Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Angel (1x07)
Feb. 19th, 2008 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrakoAngel. Aaaaah what a delicious episode.
See, romance on television is a delicate and terrible thing. I love romance, especially capital-R Romance, and we live in an unromantic age. I get my fix from Dunnett and 19th century poets and the like. Not often from books published as "romance", which are sometimes good but not what I'm looking for, and still less from television. One of the reasons I loved "Doctor Who" so much is that it presented me with one of the best romances ever on television. (The Doctor and Rose, if you're wondering what I'm talking about.)
Knowing Joss Whedon's track record, the last thing I expected from Buffy was really good romance. I expected sexy stuff and lots of action-adventure and humour and heartwarming stuff and good characterization and clever writing, but I didn't expect anything truly romantic because I've learned not to look for that on TV. Ever. And "Firefly" was mostly counter-romantic, but it had its moments. My belief is that Joss likes to present us with wonderful classic romance in the finest heart-wrenching fashion, and then twist it out of shape.
But here, in "Angel", we get real classic brilliantly-written doomed romance and I can hardly believe it. It doesn't matter what comes after this. It's a moment of romantic glory. It's set up so carefully - yes, of course I knew Angel was a vampire, because I'm coming in way after the fact, but if anything that foreknowledge just made it more effective.
Amazing. I can hardly believe my eyes.
Okay, now I've had my little rave, on to precise points.
1. Darla returns. I felt like cheering. Why was I happy to see her again? Maybe because she was one of the few vampires we've seen so far who actually has a personality. One of the only two, I'd say, the other being Angel. (I have the feeling that the Master has a sort of personality, but I haven't figured it out yet. So far he seems like a mouthpiece for dialogue. There's nothing real about him.)
2. I like Darla's line: "I don't get to have any fun." She's a sulker, isn't she?
3. "I will send the Three," says the Master. Joss seems to like using numbers this way. Prime numbers? Well, that's sort of traditional for the mystical, the mythical and the horrific. Snow White and the Six Dwarfs wouldn't sound as good. I'm not sure if I think this use of numbers is trite or clever.
4. The Annual Cockroach Rodeo. Eeuw.
5. Buffy: "For us to have a conversation about a guy, there'd have to be a guy for us to have a conversation about. Is that a sentence?" That's the kind of things writers write. And it amuses me.
6. Buffy: "Buffy: When [Angel] is around... it's like the lights dim everywhere else." So romantic! It sounds like something Lois McMaster Bujold would write.
7. Cordelia: "Please get your extreme oafishness off my two-hundred-dollar shoes!" This struck me as particularly bitchy, materialistic and prime Cordelia characterization. I hope she eventually develops into less of a one-note role. She has been consistently amusing but I'm getting impatient with her. She's becoming predictable in an unamusing way.
8. Xander to Cordelia: "Y'know, hey, I don't know what everyone's talking about. That outfit doesn't make you look like a hooker!" Oooh, good left hook! Is he developing some backbone? Some wit? Some defenses? And this is followed up by another good Xander line: "Boy, that Cordelia is a regular breath of vile air."
9. Liked Willow's depressed line, too: "Just sitting here, watching our barren lives pass us by." Aaaw.
10. I wouldn't have got it if I didn't already know the basics of Angel's story, but I loved the way it's set up when, after being attacked by the Three, Angel and Buffy run to Buffy's place, where she says, "Get in! C'mon!" and then, as the Three lurk around, Angel says, "It's all right. A vampire can't come in unless it's invited." Oooh. Deftly done, Joss.
11. I don't want to like the Three because they're hokey and they have no personality, but you know - I like the Three. I love their armour which implies, I don't know, a long and dramatic background of mid-Renaissance warfare in the steppes of Transylvania. Or mountains. Whatever. They're so tough and old they might be Vampire Huns.
12. I couldn't really make out Angel's tattoo properly. Were we suppose to see what it was?
13. Buffy's kind of unsubtle trying to keep her mother from seeing Angel. Surely every teen-age girl knows this kind of things is futile? But then her mother, later on, doesn't even hear Buffy and Angel talking in her room, which, unless they were totally soundproofed, seems extremely unlikely to me. Not a big deal. Just something... not handled very smoothly.
14. Sort of a rhetorical question here, so don't answer it: why does Angel spend the night in Buffy's room? Would the Three really kill him? Or is it just that he wants to hang around with Buffy? Or keep out of the Master's way? I'm hoping it's reason #2 there, but it might not be.
15. The next day: I like Xander's reaction - "Buffy, c'mon, wake up and smell the seduction. It's the oldest trick in the book." Pretend to be chivalrous - why don't more guys try it?
16. I still glaze over in boredom whenever the Master and the Anointed appear on screen. Yawn.
17. The diary conversation between Buffy and Angel was amusing. I know a lot of people (including myself) have dire "he read my diary" stories. (And in fact, the subject came up in last week's Torchwood...) I like the dialogue about his family, too: a nice set-up, first to make him seem sympathetic (poor guy, family killed by vampires) then horrific (he's a monster - as a vampire, he killed his own family). Effectively done.
18. So Angel says he wants to kiss her but it's a bad idea because he's "older". Right. He does seem to have unvampirelike scruples. Maybe even unhumanlike scruples. C'mon, Angel. Just kiss her.
