andrew_jorgensen | "Soul Purpose"

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"Soul Purpose"

I may be the only person in the known fanoverse who liked "Harm's Way." I, unlike some, quite enjoy farce. What I don't particularly like is when ME does camp. And that's ultimately what confused me about "Soul Purpose": the gradually increasing campiness of Angel's fantasies. The first one, in which Wesley stakes him, was perfectly chilling, but about the time Fred starts making walnut jokes and quoting Jaws it started to lose me. "Restless" mixed the absurd with the terrifying, but facing absurdity is always a little terrifying. Here, with the Blue Fairy and "Honkeytonk" and all that, it was just too over the top to be taken seriously.

Especially contrasted with Lindsey's infiltration of Spike's natural skepticism. The way that Lindsey was able to ferret out Spike's own sense of duty was masterful. Honor was paid to Spike's lack of concern with reward, but in a sense, feeding his egomania is it's own reward. Certainly, even while evil he prided himself on being more direct, more real than Angelus; tonight he refers to himself as of the "working-class," the image he has worked so hard to maintain.

Lindsey's reference to himself as Doyle, and his appearance as a Whistler-like figure to Spike, in fact the whole ep as a remix of bits and pieces the first two seasons, were wonderful. There was certainly enough intertextuality and metanarration to keep ATPo happy (assuming anyone ever posts about an Angel ep over there). But any episode that hinges on latex Alien-derived parasites is going to have to work hard to get my love, and this one didn't have even the Gorches.

Eve was excellent in her scene with Lindsey: the mutual manipulation is obvious, though its ends are not. She was less convincing at the end, though. Somehow, after she says, "Perhaps you should look inward," I would imagine the dialogue running:

WESLEY
She did it.

FRED
Oh, totally!!

GUNN
Can we kill her now?

That said, I was pretty happy with this episode, but I would have liked to have seen the dark tone of the realistic sequences seep over more into Angel's later fantasies. It went from staking and cutting and degenerated into worries over losing one's voice and pushing a mailcart (nice shoutout to "Numero Cinco" though). It seems to tie all of Angel's worries about being "empty" to Spike's ability to sleep with Buffy without her killing his goldfish. But there is a dog who does not bark: if there is any allusion to Connor in this most allusive of episodes I missed it.

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I didn't read this post, but so far, I've watched about eleven one-hour episodes of Justice League that I downloaded, rather than watch the second half of "Harm's Way" (which I also downloaded). And I've never given up on an episode like this. So I'm glad you liked it, but so far I'm in the "wtf was that" category with a vengeance. I can only hope I disagree with you on the next one, because I'm starting to think a lousy Cartoon Network/DC Comics show had a better season than a Joss show! Ack.

Ok.

I'll let

fresne expound on just how good Justice League has been this season.

Justice League of Dini/Tim fame rocks. Well this season, 1st season was not up to their potential. But anyway, I've been watching their work for many the eon. The Dini series of graphic novels are also pretty cool.

However, Harms Way, I loved it. I just don't have much to say about it other than chortle, chortle, look ma, funny. Than again, I liked the Soulful walnut thing too. And the bear. Gotta love a Mr. Bear.

However, call me a Philistine, I think I’ve seen Jaws once. What Jaws reference? Was it the goldfish?

Oh, and what’s interesting about the working man comment from Spike, is that’s Angel’s subconscious talking. So, it’s interesting from an Angel’s state of mind, working class=real=real boy deserving.

The Jaws reference came when Fred pulled the Mexican license plate out of Angel and said, "Came up the Gulf Stream" or somesuch.

You're right about it being in Angel's subconscious that Spike refers to himself as "working class." That does shed some light on Angel's doubts about trying to fight evil from the penthouse suite. Of course, at the end of that scene, it is Angel, mailroom boy, who returns to the working class.

I thought the rusty license was a reference to Angel's license to kill in discussion earlier, and the writer's poetic license with bears, fish and squishy dream inducing creatures. Also his license to be the holder of the shanshue prophesy! Gulf stream also meaning stream of consciousness.

So it's not just me as a (born again) comic book geek huh? Because yeah, the improvement from Season One to Two is one of the most staggering improvements I've ever seen! So the question is, which is better, Kim Possible or Justice League? I gave up on the former after some of the the first Season 2 episodes didn't seem so great, like they had lost their former glory. Or maybe I'm just waiting for Ron to get a comeuppance, knowing that he never will! :P

Kim Possible has been up and down this season. Most of the half-hour episodes have been good (though the concepts not as fresh), some even excellent, but they've run four fifteen minute episodes (rolled into two shows) now and I wish they'd stop that. I'm happy because in one of the last few episodes, Dr. Drakken asked, "Are you being serious or are you just mocking me now?" and Shego replied, "About 30 percent serious, 70 percent mock." That should be an icon!

