Hello everyone.

And what's more, I have the 100th episode. I haven't watched it yet, because I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but I?m most excited. In the meantime, some reviews of ?Harm?s Way? and ?Soul Purpose?. I wrote a poem a little over a month ago, which I was told would have relevance to ?Harm?s Way?. And it kinda does, so here it is.

Life's Arrow

Halfway along the harderroad, in the shadow of Purpose,
I stopped to liedown awhile. In my stillness I drifted.
Away from the targetstotalstrigonometry of life, to
A mishcievousrevelation. Unsuitable for now.
It's not the rush Of the headedship.
This is Modern Life after all. It's pretty much:

-Awoke at six, shaved, flossed and ate
Arrived at work full-briefed by eight
Then typed and argued, stressed elastic
Cutting budgets, futile, drastic-
Twelve reached lunched but no cigar
Driven like the Shooting Star
(Not the beauty, understand
Just the purposed arcing brand)-
Worked, shot, drafted new ideas,
Hurting humans, chopping years
Home at nine to work and bed
Next, next, next, next in my head-

While instead I sidle, halfguiltyhands in yawningjeanpockets
Uncouth and unshaven, the cog that hasn't been oiled.
There's those mysterious shards of people who appear.
Not employeescolleaguesfriendsrelations, parts of me only,
But people. And it's there, that I could perhaps begin to learn
That it's not an order, but a message which is the point of the arrow.

The lesson that Harmony learns in this episode really isn?t that far from what I learnt that particular afternoon, although her means of discovery is somewhat difference- she fought a vampire while I sat around at a computer. Possibly one reason why I?m not as pretty as Harmony.

5.9- ?Harm?s Way?

I suspect strongly that there is a large group of fans of this dying show for whom Craft and Fain?s two offerings this season- ?Unleashed? and ?Harm?s Way? have been the weakest episode. I can?t concur on either count here. I thought ?Unleashed? was well-written, subtly contrasting Angel, Nina and Spike and providing a lovely crunchy ending under all that apparent fluffiness. And I thought that ?Harm?s Way? was very enjoyable (much more so than the lamentable ?Life of the Party?), if never too challenging. The undertones are playing, if not as powerfully as Minear or Smith might have arranged them. Undertones and mixing are Craft and Fain trademarks, and here we see the mixtures from the first moment.

One thing that aliera?s generosity has let me understand this Season is what a huge quantity of advertising Americans have to put up with between their shows. In England, away from the uninterrupted BBC, the commercial networks have significantly shorter breaks. And it?s extraordinary how they can grind you down, if you?re not lucky enough to have a fast forward button, like me. Even more sneaky is the way that the WB tend to go straight into the programme after the break, without any warning. There?s usually a prolonged title card on ITV, so that you know, but in America it?s like they?re taunting you with the possibility that the next one might be your show. So this is one of the reasons that the beginning of the teaser, with corporate advertising for Wolfram and Hart, is so powerful. It?s meta-narration on the network, on the power of advertising. They say a lot of negative things in a manner so cheery that you can barely help wanting to become a client. The only stick in the wheel is Angel with his glorious ?If you don?t kill us, we won?t kill you?, unrehearsed and with no conviction whatsoever. Angel is summed up by the advert. Wolfram and Hart may not quite know where they?re going, but they?re sure flashy about it. Their CEO is lost in a sea of shorthand and dictatphones, but constantly in the eye of the Corporation at large. And like Cordelia in Pylea, it may only be a matter of time before Angel finds out just how hollow his apparent power is within the company.

We?ve seen this angle before though, the Angel Angle. In many episodes. So the subversion here is to see not Angel?s confusion from within, but instead the problems it causes from without. In order to do this, we need a known character who is not a particular confidante of Angel. Enter Harmony. Her everywoman (even if she?s not ?straight?, and incidentally is everyone else happy with this semantic paralleling?) is played with a good deal of guile by Mercedes McNab. We suddenly see the other side of her face, after all these years. The effect of the episode for me was to be reminded of the way David Greenwalt and his writers fleshed out Cordelia in the show?s freshman year. Suddenly the ?vapid tramp?, the butt of the central characters? put-downs, becomes the focus. And suddenly, with the shadowkatian perspective change, we see characters in a different and really interesting light, which is in many cases not so positive. We?ve suffered with Angel, Lorne, Wesley, Gunn and Fred, but to suddenly be Harmony?s ?Zeppo?, we must look at them from the outside. The results are interesting.

