A reminder: These threads did that on purpose. That's pretty
pathetic... if it's a lie, or if it's the truth.

ANGEL
Season Four, Episode 9: "Long Day's Journey"
Writer: Mere Smith
Director: Terrence O'Hara

One thing I've been noticing is an evening of my opinions about S4
episodes - yes, I see these 44-minute chunks very much as individual
pieces of the picture. The ones I didn't think so much of I'm
enjoying more. Whereas LDJ, for example, originally seemed like a
highlight of the pre-"Calvary" run, but now it's more of an, um, mid-
light. What's interesting is that this is the episode that, until the
end, can be boiled down to an enemy collecting a series of mystical
whatevers to unleash an evil plan that, as has been pointed out, was
only slightly more over-the-top when it was deliberately ridiculous on
_The Simpsons_. Few pretensions this week of reflecting the human
experience or getting to the core of Angel's psyche or anything like
that; it's an all out fantasy stock plot. Maybe it's a good thing,
because the shticky plot means ATS can take a moment to take itself
less seriously, and despite the fact that it's been only two episodes
since the last "comedy" show (months in first run viewer time,
though), it feels useful. I'm not a big fan of Gwen, but I smile some
at her vibe with Angel and the ridiculously posh secret lair. And
hey, the writers suddenly remembered how to write for Cordelia, not
that it matters at this point. Things progress to an intriguing
little mystery with the blackout sequence which surprised me when the
solution was finally revealed. The stylish stuff surrounding
nightfall (especially Connor first noticing it) make the mystical
fight and near-miss work... even if the Beast still doesn't do it for me
as the menace it's supposed to be.
Rating: Good


Season Four, Episode 10: "Awakening"
Writers: David Fury and Steven S. DeKnight
Director: James A. Contner

We frequently say that we "want" to like certain episodes better than
we do. The ideas are there, but something falls flat. You know what
I'm talking about. But then there are a few that're the other way
around. Most of the examples I can think of for the converse are
really bad episodes; if something pisses me off enough about a show, I
kinda don't want there to be any redeeming value to distract people
from how much it sucks. And then there's "Awakening," which is almost
its own category. A big part of me doesn't want to like "Awakening."
I hate the idea of ****ing with the audience for the sake of it, or
wasting time throwing a bunch of big plot elements into a stew that
"doesn't count." I also don't think Angel's fantasy really tells us
all that much about him beyond the obvious, and I don't think the
season structure demands a fake feel-good show at this time the way
some people do. But for all I rationalize against it, true happiness
is an engaging place to spend an episode. It's entertaining, and
drops clues about what's really going left and right without quite
slipping into giving itself away until almost the very end. The
fantasy doesn't quite line up with reality in several ways, but
nothing really plays outright wrong or badly except (and here's a huge
shock) for the scenes in which Cordelia appears. And for all the idea
annoys me, the big cut-away out of dreamland at the end is striking,
and sticks with me. Although it feels like an admission of moral
weakness to say it, I like "Awakening." Damn its cheap manipulative
soul.
Rating: Good (up from Decent)


Season Four, Episode 11: "Soulless"
Writers: Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft
Director: Sean Astin

"Soulless" rises in my estimation when I watch it and slips in my
memory as I spend time not watching it. Since I think in terms of
plot summaries, it'd have to be summed up as an hour in which very
little happens. (I actually closed my original review by saying I was
ready for something to happen now.) Angel's words slightly heat up
the issues that were already simmering without boiling them over, and,
um, that's it. But what I forgot between viewings is how much
sinister energy the nothing has. Now, this "Angelus" run will fall
flat in places (and not only because normal-Angel has gotten so much
more interesting over the years) - I mean, whose idea was it to have
him yelling and angry all the time? I'd say those issues don't stem
from this episode, which features the character at his best as a
calmly cerebral enemy working from within the group. A few occasional
bursts of action involving Wes, Gunn, and Fred raise tensions higher
as "Soulless" gives us one of our most focused looks at just how
dysfunctional our heroes can be. Then it dies a little in the fourth
act with the predictable off-screen slaughter followed by the single
most predictable "cliffhanger" ever, but it was pretty fun while it
was good. Overall, an episode that remains on the Good/Decent
boundary, and I'm going to once again round up, if only to keep the
streak alive.
Rating: Good


