Angel - Season 2 impressions (episode 12)
Jan. 6th, 2006 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thalia_seawoodBlood Money
A summary can be found here.
- The episode starts with some very nice interaction between Wesley, Gunn and Cordelia.
The big advantage of Angel's absence is that Gunn is finally integrated into the team. Beforehand, it he didn't interact very much with Wes and Cordy. Usually, Gunn followed Angel on his more risky missions or on mission that Wes and Cordy didn't approve of and got paid for it. Because of this, the relationship dynamic went more like Angel & Gunn versus Cordelia & Wesley. With Angel firing his team, Gunn has started to hang out with Wesley - and it seems like they've actually become good friends.
Gunn: "Go on, English, make your move - because it'll be your last."
Both Wesley and Gunn raise their right fists, blow into them, then, simultaneously, cast their dice on the table on which we see a game board set up between them. Wesley slumps in defeat.
Gunn doing a little dance: "And now I rule Europe, Australia and South America!"
Wesley: "I still got Kamchakta."
Gunn: "Three fifths of the world covered in water, the rest covered in me!"
Wesley: "Shut up."
Gunn: "Who's your ruler, baby? What's my name? Come on, English, say it: Gunn."
Cordy comes in, wearing a house robe.
Cordy: "Fun as it is having you guys over day and night, it's getting kind of late."
Wesley: "It's only seven thirty."
Cordy: "Really? Oh. In that case: get out!"
- Nice to see Chanterelle/Lily/Anne again who we've met before in Lie To me and Anne. She obviously kept the name she took on in Anne and has managed not to slip back into life on the streets. Instead she's helping others.
- Angel paying a visit to Lilah. The way he acts has a very strong Angelus vibe.
I wish that Angel would stop to act at one time as if Liam, Angelus and Angel are different persons. They aren't. All the bad sides and the good sides are there in all of his incarnations. His character traits are just arranged differently, if that makes sense.
Angel: "The game. - It's actually kind of fun when you know the rules. I mean, when you know - that there aren't any. (Taps her shoulder with his finger) You screw with me, and you screw with me, and... you screw with me. And now - I get to screw with you."
Lilah: "Uh..."
Angel: "That's gonna be great!"
Lilah: "Angel, please..."
Angel leans in real close: "No. No. No. No. The begging - that comes later."
Lilah closes her eyes and swallows and Angel is suddenly gone.
- Wesley and Gunn actually defeat a giant dragon together. Really liked how they filmed that scene, i.e. without ever showing the dragon. *g* Much cheaper - and my own imagination is usually much better than the special effects.
So cute how Wesley praises Gunn and Gunn praises Wesley:
Gunn: "And then you come crawling back, stinking, screaming curses. The mouth on this boy!"
Wesley: "And Gunn hits him form behind, yelling 'look at us when we kill you!' and both its heads turn..."
Gunn gets up and makes a swinging motion: "Then 'shronk!' Wes buries his ax in the head number one."
Wesley: "And Gunn is running him through, pulling out intestines the size of your leg!"
Can anyone recommend well-written Wesley/Gunn stories to me? *g* I have a particular fondness for stories with an actual plot.
Also like that both Wes and Gunn aren't too proud to admit that they were scared.
Cordy: "You weren't scared?"
Wesley: "Oh, mother in heaven."
Gunn: "Pants wetting, praising the lord to save me kind of scared. All right?"
- Cordy, Wes and Gunn found their own agency. Yay!
- Holland's commercial video with his speech for creating a better world is brilliantly funny. Holland totally reminded me of Mayor Wilkins here. I wonder if they ever met. Anyway, I bet Wilkins had some W&H lawyers working for him occasionally.
- Woman: "Serena, I have to know, this thing with making your character gay, (Drops the necklace into her husbands fundraiser envelope) is that like all about ratings? Because I don't get it."
*g* What a wonderful meta line! So this is Joss's take on the reactions he got after Willow got together with Tara.
- Angel pissed me off big time in this episode. So he's fighting the war of the righteous against Wolfram & Hart and therefore the end all of a sudden justifies the means? In the beginning, I thought he genuinly wanted to protect Anne, but it becomes clear very soon that his real goal is to step on the toes of Wolfram & Hart, in particular Lindsey and Lilah.
Now in the end, he gives all the money that was collected at the W&H charity ball to Anne, but still I just don't appreciate the way he used her as a pawn in his fight against W&H.
