When we were muck stories
Apr. 29th, 2004 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI didn’t get to watch Angel in real time last night, since I had my little editing class, and I haven’t had the chance to catch up with what others are saying about it, either, so I feel like I’m writing this in a vacuum. I’ve grown so used to loving all the eps and feeling the zeitgeist that it's weird to be unattached that way.
I didn’t dislike it, and didn’t love it, but fell somewhere in between. Possibly because it’s winding down to the final eps and somehow I have this expectation of something different (always dangerous with Joss, I’ve leraned, and yet I still do it), and I haven’t exactly found myself fannishly in love with Illyria. In fact, I don’t like her at all, and was deeply grateful for Angel calling the speechifying and all of that -- someone on the show finally put into words what’s annoying me. I just don’t care that worlds bowed before her, blah blah, it bores me and while I love the blue, the whole leather getup is still somewhat silly to me. There’s just nothing about her I enjoy enough to embrace the character as much as many of my friends have. But the rest of the events around her being there -- Wes’s psychotic break, Gunn’s regret and self-recriminations, Angel’s distress and conniving to figure a way to use her or get rid of her -- all of it works for me, so I feel like I have to just deal with the character. This ep also felt like it was designed as a final statement of Illyria’s presence, and that Fred, or anything like Fred, won’t be coming back. While I loved her marching in and taking Gunn back, she herself isn’t appealing to me, I miss Fred, and so the story doesn’t grab me much -- especially at such a crucial juncture. I guess this means I won’t be writing and Spike/Illyria petfic. ;-)
What I do love is the way others react to her, and their own interactions with each other in regards to her. Spike, with his lack of connection to her despite her appearance of Fredness, is a wonderful breath of fresh air in a universe where too much often hangs on the past and people moping around about it. Spike doesn’t question the reality of what he sees, he doesn’t view others through the lens of the past or even his own deep emotional connection to them (except, of course, Angel, because everything with Angel is different), so he acts with a different purpose than anyone else. Wes, obviously, is consumed with the past, so an episode that focuses on time travel and shifts in time constructs would have a huge impact on him. He can only see a certain type of future, and then when he’s confronted with a real picture of a future, he has to decide how to act when his heart and mind are trapped in the past -- pretty nifty idea, actually.
Angel is finding himself increasingly stuck in spaces of black and white, so when he’s confronted by the mess of the timeline that Illyria’s traveling through, he gets his own goals completely mixed up. That part of the story I love dearly, becuase for me Angel is never so exciting as when he’s confronted wtih his own limitation. I love him petty, I love him baffled, I love him cranky. By the time he starts to figure it out, though, he doesn’t know how to act because the reality isn’t fitting in with his own narrower and narrower definitions of reality -- but clearly, he has something up his sleeve. His decision at the end is not a typical Angel decision, so we now have to wait to understand why he’d do that. Is he a king? Can he be and still be in love with the false construct of morality? What does it mean to rule a kingdom if the intent of the rule is do good only for others? It's a really interesting paradox, and the time shifts makes it even cooler. And now matter how bad Wes gets, he still has control of his intellect, with creates even more of a paradox for the vampire who would be king.
Even Hamilton doesn’t have the answers on how to really deal with Illyria’s presence -- clearly the Senior Partners are afraid of her, so now it’s up the Angel and crew to figure out how to use that to their advantage. And clearly Hamilton is not the smarmy Greek Chorus act Eve played; he’s got all the cards and he’s dealing them out very carefully to Angel, pushing his buttons, not just acting as puppet for others. I’m fascinated by the dynamic of where he fits in and just how far his enmity will go, and if Illyria’s reduced powers will mean Hamilton can be physically more powerful than she is. Could be interesting if they do something with that.
Most of all, though, it’s Wes’s disconnect with reality that’s shaping the force of the story -- he alone has a connection with Illyria, so he alone has the ability to determine which direction their fate may go if indeed Illyria is going to be a determining factor. Yet he’s so unstable, so lost in his own time warp of sadness and loss, that he might not be able to sustain the control over her or the connection to this reality, and she may end up not being anything at all. It’s a dangerous line he’s walking, and of course, he doesn't know he’s walking it at all. He seems oblivious of behaving like a bug jittering on a hotplate, or a catatonic, but aware enough of what Illyria could be thinking or feeling. As if he’s unable to understand his own feelings, but capable of getting what’s going on with a being who’s completely unfathomable.
