Challenge of the Super Friends!
Apr. 29th, 2004 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookThe strange South Park synchronicity holds. I also throw in a couple of spoilers for next week's trailer. Otherwise, it's all about the superheroes.
Just when I thought I'd figured out the show's new paradigm (This is Angel. Welcome to SMACKDOWN!), the whole thing turns around again and gets back on the track I thought they were on with the introduction of Illyria in the first place. That is, the superhero team thing. Yes, Wesley tells us at the end of the ep, she may make "the team." Not that there's been much of a team lately, but maybe that's beginning to change - Illyria pulls a Gunn rescue mission, apparently to further her own agenda, whatever that is, and with his return to the W&H offices (although not back in his tool-for-the-man pinstripe suit - Gunn has resolutely returned to his roots as a hoodie-wearing hardcore), nearly everyone is back to where they were when we started this whole mess, back in "Conviction." Except for Fred, who is, y'know, gone. (And yeah, except for Spike, but I'll get to that.) First, Illyria.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Now, I stand by my original assessment that Illyria, as a character, is extremely superhero-comic - she's got the super-strength and funky time-distortion powers, plus a costume, and dialogue that (were it a little more consistent, that is) tends to read as ripped from the pages of Jack Kirby's New Gods. However, at least at this point in the story, Illyria is very much the exiled supervillian, not hero.
This is a key distinction for a couple of reasons. (Is anybody besides me noticing the continuing theme of the subverted villain in these shows?) First, as someone whose moral/ethical subset and overall life goals do not match up with those of Our Heroes, Illyria is well-placed to comment on the ethics, morals, and life goals of Angel and Co., thus providing the story with both a counterpoint and a (theoretically) impartial narrator. We've seen this trick before multiple times - whenever a major character goes "evil," for instance, they comment relentlessly on the shortcomings of their former self (e.g., soulless Angelus bagging on souled Angel; Faith-as-Buffy deriding Buffy and then herself in "Who Are You," etc.). Constant commentary makes an even more pointed appearance when characters switch sides, such as BtVS Season 3 Faith, Season 4 Spike, or Season 7 Andrew. A former opposition character integrated into the heroic inner circle can question methods, raise legitimate moral quandries, and challenge the hero's authority. They can also offer assistance that the hero may or may not wish to take, for various reasons, and... notice how we're getting into parallel with the entire Wolfram & Hart deal here?
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them?
So Angel, by taking over the law firm that was set up to be his ultimate nemesis in Angel episode 1, is in the ultimate trying-to-integrate-the-opposition mode. If he's Superman, then his gang is his Justice League, and W&H is the Legion of Doom. (And no, none of this maps one-to-one - I'm not saying Lorne is Aquaman and Illyria is the Martian Manhunter, for instance, but you get the idea.) Angel taking meetings with demons is Superman conference-calling with Sinestro, and that's just plain weird.
But the brain-teasing fun of "Time Bomb" is that the story gets us back on this track, of noticing the inherent weirdness. After more than a few episodes of moral hand-wringing (we-shouldn't-have-come-here-blee-blither-blah), we see Angel butt up against Illyria, a rival leader ala Brainiac or Lex Luthor, and also against new Senior Partners snitch Marcus Hamilton, the guy who signs his checks. Both have different approaches to power than Angel's own, and it's through exploring that contrast that Angel may yet gain a better handle on both himself as a hero - for what is a hero, in the superhero-comic sense, but someone who opposes a villain? - and how to wield the double-edged weapon that is Wolfram & Hart.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
I'll get back to Illyria in a moment, but first, Marcus. I found myself wishing quite loudly throughout the episode (hosted this time at the house of our usual Special Guest Viewers, Mech Man and Action Girl) that we'd been given Marcus all along instead of Eve. For one, he actually does stuff, such as remind Angel that he's running a business here, yo, and delivers useful information. (Such as the reveal that Angel's division was pulling in top profits - whuzzat? I guess while everyone's been running around fighting evil puppets and flame-throwing demon leeches, Lorne's entertainment section has been raking in the cash.) Marcus's sudden go-getter competency serves to contrast just how little Eve really did, other than to sashay around in office-inappropriate slink-wear, offer metaphorically Biblical bites of an apple, and drop her underpants for Angel. As a female executive, she was frighteningly ineffectual, and to top all this off, she exited her career arc at first opportunity for the sake of love. This makes her an eye-rolling throwback to the Days Before Feminism - the "weaker" sex indeed - but, by way of Marcus, I realize now that her utter uselessness did have a point.
