Angel - 05/07/03 - Home - Season Finale (spoilers)

Cafe Society
21

Brilliant and very very sad.

Here’s my analysis of the situation. Just incase I’m going to put it in a spoiler box. You need to see it fresh.

Angel said that he was making terms of the deal and so he secured the new life for Connor. The key is that it isn’t Connor happy with Angel as his father, or restored as a champion. Angel finally realized that he has been selflish about the Connor issue. Yes Angel loved Connor but more than that Angel wanted to be his father. He wanted to have a son and to raise him and to guide him. Yet that simply wasn’t possible, so finally he let Connor go. He gave Connor a real, and good, life. In the process Connor vanished, probably it is just a memory thing but who knows. Angel was willing to make a long lasting deal with the senior partners and give up any chance of having Connor to save him.
As for Gunn and the panther I’m not sure. I have the notion that it was a representation of the beings that the little girl used to channel for Wolfram and Hart offering to make Gunn their new conduit. However I think it has to be something more than that, some offer of making the world better in a direct way, to get him to accept.

A simply amazing hour of TV.

22

I wish I had previewed so I could have responded to Apos in the first post.

I’m willing to bet that there is an elegant memory solution. A set of individuals most likely to fill in for Connor. Jasmine would still be there, perhaps with memories of a virgin pregancy on the part of Cordy, or rather a pregnancy that originated when she was elsewhere. Or as the Beast’s child. Regardless the holes can be patched and hopefully if it is renewed the rough spots will be major plot points.

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this post has been Graped by the Grapist!

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That was fast!

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I think Gunn got the Spider Sense Cordy used to have. He does have the best intuition of the group.

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I dunno: that doesn’t seem all that elegant, especially since it

wasn’t just that so much revolved around pasrticular events, but that the events revolved around the plot of Connor existing. I mean, they’d essentially be retconning the entire show’s season 3 and 4 history. They’ve had things fit together well before, but I can’t think of anything that would be elegant and still hold the show’s arc plot together coherently.

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Maybe it won’t work right Apos and that will be a major focus of next season. Personally I have faith in ME to do something good with it, especially since they’ve shown me that none of my faith has been misplaced in Angel this season. Really it isn’t an issue for me until I see what happens next season.

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The limo was on the wrong side of the road. I bet they had to reverse the film to get the proper left->right motion they wanted on screen. A bit disconcerting, to be sure.

I think they handled Connor as well as possible. He needed to be removed, Angel wouldn’t kill him, this was a compromise. Who knows how they’ll deal with the changed memories, not really important.

Is Lilah back to stay, as Angel’s assistant? Or is she gone for good once the episode is over? It would make things very odd for Wes if she was around, sore throat and all. I loved the idea of Wes going in there to burn her contract, very in touch with what that character would do.

So Wes didn’t get anything from the W&H, Fred would have been head of the lab, Lorne gets to meet beautiful people, what about Gunn? I think the panther was a way of showing him what he really is, not just muscle, but a sleek, efficient, intelligent, (black), force to be reckoned with. I don’t think he was granted any powers or visions, he doesn’t need them, he’s enough as is. With an organization like W&H he could do so much more, that’s why he wanted to take the deal.

(On the other hand, why go to the White Room for all that? Maybe I’m completely off base.)

Some good humor in a serious episode. Loved the minute of silence (I kept turning the volume up on the TV to hear what was going on), “offer of a lifetime, just not mine”, “Sigfried, evil, Roy, not”, Fred with the machine gun, the coated windows that keep Angel from bursting into flames, and are 30% more efficient.

Good stuff, hope it’s not the end.

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Oh, I agree. I’m just betting that they WONT simply foist it off like that: that like everything else, it’s something they are going to have to deal with and resolve later. I imagine that, given ultimate power, the members of the FG miht well have a few episodes of doing questionable things to each other. Angel wiping out a year’s worth of memories may be just the start.

30

Loved it, loved the whole season. I thought the ending was beautiful and I was really glad I had stayed unspoiled.

Not that I didn’t love the entire season, but I do have one minor quibble, why exactly did Jasmine bring back Angelus? To partner with the Beast? To put him in a form the team would kill? I love Angelus and was glad to see him, but it just seemed a bit odd…in retrospect.

31

Did I hear it wrong? I thought Fred said “Where’s Connon?” Not “Who’s Connor.”

I don’t like the mind wiping thing… They’ve used it before on Angel.

32

Very good episode. Especially the ending. However, I didn’t like the mind wiping either. Hopefully it will be short-lived. Why would Angel even want to mind wipe his friends?

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Where to go from here…? What sort of evils will the FG confront?

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Regarding the ending to tonight’s Angel: Does this mean Connor is off the show? Or if Angel is renewed would they find a way to work him back in somehow?

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My guesses are:

  1. yes, he’s gone for good and we’ll never see him again, though Angel might reffer to him obliquely. The mind wipe will either not be dealt with, or will cause further problems, but even if people learn what happened, they’ll agree to leave Connor to his new life.

