As to the ugly=bad thing I think that there is a good chance that Jasmine doesn’t actually look like that. It is merely a projection based on understanding that she isn’t a good thing. Given her obsessive putting together of events leading to her birth I doubt that she would allow the possibility of actually being putrid. I’d wager if Anya saw her and was immune she would see a bunny-thing. Alternatively there may be some truth to the rotting that is metaphoric. She is existing unnaturally in a state of corruption and delivers that corruption to everything around her. Regardless I don’t think she is actually a rotting thing like Fred and the guy saw.
Which of course was the first name suggested for her. Gotta love continuity across multiple series.
I’m on board with the blood theory. As far as the evil=ugly thing, we’ve seen any number of examples in the Buffyverse of evil=beautiful (Angel, Spike, Dru, Willow and so on). If Jasmine is indeed ugly (as opposed to just being perceived as such by those who’ve been “called”) then she’s probably playing on the human fallacy of pretty=good and ugly=bad.
Previously on Angel, people worried about Cordy and the baby.
Cordy’s baby was born and turned into a beautiful naked woman. Cordy lies still on the floor, while Conner and Angel fall to their knees in apparent worship.
The woman walks past the kneeling Angel, who still has a sword in his hand, to pick up a gray blanket to cover her nakedness. She wraps it around herself. “Everything is so…”
“Unworthy,” Angel finishes. “Wonderful.” She thanks Cordelia and talks about how lovely it is to be human and feel things. Angel goes on for a bit about how he came to kill her and he needs to be spanked for his naughtiness. He gives her the sword, and she tells him all his pain will soon be over. Angel stays kneeling, baring his neck, until he realizes she’s gone.
Fred nervously fusses, trying to clean up the office and put the books away. Lorne sits on a desk and helpfully straightens a lamp while they exposit on various dangers for the benefit of the slower viewers. Suddenly, Fred grabs a knife and runs to lobby to confront Conner. Bantering ensures. Angel, from off camera, finally says “He’s with me”. Camera pans back to show still-unconscious Cordy on the couch in the lobby. Not clear if Angel or Conner carried her back.
The gang surrounds Cordy, and they notice she’s not pregnant any more. “Did you kill it?” No. Humorous speculation on numbers of tentacles and horns ensues, as well as an endearing family moment between Conner and Angel. Gunn: “We gotta find her and kill her”.
Angel: “Kill? No, no killing, we have to find her and worship her.”
The clue-stick is finally wielded with sufficient force.
Wesley tells Angel that it’s a trick, a spell, and reminds him that the Beastmaster controlled Cordy before it was born, and made her do unspeakable things.
“Terrible things that must be rectified” says the voice from above.
All turn and the woman is on the steps, now dressed in a long dove-gray skirt and a steel blue sweater. Angel and Conner drop to their knees immediately, then Lorne, Fred holds onto her spine for second and sinks to her knees saying “I’m just going… to do this”. Gunn drops to his knees. The woman speaks again about the pain they have suffered and how she wants to help. “If you’ll have me,” she says. Wesley drops to one knee, “Tell us what to do.”
Upstairs in Cordelia’s room, she lies peacefully in her bed while the others talk about how she’s resting in a nice place. They light candles. The woman sits on the edge of Cordy’s bed and talks about how she is an ancient higher power, but she was not satisfied with merely observing anymore, she wants to make the world a better place. She arranged for her birth by using the life Angel earned (trying to save Darla) to create Conner. Cordelia might wake up when the battle is won and the world is changed.
