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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Angel Season 5 UK

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ONLY NICE THINGS

12:49 / 04.06.04

Yes, but Wesley isn't *like* you. Dude. My dear dude. Whether he has been rejected by his Slayer, sacked by his boss, rejected by all his friends, the one thing he has always done has been, in effect, whatever he can. When he was rejected by his slayer and the Watchers' Coucnil, he became a "rogue demon hunter", when he was sacked *again* he kept Angel Investigations afloat, when he was cut off from Angel and friends, and notionally from "the mission", he set up his own agency to help the helpless when Fred and Gunn were trying (and failing) to find Angel. Even when Fred died, although he was drinking too much and was going bonkers, I don't think anyone faulted his work rate, did they? And I can't imagine Wesley, who has loved Fred in his creepy way for three series, failing to cross her dying wish off his "to do" list just because he was a bit bonkers.

Also Angel has been going through getting over Buffy since Faith turned up in Series 1 - we can identify the crux point at "Pangs" - that and the follow-up is where he bottomed out, and this became clear in "Sanctuary", where he has acknowledged the problem and working to find a way around it.

That's great. It's nice you moved on. I can't. You found someone new. I'm not allowed to, remember? I see you again, it cuts me up inside. The person I share that with is me. You don't know me anymore, so don't come down here with your great new life and expect me to do things your way! Go home.

This is not a quick process, but he *does* move on, first with Cordy and then with Nina, and I don't see it is reasonable that he should go back to being a teenager. I have to accept the hypothesis in that most effectively fits the facts, and that hypothesis in this case is that Angel in "Chosen" and "The Girl in Question" is being badly written to drive a plot, and that the device they chose to bring in the Fred transformation in "The Girl in Question" made no real sense.

Jack The Bodiless

20:42 / 07.06.04

Or, alternatively, that you never really 'move on' from your first (non-evil) love? No matter how many new girlfriends you acquire or temper tantrums you throw? Remember that the next thing he did after flaring up at her was go all the way to Sunnydale to apologise - and beat up her new boyfriend. Angel's attitude towards Buffy has always been inconsistent. It's kind of natural to never really get over the big relationships - he never really sorted out the whole Darla thing, either...

And, dude (my dear, dear dude) - so, effectively, despite the fact that Wesley is bonkers right now, and the fact that they've clearly set up his mental state as vacillating between 'Wes brain say Fred ded' and 'But smurf look like Fred so Wes fink Fred maybe not so ded' - you still think it's somehow much much inconsistent for him to have put off telling her parents for a few weeks.

Aside from the fact that I think you're reaching, I really think you're reaching...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:05 / 08.06.04

LAST EPISODE SPOILERS!

Wow. So I guess that onlin petition didn't work then, they really aren't coming back.

That was great. Lorne's doublecross of Lindsey. The whole thing with Blue and Wes, "Would you like me to lie to you now?" justifies the whole unpleasant at the time subplot with Fred's parents. The fact we saw so little of the actual fighting. Connor coming back. "What do we do now?" "I'll take the 30 thousand on the left..." "I've always wanted to kill a dragon."

Ace.

The Natural Way

20:27 / 08.06.04

Yes. Good.

I liked.

I liked it when the head exploded.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:56 / 08.06.04

And, dude (my dear, dear dude) - so, effectively, despite the fact that Wesley is bonkers right now, and the fact that they've clearly set up his mental state as vacillating between 'Wes brain say Fred ded' and 'But smurf look like Fred so Wes fink Fred maybe not so ded' - you still think it's somehow much much inconsistent for him to have put off telling her parents for a few weeks.

Not true - the baby talk clearly intended to express contempt for my position pretty much highlights the childishness of your own. Wes has always been perfectly clear on Fred being dead. That was kind of why 5.22 was sad - because he knows that Fred is dead. Fred is dead. Do you see? The bit about being able to tell illusion from reality? That's becasue he knows that Fred is dead. The Brian Rix farce in 5.20. He knows Fred is dead. The bit where he says that Fred is dead, and she can't be brought back? I think that might just hint that he knows that Fred is dead. The bit at the end where he has nothing left to lose and lets Illyria pretend to be Fred *because he is dying*? See how those two concepts are subtly filligreed there?

You're reaching. I'm reaching. Everybody's reaching. For some reason you want Angel, Spike and Wesley to be expressing soemthing true and beautiful, whereas I'm happy to take the key messages - Spike and Angel haev soem ambivalence about Buffy, Illyria can look like Fred, Wesley finds this upsetting - and pretend the rest of it didn't happen. YMMV.

09:14 / 09.06.04

why didn't he just go in there guns blazing and fuck the red magic guy that way? wes never got the peckinpah moment that he deserved, (spikes john woo moment - killing baddies with a baby under one arm), but top 'i'm dying' acting at the end there i thought. a little sniffle. (and made me think of when lyla dressed up like fred britney)

the nearest to choking moment for me came with the word 'effulgent'. that was the buffiness ending for me, realised how long i'd been into this shit and how much (at a point at least) it had meant to me. bye buffyverse, you never had quite enough fighting, but i liked you anyway.