-Angel?s brutality, shortness of temper, lack of time and inability to empathise with Harmony all come across. It?s understandable for us, but that?s not the point of the episode. The point is what an Everywoman sees. And if Angel?s gang are now the ?bigwigs?, then the everyman becomes an inferior. You can judge a man by how he treats his inferiors, the saying goes [Sidebar- when I attempted an attribution here, I came up, comically, with Sirius Black. But then Rowling is magnificently derivative.] And so we see Angel beheading the only person who has given the time of day to Harmony, he shouts at her for not having his blood ready, he keeps an extraordinary distance, both professionally and personally, from a secretary who for many is their one point of sanity in a work environment. In the end, the problem is solved, and in this kind of episode, there?s going to be a small resolution. But notice the way that the difficulties with the demons is due to Harmony?s lack of belief that she can talk to Angel about his problems. This divorcement is characteristic of his relationships with all his employees. As he clicks away to the demons, communicating with only marginally less success with them than with the rowing Wesley and Gunn, it?s the isolation that is beginning to overpower him.

Look at the one point of engagement that a character tries to make with him in this episode; the one point where he is neither boss nor a person who just needs space. It is Spike. Here, Spike is in wonderful younger brother mode, asking for a little money, and assuring Angel that he?s about to take his Viper. And Angel rejects him, repeatedly. It?s not that the Angel-Spike relationship should be easy, or that it?s all Angel?s fault, but his gratuitous insult to be passed on to Buffy is symptomatic of his inability to form meaningful relationships this Season. And, he played like a broken record, that all boils down to Connor and Cordelia.

If we see Gunn and Wesley from Harmony?s point of view only momentarily, then it?s as shadowy figures controlling things that she barely understands, and leaving her with only thinly veiled irony, (Wesley?s sardonic: ?I?m glad you?re here Harmony? is shown to be unnecessarily derisive when we?re in Harmony?s stilettos). The other character we see interact in a less cursory way with Harm is Fred, and she comes off significantly better. She takes a little pity, engages, interacts and believes she has helped Harmony to regain some confidence. That her advice should lead her to a classic set-up is the fault of the Noir genre rather than her good intentions. Fred once again comes out of this episode looking good. I wonder what horrible pain lies in wait for her.

-A list of nouns is built up in this episode which sound like a kind of Rorschach test. We have the camel, a poodle, even more forks (for pity?s sake Edlund), and various other random animals, (I draw the line at ?wildebeest? which has Fawlty Towers connotations.).

-The man Harmony bites is called Toby, which gives me a certain involuntary empathy for him. He seemed nice enough, although the astronaut part is just another lash to our ailing Zeppo.

-The resolution of the episode, is, I think rather neat and subversive. I like the way that it was through someone hating Harmony that she realised her own worth, and that Spike should explain this to her is fitting, considering the store he may well have set by Xander?s disapproval during his time in Sunnydale. The Harmony/Spike relationship has a (barely) metarelation to the old Buffy/Spike, with Spike as Buffy and Harmony as Spike. Our hero comes back to life (after martyrdom), and the other is delighted, only to be largely ignored and derided. After a key revelation, the Hero gives in, for unrelated reasons, to some irrelevant (to them) sex. The Hero helps the other to grow, but the other still has to win respect from other members of the Hero?s clan. If Spike is less of a Hero than Buffy, and Harmony is more of a sap than Spike, then we can chalk it up to the harsher judgements of Angel as a show, along with the fact that Spike is once removed from the central role. Yet in ?Soul Purpose?, he starts to develop another interesting aspect of his character, in an episode with two contrasting sides that never quite fit as snugly as they might have done?

5.10- ?Soul Purpose?

You?ll have to excuse my tendency to refer to this episode as ?Sole Porpoise?. It?s just a tic in my character, I can?t do anything about. And in any case, there are important fish in the episode, so it?s not entirely mal a propos.