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
Eve was not a threat to Angel. That was the whole point of Eve. As Marcus called out clearly last episode, she was a "little girl" he didn't take all that seriously. He had sex with her for gossakes, and we all know what a minefield that topic is here - respect and sex don't often go together in the Whedonverse, at least not without tragic consequences, and Marcus even reminded us of this: "we won't be making love on that couch anytime soon." Eve was there to be a unthreatening face for the Senior Partners, a tame kitty that Angel could make himself think he had under control, just like Gunn's misconceptions about the Conduit panther.
I'm sort of starting to circle back around to Illyria here now. Stay with me.
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
Marcus, unlike Eve, is a real and present voice of the Senior Partners. He's big with the reminders of what Wolfram & Hart is, what Angel's responsibilities are in running it, what "profit" and "loss" mean in those terms (a pregnant woman under contract to a demon cult - profit for her, loss for possibly everyone else, what's the bottom line here?). Marcus is a clear and distinct symbol of exactly what Angel opposes, the Wolfram & Hart that Angel originally started fighting. Institutionalized sin, evil made acceptable and clean and corporate. Angel has always been a get-his-hands dirty sort of guy, someone who "enjoys," if that's the word, fighting battles in sewer tunnels, getting his clothes covered in gore. The remote, behind-a-desk quality of his new life as CEO has always been a bad fit for him.
Okay, now we're back to Illyria.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all
Illyria does a lot of talking in "Time Bomb" about her former role as ultimate monarch. She tells us that true rulers are without morality. They are forces of nature, like a hurricane. Real power means never having to justify anything, just like that old adage about real love meaning never having to say you're sorry. Power just is. Illyria sneers at Angel for being "moral," for having principles. She scoffs at him as a leader because he spends all his time thinking about the effects of his power rather than using it.
This gets us into the theme of compromise, the whole core of the question surrounding the W&H deal. Illyria doesn't believe in adapting onesself to one's environment - she says as much to Spike in one of their "training" sessions. Finally, we're seeing a point to Spike being Illyria's Danger Room opponent other than the straightforward S&M thrill of catsuited-woman-throws-Spike-around. From Illyria's worldview, the view of an uncompromising leader, Spike's adaptability is a sign of his status as something low and pathetic. And yet, by studying her, learning her, Spike is actually starting to get inside her defenses, score some hits. She's still far stronger than he is, but that doesn't make her invulnerable. Illyria's worldview begins cracking, like she the "cracked engine block" that she herself becomes, with this realization. Power by itself, even if wielded ruthlessly, is not a complete protection.
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action
So Illyria, bleeding "gasoline" from a time-distortion flaw, becomes a both literal and metaphorical ticking timebomb. We see her shifting around in time, constantly reassessing and challenging. She rails at cruel fate. She tries to get in a surgical strike and kill the team before they can kill her. None of it does any good. Ultimately, she has to trust in Wesley - who has tried to kill her before, so she has no reason to trust - and his "moral" notions, simply to survive. To exist in this time and place, Illyria has to compromise. Staying true to her principles of ultimate leadership means death. Illyria picks survival, even at the cost of reduced power.
In contrast, Angel learns something from Illyria. He learns that he has power - the "wolf, ram, and hart" is a powerful weapon, which we knew from "Conviction," and Angel finally decides he's going to use it. At the end of the episode, he takes firm control of the negotiations with the demon cult, pulling the rug out from under Gunn's moral objections, which were paralyzing the deal. Angel has learned that power is something you use.
Be all my sins remember'd.
Only that's not a new thing for Angel, is it? Angelus knew how to use power perfectly well. The confident Angel we end on is disturbingly similiar to good ol' Angelus's firm belief in evil, so it remains to be seen just how his newfound resolve will play out. Is Angel just that good at playing evil's game that he can win even in their own arena? Maybe. Or has he learned exactly the wrong lesson in this current "apocalypse," which is apparently already in late innings and the bad guys are winning, all with the good guys' naive help? We'll see.
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
Other than that, my only other observations have to do with the strangeness of Crazy Wesley - dude, what's with the creepy Renfield phase? Is there a point to Wesley going all bipolar? - and the head-scratchingly dumb fun of Secret Agent Lorne. Ben Edlund's dialogue was hot as usual - the guy really knows his superhero plot bunnies and how to work them; of our audience, everyone immediately identified "that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise blows up over and over" as a precedent, but the story did not reuse or overlap with that one in any way, nice! And I especially liked that everyone had something to do that looked and felt less like sheer filler (in the case of Secret Agent Lorne, the filler quotiet was implicit, but also useful in making wry commentary on Angel and how he's been losing the plot of his own plans). Spike comes off as not a total idiot - always a pleaser for me - and Illlyria's plight actually held my interest. There was some money spent on this episode - weird time effects, two expensive vampire dustings (dude, Angel's head rolled!), four guys in latex. Harmony had a great bit offering demons organic colas. Gunn and Wes buried the hatchet, so to speak, on the whole I-stabbed-you issue. Good stuff.