Ron is definitely out of hand.

Comparing Justice League and Kim Possible is a little like comparing Schindler's List and Airplane! Though I do like Airplane! a little more than Kim Possible and Justice League more than Schindler's List.

Ha, and here I wouldn't have figured you'd like Justice League at all. I guess I should know better by now, then again I honestly don't know you too well at all, any more then I know that I can say "darn" when you say you didn't die and get away with it. ;)

Also, you flubbed your italics tags; you didn't properly close the one after "Airplane!" I've never seen Airplane! in its entirety, by the way, but I will admit that I'd never dare assert whether Justice League or Schindler's List was better!

Although, I may be the wrong person to ask about Kim Possible, since I’ve never glommed to the show. Possibly one of those personal taste things.

I have a friend who keeps telling me about how wonderful next season of Teen Titan’s is going to be. To which my only response is to shrug Whatever and go back to watching Static Shock, which he can’t stand. At least we’ll always have Justice League.

Because yes, it’s been practically an exponential improvement. I’m just glad T.V. guide raved about the season opener, or I wouldn’t have bothered watching. And that would have been a shame. What with Brainy plotting, Darkseed/Apoco-Pinky’s shiny pants of glowy evil and Supes having a meltdown and all.

Good fun for the whole dysfunctional family.

I did actually watch the first season in reruns, but back then it was more the "ooh flashy lasers" level of appreciation. I was definitely happy when they decided to go to another level with the season premier you mentioned, and more or less stay there. I have fond memories of Batman: The Animated Series which I didn't believe to be solely based on lack of taste as a youngster, so I knew this crew (same crew more or less, I've read) had it in them!

The "Doyle" thing puzzles me, b/c Spike met the real Doyle in "In the Dark." Or is that the point? I'll need to rewatch. Was he saying, "Call me Doyle" as a call-back to that, if so, and I can't believe I'm saying this, they mave have underplayed it a bit.

Uck. Now that I think about it, that's exactly what they were doing and I'm just now arriving at the point in the short bus.

The way the lightening and growing silliness of Angel's dreams can be wanked, is that Angel, thanks to the neurowhatsits, was relaxing into the dream state, leading to the final hill are alive vision, by being made to feel less and less important, but also, less self-important. The parasite would want a happy host, rather than a tortured one, prone to rolling around and squashing said plastic crab. Like I said, it's wank. As dreams go, it wasn't a patch on Restless in either creepiness, absurdity and inscrutability.

Speaking of referencing Connor, wasn't it implied as at least one of the reasons for his emptiness, and Eve does say something to the effect of "Where's Junior?".

The blue fairy reminded me of the receptionist in Beetlejuice in the waiting room of hell/purgatory/whateveritwasitsbeenalongtimesinceI'veseenthemovie.

Speaking of Honkytonk, I don't think we've seen Lorne accurately read anyone since Slouching. Yeah, he read the W&H employees to weed out which ones to keep and which to, er, axe, but a lot of still evil ones seemed to have slipped through. Or maybe it wasn't until the fake Cordy's fake souling spell in Calvary(?), that Lorne's anagogism (I have no idea if that's the word I want, or want to have made up) went completely missing. And when he's in the limo in LotP and complaining about not having any superpowers, you'd think that being able to read people would be something that Angel would bring up to reassure him of his value to the gang unless Angel were having some doubts about it, himself.

Okay, shutting up, now. I had no idea I was going to ramble like that.

I was shocked that they expected us to remember Doyle -- I never thought they'd expect us to remember whether or not Spike and Doyle ever met.

Your fanwank makes sense, but I don't think my problems with the increasing campiness had anything to do with in-show logic, but rather my aesthetic preferences.

Thank you for your comments. Must sleep now.

Well, yes, in general I prefer farce to camp, too.

Sweet bedroom farce dreams, but don't hurt your back again.

I thought that Eve was referencing the smaller parasite that Angel had just pulled off and squished. Because the parasite that she let go from the box, which by the way reminded me of the hairy spiders that the Mayor had to eat on BtVS, was a good deal larger than the one that was on Angel earlier.

That was my interpretation of "Junior" as well.

Well, yeah, that was the primary meaning of "Where's Junior." I think (it was damn late when I wrote about it maybe being a Connor reference) that I was positing a secondary meaning to Eve's seemingly innocuous query about the whereabouts of her smaller pet (which proves, I think, that pets and their owners *do* look alike - sorry, couldn't help the cattiness, I do so hate Eve).

I have a feeling that I'm madly over-interpreting this episode.

No, others have suggested a similar spin on the Junior line, and I don't think it's necessarily over-interpretation.

IIRC, Eve said "You killed Junior", which makes it a very clear Connor reference. Of course, textually it refers to baby bug, which then gets replaced with mama bug. Why they didn't just use the big one in the first place is beyond me. Maybe they wanted to use it as a sex aid, since it was on the bedside table ...
Ugh. Must go scrub brain clean of that image.

it was just too over the top to be taken seriously.

