Previously, on
"Angel."
+ Angel and
Darla fulfilled the Naizean prophecy of the Troclan by Angel's moment of
perfect despair with the recently re-sired Darla, thus bringing Connor into the
world.
+ Cordy became
part demon in order to avoid having the back of her head blown out by the
visions she carried.
+ Holtz made
an appearance as part of Sahjahn's fear of prophesied execution to muck
everything up and make it possible in the first place.
+ In a panic
attack of madness, Holtz leaps into the darkest of the dark worlds and Connor
ages 16 years practically overnight.
+ Far from
fulfilling his end of the bargain with Sahjahn (to destroy Angel? Connor? This
isn't exactly clear) Holtz raises Connor to hate Angel and Darla.
+ Connor
returned to this world to ... what, exactly? Meet Angel? Destroy him? His
actions suggest the latter, but in his conversation with Holtz, his motives
seem a bit muddly.
+ Believing
Angel to have murdered Holtz, Connor, together with his father's //actual//
murderer, Justine, sinks Angel to the bottom of the sea.
+ At exactly
the same time, Cordy's destiny (to float about in a bubble of light made of
pure joy) is fulfilled because she's so good and pure. No, rather she's taken
out of the picture and subject to infection by Jasmine, who might not have had
anyone to latch onto if Cordy hadn't so readily acquiesced to the offer of
infusion with demon essence so as to retain the visions. Skip back to
"S1x02 - Lonely Heart" when she told Doyle if the visions were her
gift she'd return it. She could've just given the visions to Groo, but no. She
needed to be special.
+ Sometime in
the next three months -- presumably earlier rather than later -- Wesley tracks
Justine down and locks her in his closet. After he retrieves Angel he leaves
her chained to a pickup truck and she disappears for the balance of the show.
+ Angel confronts
Connor and kicks him out.
+ Cordy
returns, massively disoriented and not entirely herself.
+ She
remembers that she was in love with Angel and so naturally goes to sleep to
Connor, who is still exiled.
+ Portents of
devastation rock the city -- plauges of rats, snakes, sparrows and so forth.
+ The Beast
arises melodramatically in the spot that Darla gave birth to Connor.
+ He, at the
behest of his Beastmaster, Cordy, kills a bunch of people, causing the Rain of
Fire.
+ Cordy sleeps
with Connor. Angel sees this.
+ The Beast
kills a bunch of lawyers -- much like Angel did in S2 except that Angel just
unleashed Darla and Dru on them and didn't turn them into zombies. For reasons
that are never explained, he rips Lilah a new one but lets her live.
+ The Beast,
guided by Cordy, blots out the sun. Truckloads of vamps flood the city as it is
now permanent midnight.
+ The one
remaining sister in the sisterhood who could neutralize the Beast is found
murdered by Cordy.
+ Angelus
arises, and Angel's soul is stolen by Cordy. This is the single worst move
Jasmine made, if Jasmine is guiding events. There's no way to ensure Angelus
won't simply kill Cordy. And there was no truly satisfying reason that he
didn't.
+ Cordy
executes Lilah in the same manner that Justine executed Holtz -- making it look
like a vamp attack.
+ Wesley
springs Faith from prison and Faith and Angelus destroy the Beast. Is this also
part of Jasmine's plan? Jasmine later suggests she's made mistakes -- not
anticipating the ramifications of the connections she was going to make with
people, and in this episode, mistakes she made with the Blue World. Is this
also a mistake?
+ In another
crossover, Willow arrives.
+ After all of
this mishegah, Skip and Jasmine both suggest that she's responsible for all
these things. Well, take her at her word, then yes, she's responsible for the
vamp attacks in Los Angeles and the devastation in the wake of the rain of
fire.
+ Jasmine
makes everyone happy. But what is emphasized in this episode, simply by her
finally using her own fists instead of those of others, Jasmine never takes any
direct action. She merely directs others to do her bidding.
+ Fred
discovers that mingling Jasmine's blood with her own allows her to see Jasmine
for what she truly is. If we know nothing about anything, we know that Fred has
a good heart, and if she's repelled by what she sees, then Jasmine must be a
being of pure amoral chaos, at the very least, and of dark and disturbing evil
at worst.
+ Fred equips
Angel to see Jasmine as she does, and together they disenchant the others.
+ They are
pursued into the sewers where they meet one of Jasmine's other acolytes from
the Blue World.
+ Following a
hunch, Angel travels there, while Connor leads the attack against what Gunn
called the Big Bad Free Will Gang.
And our old friends, the Powers That Be?
Powers That Be: * sip *
Actually, there's two references to the Powers That Be in this show, and
they're striking because they've barely been mentioned the entire season.
The first occurs in the Blue World, where the singularly bipedal High Priest,
Guardian of the Word (and can I just say what a terrible reimagination of
"Who's on First" that was) reminds Angel, in flawless English,
that it's the Powers That Be that tell him he needs to fight, but that they
could be wrong.
The second is from Jasmine, still claiming to be a Power That Was, pointing out
that there are no absolutes in serving the Powers -- just choices. Her true
colors are shown, by the way, in fighting Angel. He gave her the chance to join
him in fighting darkness, making the world a better place with what powers she
retained, and since she could not rule it, she chose to work to destroy it.
