I Remember the words of the poet:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN? SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn."

See you soon.

-Joss Whedon

You can dye your hair
But it's the one thing you can't change
Can't run away from yourself.

-Pulp; 'Help the Aged'

Yes, you read that right. A masterpiece. Pretty near perfection...

5.20- 'The Girl In Question'

Well, OK. I had so many thoughts during this episode that I haven't written half of them down, and so now I have to recreate them from a computer keyboard and a load of illegible words. In this episode, for me, lies the key to Greenwalt's writing and direction through the whole series, Joss Whedon's ultimate message, (or at least, antepenultimate), and pure unadulterated love for the experiences they've had from Steve DeKnight and Drew Goddard. Let's face it- the episode was pointless. I loved it.

Scour all my writings for Greenwalt, and, if you don't encounter the word Lorne in the sentence, you're most likely to see my favourite word to describe him: scattershot. His writing technique is to mix in a load of irrelevant, hilarious nonsense, stir it all together, give it a resolution and call it a show. Here DeKnight and Goddard do the tiny necessary of actually writing the script, and Greenwalt takes the show in his usual bizarre direction. And here we find out why.

For how much of life is happening exactly where we ain't? In Brueghel's Icarus for example- that feeling of not being quite where the major story is- the feeling, as Kundera put it, that life is elsewhere. For Angel and Spike in this episode, that's it, exactly. Nothing happens. It's an hour of our lives we'll never get back, but didn't we enjoy spending it. Greenwalt puts the final QED on his style. He writes like this because this is what life is like- irrelevant distractions threatening to capsize the simple moral of life you thought you were holding onto. The scattershot man comes through with his own anarchic philosophy. I'll miss you David- thanks not only for this but for 'To Shanshu', 'Judgement', 'Dear Boy', 'There's no place...', 'Heartthrob', 'Sleep Tight', and 'Tomorrow'. And yes, I forgive you for 'She'.

Meanwhile, Whedon's message is- we're gonna have to move on eventually. But note how it isn't: 'It's time to move on, we're happy to move on, and we really didn't want to stay where we were anyway.' The final scene ends in Angel's office, with Angel and Spike, (certainly deKnight and Goddard, at least nominally), claiming they're going to move on, but actually just having one final stab 'The end of it all'. The writers, the audience and everyone, would like to turn the 'We don't care' switch, but ultimately care too much about Buffy and our show. And in doing so, they get exploded by bombs along the way.

So how does all this speculation on metanarrative themes play into the episode itself? How did I come up with this rubbish? Thusly:

-Notice the absent leads in this episode. There are three of them. Angel and Spike are like Vladimir and Estragon doing 'The Italian Job', while waiting for Buffy. In the A-plot, meanwhile, they're tip-toeing carefully round the ambition of the Immortal, while never seeing him on the screen. And back in Los Angeles, in our C-plot, we have Wesley and the Burkles trying to work out how to live without Fred. The Burkles have to do so since they're parents. All those melancholy sighs as they admit she's grown up and they can only call in every so often. For Wesley, the problem is both larger, haunting and magnified by Illyria's presence as Fred. For a second, we wonder whether he's finally revealed as being insane. He's finally given in to the comforting visions and the infinite solace of memories, [be they false or true ;-)]. In reality, Fred's visage is really there as Illyria. But Fred isn't. And Wesley's eventual decision to tell Illyria that she can't pretend to be Fred, that he'd rather see her as anything else, parallels Angel and Spike's loss of Buffy. So Illyria dyes her hair blue, and stays within herself.

-Crash, bang, and we're right into the middle of a scene. Rather than a haunting prelude, as piece of irrelevance or stage-setting, like the teaser often is, (although admittedly more often in 'Friends' than the smarter 'Angel), the first moments of this episode are straight into Gunn's quirky exposition. I almost wondered whether aliera had cut off the beginning of the episode, we are so confronted. And Greenwalt's at the helm (I'd like to know if he did an uncredited re-write on it), so we're going to get a mislead. It all seems very business-like and straight ahead, until it suddenly turns out that neither Angel nor Spike are much interested in the mission, they're more interested in Buffy. And with perhaps slightly too manipulative grace, we end the teaser on the disturbed Angel saying 'It's Buffy', an ironic echo of Greenwalt's earlier line as Angel tells Willow [sic] that Buffy's dead.

-There's just a touch of conflict between Gunn and Angel at the start here, which sets up the mammoth snarkiness that's going on between Angel and Spike in the most important love arc of the Season.

-At one point, at the beginning, it appears Wesley is finally getting the hang of Illyria. He tells her that it is her choice whether he runs more tests on her. Illyria's existentialist dilemma is not that different from Adam's in Season Four. Stitched together from the corpses of beings which have lost life, she has a more primal interest than most in just why and how she exists. She's not so much for the symbiosis as Adam, but she is wicked strong.

-Where Angel Isn't: Number One. He's not in Angel where he keeps his spies. When on the jet, Spike half-ironically comments that he should have had more than one spy, he agrees deadpan. Angel is wondering if he shoudln't really have been in Rome all along- anywhere other than the Evil Law Firm that he's running away from. As we are to see later, Rome really doesn't look that different once you try to work there.

