Also known as:
"Wake Up, Sleepyhead" or "Vail, You Missed a Spot"
Consider a few highlights from the short but eventful life of Miss Cordelia
Chase.
She's the most popular girl in school. Like everyone else, she knows that life
in her sleepy little burg is ... unusual, but she gets by. The one day,
a short blonde girl -- one she'd even been nice to, if you can believe
it -- shows up and attacks her with some sort of stake.
"Excuse me. I have to call everyone I have ever met."
She tries out for cheerleading and goes blind. Invisible girls take revenge
upon her face. She invites a tall dark stranger into her hot little "Queen
C" car and he turns out to be a vampire. She finds herself drawn into the
strangest situations, not least of which dating a geek. Not only does this hurt
her socially, but physically, when she falls on a piece of rebar and it goes
through her (Joss do love him a nice sucking gut wound).
Her surgeons apparently do some astonishing work, as we see in
"Belonging" and elsewhere. One wonders if defaults in the medical
bills tipped the fragile financial house of cards her parents were maintaining
and the IRS descended upon them like vultures. Because along with who is going
to be homecoming queen, suddenly she needs to worry about being poor and
working retail. And then on her graduation day, the speaker turns into a giant
scary demon guy, her best friend goes and gets herself sired and her school
blows up.
Enough of that. ENOUGH! Los Angeles and inevitable stardom beckons. As do
cramped apartments and roaches. How fortunate to bump into ... hey, are you
still, "grr"? Yep, there ... isn't actually a cure for that. OK,
fine, I'll come work for you. And room with a ghost. And fall for yet another
-- oh, your being part demon is so far down the list. And star in
commercials except for this whole seizure visions thing (whaddya know -- you can
get it from kissing) and hey, while I'm at it, pick up not one, not two, but
three mystical pregnancies (the third-eye demons' means of procreation which
you'd think would've come to the attention of at least one doctor by now).
Yep, she's vision girl, no one will hire her, woe is she, until she's sucked into
another dimension where they go from forcing her to muck out the stables to
worshipping her as a princess and this gorgeous hunk of manmeat offers to be
her love slave and release her from the head-splitting visions. She declines,
instead choosing to hold onto them so that she can contribute to the mission
she now seems wholly committed to.
The visions just get worse, but that's mostly because she's being targeted by a
high-power law firm. And she's still good to go toe-to-beautifully-shod-toe
with a high-power lawyer from that firm. Ultimately, in a very comic "It's
a Wonderful Life" sequence, she sees how her life could've gone if
she'd never hooked up with Angel in L.A. -- and what could happen to her if she
has one more vision -- and again she chooses the visions, mostly to save Angel.
Fine and fair enough. Make with the demon essence infusion. But while this
makes her more powerful than she ever was, it probably begins to change her,
subtly, opens her to influences she wasn't subject to before. No matter. Wherever
Jasmine comes from -- that higher plane bubble world or the deal she makes in
"Birthday" -- Jasmine does, ultimately, take control. She does ascend
to a cloud of light made of pure joy on the eve of professing her big undying
love for Angel and then for about four months she's floating around bored out
of her semi-mystical skull.
Until she makes her big inexplicable comeback. There's some trippy amnesia,
there's smooching with the Beast as the Beastmaster, there's ...
Our lives are different from other people's.
... there's mojo she's accessed that is never explained, there's sleeping with
a teenage boy whose diapers she was changing just a few episodes ago, there's
the stealing of Angel's soul, there's the fake vision that unleashes Angelus on
an unsuspecting populace, then there's murdering Lilah, among others, there's
booming voices in Angelus' skull, there's murdering entire families to keep her
Beast from being banished, there's blocking of the sun -- oh, yes, all of these
things are harbingers -- birth pangs -- as Jasmine brings herself into being
and she falls into a coma.
.
And, one complete transformation of her world later, she wakes up.
.
Others have suggested the Powers have been subtly working around the influence
of Jasmine to maintain the course of their champion, identified in Season 1 as
Angel. They worked the slot machine, they sent Darla as some sort of
ghost/angel/vision to Connor, etc.
But it would seem that they did retain some communication with this conduit,
and whereas they once had something to say like every other episode, they saved
the best for last. They show Cordy what Angel needs to do to get back on track
-- Ethan Lindsey's reign of dark comic tomfoolery as means to access ...
Excuse me, but isn't he snogging the liaison to the Senior Partners? What more
access to everything does he think he needs, anyway?
And I defy anyone to tattoo themselves and chant a mystical chant and become
invisible to lasers and security cameras.
Never mind. She's got the coma vision, she's got the wakeup call, and, since
all her demon-infusion would seem to have left her with the birth of Jasmine,
she just got the back of her skull blown out, like poor Tammy in
"Birthday."
But that isn't necessarily gonna help the Powers, so instead of just murdering
her and letting that last important vision be the weapon, she's fitted with a
corporeal spirit with great hair and lousy wardrobe (she so needed to go
shopping) and a call to the CEO of Hell Incorporated later, she's on her way to
do something about it.
