Hello, everyone. Somewhat underwhelmed by 'Get It Done', loved 'Storyteller', but somewhat worried about the fact that I find it so much easier to slip into the side-lined characters' thought processes (Andrew, Dawn, Anya) than the ostensibly main characters (Buffy, Spike, Wood). There's something of a thematic vacuum going on in the middle of the season, making it feel a bit too like a ring doughnut for my liking. Next for me, the infamous 'Lies My Parents Told Me'.

Sorry, I'm forgetting my manners. Here's some poetry.

4.15- 'Orpheus'

Eurydice

Girls, I was dead and down
in the Underworld, a shade,
a shadow of my former self, nowhen.
It was a place where language stopped,
a black full stop, a black hole
Where the words had to come to an end.
And end they did there,
last words,
famous or not.
It suited me down to the ground.

Girls, forget what you've read.
It happened like this-
I did everything in my power
to make him look back.
What did I have to do, I said,
to make him see we were through?
I was dead. Deceased.
I was Resting in Peace. Passe. Late.
Past my sell-by date...
I stretched out my hand
to touch him once
on the back of the neck.
Please let me stay.
But laready the light had saddened from purple to grey.

It was an uphill schlep
from death to life
and with every step
I willed him to turn.
I was thinking of filching the poem
out of his cloak,
when inspiration finally struck.
I stopped, thrilled.
He was a yeard in front.
My voice shook when I spoke-
Orpheus, your poem's a masterpiece.
I'd love to hear it again...

The dead are so talented.
The living walk by the edge of a vast lake
near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

-Carol Ann Duffy, from her very, very funny collection, The World's Wife

Excuse that digression, but I can never resist bringing in some Duffy, given the opportunity. Here of course, the twist is that Eurydice didn't want to be saved, and that Orpheus loved her less than he loved himself- he was too closely related to Narcissus. In Angel's take on the myth, Orpheus' struggle is against himself, and both Faith and Angel play Orpheus and Eurydice, reiterating how the relationship has been rewarding and symbiotic ever since it hit our screens so powerfully in 'Consequences'.

This is probably an unnecessary re-statement, but in case anyone didn't know, I love Mere Smith as a writer- she's probably my favourite on Angel, with Tim Minear gone. Here she once again does extremely well. She also manages to bring in a good few literary references, almost as if jostling with Craft and Fain for that 'Soulless' crown, (I don't think she quite made it, but it was a good shot.) And at the outset, we reference one of the older episodes 'The Shroud of Rahmon', and also several films like 'Pulp Fiction' where we only see half of the narrative the first time round, and are made to wait to understand it all the second time round. In 'Release' we see Angelus biting Faith, but don't see either that Faith has already dosed herself, or Angelus' reaction immediately afterwards. ME tidily allow a cliffhanger to be nicely resolved in double quick time.

The result of Wesley's repeated testing of Faith, making sure that she is committed enough to risk anything for the mission of beating Angelus and returning Angel, is that she risks her own life. This is an ironic spin on the fact that Faith won't allow Wesley to be killed by Angelus in return for his re-ensoullment in 'Salvage'. It is not Wesley's life that Faith puts in jeopardy, but her own. Wesley's suggestions to her, while ingenious, are again exceedingly risky. That it works, we suspect, is more down to fortune than his good judgement. It is difficult to surmise, from the dense plot as it is, whether Wesley will some time get a comeuppance for his brutality and dedication to Good ends despite murky Means. Perhaps it will all end as an unexplored vista like Giles' murder of Ben in 'The Gift', but Wesley this Season has repeatedly used morally questionable methods to reach his results. Success has been relatively high. He retrieved Angel from under the sea in 'Deep Down', won more of Fred's heart in 'Supersymmetry', allowed Angelus to defeat the Beast in 'Salvage' and here returns Angel. But in each case there is a strong element of luck to his missions. His character's motivation and development continues to be one of the most inriguing on the show.

Before I alight upon the two fascinations of this episode, Angel and Willow, let me clear up a few of those references, internal and external.

-Internally, we have the same spell used for Angel's re-resurrection as in Becoming, with one minor alteration. The second part, spoken by Willow on both occasions on Buffy, was 'Not dead, nor not of the living/ Spirits of the interregnum I call' whereas here it is in Latin. But some nice continuity between shows once again.