  2. The mind wipe will be a serious issue: the start of some really dastardly infighting within the FG that leads to the others finding out. Something goes terribly wrong with the setup, and Connor will come back in some form or another when his new situation starts to break down.

Personally, I think option 1 is the most likely. Connor was a really good plot idea as far as “babies!” plots go, but his petulant character was one of the weaker points on the show. They ended it well, though emotionally in a fairly difficult place.

Let’s hope there IS a show for him to be off though…

36

I think this mind wiping thing is gonna come back to bite Angel in the ass. I am assuming that it didn’t work on Cordy, but you never know. One theory I have seen tossed around is that Cordy, being the only one of the FG not on board the W&H train, will be the voice of reason and normalcy. Perhaps she will be able to bring the guys around. OTOH, Angel is presumably filthy rich now, and we all know what motivates (or did motivate) Cordy.

It was great seeing Liliah again, and Wes was trying so hard to be gallant and do the right thing. “Loved one”, indeed. Too bad it didn’t work. Oh, and “go-go gadget Wesley”. Almost cheesy.

Does anyone have any idea where the Gunn/Panther thing is going? I cannot imagine a storyline to go with it. Was it a Beastmaster thing, and soul transference, what…?

I can’t say I am sorry to see Connor go, and the “Who’s Connor?” line took me by surprise. I wasn’t feeling the least bit sympathetic towards Connor during his speech at the sporting goods store. All I saw was a desperate, extremely troubled/depressed/confused/messed up kid. Did he never understand that Darla died to save him? Did he never understand what Angel and the gang went through for him. Get that kid some counseling. Geez.:smack:

One thing I am still not quite sure of. Are W&H giving Team Angel the building, staff etc…with no strings attached? Does this mean, as Liliah said, that they can really do as they please? Will they have to answer to W&H for their actions? Will they turn it into a huge evil-fighting conglomerate? What exactly does W&H mean by “we ceded the L.A. Branch to you, you won”?

Boy, the summer is not going to go fast enough.

37

Spoilers before this episode have said that the entire hour would be a setup for a fifth season, if there is one. Taking the show in a totally new direction.
I think a key component was what Angel said early on - after ten minutes in that limo, they will all be corrupted.

Wasn’t it very apt, that Gunn met with a ‘Black Panther’?

I think that changing Connor’s life ment changing the reality, the way it was with Dawn. You can’t change reality a little, it has to be done full scale.

I’m not very concerned about the way things will be patched up, if there is a fifth season. The fairy of mis-direction has been working deftly with Angel this year. There were times when I thought they had lost it, and then it all fit together anyway.

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Fascinating. Buffy, in season 4, wrapped up the major storyline in episode 21, and then did a “coda” episode for the finale, with little action but a lot of setting up for the future (“Be back before Dawn…”). Now Angel does the same in in its 4th season. Except instead of foreshadowing a memory change leading to a new character, memories are changed to subtract one.

Fascinating.

My questions:

1 What happened with Gunn? My sense of it is that they really didn’t know what to do with him for this ep, so they just left it all vague, and will try to fill in the blanks later.

2 What is going to happen with Cordy? I’m especially confused because according to a (up until now) reliable spoiler source, the whole “Evil Cordelia” thing was going to be explained in a way that made some sense to me. But it didn’t happen. They just left her hanging, like at the end of last season, when I thought they were writing her out. Will she come back again, or no?

3 Have we seen the last of Connor? I was just kinda getting to like him. But I can live without him.

4 If memories are being changed, have the memories of the residents of LA been altered so they forget Jasmine, the blotting out of the sun, etc? This is something I think should happen, because when huge public events like that happen, it represents a real conceptual degradation of the show. The whole demon/magic underworld is not supposed to be common public knowledge, but how can people ignore something like that?

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And the TV! “Cool! Is that Hi-Def?” :smiley:

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to enjoy the minute of stunned silence, since the local WB felt it necessary to beep incessently to inform me of thunderstorms. :frowning:

The whole W&H tour had a nice “showing all the kingdoms of the Earth” feel. Hope it works out for the FG…

A toast to the writers, producers, and Joss for an unbelievable season 4! And heres to many seasons to come!

40

Evil Cordy, as they explained, was woken up when they did the memory restoring spell, and it controlled Cordy from then on (though I don’t see why it couldn’t have been her earlier as well). Skip told us that if Jasmine came to be, Cordy would either die or be as good as dead: in a coma. That’s where we stand now with her.

The problem with this is that it’s almost TOO powerful. I mean, all that incredible struggle over 4 seasons to get Jasmine into being… a being with power unlike anything ever before… and WolfRam and Heart can undo all the damage with a wave of their… uh, unseen appendages? If they were powerful enough to alter reality like this, why didn’t they just do it before in their battles with Angel? Why not turn the entire world against Angel just like Jasmine did?