A sweet little stand-alone, and while
intrigued by what Mata Hari might've sounded like -- Joss always arranges such
cool bands -- I'm very happy Angel tracked down those tickets.
I'm with Cordelia -- the magic of the ballet doesn't do a damn thing for me.
While I respect the dedication and discipline involved, dance is one artform
I've never been able to make myself interested in. And sneaking around
backstage tracking down the mystery would be way more interesting.
And boy howdy was it ever.
Angel and Cordy go prowling around in an unescapeable temporal anomaly which
has trapped a rogue soap operatic energy similar to the one in "I Only
Have Eyes For You" in BtVS. Angel and Cordy get possessed and Cordy's
myopia regarding matters of the heart allow her to completely misread all of
the tentative overtures Angel is trying to make. If the writers had allowed him
to be less tongue-tied and let her shut up and get a thought all the way
across, this could've gone somewhere. Sadly, everything remained unsaid until
it was entirely too late and she reunited with the Groosalaug.
It was so irritating. But it played a deep second to what Wes was going through
-- Wes in his deeply repressed persona, so injured spiritually by what happened
to him in "Billy," he felt he needed to rebuild that trust between
Fred and him, and in the meantime, Gunn, who had no such recompense to make (in
that Fred was able to knock him unconscious) floated right in and made it
official.
And Wes in the person of Kuzco, nearly acted upon his wrath.
If Fred had not said "Angel" at a critical juncture, it's interesting
to me what would have happened when both hands slipped into her lap. The
writers dodged a big bullet there.
I wish I could've seen the Wes and Fred ballet scene in the episode as
originally planned. I feel like Joss could’ve cut other things. It wasn’t
exactly chock full of anything but yappery and I know there are ways to
condense that.
I hate how disorganized my thoughts
are on this episode. But I think they reflect the haphazard writing of this
episode. Terrible minions (those tragicomic laughing/weeping things just
sucked), the amorphous nature of what was happening out there on the stage was
not especially attractive (apparitions? spectral echoes or reflections? Then
how was Angel interacting with Summer Glau?)
And there were arc-level inconsistencies. After picking up a whole gob of
liquid cash recently, they complain of being poor (although Cordy's discussion
of the traditions of her people was delightful).
And the reintroduction of Groo was just irritating to me.
In the plus column, it's always cool to watch River dance, because she truly
can. I loved Summer Glau all the way through "Firefly," and she does
such a good job here. And the "solve" was cool even if the problem
wasn't. And Lorne's psychotic lullaby was wild fun:
"Go to sleep, lullaby
You've been fed and you're sleepy
You'll be with Uncle Lorne,
Who in no way resents not being asked to go to the ballet
And is certainly not thinking
Of selling you to the first vampire cult
that makes him a decent offer..."
I'm sorry, that was just riotously
funny.
The main problem is that this episode is mostly written to showcase something
that ultimately never made it to the screen -- with the possible exception of
some of the choreography, perhaps, cannibalized for the "We are as
gods" passage in Buffy's "Storyteller" episode.
Gunn's transformation to a ballet fan was cool -- "guys with their big-ass
packages jumping up and down" to his reaction to dancing vampires (Cordy:
"Who's scared?") "That would explain the athleticism, I mean
some of those jumps ... I was cool before I met y'all" was quite amusing.
Wes and his proto-gay snippiness was less cool. I mean, the lines were fun --
"What, from all the way back there?" (complaining about the seats)
and "How will the dancers manage to keep time without your rhythmic
snoring?" but they were not Wes lines. At least, not the Wes of this
season. Maybe Wes when he showed up on Buffy, or Wes in "Spin the
Bottle" -- "Head Boy" Wes. In fact, I think Cordy would've been
delivering those lines if she'd not been the target of one of them.
Oh, forgot to mention: That smattering
of applause when the dancers vanished into nothingness -- I don't know how I'd
have reacted to that if I was in the audience.
"Um ... er ... great special effects, what?"
Anyway, I know I'm meant to like this episode, but it's not my favorite. But
Summer's good and it was a pleasant outing, and it's not that damaging overall
characterwise. Just -- meh. There are ways it could've been more enjoyable. But
I like Fred with Gunn, so that was a good move storywise, and it isolates Wes
more, which was structurally important, and Cordy, well, it's in her nature to
be a little stupid heartwise, so let her drift over to the Groosalaug. You have
fun, Cordy -- I'm sure it'll all go perfectly.
Really looking forward, now, to ... ew. "Couplet." Then
"Loyalty." And ... oh yeah. We're entering a pretty dark patch.
Well, once again, they are "Angel" episodes, so they're by definition
better than most everything else on television.
I'll manage.