Well, that's quite a title. Doesn't make any sense, but what it lacks in quality, it makes up in sheer quantity. Quantity not quality, my school teacher always used to tell me. I think.

And so to the sidebar about these reviews: due, I believe, to the Royal Mail, I received at excellent speed, (post haste, I suppose), 5.5 and 5.6 this morning. However, due to the postal strikes, I believe that some of the earlier sent post has been held up, and the backlog is being slowly cleared away, which is why I don't have 5.4, or indeed KdS' weeks-ago-sent Firefly tape. So I'm going to review these two out of order, and if Spike's infernal dalliances make much difference to what these two episodes said to me, I'll make a note of that later. Frankly, I doubt it will much alter my opinion on...

5.5- 'Life of the Party'

It pains me to do this again, as I'm a massive Lorne-lover, and some of the episodes that Lorne squiggles round the outside of are some of my personal favourites (Judgement, Happy Anniversary, Tomorrow). But when we focus on Lorne as a straight-ahead, in the narrative, no special measures character, the show crashes and burns, intent on adding conflict and personal interests to a character who's not about that. Lorne's not about existentialist struggle, the impossibility of redemption. He's about reflection. Which is why an episode all about Lorne and mirrors should have worked, and why it failed. Because here, we are not seeing Lorne reflecting others' problems, empathising, chipping in, and being the narrative voice. Here Lorne is merely the reflection of himself in a big, green Hulk-ish monster. And that means approximately nothing.

Give me Lorne-as-Greenwalt any day. Even Lorne as the writers holds nicely, particularly in the structure which redeems the slightly vacuous Spin the Bottle. Here we get Lorne failing to be 'the Host of the Party' all the time. He's living a 24/7 existence, and in order to do that, he's had his sleep removed. The most interesting parallel for this is the parallel for Gunn. The way that Gunn commends Lorne for his idea is a little worrying, and the fact that Lorne's apparently innocent tampering has consequences means that it's almost inevitable that Gunn is going to get a similarly rude awakening someday soon. But when we get to Lorne paralleling Gunn, fourth billed in this episode, something wonky's happening.

I thought that Ben Edlund's Sacrifice was magnificent, but now I'm wondering whether, like Supersymmetry and Selfless, there was a lot of help behind the debutant which made it so slick. Here the thematic resonances are all a bit off. Maybe it's because I'm digging for more than is there, in which case it is just shallow, and I resort to not watching it again. But here's an attempt at what might be happening underneath the Partiness.

Reflection, mirrors, duality of self seems crucial to the episode. We get Lorne talking to his reflection at the beginning. Then we get the magic windows- the distortion of view that Wolfram and Hart brings to Angel's life. Next, the mirrorball spreads Lorne's unknown influence throughout the party. Lorne, sleepless, is devoid of the shadow self, the reflection of the mirror, that sleep brings. In a dreamless state, Lorne has no time for self-reflection. And this means that instead of reflecting on himself personally, of taking time to iron things out and work out how other people see him, he must merely soldier on, having self-reflection forced on him by his diffident friends.

And so, extremely tenuously, we reach Angel. Angel is the bloke working 18 hour days, with no time to get emotionally involved in what he's doing. He's CEO-ing so much he barely has time to watch Ice Hockey. Lorne's situation is just a shadow, the long-needed reflection into Angel's life, his disconnection, is inability to consider what he's doing under the stress of a million little tasks- killing, signing, discussing things with Eve the tempter. Self-awareness is the thing that Angel is lacking at this stage in the season, swept under the carpet where family and emotional investment lived, to be finally rediscovered by a veteran wrestler. For now, Lorne's situation is merely Angel's.

Also salvaged from the rapidly sinking ship- Fred and Wesley's chemistry is interesting. We're back just before Billy except that Wesley now has no Cordelia to tell him to go for it or otherwise. And it appears again that Fred's affections may be falling elsewhere, this time for Knox. In the meanwhile, Fred's drunken outbursts about friendships is difficult for Wesley to take, the eternal dilemma of the loving and unloved. Inebriation negates self-awareness, and Fred hasn't quite the nous to see what's going on here. She could do with a good few hours sleep as well, and slightly less of the machine which is partly magical and partly scientific. This machine is symbolic of Angel, and indeed the gang as a whole. They don't know quite what they are, and, stuck between two stools, they don't have anywhere to sit down and rest their weary heads.

