"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsmtsm@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:09f2d38b-6eaf-44f4-b3a4-e35f9f75efa9@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>A reminder: These threads are having a lot of trust issues at this
>time in their life.
>ANGEL
>Season Three, Episode 12: "Provider"
>Writer: Scott Murphy
>Director: Bill Norton
>of not being particularly interesting. I have yet to find anyone
>ready to get behind this one and give it any praise beyond "I like it
>okay." Any takers?
No. Not from me anyway.
>Rating: Weak
I haven't rewatched it, but it slips over the boundary from barely Decent
to
just Weak anyway due to a slight reclassification of the Decent/Weak
boundary (which probably affects only this episode). It is my 89th
favourite
AtS episode, 16th best in season 3 (last time was 88th and 17th).
>Season Three, Episode 13: "Waiting In The Wings"
>Writer: Joss Whedon
>Director: Joss Whedon
>wondering what the point of the whole thing is. I characterized it as
>a long tease, because it operates from the assumption that whether
>Angel and Cordelia get together is the most important issue of the
>series, and then spends the whole show getting them sexually close in
>a way that "doesn't count."
That has been an assumption pushed on us since the whole kairumption thing
reared it's ugly head (well, not so ugly back then, because then it was
Fred
that
was raising it - now it's Lorne). But just in case anyone was hoping that
was just a bad dream, Whedon is reminding us that no, it's real, they
really
do mean to push Angel and Cordy as a couple.
>And then the ending, meant to be
>frustrating, inexplicably brings back the Groosalugg and tries to
>convince us that Cordelia has serious feelings for a character whose
>previous portrayal can be described by stealing Scythe's phrase: "a
>caricature of a cartoon."
And then teases us with hope. Who cares if it's flimsy? The whole
Angel/Cordy premise is flimsy to begin with.
>Oddly, WITW does better with what's
>basically a straightforward love triangle story among the secondary
>characters - as Joss says, you sell the connection and the sweetness
>if your people are well defined enough to do it, but the audience's
>heart is naturally going to go with the one who gets left out.
There's nothing odd about it. Wes/Fred/Gunn is the core of the story, as
Wes
gets a sudden insight into the mind of Kursov when he realises its
actually
just Fred/Gunn. Well, that and the dialogue and the Riverdance bit.
Angel/Cordy/Gru really only provides a comic counterpoint for the real
triangle
>Rating: Decent
Good for me. It has continued to slide in my rankings a little, but is
still
my 22nd favourite AtS episode, 1st in season 3 (last time was 17th and
1st).
Though it is unfortunately currently the weakest "best episode" in the
Buffyverse
in my rankings. Even the horrible season has a better episode (Spin the
Bottle).
>Season Three, Episode 14: "Couplet"
>Writers: Tim Minear and Jeffrey Bell
>Director: Tim Minear
>"it's dull, I hate it, and these writers are better than this." The
>plus side includes a surprisingly entertaining encounter with an
>internet predator who's a tree
For me, that is pretty much the only highlight - and then only Fred &
Gunn's
initial encounter with the tree. There is also the bit about the "Dance of
Revolution" and the description of the divisive revolutionary factions
(inspired either by the Russian Revolution or Monty Python's Life of Brian
-
I'm always mixing up those two) and... - no, I think that's about it.
>Rating: Decent
It has fallen to Weak for me. It's my 93rd favourite AtS episode, 18th
best
in season 3 (last time was 86th and 16th).
Season Three, Episode 15: "Loyalty"
Writer: Mere Smith
Director: James A. Contner
>making his deal with Lilah. Ye gods, this is good. Most of the
>complaints about the episode have focused on not buying Wesley buying
>in to the prophecy
I don't think the problem is so much in Wesley buying into the prophecy as
it is Wesley thinking he can beat the "infallible" prophecy while Angel
can't (so there's no point bothering him with it). His experience should
have taught him that prophecies are tricky things, and that if this
prophecy
is true, anything he does will only serve to fulfill it (and if it isn't,
he
doesn't need to do anything). He doesn't even consider that even if the
prophecy comes true in the most literal of ways, and Angel physically and
deliberately kills Connor, it might be for the best. Connor could turn out
to be the Ultimate Evil that everyone originally thought the vampire birth
might be, and Angel might need to kill him to save the world. Or, Connor
might turn out to be a whiney and tiresome teenager, and Angel might need
to
kill him to save millions of viewers from several tedious episodes...
And although he might be justified in construing the earthquake as the
first
of the Loa's signs, if he is prepared to accept a small fire and a few
drops
of blood as "The second will burn the air. The last will turn the sky to
blood" then he might just as well read the killing prophecy as being
fulfilled by Angel "killing" Connor with kindness. Points to Gavin though,
for warning in an earlier episode that the Hyperion was not up to Code.
People just keep heeding the wrong warnings.
>Rating: Excellent
I like the Loa, and I like the Dark Wesley character that is eventually
created out of this story, so I am a little more forgiving than I might
otherwise have been of the fact that I think they cheat a bit in creating
that character. So a high Decent for me. It is my 46th favourite AtS
episode, 6th best in season 3 (last time was 53rd and 8th).
>Additional comments on S3D4: Now that we're through the series, any
>new thoughts on the prophecy? There's a lot of effort made to make
>everyone believe it's legitimate, and then it becomes the one prophecy
>in the Buffyverse treated as completely manufactured, created as a way
>of avoiding a true prophecy. Then after all that, Angel does kill
>Connor (well, one version) to close the S3/4 period.
Clearly the prophecy is completely bogus, yet the writers still can't help
themselves from providing a possible interpretation by which it is
fulfilled.
>I've noticed that quite a few fans of the series have a moment at
>which the character of Cordelia no longer had any interest for them.
>(Compared to the situation for me, this is a bigger change, since many
>of them had always been fans of the cartoonish version from _Buffy_.)
>For me, it's the end of "Waiting In The Wings." From that moment on,
>Cordy is essentially dead to me, and I don't care about her at all
>with the exception of a few scenes from "You're Welcome" (not the
>whole episode, either). I'm thinking now that the mishandling of the
>Angel/Cordelia romance angle may have done more damage than I gave it
>credit for. Once Cordy turns into an object of desire for the main
>character, the skewed emphasis means that she's important to the
>series primarily for whom she's in love with. Some characters can't
>survive that. The alternative viewpoint would place the problems with
>the attempt to take her on a journey from selfishness to selflessness,
>since the latter is always so much less interesting.
I think both those factor play in the Decline and Fall of Cordy, though
for
me, the latter is more important. For me the decline is more gradual,
although the return of Gru at the end of WITW is a big step. For me, Cordy
was at her best in BtVS 2, when she was striving to be more than the bitch
of most of BtVS 1, but with enough lapses to show that she wasn't about to
achieve enlightenment anytime soon. She has been in slow decline ever
since
then. But yeah, it is about now that she becomes an actual drag on the
show.
--
Apteryx
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