My parents are
liars and I can never trust them, but it's cool.
In light of Angel's conversation with Connor in "Not Fade Away," it's
all so obvious.
Most viewers took it for granted that Connor's memories returned when the
Window of Orlon was smashed. I was misled, but in retrospect, Joss played very
fair.
Never mind Angel's exchange with Connor in "Not Fade Away." It's
spelled out perfectly (for the less gullible) in "Origin."
Connor:
"You've got to do what you can to protect your family. I learned that from
my father."
So who was
Connor kidding?
Well, let's start with who Joss was kidding.
I've been asked how on earth I couldn't have known instantly that Connor's
memories had been restored. After all, the fight went co-incidentally in his
favor when Wes smashed the Window. Why was I so resistant to the obvious?
Vail had created a beautiful set of memories for Connor. Memories of love, hope
and promises fulfilled. Like Angel, I was heartbroken at the idea that all of
these memories were stolen from this boy, who was suddenly dear to me. Connor,
at the end of S4x22 - HOME, was sweet and loving and genuinely happy. He hadn't
been stolen from a loving father. He hadn't been tied to what passes in the Qor'Toth for a tree for five days by
the only father figure he had and loosed himself to track him (a truly macabre version of hide-and-seek).
His mind had not been systematically poisoned against the vampire father who
loved him, whose soul cried out to save him, who never gave up hope until it
had shagged the only mother figure it had ever known, tried to murder its own
father several times, run a fist through its own child's face and strung up a
dozen innocents in a psychotic sacrifice of fear, who Angel had had to all but
destroy.
And, finally, if we are the sum of our memories, did.
It's not until after this episode that Angel realizes what Illyria is doing is
testing Team Angel, not the other way around, and his mind could not have
misplaced the memories of sparring with Connor as Connor learned his moves and
readied himself to destroy Angel in S3x22 - TOMORROW.
If Angel resisted with every fiber of his being Connor's memories being
restored, Wes could hardly do it fast enough.
I hadn't gotten that Vail hadn't teleported the Window into Wesley's hand --
that that was probably one of Illyria's time-stand-still things. But regardless
of how it got to Wes, Vail could've called it back. Vail knew what memories
he'd created for Wes and maybe he was less satisfied with the hours upon
pleasurable hours of Jenga he'd sketched in for Wes (an aside from S5x13 - WHY
WE FIGHT), so maybe his creative sensibilities weren't so offended if only
Wesley's memories were in danger of flooding back.
That's part of what I forgot. The memories are restored. They are not replaced
outright. As Connor explains in the series finale, the dark memories resurfaced.
They did not entirely overpower. He had access to his fighting abilities.
He also remained, essentially, Connor. Connor was always stridently forthright.
That wasn't always attractive for those of us who'd seen all three seasons up
until his appearance in S3x20 - A NEW WORLD. But he was always fiercely
loyal, even if it was a loyalty we as viewers might not have shared, even if we
saw the manipulation involved, even when it made the character thoroughly
unappealing.
He was Connor. He was always Connor.
A word about loyalty. Watching this series as an adopted person, I recognize
Angel's difficulty in giving up a son he'd known for maybe a good part of a
year, under drastically diverse circumstances. He'd gotten to share his life
only so very briefly, and he recognized what that life entailed.
When W&H offered to save him, to set aside the darkness, anger and
frustration inherent in the life Angel could offer him, to provide him with a
loving family with loving parents, Angel took the offer.
Parents cannot bear their children to suffer, and from the life he'd won in
S2x09 - THE TRIAL -- which is the only good explanation we've ever received for
Connor's mystical parentage -- Angel recognized the suffering his child would
face if he stayed. He recognized it as a magical gift to the world that he
could only manage to save from itself -- and not completely.
Connor had a terrible lot in life. By giving him up -- completely -- Angel
could improve it, make it better. Looking in from the outside at the life
Connor could enjoy without him, Angel was secure in his determination that this was the best choice.
Was it?
Was it .. for everyone?
Part of the deal, struck during that wash to white in S4x22 - HOME -- entailed
the attachment of Lorne, Wes, Fred and Gunn to W&H. And at the end of their
tours, they were all convinced W&H
was a good move. At the beginning of S5x01 - CONVICTION, Fred outlined
how quickly they'd all decided.
But all of them had gotten into that limo. All of them were open to the
possibilities W&H was showing them. All of them felt, at some point, that
they were making a good decision.
The day Wesley couldn't remember so terribly well. And which he could no longer
trust. Angel gave him sort of a pep-talk at the beginning of this episode,
telling him to regain his own life in the wake of losing Fred.
