“Odd. It
doesn't exist until it cracks apart.”
The end is very much in sight. Wesley is carrying the weight of unbidden
memories amid the wreckage of what they could not restore. Gunn is trapped
in a hell dimension. Illyria remains impossible to read but as ungoverned as
ever. And Angel is keeping his own counsel but takes a moment to discuss the
lay of the land with his shattered lieutenant.
Already in these initial scenes, Angel is agitated. No more conciliatory
discussion with Wes as to how his judgment is piercing, true, regardless of
cost and respecting of persons, he sees the clear path and the right decisions.
Instead, Wesley is quizzed mercilessly about the nature of Illyria, how she
fits into the current lay of things. If Wesley is babysitter or Kwaa-ha-zan,
he's not even the go-to man for keeping an eye on her. Wes is a broken shell of
himself, his last plan -- to wit, the bringing back of Fred with the alteration
of perception -- the seat of reality -- his entire undoing. Looking at Wes, Angel
is no longer certain which way is up. At least Lorne can keep track of a body
in flight, and Angel commits him to that service.
Wesley has more important things to do.
On one level, this episode provides structure for the final moments of the
series. The task of studying Illyria is rejected as pointless. Instead, she
must be contained. This becomes Wesley's focus for the duration.
As to why Illyria is a priority, he has returned Gunn to this reality without
permission or fanfare. In the little garb of Fred, he is still able to open
portals and walk among dimensions and he does so, reaching into a holding
dimension and making short work of the denizens in achieving his goal -- to put
Angel in his debt.
One episode to the north, Hamilton was beaming about how profitable the
Partners' agreement with Angel is progressing -- despite the loss of $10
million in bail money for an escaped ne'er-do-well (the tracking of whom
wouldn't be a poor task to set Illyria, who is likely as little in need of five
slain holy women as he is of a Camaro in pursuit of his cause). Balance
bookwise, it seems Angel remains in the black.
Mystical holding dimensions appear to be spendier than fugitives fleeing them,
however, and the destruction in Illyria's wake regarding this one seems to
require a personal appearance. Hamilton scolds Angel for his recklessness and
Angel hardly knows how to answer, but he does seem less agitated at this point.
The confusion sets in as scenes continue to focus around Illyria -- Wesley
guiding him, Lorne following him, Spike sparring with him. While sinking into
an endless drunk, Wesley's gift shines through. However much obeisance he must
make to stave off Illyria's wrath or counter Angel's probing questions, his
particular skill -- his unique awareness of reality -- remains, if obscured
somewhat by his seeming divorce from
it.
I truly enjoy his scene with Gunn, where he is mincing his way unshod about the
open documents, scrolls and papers scattered about his office. I love Lorne's
limited reaction to it. And how ultimately valuable it proves.
If Illyria has seen his betrayal, Wesley believes him. It's not the one he
talks of -- his attempt to shift
reality back to a prior timeline -- but rather one he hints at. As the moment
becomes closer in consensus reality, a number of things happen that I'm simply
going to ignore except to mention:
Which Illyria lives at any given moment in the timeline? It feels like his
incursion into the holding dimension provides a starting point for time to
unfix itself. But how many times has Illyria lived what must be a very tedious
looping reality, in which tiresome ants once dispatched appear once more
mewling about his form?
If his destruction provides an endpoint to the disruptions, his experience
beyond that reality is a blank as well, as it must be for all of us, memory
traveling only in one dimension. But how his form replaces itself in each
instance of the timeline discusses the instability. Angel's unwitting
accompaniment of him then must be especially jarring.
Angel's pursuing his own plan. His own vector in his monomaniacal opposition to
the Apocalypso the Senior Partners have called, and Illyria is nothing more
than disruption -- this "x factor ... bouncing around unchecked." He
needs to win Hamilton's trust at the expense of that of his team. Hamilton and
the Senior Partners are unhappy with the status quo. The ascension of a
god-king represents power they hadn't factored in, and they are making their
complaints known through what means they might.
Indeed, Hamilton proves helpful in the powering down of Illyria. Encountering
Wesley in Fred's abandoned lab, he points to the one aspect of Illyria all of
their technology may have some effect on.
Wesley is able to use the information.
WHERE THEY STAND
LORNE: A broken shell of himself, he looks back on years of being the beloved
Host of Caritas, a swell gig after his years of disappointing his family.
There's no better reason for him to spend his last moments in Los Angeles at a
karaoke bar, laying out the saga of what started the whole mess. I'm coming
around to the notion that his presentation in "Spin the Bottle"
essentially is his off-camera commentary from "Not Fade Away."
