Angel 1/28 "Damage" **SPOILERS**

Cafe Society
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I think I have (just barely) enough backfill to cover the continuity problem raised by the Willow/Thousands-of-Slayers spell.

Why aren’t they all out killing monsters left and right? Because the only thing about them that changed was their abilities, not necessarily their motivation. They are striving towards the same things they were before: student council, cheerleading, college applications, Girl Scouts, sports… I imagine one or two have joined their schools’ rugby or (American) football teams, but most of them have probably just become better at what they were doing before (with a marked emphasis on athletic abilities). For those of you who have read Fray, think about how strong of a leader she was before her role was discovered. Also remember the montage of women gaining their powers - one woman used her newfound powers to walk out on an abusive husband… but what on earth would compel her to then go off and dust vamps?

The new Slayers are out there, but I doubt they’re all slaying. That’s why the Slayerettes and Scoobies (and Andrew, who isn’t worthy of either title) are out recruiting them!

Why didn’t Wolfram & Hart know about the spell? If it was powerful white magic, and there were no witnesses who worked for the Firm, I can see the wizards at W&H being more inclined to pay more attention to The First (and its potential to cause Apocalypse, W&H’s “mission”) and the Hellmouth than to any spells being cast nearby. It’s also possible that the Hellmouth or The First were “jamming” anyone’s ability to spy on Sunnydale. A wizard trying to “listen” for Willow’s spell in Sunnydale at the end of Season 7 (and identify it, and decipher its effects) could be compared to someone listening to a Led Zeppelin concert in a rainstorm, and trying to make out the words to “Immigrant Song” from a mile away.

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I’d just like to note that the real estate agent in this episode probably works for W&H, hence the lack of surprise at seeing Lorne. W&H’s real estate division has been established as early as season 2 (per “Reunion,” etc and the beginning of the Pylea arc when Gavin comes to visit). I think the realtor was just creeped out when the psychic started babbling about all the bad stuff that happened there.

Did anyone else think Dana looked way too much like Faith?

63

Excellent episode, the dialog at the end was especially good, as other have pointed out. I also loved Andrews line about “X-Men” falling apart in the final third. For the less compulsively geek out there, Joss Whedon was hired for a rewrite of the final third of the X-Men Movie.

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Oh just fine, Otto. Adverb, adjective, whatever. Now it’s bugging me again. I figure it’s either a bone tossed in their to drive us nuts or that it’s something clever that ties into the episode. So if it’s not “harmony”…

“Handily” would tie into the episode and it’s 7 letters, but it’s not really a synonym.

RATS.

Now onto another subject. It seems a lot of our trusted characters such as Buffy and Giles and Andrew and Cordy like the fact that Angel is working at W&H. And we’ve all noticed that Angel’s been acting out of character for quite some time. Killing people instead of just monsters. Chopping off rogue employee’s heads off right in the middle of his office. Putting the Hellbound dude into a chamber of eternal torment…

Angel is sliding more down that slippery slope every day.

So, a question: Is it possible that Angelus is still around and just pretending to be Angel? And that last year Angelus was pretending to be Angel pretending to be Angelus? Did we ever have any proof that the real Angel returned other than the fact that he helped defeat whatshername from last season (Last season was soooo long ago, it seems.)?

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No, I don’t believe it’s Angelus. Angel’s movitation to take the deal was to save Connor and Cordy. Like Angelus would give a fuck about either of them. He would have just ripped their heads off, sucked them dry, and moved ont to the rest of the gang. I think that line between Angel and Angelus is blurry, and that’s why Angel always seems so uptight and under control and broody. He has to work constantly to keep the two “personalities” seperated…maybe he’s not working quite so hard to keep them seperated even more. I don’t know if he’s falling down the slope to evil so much as “beige” Angel status where nothing matters.

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Don’t make me watch my tapes of Season Seven to confirm this (really, please don’t), but…

[When Giles arrives in Sunnydale with the first four potentials in BtVS Season 7, I’m fairly certain that he mentions that the majority of the Potentials have been hunted down and killed by the Bringers. The sequences in various episodes of Season 7 which show Potentials being hunted down and killed by Slayers show girls of varying nationalities. It wasn’t happening just in Sunnydale. I seriously doubt there’s more than a hundred or so left.

Also, Dana knew how to kill vampires from the visions. She mutters several times about “cut the neck until you see dust.” She knew who were the vampires because of her Slayer-spidey-sense.

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I think a lot of the reason W&H didn’t know about the mass activation of Slayers was, well, they had other things on their mind. Like the fact that the entire staff of their L.A. office had been slaughtered by the Beast… the staff that would, no doubt have included all of their psychics, mystics, and magicians, or at least the ones who weren’t out sick or on vacation that week. They were probably too busy recruiting a new work force that would consist of several hundred people, and, er, other things to actually be able to put them to work in any kind of constructive way. They might have known about the First simply because a mystical force of that magnitude would make its presence felt without anyone actively trying to look for it, but the Slayer activation spell might well have slipped under the radar if nobody was actively on the lookout for ripples in the Force.

