So, I’m watching my recently purchased DVDs of Angel Season 4. I regard it as the most muddled of Angel’s 5 seasons - because several plot points aren’t quite clear to me.
Perhaps you Doper folks have more insight.
1.) Cordelia’s possession - As near as I can figure, this began only after she shagged Connor, and then only in spurts, as up until the pregnancy begins to show, we continue to have genuine “Cordelia” moments, even when she’s alone sometime. Is this accurate?
2.) The Big Bad’s plan - Why the devil did Jasmine want Angelus around? What was that supposed to achieve? From the point of view of the manifestation of her shiny, happy world a few episodes later - it seems like Angelus wouldn’t have been very useful.
3.) The Big Bad - okay, Fallen Power-That-Was. Suposedly. Working with some demon-types - check. Manipulating Team Angel since the very beginning? This is what Skip implies. But It sort of retroactively falsifies half of what they’ve been fighting for. This revelation suggests that Doyle was given the visions by this rogue power. Or is it that the rogue power learned to ‘tap into’ the visions?
Okay, here’s my thoughts, though I’m not disagreeing with you overall about ‘muddled’
1 - in ‘Inside out’, the gang theorized that it was the completed memory spell at the end of ‘spin the bottle’ that really let evil cordy out to play. There are a couple of moments IIRC in ‘apocalypse nowish’ where it seems that cordy is trying to lead Angel the wrong way about the beast’s arrival and manipulating connor in such a way that he’ll be most vulnerable to her attempt at seduction.
My pet theory is that ‘evil cordy’ whatever that is… (her behavior doesn’t seem very consistent with Jasmine’s personality, maybe it’s just cordelia under jasmine’s thrall, maybe it’s some other minion who’s posessed her,) was completely free of action ever since she arrived at the end of ‘the house always wins’, and was faking amnesia to better pull connor and the gang’s strings (or if it was a true case of posession, to stall for time until it gained access to all of cordy’s memories.)
2 - The only explanation I can think of was that the whole Angelus thing was pure diversion. As long as the gang were worrying about angelus, they didn’t notice that cordelia was pregnant… and Angel himself, the one who wouldn’t leave cordelia alone, was kept out of play. Notice how pretty much as soon as Angel is restored and healthy, cordelia reveals the pregnancy, as if she knows she won’t be able to keep it secret anyway and wants to push angel off balance. :]
3 - Repeat after me, "the bad guy always exxagerates and boasts in hyperbole’ I think that a few threads could have been pulled by Jasmine, but there’s no real evidence of it, and it doesn’t really hold water as a theory – why did Jasmine need fred to be there, or Gunn?? Even the reveal of the connection of connor’s birth to the miracle that angel earned on darla’s behalf, though very intuitively satisfying, isn’t proof that jasmine was involved in those events - just that she was able to perceive what was going on.
The only thing that jasmine really HAD to manipulate to bring her plan to bear was corrupting Skip – or hiring his services, if he was already on the take, which seems likely. All of ‘birthday’ was probably faked to get cordelia to accept a half-demon part, and then Skip ‘called her up to a higher plane.’ Cordelia was really bored there, which suggests that the true powers that be didn’t understand what she was doing there – and then Jaz made her move.
Hope this helps, and I’d love to chat about it some more.
It’s possible - but like I mentioned, we see some moments, with Cordy, by herself, behaving in typical Cordy fashion. This leads me to believe that Cordelia was indeed calling the shots in her own body, at least part of the time.
For example, the vision Cordelia has of the eyes of the Beast - we originally get it form the gang’s perspective, not seeing the vision - then Lorne (who narrates the episode - Spin the Bottle) recaps it from the perspective of what Cordelia saw. Cordelia seems stunned by the vision - but if she’s, at this point, the Big Bad wearing Cordelia, she has no reason to act stunned, or even have the vision at all.
I have a theory (it could be bunnies) that the vision may have triggered the dormant Big Bad in Cordelia - or been a manifestation of the transference of the Big Bad’s mind to Cordy’s body - causing her momentary confusion - and accounting for both Cordy’s running off swiftly, and Lorne’s emphasis one the retelling of events with the flash of the vision included. Maybe.
I just wish Joss had given us more to work with on that puzzler.
Okay, I buy that partially - I thought of the distraction angle - but the Beast was plenty distracting by himself, so I didn’t buy Angelus for that - but it makes sense that Angel wouldn’t have left Cordelia alone while the pregnancy manifested - turning him into Angelus is a convoluted but reasonable way to get him out of the picture.
The problem is - aside from those Oracles - we’ve got no real solid evidence to suggest that it was the true Powers sending the visions. The Oracles aren’t conclusive either - they could’ve been Jasmine minions, really.
Can you provide any examples that don’t involve the memory rewind episode?? (Though even there, cordelia seems to be revving Connor up a little and getting him all bothered.)
Yeah, the general opinion from people I know is that:
She was mentally relaying a command to the beast: “Okay, I’m done up here, time for you to wakey wakey and begin travelling to the surface.”
She acted stunned as another tactic to keep Angel off balance and more concerned about herself than anything else.
To me that whole scene could just as easily have been some minion immersing itself in the role of ‘Cordelia Chase’ as real cordy-without-memory, or cordy pretending not to have her memory.
The pretending doesn’t wash - she was alone and unobserved. (Except from the fourth wall perspective). If it was indeed a minion pretending - the minion should at LEAST know who Connor is/was.
