did his fear of being found out, of having his reflected image broken in front of his friends, lead him to try to kill Knox, or was it simply the true Gunn breaking through the new image? You can take the thug out of the street, but can you take the street out of the thug? It’s hard to tell -- that scene plays out well enough that you could easily take it either way, and I find this incredibly intriguing.
Mirrors and reverse images also play a huge part in both the visual motifs of the episode and in the relational motifs, especially between Angel and Spike. When Wes brings Fred back to her room, we see him place her on the bed from a long shot in a mirror. This is an interesting choice, because it not only distances us by the focal length of the camera, but also distances us by putting the shot into reverse. This is the first time that Wes and Fred have had this level of intimacy, and yet the initial shot establishing us in this world is as far removed as it can be. Is it setting us up for what’s to come -- both Wes’s loss, and the audience/fans’ loss? Or is it hinting at some other kind of reversal? I could think about this for days.
We also see something with Wes that I’ve come to think of as his alter ego personality -- for good Sonny Crockett, it was bad Sonny Burnett, underworld player and drug dealer. For Wes, it’s that darker man who was released after countless personal blows, and who has yet to fully return to the subconscious of the former, more constrained Wesley. It comes out most in times of threat or crisis (killing his father, shooting the staff member). Even Gunn comments on it here, when he says that the older, civilized Wes is still there -- so Wes’s mirror image flickers and changes as circumstances dictate. He’s Book Man, he’s the confident killer, he’s Shotgun Wes, he’s the sweet, loving boyfriend... he has fragmented reflections, chaotic reflections, something that Fred can respond to because she clearly values and understands fragmented and mixed up things.
Angel, Spike, and Angel and Spike
Here, too, we see reflections of both a past and a present in these two characters (their pasts with each other, predominantly), and also a reflection of an accepted self and a rejected self in the other person. Angel sees the worst of himself in Spike, something that provokes him to yell and argue about a totally moronic concept for 40 minutes. He finally understands that this is the person he wants to reject inside himself, that he fights to contain (Spike as the id, again). Spike, on the other hand, sees the self he can’t yet become and is afraid of being with the soul: the brooder and the dully noble stoic. Yet Angel also represents something he wants, and a connection with his past, which his sad little “nowhere else to go” line amplifies. He needs something and someone to belong to, always has, and Angel, despite the annoying reminders of what he may or may not become, represents belonging in the most elemental way -- because Angel has another “family” around him, one Spike desperately wants to be part of.
The fact that they take opposite sides on the caveman argument, that they take opposite positions (id and superego) on everything, creates the mirror reverse image; in times of crisis, though, the two images become nearly one. Angel will always choose to sacrifice the world for one cause or one person (he did it as Angelus, and does it as Angel, over and over), and Spike, conflicted, has to follow along. It’s Spike who, when faced with a need to fix something, Angel calls upon to “save the day.” Angel knows that this is what Spike is (that Spike wants to be the champion, at heart), for all their opposition. He sees the reflected image as well as the reverse image, it’s just that most of the time, he doesn’t know what to do with either when he sees them in Spike. And it’s probably because of that connection that Spike can move him to tears -- Spike’s verbal abilities allow him to articulate feelings Angel never expresses openly, but clearly has.
The scene in the plane will probably be one of my favorite scenes from the show, forever. The two of them on opposite sides, both terrified of being in a plane for the first time (and I love Joss for actually thinking of this, for remembering not just the helicopter, but also that there wouldn’t have been a chance for the two of them to experience something so alarming to two very old guys, even if they’ve been mostly modernized), both terrified of not being able to save the ones they love. Angel couldn’t save Cordelia or Connor, Spike could, and did, save Buffy and the others. It’s Angel who doubts the outcome, and Spike who is so confident of success (because he has to believe, or crumble) that he expects them to go take in a show on the West End. And then the scene plays out with that shot of the sun arcing across their faces (something we would never otherwise get to see outside of W&H because of the necrotempered glass) -- the sun that is supposed to bring life and light, but for them, signals something totally different. And also says that time is running out. The scene was so exquisite and perfect that I’ve watched it now at least ten times, and will probably just keep hitting repeat for ten more.
And of course the obvious slashiness of the sight gag with the sword in Angel, of the hand-holding, and the closeness of their faces as they argued was a huge part of the joy of the episode. I adored it that Spike just made a cute little face when Angel asked him to hold his hand, as if “sure, why not?” in that very Spike-like way, and the mostly unspoken bit of history in St. Petersburg. Sheer perfection.
Knox, we hardly knew ye
I’ve been waiting for the reveal of Knox to be evil -- after all, this is the character Jonathan Woodward seems to be playing across all the Jossverse shows (though Tracey wasn’t evil, per se, just a fuckup who did some Very Bad Things). But the way in which he’s revealed to be evil was interesting, though I’m not sure of some of the details. He seems genuinely distressed and confused at first, which doesn’t make sense if he knew what was coming. And does his comment about coming to LA to prepare for Illyria’s return mean that he himself is a demon of some kind, or another type of supernatural being? We see a glimpse of him standing in the preview for next week, so perhaps he is -- Gunn seems to have effectively killed him, or at least, few people would be able to survive a blow with a canister of that size from a guy as powerful as Gunn. I don’t read spoilers, so I have no idea what the outcome will be, but I’m curious.
And even though I knew Knox would turn out to be evil, I’d expected, like others, that it would come out because he was angry over losing Fred. This puts an interesting spin, that he’s been waiting all this time. It’s also hard to lose him because I adore Knox (and Holden and Tracey), but I guess it was always coming. It seemed inevitable, since Knox is also a mirror image -- this time of Fred. She is the heart, the good, the soul; she brings humanity to science and to the team, and now we understand that Knox is the opposite of this, the dark side of all those things in Fred, the aspects that would have to exist within a scientist at W&H.
