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Where the heart is
I’ve finally ordered the Angel S5 DVDs. In anticipation here are some thoughts about Home
S4, according to Whedon, is AtS doing what it does best. It’s a rollercoaster ride of big epic storytelling that addresses big epic themes, destiny, free will the nature of good and evil. In the process the more personal metaphors that originally grounded the series get a little lost. The whole Angel as a recovering alcoholic, life in the big city schtick. One thing that Home does very well is to set up a new grounding metaphor, this time not so much drying out but selling out. The Greenpeace warrior settling for a job at Shell, the public prosecutor attracting the attention of the big law firm, the researcher head-hunted by MIT. It happens, it always seems a good idea at the time and sometimes it is a good idea or at least the least bad option. Another thing the episode does brilliantly is to resolve the Angel/Connor father/son relationship but that comes later.
Theoretically things should begin with big smiles all round. They beat the bad guy. But instead of a dancing demon they get Lilah congratulating them on ending world peace. Stephanie Romanov does a great job tottering forward precariously on her Manolo Blahniks. It looks as if one push and her head really would come off. She comes with an offer she says they won’t want but they’ll take. When everyone independently makes their way to the limo it appears that they may want it after all. So what is it that each of them wants?
Lorne and Fred are fairly straightforward, they both want help to go back to exploring their particular gifts. Music and empathy for the ex-host and there’s no business like show business. Science in a shiny new lab with like-minded colleagues for uberphysicist Fred. Wesley’s desires are more obscure but it transpires that what he intends is to destroy the contract that keeps Lilah in service to Wolfram and Hart. To save her, to clear his debt to her, to wipe out his past? But the rules don’t allow that. Not yet. What Gunn wants is even more mysterious although he clearly wants it the most of all of them. A cat, a black cat, a Black Panther? Fat cat, top cat, big cat, cool cat? Whatever it is, he walks taller for it. Not the muscle anymore. One interpretation of all this is that each of them wants to escape his/her recent past. To return to a version of their lives before it in Fred and Lorne’s cases, to pay for it in Wesley’s, to transcend it in Gunn’s. Be careful what you wish for.
However, it’s Angel’s show and the heart of the episode deals with what Angel wants. He rejects offers of power, of worldly goods, of Buffy. Angel always wants what he can really never have and what he wants is his son back. In Nick Hornby’s new novel A Long Way Down one of the protagonists is a woman with a severely disabled son who creates a “normal” life for him - posters of Patrick Vieira and Buffy on his wall, because, in her imagination, he supports Arsenal and has the hots for SMG. It’s an extension of a very natural reaction to a child being diagnosed with a disability, a form of denial that can also express itself as an inability to discuss the condition with family or friends. Initially it often comes along with a desperate desire to sacrifice anything for a cure, anything to restore the normal happy child that was originally hoped for, that would/should have been.
Angel first gets to know Connor as a miracle baby. On his return from Quortoth, its obvious that Connor has been damaged by his upbringing but, right up until the end of the season , Angel continues to hope that his son can be saved. In Home when he finally accepts the judgment that no such redemption is possible Angel is literally given the option of restoring Connor-that-would–have-been and making it so his friends need never know. The show doesn’t shy away from the complexities of the situation. That climactic scene where Angel holds the knife to Connor’s throat and everything goes white as he kills him is both profoundly disturbing and yet not unsympathetic. Angel was never a character that I naturally rooted for but I get the love now. I do.
The season ends as it began with a vision of home and family that he knows can only be a dream. All that remains is a quick trip to Sunnydale to go out in a blaze of glory and Angel’s work will be done. Needless to say this doesn’t go quite as planned.
S4, according to Whedon, is AtS doing what it does best. It’s a rollercoaster ride of big epic storytelling that addresses big epic themes, destiny, free will the nature of good and evil. In the process the more personal metaphors that originally grounded the series get a little lost. The whole Angel as a recovering alcoholic, life in the big city schtick. One thing that Home does very well is to set up a new grounding metaphor, this time not so much drying out but selling out. The Greenpeace warrior settling for a job at Shell, the public prosecutor attracting the attention of the big law firm, the researcher head-hunted by MIT. It happens, it always seems a good idea at the time and sometimes it is a good idea or at least the least bad option. Another thing the episode does brilliantly is to resolve the Angel/Connor father/son relationship but that comes later.
