Lotsa oohing and aahing about the people and places that make me lurv my show.
Judgment
There is an interesting little anecdote about the opening scene of Judgment, and I don’t remember where I heard it, because once Season 2 started, the ATPo board had been going about four months, and I might have heard it at ATPo, or I might have heard it at the Bronze.
Anyway, the anecdote goes like this. Someone’s spouse was watching “Buffy vs. Dracula”, the BtVS season premier for the 2000-2001 season, and thought it was pretty lame. So then BtVS ends and Angel starts and the first thing you see on the screen is this green demon with red horns. And the person’s spouse says, “Now, see, on Angel they have *real* demons. Actually *scary* demons!”
At which point the demon proceeds to sing “I Will Survive” like a big green Disco Queen.
Angel the Series: it’s not just Morally Ambiguous Noir Angst.
It’s Los Angeles!
*Loves Lorne*
Lorne may have been sadly underused in later seasons, but I never stopped loving him.
And how brilliant was the idea of Caritas? At the time I thought it was Lame with a capital L. Probably because I hate Karaoke and I like my demons scary just like FanSpouse did.
But Caritas became a lot more morally ambiguous with time. And it became Angel’s home-away-from-home. It was where he went to get advice from the pal who replaced Doyle as his demon confidant. It was where the gang went to hang out. And it was where Connor was born (OK, in the alley behind). Caritas is exactly the sort of place you’d expect to find in the demon-infected entertainment capital of the world. Caritas IS Angelverse Los Angeles.
OK, enough about that place.
This episode also introduces the Hyperion.
*sob*! I miss the Hyperion. It’s home, you know? It’s where everything happened. All the pain and the heartache and the happy moments. The good news is, ME was planning on blowing up the Hyperion at the end of Season 4 and they didn’t. I don’t think I could have taken the death of *that* too, on top of everything else.
Anyway, so in this episode, Angel is hell-bent on getting the toy surprise at the bottom of the Champion box, and in his enthusiasm, inadvertently kills another Champion. He then proceeds to soak up the guilt and angst about how he thought he was gonna Shanshu any second now – all he had to do was put in enough fighting. Then Cordelia gives him an interesting speech. She tells him that he will get there, and she’ll be with him until he does.
And you believe her. And you believe the writers believe her. That was the plan. Cordelia has spent a year helping Angel at this point. She’s been stuck with the visions, she suffered through the spell that forced her to experience everyone else’s pain in TSILA. She is a different person now. Growing, changing. She’s going to have a hell of a life as a Champion of Good.
Sigh. Things never quite work out the way they’re planned though. Especially in episodic television.
The highlight of Judgment is of course, Faith!! At the time it aired, it was an unexpected little treat. THIS is why it’s good to stay unspoiled kids. This is it in a nutshell.
And Faith’s appearance wasn’t a throw-away gift, either. It was a necessary bridge for the character, to span the gap between Sanctuary and Salvage. We see her in her prison context, working on herself. And Angel’s visit is a meeting between a former evil-a-holic and her sponsor. Two people who care about each other talking about the journey to redemption.
Oh, and out-takes of Boreanaz singing Mandy. Run screaming! Teehee
AYNOHYEB
OK, I know I’m alone in this, but I think AYNOHYEB is overrated. People I admire inevitably give it the 9 or 10 out of 10 or rate it as the best Second Episode of all five seasons and wax on about the color and the lighting and the themes and the mood and the metaphors.
But I find it kind of boring.
I know, I’m an unschooled plebeian.
The episode is set in the 1950’s, which is probably my least favorite era, ever, and though setting the story in this decade allows for nifty metaphors of paranoia and conformity and sets up the whole noir thing in spades and I’m supposed to be uncomfortable with it because that’s the mood they’re creating, I’m still sort of more… bored.
But let me focus on the positive.
At the time this episode aired, AYNOHYEB was the first attempt to fill in Angel’s history *AS* souled Angel (rather than as Angelus) between the 1898 re-ensouling in Becoming/Five By Five and the 1996 alley way scene in Becoming.
I remember people complained after watching this episode that Angel living more or less competently in a comfortable hotel in 1952 broke continuity with the rat-eating Angel of Becoming. Which just goes to show you that fans will complain about anything, because I could have written you a narrative back when AYNOHYEB first aired about how he got from the 50’s hotel to that alley – long before episodes like Darla and Orpheus and Why We Fight filled in more of those gaps.
As Tim Minear argued, Angel was souled for 100 years – that’s a long time. He didn’t go straight from the alley in Five By Five to the alley in Becoming. A lot of Shit Happened, good, bad and indifferent, and in AYNOHYEB, we still get a big sense of Angel’s isolation from humanity – in it, but not really in it at all.
