Hello everyone.

4.20-'Sacrifice'

The first lesson is taken from the Gospel according to St Mark

And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the land of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains; Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.

And always, night and day, he went into the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stnoes. But when he saw Jesus far off, he ran off and worshipped him. And he cried in a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is ty name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea. And they went out to see what it was that was done.

Oooh, and in true Buffy tradition- Here endeth the lesson.

-Mark 5:1-14 [actually running on a little further than I'd planned- I keep getting drunk on the King James-ness of it all]

And in this episode, she possesses the swine. She can become the people, and speak through them. She becomes them. And like the devils (in classic Biblical style, 'about two thousand', we never get anything in half measures!) it is the aspect most germane to the people whom she possesses. Each swine gets a different devil, and each person becomes a different aspect of Jasmine- or at least can do, depending what their body is suited to- her voice, her eyes, her ears, or even her fists. Of course, as we might expect from devils, the swine don't end up in a cushy pig-pen in the suave end of Nazareth. Like the extreme disciples who (unknowingly?) put themselves up for devouring by Jasmine, so the swines throw themselves off a cliff, controlled by anything but a desire for self-preservation. Yet Jasmine gains power by being 'connected', an idea she repeats throughout 'The Magic Bullet'. It is a network of Jasmine. Jasmine is no longer simply housed by her body- her tendrils stretch further and further- until the Governor of California cedes his office. Now, truly, Jasmine's name is Legion, for she is many.

Alright, obscure literary tangent done. Here's some rather less perverse thoughts.

There are puzzles of all sorts of love going on in this episode. It's a nice meditation, broken up by some of Lorne's funniest lines in a while- and a very accomplished debut from Ben Edlund. Everything fitts together quite nicely- hitting on the general theme- the suggestion 'Love is Sacrifice'. This is the most powerful sentiment the excellently creepy polypod comes up with while talking to Wesley. And I think it's important that he doesn't rate language. He is less accomplished at explaining what he means, and this isn't a foreign language thing only. It's about the idea that language is over-rated in our universe, apparently. Bandying about names is dangerous- it may open ourselves to identification by others, and in doing so we may lose a part of ourselves. However the ethos works, he is much less articulate than Wesley, who, becoming the Watcher of old, outmanoeuvres him, getting him to give away more than he'd want to [hooray for ending sentences with prepositions]. Jasmine's name is what will, or may, defeat her. Acknowledging what she is- just like her blood. So while language is claimed to be over-rated in the other universe, it is actually extraordinarily powerful. How often is that true in our world? We dismiss something powerful because we want to deny its power over us.

And so with love, and so with devotion. Here we see Angel, having lost Cordelia, and deciding there is no other option than preparing to lose Connor as well, starting to close up inside. He's doing a similar thing to what Buffy decided she'd never do in 'The Gift', and what sent her catatonic in the previous episode- the idea of letting the most important person in the world to them die. Angel's situation is, as always, greyer. He has no reason to expect Connor to die from Jasmine, but he nevertheless knocks him unconscious. He denies his love- he tries to become the empty shell- explaining that 'Hearts get in the way.' I suspect that's not it at all. It's that hearts hurt too much, and again, Angel is on the verge of losing everything. Not only that love he never quite had with Cordelia, but the son he never quite had, and the job he never quite understood. It's like Job if Job had been Willy Loman. Just laugh politely and skip those sentences, I can't help them.

Hence we come, rather wonderfully, to Fred and Gunn. The way that Edlund links their dilemma into Angel's is pure Minear territory. We get an exceptionally truthful scene for the characters linked thematically to the idea of the episode. This is what I watch Angel for. Those moments where the story is so elegant and universal. Here, the conclusion is disturbing. For Gunn is worried about letting go, about doing what is ight. He is half-convinced to follow Angel's line. He is scared about Seidel. That this, an undercurrent in the season, is made explicit again exactly here is extraordinarily brilliant, in my humble opinion. And sweet, smiling, harmless Fred, speaks the controversial lines on which they end the scene. At least when 'they' killed Seidel they were feeling something. Not like leaving Cordelia- leaving Connor. There's something they did right in committing murder that they're getting wrong while abiding by every law. It's a moral so dark, so counter-intuitive that it takes considering. It wasn't right to kill the physicist, but it was right to let the heart haven some rein. To follow some emotions- to go on the instincts that Buffy has- that Gunn has, and which Angel has always been tempted to deny. He was attempting to re-engage with that heart- with Cordelia as a friend , alover, a confidante, and Connor, a son, a prot�g�, a mystery, until both were ripped from him. And he hurts, and, like so many other times in the previous two and a half centuries, he tries to go on.