It’s funny that they’ve never really done time travel on the Jossverse shows. Especially on Angel, with the sense of elasticity time has on the show. So it’s interesting that they chose now to do an episode with time warping in and out, and characters having to really figure out what constructs they buy into and what reality means -- or doesn’t mean. Because, as Angel points out, Illyria has an ego of a god, she decides that everything is about her and that people are betraying her, trying to remove her from the world. Angel thinks it’s about him, Wes thinks it’s about something larger and a threat to the world (and how cool is it to see Wes and Spike working together on something scientific? I always said that Spike was smarter than anyone ever gave him credit for), and Spike’s willing to go along with that. And it was such a shock to see them all killed off, so quickly and without any fanfare. It scares me a little in that I fear this is a sign Joss will do just that at the finale, but I still thought it was pretty cool that they wasted no time on it, just killed them off with such dispassionate speed that it left me breathless.
I do like Ben Edlunds’s writing so much; I think it’s just that I’m already tired of Illyria and the constant harping on everything. Wes is also trapped in a past, like her, but his reactions to the reality (and unreality) of his present are more tolerable, I suppose, for me. He’s adapting, although in a terribly psychotic way, and everyone else is adapting as best they can (except Gunn, who’s confused and stuck still in his atonement), but none of them really seems to see the reality in front of them. Maybe it’s not so much adaptation as accommodation.
About the promo for next week (GO AWAY NOW IF YOU'RE AVOIDING PROMO STUFF):
Strangely, the thing I can’t seem to get past is next week’s promo and I think it’s affecting how I viewed this ep. Please, someone who loves this show as much as I do, tell me that it’s not going to be pathetic and cheesy and disgusting, because it looks like it’s going to be, and the TiVo listing sounds horrible. I mean, I just... god, that whole stupid cheesy lameass fake Buffy scene from earlier this year made me cringe in horror, and now it looks like they’re going to do a fake Buffy thing again. And frankly, I don’t understand why now, with three eps to go, we have to waste time on this stupid story. Both vampires seem to be doing fine now on their own, without any real need ot this dumbass Buffy “resolution” and I’m just filled with dread over this episode and its possibility of suckage. The Spike and Angel slashy road movie stuff looks cute, but I don’t see the point of dragging in that same old stupid Spike *vs.* Angel crap some more in terms of their overdone past. I’m really, really done with this dead and boring story, and all this seems like is an excuse to shoehorn Julie Benz and Juliet Landau on the show again so we can have yet another rehash of the whole Spike and Angel are jealous story. We’ve *done* this already, yo, do we have to do it again and again, when there’s no time to waste? I mean, I’m glad, I guess, that my S/A slash friends get more scenes, but I just feel like this is a total waste of time, it’s been done to death, move on, and please please quit with the damn fake Buffy cheeseball crap. I’m living in total terror of next week. Someone talk me down from the ledge. Please?
I didn’t dislike it, and didn’t love it, but fell somewhere in between. Possibly because it’s winding down to the final eps and somehow I have this expectation of something different (always dangerous with Joss, I’ve leraned, and yet I still do it), and I haven’t exactly found myself fannishly in love with Illyria. In fact, I don’t like her at all, and was deeply grateful for Angel calling the speechifying and all of that -- someone on the show finally put into words what’s annoying me. I just don’t care that worlds bowed before her, blah blah, it bores me and while I love the blue, the whole leather getup is still somewhat silly to me. There’s just nothing about her I enjoy enough to embrace the character as much as many of my friends have. But the rest of the events around her being there -- Wes’s psychotic break, Gunn’s regret and self-recriminations, Angel’s distress and conniving to figure a way to use her or get rid of her -- all of it works for me, so I feel like I have to just deal with the character. This ep also felt like it was designed as a final statement of Illyria’s presence, and that Fred, or anything like Fred, won’t be coming back. While I loved her marching in and taking Gunn back, she herself isn’t appealing to me, I miss Fred, and so the story doesn’t grab me much -- especially at such a crucial juncture. I guess this means I won’t be writing and Spike/Illyria petfic. ;-)
What I do love is the way others react to her, and their own interactions with each other in regards to her. Spike, with his lack of connection to her despite her appearance of Fredness, is a wonderful breath of fresh air in a universe where too much often hangs on the past and people moping around about it. Spike doesn’t question the reality of what he sees, he doesn’t view others through the lens of the past or even his own deep emotional connection to them (except, of course, Angel, because everything with Angel is different), so he acts with a different purpose than anyone else. Wes, obviously, is consumed with the past, so an episode that focuses on time travel and shifts in time constructs would have a huge impact on him. He can only see a certain type of future, and then when he’s confronted with a real picture of a future, he has to decide how to act when his heart and mind are trapped in the past -- pretty nifty idea, actually.
