Fragments of shells

[gwyn]

I’ve had a lot of trouble with the idea of writing a review of Shells, for various reasons, but the most difficult is simply that I’m too upset by it to actually think sensible thoughts.

I like trauma. I like angst and misery and darkness and favorite characters turning into psychopathic, emotionally damaged people. I like never knowing if characters will continue or not, and complex stories that make you puzzle over their purpose. But the truth is, I don’t think Fred deserved this. I don’t think Angel and Wes deserved it, either, nor the rest of the consequences that ensued from Fred’s death. I don’t want Amy Acker around with cool blue hair and animal motions and sexy S&M leather gear -- I want her as Fred. Despite how much I love bittersweet almost happy endings where damaged characters assess their losses and their futures, this ending left me cold. Because Fred’s gone. Really most sincerely gone.

As wonderful as much of the episode was, I can’t seem to get past this hurdle. I know all the usual platitudes -- Joss giveth and he taketh away, you can’t have expectations with his shows, it’s the gayest show ever so why not get rid of the women, blah blah. None of those really work for me to get rid of this negative feeling. A lot of it comes from the fact that I had just really begun to love Fred, especially in her interactions with Knox (and that’s a whole other thing that I can’t really go into, because having one character I love kill another character I love usually gets me all happy, only this time it had the reverse effect), and her difficulties in maintaining her role as the heart of the group in a heartless situation. Some of it comes from the fact that this is two women in a row -- the only real women on the show who could be considered integral to the story -- have disappeared, and been replaced with something else in order to be killed off. I’m not sure what this says, even though I’ve always known it was not a kind show for women.

Some of it also comes from how the story has developed with the off-screen characters -- I could buy Andrew’s statement that they didn’t trust Angel and his group anymore because they were working for Wolfram & Hart. But I’m not sure I can buy Giles making a decision to let someone die horribly because she works for Angel -- there’s a difference between mistrust and wanting to take care of one of your own, and allowing those people you mistrust to die horribly and be replaced with a deadly demon. I don’t see it happening in those characters, and it bothers me that it became a plot device. And some of it is plain inconsistency in how they played the Gunn storyline, because last week he didn’t seem to know the real result of his actions until Knox spilled the beans; now he’s being stabbed and rejected from his family because he apparently knew all along and knew every detail.

The second half of serious stories always seem to suffer when the first one’s done by Joss and the latter ones by someone else. So it could simply be that this is where I felt the breakdown, even though I think highly of Steve DeKnight. But most of it didn’t feel as intense, as cohesive, as sensible as the first part, and often felt static and far too explanatory for my usual tastes. And I can’t quite get past that issue of Fred’s death. The pounding anvil of her soul being gone... it really bothers me, especially because the show has never clearly established the truth of what a soul really is, so the harping on this particular point makes me wonder.

Not that there weren’t fabulous moments in the show, most especially Wes’s true break with reality, with his emotional nature, at long last. He’s finally, irrevocably gone round the bend this time, and the fact that he seems fully aware of it -- and even okay with it -- makes him a wonderfully scary character to me. I don’t necessarily buy him stabbing Gunn that way, but I still love psycho killer Wes all the more. Even Angel seems baffled by what to really do with, and for, him And I loved the stuff with Angel and Spike in the beginning -- Spike’s “it’s a play on perspective” coming out full force by the end, with Illyria trying to connect to Wesley -- and in the end, especially Spike finally realizing that what he wants is what matters, not what he thinks others want in him, or what he wants from them. He’s always been selfish before, but never self-oriented in the way that would give him some idea of how to make a go of his existence. It’s wonderful, also, to see Angel relying on him, and knowing that he can count on Spike after all this time of insisting he couldn’t.

And I loved Knox’s hilarious responses to Illyria, especially his “sorry, my bad” and “I’m with the king!” lines. The idea of a million-year-old demon who’s confronted with a world long since changed, making it irrelevant, and the destruction of its kingdom, is pretty darn cool. I just wish it hadn’t come at the expense of poor Fred. In watching the season 3 DVDs this week (I’m trying to get through them all and the features so I can do a real review, but it’s taking time), it seems like too much of this happens to Fred, which makes the ending of her heading off into a beautiful sunny day and her great new life all the more heartbreaking. I loved the idea of everyone being left shells of their former selves, of it not just being Fred’s body that is the shell here. The fragmentation thing again -- where pieces of Fred are left inside Illyria’s mind, and pieces of Gunn and Wes and Angel are left inside themselves, unanchored and helpless. And it’s probably wrong of me, but I loved Spike wiping his hands of blood and talking about torturing that horrible smug doctor, just a little too much.

