Buffyverse Mini-Marathon Discussion

[crazydiamondsue]

Discussion of BtVS "Choices" continues here


You're Soaking In It
Angel locates Lindsey while Wesley begins to deal with Illyria.*

I'm not going to pretend to be any kind of AtS expert. While I know BtVS inside and out (that's what obsession will do for ya) AtS humbles me and truly takes me to the place of fire bad, tree pretty. Since I have it on good authority that germaine_pet is cooking up some fine meta for this ep, I'm going to be a bit less thinky and whole lot more obscure.


Why Am I Alone
Angel

I love that the episode begins with Angel alone in a conference room (with his bullet-point agenda.) His impatient bark of, "Why am I alone?" to Harmony as he waits for the rest of his team to join him resonates in ways I don't have to point out.

Cordelia and Fred are both gone, Lorne is demoralized, Gunn is hiding inside himself and a hospital room, Wesley's tortured by dream visions of Fred and then wakes to her face reflected in Illyria's, leaving Spike to be the unbeating heart of...okay, Angel would so call them Angel’s Avengers.

Care to weigh in on that alone theme? Or offer explanations as to how Spike became an "official" member of the Not!Scoobies? Did he sign a contract? Did I miss a scene - or was that just a given? Every man is needed now that the numbers are dwindling and Spike's dotting the line? Give me some souled!Spike thoughts, please.



Handsome Man Save Me From the Monsters
Mourning Fred

Angel's line regarding Fred, "I should never have let her come here. Bad things always happen here," echoes Fred's line from Through the Looking Glass: "And bad things will happen to you here. Bad things always happen here."

Angel has already lost Doyle and Cordelia, but they both died sacrificing themselves to the shared cause. Fred's death feels pointless to Angel, and he'll spend the remainder of the series trying to make it mean something. Survivor's guilt (hell, any kind of guilt) and Angel are old friends but, Fred's death seems to weigh hardest on him. It could be a sum total of loss (Doyle, Cordelia, Fred, Connor, and Buffy to a degree) but Angel seems truly lost here. Thoughts?



‘Cause That’s What the Green Guy Does
Lorne’s crisis of faith.

Gah. Poor Lorne. This world was supposed to be his escape - I mean, it had Aretha and seabreezes! His gig at W&H was supposed to put him in his element with an actual division tied to his interests, and an entire HR department full of evil-to-somewhat-naughty auras to read. He wouldn't be the, "Meanwhile, back at the Hyperion," character any longer, and Connor no longer needed a babysitter. And yet he seems to be the first emotional causality of W&H. His readings have taken a turn from 100 percent to 180 proof. A SoCal cheerleader and a Texas science geek seemed to bear the slings and arrows of fighting the good fight, but somehow a demon from a black and white dimension can't seem to bear up under their loss. Was Lorne's center just too soft and chewy to be a street fightin' man?


I'm a Liaison. I Liaise.
Eve & Hamilton

Eve was a creation of the senior partners, yet seems less suited for evil than the mother-born humans Lilah and Lindsey. She gives Angel a bit of the panty-fan, and then falls in love with Lindsey, causing her to turn her back on the very organization she was bred to serve. Was Eve a glitch in the matrix, or are Lindsey and Angel just that hot? Seriously, how evil was Eve?

Speaking of the Matrix, I remember reading an early review which felt that Adam Baldwin's interpretation of Hamilton was a bit too Agent Smith. I can nod along with that thought with some of the more Matrix-y fight scenes AtS toyed with from time to time, but I thought Hamilton was a stoic creation all his own. His very lack of "Grr! Argh! I'll get you, my pretty vampires!" made him all the more menacing. Thoughts on Eve v. Hamilton as to who was the liaison with the raison?



Toy Poodles On Parade Hell
Lindsey

Eve tells Angel that Lindsey was the one with goods on the Senior Partners - he'd spent the interim studying up on them (and evidently visiting Tokyo for some kick-ass tattoos and growing some sideburns, to boot.) His plans involved bringing Spike back and making him corporeal, and then he seemed to lie in wait for...something. Eve suggests that it wasn't all about the Senior Partners, that his machinations also involved Angel, because he "really didn't like him." So...Lindsey's toe-to-toe with the Senior Partners was derailed by his grudge match with Angel? Want to theorize what Lindsey could have done with his Senior Partners intel and a ready to gab resource like Eve if everything hadn't, for him, come down to Angel in the end?



Apocalypto
How many apocalypses are too many? Lindsey tells Angel that this is Apocalypse comma THE. I tended to see AtS' take on the apocalypse as more internal (events started by or that only affected the AI Team) while BtVS tended to have external factors with the gang just caught in the cross hairs.

Do you feel that AtS (as well as BtVS) kept having to amp the apocalypse factor, make the Big Bad badder and bigger so that we'd believe that there was a chance of true jeopardy for the heroes? Given that the Whedonverse is a place where often heroes go to die, did we really need the "This is THE apocalypse, or THE first evil," to feel the pinch?

Since we know that AtS received its cancellation papers during the first upswing of this season (ouch), do you feel that this episode served its purpose in setting the stage for the coming finale?