Once Fred was lost, once his memories were restored, his biggest problem with
taking the deal offered by Wolfram & Hart -- how empty and useless it made
him -- was fresh enough in his mind that an afternoon's soul-searching could
well ready him for the task Angel sets for him.
GUNN: A broken shell of himself. A fortnight's "leisure" in penance
for his loss -- the all-too-literal tearing out of his heart following the loss
of Fred -- left him wearied and ill-equipped to face the task at hand -- filing
documents, however mystically, with any enthusiasm. Even the opportunity to
reverse the fortunes of a girl who'd fallen into a bad situation -- momentarily
restoring his righteous zeal and reminding him of his purpose in this
destructive space -- is denied to him. He's stronger at the end of the episode, but while he might
indeed have a weapon, he's none too clear on where he should be aiming it.
WESLEY: A broken shell of himself, for all the reasons I've already discussed,
and one other: He discusses, in "Not Fade Away," about how a
Watcher's first rule is to perceive spells and magics and maintain a footing
within reality as she is spoke. For an entire season, this has been denied him.
The blow is all the more shuddering for his complicity in it -- signing away
reality for access to greater knowledge and power. He gets in the limo to save
Lilah, and he cannot, and by that point is unable to save himself.
But he thinks he does. His demeanor for most of S5 is akin to the
effects of Demerol on a sucking wound. You feel wonderful, despite your innards
spilling out in every direction.
He overcomes the palliative and now is left with the pain.
And ... on some level ... recaptures the ability to both see what needs to be
done and then to do it, to restore
some semblance of order regardless of the cost.
SPIKE: Not broken much. This was never his scene and it was never his fight.
He's pleased enough for a worthy adversary but Illyria's toying with him. All
the same, that hanging-in-the-air thing he did was tres cool and should
be made avaiable as a screen-saver for Cordy.
ILLYRIA: If Illyria has been trapped in a graceless bag of sticks, he is still
more powerful than most beings. He'd probably be able to take on that creature
in the basement handily. His manipulation of time gives him a special
relationship with it, and he is able to discuss it as an element of this
reality rather than a fixture within it.
Still, Illyria reacts bombastically. The loss of his own reality -- the
shifting perceptions to the limitations of his own form -- anger rather than
crush him. Certainly he tosses Angel and Spike about like playthings but also presents Gunn as something
approaching a tribute. He is aware of the power invested in Wolfram & Hart
even if the rest of us are not and demands portion in it. And once the future
is shown him, rather than draw in and contemplate his instability he demands
continued existence as a god-king and the destruction that entails.
Illyria, still mighty, crumpled on the floor following the extraction of his
power, is a truly broken sight. Not governable but allied on some level -- no
certain ally at that -- his days of raging devastation are not complete,
although we will no longer need a shard of sarcophagus to keep up.
All the same, a broken shell even of what he'd been when he turned the blade on
its own attacker at the beginning of the episode.
ANGEL: A blur. A mad, raging blur. He leaps from crisis to crisis demanding
answers to questions that have none and defying the Partners to working with
them. He demands Wes keep an eye on Illyria and derides his inability to do so.
He brings Gunn in to assist him and rejects his counsel. He dismisses Hamilton
and seems to collude with him from one scene to the next. Little short of being
dragged in Illyria's wake through time and space could explain his instability,
could it?
Could it indeed. His alliance with the Partners against the weak and
defenseless raises every tattered red flag Team Angel retains, but that door
appears closed. By the end of this episode, Angel has officially lost it.
Is even, perhaps, broken.
WHY CAN'T I STAY?
What sorcery is this, that you can unweave reality in this manner? You caged me
in this fractured time frame! Plankton, envying the ocean that holds it. Drawn
directly from Joss's conversations with the WB? How can you end this? How can
you undo us? This form cannot contain me, I open my mouth and don't know what
might come out.
Illyria, in the final moments of his potent grandeur, seems to tower above the
WB executives and release a gale of contempt.
Or perhaps it's just fun to hear him like that.
Initially, I thought I'd have more to say about the discussion of time-travel
as experiential reality and how incredibly fun the Fell brethren were.
But in the end, the characters are the storytelling. Their loss, their
situations heading into the final steps of this incredible journey, their
confusion and brokenness and the seemingly unbridgeable distance between them,
all shine through as being more significant than the physics binding
Illyria to this reality or the joy
of David Boreanaz's wife explaining, with straight-faced emotion, how her
husband's work has left him with permanent brain damage, and the sinister Fell
cossetting her with protein shakes.
"Time Bomb" is an excellent character study, providing a substantive
breather while advancing a
fascinating story.
And with only three episodes remaining beyond it, quite a worthy installment.