Damned server to be re-started, just as I was posting. I hope the hamsters are happy with their lunchbreak.
Anyhow. I think we should cut DB some slack for his directorial debut and I have a couple of reasons. While the work was not stellar, I still think most poeple wouldn’t have noticed, had they not seen his name. I missed it and found out in this thread. DB gets to sit in a chair by the monitor and shout: Cut! It’s a wrap! Thank you guys!". It’s not like he has final cut or anything to do with editing, pick of music or writing the script. In fact, I think the script was to blame. They’re clearly stretching things out for the Feb. sweeps and they needed a cliffhanger, but didn’t have enough story to fill 42 minutes. So they stretched some scenes a bit too long, most notably the dream sequences.
I’m glad we’re getting something looking like an arc. I guess it normally get’s obvious around ep 10 in the Jossverse, but ep 10 came very late this season. They started late and went to hiatus after eight eps, whereas ealier seasons, we’re around 12 or so by this time. I think one of the defining moments was when the corporate enforcers Crocket and Tubbs (snicker!) came to talk to Spike:
Wes:* “We hear you’re fighting the good cause…”*
Gunn: “We figure that’s our territory.”
I mean, we all pretty much figured out that the theme of the season would be that power corrupts, but I like the way they play it out, slowly and in a fairly subtle way.
Pros:
Small doses of Harmony I can handle and even enjoy. She got some great one-liners and fill a role like Cordy in B.S.1
Some of the dialogue was over par, as others have mentioned. Spike was back in form, snarky as I like him and I could almost forget the whiney creature in the basment about this time last year.
Lindsey is a really good ‘evil guy’ if that’s what he is. Kane plays him deftly and gives us a well rounded character, where we can feel his emotions and motives. I want to understand the bad guy and even sympathize with him/her from time to time.
This leads to Cons:
Sarah Thompson should really get some acting leasons from Christian Kane. She couldn’t play evil if her life depended on it. In fact, not even someone as meek as Fred should be menaced by whimpy Eve senior partners song-and-dance or not.
They really don’t know what to do with Lorne this year, do they?
The jokes and lines in the dream sequences were fun, but off. It didn’t work dramatically when they switched from menacing to whimsical. Also, it was to much re-hash, from when Darla was poisoning Angel and of course Restless.
I was entertained, but it wasn’t spectacular. Time to downshift and press that pedal. I’m very curious what Lindsey is up to, though.
Well, Lindsay has old axes to grind with both W&H and Angel, so I think that by bringing Spike back into the mix, they intend to kill two birds with one stone. There has already been one attempt at tricking Spike into killing Angel, and Spike has expressed his serious disapproval of Angel getting into bed with the Evil Law Firm From Hell. Lindsay is obviously playing this to his advantage, and setting Spike up to be the anti-Shanshu. It is unclear in the prophecies whether the Shanshu will be fighting on the side of good or evil in the apocalypse, and W&H is clearly trying to manipulate Angel to the side of evil, and so far seems to be meeting with some success his willingness to use the 1920’s SDR is evidence of that. Spike clearly sees Angel as having gone over to the Dark Side of the Force, complete with Darth Vader reference in his speech to Gunn and Wesley. Lindsay and Eve seem to be setting Spike up as the Anti-Shanshu. If they can eliminate Angel and control Spike, who would then be the Shanshu by default, they might be in a position to take over W&H.
I’m wondering how long it’s going to take Spike to tumble to the fact that Lindsay is playing him. Right now, he’s not in much of a position to be sorting things out. He’s newly corporealized, needs to play nice with the guy who’s responsible for bringing him back and providing him with a place to live. I suppose if worse came to worse, he could find a nice crypt to hang his hat, or his coat in, but the apartment is definitely preferable. (Actually, the kind of crummy one-room in a basement is precisely the kind of digs I envisioned for Spike if he got a place of his own.) And despite his protestations to the contrary, when you’re fighting evil, it is helpful to have someone around who can point you to the evil, or the damsel in distress, or whatever. But Spike is much too perceptive to let himself be manipulated for long. Sooner or later, he’s going to put a few numbers together and realize they don’t add up- I’ll give the situation five more episodes, max.
If Angel hears that Doyle is back and passing out visions, he’s going to want to see him, right away, and there’s not much that’ll get in the way of that. This seems contrary to Lindsey’s plan, at least as much as we understand of it right now. If he hears that Spike is getting visions from some guy named “Steve,” he might still want to find out who the guy is and what’s going on, but he won’t be nearly as insistent about it, and could be misdirected or distracted.
Lindsey was the ‘little bad’ of season 2. Actually, there wasn’t really a big bad, but he was one of several bad guys. You can get spoiled if you want to with excellent summaries here.
I’m assuming RealityChuck’s problem with Lindsey’s hand stems from him forgetting about or never seeing the episode where Lindsey had a hand magically reattached to replace the one Angel hacked off in season one.
Well, considering that Spike and Angel aren’t exactly on amicable terms, I think Lindsay is betting that Angel won’t find out, at least not for a while. Not from Spike, anyway. He’s probably hoping that he can convince Spike that Angel has become corrupted and thoroughly evil, which, judging by his speech to Wes and Gunn, would not be a difficult task. If he can keep Spike’s interactions with Angel and the FG to a minimum, he stands a chance of not being found out. The question is, will Spike tumble to what Lindsey is up to before being convinced that he has to kill Angel. Spike hates Angel, which gives Lindsay an advantage, but he doesn’t entirely trust Lindsay, either. Of course, Angel could still find out from other channels that Lindsay is back in town. I think the tatoos may protect him from being found out by mystical sources, but if he’s seen by someone who knows both him and Angel, Angel could be tipped off.