What also annoyed me was the tape he gave to Anne. Couldn't he find a tape that was not chokeful with embarrassing recordings of Cordy and Wesley?! I don't get it.
Nevertheless, Angel is still one of my favorite characters. I don't approve of what he does right now, but I think that the flaws he shows right now makes him a much more complex character.
A summary can be found here.
- The episode starts with some very nice interaction between Wesley, Gunn and Cordelia.
The big advantage of Angel's absence is that Gunn is finally integrated into the team. Beforehand, it he didn't interact very much with Wes and Cordy. Usually, Gunn followed Angel on his more risky missions or on mission that Wes and Cordy didn't approve of and got paid for it. Because of this, the relationship dynamic went more like Angel & Gunn versus Cordelia & Wesley. With Angel firing his team, Gunn has started to hang out with Wesley - and it seems like they've actually become good friends.
Gunn: "Go on, English, make your move - because it'll be your last."
Both Wesley and Gunn raise their right fists, blow into them, then, simultaneously, cast their dice on the table on which we see a game board set up between them. Wesley slumps in defeat.
Gunn doing a little dance: "And now I rule Europe, Australia and South America!"
Wesley: "I still got Kamchakta."
Gunn: "Three fifths of the world covered in water, the rest covered in me!"
Wesley: "Shut up."
Gunn: "Who's your ruler, baby? What's my name? Come on, English, say it: Gunn."
Cordy comes in, wearing a house robe.
Cordy: "Fun as it is having you guys over day and night, it's getting kind of late."
Wesley: "It's only seven thirty."
Cordy: "Really? Oh. In that case: get out!"
- Nice to see Chanterelle/Lily/Anne again who we've met before in Lie To me and Anne. She obviously kept the name she took on in Anne and has managed not to slip back into life on the streets. Instead she's helping others.
- Angel paying a visit to Lilah. The way he acts has a very strong Angelus vibe.
I wish that Angel would stop to act at one time as if Liam, Angelus and Angel are different persons. They aren't. All the bad sides and the good sides are there in all of his incarnations. His character traits are just arranged differently, if that makes sense.
Angel: "The game. - It's actually kind of fun when you know the rules. I mean, when you know - that there aren't any. (Taps her shoulder with his finger) You screw with me, and you screw with me, and... you screw with me. And now - I get to screw with you."
Lilah: "Uh..."
Angel: "That's gonna be great!"
Lilah: "Angel, please..."
Angel leans in real close: "No. No. No. No. The begging - that comes later."
Lilah closes her eyes and swallows and Angel is suddenly gone.
- Wesley and Gunn actually defeat a giant dragon together. Really liked how they filmed that scene, i.e. without ever showing the dragon. *g* Much cheaper - and my own imagination is usually much better than the special effects.
So cute how Wesley praises Gunn and Gunn praises Wesley:
Gunn: "And then you come crawling back, stinking, screaming curses. The mouth on this boy!"
Wesley: "And Gunn hits him form behind, yelling 'look at us when we kill you!' and both its heads turn..."
Gunn gets up and makes a swinging motion: "Then 'shronk!' Wes buries his ax in the head number one."
Wesley: "And Gunn is running him through, pulling out intestines the size of your leg!"
Can anyone recommend well-written Wesley/Gunn stories to me? *g* I have a particular fondness for stories with an actual plot.
Also like that both Wes and Gunn aren't too proud to admit that they were scared.
Cordy: "You weren't scared?"
Wesley: "Oh, mother in heaven."
Gunn: "Pants wetting, praising the lord to save me kind of scared. All right?"
- Cordy, Wes and Gunn found their own agency. Yay!
- Holland's commercial video with his speech for creating a better world is brilliantly funny. Holland totally reminded me of Mayor Wilkins here. I wonder if they ever met. Anyway, I bet Wilkins had some W&H lawyers working for him occasionally.
- Woman: "Serena, I have to know, this thing with making your character gay, (Drops the necklace into her husbands fundraiser envelope) is that like all about ratings? Because I don't get it."
*g* What a wonderful meta line! So this is Joss's take on the reactions he got after Willow got together with Tara.
- Angel pissed me off big time in this episode. So he's fighting the war of the righteous against Wolfram & Hart and therefore the end all of a sudden justifies the means? In the beginning, I thought he genuinly wanted to protect Anne, but it becomes clear very soon that his real goal is to step on the toes of Wolfram & Hart, in particular Lindsey and Lilah.
