For Mary, Mother of our Lord,
God's holy Name be praised,
Who first the Son of God adored
As on her Child she gazed.
Brave, holy virgin, she believed,
Though hard the task assigned,
And by the Holy Ghost conceived
The Savior of mankind.
She gave her body as God's shrine
Her heart to piercing pain;
She knew the cost of love divine
When Jesus Christ was slain.
Dear Mary, from your lowliness
And home in Galilee
There comes a joy and holiness
To every family.
Hail, Mary; you are full of grace,
Above all women blest;
And blest your Son, Whom your embrace
In birth and death confessed.

Joss' final episode: and we get from this atheist an episode bulging with so many religious allusions that it could have been a book of the Bible, (a particularly funny one). It's also a rather Greenwaltian episode- there are themes running through it, but they're developed in a rather scattershot manner, and the coalescing that takes place in the viewer's head is closer to free association than structural perfection. So this is neither Joss' highest concept episode nor the best plotted, nor the one with the clearest message. It's not the best episode of the Season for me, but it does raise more questions about life than any other; it leaves me teasing out contradictions in philosophy and religion that had never worried me up until this morning. That's one of Joss' gifts I think.

We start and finish the episode on Fred. Initially, we're watching the eighteen year-old Southerner off to LA - before all the nightmares and pain start to catch up with her. There's the pointed line from Fred's Father that she might find 'an Angel'. And strangely enough, eventually, after a period in which it's not clear whether she's just a physical commodity, just another cow to the slaughter, she does find her saviour. He tells her and advises her as to what she is about to become. But by 'Fredless', she has the opportunity to shirk her new conditions and the growing Good of Angel Investigations, and go home with her parents. She decides to stay, embracing her destiny wholeheartedly. And so throughout the next two years, she grows, finding out what it is to be a servant of the Powers that Be, and attracting respect from her colleagues. Eventually, and after various confusions and complications, Wesley comes to her as her lover, beginning to understand how she is a strong, independent woman, not needing to be coddled and, in Wesley's opinion much greater than he himself.

But Fred is taken ill, and confined to bed with worsening pain. She wakes up to find herself surrounded by men - all with her interests and the interests of her illness at heart. The shot with the six men, Wesley, Spike, Angel, Knox, Gunn and Lorne, is extraordinary.

Fred's suffering increases, until, almost with the demon Illyria talking through her, she proclaims to her Joseph, her Simon Peter, 'You Will Leave Me'. Wesley doesn't, and no cock crows. By the end of the episode, Fred has confusedly given everything, without understanding the whole of what is going on, to the demon Ilyria, who inhabits her own body.

With the rather heavy hint in the opening hymn, I hope it's obvious how much of Mary I saw in Fred in this episode. It's not a straight transference - and it's also commenting on two other strong women who gave birth in previous Angel Seasons- Darla and Cordelia, the latter giving birth to a demiurge. But the pain and the suffering that Fred must go through here reminded me of some Gothic nativity- the only way that an unspeakably old dormant power can be raised back to life is through the impregnation of some woman. Which leaves Knox as the Holy Spirit, oddly.

But the religious imagery in this episode, and the casual allusions, are laced through with such vigour and repetition that it is clear Whedon is thinking deeply about what it is to believe. Here are just a few of the moments that support the central tableau:

Way back in the teaser we get Fred casually using the phrase 'hell'. Such apparently gentle oaths go by with barely a thought in most conversations nowadays, but Joss uses the sense of propriety of the South to start up his theme- Hell is a dangerous place to evoke, Los Angeles might be a kind of Hell for his daughter, and such comparison is not to be taken lightly. Then, with the utter genius only accomplishable by a writer-director, Joss cuts to Fred and Wesley with the fire burning beautiful as a background to their ephemeral happiness. It's worth noting that this incarnation of Wesley, (who will later shoot a man with no provocation other than unrelated grief), is the kind of man Fred's father might well have expected him to find.