-Also there's a nice shout-out to one of Greenberg's most memorable lines, from 'Smashed'
-How have you been?
-Rat. You?
-Dead
as we get the Cordelia/Willow spin:
Willow: How have you been?
Cordelia: Higher power. You?
Willow: Ultimate evil. But I got better.
Cordelia: You heard about Faith?
Willow: Coma again.

-Finally, there's the little metanarration (at least for me), on that section at the end of 'Doomed', where Spike is desperate to go out and fight demons, ostensibly 'for puppies. And Christmas!'. Here to Angelus' deep despair, Angel actually saves a puppy for his owner, before not biting her, as succulent as she no doubt looked.

Externally, we've got Ovid/Virgil stroke whoever, Dickens and a bit of Dylan Thomas

-Orpheus. All sorts of puzzles as to who is Orpheus and who is Eurydice, and no, I'm not letting them off with calling the drug 'Orpheus' because it leads you down to Hell, (which in any case wasn't really what Orpheus did.) My initial reaction was that it was Angel who became Orpheus, saving Faith from Hell, (this being Angelus' hell), and allowing her, through the 'pep talk' to understand why it was important that she go on living and not just give up, aware of her inability to fight on the side of good through Angelus' tauntings. It is clear how well the mind of Ang... knows Faith from the way that Angel, the beneficient is able to help her to understand herself and her life, while Angleus is so good at ripping her apart. When Faith sees Angel, the ensoulled Angel, who so much of her attempts at redemption are modelled on, biting the dead, shot man, she almost gives up. For if her model is so flawed, how does she have any opportunity of getting back from Hell? Of course, it was not just the soulfulness of Angel which allowed him to start his long journey to become 'a righteous man' but also the motivation of Whistler and Buffy. Angel tells Faith that now she has seen the very worst that he has done, and yet he is still living, still atoning, and she must too. Faith's reawakening is crucial both in the short and long term. In the short term, for beating the avenging, worried Connor. In the long term for Angel's figurehead project, the reform of Faith, still staying on track.

There are other Orpheuses too though. Faith is an Orpheus who drags Angel back into the frame, accompanying Angelus through his purgatory. Willow is an Orpheus, unsure of her power, and yet playing her part of luring Angel from the hell of being inside Angelus. And perhaps Connor is an Orpheus too, attempting to liberate his supposed Eurydice Cordelia from the fear of Angelus' attacks on their nascent family. Cordelia would be the Eurydice least understood, the closest to the Duffy poem above.

-Faith is allowed to be Marley, making Angelus Scrooge. Of course, Angelus sees his past, his present, in his sempiternal yet current struggle with Angel, and maybe just a hint at what is to come as Angel inspires Faith towards redemption, slowly recliaming the body in the dream as Willow invests the soul. Maybe that's a stretch. But remember that Scrooge is so affected by the dream, that, late on in his life, he re-evaluates just what Christmas, and life, means. Angel has had frequent epiphanies, including, remember, the one at Christmas, in 'Amends', and the one with his personal Jacob at the end of 'Judgement'. Intirguing parallels or just plain gibberish. You decide. -The most ironic and intriguing little reference was when Angelus said 'Faith go gently into that good night'. The night, in the Thomas poem is Death, and seems natural and beautiful. And yet Thomas instructs the reader to 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'. Accidentally, or with a hint of fatalism, Angelus uses a poem that encapsulates Angel'ls later message to Faith, that she should fight and live, for redemption, like vengeance, is a living thing.

-Oooh, and not a reference, but an exquisitely funny little line:
Faith: Angel, It's good to see you. Hate the hair.
Lovely stuff.

Enter Willow. I was disappointed that Willow's interaction with Faith was so minimal in this episode, because the struggle of the powerful character worried about the consequences of her power is so strong in both of them, but there's still time in Sunnydale, so I won't whine much. Most of the Willow stuff is just general expressions of delight, but here goes:

-The character synopses during Willow's 'yammer' are of the quality of another wonderful Mere Smith moment, the pastiche of Buffy/Angel by Cordelia and Wesley in 'Fredless'. It also reminded me of Andrew's wonderful speech about female empowerment, only to be cut down to size by Xander and told to talk about Star Trek again, and the really, really silly: 'There's a guy called Fred with a really effeminate voice, for Willow'. Here we get Connor's androgynousness (nasty word), Wesley's transformation and so on summed up extremely amusingly.