In a bowling alley, bored spiteful vampires discover that human heads don’t make good bowling balls. Angel, the gang and the woman come in. The men start kicking ass, while Fred (holding a crossbow and protectively hovering) and the woman observe and then take seats. “Now,” says the woman, “What are we going to call me?” Fred sucks up, saying there’s no name that would sum up her wonderfulness. But no-one can choose their own name, everyone must be named by the people that love them. It’s one of the rules, and the woman must abide by the rules. A random vamp runs behind the woman and grabs her arm, digging in his nails enough to draw blood. He runs off, chased by Angel. Fred worries the woman is hurt and it’s all her fault. Angel follows the random vamp running through the back of the pin-setting machines and out the back door. Running past a café with outdoor seating the random vamp crashes into a guy and scrapes his nails across his chest, drawing blood. Angel catches up to the random vamp and stakes him. He and Wesley assure the crowd that all is well. The woman walks up and the diners begin to kneel. “Stand up,” she says “to be good to me, you must be excellent to each other. A new word is coming.” They stand and ask questions to give the guy who was knocked over and bloodied by the vamp time to recover, find a knife and rehearse his manifesto. “Monster!” He charges the woman. “It must die!” Angel vamps out, grabs the guy and proceeds to pummel him on the edge of the fountain. The woman stops Angel after six or seven punches and Wes calls for an ambulance. The man says “Don’t you see it?, don’t you touch me!”. The woman speaks to the pummeled man and touches his face, running her fingers lightly from brow and down his cheek.
Back at the hotel, Gunn and Wes polish weapons and discus possible names with the woman. Fred is frantically trying to get the blood out of the woman’ shirt, and displays some of her old OCD and advanced guilt. The woman spouts on about the beauty of life and says that since Gunn and Wes share the same love (for Fred) that love shoud bring them together.
Angel worries about why the man wanted to hurt the woman, when she’s obviously so beautiful and awe-inspiring. She says she doesn’t know, and theorizes that some people are frightened of change and this makes them attack the bringers of change. She notices the jasmine and comments on it. Angel worries he shamed her in beating the man. She reassures him. He worries and broods over the fact that he’s so happy when he’s near her, his soul might be free again. She assures him soon all evil will be banished by their deeds. She has faith in all her warriors.
The male members of the gang go out to kick some ass, to inspiring voice over. “I will be with you where ever you go.” Fred tries to clean the shirt with ever-increasing desperation.
Back at the hotel, a tv anchor talks about the sudden decrease in homicides. Angel is wearing a pale yellow shirt with stripes. Lorne interrupts, saying he has a surprise for the woman and takes her upstairs. Fred walks on to have hysterics about how she scrubbed the shirt until her fingers bled and it still didn’t work. She bought a new one for the woman. Upstairs, Lorne show the woman new quarters he decorated just for her (vases of jasmine). Exunt Lorne.
Conner, lurking in the hallway, comes into her rooms to discuss his mental state. The woman told him he has a unique soul, he deserves to be happy, it’s his season to be a champion.
Fred comes in with the new shirt and sees the woman, but instead of the face we usually see, it’s monster-o-vision of melting flesh, blood and maggots. The voice remained the same. Because the WB felt it necessary to put a logo in the bottom corner of the screen I don’t know if her hands were also disfigured.
Fred, having been slightly hysterical over the sweater, is now only slightly more hysterical over the vision. She covers and bails out of the room when she realizes everyone else still sees the beautiful woman.
Fred goes to get advice from the still-unconscious Cordelia. She talks to Cordy for a bit, remembering the scary-headachy-pukiness of Lorne’s reading of the pregnant Cordy. Yellow-shirted Angel comes in, and briefly mis-leads Fred into thinking that he still was in control of his own mind. But he’s still under the spell. Fred asks leading question, trying to get Angel to think but fails.
Fred goes to the hospital and finds the guy Angel beat senseless on Thursday. John Stollar was moved to the Psych ward. Fred sneaks into the ward and talks to him, trying to determine if he had previous mental illness. We see him only in profile, strapped down to his bed. She tells Stollar that she saw the same horrible vision he saw. He asks if the monster touched Fred, and turns to reveal the side of his face is disfigured and the eye is demon yellow. Stollar says that the monster must die, and that Fred’s been called. He repeats this until Fred’s phone rings. Fred flees the hospital, protesting her inability to do things. “Don’t trust anyone!” yells Stollar.
