No, your eyes don't deceive you. Prepare to be very excited. But first a quick and shameless plug for my Once More, With Feeling transcript, currently sliding down the archives despite gallant and appreciated attempts by many posters to keep it up. If you haven't had a chance to read it yet, the most permanent link is probably to Rufus' copy which is at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conversebuffyverse/message/10611
Don't worry, this will take you straight to the transcript and nowhere near spoilers. Anyway, legs 11 for the Season, and time for some fun...

4.11- 'Soulless'

The clue's in the title- this is Literary References Bingo. You will need either a superb memory or a copy of 'Soulless', and a shallow but broad knowledge of the last 3000 years of literature. Ready. OK, here goes:

1) Samuel Beckett
2) Thomas Harris
3) Samuel Coleridge
4) Anonymous [Jimmy Kennedy actually wrote this!]
5) WB Yeats
6) Sophocles
7) William Shakespeare

The idea is to match up the authors above with literary references, explicit or implicit, in 4.11. I'll give you some time. Anyone who gets all seven without cheating can collect a virtual prize, (several Voy Credibility Points).

OK, done?
Here goes.

1) Probably the most obtuse reference of the seven to start off with. I was left at the end of 'Awakening' with that wonderful laugh, equal parts Angelus and Joss Whedon, at the trick that had been played. Throughout the next week, I was wondering what would happen when Angelus returned. Then when it finally happened, we instead get a teaser which smacks of Beckett's absent lead character technique from 'Waiting for Godot' and others. First, we expect to see Angelus involved in the fight in LA, but instead it's Connor. An interesting choice here, because Connor seems to have so much of his vague personal identity stolen by Angel- Angel has the same love, the same abilities to fight, and here he is in an inversion, filling the role we expect his Father to fill.

After this we go into a long, excellent preliminary about Angelus, building up the excitement without seeing the interactions between the characters and Angelus himself. I have to say that after all the build up that Craft and Fain gave him, I was kind of expecting to be disappointed, because they'd added almost too much wait to the introduction and it could only fail. But superb writing, beautiful directing and lighting (of course by Sean Astin, the funny little hairy-footed Irish hobbit-y chap), and a very good performance from David Boreanaz, whose Angelus took on a higher level of evil due to the improvements in acting he's made since Season Two of Buffy. Although I have to mention that while in Sunnydale the Scooby Gang were fairly tightly together, here in LA the factions and the fall-outs mean that starting to tear them apart was a much easier job.

After the conversation between Wesley and the others, and the crescendo of expectation, we cut to Angelus, eerily singing to himself. Which I'll return to later...

2)A relatively easy though implicit one. Angelus plays Hannibal Lecter in this episode. For full marks, you'll need to have mentally noted 'Red Dragon', the books in which Hannibal is a fairly minor character, but he, though locked up in a cage, seems the most well-drawn threatening character in the whole book. Here Angelus does the same thing, always seeming to be relaxed and in control, even though he's the one locked in the cage and poisoned with darts at regular intervals.

3) I'm not sure how deliberate the expansion of the one little line is here, but it seems to fit quite nicely. Craft and Fain write, 'Bodies, bodies everywhere/ And not a drop to drink' fro Angelus. It's a good pun, undoubtedly, and it's taken from Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner', as the sailor is stranded in the ship, with only the dangerous sea water with which to quench his thirst. Of course, the main point of Coleridge's poem, is, apart from a kind of gothic horror, the idea that disturbing the rules of nature is a poor idea. The Mariner, who kills the apparently benevolent albatross, ends up eternally walking the earth, attempting to achieve redemption by telling people his tale and instructing them not to repeat it. There is a certain symmetry here with Angelus' position. He regularly broke the rules of nature, and eventually stumbled across somebody who could do something about it, the gypsy elder. Then, as the Mariner walked with the albatross hanging round his neck, so Angelus was forced to walk with his soul, an instruction to the other vampires that messing with the sanctity of life can be a dangerous thing. Angel however is not a positive instruction so much as a warning to vampires not to mess with gypsies. Angel becomes a cautionary tale for vampires, a halfway house between humanity and vampirism, eternally doomed to walk the earth in a different guise.

