Hello everyone.

Excuse me while I adjust back to the condition in which Angel is the typeface of my life. Here's some verses to pass the time:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:? Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Shelley's 'Ozymandias', which still casts a Sphinx like shadow over history. I always find it interesting that it's a sonnet - a love poem from Shelley to time, and from Ozymandias to himself.

5.16- 'Shells'

Well, Gah. Will that do for a review. I ought to complain a little bit first. From the somewhat surprising 'Previously' onwards, it was obvious that Whedon and DeKnight had treated 'Shells' and the previous episode as a double-bill. For example, the framing device on the two episodes don't work perfectly when seen in isolation; writing the 5.15 review I was puzzled as to how the family fit into the momentum of the plot. But as one piece of work, with Fred ending up driving off to be met by LA, Pylea and the Hyperion, it fits together perfectly. What's more, 'Shells' is rather surprisingly the stronger half of the piece, (marginally), and the acting in this one at times hits the 'not suitable for network television' level. Like when Wesley, the always-repressed, almost, almost breaks down. If Alexis Denisof doesn't get an Emmy, it will be entirely predictable but no less unjust for being routine. J August Richards was also wonderful here, and Marsters nailed the scene where he decided to stay in Los Angeles. The thinning reason for his presence is now dispelled.

Here's a pattern I noticed before starting on the specifics of the episodes:

Season One Finale

Hero discovers Destiny, and starts to re-concile themselves to it.

2.1

The ghosts of the previous finale crop up once again

2.22

The Hero must deal with the death of their one true love - a death they feel they could have averted

Season Three

In a Season about Duty and how it fits in with fulfilment in relationships, the Hero evenutally vanquishes a somewhat ambiguous villain who reflects many of their problems.

Season Four

Coping with the loss of several luminaries, the Hero adjusts to a new set of challenges while becoming increasingly isolated from closest friends.

4.21

The Hero defeats a villain who has a childlike innocence and curiosity about how they work, but is nevertheless causing great danger, in a big battle scene.

4.22 An extraordinary piece of television, which focusses not on pure plot but on the desire of the Hero and the aspects of psyche inherent in friends. The episode redefines the show's boundaries.

5.16 An episode based on the recovery from the death of a loved one.

5.22 The Hero, world-weary and doing the right thing, dies to save the World.

You tell me which series I'm talking about. [It's only when I checked and noticed that 'The Body' was 5.16 that it started occuring to me what remarkably similar trajectories the shows had taken, though staggered by three years, and even while Angel is a fundamentally different, darker show. So the question is, can and will Whedon kill off Angel in the finale?

I'm not sure I could take that much heart-ache - this was easily enough.

We start in the teaser with Wesley's nihilistic worldview, in an explanation to Illyria. It's incredibly hard to tell how much he believes everything he says at this point- and indeed how true Whedon or DeKnight beleive the sentiment to be. It reminds me a little of Macbeth's 'She would have died hereafter' speech, mid-way through Act Five of his play - a beautiful speech, but claiming that life is useless, ugly and pointless. Wesley acts with the same kind of controlled anarchism in this episode that he did towards the end of Season Three, and many of the same dilemmas, albeit ones that most of the cast can't remember, are being set up again in slightly different ways.

This episode, much as 'Forever' did for 'The Body' and Joyce, shows how the characters accept that Fred cannot come back. I'm still not convinced, since the demon is named Illyria, that this is actually true, but this revelation must wait until the end of the Season. For now, we see Angel and Spike claiming that 'Death doesn't have to be the end', and then the episode gives them Dawn and Buffy's heart-breaking wondrous epiphany that Joyce is really gone, and that she won't be back. It is important that Illyria has consumed Fred, and not only in a physical but in a rather intangible, spiritual sense as well. And I think it's this total consummation that gives the first hint that Illyria might not be a Big Bad who is totally evil throughout. It suggests that the line is blurrier, and the black is smudged with blue streaks.

Another theme that has run through from the previous episode is about blame. It widens until it has enveloped every member of the cast, (except perhaps the self-involved Harmony). If Lorne had accurately read Knox' religious fervour, he would have been expelled. If Angel had been more emotional and less utilitarian, ('Peace Out' buzzer ringing somewhere in the ether), then he could have saved Fred at a bit of a price. And Gunn's fault deepens- it was his selfish desire to consolidate the him he felt himself becoming, (a false him, and one that does not hold the only remedy to his Just The Muscle fixation), that led directly to the sarcophagus entering Wolfram and Hart.