Angel is finding himself increasingly stuck in spaces of black and white, so when he’s confronted by the mess of the timeline that Illyria’s traveling through, he gets his own goals completely mixed up. That part of the story I love dearly, becuase for me Angel is never so exciting as when he’s confronted wtih his own limitation. I love him petty, I love him baffled, I love him cranky. By the time he starts to figure it out, though, he doesn’t know how to act because the reality isn’t fitting in with his own narrower and narrower definitions of reality -- but clearly, he has something up his sleeve. His decision at the end is not a typical Angel decision, so we now have to wait to understand why he’d do that. Is he a king? Can he be and still be in love with the false construct of morality? What does it mean to rule a kingdom if the intent of the rule is do good only for others? It's a really interesting paradox, and the time shifts makes it even cooler. And now matter how bad Wes gets, he still has control of his intellect, with creates even more of a paradox for the vampire who would be king.
Even Hamilton doesn’t have the answers on how to really deal with Illyria’s presence -- clearly the Senior Partners are afraid of her, so now it’s up the Angel and crew to figure out how to use that to their advantage. And clearly Hamilton is not the smarmy Greek Chorus act Eve played; he’s got all the cards and he’s dealing them out very carefully to Angel, pushing his buttons, not just acting as puppet for others. I’m fascinated by the dynamic of where he fits in and just how far his enmity will go, and if Illyria’s reduced powers will mean Hamilton can be physically more powerful than she is. Could be interesting if they do something with that.
Most of all, though, it’s Wes’s disconnect with reality that’s shaping the force of the story -- he alone has a connection with Illyria, so he alone has the ability to determine which direction their fate may go if indeed Illyria is going to be a determining factor. Yet he’s so unstable, so lost in his own time warp of sadness and loss, that he might not be able to sustain the control over her or the connection to this reality, and she may end up not being anything at all. It’s a dangerous line he’s walking, and of course, he doesn't know he’s walking it at all. He seems oblivious of behaving like a bug jittering on a hotplate, or a catatonic, but aware enough of what Illyria could be thinking or feeling. As if he’s unable to understand his own feelings, but capable of getting what’s going on with a being who’s completely unfathomable.
It’s funny that they’ve never really done time travel on the Jossverse shows. Especially on Angel, with the sense of elasticity time has on the show. So it’s interesting that they chose now to do an episode with time warping in and out, and characters having to really figure out what constructs they buy into and what reality means -- or doesn’t mean. Because, as Angel points out, Illyria has an ego of a god, she decides that everything is about her and that people are betraying her, trying to remove her from the world. Angel thinks it’s about him, Wes thinks it’s about something larger and a threat to the world (and how cool is it to see Wes and Spike working together on something scientific? I always said that Spike was smarter than anyone ever gave him credit for), and Spike’s willing to go along with that. And it was such a shock to see them all killed off, so quickly and without any fanfare. It scares me a little in that I fear this is a sign Joss will do just that at the finale, but I still thought it was pretty cool that they wasted no time on it, just killed them off with such dispassionate speed that it left me breathless.