-Where Angel Isn't: Number Two. He isn't in Italy in the 1950's, where Spike is put in prison for tax evasion, (we assume). But those few stylised moments, (pure Greenwalt scattershot), are gold-dust. I think I may have remembered one facet of Buffy I'd half-forgotten in this episode. The times when the show is, as Joss Whedon puts in his 'Once More, With Feeling' commentary, sophomoric. Or sophomoronic, as it would be if I ruled the world. Wise yet foolish. More accurately, a wise foolishness. A ridicule all the stronger for its self-knowledge of its limited scope. Season Five may well turn out to be my favourite Season of Angel, but if there's one single element it's been lacking, it's been the crazy humour. And even in this criticism, Exhibit A for the defence is 'Smile Time'. It's been a brilliant Season. Greenwalt's style in shooting the 50's flashback, incidentally, has a hint of homage to Whedon's Spike scene in 'Restless', as well as of course referencing the film noir genre on which shadowkat and others have so often showed that it is based.

-Where Angel Isn't: Number Three. He's not where Andrew is. Andrew, the ultimate sophomore, has moved on from his former life. For example, we get the lovely moment : 'An intriguing question. [Embarassed pause]. No'. Andrew's learning to deal with actual reality. But he's also in the Xander role- and inheriting the jealousy that Xander always got from Angel. Almost casually crashing with Buffy and Dawn. Where Angel and Spike (and every viewer loyal even to 'Chosen') might ultimately like to be.

Where Angel Isn't: Number Four. He's not at home in 1894, as Darla and Drusilla are ravished (I think that's the word, although it has connotations of 'radish', which make it sound just a bit silly), by the Immortal. Once again, and how insistently has this game played throughout the series?, as soon as we have a reference to Angel's love for Buffy, we have the mirror image of his love for Darla. And as always, (see the idiot savant fake swaami in 'Guise will be Guise'), Darla was there first. Darla was stolen first. Along with Drusilla, who needs a bath to recover. Y'know there were a lot of things the audience intuitively want to see in this episode. A real Fred. Buffy, rather than just the saffron of espied hair. Dawn. The Immortal. Resolution. That bath... It's a masterful episode about missed opportunity, and how to forge strength from where you actually are.

-Where Angel Isn't: Number Five. Finally and crucially, Angel is not with Buffy. She's noved on. The Immortal is devouring Cookie Her. And it's not time to acknowledge what they mutually mean too each other here. This isn't the careless cop out of the first act of 'Chosen'. It's a Buffy who never comes to the door of her apartment. It's a Sarah Michelle Gellar, who, let's face it, has other things to do in life. And after finally and at length discussing the Elephant in Angel and Spike's shared dormitory, they can start to function as real brothers. Or not Really real, but you're kinda clever, you get it.

-So absent leads. Absent leads in our story, and absent Angel where Angel might be the lead in the mirror stories we don't see. For example, there's a good fanfic, (possibly even an intriguing flashback) to be written in a paralleling story with Buffy and Dawn in Rome, Buffy with the Immortal. Her reaction to Andrew's revelations. What she really thinks of the relationship. Here we get that whole story, the story some viewers might have considered it perverse not to address, as wonderfully observed negative space.

Other brushstrokes on the Dialectic-o-Gram:

-Nina mentioned. Probably a neat lead in to 'Power Play', otherwise why mention someone seemingly discarded. I suppose Nina is symbolic of Angel's future. She certainly was used that way in 'Unleashed'.

-It's lovely to see Spike back as the subjugate he was is 1894, telling Angelus how great he was and getting righteously outraged on Angel's behalf. How those dynamics are to change post Boxer Rebellion. Speaking of

-Spike finally discards the coat, if not the look. Well, it had been coming, after 'Damage', and while not totally annihilating some of ME's previous errors in their handling of the symbol, it is at least a good ending. In some ways, I suppose, a bit like 'Origin'.

-The head of the demon, still functioning, calls back Lorne, also in Greenwalt's last Season Two episode. Which is a relief, considering how little we see of him in this episode. A touch of a let down, but what can you do.

-Some really, really good work from Rob Kral this week. He's been magnificent this Season. Watch the morgue scene in 'Just Rewards', his Spanish stuff from 'Numero Cinco', and the raucous theme music from 'Smile Time'. Admire. He is starting to rival Chris Beck. And I don't say that lightly. Here, his styles of Italian music are many and brilliant. Bonus marks for Dean Martin over the 'really loud' disco music.

-Indeed, that almost 'Waiting in the Wings', balletic qualtiy of Angel and Spike's fight really amped up the emotion going on between them. A beautiful, hysterical moment.

-The Italian Harmony is priceless. Just a couple of stereotype Italian jokes, (the Italian Wes is taking a nap), but then the Europeans get the last laugh: 'Typical of Americans. Relying on violence to solve their problems.'

-At the end of the fourth act, Andrew gets the moral of the story. Where is he at the time? Off stage. What happens next time we see him? He is unconscionably spiffy, and about to be escorted off by two (not unBuffynDawnesque, [$1000 for the next time you see that word]) girls. To the man who'll move on, the spoils.

-Can Spike and Angel box time, and keep Buffy kept in eternal servitude to the past? No they can't. Unlike Willow, they realise she's pretty smart, and very strong. So it's up to them to complete their story.

As this is three before the end of the Season, and not arc-y, it's bound to have upset some people, (I'm off to the archives in a second to find out), but here's my message on the episode. It's OK not to like it, and to have your own opinion. But on this occasion you're wrong. For this, gentle viewers, is Greenwalt's Last Masterpiece.

TCH