He actually shaved his head on Tuesday. He filmed the Sharon Osbourne show on Monday. And he’s still damn pretty.
sigh
I liked that Wes keeps his full-on crazy in his office. Well, if I sit here and try to list everything I liked about the episode, I’ll just be recapping the whole thing. Next week is going to be great. I’m simultaneously excited about the episodes and dreading them because I know it’s the end.
And DB’s wife is really hot. I wouldn’t mind if she’s a recurring guest star for the rest of the season.
Playboy Playmates often are! And, to her credit, she did an acceptable job of acting – none of those “I can’t act, but I’m married to the star” vibes going on there.
I also interpreted this to mean that Angel now has some interesting insight into the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart. Perhaps he’s got an idea about using thier own ambition to cause their downfall.
Unfortunately, I only get to watch the show in spurts, but like many pointed out, I got a rather big “You’re wasting time!” feeling from this episode. It seems that the writers are completely oblivious to the fact that the series is ending and are having fun with their “monster of the week” episodes. Sure, in other seasons, there was always a couple of episodes that distracted from the main focus of the season, but there was always this sense that all the episodes were working up towards a final conclusion. With only three more episodes left, and the next one supposedly being “the funniest one they’ve ever shot”, I can’t see them doing anything but either rushing the ending, or leaving it with “Well, I guess we keep fighting the good fight” and walking off into the sunset without finalizing anything.
As it stands, the episode was fun, and I liked seeing how easily Illyria dispatched the gang. That fight lasted an all, what? Ten seconds? Kinda makes you wonder how they lasted that long. Despite that, I don’t like the way it ended. Now Illyria is essentially human. Sure, she may still have super strength, but if Spike could hurt her when she was at her peak, it doesn’t seem like she’s going to be all that super in the upcoming battles. Hell, if she’s still cocky about the whole thing, she’ll probably get killed off real quick in the next big fight they get into, but then she wouldn’t be able to fill the series with angst of being a fallen god, so that probably won’t happen.
I also thought that this episode did little to advance the plot. I kept panicking: ONLY 3 EPISODES LEFT TO WRAP UP THE SERIES! Kill Illyria already and moooove on!
The episode with Buffy’s hair. He He. Although I’m still holding out hope that it’s a ruse and that SMG really did show up for this episode and we’ll all be really shocked. No? A girl can hope.
Xander and Anger = supersize. He He
Lorne: “At least he’s better than Eve.” He He (I have a feeling that was a wink to the audience for their negative reaction to Eve.)
My fantasy: The friction that was made public was to cover up a cameo filmed by SMG in which Buffy dies. Think about it— It gets SMG out from under the nagging obligation to reappear sooner or later (plus it gives her a death scene, which actors love to do), it frees up the climax of the show to be about its actual main character, it’s a whopper of a Whedonesque twist, it provides some serious emotional motivation building to the finale, and best of all, it doesn’t really affect the Slayer mythos because the Scoobies-cum-New-Watchers have, as we saw in the Andrew episode, assembled a kickass bunch of Slayers-in-training. Honestly, I think it’s the best possible solution to a bunch of problems.
Of course, it won’t really happen, but like you said, a girl can hope. Except I’m not a girl. So that would be… oh, screw it, you know what I mean.
After crushing her enemies and seeing them driven before her, do you think she’d want to hear the lamentations of their women? I mean, I know she’d like the first two, but she would probably not want to bother with hearing lamentations. She’d probably crush the women, too, just to stop all the goddamn lamenting.
This is what really worries me. They barely even introduced any big bad threat so far other than Lindsay’s mostly confusing hint about evil going on around in the world (which they have yet to show us any actual examples of that would be on an apocolyptic scale). What I really worry is they are suddenly going to pull some new threat right out of the blue right at the end, and even kill off characters like they did in the Buffy finale in ways that just don’t do their characters much justice or leave tons of plot lines hanging. The fact that they killed off both Cordy and Fred pretty much means that life is sort of empty and loveless for all of Angel, Gunn, and Wes, and Krev really doesn’t have much love of life or purpose anymore to begin with. Kind of a sad way to go out.
