Still behind, but catching up.
May. 13th, 2004 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowscastI've now seen Angel up to, um, "Habeas Corpses." The 8th ep of S4. And now I'm watching them on videotape so I don't know the names as I watch them - I just went to an ep guide online to find out.
It's a bit different from watching on DVD. Now I'm seeing the "Previously, on Angel" sequences, which is kind of cool, and also just a little spoilery (because I can guess at the themes of the coming episode by which Previously bits they choose to show). On the other hand, unlike with the DVDs I don't know the names of the episodes as I watch them, and the names can also be a bit spoilery in a very cryptic way. (Some more than others. The title "Inca Mummy Girl," for instance, gives a pretty good idea of what's to come, whereas "Redefinition" gave me no idea what to expect, and in fact I can't even remember from the title what happened in that one.)
When's the very last episode of Angel airing? Monday after next? I have this crazy ambition to catch up by then, and watch the final ep live with a friend. (Or at least on tape just a couple hours after airing, with the friend, because we have our regular D&D sessions on Monday nights and we can't miss that... and why yes, I am a geek!)
Now I'm going to talk about things that happen in the first eight eps of Angel S4, so I shall cut.
I have to say, it was quite a shock to see Wolfram and Hart utterly destroyed like that, in mid-season with little forshadowing, after they'd been the key villians for three and a half seasons! I mean, I always thought there'd be some kind of season-finale showdown between them and the good guys, and that would be their downfall.
I love it when the show shocks me.
And since I'm constantly getting spoilered (my own fault in so many ways), the show doesn't get to shock me nearly as often as it should.
That "Habeas Corpses" episode had a total Resident Evil feel to it, just with suits instead of lab coats. I suspect it was a deliberate homage? The summary site I looked to for the episode name mentioned it, too.
Resident Evil, by the way, completely freaked me out. I watched it without sound in a goth club, where it was being shown on a screen with subtitles at the back of the dance floor while goth/industrial music was playing. (Not a typical night in my life, if you were wondering.) So "Habeas Corpses" very much freaked me out too, by association.
I was really happy to see Wesley getting back on the team, though. I mean, I would have been happier if they'd thrown a party for him, and they'd all hugged him and tearfully apologized for being so crappy to him. But I'll take what I can get.
Oh, and the Lilah/Wesley relationship strongly parallels the S6 Spike/Buffy relationship, doesn't it? They were both rooted in self-loathing for at least one of the participants. They were both borderline abusive. (Maybe not even borderline. Open to debate.) I'm comparing Spike with Lilah (the evil ones - though Lilah was way the hell more evil than S6 Spike, imo) and Wesley with Buffy (the ones who came back from death or near-death darkly changed). They both developed into something more.
I mean, seriously, right there at the end, Lilah was seriously finding herself emotionally invested, wasn't she? Was there a glimmer of real affection, of real hurt? It started to seem like she was holding the "I'm evil!" declarations around her like a tattered cloak, the same way Spike did after the chip.
Oh, and Cordy/Connor/Angel : most twisted love triangle ever??? I was a bit spoilered for that one, so it didn't shock me as much as it should have, but it was still pretty darn shocking. I hope Angel manages to be a bit mature about this. I mean, it's a bit creepy, but really the age gap between Cordy and Connor isn't quite scandalous (he's what, 18? And she's 22? I know people who've done that one). And the whole thing did seem to be good for Connor. He's showing more human feelings, less tendancy to murder his father. (Though there is a pretty strongly Oedipal thing to this whole subplot which I just noticed. Murder father, marry mother. Oh, ick.)
I'm all happy for Fred getting back into academia. Though of course I'm sitting there nitpicking it, 'cause I've been in a very similar branch of academia (math instead of physics), so I feel like an Expert Witness. When Fred started to give her lecture, I was all like "Oh, give me a break, there's no way she'd be giving that talk without a chalkboard or whiteboard to hand, or at the very least a frikkin' Powerpoint."
I see potential for the Fred/Gunn/Wesley triangle to go horribly, horribly wrong. Especially if Lilah comes back and makes it into a quadrilateral. (See? Mathematician. Wanna know about properties of binary cyclic strings? Totally unrelated to the strings Fred studies, if you were wondering.) I mean, Gunn already killed a guy for her. (Adding him to the increasingly long list of Buffy/Angel good guys who have murdered humans... dear lord this show really is dark.) Now that he's crossed that line, what else might he do to keep her? And he already hates Wesley.
Um. That's all I can think of for now.
It's a bit different from watching on DVD. Now I'm seeing the "Previously, on Angel" sequences, which is kind of cool, and also just a little spoilery (because I can guess at the themes of the coming episode by which Previously bits they choose to show). On the other hand, unlike with the DVDs I don't know the names of the episodes as I watch them, and the names can also be a bit spoilery in a very cryptic way. (Some more than others. The title "Inca Mummy Girl," for instance, gives a pretty good idea of what's to come, whereas "Redefinition" gave me no idea what to expect, and in fact I can't even remember from the title what happened in that one.)