Theoretically things should begin with big smiles all round. They beat the bad guy. But instead of a dancing demon they get Lilah congratulating them on ending world peace. Stephanie Romanov does a great job tottering forward precariously on her Manolo Blahniks. It looks as if one push and her head really would come off. She comes with an offer she says they won’t want but they’ll take. When everyone independently makes their way to the limo it appears that they may want it after all. So what is it that each of them wants?
Lorne and Fred are fairly straightforward, they both want help to go back to exploring their particular gifts. Music and empathy for the ex-host and there’s no business like show business. Science in a shiny new lab with like-minded colleagues for uberphysicist Fred. Wesley’s desires are more obscure but it transpires that what he intends is to destroy the contract that keeps Lilah in service to Wolfram and Hart. To save her, to clear his debt to her, to wipe out his past? But the rules don’t allow that. Not yet. What Gunn wants is even more mysterious although he clearly wants it the most of all of them. A cat, a black cat, a Black Panther? Fat cat, top cat, big cat, cool cat? Whatever it is, he walks taller for it. Not the muscle anymore. One interpretation of all this is that each of them wants to escape his/her recent past. To return to a version of their lives before it in Fred and Lorne’s cases, to pay for it in Wesley’s, to transcend it in Gunn’s. Be careful what you wish for.
However, it’s Angel’s show and the heart of the episode deals with what Angel wants. He rejects offers of power, of worldly goods, of Buffy. Angel always wants what he can really never have and what he wants is his son back. In Nick Hornby’s new novel A Long Way Down one of the protagonists is a woman with a severely disabled son who creates a “normal” life for him - posters of Patrick Vieira and Buffy on his wall, because, in her imagination, he supports Arsenal and has the hots for SMG. It’s an extension of a very natural reaction to a child being diagnosed with a disability, a form of denial that can also express itself as an inability to discuss the condition with family or friends. Initially it often comes along with a desperate desire to sacrifice anything for a cure, anything to restore the normal happy child that was originally hoped for, that would/should have been.
Angel first gets to know Connor as a miracle baby. On his return from Quortoth, its obvious that Connor has been damaged by his upbringing but, right up until the end of the season , Angel continues to hope that his son can be saved. In Home when he finally accepts the judgment that no such redemption is possible Angel is literally given the option of restoring Connor-that-would–have-been and making it so his friends need never know. The show doesn’t shy away from the complexities of the situation. That climactic scene where Angel holds the knife to Connor’s throat and everything goes white as he kills him is both profoundly disturbing and yet not unsympathetic. Angel was never a character that I naturally rooted for but I get the love now. I do.
The season ends as it began with a vision of home and family that he knows can only be a dream. All that remains is a quick trip to Sunnydale to go out in a blaze of glory and Angel’s work will be done. Needless to say this doesn’t go quite as planned.
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He was right about rollorcoaster, I was left feeling dizzy and a little sick at the end. Yet I was still ready to queue for the next big ride. *grins* Finish this sentence 'glutton for _______'.
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Yes! I pointed that out to someone once and was told that I was imagining it, but I love how SR looks slightly off-balance during many of her scenes. Actually, I just love her in general in "Home". She very nearly steals the episode.
Angel was never a character that I naturally rooted for but I get the love now.
Angel is not a character I generally root for either, but he is tremendously sympathetic in "Home". I wish S5 had dealt more with the other characters finding out about the memory wipe and confronting Angel about it, because I thought his doing the wrong thing for the right reasons regarding Connor was an interesting dilemma that never really got addressed.
no subject
If identity is nothing but an assembly of recollections (we are what we remember), then people are constantly changing, as a result of experiences that lay down new memories, so whether those new memories are acquired now or retroactively is unimportant. There’s no fixed Platonic Ideal Self that can violated anyway. You just are who you are at any one time.
In any case it is striking that in all three cases that ME’s brought up the idea of memories being tampered with it’s never been dealt with as an unforgivable crime. With Dawn everyone just accepted the changes. As you’d hope people would with a metaphor for finding out that someone was adopted. With Willow, Tara does get to express her outrage but that’s about all. On the whole the Lethe spell gets treated as if it were analogous to Willow covering for things by lying about them rather than committing mind rape. I suppose you could think of lying as violating trust and some lies can feel almost like rape to the ‘victim.’ I’m not sure where this is going. It’s interesting.