Fred
I never thought I’d like Fred at first. But over time, I’ve grown to like her more and more, and even though I wished that the Wes and Fred romance hadn’t happened (I always thought his carrying a torch for her that long, especially after Lilah, rang really false), it was handled pleasantly enough that I don’t begrudge it. And of course it would have had to escalate for this episode, because it’s that tenuous, unexplored connection that keeps her going as long as it did. Her absence will make a hole in Angel and crew’s world -- and this is important, because over and over the team has been split up since they joined W&H, they’ve had crises of conscience and felt directionless, agonized over their choices. Fighting for Fred brought them together as a circle, and now one set of hands is missing as part of that circle -- maintaining the group will be crucial to their next goal. But how can they keep the world together when they find out that it was Gunn’s desperation that brought this to pass? And can he live with himself?
Damsels don’t always do so well on Angel -- where men fared badly on Buffy, women seem to always be one thing or another on Angel. Reverse images, again -- the strong bitches with the soft core, like Lilah and Faith and to some degree the egregious Kate, or the softer, seemingly delicate outside with the steel rod inside, like Fred and Cordelia. And the latter kind are always imperiled. So at the beginning of the episode, we see the one image of Fred -- in danger, as she promised her parents she wouldn’t be, but doing something deadly and effective. By the end of the episode, it’s the reverse -- she is broken, hollowed out, dying because of the nature of the work she chose. I can only hope that the maxim of how no one really dies in the Buffyverse is true, and that Fred will come back to us as Fred. I feel like she’s needed in this circle, that the group can’t be effective without their heart.
And the rest
Joss has become such a technically proficient director. I remember his jokes about his first episodes and how awkward he was behind the camera, and I think this episode is a perfect example of how far he’s come, and how much he excels now at the directorial duties. I loved the red of Fred’s room (heart, blood, passion) and the centered shots he often used, the sense of available light from the windows (it seemed as if he picked up a lot from the outstanding directors and set designers they had on Firefly). The beauty of the airplane scene. The way he set up the gag with Angel and Spike coming through into the room, Angel with the sword in him, and the blocking all the way over across the room, was perfect. A tiny throwaway that amazed me was when Fred sings, and suddenly Lorne turns around, the slightly overhead angle making his eyes look redder and more fearful, the speed of his turn -- was one of the most thrilling things they’ve done.
He did some wonderful things with Lorne in this episode, also -- the way Lorne seemed to expand and grow more beefy and dangerous, the lowness of his voice, as he threatened Eve (and man, doesn’t she look better like that?), and how he seemed to be smaller and look different when he said he wanted to pray. Color and size played a huge part of this episode, I noticed, something they rarely do -- the dramatic shifts in set colors create a tone for each scene that tell us a lot about what’s happening to the characters inside (the cool icy blue of the lab, the warmer tones of the airplane, the hearth and fire quality of Fred’s room, the empty darkness and white light of the Deeper Well). And Lorne seemed to embody that, as if his greenness shifted during scenes with different feelings (mood Lorne!).
I could go on and on with the script and the direction, but I’m already far too long on this thing. Suffice to say that small touches -- Spike’s hand over his heart on “are you saying we should annoy other people?”, the way he walks over furniture, the fight with the swords and the undercranking of the camera, Gladiator-style, for a few seconds, the blocking of the two-shot with Spike and Angel above the well, and maybe the loveliest scene of all, Angel's quiet "Wes and Fred?" and Spike's gentle, not even remotely goading "You didn't know?" ... all were beautiful, deft touches that I enjoyed. Joss is all growed up as a director!
I can’t believe they want to take this story away from me. I just can’t.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 11:52 am (UTC)I can't believe they want to take this story away from me. I just can't.
::cries with you::
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 12:34 pm (UTC)absolutely spot on. even her rabbit is the master of chaos.
because Angel has another “family” around him, one Spike desperately wants to be part of.
and also because they are family to each other.--the only true family each other has.
I could go on and on with the script and the direction, but I’m already far too long on this thing.
honey, you could talk about angel forever and i'd listen. you always have such a beautiful take on what we've watched. and then you synthesize with an elegance and eloquence that i am just glad to be able to read. and not to gush too much, but you rock, girlfriend!
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 01:53 pm (UTC)Also, this? that they take opposite positions (id and superego) on everything
I can't believe I didn't think of that. Thanks for pointing it out! :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 05:47 pm (UTC)I want to add something...but...too much. This episode has just left me reeeeeling, leaving my own review a bit jumbled, and me just so bouncy and restless with thoughts and clues and foreshadowing and...OOH, i feel i have reached this cliffhanger and screeching "MORE! MORE! MORE!"
*ahem*
So yeah, i'll stop now with thanks for your always wonderful and insightful thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 06:24 pm (UTC)Re: Sonny Crockett – Spike called Wes and Gunn “Crockett and Tubbs” in the “Soul Purpose”, didn’t he?
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 08:29 pm (UTC)Thanks for writing this! Off to watch again...:)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 03:15 pm (UTC)I was wondering the same thing. I'm really intrigued by this new Gunn-arc. And damn, I can't believe they really want to cut it all short!...
And of course the obvious slashiness of the sight gag with the sword in Angel, of the hand-holding, and the closeness of their faces as they argued was a huge part of the joy of the episode.
So true. I was giddy all the way through. Just love it when an episode has many so layers: heartbreak, fun, history,...
Came across your great, insightful review browsing through Friends' LJs. I hope you don't mind if I add you to my list?
lastofmercy
no subject
Date: 2004-03-01 06:48 am (UTC)I rarely notice the nuances of direction and lighting, so I really appreciate having them pointed out.