Another thing I liked about AYNOHYEB is Denver the bookstore owner. A great character. I was glad they could bring him back in the present in Reprise. Characters like that–interesting and 3-dimensional even though they are bit-parts–are part of what made AtS great. They made that unreal world seem real.
And it’s not just the people, but places that did this as well. AYNOHYEB is the episode that establishes the Hyperion as the new home/base of operations for the gang. In 2000, “The Hotel” as we would come to know it, was introduced through its history. In Angel’s present-day (2000), it’s a mysterious run-down place full of trash and dusty cobweb-covered objects left behind from 70 long years. In one era of that stretch of time that we see, the 1950’s, it is filled with strangers who saw as a temporary lodging.
Four years later, though, it’s hard to see the place through those unfamiliar eyes. I know The Hotel like I know my favorite pair of old shoes. I look at the ’50’s scenes set in the Hyperion and I’m like, “Hey–that’s where Cordelia did this and Angel did that and Wesley and Fred and Gunn and Connor….” This place oozes history, but it’s not the pre-2000 history that interests me.
In some ways, the Hyperion *is* AtS for me. It’s the show’s heart. Its home.
First Impressions
My first attempt to write about First Impressions started veering into this long tangent about the metaphysical, moral, and emotional complexity that is Angel and Darla’s relationship. After two or three pages, though, I realized I had a whole essay topic. So I’ll spare you most of my thoughts right now and save them for another time.
The thing that’s hard to remember about Darla while re-watching early Season 2 is that we didn’t find out she was human until the end of “Dear Boy”, when she ran out into the sunlight. They saved that little factoid as a surprise.
One way they created that surprise was by having Darla act pretty much like you’d expect an unsouled vampire to act for the first few episodes. She’s going along with Wolfram and Hart’s plan to torment Angel with eager glee. She doesn’t have her big “soul break-down” until the beginning of …Darla?
They don’t really ever bother to explain why Darla isn’t instantly plagued by her conscience, why its influence builds gradually, and I remember fans noticing it and questioning it at the time. Now, though, it’s sort of a given that the experience of having a soul after one has lived without a soul for a long time is different for everybody. Angel isn’t Spike isn’t Darla.
Watching this episode, I can’t help but wonder – just what *are* Angel(us’) and Darla’s feelings for each other, over the span of 250 years, and how do they change? You can argue that Angel-with-a-soul has intense feelings for Darla because now he can, and now human!Darla can have feelings in return, especially after all Angel does to try to help her in subsequent episodes.
But what about before that? What about when they were Darla and Angelus, soulless vampires? The canonical writer’s blahblahblah is that they didn’t love each other, that unlike Spike, or James and Elisabeth in Heartthrob, they were somehow incapable of it.
But I believe this is one of those cases where the writers SAY one thing and SHOW another.
I mean, 150 years together – if that’s not love of *some kind* then I don’t know what is. Passion wears out. Obsession exhausts itself. Domesticity and commitment, OTOH, take work. And when you’re soulless and have no qualms about anything, and can and DO take off on your own whenever you want (and they did, from time to time), to still come back together over and over again – *that’s love*. It just isn’t the sort of love that’s easily defined and recognizable.
Darla and Angel(us) were many, many things to each other, and that’s what makes their relationship so rich. If I ever do write my hypothetical essay, I want to explore all the facets of it — the one-hundred-and-one variations on archetypal coupledom that these two characters have played out vis-à-vis each other over the centuries.
As a soulless vampire, Darla was seductress, mother, mentor, lover, wife, and friend to Angelus. After he was souled, she was his rejector, then the blindly hopeful ex whose hopes were dashed and disappointed (“Darla”). In BtVS Season 1, she was the long-ago ex going after her younger rival, trying to bring out in Angel the things she once had from him. Now Darla returns, seducing Angel in his dreams as the perfect date, the vulnerable damsel, and the sweet wife who offers theBigChampionMan domesticity and home.
That Darla can *do* this, that Angel would let the dreams seduce him rather than wonder “why am I dreaming about sweet domestic Darla? Like *that* would happen!” means he doesn’t find it so entirely implausible that she could be those things to him. Or at least, those are the very sorts of fantasies he had about her at some point in the past.
And Darla knows him pretty darned well, soulless or souled. She knows all the wildly different things that can seduce him.
They are all these things to each other. And I haven’t even gotten to the unexpected twists of Season 3 yet.
OK. Other stuff happened in First Impressions as well. Non-Darlus stuff. The basic plot of this episode is, “Dude, where’s my car?” Cordelia tries to help Gunn, ends up losing Angel’s car in the process, and so Gunn and Cordelia set out to find it.