But still I come back to the fact that within a span of a few weeks, we’ve lost the only two significant women on the show; throughout the history of the show, women continue to fare very badly, and for some reason that eats at the back of my brain. Clearly Illyria is going to play a pivotal part in whatever Spike was talking about at the end of the episode, and this was their way of introducing her to the equation. But I’m dissatisfied with the explanation that her soul is gone, when this relationship of soul/ether/replacement of soul has never been fully explained. I want, and hope, that the rest of Fred can come back to inhabit that shell, and not simply as echoes inside Illyria’s consciousness. I know people loved this episode, but I can’t quite embrace it as I have other operatically tragic episodes. I’m left with the feeling of extreme loss and sadness over Fred’s passing. She deserved better, as did others before her.

Comments

[rainkatt.livejournal.com]

Thanks for doing this. I've been reading reviews and thinking about this episode a lot. It always takes me forever to get a grip on what I feel, and I'm not sure I'm with you 100% on this, but a lot of what you say makes sense. You said it much more eloquently than I did, but I do wholeheartedly agree with you about Wes. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about Fred... I'm fascinated by the otherness of Illyria, mostly because she's so not Fred...

The whole Giles conversation seemed off to me, and I'm having a lot of trouble with the idea that Fred's soul was "burned up." What does that mean, anyway? My grip on the meaning of the soul in the Jossverse is tenuous, at best, though.

You've at least helped me focus some of my jumbled feelings into something that may eventually turn into a thought...

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the otherness is always interesting, and provides that classic fish out of water, learning to exist in the new world thing, but I suppose I'm mostly just... I didn't get there with them, and I'm not sure I want to go along with the path they're on. Not that I have a choice, I will always see it out!

[soobunny.livejournal.com]

But still I come back to the fact that within a span of a few weeks, we’ve lost the only two significant women on the show

I keep coming back to this as well and it bothers me a lot. I respect Joss a lot but I have to wonder where he is going with this. To kill off the two main women characters in a space of a couple of weeks frightens me and I hope that he is going somewhere with this.

[wolffire.livejournal.com]

I ended in a very bleak "what now?" way which certainly flipped the dynamics of the Fred/Wesley dynamic to its opposite. I heard the bits of Fred still alive at the end and the episode closed with more of the Fred we never really knew before Ilyria took hold.

Parts of the episode seemed off to me. The pacing was absolutely jarring. The bit with Giles refsing to help bothered me as well.

Yet, somehow, I was more satisfied with the barely-a-glimmer-of-hope way that it ended than I think I would have been if the guys had manage to "save Fred." Perhaps because I still want her to find her own way back, and have a small glimmer of hope that she will.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that pacing was odd. They usually do a better job of spacing out the larger moments, and the ending was really peculiarly structured, to me. I guess I'm just in denial right now. I wasn't really ready for this to happen.

just a thought from a lurker

[(Anonymous)]

The thing that strikes me most ... At this point, Angel has lost, one way or another, every woman who ever meant anything to him -- from his baby sister Kathy who considered him a heavenly being and whom he devoured his first night as a vampire, to Buffy who allegedly no longer trusts him to do any kind of right, to Fred, who once trusted him with her very life. I'm not sure what this means, though ... Mazal

Re: just a thought from a lurker

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

That's a good point -- and I wonder at the reasoning behind it. At least, badly as most of the men fared on Buffy, they weren't necessarily all killed off as a method of amping up her suffering, so I wonder at the need for doing this to amplify Angel's aloneness, his feelings of inadequacy in this job, or... whatever else they may be trying to say here.

[glassslipper.livejournal.com]

But still I come back to the fact that within a span of a few weeks, we’ve lost the only two significant women on the show; throughout the history of the show, women continue to fare very badly, and for some reason that eats at the back of my brain.

I'm so right with you here. Harmony is great for comic relief, but why can't we have strong women who aren't evil demons a la Jasmine?

I have a hard time figuring this one out, especially as BtVS had so many women characters, large and small, strong and stronger. Was there a conscious decision to make Angel different because the main character is a guy? Doesn't make sense to me.

[molly_may]

Some of it comes from the fact that this is two women in a row -- the only real women on the show who could be considered integral to the story -- have disappeared, and been replaced with something else in order to be killed off. I’m not sure what this says, even though I’ve always known it was not a kind show for women.

This bothers me as well, in the sort of way where I don't even want to look at it too closely. One of the many things that I loved most about BTVS was the wide range of strong female characters. It's unsettling that on Angel the strong women either die (Cordy, Fred, Lilah) or disappear (Kate, Gwen).

But I’m dissatisfied with the explanation that her soul is gone, when this relationship of soul/ether/replacement of soul has never been fully explained.