19. He did.
20. And transforms. There's something a little "Beauty and the Beast" about that. Isn't the kiss supposed to turn the frog into the prince, not the prince into a vampire?
21. Cool, anyway.
22. But I still don't take back all those nasty things I've said about vampire romance. This is clearly and obviously a unique exception.
23. Xander isn't very compassionate about this. Sometimes he is... unendearing.
24. Love the dialogue between Angel and Darla:
Angel: What's with the Catholic schoolgirl look? Last time I saw you it was kimonos.
Darla: And last time I saw you it wasn't high school girls.
She has a point.
25. Nice Darla line: "Is there anything better than a natural disaster?" Heh.
26. I absolutely love the exchange between Darla and Angel:
Darla: You and your new friend are attacking us, like one of them. But guess what, precious? You're not one of them. (Sunlight.) Are you?
Angel: No. But I'm not exactly one of you either.
Darla: Is that what you tell yourself these days?
27. Giles says Angel/Angelus is "the one with the angelic face". I've seldom seen anyone who looks less angelic to my eyes. Now, Lymond looked angelic, a Della Robbia angel. But Angel? He looks human to my eyes. I've got over flinching at his looks (good) but I still don't find him particularly attractive - kind of interesting-looking, maybe, but certainly not angelic.
28. So Angel has been a vampire for 240 years. Cool.
29. Lovely Buffy-Willow exchange:
Buffy: You want Xander, you've gotta speak up, girl!
Willow: No, no, no, no. No speaking up. That way leads to madness and sweaty palms.
30. I loved Buffy's new mixed feelings about killing Angel. "I'm the Slayer, and he's a... vampire. God, I can't! He's never done anything to hurt me..." Interesting dilemma. Such a set-up. A totally impossible situation. (Rivalled, perhaps, only by Mal and Inara.)
31. I loved Darla telling Buffy's mother she's a friend of Buffy's, and getting Joyce to let her in. (Shudder.) And the Buffy comes and thinks it's Angel who attacked Joyce. Brilliant! It's the old "what's the worst thing that could happen?" trick. I love it.
32. And then I love the way Joyce just refers to Darla as "your friend" so Buffy thinks she's talking about Angel. Nice, nice set-up. Plausible.
33. Barbecue fork? Heh.
34. This isn't really a good Giles episode. He's fine, but doesn't get the best lines, the isn't the focus of any of the action, he doesn't give good advice or wisdom or (much) knowledge, and is generally overshadowed by the Buffy/Angel theme. About which he seems to have no advice or thoughts whatsoever.
35. I liked it when Joyce said, "That school is amazing," but I don't really like the way the plot (or the line) plays on her ignorance. It isn't quite fair.
36. Great Buffy-Angel exchange:
Angel: I'm just an animal, right?
Buffy: You're not an animal. Animals I like.
37. Great Angel-Buffy fight. Best fight in the show yet, I think.
38. More great dialogue, albeit a little expository:
Buffy: I've killed a lot of vampires. I've never hated one before.
Angel: Feels good, doesn't it? Feels simple.
Buffy: I invited you into my home and then you attacked my family! Angel: Why not? I killed mine. I killed their friends... and their friend's children... For a hundred years I offered ugly death to everyone I met, and I did it with a song in my heart.
[This reminds me of the Doctor's destroying Gallifrey in "Doctor Who". Same principle.]
39. So we get the story of Angel's curse. When my friends told me about this curse way back when the show was first on, it didn't make much sense to me. It makes more sense now, actually seeing how the action goes, and hearing what Angel says.
40. So Buffy offers herself to Angel. Vampirically speaking. Woo. But I love the symmetry: Buffy can't/won't kill Angel, he can't/won't bite Buffy. Powerful stuff.
41. I'm pretty sure Darla will be back. To interesting to disappear or die.
42. Good Angel line at the Bronze: "I just gotta... I gotta walk away from this." Hah! Famous last words.
43. So they kiss. Of course. Quite right, too. And another great bit of romantic dialogue/visual action:
Buffy: You okay?
Angel: It's just...
Buffy: ...painful. I know.
Then we see, but she doesn't, how her cross has burned him.
~ ~ ~
I liked it. A lot. In case you didn't already notice.
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Oh, and FRENCH!
Date: 2008-02-21 06:56 pm (UTC)Personally I think Joss should sue them. In fact, I think fans should unite and sue the French as a group.
Re: Oh, and FRENCH!
Date: 2008-02-21 07:03 pm (UTC)My comments on dubbing were not meant to apply to Buffy, which I have not heard in French, merely to Torchwood, which I get a kick out of en français.
Re: Oh, and FRENCH!
Date: 2008-02-21 07:29 pm (UTC)*grudgingly accepting, still ranty*
I think Cat was talking to you about how... the French version of Buffy is not so much *dubbing* as much as *reinventing the texts*. Badly.
Re: Oh, and FRENCH!
Date: 2008-02-21 07:33 pm (UTC)I can tell.
I'd like to go and dub everything into Esperato. Really good translations. Really good voices.
the French version of Buffy is not so much *dubbing* as much as *reinventing the texts*.
That isn't dubbing. That's destruction and devastation.
Re: Oh, and FRENCH!
Date: 2008-02-21 07:39 pm (UTC)I miss my TEETH icon.