4) The sneakiest of the seven, but you will probably have got it if you really did go and watch the episode. I assume no-one knows the author of 'The Teddy Bear's Picnic', although I'd be happy to be corrected if it's more recnet than I think. A couple of things here. The words are somewhat changed, from 'If you go down to the woods today', to tonight, a little in-reference to the permanently dark sky and blotted sun in LA. The song may seem harmless, but like most nursery rhymes, it has a rather dark undercurrent lurking underneath. In the much-maligned and oft-omitted third verse, we have

'If you go down to the woods today
You'd better not go alone.
It's lovely down in the woods today,
But better to stay at home'.

This little warning always struck me as rather wonderful. It's totally incongruous to the harmless sounding animals of the chorus, but I always wondered whether a transformation might be about to take place. Lurking under the innocent teddy bear exterior, perhaps, lurks the creature with claws who will come to threaten you, the real live bear who's territorial and terrifying when threatened. Maybe this transformation from harmless fluffy toy to wild animal is supposed to parallel Angelus, or perhaps I'm just projecting. In any case, it made for a very unnerving shot of Angelus early on.

5) Well, this one was there for the taking if you knew the quote: 'In the foul rag and bone shop of my heart'. This is another beautiful poem by WB Yeats, (like almost all his writing), and for this reason, as well as it being scarily relevant and wanting to break the 100 super-compressed pages barrier, I include it below:

The Circus Animals' Desertion

I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

This is a very clear manifesto about 'Awakening', for me at least. When we see Angel's dream, the vision which will lend him perfect happiness just for a moment, we see not the reality which he is facing, but instead a perfect world where issues about Cordelia, Connor, the other triangle and his status as a Champion are made clear and suited to his needs. Yet Angelus perceives that this is not reality at all. Her claims Angel does not love the 'mound of refuse or the sweepings of the street', but instead 'Players and painted stage took all my love'. The reality is not what Angel wanted, merely the emblems of what was, the paradigm where all his troubles could be over.

The main point is that Angelus' thinking is clearly that Angel shows no interest, only disgust, in the reality of the situation. In his opinion, he has no love or trust in the gang, but instead perceives them as in the poem, with Cordelia 'the raving slut/ Who keeps the till', sleeping with his son, and the others merely 'Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can'. At least, this is Angelus would like the others to believe. The truth is not like that at all. Angel has a profound love for AI, for the family that he is haltingly attempting to forge. The idea that the 'masterful images' were all that he wanted, all he loved, is entirely untrue and without back-up. That Angel, in the situation, had a perfect day much different from reality, is unsurprising, but this does not mean he has in any sense betrayed AI, who in any case no nothing of the dream he had.

6) Well of course this one has been playing out implicitly not only throughout this Season but as far back as 'A New World'. I suspect Sophocles would be surprised by the immortality of his play, although it was probably not his plot originally. The mythic power of the story, which has kept it alive for more than 2000 years, perhaps suggests more about the truth of it than Freud with his arguments ever will. In any case, here we have the first explicit mention of it, as Angelus tells Connor, 'You boned the nearest thing you had to a Mother, you tried to kill your Father. There should be a play.'

Here though, the story is not about Oedipus, but Laius, and how he responds to what has happened. As it is his story, he is the most charismatic one, and he does not get killed at the cross-roads like his mythic counterpart. The question now is to see how the relationship between Father and son develop.

It was a fascinating development that Connor decided that Angelus was his real Father. That he identifies more with the anarchic, manipulative psychopath than the tortured, good intentioned proto-Hero is perhaps worrying for his psyche. But Angel was Angel when Darla conceived Connor, n a moment of perfect despair. That he was ready to surrender his soul, to give up on life, is undeniable, yet what Connor contends is not strictly true. However, the question it raises is still a major point for discussion. Just how much of Angelus is Angel, and how much of Angel Angelus? Is it still as simple as Season Two of Buffy, where we see Angelus as a clearly and demonstrably different character? Do elements of each interact more than Angel will admit, while he still compartmentalises his normal self? Is it important that Angel integrates his evil side in order to become a more content person? I am reminded of lunasea's interesting contention that the addition of soul to Angelus, a vampire with a strong, black moral compass, snaps him round like poles of a magnet, giving him a strong predilection to do good instead. By contrast perhaps, Spike, whose moral compass is weaker, his changed less from soulless to soulful, with the conclusion that his moral compass was less of a guiding principle as soulless vampire and then as ensoulled, reforming New!William. Remember the mantra: 'Spike does not negate Angel. Angel does not negate Spike'. Oh, and incidentally, (and this is just my worthless opinion), I cannot believe that a Joss Whedon helmed fifth Season of Angel, when this is his only show running, will fail to balance. I can see Angel and Spike as excellent counterparts, without denying Fred, Gunn, Lorne and anyone else time. But I don't even know the end of the Season, so what do I know?

