Angel - 4-2 - Spoilers

Cafe Society
41

Still unanswered question: why did the Beast slaughter all of WolfRam&Hart? EvilCordy even finished the job.

Given what this BB seems to be (worshiped and beautiful), I’m thinking that it actually believes that it’s the GOOD GUY(or GAL). This reinforces my belief that the HigherPowers/PowersthatBe are the ones really behind this. It fits. They’ve always been unable to do all the “good things” they wanted to without using proxies. They’re sick of mostly just watching, shifting minor events and trying to get champions to do the right things. They want to get busy with the world and make it what they’ve wanted to be: they think they know best, and they’re sick of watching humanity screw up the potentially perfect world THEY could make.

This naked chick is a fulfillment of that wish: now they (or their avatar) can act upon the world directly. It’s everything they’ve ever wanted. No more dooting around sending humans to solve little problems and saving stupid lives.

Unfortunately, that means that this is the standard “bad guy is bad because she’ll do anything to “fix” the world: even if that means doing all sorts of evil along the way.” But it’s definately in line with the moral of Whedonverse: that even the good gods and authorities are ultimately corrupt, only humans with souls really have the right mix of humility, compassion, and ambition to do the truly “right” things.

42

Being a hetero guy, I don’t know if my vote should count- but I would say the actor who plays Gunn.

Actress- the one who plays Anya.

:slight_smile:

Apos I think it was to get them out of the way because they had a separate agenda and the power to do something about it (and they had the contents to Lorne’s reading- remember), and additionally as stated in one of the episodes, it was also simply getting rid of the competition.

Also, I think the now ultra-lame First has nothing to do with the Big Bad on Angel. Just when you thought “life as the Big Bad” or the geek trio was bad, here comes the First. The only villan to take weeks off at a time “to recharge”. Yeesh, this thing run on batteries? First Evil indeed. . .

43

Two things in the episode reminded me of other, unrelated fiction:

First: When Wesley started shooting at Skip, I flashed back to the Brigadier’s line from Dr. Who: “Just once, I would like to meet an alien menace that was NOT immune to bullets.”

Second: When Cordelia started “giving birth” and that big swirly-tentacled-looking thing was floating over her, I thought, “Cool, she’s giving birth to great Cthulu!”

Can anybody give me a little back-story on Skip? I missed the episodes where he first appeared.

Very good episode.

44

Who’s Tim? The “big horny demon” line was mine. And to my knowledge, I’m not Tim. Unless you know something that I don’t. But please feel free to use it wherever you want; I’d be flattered.

45

Totally. As for The Master Plan, I ain’t buying it. It sounds really impressive and intimidating, to the point of being impossible. That’s why it’s deeply suspect. I mean, fiction and reality abound with examples of villians claiming responsibility for things they really had nothing to do with, if it serves their purposes. Convincing the Angel gang that every single act that brought them to their current circumstances was planned is a great way to terrify them into inactivity. Make them doubt their own actions, and you’ve effectively paralyzed them. Good tactic!

What a fantastic episode. One of the things I continue to admire about Angel is the music. I’ve always loved the theme song, and the way they use music to set the tone is usually flawless. The sort of music-box sound to the otherwise silent sequence of Cordy dragging the innocent virgin to her death… spooky and chilling. Well done. Now, if they would just drop the hopelessly cheesy slo-mo shots, I’ll be a completely happy camper.

I love that the new Big Bad isn’t presenting its/herself that way to the world. I was fully expecting something scaly, possibly tentacled, and wearing its evil on its sleeve. Instead, glowy beautiful woman getting whole-heartedly worshipful responses.

And lastly, what a glut of new epispodes! Seems like Buffy has been doing repeats so often that a new ep is a treat, and Angel just keeps up the relentless continuity. Love it.

