Arbitrar Of Quality <tsmtsm@wildmail.com> wrote:

> ANGEL
> Season Three, Episode 5: "Fredless"
> Writer: Mere Smith
> Director: Marita Grabiak
..
> An early favorite of mine last time, and not just because of one of
> the best comedy-with-a-point teasers of the series

Fred's naive question -- if they truly love each other, why wouldn't it
work out? -- sounds so much like some of the more naively romantic
commentary sometimes seen on the Internet that I wonder if the similarity
was deliberate. Cordy and Wes's impromptu Angel-mocking is hilarious
enough to overshadow some subtler but equally good humor in the teaser; I
like Fred mentioning the "girl with the goofy name" and Wes starting his
reply with "Well, *Fred* ...."

> whatever reason). The character of Fred has always been of interest
> to many viewers, but this is an episode specifically centered around
> getting to know how her mind works. Getting a chance to understand
> what she's running from, and the story she's always drawing, and the
> way Pylea changed her are small-scale versions of those things that
> caught me by surprise while retrospectively seeming so obvious.

Though I love Fred, and like this episode pretty well, I'm one of those
who find the reason Fred fled her parents a little hard to swallow. The
idea that Fred deals with her Pylean trauma as a fairy tale, and
reconnecting with her family would make that too hard to keep up, sort of
works. But for me at least, it would work best as an instinctive
emotional reaction, *not* a conscious choice. Yet the way Fred goes about
fleeing is all conscious and deliberate -- she packs a bag, goes to Lorne
for advice, buys a bus ticket. This makes it harder for me to accept.
It doesn't come close to ruining the episode for me, though. After all,
if someone is acting irrationally anyway, how important can the exact
details of her irrationality be?

I've never quite made up my mind about what the hell Lorne meant by "You
haven't run far enough." Maybe he thought she had to run until she got it
out of her system? Or maybe that's Lorne's answer to all family problems?

The most satisfying moment comes when Fred moves definitively from victim
to hero by saving her savior. Angel, pinned down by a monster: "Who's
helping me here?" Fred: "I am!" And fittingly, she does it the
non-obvious way, firing her toaster not at that monster but at the severed
head. Come to think of it, this scene is an answer of sorts to Fred's
earlier question to Angel: "You can't save me now, can you?" He can't
because monsters are no longer her problem, but also because she is now
part of the savior class herself.

So Fredless is a turning point in one way, because it establishes Fred as
part of the hero team. But is it also a turning point in Fred's journey
toward mental health? I think so, but I'll have to think about that more
as I re-watch the rest of the season. Either way, Fred's progress is not
smooth. Her crazy side is certainly played up in the first part of the
episode, increasing the contrast with her more down-to-earth behavior
later. But looking back, I'm not sure how much progress Fred was really
making after the big step of leaving her room.

> these people and how they relate to each other. The vibe at the end
> once they're figuratively having dinner at their friends' house, as a
> group, feels touching to me, as does painting over the wall.

I like it that Fred's father always suspected Spiro Agnew was a demon. I
guess Texas Forgettyitis, like the Sunnydale version, includes as much
pretence and fear of speaking up as actual forgetting.

Odd detail: apparently Fred's and Wesley's fathers have the same first
name.

> It's
> great to have Fred along for the mostly-long haul, and the show on re-
> watching feels much more complete with her in the ensemble.

The cast *definitely* feels more complete with Fred. It's analogous to
BtVS's mythology feeling more comlete after Angel loses his soul -- a
total surprise that afterwards feels fundamental to the fictional 'verse.
Okay, maybe that's going a little far, but Fred really is that important
to the cast, at least for me. Season 3 is usually my favorite, and I
think one major reason is that it has the highest number of the core cast.
But that mainly applies to the last few episodes of the season, when
Connor returns and seven of the ten main cast members are on at the same
time, and they're all themselves, not possessed. (Admittedly some of them
aren't "main cast" yet in the strictest sense).

> Rating: Good

Good for me too.

> Season Three, Episode 6: "Billy"
> Writers: Tim Minear and Jeffery Bell
> Director: David Grossman
..
> Everyone who has anything to say about this show, almost without
> exception, is all about Wesley and his middling re-enactment of _The
> Shining_.

