Unfortunately, I have not seen any other Angel threads. If there is another one, please delete.
Otherwise …
Wow. This is amazing. Even though all that many of us have guessed has happened, they are still throwing us for a loop.
Wes, is still the big badass, but what is up with the … um … GOD or whatever?
Holy geez!!!
Next ep … lookin’ great. The thing is spinnin’ on Fred, who needs more play as it is. Between that and lat week’s Gunn episode, they are giving GREAT play for all the main characters.
[spoiler]However - can Conner be any dumber? My god, what a parrot he is.
Cordy to Conner “Good and evil are just words.”
Conner to Darla “Good and evil are just words.”
Darla to Conner - “blah blah annointed with innocent blood!?”
Conner to Cordy - “blah blah annointed with innocent blood!?”
It was great seeing Darla again.
And why oh why can’t Angel just come out and say he loves Cordy. Even there at the end, he just says “I’m sorry”. How about "I love you Cordy, I’m sorry?.
All the stuff Skip told the FG - Cordy was supposed to get the visions, Fred was supposed to open the wrong book etc…boggles the mind.
Oh, and a Buffy shout out by Skip. T-rif![/spoiler]
I love that the child wasn’t some rampaging monster or a being that starting wailing ass instantly. Instead Angel and Conner just fall to their knees in abject worship. It looks like everyone else does as well. In that way I entirely disagree about it being a let down.
The only thing I worry about is Fred’s immunity to the come let us adore her effect. If it doesn’t get a good solid explination at some point I’m going to be really fucking angry. Right now they are nicely sliding around from question to question, shifting the uncertainty. This lets them at times just toss it like a hot potato to a different issue and it has been fun to watch but I keep expecting them to drop it and this looks like a place where that might happen.
The conversation Angel had with Skip was great. First with the Buffy comment and then during the fight when Skip doesn’t just spill the beans because he knows he can kill Angel. I like how the FG had to pry the information out of him with threats of eternal torment.
My biggest beef was Angel lolly gagging and not bringing a tranq gun. Burst in, tranq conner and then hack up Cordy ASAP. I know the birth would have to interupt his killing and that’s fine BUT it should at least look like he’s actually racing against time.
Even evil, Skip has great lines. And I never realized just how icky eating buffolo wings sounds. I am sorry that he had to go without (to my mind at least) the obvious witty retort:
Skip: You think you can win/stop this/stop me?
Wes: You’re damn skippy!
And I hope that there’s some loophole (maybe being part demon) that allows Real!Cordy to not become a head of cabbage (since she did seem to still be breathing).
Now if only new Buffy eps would come back with their Faith-y goodness, my world will be complete.
Since the show has ended on the West Coast, I hope I can get away without using spoiler tags. Sorry if otherwise.
Whoever this evil is it’s certainly making The First Evil on Buffy look like a major doofus. Any entinty that has plans going as far back as having The Master sire Darla (which ought to show you the power there too if it can control The Master) to sire Angel to bring about Conner etc etc etc has some serious ectoplasmic cojones. The First just seems, well, amateurish now. It’s had a few girls killed, but they weren’t gods. It had a nerd killed. It had a vampire make a few vampires. Wow. Buffy and gang always suspected Cordellia was evil, but little did they know that she really was. In spades.
While I don’t want to sound like some fanboy saying “I knew it all along,” I must admit I have always been uncomfortable with Skip. Why? Because he’s physical. The Powers never communicated to Buffy in physical form, nor Doyle and Cordellia. The only time The Powers had something to say was via a channel, like Buffy’s dreams, Whistler, Doyle, and Cordy. The Powers were just amorphous things and Skip, he was just a big brick wall. He just didn’t fit in.
I kept hoping that Conner would snap out of it and clock Evil!Cordellia. I’m not sure who’s more irratating yet.
I too must give this one a 10/10, because I think Angel has finally forgiven Wesley.
I didn’t watch the previews for the next ep, but if Fred is somehow immune to the Beast Master’s ability to make people fall to their knees in abject worship, there is an obvious answer: she’s a woman.
The Beast Master’s a woman, maybe only men fall under her spell?