46

Well, I’m worried if the manipulation of Angel only goes back 4 years,or if it’s been that way since the beginning. And if it’s been that way since the beginning, then how much was Spike manipulated, and how much does that go over to the Buffyverse?
First: The Master Turned Darla
Seconds: Darla turned Liam/Angelus.
Third: Angelus Turns Drusilla—this is important in the Grand Scheme of Things because Dru is the one who turns Darla.
Fourth–Dru turns Spike–This is important to TGSOT because Spike kept Dru alive for 100 years—notably in Prague. And, supposedly if Angel was supposed to avert the planned Apocolypse, perhaps it was Dru who orchestrated it (Like with the Judge).
Ok, so is the end of Spike’s part in this silly play? I’m thinking it must be, because that’s where the stories fork. And if that’s where the stories fork, then that means that Buffy et al were not manipulated either–at least, not after Angel left. Like Buffy’s resurrection in S1. She was prophesiced to die, but if she remained dead, the Hellmouth would remain open and the Master would wreak havoc. (See The Wish). So that must have been the PTB nudging Xander…And if Angel had to leave Sunnydale to run into Wolfram and Heart in order for them to bring Darla back–was he nudged into leaving Buffy?
Anyway, I won’t go on. The point is, ME opened a huge ****ing can of worms with this story, and they probably won’t address it or wrap it up.

47

Extremely good episode, but it’s looking like Angel is still turning out to be a zero-sum game:

Good: They finally killed “Skip,” the most annoying one-joke character outside a sitcom, ever! Yaaay!
Bad: They killed Lilah, who was hot.

Good: They did away with the stupid go-nowhere Wolfram & Hart storyline!
Bad: They killed Lilah, who was hot.

Good: Any excuse to bring back Darla (also hot) is a good one, especially if they can tie it in with the whole “redemption” theme of the series as a whole!
Bad: Connor is still a total dipshit.

48

Or maybe Skip was just talking shit to make them believe that since everything has been pre-determined they can’t do anything to stop the BB from coming in to being. It was just a mind trip on his part.

49

Damned wildfeed acting up again this week. Two whole days later than usual I get the episode, but I was a good boy and stayed away from here so I was spoiler free.

I’ll start with Pepperlandgirl’s comments. In a way, you’re right. But I don’t care. Ats might be the SpinOff, but to me. it’s the leading show from the JossVerse right now. The quality is outstanding. I get a feeling that BtVS ran out of gas last season, and when UPN said “Hey, can you guys do one more season?” ME just scrambled something up. I get a distinct feeling that ME has known all year along that there won’t be a season 8.
JOss became a father recently, he had Firefly and has only done one episode on BtVS so far this year (IIRC). So what happened on Ats this week might screw the continuity with BtVS. But I don’t care, because it fits ok with the continuity of Angel, which (hopefully) I’ll be watching this fall.

Those who said that Skip’s comments might be to spook the Fang Gang are probably right. I’m shure, though, that there has been an ongoing plan. Probably hatched when Darla was brought back. Or maybe they even let her come back, because TPTB saw a chance to tip the scale.

So why kill Wolfram&Hart? Because TPTB no longer needed those guys, with BigEvil coming along. I get an Idea from Terry Pratchett and his ideas about gods: They played games with the lives of men, but not fair games. Their idea of fun was greased ladder rungs and snakes. (or something like that). I simply get a feeling, as Cordy said, that Good and Evil are just words. For TPTB, Angel is just a Knight and Lilah was a bishop in their ongoing game of chess.

That way, the incarnation of Darla was just a way to see if another pawn in the game would go this way or that. She wouldn’t tell him why he shouldn’t help Cordy. She started and broke off.

Anyway, the episode itself was just great. I remember being hesitant at the beginning of the season, about Cordy’s amnesia, Cordy+Connor ASF. But everything is so neatly tied together. The action is good, the acting is good, the filming is great. And I like the slo-mo. It’s cheesy. But it’s a cheesy show and that’s why I love it.

What’s up with demons and buffalo wings? Clem and Skip. Sad to see Skip go. He’s talk about commuting to work and the likes were very funny stuff.