But it has to be said that this episode is the weakest since way back to, I'm afraid The House Always Wins, the last Lorne-centric episode and another ugly failure. And here are some of the reasons why:

-The pacing in the first act was some of the slowest ever. There was so little going on that Eve's sledgehammer 'ethical tightrope' line was about as interesting as it got. And that's not very interesting when it's been done infinitely better by Joss Whedon in the premiere.

-You have to be in trouble when you're recycling a Tracey Forbes story. Something Blue was a poor episode in a season full of excellent standalones, and this is a worse example. There's nothing gained at all from Angel's sex with Eve, Wesley and Fred being drunk, Gunn marking his territory (another marginally disconcerting Animalistic!Gunn reference post Home), or Lorne being a huge monster who looks like an in-shape Shrek. And we get Mercedes McNab utterly wasted in an episode which is supposed to be funny.

-The resolution is tedious, the moral is blurry, the direction is uninspiring.

Well, Edlund has a little to prove. He needs to go back and look very carefully to see how Sacrifice worked. Because in such an excellent team of writers, episodes like that are going to stick out like a Nemo in a shoal full of cod.

5.6- 'The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco'

I verged on stern there, didn't I? Cool. Anyhow, no need for that with this episode. I couldn't quite resist reading cjl's review of this, and he knocks the nail right into the centre of the opposing guy's mask as usual. This is a very beautifully written, directed and scored episode, the best of the season so far, and working on thematic levels in precisely the way the previous episode failed to do.

First a note to Rob Kral and co for their excellent Spanish music on the episode. It gave Los Angeles a whole different ambience which worked spectacularly well. The final Rodrigo-esque guitar solo was very poignant, and the earlier Latin tones gave the show a quite distinct, unique feeling. At times watching this episode, I was reminded of Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? in the way that, while fitting perfectly with the show's canon and feeling, there was a totally foreign quality about the episode which made it quite compelling.

We start with Lorne and Fred, the Wonderwoman, Everywoman, a dichotomy which is interesting. We've often had Fred as the Everyman character since the beatification of Cordelia after Birthday, particularly in Tomorrow, where her super friends disappear to the opposite ends of the atmosphere. But we've also had Fred as the exceptional, the surprisingly adept physicist, resourceful in This Old Gang of Mine, Fredless and Billy, and threatening in Deep Down and Conviction. Here she is more than average- she is the type of person who could be head of Science in Wolfram and Hart, the exceptional intelligence, the outstanding mind.

And throughout the episode, there is this dichotomy being played with. If we are Angel, are we really a Champion? A Hero? What makes us different from anything else, the stronger person. It's not merely strength or intelligence- resolve and self-confidence works in there as well. Eventually, this episode's outer moral, that people who are amazing can always be heroic, is rather deeper and more powerful- that we are all potential Heroes if only we believe. It is Angel's re-engagement with belief, expertly shadowing the story of Numero Cinco, that makes the central message so powerful.

Spike is an interesting cog in this episode's wheel. Not immediately apparent as being crucial, but ultimately the person whom Angel wonders about by the end. We've had the suggestion that Spike could be the vampire to become human in Just Rewards, which Angel interrupts before Wesley can explain. Here, it becomes totally explicit. Spike is still wondering about his achievement, what he did standing back there in Sunnydale. How it relates to him as a Hero or otherwise. It wasn't an empty gesture- it saved the world and it saved Buffy. And it may be partly this, the utility of his sacrifice- what may now seem, in his retconning mind, the calculated risk of his sacrifice- to be redeemed from fire by fire, the amulet's fire, the fire of re-incarnation, the Holy Spirit. Because Spike did what was clearly right, and has ended up maintaining his existence, still on the ever changing leash which has always restrained him from the full expression of his self- he may believe he did very little. He may now be having trouble engaging with the emotional life of this former him, and understanding just what he did. Now the Hero is toothless, the neutered puppy. He can't understand how he can be a Hero.