Watching this episode, I think of roads not traveled. Gunn/Cordelia! Two big heads from different sides of the tracks butt and an interesting alchemy ensues. The bickering was hilarious. But ME never really revisited that chemistry, did they?
Note on Gunn’s evolution: In my previous review, I pondered how Gunn got from the guy he is in War Zone to the guy he was by the Pylea eps. As this episode starts, Gunn is still the impatient hot-head. The only difference is, now he’s hyper-vigilant on top of that. The lesson he took from Alonna’s death was that he couldn’t lower his guard for a second, and so now he goes around banging heads to keep himself and his “people” ready for any and all trouble.
Cordelia tells him he is creating more trouble for himself than he avoids this way. Nice to have someone blunt around to tell you what she thinks.
Untouched
“Untouched” is one of the “women of power” episodes like Damage or Consequences, 5×5, and Sanctuary. A traumatized woman with supernatural powers has to learn how to control her power rather than channel it into her trauma/let the power control her.
Bethany is more screwed up than insane like Dana (Damage), and unlike Faith, she doesn’t feel in control of her supernatural powers (Faith feels in control in S3/S1; whether she really is is a separate question). But, like Faith, it’s her self-image that’s crippling her.
The “woman of power” episodes give Angel a chance to be a mentor to those with power, to teach them to realize that the power is theirs to control, to use for good or ill, and then to teach them how to control it. I don’t have a list of episodes where Angel mentors those with supernatural gifts, but I want to say they’re all women, with the exception of Connor, who Angel tried to mentor, even if he didn’t succeed.
As with Angel’s other “women of power” episodes, ME pulls no punches with Bethany. She was sexually abused as a child, and as an adult, she navigates her way through the world as a sexual landscape. That’s what she knows: fear, sex, and power. “If I make myself the willing victim, I feel in control of my inevitable victimization”. She is both victim and user. What she needs to learn is how to choose not to be a victim at all.
Contrasted to Bethany is Lilah, who is presented in this episode as the prototypical corporate woman struggling to prove she’s just as ruthless as any man in her firm. And the scary part is, she IS just as ruthless. In fact, she’s more ruthless than Lindsey could ever hope to be, because she doesn’t seem to have that pesky thing Lindsey is loathed to call his conscience.
But Lindsey somehow gets the benefit of the doubt he’s proven he doesn’t deserve, while Lilah gets a nice patronizing speech from the boss. They’re setting up the Lindsey/Lilah rivalry that’s going to be so delicious this season. You gotta love them W&H lawyers. More fantastic characters in this fantastic ‘verse.
Author Nancy E. Shaffer 
Interesting. For one, I agree about the Hyperion being home (you’ll note in my future fic, it’s still around). I even set up a story challenge with the hotel but sadly no one took it. I loved the building.
the 50’s episode, actually, it bored me. At first, the non-gutter Angel did bother me then I thought about it and in retrospect you can see him cycling, dirty to almost alive then back again. He’s almost like a junkie who pulls himself together for short bursts of time.
Darla – I like your observations about her. I agree. I’ve never bought into the I’ve only loved two women line for all the reasons you list. Maybe she never made him exactly happy but there had to be something there. Spike/Dru if the Judge is to be believed proved love was possible without a soul so why not Darla and Angel(us). Otherwise they wouldn’t have saved each other from Holtz a time or two. Darla woudln’t have cared about the soul. She would have just turned her back and not try to free him and then give him a second chance etc.
I loved that bit in ARNOHYEB when the bellhop whines about how afraid he is of that new guy, the ominous music builds, and then the big reveal-Angel behind the door.
Angel and Darla. Why would Darla try to be everything to a man? What need is she trying to fill? She’s so powerful herself, with vampire strength and will and intelligence, why continue to work through surrogates instead of taking the overt lead? Sure, that’s what women did back in the day, but why keep the same old pattern? And Angel kept coming back to her as Angelus and kept trying to save her when he was souled. You don’t give someone what they want, because that changes on a whim. You give them what they need. Darla needed to control and corrupt a man. Angel needed to have a person who would be all things to him, make him feel important and powerful. They are an anti-love story, the thing that passes for love when are hearts are too damaged to love. Perhaps. But there was love too, just as with Buffy and Spike, and Wes and Lilah. Those couples love each other for what they could be, if not for what they were.
I love “Untouched” because of the use of dreams and examination of power and choice. Its three parts are beautifully interwoven.
I’m going to start collecting more Darla/Angel(us) anecdotes for this hypothetical essay of mine. Because the example you state (Darla saving Angelus from Holtz) and many others are proof to me that these two vampires felt something very intense for each other, and maybe some fans don’t want to call it “love” (Angel doesn’t, but Angel believes all sorts of things about himself that aren’t true, or clings to certain statements that maybe he doesn’t really believe deep down inside).
