Point 1: I don’t think that’s why he’s keeping her around. In the first place, he has no immediate means of getting rid of her. But second, he may be thinking that he can actually redeem her. It was a major reason why he kept Lilah around. The stabbing of Gunn was a bit of a surprise, but it’s not inconsistent with the guy who callously shot an innocent employee in the leg last week. Actually, I think the casual shooting last week was more out of character - he at least had cause to be pissed at Gunn.
Point 2: The “Scoobies don’t trust the Fang Gang” plot was already established earlier this season and still remains weak. But Giles does have serious trust issues as it concerns Angel (and, to a lesser extent, Spike), and probably more background on what Wolfram & Hart is and what it has done. Willow probably would have teleported to LA in a heartbeat - that’s just her character, so they had to make her “unavailable.” (And I do like that she was the first one they thought of). But Giles harboring mistrust is in character. (Angelus did torture him at great length and with obvious pleasure.) As it would be for Xander, which is why I thought Xander would have been a better choice as the guest star for the “psycho Slayer” episode than Andrew.
I kinda get the feeling with this episode that Joss and Co. were saying “OK, with a bit of reworking, we can use Fred to properly tell the story we wanted to do with Cordy if Charisma hadn’t gotten preggers. What? The show’s being cancelled? Oh… well, might as well kill her off.”
I just wonder if the SP had something to do with Illyria’s army going missing. She was, after all, locked in a box for several millions of years.
On the uspide, we found out that Amy Acker is an excellent actress who can play a range of characters. Go, Amy. Don’t see any problem with her finding work after the show ends.
What I was really hoping would happen when Angel was talking to Giles would be Spike taking the phone from him, and saying “Hello, Rupert…” Giles still probably wouldn’t have helped, but at least the guy he tried to have murdered who subsequently died saving the world would have had a chance to tear him a new one.
My impression is that Illiria isn’t evil at all. She’s from another time, and getting her army and taking the world back from the humans is the right thing to do. It would be similar if, say, Angel were frozen in time for thousands of years, and when he was revived, the world had been overrun by demons, and he had a human army waiting for him…he’d try to get rid of the demons. Ok, it’s a crappy example, but I think that’s where Illiria was coming from. In the end, she seemed helpless and confused, and actually willing to cooperate with Wes in exchange for starting her new life. It will be interesting to see where they take this.
I think it was important the way she said “Wolf, Ram and Hart.” She talked about them as if they were three people, or beings. (the SP?) I have a feeling W&H is the big bad this season, and they are the Astronauts, and the ancient Illiria (and the MoG) is the Cavemen. The Astronaut/Caveman arguement was in a Joss-penned episode, so I’m betting it gets revisited, and I’m betting they use Illiria and her knowledge of the old ones, and possibly her knowledge of the origin of W&H and of course her time altering abilities to bring W&H down.
All just wild speculation, though. I just can’t believe we have to wait 6 weeks for a new episode. I’m also told that instead of showing Angel reruns between now and then, the evil bastards at the WB are showing Smallville instead.
It was for me, too. When it happened I said, “I do not like where they’re taking this.” It felt really cheap. But, for all that, I think they’ll still make a good story out of it.
Except maybe it wasn’t a 180. Maybe she’s just manipulating Wes. It seems more likely. I’ll admit that the way it was acted it didn’t feel like that. But that hardly matters.
A few things I want to see before the season ends:
Closure for Leslie
Closure for Eve (I’m sure she’ll be back)
What the hell that “fail-safe” monster (to take care of Angel) that W&H had in the basement is. (Remember, the tentecle-y thingy?)
The larger reprecussions of the memory spell (only hinted at)
Back when the gang went to Lorne’s home dimension and found Fred, there were three books (?) with pictures of a wolf, a ram, and a deer. Wes mentions that the deer was more commonly referred to as a hart, says “Wolf, Ram, and Hart” and leaves it at that.
