"Soul Purpose"

[andrew_jorgensen]

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.

Comments

[cwx.livejournal.com]

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.

[deadsoul820.livejournal.com]

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.

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

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)

Reference to Connor

[wisewoman.livejournal.com]

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)

I think there is an allusion to Connor...

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

...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).

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

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

[littlesammy.livejournal.com]

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.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

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

Coolness.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

"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. & ;-)