Maybe I’ll title my essay “Call It What You Will”.
“It’s three parts”
You mean Bethany, Lilah, and… Darla? Or Angel?
sounds interesting. I like that title. There was definitely something there. Witness Angelus begging her for help moments after being souled,the look on his face when she rejects him.
Bethany and her father, Bethany and Angel, Angelus and Darla. Bethany’s father violated her, and it persists even in her dreams. W&H is violating both Bethany and Angel. Lilah is abusing Bethany to gain control over her and Darla is invading Angel’s dreams to control him, making him remember when they violated the gypsy girl.
Darla: “There is nothing so lovely as dreams. Everything is in them, everything hidden. Open those chambers and you can truly understand someone – and control them.”
Lilah with a slight smile: “And what’s hidden in Angel’s secret chambers?”
Darla: “Horrors.”
We are such strange obsessive creatures. We run away from our fears by reliving them over and over. They intensify. When our fears are exposed they are lessened. Angel’s hallucinations last year were of his fears, made into nightmares. I keep coming back to this-I think it’s important. Angel has buried his fears deep, but they keep coming out. Angelus is Angel’s nightmare self. The whole series has an edge-of-dreamland feel at times. The closer we get to who Angel really is-the closer he gets to understanding himself-the more we delve into dreams, visions, hallucinations, archtypes.
I liked AYNOHYEB as well, although it has some strange quirks. I think the 1950s noir setting, out of context is almost always boring. I remember even back in the late 1950s when Rod Sterling was writing Twilight Zone episodes, the dullest ones were always the noir stuff with the weaselly characters ala Whistler and Doyle. What is noir, after all, if it doesn’t reek of pessimism. Pessimism is inherently dull in my book.
Still in this case I think it worked. I didn’t have any problem after watching it thinking that Angel could have gone down hill from there. But, it did seem like a mighty come down.
I read the shooting script for Five By Five, and it states that Darla’s inital worry when she walks in on Angelus acting so strangely is that he’s “met someone else”. Someone to take the place of what she’s provided for him.
The writers may have paid lip-service to this not being a relationship based on “love”, but they had to pull from the human experience of marriage and coupledom and long-term relationships to flesh these two out, and in the end, the sum total of it is something *like* love.
You might consider…
…a psychology article I read about 15 years ago as a basis for your essay. The author described love in a triangular shape with three sides for passion, commitment and intimacy with the length of each side proportional to the amount of each component of love. Overall love was illustrated by the area of the triangle. It gave a nice visualisation of it.
When looked at this way the Angel(us)-Darla “triangle” relationship is at times fairly big. As you mention they had commitment and they must have had intimacy, otherwise they wouldn’t know each other so well. They also had passion – note Angelus being upset with a certain Roman guy having an affair with Darla.
Far too much credence has been given to the Judge’s statement in Btvs S2.
The closer we get to who Angel really is-the closer he gets to understanding himself-the more we delve into dreams, visions, hallucinations, archtypes.
Like in the Season 6 scripts we’ve been talking about!
Do you think Noir works better in a film context?
Re: You might consider…
It wasn’t just the Judge. Angel says to Darla–in Dear Boy, I think–that they didn’t love each other, that they were incapable of that. I’m pretty sure Angel says that of himself and Darla in other places (at least once again in Lullaby or some season 3 ep).
I’m starting to think Angel had a vested psychological interest in seeing what he had with Darla when he was unsouled as NOT being love, because that made him feel better as a souled vampire.
But Jesus, they sure acted like two people who cared about each other, lusted after each other, were ohslightlymaybetotally obsessed with each other, shared death and homes and hunts and other intimate things with each other over and over and over and over for 150 years.
Like I say, call it what you will, but the canon “they don’t love each other” comes most often from Angel’s lips.
Yes, we seem to be leaning in that direction anyway. I worried a little about too many hallucinations-maybe we should have more dream-like occurrences.
Part 1: Everything but Gunn
Lorne! Loved Caritas, what it stood for. A sanctuary from fighting. And yet how many times did violence erupt in that place and destroy the peace? It’s no wonder Lorne became so bitter in the end; Angel kept bringing so much trouble to his door, disturbing whatever peace and beauty he’d found.
Hyperion = home. The S1 offices really established the Dixon Hill, film noir detective atmosphere, but Hyperion wasn’t just an office — it was base camp and the family den and a symbol of Angel’s reclamation of himself as a house for Good. Also, I just love that Hyperion was a sun god. Considering Angel’s sun allergies, it’s both hopeful and masochistic.
The good news is, ME was planning on blowing up the Hyperion at the end of Season 4 and they didn’t. I don’t think I could have taken the death of *that* too, on top of everything else.