I think Fred is the wild card. Spike is friendly with her, and she is the nominee for Least Likely to be Corrupted, and he may talk to her more openly than he would the rest of the FG, so if he tells her there’s this guy named Doyle who points him to the fight with visions, she could carry the news back to Angel.
I really wish they would decide what to do with Lorne this season. Being head of the entertainment division puts him in a position where he’d probably be dealing with a lot of people who would sell their souls, sacrifice children and cuddly pets, and otherwise get themselves into the kind of trouble for the sake of fame and fortune that only Angel & Co. could get them out of.
Well, if he wants to keep Spikes interactions with Angel a minimum, he should stop smuggling magic parasites into Angel’s bedroom, then faking a psychic vision to send Spike there in the nick of time to save Angel’s life. All it would have taken is for Spike to say, “Looks like Doyle was right,” or similar, and Lindsey’s game is blown. It’s an (apparently) unnecessary risk in an already insanely complicated plot.
Ah, season 2 of Angel. I only started watching season 3, and the syndication channel i watch is still on season 1 (although I still haven’t seen the pilot or the second ep).
Which may ultimately be the thing that leads to Lindsay’s downfall. The more complicated the plumbing…
For that matter, why set Spike up to save Angel when he’s planning to have Spike kill Angel? Spike didn’t stick around to chat, he just walked in, killed the bug, snarked, and walked out. Could be that he’s setting the Peroxided One up as the Good Guy in the eyes of the FG- Spike hates Angel, but he popped in to save his sorry ass anyway. Brownie points for the Anti-Shanshu.
It could be that Lindsay is also trying to orchestrate a split in FG loyalties and deprive Angel of his psychological support system. Wesley felt a moral obligation to try to help Spike when he was all ghosty, Fred obviously felt Spike was worth saving, and he seems to have proved that. Gunn seems to be being sucked in by his new role at W&H, and is trying to convince Angel that he’s doing the right thing by being head of the LA branch. It remains to be seen where Lorne and Fred will fall out in this. Fred seems to be enjoying playing with her multi-million dollar lab, but she’s still fairly isolated from the business aspect of the business. Same situation for Lorne having a wonderful time in the entertainment department. He’s more interested in keeping his clients happy than in the bottome line. If they’re witnessing Spike saving Angel from living the ending of Brazil when only a few weeks earlier, Angel seemed perfectly content to let Spike be sucked into Hell, it could create doubt in their minds as to whether Angel was really the Good Guy. Angel and Spike are seeing the situation in terms of which of them deserves the Shanshu more- Spike thinks dying to save the world trumps the six years Angel has spent fighting the Good Fight, Angel thinks the reverse is true. Each sees the other as evil- Spike because he thinks Angel is now working for the Bad Guys, Angel because he has only known Spike as a vicious killer with selfish motives, and is unwilling to re-evaluate him now that he has a soul. Both of them are behaving like snot-nosed middle school boys with regard to the other.
The FG, not being souled vampires, are not really concerned with the Shanshu rivalry, except academically. They’re interested in trying to use the resources of this large corporation they’ve been put in charge of to fight evil. If the two who are least involved with the business aspects see Angel sliding down that slippery slope into evil, and Spike behaving in a marginally more noble fashion, they could potentially start channelling their energies into helping Spike fight the Good Fight, which would make Angel feel even more isolated. It could also make them less likely to oppose Spike if he becomes convinced that Angel has, at least metaphorically, lost his soul and given himself over to evil, and needs to be killed.
Lindsay is being deviously clever in his manipulation of Spike and Angel. (Not forgetting Eve- she definitely has her role to play in eroding Angel’s belief in himself, as well as functioning as both spy and distraction- but I really don’t think she’s the brains behind the operation.) But he’s probably being too clever for his own good. He’s setting up a house of cards that one sneeze could bring tumbling down.
I wonder if Lindsey is really even Angel’s enemy. Perhaps all this business with Spike is just an elaborate passion play for his benefit, in the hopes that he’ll realize that his “grey area” is really pretty dark. Angel did save Lindsey from Wolfram and Hart once, maybe he’s trying to repay the favor.
I’m hoping that the whole Eve and “It’s a dream Angel!” thing was done on purpose as a setup to tip them off about her, because if it’s not, then that’s kind of sad.
After posting my lame pun, I realized that good usernames would be Evil Hand! or Left Hand of Lindsey. Too late…
My question is, did Eve know that Angel was going to get saved, or is Lindsey playing her, too? Because the way that all went down really put her at risk: if the FG weren’t terminally stupid, they wouldn’t have let her walk out of that room until the matter was resolved (either through Eve’s exoneration or her exsanguination). I’m wondering if next week we’ll see fireworks between the two plotters.
Lindsey is playing Eve. His scenes with her give off that flavor, especially the last episode. Sending Spike there could only hurt Eve. Breaking the link with the Senior Partners may be a goal.
BTW: Lindsey didn’t have an “issue” with Angel, they departed on relatively good terms. Well, except for that sign Angel pinned on his truck. . .
Lindsey does have a major issue with W&H and the senior partners (who may hold the rights to his soul, see i.e. Lyla and Wesley final discussion when he tried to release her). Someone has been very interested in taking control of Angel away from the senior partners- remember robo ninjas?
To me it looks like Lindsey is trying to break up the senior partners game, by redirecting them towards Spike with the Cup gambit and putting him back in play, while at the same time trying to take Angel out of their grasp. Clearly to me, it seems like Angel is the true sandy-shoe guy. Lindsey though is trying to add a bunch of doubt to this and gain control over Angel to boot.
But the ultimate issue is why- what it his ultimate goal? Stopping the Senior Partners plan to corrupt Angel? Or does he has his own play?