Well, not just the performance itself, but the very fact of the terrifying
transformation of one of the good guys (and it's not Angel this time!), as
well as Wesley's reaction afterwards. Without getting into the whole long
discussion, I'll just say that I like djsosonut's thoughts about Wesley in
this episode. I'll also add to one little bit that people have touched on
slightly: Wesley's behavior during his misogynist phase owes a lot to his
father. I don't mean the misogyny itself, but the manner in which it's
expressed. The calm facade, the condescending I-expect-no-better-from-you
attitude, the biting sarcasm disguised as weary patience ... remove the
physical violence, and it's a lot like what Wesley apparently got from his
father as he was growing up. Wesley's TMI moment in the last episode
conveniently reminded us of this, though of course we don't get an
extended look at it until Lineage.

(What's a little disappointing is the lack of followup in subsequent
episodes. Maybe there's more than I'm remembering in disc 3 and later.
We'll see. But at the beginning of Offspring, Wes is not only okay, he's
veering towards S1-style goofiness again.)

Fred's reaction at the end is as interesting as Wesley's. After Wes
closes the door, she hears him crying, hesitates, but then just leaves.
Certainly she realized that there was nothing more she could say to help
him. But I also think this might show a slight distance that has grown up
between them. However good a man she thinks he is, it's hard for her to
feel close to him now.

> left mostly to audience inference. I do like Elisi's idea that it
> shows something about the character that he's haunted to the degree he
> is by what he's done while someone like Gunn can shrug it off.

When you think about them, it's pretty clear that Gunn is much more stable
and emotionally healthy than Wes, despite growing up as an orphan on the
streets killing demons since he was 13. Apparently that was better for
him than growing up with Wes's father.... Not to say that Gunn doesn't
have issues of his own! And of course he had the advantage of only being
enspelled for a much shorter time than Wes, as others have pointed out.

> Speaking of whom, apparently a great way to win the love of a woman is
> to encourage her to hit you over the head with blunt objects - I
> wonder if Gunn pulled way ahead in the love triangle right there?

I think he did; but at the same time Wes gave himself a severe handicap.
Maybe it wasn't so much Billy's spell as the aftermath. Wes didn't take
it well. And why would Fred, who has problems of her own, be attracted to
someone carrying that load of confusion and guilt?

> Rating: Good

Good for me too.

> Season Three, Episode 7: "Offspring"
> Writer: David Greenwalt
> Director: Turi Meyer

On AtS, as soon as we see a flashback to the 18th or 19th century, we
immediately think "Cool! Darla episode!" Or at least I do.

So we start off with Holtz using a few enhanced interrogation techniques
on Angelus. "You're a demon," Holtz says. "...But you were also once a
man. If we beat and burn the demon out of your living flesh, will there be
anything left?" Here I think he's on the wrong track entirely. It's the
*human* in him that would be driven out, or rather destroyed, by prolonged
torture. That would leave only the demon. But maybe this is what Holtz
really wants, deep down inside: to face the pure demon so he can kill it.
Later, in LA, the vengeance possibilities opened up when "Angelus"
becomes more human, with a soul and a family, will strike Holtz with the
force of a revelation.

One thing we haven't discussed very much (as far as I can remember) is
Cordy's reaction to Darla's pregnancy. She's the first one to be openly
solicitous towards Darla, and I think the others are mostly following her
lead when they do likewise. She comes perilously close to forgetting that
she's dealing with a vampire. And she's absolutely furious with Angel,
for "using" Darla and for lying to Cordy about it. Now, note the context:
all this comes after several episodes of Cordy and Angel moving closer
together with all the sexy training and stuff, and a scene or two of Angel
realizing that he might now see Cordy as more than a friend. So, what's
going on with Cordy? Obviously, part of it is sympathy for a fellow
victim of mystical pregnancy (one who looks as helpless as Cordy felt in
Expecting). She's also got the evil of males on her mind after Billy.
And we can assume that part of it is natural anger at being betrayed by
that lying Angel. But the big question is, is Cordy also starting to feel
more-than-friends-ish towards Angel? That would explain a lot, especially
the degree of Cordy's anger towards Angel: she would feel like a betrayed
lover, rather than merely a friend who was lied to. But I'm not at all
sure that the episode gives us any real hint at all that Cordy is actually
starting to feel that way. The flower-arranging teases us, but then,
nothing. In fact, it seems to be using humor to push us away from the
idea: see the training-that-sounds-like-sex scene and the we-love-you
scene. The only signs of budding love on Cordy's part come much later.
OFV Offspring must seem like they're setting up Angel for an unrequited
love towards Cordy (like he'll go through when Groo shows up). So, if
anyone has read to the end of this long run-on paragraph, what do you
think? Is Cordy already feeling the romantic, non-just-friends love for
Angel that will become explicit at the end of the season? And if so, are
there any real clues for it in this episode?