10:23 / 09.06.04

the nearest to choking moment for me came with the word 'effulgent'.

Me too. That bit was amazing.

(And the rest of the episode would have been okay - apart from the blatant Angel/Lindsay shipping [favouritism! favouritism!] - if they hadn't spent an entire season making me not care about any of these people. I suppose at least they realized it would take an entire season, because I used to care about some of them quite a lot.)

Jack The Bodiless

11:43 / 09.06.04

Not true - the baby talk clearly intended to express contempt for my position pretty much highlights the childishness of your own.

God, you're self-obsessed. Baby-talk? I was just being silly. The way I do. What's the fuck's that got to do with you, you tiny chunk of nervous paranoia?!

Wes has always been perfectly clear on Fred being dead. That was kind of why 5.22 was sad - because he knows that Fred is dead. Fred is dead. Do you see? The bit about being able to tell illusion from reality? That's becasue he knows that Fred is dead. The Brian Rix farce in 5.20. He knows Fred is dead. The bit where he says that Fred is dead, and she can't be brought back? I think that might just hint that he knows that Fred is dead. The bit at the end where he has nothing left to lose and lets Illyria pretend to be Fred *because he is dying*? See how those two concepts are subtly filligreed there?

Yet again, you miss the point, just like you did with Angel. You seem to be under the impression that, because a character says something, they must mean something. That's distressingly binary of you, but if you'd rather think of this as more of an exercise in daytime-soap-opera-style character-work, I guess that's up to you, and certainly you've shown no indication of wanting to take into consideration all of the ambivalence shown towards Illyria by Wesley, the inconsistencies with what he actually says. Personally, I'm of the opinion that Spike summed it up when he told Illyria that he could tell it wasn't Fred in there, hence why he treated her as an entirely different person. Wesley does not treat her as an entirely separate person. In fact, the way he actually treats her, as opposed to what he says to her, indicates severe mixed messages on what he feels about her. And, of course, the fact that his little speech about illusion/reality makes a lot more sense when you consider that he's lying to himself and her. But, of course, you'd rather ignore that in favour of... well, not a lot, actually.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:36 / 09.06.04

Yes, yes. As I say, we are reading this in different ways. However, I have yet to encounter any argument sufficiently compelling to make me think that it is in character for Wesley, however mad, to let the Burkles down that badly. Wesley's an ambiguous character of questionable stability, but that doesn't justify his lurch into being so negligent.

Likewise, Angel and Spike behaving over Buffy in a manner that simply is not supported by the previous 4 3/4 series of Angel (Spike I'm more ready to be convinced about - specifically that he was just drunk at the end of 5.9, and actually *does* very much want to see Buffy again right now, and I'm happy to accept that Angel will get pulled into competition with Spike because he doesn't like him, and he's now totally over the death of Fred and his recent relationship with Nina and ready to indulge in some petty rivalry for comic effect) I'm not buying. Nor am I buying the gag flashbacks or the gag Italians. You can keep insulting me if you like, but it's unlikely to change my mind in and of itself. 5.20 was perhaps six minutes of useful plotting and 30 minutes of mugging, and, as the 108th of 110 episodes, it was a waste. If Buffy *had* to be addressed, about which I am doubtful anyway (whereas an episode on the ISS might have been v. interesting), it could have been addressed in a non-shit way without the fabric of the space-time continuum being ruptured...

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:52 / 09.06.04

I'd like the International Scooby Society episode to reveal that Xander is dead, and that his friends are treating his death with the same offensively casual callous humour he demonstrated in 'Chosen'.

Willow: "Hey Angel, did you hear Xander sacrificed himself to save my life? He got his guts all ripped out but good!"

Angel: "Really? [beat] I never liked that guy."

Willow: "It was a stupid thing to do. Xander was stupid. That's my Xander! Stupid stupid STUPID."

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:14 / 09.06.04

Funnily, I dreamt that I read an episode summary of 5.21 in which Angel's acting up and naughtiness was to get the ISS' attention, at which point he launched a combined attack on Wolfram & Hart, at the end of the first part of which Xander was crushed by a falling doorway.

Like Athos. Or Gan.

I *need* to get out more...

Jack The Bodiless

11:31 / 10.06.04

That's really odd... I had a dream last night in which you and I were having a heated argument about... well, the above argument (in the Princess Louise, actually), and I started ranting on about how you couldn't see what was actually going on because you were unilevel and Wesley was multilevel, and then some stuff about chakras (this stems from a private joke re: Highlander slash between me and Ma'at, by the way), and then you hit me in the face with a big cream pie, and said something along the lines of "Now THAT'S inappropriate slapstick."

Anyway. What did you guys think of the season finale?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:05 / 11.06.04

Epic. And in the end, Angel Investigations never managed to do that much good for the world, except clearing up the mistakes they made themselves. Which is brilliant.

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