Back at the hotel, there is an impromptu party going on, apparently people jusy followed the woman back to the hotel when she was out walking. Fred talks to Wesley, asking him for help and telling him what happened to her and to Stollar. Wes asks her to wait, implying he will help Fred. The woman comes out and stands on the balcony, flanked by Conner and Angel. Wes goes towards her, pausing to talk to Gunn, who looks at Fred. Wes keeps going, and Gunn speaks to Lorne, who who looks at Fred. Fred begins to back up towards the weapons cabinet. Wes gets to the woman. Fred gets a knife and a crossbow. Angel and Conner look at Fred. Fred says “I’m sorry” and fires. Angel jumps off the balcony, intersecting the arrow in air, which imbeds in his shoulder. Conner also jumps and when they hit the ground pulls the arrow out of Angel. Fred grabs Lorne, puts the knife to his neck and backs towards the open door. “You cannot run, Fred, my love will follow you everywhere,” calls the woman. Fred pushes Lorne at Angel and runs.
The gang starts after Fred, but the woman stops them, saying tomorrow will be soon enough.
Fred drives, nervously looking into the rear view mirror before stopping to cry.
After the party, the gang broods over Fred being evil. Angel brings the woman jasmine from the patio. They eventually decide it must be the fault of Stollar, perhaps he put a spell on her. The woman decides to try to get Fred back and figure out what went wrong, “Tomorrow, when we’ll have eyes everywhere”.
The next morning, Fred is served breakfast by an unsympathetic counter guy. On the television, a morning show host introduces a new guest, Jasmine. The people in the diner, kneel before the television, as the woman begins to tell the same story she told in Cordy’s bedroom. Fred slides off her stool at the counter and leaves. The street is deserted. As she walks away, a man with a briefcase looks in the window of the restaurant and kneels.
Why was Angel affected, but the regular, run-of-the-mill, soulless, bowling vampires weren’t? If the soul’s the key, does that mean Angelus would be free? (Though obviously they aren’t going to do that again so soon.)
My 2 cents:
Another excellent episode. If they keep this up, I’m going to have to start taking back all the bad stuff I’ve said about “Angel.” I’m actually concerned that they’ll fix the problems with the series with this season finale, and then it’ll get cancelled! I didn’t see this as a filler episode at all; instead, it seemed as if they’d managed to work themselves out of a corner, plot-wise. I’d been thinking that after the Beast was killed, they’d blown their collective wad, but they managed to pull off a really genuinely creepy twist without making the whole thing seem anti-climactic. Contrast that with the uneven pacing on “Buffy” – sequences of episodes where nothing happens while they’re waiting for the season to almost be over so they can have their big climactic battle.
Great deduction work by the SDMB on the blood thing. That never occurred to me, and now it seems obvious.
Excellent job by Gina Torres. She even had me going; until the rotting head business, I was starting to think that she really was all benevolent. And I wasn’t even (presumably) under the spell.
I was surprised to see a genuinely funny moment in the show – they show the Angel gang all Doing Their Part to Change the World in a dramatic montage. Scenes of Wesley, Angel, Connor, and Gunn battling demons in slow motion. Cut to scenes of Fred frantically scrubbing the blouse in slow motion. Great stuff.
Biggest directorial mistake: trying to make the rotting head talk. They showed the flash of it, it was disgusting, very unsettling and extremely effective. Then, a few moments later, they cut back and tried to move the mouth while Jasmine was delivering a line. It ruined the whole effect; made it look like a rotting muppet.
And I missed the very beginning of the episode – was there a “This show is intended for mature audiences” warning? Because when they had the scene of the vampires bowling with a decapitated head, with other bloody bodies strewn about the other lanes, it occurred to me how much standards for network television have loosened up. (I’m not complaining, mind you, just observing.)
I think the random vamps weren’t affected because they were distracted by the fighting. Jasmine came in after the fighting started and didn’t speak to them.
Or, you might be right and she only uses her hypno-beam on soul’d creatures. This would explain why she needs to get every other demon out of LA.
Does Lorne have a soul? He was affected by Jasmine. This is very curious… I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Being a cynic, in regard to the media, I had a thought today.
Could it be that thewb and ME are holding back info about renewal of Ats, because knowing that it would be renewed could spoil the fun for the finale of Angel this season and also what the brooding guy might be up to in Sunnydale in May?
Just a WAG, but I think yes, Lorne does have a soul. He behaves like other soul’d characters. He’s just from a different dimension; he’s not a demon.