I'm completely unspoiled, so this is just speculation, but they emphasized so many times that Fred was really, really, gone that it makes me think there may be a reversal in the future and Fred will be brought back somehow.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

From your lips to God's... er, Joss's ear! I know that often when they pound on the anvil over and over about something, we get a different take on it later, so I can only hope that there will be a reversal... of some kind that at least isn't just Illyria channeling Fred.

Am I the only petty one who watches this show?

[emmarytz.livejournal.com]

Petty, bloody and bitter, though I admit that it was my husband's theory originally. An angry and hurt Joss (such as was displayed in his initial "I hope my people will be too busy to be available for any tv movies" response) could very readily have decided to kill off each and every one of his main characters, possibly in reverse order of their first appearance. And one reason I'm not a powerful and successful executive is that that is just the sort of petty "whole fuckin' lot, right up in smoke" approach I would take. But I don't seriously think that's what he's doing, not any more. Sadly...

I agree with wolffire: the pacing frequently seemed wrong to me in this episode. Maybe it's just knowing that they're scrambling to tidy things up, but this episode felt like it was supposed to be much longer, like the development of three episodes had been crammed into one. Wes' progression from going at Illyria with an axe to deciding to help her adjust to her new life made no sense, despite his having supposedly gone over the edge. As someone pointed out earlier, Gunn goes from not really knowing what he had signed for to knowing all about it with no explanation. Knox goes to all the trouble of sewing god-knows-what into himself and then gets shot without anything happening with that plot device? Wasn't it Chekov who said that if there's a squiggly deposit of something unnatural in the villain's ribcage in the first act, something squiggly must emerge in the third act? Maybe that's where Fred's soul went which would make it doubly unfortunate that Wesley didn't listen to Angel's speech. I donno; I'd just as soon have seven weeks of Muppet-Angel, with Spike doing Lost In Translation-esque advertisements for Jim Beam and Jack Daniels periodically. -em

Re: Am I the only petty one who watches this show?

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I've always felt Joss was my spiritual fiance, and he just didn't know it and married the wrong person. But if he killed everyone off, then I would have to divorce him. And it troubles me a lot that this was written and filmed before they'd have had the news of the cancelation, so if he's planning to off at least a few more characters in response to this... arg. Just arg.

Wasn't it Chekov who said that if there's a squiggly deposit of something unnatural in the villain's ribcage in the first act, something squiggly must emerge in the third act?

Haaaaaahhhhhhaaahhhaaaa! ::dies::

Re: Am I the only petty one who watches this show?

[wolffire.livejournal.com]

While I did say the pacing was jarring, I'm not certain that it was unintentional. I think there was a lot going on in the pacing and the starkness of this episode that was on purpose. Including that there was not a neat tidy happy ending. I could be completely wrong about this. But...

I'm very curious to see what happens next. I think this whole season started with us going down the rabbit hole in Angel's universe--Angel heading up the LA headquarters of Wolfram and Hart?!?--this episode firmly reminded me that we are still in this strange twisted place. So, why should Willow, Giles, Buffy put any trust in Angel?

Re: Am I the only petty one who watches this show?

[killerweasel.livejournal.com]

Would the peisode have possible flowed better if 'Hole in the World' and 'Shells' had been shown back to back or as a double-length episode?

I'm confused as to why Wes turned around and seemed to join with Illyria. He saw her loss in her world, and maybe it was teh same as his loss for Fred. Yes, I know, it's totally different. On one hand you've got the loss of a woman Wes has loved since the first time he say her(or even before), and on the other you've got a demon goddess who has lost her followers and army that she planned on taking over the world with. Just because she sortof looks like Fred shouldn't be a good enough reason to help her adjust to the world.

As for Gunn, he got in a fight with 'himself' in the white room, right? Is the real Gunn the one who stepped out of the white room after he got got smacked around?

I was wondering what they were going to do with that lump in Knox's chest. Did they cut it out and keep it? It could have some sort of power.

It almost seemed to me by the end of the episode that this could be a finale, with the music (great song), and the showing of all the sad people thinking about Fred.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I saw your post but didn't read it, b/c I didn't get to see the episode till this morning (I'm catching up on all my shows by watching them while exercising :-). And I felt all the things you felt (esp. the Giles refusal and the pacing), but at the same time I was impressed that they went through with it. It might have been nice not to have two females possessed by demons thing, but then Buffyverse thrives on repetition, doesn't it? (and the second time around is not always comedy :-) I think I was impressed b/c I'm always a little bit frustrated to see shows that battle evil beyond comprehension every week...only to all end up safe and sound. So while emotionally I was all sad and politically feminist I was frustrated, part of me was exited about actual consequences...though I wish it'd been another character :-)

good rant, though :-)