I have a friend who has a theory that Cordelia Chase died in Birthday, when she became part demon and essentially under the authority of the PTB. I think she was possessed from the second she returned from the other realm, and her confusion etc was both a diversion tactic and a way to feel out what was going on with the gang, plus an excellent way to manipulate poor Connor.
Well the spell could have worked so well that it wiped out the minion’s memories as well, or at least, overrode the minion temporarily. Or even gave the minion Cordy’s memories as a 17 year old and it was trying to figure out how to behave, or even what the hell was going on. We really have no idea how that spell worked or why it worked or really why it messed up.
Also, the season seemed muddled because it was muddled. Cordelia was supposed to the big bad for the season (possibly because of the backlash against “St Cordelia” and Angel/Cordelia) but then CC got pregnant, and Joss wasn’t too keen on Angel pounding on an obviously pregnant Cordelia. He didn’t think that would go over well. So things were changed slightly. And then CC had some complications with her pregnancy, so she couldn’t even be in the final episodes much at all, so things were changed again. And David Greenwalt–who had been the show runner up until then and Cordy’s biggest fan–was gone to work on another show and Joss was working on Firefly and so with a new show-runner (tim minear and jeff bell) things got moved around, again.
I think they did the best they could given the flux and changes and the fact they only have 8 days to put an episode in the can.
Appreciate the input, pepperlandgirl - just wondering why it took you so long to show up…
It’s possible she was possessed from the second she came back - but the scene **chrisk ** has thoughtfully excerpted above seems odd in that context. It’s not during the *Spin the Bottle * memory-meddling.
Trouble is - if it’s 17-year-old Cordy, she’d remember Angel. Oh, well.
I understand there were complicated situations that season - I just felt that Joss could’ve given us a little more retroactive exposition towards the end to tie it all together.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that thinks it’s muddled though. For me, it’s my least favorite season.
What, like anyone who’s pretending something or playing a part will immediately and instantly drop the act the second they don’t think anybody is looking?? :wally
The impression I was trying to give when I said she might have been ‘immersing herself in the part’ was that she was pretending for the sake of pretending… as a way of warming herself (itself) up. And I think that’s plenty believable!!
The putz smiley’s usually kept to the pit, chrisk.
And no, I still don’t buy it. The picture of the infant genuinely confused “Cordy”.
Watched a few more episodes last night, and got up to Inside Out, with the dialogue with Skip - and it’s even more muddled. I’d forgotten the gang advances most ever theory we’ve put forth here - and still doesn’t determine which it was, but most plausible-seeming was the idea that it came back dormant in Cordelia and that Lorne’s memory mojo woke it up.
Unfortunately, the episode’s more problematic than I remembered - Skip mentions personal events from each of the Angel Gang’s lives as he’s making his point about their strings being pulled. It’s difficult to see why he would be so informed if his master wasn’t manipulating these events. Obviously he’s not very reliable about keeping secrets, either, as he accidentally reveals the name of a locator ritual that nearly gets Angel to Cordy in time.
My impression was that the “real” Cordy never came back, just her body. The memory loss was probably faked (or a side effect of the transfer).
Skip is probablematic as he told so many lies and half-lies it is hard to believe anything he said. What about Sajon (sp?) he made the same claims basically. How did these vast plots work at the same time?
Much like the effect of electricity on Vampires (see the Gwen paradox), its probably best not to dwell on it too long.
Oh, you mean how a Taser knocks them firmly on their undead behinds, but Gwen’s shock not only doesn’t bother Angel all that much, but jump-starts his heart?
Sorry about the wally - didn’t know that, and I always wanted to try it out. Don’t hang out in the pit generally. No hard feelings I hope??
As far as the skip thing… I don’t think it’s that problematic that he would be that well informed. Jaz obviously researched the gang with INCREDIBLE thoroughness… and that’s easier than actually pulling the strings behind such events. She was just doing her due dilligence, and she passed on to ‘skip’ any of her research that might be important for him, since he was going out on a pretty big limb.
As far as ‘not being reliable’… well, Skip was caught in a pretty big bind at the time, for all that he was keeping his bravado up. Might well have mentioned the ritual in the hopes that during all the confusion he’d be able to get free again… which, well – that wasn’t exactly how it happened, but was a pretty good try.
I always assumed that Jasmine was just a passenger in Cordelia’s head as soon as she came back – unless there was some reason to exercise control. So Cordy comes back actually amnesiac, just like she appears, and her personality is thoroughly Cordy’s, because it is actually her. Whenever Jas needs Cordy to do something to further the plot, she steps in to control Cordy or, when possible, just “nudges” her so that she (Cordy) is not obviously being possessed. I don’t think any of that would be outside Jasmine’s abilities as demonstrated.
I have to admit, I never delved too deeply into this because I knew I’d be disappointed in whatever retcon was conjured up. I just accept that things didn’t pan out the way the writers has planned due to a number of things that happened outside of their control. Heck, it was a rather disjointed time, stuff happened, and then the season ended as good as could be expected.
There was some good TV in there, and there was some really bad stuff as well, and trying to put a logical timeline together always seemed futile to me. I understand the desire to do so, but I think I’m never going to be happy with it so I’ve chosen to ignore the whole thing.
Please continue, I have no desire to stifle this discussion, just sharing my thoughts.
I think that a few threads could have been pulled by Jasmine, but there’s no real evidence of it, and it doesn’t really hold water as a theory – why did Jasmine need fred to be there, or Gunn?? Even the reveal of the connection of connor’s birth to the miracle that angel earned on darla’s behalf, though very intuitively satisfying, isn’t proof that jasmine was involved in those events - just that she was able to perceive what was going on.