Wolfram and Hart is called the 'House of Pain' in the first act. This to me conjures allusions of the punishment of sins in Catholicism at its most vicious. Beyond this, we're later to have the slow gradation until Fred calls it the 'House of Death' in the third act. It's not a co-incidence, and the recognition that this death is an inevitable feature of a world with only the Trickster Creator's hobson's choices as options.

-At the end of the second act, Lorne tells the assembled group that he is going to pray, and Wesley thanks him for it. We've seen little indication of Lorne as a spiritual man before, so this has the double function of underlining the desperation of the situation, and once again bringing the question of the usefulness of religion into the show.

-Standing against this is Spike's promise: 'Not this girl. Not this day.' The form of words is a not-too-definite parallel to Aragorn's speech in 'The Return of the King', where he tells the assembled troops "A day may come, when the courage of men fails. When we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day." This is an apposite subtext for the episode, where six very different, very similarly motivated men all fight for Fred's best interest.

-In Fred's world, there is a rather different idea of how the Universe runs. Her bunny Feigenbaum is named after the man who discovered the chaotic fractals that would have interested her so much. But the very epitome of that chaos is in her confused, over-wrought mind by the time of her illness. She can no longer remember who Feigenbaum is. This little detail for me called back the brilliant 'Citizen Kane'. Later generations can never fully understand him because Orson Welles' journalist never finds out the meaning of the word 'Rosebud'. Finally beaten, he is consoled by a friend of Kane that she is probably just another of the girls he knew. Then the audience only sees his sled being burnt away. The key to his life, that kernel of innocent joy, is lost. Here, do we see Fred's belief that the world is chaos in a similar light? As a rather innocent, delightful way of seeing it all, when contrasted to the heavily religously influenced ideas of many of the other characters. And is this Season, spiralling as ever towards questions of love, redemption and sacrifice, ultimately going to forget the joy that Fred stood for in the scramble towards its religious motif? Seven episodes to go...

-If Fred is Mary, there are also elements of the Messianic about her in the episode, perhaps rather more clearly. Although I like to see the six men gathered round the bed as a representation of the Wise Men, the Shepherds and Joseph helpign Mary in the stable, there's also the indisputable idea of them as disciples, trying to save someone in whom all six have encapsulated something ratehr special of themselves. At times, the idea of saving Fred seems to be even bigger in their psyche than the idea of losing her as a person only, not just a paradigm or a paragon. In this light, Knox' explanation of why he chose Fred to be imbued with Illyria acts as an explanation of the almost religious devotion with which Angel, Spike, Gunn and Lorne all go about their duty. Its motive is correct, but are their some slightly unsavoury aspects to the way in which it has shown itself?

-Eventually, we see Spike standing over the Deeping-Well (Deeping-Wall reference, as I suspect Whedon isn't the smallest Tolkien fan), that goes all the way through the world. It's a striking visual image, but what does it symbolise? In my reading, more than one thing. Most obviously, of course, it symbolises the loss that Fred's inaction and eventual death will leave in the team. But since Fred does not die until the final scene of the episode, it must do something else. And for me, the whole is the religion that Whedon can't find. He lives in a world full to the gunnels with religious faith, zealotry and extra-ordinary belief. The belief of Lorne praying, the blind, crazy belief of Knox, the fundamentalist believer in the Old Ones, who will crazily consider Fred's (unknowing)opportunity to sacrifice herself for a Goda privilege. The belief of the Drogyn, who must watch over the Gods, speaking only the truth about what he feels and sees; a pure unadulterated faith. Even the somewhat cloudier faith of both Angel and Spike, holding hands together, and with Angel proclaiming 'Two of these right here', to the Drogyn's mention of a champion. They have a certain belief in their Destiny, in the Powers that Be and their pattern of existence. But Joss is with Feigenbaum- there's a hole in his world here, where everyone else has faith. For him, and for this episode as a consequence, there's not one big, redemptive statement - no one line that lets us off Fred's death. There's just this whole in the world - an honest and painful one, where for us there are no Old Ones, only an idea of slipping through to New Zealand, out the other side and becoming just like the predator on 'Serenity', the lion with a mighty roar, spinning as an Object in Space.