Anyway, my favorite Cordy moment of the episode is not with Angel. It's
when she's sitting with Darla, talking about hunger, and suddenly realizes
what a dangerous situation she's put herself in. And my favorite part of
the whole episode is that little exchange between Gunn and Fred about
Angel's ex-lovers and the chart. Of course a chart of Angel/us's personal
life to this point would be simplicity itself, compared to what an updated
chart would show at the end of the series....

> Rating: Decent

I gave it a high Decent last time, but I think I'll bump it up to a low
Good now. But you're right to say that Offspring is more important for
setting up later episodes than for it's own story. It's really just the
introduction for the Offspring-Quickening-Lullaby trilogy. Darla arrives,
Angel decides he wants to have the kid, and then we're off for the meaty
parts of the trilogy.

> Season Three, Episode 8: "Quickening"
> Writer: Jeffrey Bell
> Director: Skip Schoolnik

I was thinking up a little quip about the hospital scenes of Quickening
being ME's homage to their own episode Ariel. Then I remembered that
Quickening actually aired almost a year before Ariel. So instead of an
homage, maybe Quickening was the seed for the Ariel story idea. "Hey, you
know, we could build a whole caper episode around sneaking into the
hospital!"

Anyway, back to AtS. One thing that jumped out at me this time was
Holtz's line "How is it no one has killed Angelus or Darla?" As we
viewers know, Angel himself killed Darla! One of those little details
Sahjhan chooses not to mention. (Though maybe the writers themselves had
trouble remembering it. Darla has gotten a lot more screen time since
Angel killed her on BTVS than she did before it.)

I don't have much to say about this one either. Between Holtz's deadpan
badassery and Lilah's struggle to salvage the situation while
simulataneously slapping down Gavin and his minions, I really enjoy our
main antagonists this week. The goofball vampire cult was amusing, and
Dr. Birdfoot was nice and creepy. Oh, and Fred's failed attempt to face
down the vampire cult was entertaining too. She's a genius, but she's not
perfect.

> Rating: Good

Good for me, and a higher Good than Offspring. Even though it ends on a
cliffhanger, or at least in the middle of a crisis, Quickening feels more
like a successful episode in its own right than the scene-setting previous
episode.

> Additional comments on S3D2: Fred is surprisingly hard to get a
> handle on sometimes. Now, I should mention that since last run-
> through, I've become aware of the fact that there are some members of
> ATS fandom who strongly dislike this character. I hadn't really known
> that, since she appears to be pretty widely appreciated on these NGs.

Hmph. I'm almost glad that I barely have time and energy enough for just
these newsgroups, if other discussion fora are so full of rampant error.

> As I later realized, the gag with Cordelia hitting Darla before
> agreeing to help her was re-used in the _Firefly_ episode "Trash."
> What's the statute of limitations on such things?

About 500 years?


--Chris

ps: OBS, I hope you haven't seriously been waiting for me to post first
about Buffy S6D2! Relying on me is never a good idea. And I don't think
I'm going to get it done tonight either, let alone Angel S3D3. Oh, who
ever would have thought mid-December would be such a busy time?

__________________________________________________ ____________________
chrisg [at] gwu.edu On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog.

On Dec 19, 11:33 pm, chr...@removethistoreply.gwu.edu wrote:

> ps: OBS, I hope you haven't seriously been waiting for me to post first
> about Buffy S6D2! Relying on me is never a good idea. And I don't think
> I'm going to get it done tonight either, let alone Angel S3D3. Oh, who
> ever would have thought mid-December would be such a busy time?

Mid-December's actually traditionally a busy time for those who do the
holiday thing (as someone on his own schedule who's also an evil
godless liberal, I scoff!), since people cram to get stuff finished at
work so they can take most or all of Dec. 24-Jan. 1 off, and then some
of those who have large family Christmas things find they're faced
with a separate set of tasks on top of that. Or was that sarcasm?

Sorry if the threads ever start to feel like a task. I actually have
a BTVS S6D3 thing ready to go too, but based on the speed at which
people are responding, it can wait another few days. Plus, new comic
today, so gotta save our conversational strength.

More about this post some other time, if I have anything interesting
to say.

-AOQ

<chrisg@removethistoreply.gwu.edu> wrote in message
news:13mjvldhj3fe365@corp.supernews.com...

> ps: OBS, I hope you haven't seriously been waiting for me to post first
> about Buffy S6D2! Relying on me is never a good idea. And I don't think
> I'm going to get it done tonight either, let alone Angel S3D3. Oh, who
> ever would have thought mid-December would be such a busy time?