He is so a demon! Just because he doesn’t act all evil doesn’t mean he’s not a demon. Doyle was half-demon. The refugees he died to save were demons. Clem’s a demon. And so on. None of them act evil. It’s an unsettled question as to whether demons other than vampires have souls. We seem to have established that vengeance demons do, but they are a form of demon/human hybrid. We don’t really no about any other breed.
Also, the no soul=evil thing comes out of watcher lore, and I get the impression that the watchers just tend to assume all demons are evil and should die.
Souls, especially of the human variety, seem to merely bias the posessor towards good. It draws them towards compassion, moral behavior and so on.
Presumably Jasmine is taking advantage of the soul’s draw. As a former Power, assuming that she is infact that and not something else, she probably understands how the whole thing works. Thus she appears to be a manifestation of that which calls the soul to action. This is why things that are good and have a true potential for it (Lorn definitely seems to fall into this category) are struck by her. It seems to be something about her appearance/presence, as she doesn’t need to talk to those influenced and it works through television.
Why the blood may have a freeing effect is that it gives a direct “taste” of what Jasmine is. The soul becomes innoculated against the false good and experiences what is directly beneath, pure deception and corruption. Since it merely gives the ability to perceive truthfully it doesn’t instantly break the spell, as until Jasmine is seen again the soul is still blasted and oriented towards Jasmine as opposed to actual good. Seeing her as the horrible thing is merely the perception that accompanies the soul’s freedom.
I agree that it would have been better if the face didn’t move when she spoke or if instead maggots fell out in time with the words or something else that didn’t stretch the capacity of the prop or what ever you’d call it.
Oh and Lorn isn’t gay. He mentions in one of the episodes in Pylea that while his siblings were off doing stupid violent stuff he was hitting on chicks, at least if my memory serves that happened… Though it is possible that he is bisexual his feelings towards males has not been addressed on air.
Of course, the one Pylean female I can remember seeing had a beard…
My contribution to the WAGuessing - I think the name/naming protocols may be something Very Important. Names have traditionally been very powerful in the worlds of mythologies.
How many night blooming flowers are there? I think the night-blooming jasmine is highly significant. It was obvious that she was fishing for the name. I kept telling anyone who happened to be onscreen, “Oh, come on, just name her Jasmine already”.
Next she’ll be suggesting that they sleep in the ground, but someone will say she’ll ruin her pretty dress, and she’ll say “We can sleep naked”…
OK enough of the S2 BtVS flashbacks.
Still can’t help thinking there was a Drusilla connection in here somewhere, though.
I want to agree with you, but I can’t find any deep meanings in the name Jasmine. A quick google search for “Jasmine mythology” and “Jasmine name” didn’t bring up anything interesting.
As for night-blooming flowers, there’s night blooming cereus, also called Queen of the Night. There’s also Angel’s trumpet, Four O’clocks, Peruvian daffodil, and moon flower vine, and flowering tobacco. Maybe they didn;t want to have to replant the set. 
To myself - basically, a high fantasy type - the key to the ep is Jasmine’s little origin speech. You know, ancient Powers, one group supporting demons, the other opposing, in the “time before good and evil”. I think she’s telling the truth. She really thinks she’s good.
I think she really is one of TPTB, that she really opposes the Powers of darkness. That’s why she’s hunting vamps; that’s why she destroyed W&H. However, that doesn’t make her good. I think that her side really wants law, wants harmony, wants to preserve and save, while the other side wants to shake things up, to encourahe chaos. I think neither side is evil, but neither is good, and both are willing to do what it takes to achieve their goals…
Do you see where I’m leading here? Well, how about this - I think Jasmine should get the hell out of our galaxy!!
Doesn’t explain the Rotting Face, though.
SolGrundy:
Nope. I just re-viewed the episode yesterday. The boys were fighting in slo-mo, yes, but the shots of Fred scrubbing the shirt were in regular-mo.
And here’s an important tip for all of you: if you watch the scenes where Fred saw Jasmine’s real face again, do NOT do it while eating ramen!
Now that’s a name for a demigod.
My questions is this: if her touch is so bad, when will the FG notice their hands rotting. I’m certain Lorne took her hand to lead her upstairs when he finished her room, and I’m pretty sure at least one of the others has had contact with her at one point.