Without me typing one word, you know I loved the episode, so I'll move on from there quickly just to say why I think they went the campy route for the dream sequences, and that is that it is a commentary or counterpoint to Awakening and Angel's perfect day. Only here, it turns nightmarish because it uses the same fairy-tale comic-book tone but instead of working towards "waking Angel up," the purpose is to keep him asleep forever. It is an almost exact reverse of Angel's perfect day. All of the exaggerated enthusiasm on the part of the other characters is not for him but for Spike and all of his worst fears about himself--about Spike, about his recent choices--are realized. The scene with the blue fairy and the magic castle for example is not that different in substance or tone from the final shiny happy sunny moments of Awakening, only pumped up to a more fever dream level, which I assume was influenced in part by Moulin Rouge.

I totally agree on the brilliance of the intertexuality and self-referentiality in the Lindsay/Spike scenes. They were fascinating, and definitely the strongest parts of the episode. And I particularly loved Spike's chewing out of the first girl he saves. In a weird way, oddly reminiscent of Connor and the teenage girl in Inside Out, except he yells at her for being dumb instead of knocking her over the head and dragging her to his apartment to be sacrificed to his surrogate mother/lover who is under the thrall of a millenia-old being who is going to spring forth from her loins as his and her child, even though they're both white and she appears to be a black woman in her early thirties. Um, on second thought, maybe the scenes aren't all that similar. Uh...Where was I? ;o)

...there may be an explanation for them as well. I did a bit of surfing on-line and discovered that this episode was meant as an homage to a Superman comic entitled For the Man Who Has Everything by Alan Moore, in which Superman is held in a catatonic, dream state by an alien plant that has attached itself to him. You can read more about it here. That link by the way isn't that great, but it does give some info on the issue.

You are camp incarnate.

I totally agree on the brilliance of the intertexuality and self-referentiality in the Lindsay/Spike scenes. They were fascinating, and definitely the strongest parts of the episode.

And, clever Rob, to point out the connection between this ep and Awakenings!

I wanna throw in my agreement here, as well, except Rob just said everything I wanted to. The Lindsey/Doyle thing is fascinating, and, for the moment, utterly mystifying. To what extent, if any, do the symbols L's covered in, which protect him from the recognition of the Sr. Partners, play into the "Doyle" persona? How is Lindsey learning about future victims, if not from visions? Is he paying vamps to attack people at certain times, in certain places, just to set Spike up? Why the apparent double-cross of Eve? Why did Eve reach for the box-o-parasite during her bedroom scene with Lindsey?

I agree with you, d'H, about finding the increasing campiness of Angel's dreams off-putting. I, too, liked Harm's Way, for any number of reasons, including the fact that while it gave an outsider's p.o.v. of the season, it did so without becoming obviously self-indulgent. (I mean, the writer didn't sink into smug pleasure at his own cleverness.) Angel's final dreams in last night's episode, however, did smack of self-indulgence - maybe because they were too 'easy,' in a sense? To me, Restless is brilliant in part because the dream sequences are strange and seemingly impenetrable, but begin to make sense if you know the show well and simply put some thought into it. Angel's dreams were just obvious reference after obvious reference, as though the writer either didn't trust the audience to be able to figure out what was going on (which is especially frustrating, in light of the fact that the core fanbase of this show delights in sorting through abstruse references) or just got lazy about it.

Sorry this post is so disjointed; I only had a few minutes to write before running off to class (which I'm just about to do - any second now....) - Will write more later.

"Self-indulgent." Good word!

Geez, I love your icon! May I take it if I credit? & :-P

Please do!

Thanks!

To what extent, if any, do the symbols L's covered in, which protect him from the recognition of the Sr. Partners, play into the "Doyle" persona? How is Lindsey learning about future victims, if not from visions? Is he paying vamps to attack people at certain times, in certain places, just to set Spike up?

I was wondering whether it's possible that he really is getting the visions, but is using them to trick Spike and Angel. Or maybe that whole weird tatoo thing that protects him is also the source of the visions.

Why the apparent double-cross of Eve? Why did Eve reach for the box-o-parasite during her bedroom scene with Lindsey?

I wasn't sure what was up with that either. For one thing, I think he saw her touch the box, so I think he knew she was going for it. Then the question is, did Eve want Angel and the gang to realize what she was doing...But why would she? Does she want to get in trouble with the Senior Partners? Unless she's working against Lindsey with the Senior Partners, but as the Gang said, why would they give Angel the branch just to put him in a coma? So, (a) was she just overplaying her hand by telling Angel she was a part of the dream, figuring he wouldn't be smart enough to put two and two together or (b) did she want him to realize? Very confuse-ificating!