I always assumed there were three somethings involved, and that they are the senior partners.
I don’t get the feeling that Illyria is true evil, but her comments about human emotions disgusting her at the begining of the episode don’t jive with her feeling and showing emotions at the end. It’s seemed too cutsie.
Also, if Wes was really interested in redemption of Illyria, why not be interested in redeeming Knox? He apparently did really love Fred (as did Gunn) and didn’t want to harm her (as did Gunn) but he shot (stabbed) him anyways. Illyria killed Fred, destroyed her soul, and he’s willing to forgive and move on? It doesn’t parse. My feel for the character would be Wes viewing Illyria as a mocking copy of Fred and want to kill it to preserve her spirit.
My guess is that this episode was in the can before they got cancelled. However, the cancellation can’t have been a surprise. The public announcement is one thing, but Joss has surely been in negotiations before it was made public. With the news about the Firefly movie, I think he felt that it was time to let go.
So the six weeks hiatus makes sense. They can really take the show wherever they want from here. Had it been renewed, Wheadon would’ve dropped the show in the lap of Fury, to work on Firefly. TheWB might have made them an offer (e.g. cut down on the mystical, beef up the action, get more ditzy broads, cut the ensemble in half and we’ll let you stay) but the offer might have been to weak or unappealing for Mutant Enemy.
So they got time to wrap this up. ix more eps, from mid April till end of May. Time to negotiate guest spots from former scoobies, time to tie up loose ends.
And quite possibly time for us, the fans, to say goodbye to a great couple of tv shows, all in all 276 episodes over eight years. We can be happy and let them go when they’re on top, not suffer a show for a 6th season, with a smaller budget, and with Joss gone, taking care of his movie. I can only see bad things come from that scenario.
I trust Joss. At the end, I turned to my wife and said, “Where is this going?” But not in a bad way, like, “I thought we were going to New Orleans and we just got off at the Cleveland exit.” More like, “I didn’t see this coming. I bet they’ve got something up their sleeve.”
Sure, it could still suck. But the last few episodes have been so dead on that I’m positively drooling to see what happens next.
The Big question for me is how much time JW will spend on putting the final touches on Angel, and how much will be sacrificed on the altar of Serenity?
if he takes the Aaron Sorkin route for Angel, I will be very, very happy.
As for Illyria, I figure she talks bigger than she does. After all, she tells Wes that humans are essentially worms, and yet she accepts Knox’s worship. If she decides to stay ‘evil’, she’s setting up Wes to be her new high priest (Kwizezerach ?)
And so I was wrong about Knox surviving last week. My bad.
Well, Gunn had no idea what he was bringing in. His sin was not clearing the way for the package to get out of Customs, but for concealing a lot of stuff from his friends, like the loss of his legal skills, like the deal made with the doctor, like the fact that he signed for something to come out of Customs, and that he made it possible for Fred to fall to Illyria. Knox willingly and deliberately set Fred up to be the vessel for Illyria. Illyria didn’t choose Fred; Fred was chosen for her. So Knox is clearly guilty, but Illyria slightly less so, and Gunn even less so.
RealityChuck - I know. I didn’t mean that the rerun session was planned this way, just that I think the announcement came at a very convenient point. Yes, I know they said that they wanted ME to have time to wrap things up, but considering that this stretch didn’t really end with a cliffhanger, makes me think that ME knew what was coming, and timed it with an episode, so they could go either way, pending the decision from TheWB. Last week’s ep would have been a better cliffhanger.
I’m surprised no one has yet commented on the parrallel between Wes stealing an infant Conner, and Gunn’s part in destroying Fred; they each did something rash and betrayed the Fang Gang for 'the best intentions" - only to see their good deeds go horribly, horribly awry.