Whether Spike's tete-a-tete with Fred is false modesty or not is debatable. I would argue not- it is with Fred, as with Buffy, Drusilla and Ann before her, that he feels he can speak about his personal struggle, speak as if to himself. Spike's not sure whether what he did- the mere colourlessness of standing there, of being purged from his sins, merits heroism. Because he's back, and that wasn't the final word. The rest ain't silence.

This is not so far away from Angel's thoughts at the moments. We haev the grand sweeping gesture of Home, and then an utter lack of resolution. Not only does the only difference become the absence of something, (such an intangible anti-presence that it's always a little unsatisfying, the absence of the dripping tap syndrome), but also, it's an achievement that nobody else knows about. And so the struggle continues. And the harvest reaped by Angel's decision is the harvest where he is Wolfram and Hart's boss. So, unsure of his position, he like Spike tries to work out how to be a Hero. Spike does it without physical essence, and Angel is trying to do it without emotional essence. His re-engagement depends on a chance re-meeting.

By accepting the Belly of the Beast as his new penthouse, Angel has swallowed Fred, Gunn, Wesley and Lorne along with himself in his unilateral decision. It is no co-incidence that he is Number Five in the group, the one who survives all this, worried that it is his friends who will get harmed. In the meantime, he wears the warpaint of the children of the island in Lord of the Flies- Number Five's mask. It is crucially important when the wrestler says that he can never let go of the warrior in himself, the hero. Now he only wears it in memory of his brothers, rather than as the Hero he once was. While once he was the beautifully choreographed wrestling of the 50's, he is now merely one member in a band of parodying mocking dwarfs. He has become a parody of himself, shutting away what used to be special about him, allowing time to erode everything away to dust and Wolfram and Hart's shiny new corridors.

It is interesting that he is both the Deserting Hero and the Deserted Hero. Originally, to him, it is his brothers who desert him, no longer there to be the incredible group who are so powerful against demons. But in his own way, he turns his back on the past, honouring no longer the clan's mission statement, disconnected from them, lacking the heart which the other brothers were shorn of. That he is cold and unfeeling, yearning only for a past which has evaded him, is the sentiment by which we learn most about Angel. He cannot connect with his cases at this new place- where he signs Gunn's legalese and makes miracles happen while thinking about coffee. His fighting isn't for the violence, it's for the emotion, the connection. Nina cowering in the dark. It is not that he's a drama queen, merely that he's bored, the ironic reflection of someone working too hard at things they're not interested in.

The emotional investment in Number Five, the magnificent synchronicity in their journeys, comes to a head when we see the ounce of resolve left in Number Five, in the way that he helps to kill the demon again. He only pretends that the talisman is in his stomach, thereby preoccupying the demon and helping the raised old brothers to help him once more. Finally, Angel seals the day, playing by the old brothers' rules, (realising that they pin someone as a means to victory, not as hollow artistry) and becoming emotionallu involved in what's going on. The Hero reasserts himself. Angel and Numero Cinco. But Angel goes one stage further, in living as a Hero rather than merely dying as one.

Who can be a Hero? Spike, wondering about whether he could become human with Wesley? Angel, being explained to by Wesley how he's 'lost the hope that the work has meaning', and that, gothically considering the episode 'your heart's not in it'? Wesley himself, poring through the prophecies, still not understanding of the journey in shadow, where once the three pairs The Father/Will Kill/ The Son meant more to him than anything in the world? Gunn, the super-endowed, enjoying himself for the first time ever? All of them have had Holland Manners' card passed to them (a lovely detail in the flashback sequence), and all of them have to use the card as oregami, to build themselves something they themselves can connect with, something that leaves them hoping for real good, and believing that they are a part of the tasks which they do not for a reward, but because it's right. Angel reads the Codex not to re-assert a goal, but to reconnect with his own story, to understand his life's emotional pattern. That's something that Bell does beautifully.

Right down to the smallest details in fact. Sometimes, it's not the mindless bureaucratic ephemera, it's the instinct, the feeling, the scan of the iambs thumping carnally against the verse's ribcage. In the end, we are left with Spike's correct supposition, and the person deep down, the over-riding emotional arc of his, where, he, connected with all that has happens, says, with utter certainty: 'No love. In the poetry'.

TCH