When's the very last episode of Angel airing? Monday after next? I have this crazy ambition to catch up by then, and watch the final ep live with a friend. (Or at least on tape just a couple hours after airing, with the friend, because we have our regular D&D sessions on Monday nights and we can't miss that... and why yes, I am a geek!)
Now I'm going to talk about things that happen in the first eight eps of Angel S4, so I shall cut.
I have to say, it was quite a shock to see Wolfram and Hart utterly destroyed like that, in mid-season with little forshadowing, after they'd been the key villians for three and a half seasons! I mean, I always thought there'd be some kind of season-finale showdown between them and the good guys, and that would be their downfall.
I love it when the show shocks me.
And since I'm constantly getting spoilered (my own fault in so many ways), the show doesn't get to shock me nearly as often as it should.
That "Habeas Corpses" episode had a total Resident Evil feel to it, just with suits instead of lab coats. I suspect it was a deliberate homage? The summary site I looked to for the episode name mentioned it, too.
Resident Evil, by the way, completely freaked me out. I watched it without sound in a goth club, where it was being shown on a screen with subtitles at the back of the dance floor while goth/industrial music was playing. (Not a typical night in my life, if you were wondering.) So "Habeas Corpses" very much freaked me out too, by association.
I was really happy to see Wesley getting back on the team, though. I mean, I would have been happier if they'd thrown a party for him, and they'd all hugged him and tearfully apologized for being so crappy to him. But I'll take what I can get.
Oh, and the Lilah/Wesley relationship strongly parallels the S6 Spike/Buffy relationship, doesn't it? They were both rooted in self-loathing for at least one of the participants. They were both borderline abusive. (Maybe not even borderline. Open to debate.) I'm comparing Spike with Lilah (the evil ones - though Lilah was way the hell more evil than S6 Spike, imo) and Wesley with Buffy (the ones who came back from death or near-death darkly changed). They both developed into something more.
I mean, seriously, right there at the end, Lilah was seriously finding herself emotionally invested, wasn't she? Was there a glimmer of real affection, of real hurt? It started to seem like she was holding the "I'm evil!" declarations around her like a tattered cloak, the same way Spike did after the chip.
Oh, and Cordy/Connor/Angel : most twisted love triangle ever??? I was a bit spoilered for that one, so it didn't shock me as much as it should have, but it was still pretty darn shocking. I hope Angel manages to be a bit mature about this. I mean, it's a bit creepy, but really the age gap between Cordy and Connor isn't quite scandalous (he's what, 18? And she's 22? I know people who've done that one). And the whole thing did seem to be good for Connor. He's showing more human feelings, less tendancy to murder his father. (Though there is a pretty strongly Oedipal thing to this whole subplot which I just noticed. Murder father, marry mother. Oh, ick.)
I'm all happy for Fred getting back into academia. Though of course I'm sitting there nitpicking it, 'cause I've been in a very similar branch of academia (math instead of physics), so I feel like an Expert Witness. When Fred started to give her lecture, I was all like "Oh, give me a break, there's no way she'd be giving that talk without a chalkboard or whiteboard to hand, or at the very least a frikkin' Powerpoint."
I see potential for the Fred/Gunn/Wesley triangle to go horribly, horribly wrong. Especially if Lilah comes back and makes it into a quadrilateral. (See? Mathematician. Wanna know about properties of binary cyclic strings? Totally unrelated to the strings Fred studies, if you were wondering.) I mean, Gunn already killed a guy for her. (Adding him to the increasingly long list of Buffy/Angel good guys who have murdered humans... dear lord this show really is dark.) Now that he's crossed that line, what else might he do to keep her? And he already hates Wesley.
Um. That's all I can think of for now.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 11:01 am (UTC)::must not spoil shadowscast::
::must not spoil shadowscast::
::must not spoil shadowscast::
::must not spoil shadowscast::
::must not spoil shadowscast::
was all like "Oh, give me a break, there's no way she'd be giving that talk without a chalkboard or whiteboard to hand, or at the very least a frikkin' Powerpoint."
Hee! Shades of Buffy watching martial arts movies in season five.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 11:37 am (UTC)Yes, that's right. Keep singing that refrain.
Tell you what - as I post about watching S4, you can giggle gleefully to yourself. And share later. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 01:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-13 11:34 am (UTC)Mmmm. Talk dirty to me some more, baby :-)
S4 is so cool, isn't it? I'm sitting here going 'Ha, wait till you see fngighsyhflngh' (sound of fist shoved in mouth).
Cordy/Connor freaked me out - I so did not see that coming. It's funny, I always say I wasn't a C/A shipper, but I was *so* annoyed at her for that. There was a lot of shouting at the screen going on in those eps, heh.
Last one in the US is May 19th, I think. Three weeks later for the UK.
::cries::
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-15 04:40 pm (UTC)