Well, all right - Gunn’s motives weren’t really as noble & self-sacrificing as Wes’s were. But both of them acted in a moment of panic, both ended up in the hospital feeling terrible, both of them got attacked by their former friends (Wes by Angel, and Gunn by Wec) and suffering from knife wounds, and in each of their cases of their cases - the gang sent the most recent ditzy chick recruit to tell him to hit the road (Fred told Wes never to come back to the hotel, Harmony delivered Gunn his walking papers.)
Of course, Wes has no memory of ever being in Gunn’s position, and therefore has no sympathy for him. Angel might though.
As a side note, if all the history concerning Conner was really altered, Wes never kidnapped Conner, then - presumably - he never got his throat cut either. Does Wes on the show have a scar around his neck? I’d presumed that’s why he wears so many turtlenecks.
I noticed the parallels between Season 3/4 and this season. Especially the hospital scenes. But as you said I think their motives were totally different. Wes’s motive was to save Connor…he knew it would result in his own estrangement from the group, from pretty much his only friends, but he did it anyway, in a very “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” type of way. Granted, he was following a false prophecy, but he didn’t know that. Gunn acted selfishly, and he admitted it. He admitted he knew there would be consequences, but he didn’t think it would be one of THEM.
Then there’s the Cordy/Fred being taken over by a higher power plots.
I’m not sure what it all means, but I really hope they address the mindwipe this season.
What choice did Wesley have? When an ancient superpowerful demon – who might decide to look for alternative ways to kill mankind and reclaim her lost world – asks you to teach her how to be human, the only answer is “yes”. Especially if she is willing to promise not to kill people anymore.
I don’t think Wesley casually shooting people in the leg or even killing Knox is supposed to be in character. Same with Lorne’s aggression, Angel’s human-killing and Gunn’s betrayal. The title of the episode is shells (plural). They have all been hollowed-out to some degree working at W&H.
Perhaps the whole Jasmine thing of season 4 was supposed to be the apocalypse of the prophecy, but somehow got messed up. Maybe the universe is trying to correct itself by basically doing the same thing all over again.
By the way, I missed the last 10 minutes (VCR ran out of tape). I think I’ve kind of figured out what happened, but would someone mind spoiling it for me? The last think I saw was Illyria making the spark in her hand and talking like Fred again.
I know it’s been mentioned before about this season, but those who have (unintentionally) forgotten history are certainly doomed to repeat it. In this episode, particularly, Gunn seems to be walking in Wesley’s footsteps, isolating himself, making decisions on his own, and ending up in a hospital bed for it.
I’m a little miffed we didn’t get more follow-up from the scene when Angel gritted out some explanation of what had happened to Cordy last season to Spike. Did Spike know about all this? How much do the other characters remember? They need to deal with the mindwipe sooner rather than later…
I was trying to hate the montage at the end, I was, but Fred’s happy little smile as she drove off broke me. The song was Kim Richey’s “Place Called Home,” by the way.
okay, mea culpas from the start – i’ve only watched Angel intermittently at best. but i’ve got several IDGI* moments going here.
if Illyria’s major plan was to take over the world (and presumably dump humanity and all other lesser beings…which would seem to have been just about everyone/thing else, from her initial attitude), howsacome the SP let this whole little plot slide through? Knox and the bad doctor were both on the payroll. don’t they keep better track of their employees’ plots, particularly if they seem likely to wipe out the company’s interests? or, as per the doctor’s bargaining with Gunn to get the sarcophagus through Customs, could this somehow be part of an even deeper, more devious plot against the Fang Gang?
i didn’t particularly get the impression that Illyria wanted to learn to be human. i thought she simply wanted to learn how to “get by” in a world that’s now overrun with the things. did i miss a subtlety there or something?
*I Don’t Get It, if that’s not an officially recognized acroynm around here. didn’t think this really merited a WTF.
lachesis, I think the notion with SupaFred was just that she was going to reclaim her kingdom which the humans had overrun. Without the army etc, there wasn’t anything to reclaim.
As far as ferretting out the plot, Lorne was doing this kind of work and was blaming himself for not knowing, not seeing what was going to happen.