On Feb 21, 10:20 pm, chr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> Arbitrar Of Quality <tsm...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> I wonder how Connor would
> have developed if Angel had shown up just in time to get her to the
> hospital? Or even if Angel's first reaction was to try to help her?
> Instead, Angel's unsympathetic reaction to her death, furiously
demanding
> if she put any of that crap into Connor, is just about the worst it
could
> be for Connor at that moment. Well, it might not have mattered anyway.
> Holtz's trick in the next episode might have been enough to turn Connor
on
> Angel no matter what.
I think in the long run it doesn't matter very much (and part of what
keeps ANW as merely interesting rather than momentous). Other than
the knee-jerk reaction to the drugs, Angel does his best to accept
Connor for whomever or whatever he's become. I figure "Benediction,"
with the two of them drifting together and Holtz's final vengeance,
would have played out pretty much the same way regardless of what
details about ANW you tweak.
> Benediction also gets points from me for the return of Justine, one of
my
> absolute favorite recurring AtS characters; I wonder if she might show
up
> in S6?
Her dialogue here gets me the closest to understanding why, after the
chances she's had and the things she's learned, she'd choose Holtz's
way. The two of them work well together for S3's purposes.
The ad at the back of the latest issue of ATF has a picture that
really looks like her - I think it's (supposed to be) Gwen, though.
I've always kind of imagined Angel running into her (at cross-
purposes, most likely) while she's playing some kind of morally
ambiguous game that involves killing things; she'd say something
ominous, he'd say her name in a surprised manner suggesting that he
hadn't thought about her nearly as often as vice versa, and then Spike
would say something like "am I supposed to know who this is?"
> And of course more points for the dramatic ending. I'm a little
> more dubious of the "soul colonic," though. To a first time viewer, it
> might seem like the whole season is turning into a cheap trick to give
> Angel a son, soap-operaify him into a teenager, then purge him of his
bad
> energy so he'll become a loyal Robin to Angel's Batman. *That* never
> happened, of course, thank Joss; but I'm still not sure what good the
> colonic did for the larger Angel-Connor story. Just a misdirect before
> Holtz sends Connor over the edge, I guess.
Yeah, not thrilled with it either, but I think the point (besides
building intrigue and interest around Cordelia's powers blah blah
blah) is to deprive Connor of hell-seepage as any kind of excuse for
his action. A lot of the character's story is built around how he's
shaped by the past, but his choices are still his own.
> > As mentioned, at this point many fans seem to
> > have understood that not all was as it seemed, and that's just
> > prominent enough to partially mitigate some of the cheesy excesses of
> > that.
>
> Forget the fans, Cordy herself should have realized something was up.
She
> never notices the incongruity of getting a vision about her own love
life,
> not even remotely connected with helping the helpless. I guess deep
down
> inside she's still self-centered old Queen C, sometimes at least.
Oh, I've always felt that Cordy had a sense of her own im****tance that
wasn't really reflective of reality, no matter how heroic she got.
Some of that came out last run-through from discussions with people
like Mel who disliked the character during her alleged sainthood,
leading me to argue that the show never forgets about her flaws.
> Excellent for me too. Though I like the previous episode a bit more,
> they're probably on the same level of quality.
I think I like "Benediction" more because it's better. No knock on
"Tomorrow," but...
> In another post AOQ mentions the "Excellent Trilogy." In the
> non-rating-system sense of the word "excellent," S3 actually features a
> trio of excellent trilogies: Offspring-Quickening-Lullaby, Loyalty-Sleep
> Tight-Forgiving, and ANW-Benediction-Tomorrow. It's not just great
> television, it's also satisfying in its symmetry.
I'm not so keen on "Offspring." It's setup without momentum. The
others are true high-quality trilogies. "Quickening" and "Lullaby"
are quite nice too, and if one wanted to instead pair them with "Dad,"
they'd be a trilogy in the same form as L-ST-F: rising action, climax,
consequences. The problem of course being that "Dad" is even less
solid than "Offspring." So, uh, just claim whatever symmetry you
want.
-AOQ
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