Q.E.D.
As the episode begins, Connor and the Jasmanians subdue Team Angel.
Side note: I couldn't help noticing that Fred seems to have had more weapons
pointed point-blank at her throat in this season than in all the others
combined (I can only remember it happening once before, in S3x03 - "That
Old Gang of Mine," when she's confronting Gio.) In S4, she had one pointed
at her in "Deep Down," "The Magic Bullet" and here in
"Peace Out." Even in her near fatal confrontation in S5's
"Lineage," the weapon was fired from across the room. Just something
that struck me about this opening fight sequence.
Jasmine's connected to all of Jasmania. Team Angel could be absolutely anywhere
-- it truly doesn't matter -- so why bring them in? Bargaining chips my butt.
Jasmine:
"Has it now become necessary for me to explain my wishes?"
Connor:
"No."
Um ... yes,
actually. If you keep them alive and put them in the Talky-Talk Cage (with no
facilities, incidentally -- that must've gotten pretty irritating pretty fast),
they'll talk to Connor and -- well, Connor already suspected you'd eaten Cordy.
They merely articulated it.
This was officially a Connor episode -- perhaps his first decent
front-and-center appearance since S3x20 - "A New World." He had his
big long speech at the beginning, he was the one who tracked Cordy to the
cathedral -- the one with the big Tim Minear project
"Miracles"-reference "God Is Nowhere" sign outside (we can
be thankful, I suppose, that no talking wax lions appeared anywhere) -- and the big long speech to Cordelia (who
might, now that you mention it, enjoy a beeping machine, an IV drip and some
hydration, thanks, rather than just a shoddy half-assed attempt at bricking her
into a sanctuary -- one that had to have a dozen other entrances anyway besides
the main one).
Joss doesn't seem to set a lot of scenes in churches. There's maybe a few
others, but I can only remember like half a dozen in the whole 'Verse (besides
all the scenes with the Master trapped underground in one) -- Kendra and
Buffy's throwdown with Spike and Drusilla in "What's My Line (2),"
Buffy tracking that priest in "Pangs," Buffy's throwdown with Faith
in "This Year's Girl," that scene with Buffy and Spike in the church
in "Help," Angel and Wes meeting with the nun in "I've Got You
Under My Skin" and then this one. Even the confrontations with Caleb took
place in an abbey winery rather than a church, per se.
Jasmine kept them alive because the plot demanded it. There was no good reason
for her to keep them alive.
I did enjoy the continuity of Jasmine forming a circle with her followers to
communicate with her more distant followers. I'm not sure what they all were
doing, y'know, standing around while Connor made his way back with them
to the hotel, but I'm sure they had lots to talk about (“Why is there a
trail of maggots everywhere?” etc.)
Connor's disillusionment was heartbreaking. He had grown up in the
Qor'toth, his value structure was at risk, he had a desperate
need to belong to something. And when he finally admitted to himself that
Jasmine was a lie, his devastation demanded the violence of his action.
Angel's fight with Jasmine was instructive. Building on Fred's two-word comment
to Jasmine -- "Nobody asked" -- in reference to all of the help that
Jasmine meant to provide -- Angel outlined some of the worst of what she'd been
directly and indirectly responsible for -- the rain of fire and the blotting
out of the sun, which brought a mass of evil to the city. The fight we watched
in "Shiny Happy People" could hardly have been comprehensive, and she
was actually responsible for it in the first place.
Jasmine had offered world peace (through whatever means) in an entirely
nonnegotiated abdication of free will. Angel demanded choices. Humanity demands
choices. Expanding on my comment from "Sacrifice," a future with no
choice and a complete worship of a deity -- they could make a temple
approximately the size of one of the main islands in Japan and ignore
sustainability.
Her message -- love one another and enjoy one another, right up until it's snacktime
-- is inoffensive. But real peace between people comes from engaging hopes and
ideals, expanding communication, making sacrifices. Loving Jasmine more than
you hate other people is a shortcut, and it might even have held, but it's
unstable.
That guy drew a knife on Jasmine's father fast enough, after all.
Lilah showing up in the final scene was delightful. But her leveled accusation
that they ended world peace is a slap in the face to their efforts over the
second half of the season.
Now, all of this stuff needed to happen. In order to fulfill the prophecy set
forth in the first season, all of the stuff that happened -- the Beast, the
coming darkness and so forth -- needed to be as big and as operatic and as
end-of-the-world as this season was in order for Angel to earn his humanity.
But it threw off the pacing of the show. Rather than one Big Bad (which this
season ultimately suggested there was), this show had many many Big Bad things
happen. And as big as this was, ultimately, I don't believe Angel earned the
Shoop. I personally believe that as much as he went through, Joss made the
right call in leaving the Shoop sometime in Angel's future -- if indeed it
would ultimately happen at all.
It probably will.
Sometime after the grand apocalyptic battle he was facing at the end of S5.
"Ending world peace? You've already taken care of that."
Oh, Lilah. You're such a buzzkill.