7) The easiest of all of course: Angelus' comment about Othello and Desdemona. 'But Oh no, Desdemona didn't like the guy.' The guy in this case being Cassio, who in this schematic is being played by Wesley. This leaves Angelus as Iago. There are some interesting parallels. Angelus has become like he is because Cassio's decision was supported by the rest of the group. As a direct result, Iago has become the imprisoned, scorned embittered old man, but reacts by scheming his way out of it rather than folding. As a result of what Iago (Angel) says about Cassio's (Wesley's) relationship with Desdemona (Fred), Othello (Gunn) and Desdemona break up, albeit for more reason than in the play. Cassio is the group leader, but his claims are weakened sgnificantly by Iago's rumours and manipulation. Othello is a play full of frustration, mistrust, manipulations of the confused good people, and supremacy of the manipulating evil people. Which seems to fit Angel Season Four rather nicely.

However, considering the events of 'Calvary', it is also arugable that the obvious, laid-out Othello match is not the one we actually want. Perhaps Cordelia is Iago, the manipulator, and Angel is Othello, the one betrayed by her quiet words in her ear. How it all matches in this scenario is anyone's guess, so I think I'll give it a bit longer to develop.

How did you do? Hope you had fun anyway! Anyone who got all seven has a scarily close mindset to my own.

A couple of other miscellaneous notes:

-Well done Craft and Fain for a second top grade effort after the magnificent 'Supersymmetry'. They're fast becoming my favourite writers on the show.

-Some of the sexual imagery in this was really crude, even if implicit. Just goes to show that censors really don't understand the implicit, only the explicit explicit stuff, (I mean the 'willow tree' line really says it all).

-My only contention with the excellent 'Long Day's Journey'/'Awakening'/'Soulless' run is the lack of Lorne. He's barely done anything since 'Spin the Bottle', despite being an interesting character/plot device in the earlier Seasons. He needs a bit more than comic relief, even as a recurring character.

-'Holtz was a good man'. Wrong, kiddo. Connor may have a certain grasp on Angel/Angelus, but Holtz' prevading bitterness stopped him being good very quickly. He may have been 'good' when he was wronged, but their was a speedy deterioration.

-Angelus' assaults on Wesley using both Faith and his Father show excellent cross-show continuity, as well as that Angelus/Wesley scene being for me one of the most compelling scenes of acting on the series, with the ever-improving Boreanaz almost matching the stellar Denisof. Loved this episode. Some thoughts on Calvary later today or tomorrow.

In my rush to a mindless gimmick yesterday, I missed out a couple of points I'd been meaning to include on 'Soulless'. Here they are:

-The consummation of the Fred-Wesley-Gunn triangle is physical on each side. Fred and Gunn hug when they are re-united, Wes and Fred kiss, and Gunn and Wesley come ot blows. This couldn't stretch much further, as exhibited in 'Calvary'.

-There's the 'Angel knows me' line form 'Heartthrob', which appears to be a quite beautiful moment in Cordelia's re-integration to AI, but actually turns out to be anything but in the pursuing episodes.

-Angelus is concerned about Angel's 'requisite phallic imagery' in his dream- the crowing of an Evil Alter-Ego about its good side's imposed sexual repression, and another example of implications of truth leading to false conclusions, the heart of the assertion that Angelus 'lies with the truth.'

4.12- 'Calvary'

Full of action, but not such a good effort from the assortment of writers, at least in my opinion. All sorts of things are going on, but the pacing is a little off and the characterisation has moments of creakiness.

A lot of the interest in this episode derives from the long, confused chain of intimacies which was carefully set up by the end of 'Supersymmetry', ie Lilah-Wesley-Fred-Gunn. In this episode, every single one of those chains is systematically broken, by a combination of Angelus' penchant for revealing uncomfortable truths, Cordelia's treachery and a lack of trust on all sides.