Really? I never knew that! Well, glad they didn’t do that. I loved that they went back the alley behind the Hyperion in the end. It’s their base camp and their home.
Faith! Angel and Faith! Yeah, you’ve already said it all 🙂
AYNOHYEB: I think it’s brilliant, but it’s not really one of my favourites. I love what it says about Angel, and about being a souled vampire, and about racism. But I prefer eps that are more central to the seasonal arc, plot-wise.
She tells him that he will get there, and she’ll be with him until he does.
And you believe her. And you believe the writers believe her. That was the plan.
Yeah. *sigh* Even though I’d almost given up on Cordy in late S3, I’m still sorry that Joss couldn’t find a way to keep the Big Three together to the end, and give us a more hopeful finale as well. Although I’m not sure I could’ve endured more Angel/Cordy ‘shippiness…
The basic plot of this episode is, “Dude, where’s my car?”
Hee! I wish they had developed the Cordy/Gunn chemistry too. It would’ve been fun to watch! And we could’ve been spared the pancake kisses of Frunn.
I love “Untouched”. It’s one of my favourite S2 eps, just because of the whole “women of power” message. Plus, it had one of the most subtle hints at Wesley’s childhood abuse ever.
Angel(us)/Darla: you know how I feel about them. *g* Write your essay! It’ll be fantabulous!
Part 2: Nothing but Gunn
As for how Gunn went from “War Zone” guy to Pylea arc guy, I think a lot of it had to do with not wanting to be responsible for any more deaths of his family. Forgive me as I go off on a little tangent about myself:
You know I’ve grown up in a Christian community, in a Chinese Christian church. Sometimes I get along with people there, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I feel so close to them they are like blood family, and sometimes I feel so alienated. My school friends and my online friends are easier to handle, in many ways, because I don’t have to be explicitly “Christian” among them. I can be who I choose to be with them, and there’s a freedom there because nothing ties me to you guys and to my church friends except the choices I make.
Not so with my Chinese Christian community. Yes, I can choose to walk away, not that I ever would, and… That’s exactly my point. I can’t walk away. I don’t have it in me to cut those ties, not forever. Not seriously. I can drift away for a bit, as I did some months in university, but in the end, family is family.
I think it’s the same with Gunn, only he’s living in a war zone. Knowing that his decisions and his hand were the reason why his baby sister was dead, and Rondell, and so many others, must be a terrible thing to live with. This is his family. His blood kin.
And so he walks away, makes a choice to cut those ties because otherwise it’s just too much. Too painful. Yes, he makes a new family with the AI gang. But it’s a family of choice, one that (he thinks) won’t get under his skin and into his blood the way his real family did. Of course, that doesn’t work out so well either, but that’s how I see his reasoning. And it’s important to note that, when the end came, Gunn chose to live his one day with his family, returning to his old neighbourhood and doing good works there.
And I’ll stop rambling here now. Wow. This is the first time I’ve ever articulated my Gunn thoughts. Huh. Not too bad… *g*
I think it worked better in the context of films (plural).
When noir was being written for film, naturally before anyone thought of that name, the writers had genuine fears about being blacklisted for being socialists or having socialist contacts in the entertainment business, let alone friends. Remember even Ronald Reagan was once a communist. The fact that the society was very optimistic in those days must have isolated them even more. Consequently powerful stuff was being written even if it didn’t exactly fit the mood of the audience as the people were living their lives. By the end of the 1950s the political part of ‘the red scare’ was over, and the writers still trying to write the stuff didn’t have the same feelings. By the mid 1960s the same writers were turning to more realistic drama and noir was essentially dead.
Somebody like Joss who seems essentially happy-go-lucky is a bad candidate to write straight noir, because its basically a pose. But, a whole series like Angel with noir elements is a different matter. The writers can bring elements of the genre forward into something more realistic and immediate for the audience of the early 2000s.
Translation = Real noir – good; Angel – good, phony noir – bad. But, I liked that ep anyway. ;o)
Argh, typo
there’s a freedom there because nothing ties me to you guys and to my church friends except the choices I make.
I meant there’s nothing that ties me to you guys (online friends) and to my school friends. Not my church friends. Church friends are totally tie-able. It’s bondage. (No seriously, it is. Not necessarily in a bad way. But definitely not in the sexy way either, though!)
Interesting (I’d love to see some shooting scripts some days just to see if everything they say is on them really is, just because I’d like to write scripts at some point).
BUt yeah, definitely agree with you
Your right about the canon
being repeated by Angel in several places. I remember just after I posted. There’s also Angelus washing the “love” off.