And now, my lingering questions.
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
with honesty?
Illyria's thing with names. When she first appeared, she appeared surprised at the idea that "things have names." In this episode, we see her call Wesley by name. Not so with Angel, her rival in leadership. Hm. And last week, she called Spike by name, wanting to keep him as a "pet," but this week, he's "the white-haired one." This raises a question in my mind about how Illyria rates status with names. Does assigning a name to something lower it in her mind, or raise it? Given the combination of disgust and respect she seemed to have for Wesley in "Underneath" ("you don't worship me at all, do you?"), a scene in which she never addressed him by name ("you" and "a human" were the preferred monikers), and the strange mixture of betrayal and disappointment in this episode, in which she does call him "Wesley," I'm not sure. Food for thought.
And on next week's trailer.
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his
likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
time gives it proof. I did love you once.
I held off from my usual citation of the strange South Park synergy until now, because here was the theme: to rescue the future, we must make the present a better place (okay, we're on track with where I think we're going with Angel so far), but the ultimate answer for future happiness is for guys to turn gay and have lots of sex. This just after a next-episode trailer in which we see Angel and Spike riding together on a Vespa... uhhhh. (And Angel gets on the scooter behind Spike with his arms wrapped around him, which makes him look like a teenage girl on a prom date with Marlon Brando; I'm mentally rearranging my image of who gets to be top and who gets to be bottom in this relationship even as I write.)
Anyway, next week deals with Buffy, the big rivalry over Buffy, and I can't say I'm really looking forward to it because you know, had enough heartache on that score, thank you very much, but maybe the flashbacks and some healthy guy bonding will salvage it. That's all I've really got to say.
All the quotes are from Hamlet.
Just when I thought I'd figured out the show's new paradigm (This is Angel. Welcome to SMACKDOWN!), the whole thing turns around again and gets back on the track I thought they were on with the introduction of Illyria in the first place. That is, the superhero team thing. Yes, Wesley tells us at the end of the ep, she may make "the team." Not that there's been much of a team lately, but maybe that's beginning to change - Illyria pulls a Gunn rescue mission, apparently to further her own agenda, whatever that is, and with his return to the W&H offices (although not back in his tool-for-the-man pinstripe suit - Gunn has resolutely returned to his roots as a hoodie-wearing hardcore), nearly everyone is back to where they were when we started this whole mess, back in "Conviction." Except for Fred, who is, y'know, gone. (And yeah, except for Spike, but I'll get to that.) First, Illyria.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Now, I stand by my original assessment that Illyria, as a character, is extremely superhero-comic - she's got the super-strength and funky time-distortion powers, plus a costume, and dialogue that (were it a little more consistent, that is) tends to read as ripped from the pages of Jack Kirby's New Gods. However, at least at this point in the story, Illyria is very much the exiled supervillian, not hero.
This is a key distinction for a couple of reasons. (Is anybody besides me noticing the continuing theme of the subverted villain in these shows?) First, as someone whose moral/ethical subset and overall life goals do not match up with those of Our Heroes, Illyria is well-placed to comment on the ethics, morals, and life goals of Angel and Co., thus providing the story with both a counterpoint and a (theoretically) impartial narrator. We've seen this trick before multiple times - whenever a major character goes "evil," for instance, they comment relentlessly on the shortcomings of their former self (e.g., soulless Angelus bagging on souled Angel; Faith-as-Buffy deriding Buffy and then herself in "Who Are You," etc.). Constant commentary makes an even more pointed appearance when characters switch sides, such as BtVS Season 3 Faith, Season 4 Spike, or Season 7 Andrew. A former opposition character integrated into the heroic inner circle can question methods, raise legitimate moral quandries, and challenge the hero's authority. They can also offer assistance that the hero may or may not wish to take, for various reasons, and... notice how we're getting into parallel with the entire Wolfram & Hart deal here?
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them?