-I'm sure I'm not the only person who realised after this episode that they are a rabid Willow/Fred 'shipper. Several wonderful moments throughout. Almost made me doubt my affection for Kennedy...;-) That line from Willow 'I'm seeing someone' was heart-breaking, in an irrelevant, off-set kinda way.

-The Cordelia interaction was interesting. There seems to be a little more residual feeling there than might have been expected, on both counts, although Cordelia's 'Basic Instinct'-y knife, (I only caught the end, honest), rather undercut the whole scene.

-There's the conversation between Wesley and Willow, which, besides the 'Oooh, they're married really!' thought, worked really well. For me, it actually made me consider how Wesley handled his beige period post-Loyalty, and how he is still handling it. It is made quite clear here how Willow's crossing into evil was much deeper than Wesley's, and yet, while Willow is in many senses recovering, Wesley seems to be irreparably altered. Perhaps Wesley, who of course didn't have Xander's shoulder to cry on or Buffy's strength to take, has brooded and isolated so much more than Willow that his recovery is still several more steps down the line than Willow's is. I would not expect to see a parallel to the 'That was nifty' scene by 'Home' for Wesley.

Miscellaneously:

-Angel/Angelus. Despite Angel's continuing difficulty with taking responsibility for his dark, chocolate-y Angelus centre, there are all sorts of insinuations by Angelus in this episode that are hard to brush away. That Angelus is lurking under Angel's outer persona, waiting to come out. Were there elements of Angelus leaking out in his decision at the end of 'Reunion'? Or was it, as Darla postulated, neither Angel nor Angelus? And how much of the pent up rage in 'Forgiving' was Angelus, the demon inside? Of course, the emotional response was the entirely human one, that of rage in losing his son. But does Angelus' visage pop out even while the soul is connected to Angel's body?

-'Sometimes one death can spare infinite pain' says Cordelia, playing Connor like a banjo. It's an interesting speech, and an interesting point. Stephen Fry wrote a book called 'Making History' where someone was able to rid Hitler from the world. Yet Hitler's treachery and hatred in the First World War killed off an even greater, more charismatic threat, who prolonged and expanded the Reich's influence and who's empire lived for a hundred years. Fiddling with history is not easy, and, as attested here, neither is fiddling with life or death. It's not a balance of scales, as Buffy tells Faith at the end of 'Bad Girls'. Connor, impulsive, trigger-happy, was ready to kill Angelus. Someone really needs to teach him how to play chess or something. He's far too isolated for his own good.

Maybe we should invite him to the Book Melee...

-The ending is pretty much your classic 'revelation to character not audience' moment, and the fall-out starts to be dealt with in the next episode.

-A little Sisyphean resonance from Faith, in a Greek heavy season. 'Faith: (laughs) You know what the definition of "Insanity" is, baby? Performing the same task over and over and expecting different results. Learned that in murder rehab.'

Thanks to cityofangel for all the quotes here.

I'm entirely aware that Honorificus (Ave, Ave)has covered this episode recently, and realise that there's probably not much that I, snivelling mortal that I am, can add to the Most Extravagant and Well-Dressed one's illustrious oeuvre. So you may want to give up now.

4.16- 'Players'

There have been a lot of co-written episodes in this Season of Angel, but they've on the whole been no worse than your average, so I'm not complaining. This is another one, shared between Jeffrey Bell and CraftandFain, the inseparable and superlative duo. This episode is rather nostalgic for me. It felt like something fomr Season One, or perhaps early Season Three, but it largely left the hurtling, dizzying plot that was going on before, and let us take a breath or two. Also, it allowed us to see the denouement, (or a denouement) in the battle of Gunn's identity, which has been running through this Season from his uncomfortable Father to Connor, through the Alpha Male comments, then the 'side-kick' and 'muscle' moments, through to his almost-irrelevance through the Angelus arc.