I do like Ben Edlunds’s writing so much; I think it’s just that I’m already tired of Illyria and the constant harping on everything. Wes is also trapped in a past, like her, but his reactions to the reality (and unreality) of his present are more tolerable, I suppose, for me. He’s adapting, although in a terribly psychotic way, and everyone else is adapting as best they can (except Gunn, who’s confused and stuck still in his atonement), but none of them really seems to see the reality in front of them. Maybe it’s not so much adaptation as accommodation.
About the promo for next week (GO AWAY NOW IF YOU'RE AVOIDING PROMO STUFF):
Strangely, the thing I can’t seem to get past is next week’s promo and I think it’s affecting how I viewed this ep. Please, someone who loves this show as much as I do, tell me that it’s not going to be pathetic and cheesy and disgusting, because it looks like it’s going to be, and the TiVo listing sounds horrible. I mean, I just... god, that whole stupid cheesy lameass fake Buffy scene from earlier this year made me cringe in horror, and now it looks like they’re going to do a fake Buffy thing again. And frankly, I don’t understand why now, with three eps to go, we have to waste time on this stupid story. Both vampires seem to be doing fine now on their own, without any real need ot this dumbass Buffy “resolution” and I’m just filled with dread over this episode and its possibility of suckage. The Spike and Angel slashy road movie stuff looks cute, but I don’t see the point of dragging in that same old stupid Spike *vs.* Angel crap some more in terms of their overdone past. I’m really, really done with this dead and boring story, and all this seems like is an excuse to shoehorn Julie Benz and Juliet Landau on the show again so we can have yet another rehash of the whole Spike and Angel are jealous story. We’ve *done* this already, yo, do we have to do it again and again, when there’s no time to waste? I mean, I’m glad, I guess, that my S/A slash friends get more scenes, but I just feel like this is a total waste of time, it’s been done to death, move on, and please please quit with the damn fake Buffy cheeseball crap. I’m living in total terror of next week. Someone talk me down from the ledge. Please?
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-29 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-29 11:16 pm (UTC)I get what you're saying about Illyria. I'm apparently not very "shippy" by nature. I find the character fascinating because of how truly alien It seems to be. A god sized ego isn't really ego if it's a god's, you know. It's just...fact. I get no sense of gender really despite the silly costume, only this sense of hugeness being held in a tiny tiny space. I think AA does a wonderful job with this. But by the end of the ep I knew it was time for that aspect of the character to be done with. It is a greatly diminished god now, a god fallen low.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 05:57 am (UTC)Actually, I'm assuming the blond in the club is Darla, and the "It's Buffy" refers to something else entirely (perhaps they get an invitation to Buffy's upcoming nuptials with Xander? ;)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 06:20 am (UTC)Oh, AMEN! I thought they resolved that many, many episodes ago, and honestly, I could care less at this point - I'm way too fascinated by what's going on in LA!
As for Drusilla, in particular, I always thought she was Angelus's most grievous sin, the thing that Angel ought to feel the most guilty about and I would have loved to see her story resolved in the PRESENT day (i.e. with either Spike or Angel staking her and the resulting angst-o-rama, or whatever) instead of more bad wigs and bad accents and budgetarily constrained Victoriana. Gah! But then again, Spike and Angel on a Vespa could be fun.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 09:26 am (UTC)I think my dislike of Illyria isn't so much anything to do with shippy stuff as that she's a lot like Darla for me -- droning on and on about the past, but at least AA has a voice that doesn't feel like nails on chalkboard to me as Julie Benz's does. It was funny at first -- her self absorbed self pity -- when she and Wes were having that self pity contest in his apartment, but now it's just boring. All I can do is hope it'll go away now, now that she's, as you say, fallen low.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 09:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 09:29 am (UTC)I think my fascination with her has more to do with AA than the actual character. I loved the way AA switched from Fred to Illyria, and the fact that she really sold me on Illyria says a lot about her acting.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 09:32 am (UTC)Egad. Now *there* is a thought to give me nightmares. Thanks ever so.
;^)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 09:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-03 09:26 am (UTC)I just wanted to let you know that I finally was able to read "Mercy Street" completely through and that I absolutely loved it! Somehow I always miss your stuff on the first go-through and I'm so glad that I caught this one on allaboutspike. It was beautiful and original. Thanks, as always, for the great read.