Additional comments on S4D3: A story this sprawling will leave big
gaping questions to fanwank if it's not very meticulously put
together. For me they're a small annoyance, not a deal-breaker, but
I'd still welcome any help in making more sense out of S4. I was
going to talk about the big question (the one everyone has) about Pod!
Cordy's motivations, but I think I'll defer that for one more thread,
and instead wonder why the hell Angel should have different memories
when he's Angelus. This was discussed at some length last time
through, but since everyone was avoiding spoilers, I don't think our
talk really concluded. So, as several people, including noted ATS S4
aficionado Apteryx have pointed out, Angel has all of his Angelus
memories *by definition*, because that's part of the whole point of
the soul-curse. The one commonality between the two "characters" is
memory. Angel himself has always been a bit of an exploration of how
much one is shaped by recollections of one's past.

Yet now we're expected to believe that Angelus would remember things
he didn't before he unequipped the "Human Soul" accessory. And, more
to the point, not only us. All of the characters on the show
immediately and universally jump to the conclusion that de-souling is
the best option, no one being confused by the fact that the
established rules would abruptly fail to hold under this scenario.
Why? The explanation eventually given is that the Beast/Beastmaster's
reality-altering field affects a subdued demon-personality differently
than a dominant personality. Why? The best answer the show gives us
to both "why"s is that this effect is weird and unique and behaves in
unpredictable ways that don't conform to any established rules. And
that everyone just accepts that magic is weird and beyond their
comprehension and doesn't worry about the logic of it all until
afterward. Uh, I guess. As you can see, that's a bit of hand-
waving. Not that I especially mind hand-waving once in awhile, just
that I'm trying to save up most of my fanwanking credits for something
else. So, anyone have a better explanation?

(The biggest proposed alternative, that Pod!Cordelia manufactured the
whole thing, memory of the Beast and all, doesn't fly at all for me,
since if she has that kind of power over people's brains, she should
use it more often.)

Without Angel being himself, the show has pretty much run out of
things for Connor to do. It'll try a few one-off things with the
reaction to the family pictures here and the odd gig sidekicking for
Gunn in the next episode, before going all-out with the Cordelia's-
champion story. That story, in turn, is just counting time until the
birth. I might have liked to explore the Connor/Faith dynamic some
more, especially if doing so would let her beat him up another couple
times... I guess in general I'd have liked to see Faith for more than
the three episodes for which they her actor was available, but such is
TV.

Thoughts?

-AOQ

On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:07:40 -0700 (PDT), Arbitrar Of Quality
<tsmtsm@wildmail.com> wrote:

:Season Four, Episode 11: "Soulless"
:Writers: Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft
:Director: Sean Astin

So, wait. This episode actually was directed by
Patty Duke's son Samwise Gamgee.

Hunh.
--
Doesn't the fact that there are *exactly* 50 states seem a little suspicious?

George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'

"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsmtsm@wildmail.com> wrote in message
news:6ec5a49c-f136-4941-8370-a65b0e80f627@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...

> ANGEL
> Season Four, Episode 9: "Long Day's Journey"

> One thing I've been noticing is an evening of my opinions about S4
> episodes - yes, I see these 44-minute chunks very much as individual
> pieces of the picture. The ones I didn't think so much of I'm
> enjoying more. Whereas LDJ, for example, originally seemed like a
> highlight of the pre-"Calvary" run, but now it's more of an, um, mid-
> light. What's interesting is that this is the episode that, until the
> end, can be boiled down to an enemy collecting a series of mystical
> whatevers to unleash an evil plan that, as has been pointed out, was
> only slightly more over-the-top when it was deliberately ridiculous on
> _The Simpsons_. Few pretensions this week of reflecting the human
> experience or getting to the core of Angel's psyche or anything like
> that; it's an all out fantasy stock plot.