I was sort of planning to use your posting as a prompt, but don't sweat it.
Christmas piled onto some difficult family stuff are consuming most of my
attention. The Billy conversation has pretty much consumed my attentions
here. I'm not really ready for the Buffy disc. Hell, I'm not ready for
this post from you. I may have something more tomorrow.

OBS

Arbitrar Of Quality <tsmtsm@wildmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 19, 11:33 pm, chr...@removethistoreply.gwu.edu wrote:
>
>> ps: OBS, I hope you haven't seriously been waiting for me to post first
>> about Buffy S6D2! Relying on me is never a good idea. And I don't think
>> I'm going to get it done tonight either, let alone Angel S3D3. Oh, who
>> ever would have thought mid-December would be such a busy time?
>
> Mid-December's actually traditionally a busy time for those who do the
> holiday thing (as someone on his own schedule who's also an evil
> godless liberal, I scoff!), since people cram to get stuff finished at
> work so they can take most or all of Dec. 24-Jan. 1 off, and then some
> of those who have large family Christmas things find they're faced
> with a separate set of tasks on top of that. Or was that sarcasm?

Definitely sarcasm. All those sources of busy-ness that you listed apply
to me. I shouldn't complain too much though. Despite being pretty
thoroughly godless, I actually enjoy celebrating Christmas. It's my
second-favorite holiday. And if Bill O'Reilly doesn't like it, he can sit
and spin on an Advent candle. A lit one, if possible.

> Sorry if the threads ever start to feel like a task.

For me they feel more like fun that I often miss out on because of my poor
time-management habits. But you're right that this might be a good time
of year to go a little slower. (And to think, I once argued that a thread
a week was the slowest we should go. I was young and foolish back then.)


--Chris

__________________________________________________ ____________________
chrisg [at] gwu.edu On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog.

On Dec 19, 11:33 pm, chr...@removethistoreply.gwu.edu wrote:
> Arbitrar Of Quality <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
> Fred's naive question -- if they truly love each other, why wouldn't it
> work out? -- sounds so much like some of the more naively romantic
> commentary sometimes seen on the Internet that I wonder if the similarity
> was deliberate.

Hmm. I don't think it necessarily has to be a riff on fandom,
although it could be. It is the naive kind of question that Fred
would ask, and the episode is busy trying to entertain those who watch
both shows while simultaneously down-playing Buffy's importance to
Angel's story for those who don't.

> Though I love Fred, and like this episode pretty well, I'm one of those
> who find the reason Fred fled her parents a little hard to swallow. The
> idea that Fred deals with her Pylean trauma as a fairy tale, and
> reconnecting with her family would make that too hard to keep up, sort of
> works. But for me at least, it would work best as an instinctive
> emotional reaction, *not* a conscious choice. Yet the way Fred goes about
> fleeing is all conscious and deliberate -- she packs a bag, goes to Lorne
> for advice, buys a bus ticket. This makes it harder for me to accept.

Doesn't bother me, since as you basically say, there are different
kinds of irrationality.

> The most satisfying moment comes when Fred moves definitively from victim
> to hero by saving her savior. Angel, pinned down by a monster: "Who's
> helping me here?" Fred: "I am!" And fittingly, she does it the
> non-obvious way, firing her toaster not at that monster but at the severed
> head. Come to think of it, this scene is an answer of sorts to Fred's
> earlier question to Angel: "You can't save me now, can you?" He can't
> because monsters are no longer her problem, but also because she is now
> part of the savior class herself.

Nothing to add, but well said.

> Odd detail: apparently Fred's and Wesley's fathers have the same first
> name.

That always seemed odd to me. I do believe that Drew et al just
forgot Mr. Burkle's name when working on "Lineage." Maybe "Roger"
sounds like a fatherly sort of name to them, the same way "Richard"
apparently sounds like a "guy you meet at a party" name.

> I think he did; but at the same time Wes gave himself a severe handicap.
> Maybe it wasn't so much Billy's spell as the aftermath. Wes didn't take
> it well. And why would Fred, who has problems of her own, be attracted to
> someone carrying that load of confusion and guilt?

She's much more inclined towards attraction to less broody guilt-
ridden guys like Angel.

> One thing we haven't discussed very much (as far as I can remember) is
> Cordy's reaction to Darla's pregnancy. She's the first one to be openly
> solicitous towards Darla, and I think the others are mostly following her
> lead when they do likewise. She comes perilously close to forgetting that
> she's dealing with a vampire.