There's some nice, quiet, one-off plotting here, which calmed me down a bit. While I love the high-octane motor that Season Four has to it as a whole, Gunn's description of it as 'turgid supernatural soap opera' did raise a wry smile to my lips. It has been incestuous and extremely tightly focussed on the Hyperion, without the trips out to Kate and W+H and one-off monsters that we had before. The very feeling of the episode as a release is supposed to mirror Gunn's feelings, which are told not shown rather too many times for my liking, that he's enjoying doing something unambiguously Good. As soon as anyone labels any action in Angel that though, it becomes manifestly clear that it's not that simple, and in this case, Gwen constructs an elaborate smokescreen for her own self-motivated mission. In the end, however, Gunn is ablke to be honest with himself, and to realise that it's not just fighting for Good that he hankers after, (although that is an element), but also the attention that Gwen is able to give him, the way in which he can, through being intelligent and not just the muscle, get them into the private party. When Gunn is an important, turning cog, feeling validated but not dominated, he becomes a happy man. This is an important template for us all, and this episode allowed me to relate to Gunn, his anxieties and ambitions as much as any since 'That Old Gang of Mine'.

Meanwhile, there's Gwen, and her story in 'Ground State' was a moving one, particularly for me in that faded sepia of the 1980's flashback with the burnt out toy car. Gwen's freakishness, her uniqueness and her inability to connect as a result, is finally nullified. Whereas Buffy's Slayerness is ultimately something she integrates into herself, a metaphor for the struggles of life, and something which represents empowerment, which can be shared with others, Gwen's electricity is completely different. Because it disables her from touching, from ever knowing intimacy of any kind. While Angel shows Gwen that her extraordinary-ness is not an excuse to live outside human morality in 'Ground State', it does not alter the fact that her life is made unique and lonely by her Gift, her Curse, so that a thief becomes a natural option: 'in society and yet not'. So the final scene, where she becomes 'normal', I found touching. There's a delightful change from the sassy, sexualised, almost threateningly confident yet alone Gwen we see walk through the restaurant at the beginning of the Season, to the naive, inexperienced Gwen who we see with Gunn at the end of 'Players' almost afraid, even now her physical defence barrier is gone, to let down her emotional barrier. What this relationship means to the amorphous lack of relationships between Fred, Wes and Gunn now is anyone's guess. The almost reconciliation of Gunn and Fred in 'Release' appears to be invalidated. Fred has started to accept Wesley's tryst with Lilah, but still finds it hard to accept that he accepted her as a person, not just as a body or a representation of his inner darkness. It will be interesting to see how this quartet (Gunn, Gwen, Fred, Wesley) play out towards the end of the Season. Coming to a head more currently is the Cordelia/Connor relationship. It is starting to become clear just how horrible the manipulation of Connor is by Cordelia here. While Angel is Angelus, she is his only confidant, and when that is torn away from him, as it surely will be soon, he's going to be left in complete despair. leslie commented on Connor's complete lack of a sense of humour, and this makes him unique as a Buffyverse character- all other regulars have had one of one sort or another. He has had nowhere to learn it from- coming from the bleakness of Quortoth and the stoicism of Holtz, but it marks him out as somehow a little joyless, happy only in the mission, with excitememnt only in the kill. And it's desperately sad, because underneath the bile pops out a normal teenager, craving identification, a place ot fit in the jigsaw puzzle of this turgid soap opera, seeking only to connect.

-'Everything happens for a reason.' Yet surely the idea of a deterministic universe, or one where we are 'The stars' tennis balls' doesn't mean that we should have total faith, totally give in, to someone in all situations. Cordelia's speech is chock-full of false platitudes, which Connor, desperate for some sense in this apparently meaningless universe, is bound to cling on to.

-And finally, how nice to hear Lorne singing, and happy. It's nice to see him cheerier, and also to see Andy Hallett in the opening credits. If only they would devote an episode or some of an episode to him, so that he could be as useful and interesting as he was in earlier Seasons and in 'Spin the Bottle'. Like Gunn up to this episode, he has been a touch neglected in the maelstrom of returning Angelus and with the addition of Faith and Willow. Hopefully soon we can see a little more, but the resolution of this Season of startling twists is only six episodes away, and frankly the metaphorical lie down after this Season is going to be nice for me. Any more twists and turns and I'd look like that twizzly pasta.

Totally average episode, and I loved it for that. The quality of mundane-ness.

'Inside Out' and 'Shiny Happy People' coming in the next few days, along with a brief penny for the ceaselessly dangerous well that is 'Lies My Parents Told Me' discussion. Thanks for reading.