Well I guess if you don’t define it – or allow Spike to define it – then “love” can mean what you want. If you want you could say “true love” was equivalent to Aristotle’s true friendship and based upon virture / goodness. Then Angel/Darla didn’t have love, but neither did Spike/Dru or any other evil pairing. But we know how high a standard is Aristotle’s true friendship.
The last successful ‘true’ noir film I can think of was Paul Newman’s The Hustler. It was so blatantly about isolation that the somwhat dated milieu worked fine. Besides, it had a fairly rosy, happy ending which pushes it out of the noir genre, stricly speaking.
Re: Part 1: Everything but Gunn
I was just watching “Chosen” again yesterday, and Joss has this full-circle moment where the Big Four are in a circle, planning what they hope to do when the apocalypse is over. Then the three kids turn away and start down the hall together and Giles quips, “The Earth is definitely doomed.”
It’s not hard to do “basically happy in the midst of angst”. Why was that harder to achieve on Angel than BtVS? I mean, yes, supposedly Angel had a “darker tone”, but that doesn’t mean, “kill all the characters!!” Well, Angel’s death was ambiguous; Wesley’s less so, and Cordelia’s pretty much a given.
It sorta brasses me off, you know? But I’ll live (because at least Joss didn’t kill Connor!!1!1!!)
If Charisma had been available and willing, they could have picked Cordelia up where they left her in Season 5, had a story arc about her dealing with the emotional fall-out of being possessed by Jasmine, and had her slowly come back to the tactless quipping Queen C we love. And then she and Angel could decide a romance between them was a bad idea, and they’d go back to being the friends there were up through mid-season 3.
And Wesley would have used better magicks against Cyvus Vail!
And AtS would have had a Season 6.
*sigh*
Re: Part 2: Nothing but Gunn
Your Gunn thoughts and my Gunn thoughts are very similar.
That’s interesting. I’ve never thought of Noir as essentially a rebellion against the optimistic, conformist, family-oriented society of the 50’s. But I can sure as hell see why they needed it!
Re: Argh, typo
Like family, where the ties will always be there no matter *what* choices you make.
Say, Scroll, it’s good to see you in my LJ again! You’ve had a busy summer?
Here’s the relevant portion. I think you’d have to buy the shooting scripts nowadays, but I saved a few from when they were posted on-line:
===
ANGEL
We’ve drunk and killed for how long
now…? A hundred and forty odd
years? We’ve drunk them all up and
they’re all dead…
He laughs a little at that (maybe). It’s not a sane laugh.
DARLA
Where have you been…?
For the first time, Darla gets the sense that something is really wrong with Angel. Like a woman whose radar has just picked up her man’s cheatin’ heart. She knows something has changed, but she’s not sure what.
Angel leans against the wall, half curled up, as if trying to will himself to disappear or die.
She moves closer. Reaching to touch him.
ANGEL
Don’t.
DARLA
What is this?! Have you met someone else?
yeah I know you can buy some of them. Thanks for sharing this.
Re: Your right about the canon
LOL!
When I hunt around for a definition of Love, Aristotle is not the first philosopher to come to mind!
But speaking more generally, the Greeks are better at defining it that English-speakers are. ; )
Eep!
Yes, pretty busy the last few months! I’m so sorry I haven’t been around as much, Masq. I was planning to reply to your other comment today, but then I saw this post and, well. I dunno, things have been kinda hectic in my house. Ever since school let out for the summer and my brother and sister have been constantly around, things have been crazy. So many arguments, with my dad, with my brother. Especially about the computer! (I really am going to buy my own. Within the next few weeks, hopefully.)
Also church stuff. And extended family stuff. Too many weddings! Not that I don’t love them, but it seems I’ve spent all summer going to baby showers and bridal showers and family dinners. Things at church are… in flux. We’re restructuring, kinda. Trying to figure out where we’re going and who we are and what we’re supposed to be doing. It’s… taking a lot of energy. I don’t even have the energy to post about it, though I do want to share about it all with you guys.
And so I’ve been letting my LJ slide a bit. Not too much I hope! I’ve been busy reading other people’s LJs and joining communities, and not really posting my own thoughts. I’m sorry for neglecting my friends! No, seriously, I know I’ve been a bit anti-social the past couple of months. I haven’t talked to Random or anyone else on IM in ages. I avoid commenting in people’s LJs. I dunno, I’m not even working five days a week! I shouldn’t feel this busy!
Um, yeah… Sorry for just dumping all that on you, Masq! I think I needed to get that all out. Thanks for listening, and for asking in the first place! *hugs* I’m so glad I do have friends who can be patient with me!
I love reading your stuff. Not many comments, mostly because it’s been so long since I’ve seen season 2 (I really should rewatch it).