I got the impression that Lindsey didn't betray Eve so much as that this was their plan from the beginning: to put Angel in a place where he feels he is less heroic than Spike, where he feels indebted to Spike. And, of course, nothing would show the Senior Partners that they'd backed the wrong souled vampire than having the other one rescue their golden boy from paralysis and impotence.

Really, the whole plan relied upon no one checking on Angel, which seems kind of dicey anyway, as Eve can only come up with meaningless makework for so long. Sooner or later Wesley or Fred would have said, "I'll take care of that, Eve, just after I pop in on Angel, see that there's a giant parasite on his chest, rip it off and return everything to normal." It wasn't very tenable to have Angel always under the influence of the parasite anyway, so you might as well send in the cavalry and give Spike major brownie points in the process.

Still, Eve is screwing Lindsey or Lindsey is screwing Eve or both; there's too little information now to figure out which.

I got the impression that Lindsey didn't betray Eve so much as that this was their plan from the beginning: to put Angel in a place where he feels he is less heroic than Spike, where he feels indebted to Spike.

That makes sense… I suppose Lindsey couldn’t have known that Spike would save Angel so quickly after Eve had revealed herself to him, thereby effectively accidentally betraying her. But at the same time, since there were two parasties, Lindsey would have known (arguably, anyway) that Eve would be paying Angel a visit with the Sr. parasite, so doesn’t his ‘betrayal’ seem to be cutting things kinda close? Or perhaps it doesn’t matter that Angel now has had his suspicions of Eve confirmed? (While we’re on that subject, that scene, where Angel confronts Eve and the rest of the gang patronize him immediately, really irked me. They’re all suspicious of Eve; that was established in the first episode of the season. Why wouldn’t they trust Angel there?)

Still, Eve is screwing Lindsey or Lindsey is screwing Eve or both; there's too little information now to figure out which.

Do I smell some sort of triple-cross in the workings here, a la the second episode of this season? In true ME fashion, are the first couple of eps of this season foreshadowing major events and plot-twists for the rest of the season?

For one thing, I think he saw her touch the box, so I think he knew she was going for it.

Actually, because of that scene and then the ‘junior’ comment, my first thought was that the parasites were Eve’s offspring! Either that she was a parasite herself under some sort of glamour, or that she reproduced with the parasite, and that’s why she reached for the box while in bed with Lindsay… or, even worse, that the parasite was some sort of bedroom toy! (“ooo, sexy parasite!”)… altogether, a couple of squicky thoughts!

I interpreted Angel's reaction to Wesley's mention of "the situation" to be a fear that Wesley knew/remembered about Connor. It was almost a relief when Wesley identified it otherwise. (This was in the early, staking dream, I think.)

Still, absolutely nothing in the text, just my interpretation.

;o)

...and it's the goldfish. Angels' soul is a dead goldfish. Buffy says she isn't ready for children, she killed her godlfish. Angel killed Connor. In doing so, Angel may be feeling that he sold his soul for Connor (and may have, we still don't know).

In addition to the Junior comment (which, while definitely referencing the smaller parasite, also seemed to be Eve twisting the Connor knife one more time in her choice of phrasing) but I also took Fred's "I can hear the ocean" to be a Connor reference.

Mer

I may be the only person in the known fanoverse who liked "Harm's Way." I, unlike some, quite enjoy farce.

I have mixed feelings about this ep. Technically, it was done great, it *was* funny, and I enjoyed it, more or less. On the other hand - we had this episode before, had exactly the same experiment in POV, right down to even the musical cues. Only back then it was called "The Zeppo", and it was Xander's POV. That's the main reason "Harm's Way" left a sour taste.

I am really hoping Spike referring to himself as "working class" was a pure joke...

Well that was in Angel's dream so make of that what you will.

"Restless" mixed the absurd with the terrifying, but facing absurdity is always a little terrifying. Here, with the Blue Fairy and "Honkeytonk" and all that, it was just too over the top to be taken seriously.

Oh, THANK YOU; here I was thinking I was the only one...

Eve was excellent in her scene with Lindsey: the mutual manipulation is obvious, though its ends are not. She was less convincing at the end, though. Somehow, after she says, "Perhaps you should look inward," I would imagine the dialogue running:

Hmm...not so certain that Eve is the One with a Plan, really; to me, she seems awfully like someone who tries to play in the sand-box with the big kids but lacks the big pink shovel-- she seems like a pawn, not a queen, let alone a player.

But I may be wrong; it's been known to happen. & ;-)

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"Soul Purpose"

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Well, errr...um, yes...sure

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Hey, life am good. Superman said so.

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Where's Junior?

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Didn't she say "killed"?

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And re: the "Alien" parasites...

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Farce-camp

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Reference to Connor

I think there is an allusion to Connor...

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Coolness.