Hmmm. Well, as to preposterous, it's apocalyptic, which is kind of a staple
for both series. One of the things I do generally like about this season is
the trappings of big - notably fire raining from the sky and now, the
darkening of the sun. I'll continue to like the image of the nasty swirling
sun. Of course the road to the darkening leads through the silly human,
Manny, and an awfully convenient convergence on LA by victims that ought to
be running the other way. The in episode plotting is admittedly pretty
mundane. The payoff at the end of the episode is still good. And the
mystery... well, I'll come back to that.

With the humor and Gwen and so on it makes for pretty easy watching. And
aside from bringing on the dark, the episode is reasonably effective at
building mistrust within AI - the best feature of the mystery.


> Maybe it's a good thing,
> because the shticky plot means ATS can take a moment to take itself
> less seriously, and despite the fact that it's been only two episodes
> since the last "comedy" show (months in first run viewer time,
> though), it feels useful. I'm not a big fan of Gwen, but I smile some
> at her vibe with Angel and the ridiculously posh secret lair.

Gwen isn't given the opportunity to be as much fun as she was first time
around, and I think you can see signs of not quite knowing what to do with
her. She's still a plus for the episode, however. And she does serve one
practical function of providing an alternate suspect for the mystery -
further suggested by her concealing that something had been taken from the
body she witnessed get killed.


> And
> hey, the writers suddenly remembered how to write for Cordelia, not
> that it matters at this point.

Hmm. Well, I'll come back to that too.


> Things progress to an intriguing
> little mystery with the blackout sequence which surprised me when the
> solution was finally revealed. The stylish stuff surrounding
> nightfall (especially Connor first noticing it) make the mystical
> fight and near-miss work... even if the Beast still doesn't do it for me
> as the menace it's supposed to be.

It's a very good ending. I remain generally OK with the Beast. Menace is
only one element of the Beast. Mystery is the other. Words and actions are
always curiously off for some kind of mass destroyer. The Beast very
strongly suggests that everybody's missing really important stuff. Since
I'm not terribly sold on the great mystery of the season, that's high praise
for me.

> Rating: Good

OK, where I struggle with this episode centers mainly on Cordelia. You're
right that its well written for the Cordy character, indeed so much so that
it makes this episode likely the best argument for Jasmine being slow to
take over. There's almost no practical hint of what's going on with her.
But the thing is, we know now that this is the moment of one of Jasmine's
great deceits. Jasmine/Cordy is responsible for the death of Manny. This
is when/why I pretty much give up on figuring out the when and how of
Jasmine taking over and arbitrarily choose Spin the Bottle as the point when
Jasmine takes over.

It's possible to imagine all sorts of levels of control - but what's the
point? All we know is that the most important thing was done by Jasmine
(invisible at the time) who has as much control as the episode requires (and
future episodes) without ever worrying about whether any of it ties together
except the plot points slammed in - also without explanation. The
who-done-it mystery has the nice short term effect of getting people
suspicious of each other, but otherwise is left alone until pulled back up
in the big revelation many episodes form now so as to say, See? We fooled
you. But it makes no sense for a suspicious group to just stop trying to
figure out how such an important thing to happen from within. AtS may not
be an especially subtle show, but this is ridiculous.

Here is where the everything you know is wrong characteristic of the season
takes hold with a vengeance. This is especially hard for me on re-watching
since I spend so much of my time thinking this and that is pointless,
meaningless. Maybe I would like it better if it was handled more deftly.
But it's so heavy handed - as with the who-done-it mystery

I enjoyed this episode a whole lot more the first time. This time it only
gets a Decent rating.



