solitary_summer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
solitary_summer) wrote2005-06-03 06:12 pm
solitary_summer) wrote2005-06-03 06:12 pm
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Morning run, after a week of just not getting out of bed in time because, (um...) a whole season Angel in four evenings. I refuse to be embarrassed, though, I just love this show too much.
Does it make sense that the finale has vaguely depressed me all day?
I'm conflicted. Artistically it works, and perhaps it was the only possible way to tie up the story. There's an inescapable inner logic that makes absolute, perfect sense, because at one point it would have to come to that.
Still, on a more personal, emotional, and totally unreasonable level it makes me sad. After five seasons I cared for these people and just didn't want them to die, even if it's going down in a blaze of glory, fighting the good fight, doing the right thing, whatever. I really wanted them to live, and have a little piece of happiness, if possible, because after all they've gone through they deserve it. They may be doing the right thing, or die trying, their integrity intact in the end, but there's no sense of real choice, the way Angel puts this decision before them. Just so much despair, and all of them running from a life they can't control, or deal with any longer, taking the last way out before they're consumed. Wesley probably wouldn't consciously commit suicide, but there's nothing he wants from life at this point. Angel is so tired of this constant struggle between right and wrong, the eternal futile quest for redemption, prophecies that turn out to be fake, he just wants a clear course of action, one that beyond doubt is right, and good. Gunn is torn up with guilt over Fred and wants to atone for what happened to her, Illyria hated her new body and the world she found herself in from the beginning and Lorne hasn't wanted to be a part of this for quite some time now, and only reluctantly agrees to do his part. Spike at this point is perhaps the least fucked up of them all, which is saying something, but he doesn't have that much to lose, either, and he's already sacrificed himself once. Their self-created family is all but broken at this point; none of them really trusts Angel at the end, or likes him much.
They may be doing the right thing, but how much glory is in that when it's basically the only thing left to do?
To switch universes for a moments, something Delenn says about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons comes to mind.
I'd have liked for it to end on a more hopeful note, because for the longest time Angel for me was about stumbling, and getting up again, making it through somehow, finding some kind of meaning for life. I wouldn't have expected it to end quite in such a bleak, rather nihilistic way, rushing into death, because they've basically given up on finding meaning in all this struggle and pain, given up on hope like Angel signed away his claim to the prophecy.
Great dramaturgy, though.
Wesley's death... that's something you have to come up with. The gut-wrenching thing isn't Wesley dying in Fred's arms, it's that Illyria, who may have some remnants of emotions, but certainly doesn't love Wesley still cares enough to be willing to delve into Fred's memories and create this illusion for him, tears, I love yous, promising him they'd be together soon, something most likely neither of them believes, and Wesley, dying, permitting himself to accept this lie in the end, happy, even knowing it's a lie. This is heart-breaking and incredibly twisted all at once.
And Lindsey. Again it makes perfect sense, yet it still feels so wrong somehow. Lindsey, ambitious, arrogant and beautiful, he wanted this so much, the power, the danger, the high stakes - he was perhaps the only one who went into this with any sort of passion, expectations, joy even, rather than despair. Wanting to live and to win, rather than throw his life away. Dying, disbelieving, outraged that it should have been Lorne who killed him, rather than Angel, 'Angel' his last word. And he's right, he shouldn't have ended up in this cellar with a bullet through his heart.
That Angel would lie to Lindsey about wanting him on his side, use him as a puppet, a tool to kill these demons and then have Lorne shoot him... it's the right thing to do, perhaps, because Lindsey would always have been dangerous, but it's unpleasantly cold and calculating at the same time, not the least towards Lorne, who clearly hated doing this.
I'm going to miss it. It kind of sneaked up on me, but in the end Angel is perhaps the only other tv show after B5 I really got emotionally involved in and ended up loving, flaws and all.
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Ok, I managed not to look at them. Happy, happy? Gah!
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Sorry?!
I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make to you, especially considering how much of the plot I've already given away, but since you said you might want to actually watch it, I thought a warning would be in order.
The post is mostly about who dies, and how, and a lot of rambling about motivation, and to quote B5, 'doing the right thing for the wrong reason', nothing particularly interesting...
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But then, maybe I'll need spoilers for Buffy. How much of Buffy do I need to have watched to start watching Angel? I have only seen S5 and 6 complete. I know some of the things that happened, the Buffy/Angel thing, and he was cursed, and turned evil, then she had to kill him, although he was good again... after that, things become hazy.
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Same here. Especially with the internet it's nearly impossible to avoid them when shows are aired here a year later. I've been spoiled for most of the major S4 & 5 plot twists (no details, but I knew that certain things would happen), but the emotional impact was still there, to see the story develop...
Mostly the two shows are pretty separate, just the odd reference, occasional guest appearance, or characters switching shows entirely, and as far as I remember mostly they don't presume prior knowledge, but give you a summary of what happened if it's important. I hadn't seen any of the earlier Buffy seasons either when I started to watch Angel.
Buffy killed Angel in the S2 finale, but early S3 he's returned to Earth by some higher power, and there's the whole angst romance - I love you, but we mustn't, &c. all over again, until at the end of S3 Angel departs for LA.
Buffy S4 // Angel S1. The only major crossover is when Faith turns up for two episodes, and maybe you'd have to know what went down between Buffy and Faith to understand why Buffy hates her so much, but otherwise it's pretty self-explanatory. S1, knowing that that Buffy is the Tragic Love Of His (Un)Life is all the information you need, really.
S2& S3 you've got covered, but I don't think there are any major interconnections anyway, except for Buffy's death and resurrection.
S4 has an entirely independent arc, except for one short bit in the last episode that refers to the Buffy finale.
S5 is perhaps the most problematic insofar as Spike's appearance doesn't make much sense unless you know what happened during the Buffy finale.
[Just thought I'd mention this.. You're allowed to hate it, or find it boring, or indifferent. ;) ]
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However, in this case, start with S4, not 5. Angel is a little different from Buffy in that it has plot arcs that span almost the whole series, there are things in *S5* that go back to S1, characters are changing a lot more radically than in Buffy...
S2 I loved, it's funny, relatively light-hearted, only moderately angsty, and you get a sense of the main characters before their lives are all thrown over, but even while the big events are being set in motion there, it isn't strictly necessary to understand later developments. For plot purposes I'd say start with S3, but personally I wasn't too fond of it, and I could probably explain what happened in less than novel-length.
But S5 just makes very little sense without S4, perhaps not even so much as far as the plot itself is concerned, but the interaction between the characters, the general emotional impact.
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