Unlike you, I'm not a fan of the way that plays out with everyone
being, well, stupid (more the fact that everyone follows Cordy's
lead). It's not totally inexcusable, since that vulnerable look and
way of disarming people is present and tangible, but I was still
mentally yelling at everyone not to leave Cordelia alone with her
before the cut to inside the room.

> And she's absolutely furious with Angel,
> for "using" Darla and for lying to Cordy about it. Now, note the context:
> all this comes after several episodes of Cordy and Angel moving closer
> together with all the sexy training and stuff, and a scene or two of Angel
> realizing that he might now see Cordy as more than a friend. So, what's
> going on with Cordy? Obviously, part of it is sympathy for a fellow
> victim of mystical pregnancy (one who looks as helpless as Cordy felt in
> Expecting). She's also got the evil of males on her mind after Billy.
> And we can assume that part of it is natural anger at being betrayed by
> that lying Angel. But the big question is, is Cordy also starting to feel
> more-than-friends-ish towards Angel? That would explain a lot, especially
> the degree of Cordy's anger towards Angel: she would feel like a betrayed
> lover, rather than merely a friend who was lied to. But I'm not at all
> sure that the episode gives us any real hint at all that Cordy is actually
> starting to feel that way. The flower-arranging teases us, but then,
> nothing. In fact, it seems to be using humor to push us away from the
> idea: see the training-that-sounds-like-sex scene and the we-love-you
> scene. The only signs of budding love on Cordy's part come much later.
> OFV Offspring must seem like they're setting up Angel for an unrequited
> love towards Cordy (like he'll go through when Groo shows up). So, if
> anyone has read to the end of this long run-on paragraph, what do you
> think? Is Cordy already feeling the romantic, non-just-friends love for
> Angel that will become explicit at the end of the season? And if so, are
> there any real clues for it in this episode?

It's the first time I've ever even thought about this topic, so, uh,
that's kind of my answer right there. Sadly, I do really think that
the unrequited love is what it is. "Couplet" is probably the biggest
example of the unrequited love dynamic, and there's no possible room
for conscious awareness from Cordelia there. She's casually talking
about sex and "teasing" things with Angel in a way that can't possibly
make any sense unless the idea of romance with him has never (well,
since junior year of high school) crossed her mind, like he's her gay
or eunuch friend with whom male-female attraction just doesn't
register. Without Groosalug there, she continues to have a blind eye
to the topic forever, [Annoyed sigh]

> And my favorite part of
> the whole episode is that little exchange between Gunn and Fred about
> Angel's ex-lovers and the chart. Of course a chart of Angel/us's personal
> life to this point would be simplicity itself, compared to what an updated
> chart would show at the end of the series....

For anyone who wasn't around last time, I think it's time for a re-
post of that link Elisi pointed out last time.
http://st-salieri.livejournal.com/184415.html

> I was thinking up a little quip about the hospital scenes of Quickening
> being ME's homage to their own episode Ariel. Then I remembered that
> Quickening actually aired almost a year before Ariel. So instead of an
> homage, maybe Quickening was the seed for the Ariel story idea. "Hey, you
> know, we could build a whole caper episode around sneaking into the
> hospital!"

I guess the frame story has a lot of similarities, with sneaking into
a hospital to do a diagnostic scan, but this is the first time I've
ever even thought of comparing the two episodes. The emphases and
plot/character handling are so totally different that they could just
as easily have emerged independently.

> Anyway, back to AtS. One thing that jumped out at me this time was
> Holtz's line "How is it no one has killed Angelus or Darla?" As we
> viewers know, Angel himself killed Darla! One of those little details
> Sahjhan chooses not to mention. (Though maybe the writers themselves had
> trouble remembering it. Darla has gotten a lot more screen time since
> Angel killed her on BTVS than she did before it.)

So much back-story. As we discussed at the time, you can make things
more equal by incorporating alternate universes and visions and such,
but in terms of linear plot progression, no one does the "dying and
coming back" thing like Darla.

> Good for me, and a higher Good than Offspring. Even though it ends on a
> cliffhanger, or at least in the middle of a crisis, Quickening feels more
> like a successful episode in its own right than the scene-setting previous
> episode.

But it's a surprisingly good cliffhanger too. Whereas "Offspring"
ends on a Big Reveal that isn't an immediate crisis so much as a "we
hope this was a successful episode in its own right. Now, wait 'til
you see what happens next!"

-AOQ