Now, tracking down the articles of incorporation signed in Angel's blood, he
couldn't be so sure that Angel wasn't the one responsible for her loss.
Vail's got some powerful mojo. Even an ancient demon-god-thing couldn't suss
out the overwritten memories. If Illyria had been able to fix a cold, ice blue
eye on Fred's true past, he could've set Wesley's mind a little easier.
As it was, Wesley smashed that Window out of grief. And in no small measure, to
perhaps restore Fred in some measure to the intractible artifact walking around
in her skin. His was an act of aggression which led to an overload of
regression.
He couldn't bear it. He knows at the end that his memories were not created so
he could forget his past, but to endure it.
Alexis Denisof has some amazing scenes coming up.
That Window has some far-reaching effects. With its destruction, Lorne's
memories of Connor seem to have been restored, as are those of Fred, who is no
longer, as are Gunn's, who is located in another dimension entirely. An aside,
but one wishes he'd given Hamilton a little longer to outline exactly what it
was the Senior Partners wanted from him in exchange for his freedom, but it was
clearly enough to send the newly minted Liaison to the Senior Partners into the
suburban dungeon to make the offer in the first place.
That was simply an illustration of Gunn's willingness to pursue his penance
regardless of cost. Noble, really.
It shouldn't have surprised me that Connor's memories were restored. He was
only on the other side of a barrier, however mystical.
I just ... wish he could just have continued to be the completely loving,
perfectly self-possessed spark of light he'd become. Artifice though it may
well be, he'd earned a lifetime of good karma, and the happy denial he
navigated was much happier and far less morally ambiguous than the life he'd
finally been given some reprieve from.
Can't deny it was fun seeing Sahjahn again. Can't deny it was fun meeting Cyvus
Vail. Really enjoyed Connor in this episode. A Stanford student, a
mostly not-violent, incredibly sweet-natured boy with a plucky
indestructibility.
Vail had given him what Angel could not -- his innocence.
And it survived, on some level.
"He can't show me anything I haven't already seen."
Connor's restored memories allowed him to save his own life and fulfill his
destiny.
A clue I'd been hanging onto by the molecules at the tips of my fingernails was
Connor's ability to fight in the parking lot at the hotel. His body remembered
how to fight, I reasoned, even if he himself could not.
He was fighting to save his family.
He fought less well to save himself, to fulfill a prophecy he'd only just
learned of -- one which nicely wrapped up a storyline left over from S3x17 -
FORGIVING, in which Sahjahn reveals the grand plan behind his manipulations of
Holtz et al. as having been his own, rewriting ancient prophecies so they'd
have a happier ending (for him) but which doesn't change the thrust of a
prophecy (although you can't believe everything you're foretold).
SAHJAHN: You're making a pretty good case for free will.
Exploring that: In "B-S1x12 - PROPHECY GIRL," Buffy brings about the
fulfillment of her confrontation with the Master by choosing to go to him.
Sahjahn could've ignored the prophecy and remained incorporeal forever. He
could've spent Connor's entire lifetime living it up comfortably in the 1800s.
By pushing events, by being proactive, Sahjahn becomes corporeal -- and
therefore, mortal -- and then trapped until he confront the man predestined to
destroy him.
But rather than this simple, straightforward destiny, Connor gained the
totality of his experience. And with his much more positive self-image, it
strengthened him.
Wesley regained the totality of his own experience. And it devastated him.
Angel has an exchange with Wes, in S5x07 - LINEAGE, in which he commends Wes
for making the tough calls, the decisions no one else can make -- a truth he'd
never completely grasped before. Wes is unable to fathom the full meaning of
that statement, but it is, in fact, Angel's apology for trying to murder him in
S3x17 - FORGIVING.
There's so much good in this episode, but the question remains -- in Connor's
cryptic conversation with Angel, who is Joss trying to kid?
He's trying to kid Angel.
My gullibility was incidental. But in order for Connor to live up to the
complete sacrifice he's only just beginning to comprehend that Angel has made
on his behalf, he needs to protect Angel from the truth of his own reality.
Axe still dripping with Sahjahn's essence, Connor clumsily admits to having
gone a little hardcore, that he'd gotten "really cranky," that he
doesn't know where his burst of amazing fighting abilities came from.
In Angel's office, he's a lot smoother. His objective, to protect his family.
And he knows to what depths that includes Angel.
And he can't let him know, because Angel has lost too much for Connor to be the
same person who nearly destroyed dozens lives, including that of the woman he
loved.
Angel's lost too much for him to come right out with it.
Really fantastic eppy.