As a sidenote, there's one of those cool happenstance things here: a neat parallel to "Choices." Angel jumps the gun on the Senior Partners much like Buffy's decision to stop waiting for the Mayor to make his move and states, "Yeah, which apocalypse� the one last year or the year before that? No, the senior partners are up to something now, and I'm not waiting for them to spring it on us. We're through operating in the dark."



Just the Soft Chewy Center
In case you missed it, there's a layers theme in this episode. www.televisionwithoutpity.com (where wank goes to breed) felt that the theme was both anvilicious and meaningless. Some layerin' for ya:
"This is only the first layer. Don't you wanna see how deep I go?" – Dream!Fred to Wesley
"There are layers upon layers at Wolfram & Hart, Angel, things you'll never understand." – Eve to Angel
"OK, from the top. The earth's outer layer is called..." Suburb-Hell!Lindsey to Suburb-Hell!son.

Where were the writers going with all that layerin'?



You’ve Got So Much Soul
Spike

I'm not gonna play much in this sandbox, since I liked my Spike all souled up. However, I'm going to hand you a couple of shovels and let you go to digging, if you want.

Spike to Angel, Underneath:
"Welcome to the planet. We all paint on our happy faces every day, when all we really wanted is to pound the neighbor's missus, steal his Ben Franklins, and while we're at it, not think about the third of the world that's starving to death."

vs.

Spike to Buffy, Becoming, Part Two:
"The truth is, I like this world. You've got...dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people. Billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here."

and

Spike to Giles, Pangs
"Like famine pictures from those dusty countries, only not half as funny."

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strain) - Yeah, do whatever you'd like what that.



That thing about atonement.
Gunn

Gunn begins the episode flat on his back with his heart ripped out and ends it the same way. Only, you know, metaphor segueing into literal. Gunn and Angel both began their fight against evil for different reasons (Angel because he was finally given a choice, Gunn because he never had one) but it comes around to atonement for both of them.

Gunn has blamed himself for the deaths of his sister Alonna and his freind and co-captain Rondell without reason beyond that he brought them to the fight. Now Angel blames himself for the loss for Fred for that very reason, while Gunn's reason for guilt is now a little more clear-cut.

Lindsey tells Angel: "Every day you sit behind your desk and you learn a little more how to accept the world the way it is. Well, here's the rub... heroes don't do that. Heroes don't accept the world the way it is. They fight it." Of all the members of the A.I. team, Gunn is perhaps the most seduced by the lure behind the desk, and he pays a huge price for it.

The episode sees the return the physicality we were used to from Gunn, but its still his intellect (the knowledge of the holding dimension, the Wrath) that executes the mission in the end. How did you feel about Gunn's decision to take Lindsey's place in the holding dimension? Gunn had already lost Fred and any chance of returning her, not to mention the punishment for it he received from Wesley. Angel tells him his part in Fred's death will: "For the rest of your life, it should wake you up in the middle of the night. And it will...because you're a good man." Some atonement thoughts, please?


You Don't Worship Me at All, Do You?
Illyria and Wesley

WESLEY:
Two men walk into a bar. The first man orders a scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he'd forgotten, and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor shaking....and then through the floor and into the Earth. He looks back up at the first man, but he doesn't call out to him. They're not that close.

AtS Season Five was the only season of the Buffyverse that I watched as first aired. I loved Fred's metamorphosis into Illyria, but I can remember waiting for her to do something. She seemed happily discontent to watch Wesley squirm like a beetle on his back, and I can remember calling likeadeuce after each episode and sharing fantasies of Wes just bending Illyria over a straight back chair and venting some of that frustration. And that was before I wrote porn.

Now, however, I get it. Or at least come closer to it. I don't think prime time television has ever seen pathos like Illyria and Wesley. One mourning the loss of deity and the limits of mortality and the other pushing the limits of his own mortality and mourning the loss of God.

And you wanna talk existential:

ILLYRIA
Your world is so small. And yet you box yourselves in rooms even smaller. You shut yourselves inside...in rooms, in routines.

WESLEY
There are things worse than walls. Terrible...and beautiful. If we look at them for too long they will burn right through us. Truths we couldn't bear. Not every day.

I'm leaving interpretations of that to others far more insightful and eloquent than I.


Great Moments

Spike’s briefcase and listening…with beer.

Rat? Snake? Beady little rat snake? (Spike on Eve hiding in Lindsey's apartment.)

Opaline towers as high as small moons. Glaciers that rippled with insensate lust. And one world with nothing but shrimp. I tired of that one quickly. (Illyria on other dimensions.)

Damn...he is well-dressed. (Angel about Hamilton)

*Summary from "Once Bitten" by Nikki Stafford


Fic, Meta and Other Media for Underneath
Leave It to Lindsey vid by elcazavampiros - Yes, I realize that he's my husband, but I thought the song choice perfectly underscored both the action and the angst and made the last shot a gut punch.
Angel, for someone so old, you're so young meta by madame_meretrix
Underneath icons by zandra_x
The Soft Chewy Center: Layers of Life in "Underneath" meta by germaine_pet