Now in the end, he gives all the money that was collected at the W&H charity ball to Anne, but still I just don't appreciate the way he used her as a pawn in his fight against W&H.
What also annoyed me was the tape he gave to Anne. Couldn't he find a tape that was not chokeful with embarrassing recordings of Cordy and Wesley?! I don't get it.
Nevertheless, Angel is still one of my favorite characters. I don't approve of what he does right now, but I think that the flaws he shows right now makes him a much more complex character.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 08:05 am (UTC)Angel paying a visit to Lilah. The way he acts has a very strong Angelus vibe.
Absolutely. Scenes like these are why back when you wondered in season 2 of BTVS about the identity issue I argued that Angelus was NOT a completely different entitity.
Wes/Gunn: there is a lot, especially by
Holland's commercial video with his speech for creating a better world is brilliantly funny. Holland totally reminded me of Mayor Wilkins here. I wonder if they ever met. Anyway, I bet Wilkins had some W&H lawyers working for him occasionally.
Absolutely. Soulmates, I tell you, soulmates.
What a wonderful meta line! So this is Joss's take on the reactions he got after Willow got together with Tara.
Yes, indeed.*g*
Re: Angel's "end justify the means" policy: that's a point that every Jossverse hero will have to confront sooner or later. Just think of Mal in "Serenity", and the Operator. Wesley's turn to confront the concept will come, too. For Angel, it's at this point in season 2 and later in season 5 again. And in a way, the ultimate opponent of season 4 is also the ultimate result of "the end justifies the means". It never stops being a question in the Jossverse.
Angel's dark side enhancing his complexity: exactly. I never had a problem with that. He can be a complete jerk with his soul fully intact, and that makes him not a clichéd Byronic hero.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 09:28 am (UTC)Yes, exactly. Heroes with no flaws are IMO totally unbelievable. I want them to not be perfect and to sometimes fail or make the wrong decisions.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-07 09:39 pm (UTC)Therefore Wes/Gunn fics -- friendship or 'ship -- are one of my first loves in the fandom. Personally, I tend to see the relationship at a just-sub-slash level if that makes sense. They're close, but the closeness is mostly unspoken Unfortunately, most of the fics that I can think of (and the ones that I've written) happen a little, or a lot, later in canon. Once you get into S3, though, I promise you a ton *g*.
one of my favorites, though, is an early season two that I rec'd here. It isn't huge on plot, but has more than your average 'shipper fic --
I don't have much to say on this ep, though I do like Anne a lot -- as for the video at the end, I think that might have been ME just getting a little too cute. But it IS cute, and I tend to think Angel picked up a random tape w/o checking the content (I particularly suspect the striptease of being a result of Denisof messing around on set that happened to get taped, and then they wanted an excuse to use it; the blooper reel in the S5 DVD bears this out, as he gets even sillier).
no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 08:18 am (UTC)Yes, and that's exactly what pushes my shippers' buttons. I really like reading about equal relationships when the two partners complement one another *and* mutual teasing is involved. (E.g. Fraser/Kowalski.) What I like is that Wesley and Gunn come from totally different backgrounds, so it would be interesting to explore this a bit. It's also not that easy to split their abilities: Yes, Wesley has read a lot more, but Gunn is certainly not stupid. And Gunn may be the more experienced fighter, but Wesley isn't a bad demon fighter himself. And they don't get jealous over it, but just admire the other. Love it!
But it IS cute,
It's only cute if you're not on the tape. *g*
Some of these people *knew* Wesley. Poor guy. Also Cordy might meet some of them again when she auditions. I just know she would not be please if she knew everyone had seen her "Milk" rehearsal.
And thanks for the rec! This story is excellent!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 06:12 am (UTC)What I like about this episode is that this whole complicated scenario thing is exactly the kind of thing that "Angelus" excelled at, and here you see "Angel" doing the exact same thing with a positive goal in mind.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 07:50 pm (UTC)Oh, I missed this, but you're absolutely right. Very cool observation!
What's noteworthy is that his original goal isn't that positive, though. He doesn't really think about Anne and what's best for her, but is entirely focused on stepping on Lilah's and Lindsey's toes. It's only in the very end, that he actually helps Anne.