So Angel, by taking over the law firm that was set up to be his ultimate nemesis in Angel episode 1, is in the ultimate trying-to-integrate-the-opposition mode. If he's Superman, then his gang is his Justice League, and W&H is the Legion of Doom. (And no, none of this maps one-to-one - I'm not saying Lorne is Aquaman and Illyria is the Martian Manhunter, for instance, but you get the idea.) Angel taking meetings with demons is Superman conference-calling with Sinestro, and that's just plain weird.
But the brain-teasing fun of "Time Bomb" is that the story gets us back on this track, of noticing the inherent weirdness. After more than a few episodes of moral hand-wringing (we-shouldn't-have-come-here-blee-blither-blah), we see Angel butt up against Illyria, a rival leader ala Brainiac or Lex Luthor, and also against new Senior Partners snitch Marcus Hamilton, the guy who signs his checks. Both have different approaches to power than Angel's own, and it's through exploring that contrast that Angel may yet gain a better handle on both himself as a hero - for what is a hero, in the superhero-comic sense, but someone who opposes a villain? - and how to wield the double-edged weapon that is Wolfram & Hart.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
I'll get back to Illyria in a moment, but first, Marcus. I found myself wishing quite loudly throughout the episode (hosted this time at the house of our usual Special Guest Viewers, Mech Man and Action Girl) that we'd been given Marcus all along instead of Eve. For one, he actually does stuff, such as remind Angel that he's running a business here, yo, and delivers useful information. (Such as the reveal that Angel's division was pulling in top profits - whuzzat? I guess while everyone's been running around fighting evil puppets and flame-throwing demon leeches, Lorne's entertainment section has been raking in the cash.) Marcus's sudden go-getter competency serves to contrast just how little Eve really did, other than to sashay around in office-inappropriate slink-wear, offer metaphorically Biblical bites of an apple, and drop her underpants for Angel. As a female executive, she was frighteningly ineffectual, and to top all this off, she exited her career arc at first opportunity for the sake of love. This makes her an eye-rolling throwback to the Days Before Feminism - the "weaker" sex indeed - but, by way of Marcus, I realize now that her utter uselessness did have a point.
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
Eve was not a threat to Angel. That was the whole point of Eve. As Marcus called out clearly last episode, she was a "little girl" he didn't take all that seriously. He had sex with her for gossakes, and we all know what a minefield that topic is here - respect and sex don't often go together in the Whedonverse, at least not without tragic consequences, and Marcus even reminded us of this: "we won't be making love on that couch anytime soon." Eve was there to be a unthreatening face for the Senior Partners, a tame kitty that Angel could make himself think he had under control, just like Gunn's misconceptions about the Conduit panther.
I'm sort of starting to circle back around to Illyria here now. Stay with me.
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
Marcus, unlike Eve, is a real and present voice of the Senior Partners. He's big with the reminders of what Wolfram & Hart is, what Angel's responsibilities are in running it, what "profit" and "loss" mean in those terms (a pregnant woman under contract to a demon cult - profit for her, loss for possibly everyone else, what's the bottom line here?). Marcus is a clear and distinct symbol of exactly what Angel opposes, the Wolfram & Hart that Angel originally started fighting. Institutionalized sin, evil made acceptable and clean and corporate. Angel has always been a get-his-hands dirty sort of guy, someone who "enjoys," if that's the word, fighting battles in sewer tunnels, getting his clothes covered in gore. The remote, behind-a-desk quality of his new life as CEO has always been a bad fit for him.
Okay, now we're back to Illyria.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all
Illyria does a lot of talking in "Time Bomb" about her former role as ultimate monarch. She tells us that true rulers are without morality. They are forces of nature, like a hurricane. Real power means never having to justify anything, just like that old adage about real love meaning never having to say you're sorry. Power just is. Illyria sneers at Angel for being "moral," for having principles. She scoffs at him as a leader because he spends all his time thinking about the effects of his power rather than using it.
This gets us into the theme of compromise, the whole core of the question surrounding the W&H deal. Illyria doesn't believe in adapting onesself to one's environment - she says as much to Spike in one of their "training" sessions. Finally, we're seeing a point to Spike being Illyria's Danger Room opponent other than the straightforward S&M thrill of catsuited-woman-throws-Spike-around. From Illyria's worldview, the view of an uncompromising leader, Spike's adaptability is a sign of his status as something low and pathetic. And yet, by studying her, learning her, Spike is actually starting to get inside her defenses, score some hits. She's still far stronger than he is, but that doesn't make her invulnerable. Illyria's worldview begins cracking, like she the "cracked engine block" that she herself becomes, with this realization. Power by itself, even if wielded ruthlessly, is not a complete protection.