Totally agree about the Faith bit in “Judgement” being a great surprise. And “Mandy”–well, what can you say?
I haven’t seen “Untouched” in a while and I really hadn’t thought about the idea that Bethany was being contrasted to Lilah. You’re right, Lilah is more ruthless than Lindsey, though she pretty much only held her own with some of the newer guys after Lindsey left. But she still had to prove herself harder because she’s a woman, throughout the whole series.
What’s strange is when I read your bit on “Untouched” I thought of “Billy.” Lilah is nothing like Bethany–but suddenly everybody was a little like Bethany in “Billy.” I don’t know–maybe this is nothing coherent, just ME hammering away on certain buttons–though they do it fairly intelligently.
Re: Eep!
I’m glad you’re back and that you might get your own computer! I know when I’m at my parents’ house and have to share over the holidays, it’s a big pain. And that’s usually only for a week!
I have to admit, since I did see you on LJ from time to time, I thought perhaps you had wandered off to other fandoms and were making new friends and were less interested in hanging with the ATPo crowd. Not that we haven’t moved on, but… well, we haven’t. Not quite yet. We’re “expanding” our range of interests. Yes, that’s it.
Glad to hear that tho you do have new friends and interests, you’re still part of our little family, too. {{hugs}}
Oooh, yes. I read the same thing. Many soldiers came home from the war damanged and unable to fit neatly back into the roles they formerly held in society. They were now trained killers who’d spent years in battle yet were expected to forget everything they’d learned and buys houses and cars and have babies. Women also had probloems, at times. They’d done the work of men, and were expected to forget all that and constrict themselves back into their old type of life. So we have the independent, masculine femme fatale and disillusioned, hair-trigger protagonist.
I was thinking about “Billy” when I was writing that stuff about Lilah. We never really see her have a conscience per se, but we do see her vulnerable from time to time. Like when she puts up with the Billy-spawned abuse in “Billy” because it’s her case and she’s trying to make sure it’s successful. Or in mid-season 4 where Wesley is concerned. Or at the end of Season 2 when she thinks she’s about to be “fired” and Lindsey promoted.
I’ll definitely have more Lilah thoughts as this and the next two seasons get reviewed.
Lilah goes to her grave a tried-and-true sociopathic company gal, but it’s those moments of vulnerability that make her accessible.
Re: Eep!
Heh. Well I won’t deny that I’ve been having fun getting sucked into new fandoms. It’s been good for me to expand beyond the Jossverse — as in, it’s been less depressing because of less worry about cancellations. Also, it takes my mind off my Real Life issues.
I love the ATPo crowd. I feel that we are actually friends, and that we have friendships that require maintaining. I know I haven’t always been good at doing that maintaining the past couple months, which is why I’m so grateful everybody is so patient!
The folks I’ve met in the Stargate and DCU fandoms are all pretty interesting characters, and one or two of them have become friends. But for the most part, they’re still acquaintances. Still, new experiences and interests, etc. Heh.
But seriously. I’m an ATPoer and that’s not gonna change! *hugs* And I will definitely be at the next Meet if I have to beg, borrow, and steal the money for the plane ticket! *g*
(Oops, I gotta go. My brother is home from school and he needs the computer for “homework”. See? This is why I need my own computer… *sigh*)
But, buying into the propaganda of the 50’s, these character types often met sad, dismal ends as a reward for their rebellion and inability to fit into society’s expectations.
Re: Eep!
Well, the next big Gathering (July ’05) should be at a major metropolis near you — in the Northeast, at any rate: good ol’ NYC.
We had such a good time at the ’04 one in Chicago. The shows may be gone, but LJ keeps us all very close, which gives me a big happy.
My default icon is a picture took of me at the ’04 Gathering and made it into an icon.
This icon is the drunken essay we wrote one evening at the Gathering. Oh you remember! I think we wrote it in your LJ!! (or was it ‘s???
Right. And the anti-hero in noir usually meets a sad end too. If you’re a fifties “square” the hero’s usual fate of failure and death would seem like just desserts for rejecting God, Mom and apple pie, I guess.
Like CW I think Whedon has something that noir writers didn’t-a belief in mankind. Perhaps noir is pessimistic existentialism and Whedon’s underlying philosophy is optomistic existentialism. Or potentially otptomistic. But underlying that is the pain that comes from feeling alone, isolated, different. That’s real, and is very noir.
But underlying that is the pain that comes from feeling alone, isolated, different. That’s real, and is very noir.
At the same time, both BtVS and AtS are about family. It’s just that they’re about families of choice, rather than cute little nuclear familes as was the 50’s ideal. The lonely outcasts find each other and unite as a team and as friends, and they are the real heroes of the world, saving the poor plodding normal conformist types from their own ignorance. At least the Good normal conformist types. The ev0l Establishment gets all bl0wn Up!!1!