Foreshadowing, and other games:

-'Cross my heart...' Fred ends the scene with her parents. Her life isn't dull, and the 'Hope to die' which she omitted becomes horribly painful.

-Knox' sarcophagus, placed in the teaser, bears no little relation to the tomb of Acathla unearthed in 'Becoming, Part One'. That discovery leads to the death of the one who first opens it, Angelus as Angel. Fred's exploration also leads to her eventual death.

-The Gunn and Wesley scene is delightful. Gunn plays not only on Wesley's insecurity, but on the audience's wariness about Fred's relationships because of both the mind-wipe and the slightly arbitrary feeling of the Knox, Wes triangle this Season. Joss always enjoys playing with anything that could be perceived as a shortcoming in his show's storytelling.

-'Let's not be hasty' is a Treebeard shout-out I think. Or maybe I started getting paranoid after all the other Lord of the Rings type mentions.

-The two Gunns is a fascinating scene which I still haven't fully grasped. We're certainly meant to be thinking about Gunn's leap of faith in being super-endowed with knowledge (and hence Gilbert and Sullivan, for which, thanks Joss), and how he perceives himself as an ally of the conduit (if not a 'friend'). But ow does this mocking other Gunn want to make him feel? Like he's still really just the street-fighter muscle that he never was in the first place? Like he's living a lie, just a called up visage that Wolfram and Hart put on their lackey, no more than a panther mask?

-And oh, the fun of calling back old episodes. Eve's couple of lines of song come from Lindsey's marvellous performance back in 'Dead End'. A re-affirmation of Eve's alliance with said ex-lawyer, but also a parallel of how lost Lindsey was then to how lost she feels now.

-Illyria. I suspect this has been said before, but Illyria is a land where, after the initial storm, we're thinking all about how other people perceive our appearance, and about how we might actually just be others in disguise. We think that the brother that the sister plays in disguise is dead, but in fact he's there all along. And no-one speaks the Drogyn's unwavering truth- it's all about second guessing what people really think. A mission statement for the rest of the Season?

-Lorne gets 'Life of the Party' angry, and gives that episode one more reason for existing [so that's one then]. It's moving to see how attached this reflection character is to her, and suggests how much Whedon llikes writing for her.

-St Petersburg. I wonder whether the two of them had an opportunity to meet up with Anya. -Fred of course, will not be seen as the damsel in distress by Wesley or anyone else. In fact, she's misdiagnosed the role she's been fit into by Knox, the suffering female martyr.

-Fred's death is, like all well-plotted deaths, more than one person's fault. It could be said to be Knox'. But then, it wouldn't have been so easy for him if Gunn hadn't signed the customs letter. And what's the likelihood Gunn was signing it on behalf of Angel. The blame thickens.

-There's some genuinely beautiful directing from Joss here- I think his writing has hit its peak, but his direction is still improving. Here, Wesley and Fred framed in the half-light near Fred's window, then cuts to another exquisite piece of film making, as we see Angel and Spike in the twisty fairytale wood of The Little Princess and of Fred's fate.

It's a sad episode, but it's so rich and complex that I don't think it's blubber material, for me at least. This isn't at all the type of episode I was expecting for Joss' last outing, but having received it, I'm glad he wrote it. It dwells on philosophy almost as its main aim, with the characters just twisting around it, and every joke and jab used as fodder for the discussion. This is a prime exhibit for the first two quotes on the top of the board, by Marsters and Whedon. You have to sit forward and think about this episode, and there's philosophy and symbolism just aching to get out.

We're left with the shell of Fred in Illyria. The 'Shells' review follows later today.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

TCH