This was an interesting directing effort from David Boreanaz, who, as well as bringing good performances from the actors, actually put together some technically really interesting shots from start to finish. The start would be the low shot with Angel on the ground writhing, and the end the shot with the gargantuan Angel in the foreground, and the characters, as if still within his fevered brain, in the foreground. In between, there?s a beautiful shot of Angel between Gunn and Wesley. They are arguing about tactics for killing demons. Gunn is the enthusiast for Wolfram and Hart?s expertise, Wesley is the perpetual cynic. Angel is stuck in the middle, not in a balanced comfortable centrism, but in a no-man?s-land of self-doubt. And we see these in his dreams.

Here, relatively briefly, is what I pull out of the various scenes on one viewing. The scenes are at times deliberately obtuse, and lack the wonderfully clear symbolism, humour and subconscious power of ?Restless?, but nonetheless there are some lovely little clues as to Angel?s subconscious. Much as in his perfect day in ?Awakenings? we can ascertain a lot about his relationships with the various characters.

-Wesley?s scene is obvious and visceral. Wesley is still the betrayer, even though he doesn?t realise this. And on this occasion, he?s turned to Spike rather than Connor, and therefore, in (woefully ineptly, Angel?s conscience assumes) promoting the son, he has killed all the father stands for.

-We have the alternate end of ?Destiny? where Spike?s victory really did matter. Admittedly, Angel probably wasn?t the only one to shrug blankly at my over-complex ?chromatic rejection of tonality? metaphor, but in simpler terms- it doesn?t matter who won, it matters that you talk to each other, he still hasn?t accepted it. If he?s accepted it on a mind level, then there?s still the desire and pain underneath, unquenched. Now, with Spike back it is he, not his grandspawn, who is burning up.

-Fred?s dream is stupid and delicious and I can?t quite decide whether it?s sheer genius (the Burger Loa) or simply too far for Angel (?The House Always Wins?). The lines are certainly meaning things, however. Angel doesn?t need his organs. This is because he is all brains- he?s isolated from his livers and kidney, Wesley and Gunn and whoever else. Eventually he just feels empty, shorn of connection. As a result of shutting himself off, his heart is a shrivelled walnut. I love Fred?s little, almost irrelevant seeming qualifier ?Oh, you heart really is??. They?ve all guessed how Angel is feeling; they all realise already, without the metaphor. The car registration plate is to do with the clogging and materialism in Angel?s new life- the surface things, the many cars and the helicopter. We?re then brought into a whole water scene. We get the Jaws reference. We get the pearl necklace, (from the sea, and no, I?m not going on to the other interpretation), and then rather than the Great White Shark, the little goldfish. Angel ain?t really a Big Fish, he?s just a trapped little swimmer. And while his soul/sole/fish is banging against the edges of its enclosed bowl, it?s slowly forgetting, just as Connor is seeping away and is unknown to his friends. And then we get the sound of the Ocean, where Angel had his MC Esher perspective, and lay for months. Is his incarceration in the law firm just a parallel to his summer-long seabed vigil? Watch out for submarine episodes [totally unspoiled, totally ;-)]. Fred?s interracting with other company people, much more so than the rest of the gang, and hence the disconnect on the bear. Fred is science-y, almost threateningly logical, although he can?t see the logic, and consorts with wild animals.

Although ?bear? is then played with, or at least its phoneme, when we see Angel bare-soled shortly afterwards. Of course, he?s baring his soul, and this is another reason why all the footwear stuff that Ann wrote so interestingly about is around, the sole-soul pun. In this soul-baring place, Angel is witnessing an apocalypse. But, in his cut of state it seems little more than a fairy tale. Both the infernal torment outside (a cunning and lovely poke at the over-the-topness of ?Apocalypse Now?) and the later fairytale happiness (similarly Season Four referencing, this time Jasmine?s peace on earth), are illustrations from Grimm. Angel isn?t part of the reality; they seem merely fake. Angel has to see his worst nightmare: Spike?s utter self-invention, his tendency not to avert his eyes from life, being applauded by his friends. There?s the cake, and it musn?t be under-emphasised, there?s ?Just a working class bloke?. The deviousness, that Angel doesn?t possess and will never adopt triumphs. Spike is just a boy to Angel, a child, and a not-quite-human at that, still wooden. Here comes the fairy, and Pinnochio shall never have to worry about his nose again. Angel?s efforts are all part of Spike?s narrative, and he can?t stand it. I was fascinated to read that Steve De Knight wrote ?Destiny? with Angel winning the fight, and Fury begged him to change it. One of Fury?s greatest judgements, because, although if the two would only realise each other, it doesn?t matter, while they believe it does, it flips Angel out from his lead character role and allows Spike to move in. And that dynamic is just fascinating. At the end of the scene, in a really beautiful and intelligent piece of filming, Angel leaves the room with the mail cart. Angel has become Numero Cinco, the forgotten Hero and without a word of dialogue, just a shot. This is why this television show has such spectacular genius, and still makes me swoon.

