As I said earlier, I’m working my way through the second season DVDs, and just got to the episode where Leslie gets his new hand. Interesting quote from him at the very end: “The key to Wolfram and Hart is, don’t let them make you play their game. You gotta make them play yours.”
Hmmm…
Miller nailed it. The fact that Angel is worried about 800 grand while running a multibillion dollar law firm (and not being completely upset if the thing goes belly-up and is disemboweled) shows that he’s playing their game.
A few thoughts:
Spike and the Couch: When Angel sat down and made the leather crunching noise and heavily indented the couch, I said to myself that they’re obviously going to keep Spike standing to avoid the discontinuity of crunch and indent if he sat down. And so, when Spike sat down, I was intent on seeing what happened… There was no crunch sound. Spike sat down off camera, and so, we saw no indenting of the couch. The shot of Spike on the couch was from chest up and the couch looked like there was sort of an indent on the back cushion, but we didn’t see any movement in the cushion. So, they did try to keep up continuity on this account. (However, walking on floors and unintentionally falling through one is rather random – but that’s the continuity problem of all ghosts.)
Angel getting evil: In last ep, we see the gang away from W&H trying to figure out how W&H is going to try to corrupt them for its own evil purposes. And so, Angel knows he’s being played. He knows they’re trying to corrupt him. And now, we see Angel starting to get dark. Is he really? Or is he pretending to flush out W&H’s real purpose?
Spike: What’s been happening to Spike is pure plot device to get him to be part of the team (since they want the actor and his popular character to be part of this show). If Spike simply turned up, he would immediately leave to find Buffy. And so, they need a plot device to force him to stay with the gang, i.e., he’s a sort-of ghost anchored to the amulet. They can’t corporealize him until he’s established enough of a bond with the gang that he would purposely decide to stay with them than find Buffy. But, being incorporeal would make him mostly useless. And so, they’re slowly giving him ability to affect the real world.
Harmony: I’ve liked her appearances, funny but not too much. I hope all you Harmony-haters are happy that she wasn’t in this ep.
The W&H extras: In past eps, almost every seen had ten flunky extras running around. In this ep, all the extras were given the day off. What’s up with that? It seems like W&H downsized to just ten employees all of sudden. No wonder they’re concerned about Fred’s budget.
Peace.
Or Mutant Enemy’s budget.
And I never liked Harmony, but she’s been a hoot so far. And I miss Leslie. A very interesting, multi dimensional bad guy.
Another thing about the budget: have we seen any vampires get dusted so far? Even in the first scene of the first episode this season, did we see that vampire get dusted on-camera?
I read once that each dusting effect costs $5000. And the WB cut the budget for this season.
Miller, The Gaspode: The character’s name is Lindsey, not Leslie.
:smack:
I hate having to tape the eps and watch them the next day. By the time I get to the thread I always feel like a lot of what I have to say is just a rehash of what’s already been said. Which, oddly, tends not to stop me in most instances…
So I guess I’m the only one who finds endless shots of Spike wandering sloooooowly up darkened hallways to be less horrifying than horrifyingly boring? I’ve never been a big fan of ghost stories anyway, so the “atmospheric” wandering about encountering random ghostes is a big snoozefest for me.
I wonder why this ep carried a warning about the “partial nudity”? There wasn’t any more Spike-on-display than has been seen in a number of Buffy eps (I was rather expecting a full-on moon shot) and the WB has never struck me as being particularly prudish.
I like the bits with Lorne yammering on his cell about his various deals but I’m getting tired of his lack of presence. And I miss Lindsey too; wish there was some way to bring him back that made some sort of sense.
The encounter with the conduit seemed very contrived to me. Very “dark god from the machine.” I’m glad they slammed that door shut fairly authoritatively so that well is dry (mix metaphors much?).
One thing I’m wondering about, what with there being two vampires with souls now and what with prophecy being ambiguous and what with all prophecy on the show being rather up in the air because of Sah-jhan (sp?) monkey-wrenching the timeline; could it be that the prophecy about a vampire with a soul regaining his humanity has been misinterpreted/mis-stated, and it actually refers to Spike’s regaining his body? Now that would be interesting. Whether Angel truly believes in redemption any longer or is role-playing, the hope of regaining his humanity has been a motivation for him and just think of the fun that could be had if that’s snatched away from him becasue it really meant that Spike would get a body back.
“I liked your poems.” Best line of the season to date.
I can definately get behind this explanation. 
Actually it could have easily avoided by straightening out the cushion behind him after he sat down. And since they cut away to Angel as he was sitting, it wouldn’t have interrupted the scene.
Anyway, it’s not a big deal, like I said I just mentioned it because it took my attention away from what was important, the dialog. If I can forgive Joss and co for Dawn and Connor, one squished cushion is nothing.
Well, I have nothing to add to what’s already been said other than a question:
Fred says they need the equivalent of a nuclear bomb of evil to power the contraption that ultimately made Pavane corporeal. So Gunn goes to the white room and takes (what I presumed to be whiskers or blood) from the cougar up there. Source found. Pavane gets a body. Fred says they’ll never find a power source again. So my question is this: if they obviously didn’t kill the cougar but rather took something from it, couldn’t Gunn go back and get some more? If not, why not?
As for the nudity warnings and comparing it to Buffy, most of the nudity on Buffy took place when the show was on UPN, just like most of the lesbian action took place on UPN. Different network, different standards. UPN took pride in “pushing the envelope”, while the WB has a “family-friendly” approach they’re trying to protect.
Different standards for UPN?
Try no standards. They didn’t have a “standards board” I guess, or whatever it’s called.
Well, they didn’t until, as James pointed out, the end of S6 Buffy…heh.
E-Zackly. Ah, the hard-scrabble world of cable television.
First, I think it’s a panther. Second, there was dialog indicating that the cat told Gunn that there wouldn’t be a repeat. Angel: “It talks? I didn’t hear anything.” Gunn: “Maybe you don’t know how to listen right.”
I didn’t have a problem with the White Room and the panther blood. It was just the mystic equivalent of Star Trek techno-babble. They were just establishing how rare and difficult-to-find all the ingredients were, to explain why they didn’t just fire the machine up a second time to bring Spike back. They reinforced that afterwards, when Fred mentions that there were a whle lot of irreplacable components that were destroyed when the machine blew up.
Incidentally, someone mentioned Fred asking Wesley for the “Necronomicon de Morte” and mentioned how redundant that was. I noticed the same thing, but it only occured to me last night that that might have been a deliberate Evil Dead reference. Wasn’t the book in that movie the equally redundant “Necronomicon ex Mortis”?