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I don’t think Angelus would/could pretend to be a good guy for this long. He’d have long since started killing off the rest of the MoG if he were evil. As mentioned, he never would have insisted on helping Connor as a prerequisite to him joining W&H. Hell, he would never have bothered to stop Connor from blowing up that mall with all the hostages. Naw, that’s the real Angel.

The majority of the potentials that the Watchers know about. We’ve seen plenty of evidence that the old council was not particularly good at finding potentials. They missed Dana, for one, and most famously, they missed Buffy. Since someone working for the First was able to get into the council and plant that bomb, they probably were also able to smuggle out a list of potentials known to the council and kill those girls, first. And while we did see, in the first part of that season, girls around the world being killed, by around mid-season I think it had been made pretty clear that the First was concentrating its forces in and around Sunnydale.

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My 2p:

It was good. Got tired of Andrew after about two minutes, but it was good nonetheless. And I suppose Andrew did make me giggle a couple of times (“He’s alive, Frodo” and “Check the viewscreens, Uhuru”), but he reminded me too much of the gaping pit of suck that was season 7 of Buffy. I’d’ve much rather seen Giles, but I’m sure Anthony Stewart Head has other things to do. Ooooh! If they had sent Xander, he could have gotten his eye regrown or something by Fred, who can do anything! Hello, depth perception! Sorry.

I’m amazed. Spike has been, well, actually tolerable in the last two episodes. It bodes well for the future, I think. I especially liked the final scene with Angel, where he seemed to wake up to the fact that all that bad stuff he did really was bad and it really was him.

Not to drudge up a hijack from earlier in the thread, but Angel suffered more than just a century or two of scrabbling after rats in the streets of the New World. Angel also suffered some hundreds of years in actual Hell for his troubles. Spike went insane for a summer? Oh, well, I guess he’s all done, then. Of course, Angel’s journey through soulhood has been significantly more screwed up than that. The vampire went to see Manilow, for the gods’ sakes! Not to mention that the only time he was happy in all that time, he went nuts and started killing people again. I mean, I get that they’re trying to make Spike’s reaction to his soul different than Angel’s, but I wish he would, y’know, show some remorse.

I kind of like what they’re setting up with Gunn. Well, I suppose “like” might be too strong a word. “Hate” comes closer, but it’s kind of like watching a horror movie. I’m sitting here screaming at the screen, “No, Gunn! Don’t go take a shower in the woods by yourself!” It could be done right, I guess, if they set something up where Gunn is going to have to choose to relenquish his newfound knowledge and heretofore unknown links mastery. Or, of course, there’s the equally compelling storyline where Gunn becomes too far gone, and sides with Wolfram and Hart against our favorite Grey Hats. The only bad storytelling that could come out of this situation is if they just ignored it, and pretended that we should all think that it’s great that Gunn is becoming a more mellifluous Johnny Cochran.

As far as the Potentials go, well, I think we’re sort of overestimating the number of Potentials. Most of them, you may recall, were evidently shivved by a Bringer or two during the Gaping Pit of Suck. So, well, say a couple of hundred survived. Not a bad army, but certainly nothing that’s going to start overwhelming mainstream America any time soon. Plus, that’s a number that can be more easily corralled, especially if it’s a more democratic system than what the old Watcher’s Council had set up. If the Slayers actually get a vote in the Slayage, which, using Buffy’s tutelage under Giles as a cue, should be, it’s less likely that a group of them will splinter off and cause trouble for the Scooby Slayer Task Force.

I’m sort of impressed that Dawn can learn Italian in, like, seven months. Of course, she learned ancient Sumerian in like three days, so maybe she’s slacking…

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You know what freaks me out about Angel liking Barry Manilow? Spike knows about it. Spike never hung out with Angel when he had a soul. The only times they met, they were too busy punching each other in the face to exchange likes and dislikes. He can only have learned about it when they were roaming around Europe with Darla and Drucilla. That means Angelus likes Barry Manilow too!

How weird is that? I want a scene with Angelus torturing a regular cast member while “Mandy” plays in the background.

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Actually Miller, the only time Spike could have learned about Angelus’s appreciation of Barry Manilow was in season 2 of BtVS. Now I have the image of Angelus killing Willow’s fish and singing Mandy beneath his breath as he strings them up…

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Or it could mean that Barry Manilow’s music is so evil that a vampire of unimaginable cruelty can really appreciate it…

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So was this the first episode that mentioned (even as a joke) Angel’s aging?

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What do you mean? Angelus could have mentioned any time when they were together in the… 19th… century…

Hmmm.

So, turns out I’m dumb.

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Okay, Dana’s parents are killed 15years ago. She is kidnapped and tortured for months by an unknown assailant. She escapes and is found wandering the street. The police never find the guy or the place she was captive. Angel brings in a psychic who picks up the clue of molasses which leads them to the location. Angel arrives to the rescue and announces the guy died five years ago. How did they identify who the guy was? The psychic could not do it . Would knowing the location point to one and only one individual.?