-There?s the very simple Buffy/Spike dream, another element of Spike?s possession of Angel?s character. Buffy mentions ?goldfish? of course, and we?re back to ?sole? and thence ?sole?. Dreams are the poetry to consciousness? prose, and that?s why I find it so amenable, I?m thinking.

-By the time we get to Lorne and the honkytonk, it?s getting a little too silly for my liking. But there are still the odd moments of brilliance. There?s Angel having the spotlight thrust onto him, and having to somehow perform, while Fred, Wesley and Gunn heckle. There?s Gunn with the roar of a lion. I think I?m going to have to drop the old Animalistic!Gunn complaint, since they?re obviously sincerely and repetitively using it to symbolise Gunn?s connection with the White Room, and hence the Powers that Be, yet another connection that Angel doesn?t have. Meanwhile, we have that hanging ?Junior? and all it connotes about Connor, once again.

Playing against this dream sequence, really, really unconventionally, is a B-plot that parallels Angel?s actions. Usually this kind of B-plot would be predictable, but set against the dream it makes the whole thing harder to grasp conceptually. Are there elements of Spike dreaming? Playing a part he has not yet become. Certainly Lindsey as Doyle is playing into some kind of role, but is he distorted from without, or is he the distorter himself. Fascinating stuff, and I won?t speculate, cos it would just waste time.

So here?s some thoughts on Spike as Angel:

There are bits of the B-plot that in microcosm summarise the entire series- in such an extraordinary way that it deserves some credit. A few highlights.

The way that Lindsey confronts and introduces Spike, explaining to him what his problems and character traits are, is an exact echo of the legendary subversion back in ?City Of??. The subsequent rescue scene with Spike hints at both 1.1 and 5.1, where Angel unlike Spike is mobbed by Wolfram and Hart. Spike?s punkish assertion that the woman is a moron however, is a tidy back-reference to his sarcasm way back in ?In the Dark? in the lovely scene on the rooftop. Later, the two boys escape after another of Spike?s vigilante crusades, echoing a most similar scene with Connor in ?The House Always Wins?. When Gunn and Wesley turn up at the house, ?hedging their bets? and trying to get Spike on side, who are they but the manipulative, suited lawyers of Lilah and Lindsey himself in early Season Two. Later, the masterminds, the people we don?t understand, the supposedly good getting ambiguous and the certainly evil getting blurry, are Lindsey and Eve behind Spike?s back rather than Wesley and Lilah behind Angel?s in Season Three and Four. Spike has become Hero rather than side-kick, it looks like. But when he calls Lindsey Butch, free-associating minds fly to Spike as the side-kick still, the ?Sundance Kid?, (an apposite allusion to ?Chosen? surely not lost on Joss Whedon). The question remains, wo is Spike?s Cordelia, as he mopes in the basement, both the haunts of his madness in ?Lessons? (and, beautifully, compare this madness before heroism to Angel?s early Buffy Season Three madness before the original ?City of??), and Angel?s basement at the start of the series. It?s really top-drawer stuff. Lindsey corrects himself- Spike will be hanging a coat not a hat. Does that mean he can give up the Slayer Killer title once and for all?

Twelve episodes left, and although I think this one over-balanced itself at times, and the dream sequences were a little too knowing for their own good, if they?re all as good as this one, it would be hard to complain. Congratulations to Brett Fletcher (though how carefully doctored was his script?), and certainly David Boreanaz.

Finally, I appear to be posting these at the same time as Honorificus. I?m deeply humbled. Would that they could bring a sliver of the sunlight her celestial claws emit. Thanks for reading.

TCH