"Cavemen
win."
Every time I watch this one I see something new, which is strange given how
extraordinarily straightforward it is.
First off, the WB are dorks.
Watching this one episode, with the funny little opening in Fred's room at her
parents' home, it wasn't as clear, the way it was aired, that this episode is
in fact the first of a two-part farewell to Fred -- or, more to the point, a
farewell to Fred and the introduction to Illyria.
It cheats Cordelia a little bit, but only if you ignore the fact that Cordy got
to spend her last days doing stuff, living her final moments to their
fullest. "You're Welcome" is a perfectly wonderful showcase for
Cordelia because we don't learn until the end of the show that she is, in fact,
dead.
In "A Hole in the World," Fred is being mourned very nearly through
the second half of the episode. There are very few final last-minute grasping
at straws of hope available. If anything, with this death, Joss played
completely fair, which he doesn't always.
But "A Hole in the World" and "Shells" should’ve been aired
back-to-back. As it was, there was
very little indication that this was a two-parter right up until Fred's
last words reiterated in a spark appearing between Illyria's fingers, Wesley
packing Feigenbaum, the stuffed Master of Chaos bunny, away in a box and the
final sequence of Fred climbing into a pickup truck and heading west to find
her angel, above the heart-breaking acoustic strains of Kim Ritchie's "A
Place Called Home," legitimately bookending the two-part farewell.
In a just universe, they'd have aired these episodes back to back and let that
full-circle vibe flow freely.
I'll start, as this episode did, with a mistake -- or, more to the point,
another bit of evidence were it needed that S4 is a terrible season, or that
"Supersymmetry" was a terrible episode. Apart from having Angel
manifest a hallucination in the lobby of the Hyperion, re-creating the lecture
hall where Fred was attacked -- something he's never been able to do before or
since (and it wasn't just his own imagination, since Gunn can experience it as
well) Fred, in an offhand comment before the lecture, said she'd been a history
major before Prof. Seidel inspired her to get involved in quantum physics.
Well, to begin with, the disciplines are completely different, and require
completely different skill sets. You move to quantum physics from somewhere in
the math or science fields, not from more verbal disciplines.
This, I think, we can put down to the sort of mistake we encountered in
"School Hard," where Spike shouted out that Angelus was his sire,
discovering in flashbacks that in fact Drusilla was Spoik's sire and Angelus
was hers.
It suggests that Fred's backstory was too sketchy for too long -- especially
for as wonderful as these writers tend to be. And again, the flashback
redirects just seem more persuasive, somehow. When Fred tells her mom she's
going to go to UCLA and learn everything they can teach her about quantum physics
and come up with stuff they haven't thought of, not only is it just an
exuberant backstory launch for this character, it's just more believeable --
not simply because it's just more credible than everything we saw in
"Supersymmetry," but because we see it. Fred has a stuffed
bunny named for the person who came up with Chaos Theory, and she's been
interested in high-energy physics since she was in high school.
Quod erat demonstratum.
Fred, who from "Spin the Bottle" got high in high school and pursued
conspiracy theories, Fred the incredibly bright college student who was
banished by her professor to one of the theoretical dimensions ...
Let's explore that. Fred blames Seidel for her incarceration that turned her
into this incredibly sympathetic crazy person in Pylea. But whether she picked
up that book herself in a relatively unused wing of the campus library and read
the incantation on the cover aloud, or whether her professor sent her there ...
Fred reads the incantation.
And Fred touches the gemstone on the sarcophagus.
In the second part of this two-parter, Wes curses Fred's curiosity. As fatal
flaws go, I was assuming it was going to be her impossible over-reaction to
things, like Gunn dying for a few seconds, or their trek through the sewers in
"Shiny Happy People" where she once again brings up his murder of
Prof. Seidel and refers to herself as a "shell."
Just like Angel being refered to as a puppet, Joss starts some of his
storylines far in the past.
Continuing our trace of Fred's path, she is forced to live for five years as a
slave to green demons, on the run as Cave Fred after she disables the collar
that forces obedience on pain of death, until one day she is rescued -- Hero
Angel refuses to behead her, and instead facilitates her escape, and then she
saves Wes and Gunn by distracting a seriously vamped-out Angel with a
bag of blood. She takes him back to her cave, which is increbily brave, but
whereas in five years she has learned to negotiate the monsters in Pylea, she
is ill-equipped to deal with life in L.A., reverting to Cave Fred -- cavemen
win -- back at the hotel.
She is reunited with her parents and begins to re-acclimate, forging a
relationship with Gunn, and becoming an object of Wesley's obsession -- which
he becomes horrified by in "Billy." She herself begins to pursue her
old obsession, making a little progress on string theory that gets published
and brings her face-to-face with the man who, however you want to interpret
this, sent her to Pylea. And she plans to return the favor, although Gunn
actually carries out her murderous intent, driving a wedge between them. She
fights battles, saves her friends from Jasmine's thrall, and then takes over
the practical science division at W&H, forms a little infatuation with her cute
lab assistant Knox, but ultimately turns her attentions to Wesley.