> Season Four, Episode 10: "Awakening"
> Writers: David Fury and Steven S. DeKnight
> Director: James A. Contner
>
> We frequently say that we "want" to like certain episodes better than
> we do. The ideas are there, but something falls flat. You know what
> I'm talking about. But then there are a few that're the other way
> around. Most of the examples I can think of for the converse are
> really bad episodes; if something pisses me off enough about a show, I
> kinda don't want there to be any redeeming value to distract people
> from how much it sucks. And then there's "Awakening," which is almost
> its own category. A big part of me doesn't want to like "Awakening."
> I hate the idea of ****ing with the audience for the sake of it, or
> wasting time throwing a bunch of big plot elements into a stew that
> "doesn't count." I also don't think Angel's fantasy really tells us
> all that much about him beyond the obvious, and I don't think the
> season structure demands a fake feel-good show at this time the way
> some people do. But for all I rationalize against it, true happiness
> is an engaging place to spend an episode. It's entertaining, and
> drops clues about what's really going left and right without quite
> slipping into giving itself away until almost the very end. The
> fantasy doesn't quite line up with reality in several ways, but
> nothing really plays outright wrong or badly except (and here's a huge
> shock) for the scenes in which Cordelia appears. And for all the idea
> annoys me, the big cut-away out of dreamland at the end is striking,
> and sticks with me. Although it feels like an admission of moral
> weakness to say it, I like "Awakening." Damn its cheap manipulative
> soul.
> Rating: Good (up from Decent)

Well, we're pretty far apart on this one. This may be my least liked
episode of the season - earning a Weak rating. Conceptually I do like the
idea of the process of removing Angel's soul prompting a dream of perfect
happiness. Indeed, I would guess that's how the shaman achieved the
removal. I also don't mind that everything is fake here. Yes, I suppose
that's symptomatic of the season, but in this case the bulk of the episode
doesn't have much to do with the greater season secret, and it's made clear
at the end what happened.

Unfortunately there's practically nothing in the dream that reveals
anything, or is even interesting. The quest is pretty stock, and by
indulging in Angel's desires, everything is overblown - often to a trite
level. I usually don't mind florid language, but many of the
conversations - especially between Cordelia and Angel - are extraordinarily
dull to boot. I don't really need to know how vapid Angel can be.

Then there's the issue of why they would want to bring Angelus forth to
begin with that you quite accurately question below. It's plain stupid.
They have no reason to believe Angelus would remember if Angel doesn't.

The only thing I recall enjoying was Wesley getting the Shaman - partly for
the humor of the scene - partly for continuing to show how far Wesley is
willing to go when he's decided what needs to be done. Otherwise I now
watch this episode continuously fidgeting and waiting for scenes to get over
already. (Oh, and why exactly did the shaman do his thing inside the locked
cage?)


> Season Four, Episode 11: "Soulless"
> Writers: Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft
> Director: Sean Astin
>
> "Soulless" rises in my estimation when I watch it and slips in my
> memory as I spend time not watching it. Since I think in terms of
> plot summaries, it'd have to be summed up as an hour in which very
> little happens. (I actually closed my original review by saying I was
> ready for something to happen now.) Angel's words slightly heat up
> the issues that were already simmering without boiling them over, and,
> um, that's it. But what I forgot between viewings is how much
> sinister energy the nothing has. Now, this "Angelus" run will fall
> flat in places (and not only because normal-Angel has gotten so much
> more interesting over the years) - I mean, whose idea was it to have
> him yelling and angry all the time? I'd say those issues don't stem
> from this episode, which features the character at his best as a
> calmly cerebral enemy working from within the group. A few occasional
> bursts of action involving Wes, Gunn, and Fred raise tensions higher
> as "Soulless" gives us one of our most focused looks at just how
> dysfunctional our heroes can be. Then it dies a little in the fourth
> act with the predictable off-screen slaughter followed by the single
> most predictable "cliffhanger" ever, but it was pretty fun while it
> was good. Overall, an episode that remains on the Good/Decent
> boundary, and I'm going to once again round up, if only to keep the
> streak alive.
> Rating: Good