Great ep. But I did feel that the whole “it’s all big manipulated” stuff was prety thin in some places. I mean, it doesn’t make a lot of sense why all sorts of different things were necessary: some of those references just seemed tacked on to make everyone seem “cool.” Have Gunn and Fred really been THAT essential to bringing Connor into being? What did Wes and Lilah have to do with anything? Even Lorne: would Darla and Angel really never have screwed without them? A lot of this stuff seems more like “wow, we can reference past shows!” than it did a coherent plan. But maybe it’s just TOO devious for mere mortals like me to appreciate.
This big bad’s master plot is exactly what I thought the FE on Buffy would be, instead of a lame ghost that tries to spook people, and who’s big plan so far seems to be ATTACK EVERYONE WITH MONSTERS FOR NO REASON!!! It promised back to the beginning. It promised learning. It hasn’t really lived up to it.
So, like, where does The Peroxided One fit in to all of this? I mean, really, if the Big Evil has been doing that much tweaking, a vampire going out to get his soul back has to be part of the plan, too.
Or is Spike going to prove to be the wild card in all of this? 'Cause
if Angel is renewed for another season, JM and AH are both signed up to do ten eps each.
I think this goddess chick is going to be really cool. With the First being so lame, at least one of the Buffyverse shows ought to have a cool BB.
I liked Gunn’s speech about free will, though. That was cool. I taped the ep, so I’m going to watch it again later.
BTW, I have a theory about why the First is so lame. I think that it is really emotion (of the negative variety- hate, envy, all that stuff), it has consciousness, but not intelligence. It can inspire feelings, but any intelligence or knowledge it has, it picked up from its minions, or possibly people who have died. Not actually having a brain, it really doesn’t know how to effectively use knowledge. Thus it needs humans or bleached-blonde vampires to act through.
As for Fred’s immunity I think you see a woman bow down in a crowd in the previews. However I could very well be misremembering things. It seems like not enthralling a good half of the population would be a major over sight on the part of big bad. On the other hand BB Cordy has been riffing hardcore on the negative female archetypes and so it would make sense that it is only men.
One thing to keep in mind; all the information obtained from Skippy is suspect. He’s been yanking their chains from day 1, and there’s no reason to assume that everything he gave them under threat of agony was legit. For instance, kill Cordy or she’ll die anyway, or be a veg. He may have been trying to get Angel to kill Cordy, which wouldn’t have impeded the birth, and might have gotten Cordy out of the way. She may be able to do something to stop all this.
If you’re gonna take the word of a big horny demon mercenary trapped in a force field, take it with a big grain of salt. That’s what I always say.
Amazing episode.
Which reminds me… when’s that Firefly DVD due out?
Haven’t really watched the show before this season, but isn’t Fred from another dimension or something? I’m guessing that maybe her extradimensionalness might have something to do with her immunity to the god’s influence.
Thea, Fred is from our dimension, but got swapped into Lorne’s home, Pylea, when Lorne came into ours through a portal. She got rescued by Angel and Co. at the end of season 2. While it’s possible she picked up some resistence there, that would probably make Lorne immune, unless it wears off sometime between 2 years (the amount of time Fred’s been back) and 7 (the amount of time Lorne’s been in LA, Fred had been missing for 5 years).
And I guess my theory that Cordy was going to give birth to a physical form for the First Evil went out the window. But the vision of a naked Zoe more than made up for it
Connor rescued Cordy and took her off to a hiding place.
Angel beat the snot out of Skip and dragged him to our dimension, Fred locked him in a force field and threatened him with eternal torment if he didn’t spill. He spilled. Seems Cordy’s part-demonness and Higher Beinghood, as well as Connor’s birth and Wesley’s shagging Lilah were all part of the Plan. Also, Angel has to kill Cordy, or she’ll die in labor or end up as a cabbage anyway.
Cordy sent Connor out to catch a virgin so he could annoint her pregnant belly with the blood of an innocent so the EvilBaby could be born early. He caught the virgin, but Darla appeared in an apparition and tried to talk him out of letting Cordy kill her. He let Cordy kill her anyway, annointed her abdomen with the blood.
Angel showed up to try to kill Cordy, he and Connor fought, then the Miraculous Birth happened, and, hey, presto, Zoe. Angel and Connor both fell to their knees. Angel said, “You’re beautiful.” Zoe smiled and said “Angel”.