-Gunn/Fred. Ever since 'Supersymmetry', the enforced restraint that Gunn exhibited on Fred's actions has been gnawing away at the relationship. To complicate this, there is the almost overheard scene of Fred and Wesley kissing. It's been a difficult time for a relationship which started out as a bit of a surprise, but which had grown to a surprising strength and assurance over the summer, with the proto-child Connor. Wesley's return, however, coupled with Gunn's eternal insecurity about being inferior, and Fred'stendeny not to confront her emotions, leads to the break-up. It's an insidious process which seems almost imperceptible yet slowly grows. Gunn, while neither inferior nor treated as inferior by everyone, still has qualms about being 'the muscle', 'the side-kick', or, on a more implicit level, the token black guy. Fred's history incorporates her never-expressed but obvious initial love for the saving Champion Angel, and then the repeated inability to honestly decide between Wesley and Gunn, even if she appeared to have already chosen an option. In these circumstances, the frequent pressures of LA get to them. Fred-Wesley. This relationship is tempered by a lack of emotional honesty on Wesley's part- and the scheming mind of Angelus. Fred is easily torn away by the revelation that Wesley has been sleeping with Lilah. Wesley, like Fred, while never making any concerted or coherent claim to Fred, has never denied his fascination. But Fred's revulsion over his attraction to Lilah harms the relaitonship, for the time being at least.

Wesley-Lilah. A 'relationship'/tryst which broke up when Wesley chose his side, the Englishman still felt it necessary to save her from the Beast in 'Habeas Corpses'. Here the relationship is put a permanent stop to by Evil!Cordelia.

Or is she? What on earth's going on? I'm going to stick to my guns here and not speculate because something very strange is happening. In the light of the end of 'Salvage', it is very tempting for me to correlate Cordelia's pregnancy, (via Connor, The Destroyer) with her apparent power, despite Connor's apparent ignorance on the subject. In any case, her killing of Lilah appears to be proof at least of the fact that she is not the Cordelia of Season Three, and that something over the Summer changed her more than just emotionally as a person.

This was a relatively arc-y episode, with the general whodunnit style of the lost soul implicating all sorts of people. Eventually, from the final scene of the episode, it becomes fairly certain that Cordelia is to blame, but throughout there are others in the picture. Could it be Wesley, whose tendency to self-isolate as leader madkes hime want to take matters into his own hands, 'Loyalty' style. Or Connor, the loose cannon who would like to kill the simply evil Angelus to avoid the moral ambiguity of having the probably good Angel as his Father. Or of course, Lilah, who immediately disavows the scenario but continually appears to make know claims for servants but her own- an anarchist a little like Angelus himself.

Another beautiful little bit of directing at the beginning of the Gunn/Fred break-up scene- we see the space taking the middle of the camera shot, and only half of the figures of Acker and Richards. Not only is there distance, but these two don't understand each other perfectly any more, they see only some of the other's intentions.

The big mystery, aside from the nice artistry of Angelus' escape, (which of course had me fooled, but then how was I to know Cordelia was evil?!), was why he likes Bacharach, as mentioned by cjl below? 'Why do birds suddenly appear/Evey time you are near?' All I can say is that were I a bird, I'd find any where more comfortable than near Angelus. Don't the goldfish community interact with their sparrow counterparts?

The real big mystery is why the song itself the beautiful 'Raindrops' comes across to Lorne as being pure Angel. Assuming he can tell who Angelus is from the singing, there's some foul play going. Oh, and in a slight hangover from the whole bingo thing, let me over-analyse for a second. Lines in 'Raindrops' include:

So I just did me some talking to the sun
And I said I didn't like the way he got things done
Sleeping on the job

Kind of ironic, considering. And more relevantly for Angelus, the conclusion:

Because I'm free
Nothing's worrying me'

Which becomes ominously truthful quickly.

Average episode. But enjoyed some of the delicately woven interplay between the characters. It is Angelus' ability to exploit the factions which come from the split loyalties summarised above that has been his abiding skill in these two episodes, and what makes him such a fascinating character. But even he was outshone by the return of a certain brunette in 'Salvage', coming soon...