Now this episode, on the other hand, is one of my favorites of the season,
earning an Excellent rating from me. Your summary is pretty good - except
that I liked the fourth act better than you. It's a little interesting to
see Connor yearning for a sense of family - though he's better in the rest
of the episode - one I kind of like for him. I especially like how he
speaks of Angelus being his real father. This seems to take him a step
further than Holtz's indoctrination to a place where he sees that "fact" as
self-defining too. I'm also OK with Cordy's ploy - as predictable as it
turns out. It's more an exercise of will on her part centered on getting
Angelus to believe her. Now that's one rare moment where I do like it
better on re-watch knowing that Jasmine is inside. It's kind of neat that
she's squeezing Angelus with how well he "knows" Cordy when it's not her at
all.

The best part of the episode (which makes up most of the episode) is, of
course, the way Angelus plays everybody, sowing anger and disorder. It's
exceptionally well crafted - both the way Angel delivers his digs and the
way his audience internalizes everything - even as they knew what he was
doing while it happened. Just terrific writing this episode.


> Additional comments on S4D3: A story this sprawling will leave big
> gaping questions to fanwank if it's not very meticulously put
> together. For me they're a small annoyance, not a deal-breaker, but
> I'd still welcome any help in making more sense out of S4. I was
> going to talk about the big question (the one everyone has) about Pod!
> Cordy's motivations, but I think I'll defer that for one more thread,
> and instead wonder why the hell Angel should have different memories
> when he's Angelus. This was discussed at some length last time
> through, but since everyone was avoiding spoilers, I don't think our
> talk really concluded. So, as several people, including noted ATS S4
> aficionado Apteryx have pointed out, Angel has all of his Angelus
> memories *by definition*, because that's part of the whole point of
> the soul-curse. The one commonality between the two "characters" is
> memory. Angel himself has always been a bit of an exploration of how
> much one is shaped by recollections of one's past.
>
> Yet now we're expected to believe that Angelus would remember things
> he didn't before he unequipped the "Human Soul" accessory. And, more
> to the point, not only us. All of the characters on the show
> immediately and universally jump to the conclusion that de-souling is
> the best option, no one being confused by the fact that the
> established rules would abruptly fail to hold under this scenario.
> Why? The explanation eventually given is that the Beast/Beastmaster's
> reality-altering field affects a subdued demon-personality differently
> than a dominant personality. Why? The best answer the show gives us
> to both "why"s is that this effect is weird and unique and behaves in
> unpredictable ways that don't conform to any established rules. And
> that everyone just accepts that magic is weird and beyond their
> comprehension and doesn't worry about the logic of it all until
> afterward. Uh, I guess. As you can see, that's a bit of hand-
> waving. Not that I especially mind hand-waving once in awhile, just
> that I'm trying to save up most of my fanwanking credits for something
> else. So, anyone have a better explanation?

It doesn't matter how you fanwank the weird effect. Actually I think that's
pretty easy. The spell doesn't remove memory so much as obscure it, which
doesn't work well on suppressed personalities. (Somebody somewhere with
multiple personalities may remember something they're not supposed to as
well.) Hell, it might even be on purpose as a means to bring Angelus forth,
though that's hard to say since I don't know why Jasmine wants Angelus
anyway.

The problem is that nobody has a decent reason to believe that it'll work,
and every reason to believe it would be a disaster. I suppose the episode
intends for Cordy (Jasmine) to force the issue by convincing Angel, but
really, that was all about the risk, not about the premise. So it's just
another thing that happens because it's supposed to happen even if it
doesn't make sense.