One can argue she's gone out at the top of her game. The betrayal involved in
Knox bringing that sarcophagus to her lab for her if they'd been going out
would've been one thing, but somehow it's all the more evil because she and Wes
were building a relationship and finding happiness with each other.
We don't have any evidence that they actually consummated this relationship,
but from their interaction during the raging bug battle at the beginning of
this episode -- and all of Wesley's tenderness toward the end of it -- it's a
damn good bet.
If there were any doubt at all about Gunn's complicity in that sarcophagus
appearing, the anonym- ous delivery
crew's words "It's already signed for" puts a button on it. One
wonders who Knox is acting for -- the sarcophagus he's been waiting for, which
he and Sparrow apparently were in cahoots about, appearing in his lab is a
moment when he'd be expected to knit his hands together and emit a Mr.Burns-esque
"Eeeex-cellent."
But he's coy for the cameras and for most of the episode he seems to be trying
to do everything he can to bring Fred back.
The first reveal is so incredibly cool, however. After everything looks like
it's going to be just fine after she's checked out for mummy dust, Fred and Wes
are making plans for the evening on the landing and Lorne passes by. She sings
a few notes of "You Are My Sunshine" (and what an adorable little
voice she has) and Lorne knows exactly what he's heard. He whips around with
this great expression of panic on his face in time to catch her as she coughs
blood and falls down those dangerous-looking stairs.
Immediately the arguments of the day -- including the cavemen v. astronauts
argument Angel and Spike are having and she's continuing with Wesley -- arguing
that the astronauts must be armed in some way -- cease. Everyone is united in
their efforts (it seems) to save Fred. This episode really highlighted
the fact that there are very few womenfolk in Fred's universe. The medlab they
take her to is packed full of Y chromosomes with little Fred alone in her bed
-- "My boys. I haven't had this many strapping men at my bedside since the
varsity lacrosse league." Great joke, luv.
They do everything they can -- I loved Wes shooting that guy through the
leg when he found out he wasn't working Miss Burkle's case -- and Angel and
Spike and Lorne tracking Gunn's lead to Eve's location, and her pointing them
to The Deeper Well -- which was some good storytelling, btw. I loved Lorne's
lines in Lindsey's old apartment -- "Fred once told me after a sinful
amount of Thai food that she thought most people would prefer to be green --
your shade, if possible." And "If I was facing your future, I'd make
like Carmen Miranda and die." Great work from Andy Hallett in this
ep.
Fred gets up and tries to save herself -- nice move by Joss -- a strong woman
refusing to sit idly by while her body and her world collapses makes her all
the more solid a character and actually all the more sympathetic.
Gunn confronting Knox about saving her, when he and Gunn together (without
Gunn's implicit knowledge) are the reason she's dying. Nice. Also, Gunn
confronting himself in the White Room
was interesting without being too informative. There was a lot of story
to tell in this episode, and there
wasn't a lot of throwaway stuff, but that scene, while cool, didn't add too
much.
Knox's slip of the tongue is as clumsy as Desdemona's handkerchief, but he'd
covered his tracks too well -- he had to give himself away because no one else
would've been able to figure it out. Hell, even when there are no witnesses he
doesn't get overexcited about the sarcophagus showing up and his god
manifesting once again.
The final scenes where Wes is reading to Fred from "The Little
Princess" -- using one of those wonderful templates to call it up -- is
some of the most emotionally compelling television out there. Along with Fred
repeating her first lines to Angel -- "Handsome man saves me from the
monsters" -- her conversation with Wes is even better. After instructing
him to tell her parents it was quick, that she wasn't scared, she says
something like:
Fred: I walk
with heroes."
Wes: "You are one."
Fred: "And this is my power. To not let them get me."
And if it were
up to Spike and Angel (nice trick with the wire from those two) they wouldn't.
But Angel's acting on information we don't have -- to wit, that the Circle of
the Black Thorn is watching for a sacrifice and Fred's closest in the line of
fire. This was a slightly different Angel than we saw in "Lineage,"
where his entire world would end if anything happened to Fred. The Angel of
"Lineage" would've been OK with Drogyn's warning of Illyria clawing
its way into everyone between Fred and The Deeper Well -- the lives of hundreds
if not thousands of people. The Angel on the bridge above "A Hole in the
World" determines to make the sacrifice.
Knox: "I don't mean he can't save her. I mean that he won't."
Cavemen win. Ancient powers triumph over pure science. Fred dies and ... as
perfect as the theme becomes, it was just a puzzle Mutant Enemy had been
fussing with for the week this episode was written, but it was just too
impossibly elegant. Fred is dragged back into the cave, kicking and screaming.
Fred:
"Wesley ... why can't I stay?"
In my opinion,
the most heartbreaking final words I think this show has given us for any main
character, so full of loss and confusion and sadness. And there is no answer.
Unless it is Illyria's opening assessment of her re-established existence.
Rising like an icy blue stab of pain, her words:
Illyria:
"This will do."
Joss, you evil,
evil bastage.