It's not simple for Angel, he has Lady Macbeth hands. He finds it impossible to explain to the renegades just who the blood was from. The paradigm is too fresh in the mind of someone who has never had anything so beautiful- someone who, almost as much as Darla, has achieved nothing but Connor, or nothing if not Connor. That baby who Darla sacrificed in a transcendant act of love- trading the 'brief candle' of her own life for the tiny flicker, the spark of the new baby. Now Angel cannot quite do the same, but it's hurting him. 'Yet here's a spot'.

And what of Connor? Jasmine replaces Cordelia, but still plays respecting her- claiming that she wishes time with her Mother. In the melee (a non book one, obviously), I?ve entirely forgotten that Angel is Jasmine's grandfather, in some strange way. Isn't it amazing the glitterball possibilities of this universe, almost eleven seasons in? Darla in the first scene, the Master the first Big Bad. And this charismatic character is the Master's great-greatgrandchild, by a combination of vampiric and human reproduction. And so, in a sense, everything that has happened on both shows has conspired to bring us Jasmine.

In a sense, we are Connor, beholding the wonder that everything came together the way it did to produce that radiant Goddess. And yet we know she is Legion, and that her words are dangerous, and that the argument itself strengthens her position. Connor yields the pain Jasmine's grandfather gives him still, and surrenders to Jasmine, becoming her supreme minion. No longer just the son, but still the servant. The pain constant is extinguished, and yet we are left with the same hollow shell that Angel has. For Connor's love- although sacrifice of his whole life, omits emotion, allows him to believe that 'hearts get in the way', or even that his heart isn't in the way, because it is fully for Jasmine.

So is love sacrifice? Not only. It's love. Sacrifice is an element. But Angel's sacrifice of Connor, Connor's sacrifice of self, are not simply motivated by love, but by other ideas. It's dangerous to equate two words with different meanings. Loving is sacrificing self for other, and allowing oneself to be strong in return- the moon's radiance from the shining sun of the lover.

And the other puzzle is solved by Lorne. Words can have power, as he tells the crew in a supposedly light-hearted manner how he doesn't want to be insulted for his demon-ness. 'Sticks and stones' doesn't cover it. Words can have power. As Wesley realises, Lorne is the patient explaining authorial voice. Once again. That's why we always need him on 'Angel'. Well, that and Edlund, can really, really write for him.

So love's not quite sacrifice, and words do have power. And so finally, though a repetition of words, we get one of the strongest thoughts on love. Angel to his team: 'Someone who knows the truth has to live through this'. He sacrifices himself- not merely for love, but for his mission, and his isolation and for the Horatio clause, (sorry, Shakespeare on the mind). And so we get the same in reverse, and how much harder is it for Angel this way round? This time the others are sacrificing for him, and he for them in sacrificing his leadership role. And the choice, so hard, is repayed farcially, with the crab-like creatures seemingly indifferent between killing him, and, like the swine, knocking him off the precipice, the devil of 'love is sacrifice' intact in him. I make as few predictions as possible, but vaguely and thematically, either this attitude will lead to even bigger problems for Angel or will be resolved in the last two episodes. I would have wagered on the latter, but I've seen 'Tomorrow' and for that reason, these last two episodes could do pretty much anything they want- in my mind at least.

Well done Ben. I'm now free to scurry off and watch 'Peace Out'. I'm very excited about this, as a certain relation of mine once called it the Best. Episode. Ever. And The Cheerleadery One is rarely far wrong?

TCH

PS- a couple of hours later. It's not the Best Episode Ever! Review coming tomorrow-ish.