Yep, there’s stil family and love and hope in the ‘verse. I think it’s a good middle ground, which acknowledges that life is hard and unfair, but there is still good in it. Good people, moments of happiness, hope for the future.
Right, I had forgotten all of those moments with Wesley. But that’s a little different–that was vulnerability because she actually felt affection. Actually I should really rewatch those sometime because that whole relationship between her and Wesley was just astonishing.
But willing to be vulnerable is different from willing to be a victim. I should really rewatch “Billy” sometimes. (Though the moments with Wes and Fred were excruciatingly painful–it was the beginning of Wes Can’t Ever Win which I guess lasted until the end of the series.)
anyways.
(Hmm, livejournal FUBAR. This might get posted several times.)
Re: Part 1: Everything but Gunn
CC wasn’t willing. That was the problem. She wasn’t willing even when she was physcially THERE. And I personally love the fact that Joss ended the season the way he was gonna end the season, despite the fact there wasn’t gonna be a S6- which had nothing to do with ME, and everything to do with the fuckers at the WB. Angel did end with hope. It just didn’t end with everyone being alive. And on a Jossverse show, that’s not only par for the course, but also doesn’t mean much in terms of never seeing the character(s) who are supposedly dead again.
I’m working my way through Every.Episode.Of.Angel.Ever one disc at a time.
When I get to “Dead End”, “Billy” and the Weslah eps of Season 4, I’m sure I’ll have much to say on the topic of Lilah and feelings.
Re: Part 1: Everything but Gunn
but also doesn’t mean much in terms of never seeing the character(s) who are supposedly dead again.
And that’s why I can live with it! ; )
Re: Part 1: Everything but Gunn
I actually came up with this AU scenario in which CC could have still done her one-episode Season 5 appearance, never to return again, but without Cordelia dying.
And that was to have her come out of her coma disillusioned with the PTBs. Her faith in them, after all, is what allowed her to be duped by Skip in “Tomorrow” (and “Birthday” for that matter). Then a PTB violated and used her to hurt her friends and many others.
It would have been a tad bit more realistic, not to mention juicily morally ambiguous, if Cordelia had walked away from Angel and the others (ala Lorne in Not Fade Away), hanging up her Champion mantle and going on to live the more normal life she always seemed destined to live.
Re: Part 1: Everything but Gunn
Ooooooh….NICE.
It’s also great because you see Angel visiting her regularly, not just leaving her in prison (cough*did Buffy ever visit that hospital bed?*cough). It also really sets Angel up firmly on the champion/rescuer path — I think the aftermath of “To Shanshu” runs deep through the first few eps of S2.
I was going to say that the end of “Judgment” implies that Angel visits her regularly, but at some point he must have stopped, because Faith in Salvage didn’t even know Angel had a son.
But Angel’s world is definitely filled with real people demons and monsters, whereas on Buffy they tended to be more like prey — threatening, didn’t talk much, identityless (although we did catch glimpses of places like the demon bar and the vamp suckjob place).
Actually, BtVS had interesting places like Caritas (bars, vampire bite dens, etc) and characters like Denver (Willie comes to mind). Both shows created interesting places and people to give their fantasy towns flesh and blood to seem more real.
Re: Part 1: Everything but Gunn
They decided to throw fans a bone by having old heroic never-say-die Cordy come back and help save the day.
Then she died anyway.
Re: CONT
I TOTALLY saw the Darla/Lilah slashiness.
I guess they played up that *Angel* didn’t love Darla to explain why he didn’t lose his soul in Reprise, but that doesn’t mean Angelus didn’t love Darla in his own way, or that Angel didn’t. In Season 5, they started talking about “love and ACCEPTABLE happiness”, in order to let Angel pursue Nina. I think Angel could have felt something very intense and deep for Darla (after 150 years I hope so!) and still she would not be someone who could make him happy enough to lose his soul.
In fact, it’s pretty clear to me an roll in the hay with your ex probably COULDN’T make you lose your soul!
Re: You might consider…
Well, I’ll buy that he plays down what he has with Darla as “less” and “wrong” in order to elevate what he has/had with Buffy. Buffy is the idealized love, pure, strong, heroic, human, the love of his souled life. Darla is the evil demon who turned him into a vampire, a killer, but she’s still the love of his unsouled life. He likes to say he didn’t love her, he wasn’t capable of it, to make what he has/had with Buffy more pure.
I say all of this as a Buffy/Angel ‘shipper and a Darla/Angel ‘shipper.
I think she means that Reagan was once suspected to be a Communist by the overly-paranoid Committee
The Bronze? Willie’s Bar?