50

pepperlandgirl
Does that kinda lead to Spike having a child with say Buffy b/c she is part demon and the god/ess duke it out?

51

Gaspode, Spike likes them wings too.

And yet again we see what you get when trying to post intelligently on a message board when barely awake, hung over, trying to work and just starting to get brain-fuzzy from coffee.

I am an idiot. I have no idea where Tim came from, but somehow I saw it on my screen, so into the thread it went.

So sorry about the confusion, Tim.

Er, MrVisible.

52

I don’t know the names of the episodes in question, but Skip first appeared in the beginning of last season. It was the ep in which Lilah and W&H manipulated Cordy’s visions to the point that they were killing her. In order to save Cordy, Angel had to bust a mysogynist half-demon out of a fiery box of eternal torment (the likes of which Fred threatened to lock Skip into during this ep). Skip was the guardian - commisioned by the PTB - over the box; Angel had to fight him in order to bust the woman-hater demon out (which was what Skip was refering to as “taking a fall”).

Midway through season three, when Cordy was laid low from her visions for real, Skip appeared to her and offerred to alter history so that Cordy never received visions at all. She refused. Since the visions would ultimately have killed a normal human, Skip “had” to make Cordy part-demon in order to withstand them.

In the final ep of last season, Skip again appeared to Cordy telling her she was slated to imminently arise to the Heavens and become a higher power.

While he never did behave maliciously, I always did suspect him of being up to no good. As Skippy himself alluded to during his fight with Angel, what force for good dresses up in that extreme gloom & doom goth outfit??

As far as the goddess BB, I’m guessing that she’s a rogue Power-That-Be. Angel’s comment about the PTB never wanting to get their hands dirty suggested to me the old judeo-christian concept of free will: If ‘God’ were to constantly make decisions & intervene on behalf of his subjects, then mankind would be reduced to nothing more than sheep, and would cease to evolve. The PTB realize that Angel, the Fang Gang, Buffy, the Scoobies must take action & make decisions themselves for anything to matter; for them to be anything more than pieces on a chess board. Of course, there are always dissenters (Lucifer in christian mythology, the goddess BB in JossWhedon-verse) who think they can do a better job. That fits nicely with Cordy’s comment about sacrificing the virgin for “the greater good.” It also suggests why Fred might be able to see through the adoration – she was reduced to cattle before in Pylea.

“As far as demon lairs go, the Beastmaster was pretty tidy. I think it even vacuumed.” Ahahahahaha! That just killed me.

53

I am going to be contrarian here and say that I am finally beginning to like Connor a bit. The guy playing him is doing a great acting job. Just watching his face, you can see the conflict in him. His brain is working, he obviously knows on some level that Cordelia is bullshitting him, but it’s being overruled by his heart and by his…ummm…other parts…

54

I agree. Vincent does the best possible acting with the material he is giving. The Buffyverse does incredible work when casting characters.

55

See, but we all should have known that Cordelia was housing the uberbad all the way back at What’s My Line, Part II. Only evil chicks can make time with Xander.

56

Spike is only an occasional wing-eater. He’s really more of a flowering onion man.

Without giving too much away, the flowering onion will figure in an upcoming Buffy episode.

57

Remember when Darla said “I have her feelings, her memories, doesn’t that make me her?” Or words to that affect? Uh…doesn’t that present a whole host of problems? Including, what a vampire is (Darla’s statements directly contradicts what Giles said about vamps in S1) and what the FE is? In Lessons, when the former Big Bads talked to Spike, they all seemed ot have memories and feelings…

58

In what way? I don’t recall anything she said that specifically contradicts what we know of Vamps.

59

Favorite scene was Connor dragging the virgin sacrifice across the floor.

The scene last long enough to make me think that the director liked it too. There could have been just a quick cut from Cordy wielding the hatchet, but no, it was drawn out.

Bleak, despairing, hopeless. It was very powerful, IMHO.

60

Thanks, Art Vandelay, for the info on Skip! That helps a lot.