Plus, there’s the shanshu thing. That was sort of billed as a major element of the series, and it was even made an issue of this season early on. Are they going to resolve it or even much reference it in any way? If not, that’ll be another thematic empty space.
Damn, I’m way too pessimistic. I still enjoy the show, and I’m sure I’ll like whatever they’ve got planned, but I’m not sure I’m going to enjoy the arc, when all is said and done.
Well, see, this is why I try to be as spoiled as possible. For me, the episode made perfect sense, and I could see all kinds of hints and foundation laying. It was everywhere. You’ll probably not see what I mean until after you rewatch the final run of episodes, but I just don’t see Time Bomb as a standalone ep at all.
These are not spoilers for the next three episodes. They are quotes and situations in Time Bomb that I thought were pretty big anvils for the final episodes.
How deeply did the return of the memories on top of the loss of Fred affect Wes? We’ve seen him obsessive and dark before, but this is different.
Everything Angel did 19 was like hint after hint after hint. The pregnant lady’s explanation of why she was giving up the baby–willing to sacrifice her son so her husband would remember her again. The inverse of Angel’s decision.
The repetition of the line “follow your ambition,” the bit about “that’s what you were, now you have to be what you are.”
“That’s what you learn when you become a king. You learn to destroy everything that’s not utterly yours. All that matters is victory…You are moral. The true ruler is as moral as a hurricane, empty except the force of his gale…”
“Change is constant yet things remain the same”
The Senior Partners interest in Illyria.
“Betrayal was a neutral word in my day. As unjudged a word as spring or breeze.”
Angel’s last line to Gunn. “What we’re supposed to. Serve our clients.”
I thought the episode did contain references to the coming Big Bad- the senior partners. They’ve been the looming evil since the pilot. Ilirya rescues Gunn. The new liason casually points out how many other prisoners are still in the suburban hell, and how many other divisions W&H have. Ilirya’s been building to a massive explosion. If that had happened, it would have killed Angel and the rest of the gang, something the Senior Partners might be very happy with. Draining her power showed the SPs how to deal with other ancient demons- and left a massive amount of power in a holding dimension they can draw from later.
DocCathode touched on something I wanted to point out- the SP don’t like Illyria and don’t want her around. Further, through Jayne, they point out a means of sapping her strength/power.
So, thanks to the information “helpfully” provided by the SP, Illyrias power is mostly gone = threat subdued and that power is, in theory, in holding somewhere for whoever wants to make a grab for it. Seems like a bad idea to me.
OT, but what the heck- the Sanshu prophecy (or whatever) says that a souled vampire will become human, right? With all this willy-nilly time travel and changing the course of histroy/curretn/future events, could that prophecy come to mean that the person never got vamped at all, and was left human? It’s sort of a shift on the words, but it might work, don’tcha think?
Could be, ThinkSnow, could be. But the more I think about it, the stupider this Shanshu prophecy sounds. Why bother prophesizing about an extraordinary being who becomes mortal? What a bore! And of what help could this stripped-of-superstrength-and-newly-mortal person be in the aftermath of an apocolypse, averted or not? I want a better prophecy!
Marsters does still look hot, BTW. He’s such a pretty guy…
Well, I think it’s a big deal because vampires are demons and evil–even ones with souls. Angel doesn’t want to be a vampire (despite the fact that he very obviously does.) He thinks if the world deems him worthy to be Human he’ll be redeemed.
Anyway, I have a theory that Connor is the Shanshu prophecy. Literally. I also have a theory that Connor is a result of Angel’s deal in The Trial and the literal symbol of Angel’s redemptions. That is, Angel is redeemed because he gave the world Connor and then made the decision at great personal loss and sacrfice to give his son a real shot at life.
:eek: 
I want a better prophecy!