"Cause I'm not ready to go back to the hotel just yet."
Oh right -- the hotel. There was a memo about that ...
The nun thing was a complete waste of episode. The nun thing was a nonstarter.
Some nothing for Lilah Jr. to talk about. The reveal that she and Angel had
been briefly intimate was clumsy but allowed for a great line -- "I
thought Darla was rock bottom" -- and Cordy's instant dislike of
her mirrored my own so I was pleased by that exchange.
Part of the fun of this episode was Angel putting the pieces together on
Lindsey's influence on events. It put a button on Spike's extracurricular
vigilantism -- "Here I was thinking I had some sort of destiny" --
well, there went that theory. Although I'll grant that for awhile, engineered
as the situations indeed were and not supported by anything, it's a perfectly
legitimate notion that Spike could be a candidate for the Shoop. As could any
vampire with a soul. I mean honestly, given how not-difficult it seems to be
for a vampire to be ensouled -- a novice can do it from a hospital bed -- there
must be a few walking the night.
Most disappointing was Fred's greeting of Cordy, because it's the briefest, and
funniest was Harmony's, because she's so openly joyful, despite being, technically,
evil.
Spike's attack of Cordy was fun, mostly because we learn that being evil makes
a person's blood a little astringent, sort of oaky. Spike drank a little of
her, so she's very corporeal -- not just a solid projection, but blood,
flesh and bone. The Powers did excellent work. And Angel's throwdown with Spike
in the hallway was fun, too.
Cordy's interaction with Wes was nice. There was a little vibe there, an echo
of their fondness for one another, nothing romantic. They'd tried that, and it
hadn't worked. No chemistry, although Wes still works the best mojo in town.
Cordy and Angel ...
She starts with what Angel has done everything in his power (well -- many
things. He could've signed on for the mindwipe as well) to forget -- Connor.
She reminds him of who he is -- a loving father as well as a champion of the
helpless. She takes us back to an extraordinarily nice homage to the real
Doyle -- first soldier down -- and binds what was to what is. She is, herself,
reminded of the work that they've done,
and while she is deeply offended by the status quo, in the end, she does come
to acknowledge that while Angel has gotten himself into a terrible
situation and woefully off track, he is and remains a force of good, and just
needed her guidance -- and the Powers -- to focus himself for the final fight.
So all that remains -- beyond a comment on how fun Harmony's attack on Eve in
those magnificent Manila Blahniks (one of the most expensive costumes we never
see), and Fred's seeing Wesley in a new light as he works his mojo -- is the
smackdown between Angel and a Tiny Texan.
Montana? Oklahoma? Recently of Nepal, the Hellmouth and points west? Never
mind. Clearly Lindsey gets around. His instincts are good, though -- if the
Senior Partners find him in L.A., they'll invite him in for a chat.
The switchblade vs. katana fight was going to be fun, but Lindsey's so mystical
he can create a sword. His mojo is already better than most of what the Trio
could put together, and his ability to go in for the vivisection was at least
somewhat mystical. His getting his ass handed to him by Angel in the
wake of his gloating was sweet, and in the end, Angel does indeed remember who
it is that he is: "I'm Angel. I beat the bad guys."
Stitch it on a pillow, Angel.
Cordy's kiss with Angel at the end, on the cusp of a grand reveal, is ... very
satisfying. Not dream Cordy who lives in Angel's fantasy, not manipulative
Jasmine-entralled Cordy no one could really trust, but instead, the Cordy on
her way to meet Angel the night she ascended to Boredom on High. The smooch
some of us have been waiting for her to plant for 1-1/2 seasons. The honest
affection of a woman who's been through so much with this man-pire that it's
not even a means to an end, not even physical, but rather a kiss from a soul to
a soul.
I completely get people being upset that the story was moving to a place where
Angel and Cordelia would hook up. I get the true-and-forever Bangel love that
people are angry to see even back-burnered. But for one brief moment, a last
expression of affirmation, we got to see what was so rudely interrupted by too many forces.
Who knows what would've happened? It's not like every time Cordy kisses someone
she falls in love. She and Wesley knew immediately back in Sunnydale
that there was no chemistry between them (despite their mutual attraction and,
afterwards, appreciation). It could've happened that way for them, too.
But for this moment -- remembering how comfortable and couply they were caring
for Connor together, remembering how angry I felt about her dense
superficiality in "Waiting in the Wings," and her refusal to trust
her own heart afterwards despite doing everything in her power to turn Groo
into Angel -- I choose to believe that they would've made each other very happy.
And, naturally, the visions pass once again, an unbroken line from Doyle to
Cordy to Angel (or, not discounting not-deeply-explored alternate realities,
from Doyle to Angel to Cordy).
That was ... quite a kiss. And a tour-de-force of a guest appearance.
And a towering episode, one which fully acknowledged Cordelia's place in the
Angel'Verse, showcased her at her very, very best and reminded us all of what
it was we'd been missing so very much.
Thank you, Joss.
You're welcome.