Now Gunn has the potential of going on the arc that Wesley did at the end of Season Three- not really to blame for something that so shatters someone's universe that they can never forgive them for their slight culpability. The fact that there are now only six episodes until a kind of resolution needs to be reached probably means that the story will have to be a little simpler, and have some kind of splice in it to speed up the ending. But we'll see.

It looks to start with as if the whole gang is going to be fixated on vengeance. Angel wants to bring Fred back, but also punish the people involved in Fred's endangerment. And yet later, there's a slight reverse: Angel, going into the style that characterised his 'Deep Down' and 'Epiphany' speeches, explains to Illyria how he would save Knox because of his (residual) humanity. And then Wesley shoots Wes, the triumph of humanity is subverted by the enormity of grief, and the plot thickens to a wholesome stew.

Lumps of potato in the casserole:

-Angel is brought to me by GAP, I was delighted to be told. After 'The Hole in the World', it seemed oddly appropriate.

-There's a conscious echo of the First Evil in the assertion that Illyria is 'beyond flesh'. And yet, despite her powers, she isn't, and eventually she turns out to be more connecting and human than the Evil Paradigm ever was. That is another reason why this was a wonderful episode - it flouted convention and expectation all over the place.

-She was curious. I hate her a little for that. The blame goes on the victim as Wesley clears all his emotions out into the air. To Harmony. And what's beautifuller, instead of stepping all over it, Harmony manages her first wise, comforting words outside 'Harm's Way'. Growth from an unexpected source in the face of tragedy.

-Wesley's very calm explanation to Gunn of why he can't forgive him mirrors Angel's to Wesley himself in 'Forgiving'. We wonder whether Angel is so big that he might spare Wesley his wrath, as has been building all episode. And he calmly explains how there is no trace of Angelus in his actions, and then attempts to smother him. Here we get the same, although the blind rage has just enough of an eye open to 'avoid the major organs'. Whether that was luck rather than judgement remains a question.

--Harmony's vapidity becomes a plot point due to her intimate knowledge of mobile phones. That was unfair on mobile phone owners, but as the last of a renegade dying breed, I felt I needed to say it. I'm neither big nor clever, and I realise this.

-Spike's 'It's What I want' speech is just lovely. He's just starting to weaken on his love for Angel, although he still won't even admit that he will ever like him. One of ME's writers claimed that Angel-Spike was the love story of the Season. I start to see their point.

-The almost final parallel is where we see Illyria, with her Ozymandias Kingdom just rubble, and compare it to the deserted castle with the biting wind of Wesley's life, laid waste by Knox' misplaced belief. Yet another marvellous moment.

-Rosebud! As Wesley packs Fred's things away, he finds Feigenbaum, but of course has no idea that it is what Fred was talking about. So the parallel plays out.

-I was a bit surprised by the Buffyesque song motage, but I think it pulled it off because it was a good enough song, a strong enough resolution, had words about Home, and wasn't about the bleak loneliness of Angel's cello, but a loss of interaction with a real friend. YMMV.

And acronyming of mileages, we end with Fred the open road ahead of her. Except that it isn't. It was scary then, but it was full of the possibilities life can bring. In the real time-line, those possibilities have been smudged out. I wonder whether Illyria might become Fred totally by the end of the Season. For she now has the same learning curve to climb as Fred, under the tutelage of the same Wesley. That would be a beautiful ode to consolation, the upside of the end of Animal Farm.

But those issues are for April, as I catch up with you during a Season for the first time ever, (for which thanks aliera).

For now, I grieve Fred, and this show. If either of them are really gone...

If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring, is livin' there, I hear
Say for me that I'm all right though things get kind of slow
She might think that I've forgotten her, don't tell her it isn't so.
We had a falling-out, like lovers often will
And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill
And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me, we've never been apart.
If you get close to her, kiss her once for me
I always have respected her for busting out and gettin' free
Oh, whatever makes her happy, I won't stand in the way
Though the bitter taste still lingers on from the night I tried to make her stay.
I see a lot of people as I make the rounds
And I hear her name here and there as I go from town to town
And I've never gotten used to it, I've just learned to turn it off
Either I'm too sensitive or else I'm gettin' soft.
Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast
If she's passin' back this way, I'm not that hard to find
Tell her she can look me up if she's got the time.

TCH