> (The biggest proposed alternative, that Pod!Cordelia manufactured the
> whole thing, memory of the Beast and all, doesn't fly at all for me,
> since if she has that kind of power over people's brains, she should
> use it more often.)
>
> Without Angel being himself, the show has pretty much run out of
> things for Connor to do. It'll try a few one-off things with the
> reaction to the family pictures here and the odd gig sidekicking for
> Gunn in the next episode, before going all-out with the Cordelia's-
> champion story. That story, in turn, is just counting time until the
> birth. I might have liked to explore the Connor/Faith dynamic some
> more, especially if doing so would let her beat him up another couple
> times... I guess in general I'd have liked to see Faith for more than
> the three episodes for which they her actor was available, but such is
> TV.

Well, they were so short of characters in BtVS...

Just one more episode to go that was previously unrated by me. Here's
hoping Whedon's new series succeeds in feeding the jones.

OBS

On Mar 30, 12:03 am, "One Bit Shy" <O...@nomail.sorry> wrote:
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote in messagenews:6ec5a49c-f136-4941-8370-a65b0e80f627@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...

> OK, where I struggle with this episode centers mainly on Cordelia. You're
> right that its well written for the Cordy character, indeed so much so that
> it makes this episode likely the best argument for Jasmine being slow to
> take over. There's almost no practical hint of what's going on with her.
> But the thing is, we know now that this is the moment of one of Jasmine's
> great deceits. Jasmine/Cordy is responsible for the death of Manny. This
> is when/why I pretty much give up on figuring out the when and how of
> Jasmine taking over and arbitrarily choose Spin the Bottle as the point when
> Jasmine takes over.

It's not even all that arbitrary. It's the choice that makes the most
sense, and as we both seem to agree, partial-control stuff only
needlessly complicates the story.

> The
> who-done-it mystery has the nice short term effect of getting people
> suspicious of each other, but otherwise is left alone until pulled back up
> in the big revelation many episodes form now so as to say, See? We fooled
> you. But it makes no sense for a suspicious group to just stop trying to
> figure out how such an important thing to happen from within. AtS may not
> be an especially subtle show, but this is ridiculous.

I don't quite understand why this bothers you so much. They're being
rushed from crisis to crisis and have no real leads or starting points
for figuring out what happened. Without a means to figure it out,
they can't act on it.

> Conceptually I do like the
> idea of the process of removing Angel's soul prompting a dream of perfect
> happiness. Indeed, I would guess that's how the shaman achieved the
> removal.

Okay, this topic (soul removal triggering the dream vs. the dream
being the method of soul removal) originally prompted one of those
conversations about magic mechanics that's longer and more boring than
anything I want to get into at length again; either way, it doesn't
affect the story significantly. But I must ask: how would one be an
expert in this technique if the only individual it'd work on is Angel?

> The quest is pretty stock, and by
> indulging in Angel's desires, everything is overblown - often to a trite
> level. I usually don't mind florid language, but many of the
> conversations - especially between Cordelia and Angel - are extraordinarily
> dull to boot.

Sadly, they're not all that different from non-dream scenes involving
these two. As I may have hinted once or twice, I am not a huge fan of
this pairing. (I was just pondering the fact that I've never liked
any relationship that Cordelia's been in, short or long term. The
embryonic thing with Doyle is the one that achieves the vaunted
adjective of "inoffensive.")

> > I guess in general I'd have liked to see Faith for more than
> > the three episodes for which they her actor was available, but such is
> > TV.
>
> Well, they were so short of characters in BtVS...

Heh.

> Just one more episode to go that was previously unrated by me. Here's
> hoping Whedon's new series succeeds in feeding the jones.

Looking forward to completing the set, seriously. As for _Dollhouse_,
I'm going to have to stop paying attention to the hype, because even
now it'll be hard to deal with the letdown when we realize that, in
the end, it's just a TV show. Ideally one that'll be good, and not
canceled.

-AOQ