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action
So Illyria, bleeding "gasoline" from a time-distortion flaw, becomes a both literal and metaphorical ticking timebomb. We see her shifting around in time, constantly reassessing and challenging. She rails at cruel fate. She tries to get in a surgical strike and kill the team before they can kill her. None of it does any good. Ultimately, she has to trust in Wesley - who has tried to kill her before, so she has no reason to trust - and his "moral" notions, simply to survive. To exist in this time and place, Illyria has to compromise. Staying true to her principles of ultimate leadership means death. Illyria picks survival, even at the cost of reduced power.
In contrast, Angel learns something from Illyria. He learns that he has power - the "wolf, ram, and hart" is a powerful weapon, which we knew from "Conviction," and Angel finally decides he's going to use it. At the end of the episode, he takes firm control of the negotiations with the demon cult, pulling the rug out from under Gunn's moral objections, which were paralyzing the deal. Angel has learned that power is something you use.
Be all my sins remember'd.
Only that's not a new thing for Angel, is it? Angelus knew how to use power perfectly well. The confident Angel we end on is disturbingly similiar to good ol' Angelus's firm belief in evil, so it remains to be seen just how his newfound resolve will play out. Is Angel just that good at playing evil's game that he can win even in their own arena? Maybe. Or has he learned exactly the wrong lesson in this current "apocalypse," which is apparently already in late innings and the bad guys are winning, all with the good guys' naive help? We'll see.
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
Other than that, my only other observations have to do with the strangeness of Crazy Wesley - dude, what's with the creepy Renfield phase? Is there a point to Wesley going all bipolar? - and the head-scratchingly dumb fun of Secret Agent Lorne. Ben Edlund's dialogue was hot as usual - the guy really knows his superhero plot bunnies and how to work them; of our audience, everyone immediately identified "that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise blows up over and over" as a precedent, but the story did not reuse or overlap with that one in any way, nice! And I especially liked that everyone had something to do that looked and felt less like sheer filler (in the case of Secret Agent Lorne, the filler quotiet was implicit, but also useful in making wry commentary on Angel and how he's been losing the plot of his own plans). Spike comes off as not a total idiot - always a pleaser for me - and Illlyria's plight actually held my interest. There was some money spent on this episode - weird time effects, two expensive vampire dustings (dude, Angel's head rolled!), four guys in latex. Harmony had a great bit offering demons organic colas. Gunn and Wes buried the hatchet, so to speak, on the whole I-stabbed-you issue. Good stuff.
And now, my lingering questions.
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
with honesty?
Illyria's thing with names. When she first appeared, she appeared surprised at the idea that "things have names." In this episode, we see her call Wesley by name. Not so with Angel, her rival in leadership. Hm. And last week, she called Spike by name, wanting to keep him as a "pet," but this week, he's "the white-haired one." This raises a question in my mind about how Illyria rates status with names. Does assigning a name to something lower it in her mind, or raise it? Given the combination of disgust and respect she seemed to have for Wesley in "Underneath" ("you don't worship me at all, do you?"), a scene in which she never addressed him by name ("you" and "a human" were the preferred monikers), and the strange mixture of betrayal and disappointment in this episode, in which she does call him "Wesley," I'm not sure. Food for thought.
And on next week's trailer.
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his
likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
time gives it proof. I did love you once.
I held off from my usual citation of the strange South Park synergy until now, because here was the theme: to rescue the future, we must make the present a better place (okay, we're on track with where I think we're going with Angel so far), but the ultimate answer for future happiness is for guys to turn gay and have lots of sex. This just after a next-episode trailer in which we see Angel and Spike riding together on a Vespa... uhhhh. (And Angel gets on the scooter behind Spike with his arms wrapped around him, which makes him look like a teenage girl on a prom date with Marlon Brando; I'm mentally rearranging my image of who gets to be top and who gets to be bottom in this relationship even as I write.)
Anyway, next week deals with Buffy, the big rivalry over Buffy, and I can't say I'm really looking forward to it because you know, had enough heartache on that score, thank you very much, but maybe the flashbacks and some healthy guy bonding will salvage it. That's all I've really got to say.
All the quotes are from Hamlet.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-29 03:08 pm (UTC)I was actually thinking about the same thing. In this episode she says to Angel that "in my time [vampires] were known as 'the muck that eats itself.'" That's not exactly a name, but it is a clear label, a way of categorization. She also tells him that "'Illyria' was all they needed to know." Again, using a name, a label to wield power, or take it away.