oh, don't deceive me
I love TGiQ. LOVE it.
TGiQ is far and away the most meta episode of AtS. Yeah, there's a lot of it that's shoehorned in - it's a shameless play to get one more Darla/Angelus/Dru/Spike scene in, it's necessary for Spike to be in one of his unhinged fits of heartache if it's even going to be an outside possibility for him to go along with the INSANE POINTLESS SUICIDE MISSION that was NFA (BORED NOW, LET'S WAKE UP SOME UNSPEAKABLY EVIL DEMONS AND TIP THE WORLD INTO HELL, THIS HAS NEVER ENDED BADLY BEFORE; Angel, even you are not that thick), it's one last bit of sheer entertainment before the darkness of the INSANE POINTLESS SUICIDE BLAH BLAH BLAH (WHAT, YOU CAN TAKE OUT THE WHOLE CIRCLE OF THE BLACK THORN BUT NOT COVERTLY ASSASSINATE ONE MEASELY SENATOR, YOU SORRY EXCUSE FOR A CEO/SUPERVILLAIN), it deals with the ghost of the two Buffys that have been lurking about W&H since Spike sprung out of the locket, it brutally showcased the Fred left in Fredyria and shows us her attachment to Wesley (rather than the other way around) - SO MUCH for one episode! What the WHAT. It should be a mess!
But the episode gets around it by just going with it, by playing with perception in a way that is very enjoyable and clever. Any one of the nods to illusion and reality feels almost too obvious to say - Fredyria, Spike's coat, the fake Italy - but when they're piled up, the sheer volume and the layers they make gets interesting. I didn't rewatch this episode until very recently because I liked Fred so much (was anybody else sad to see Fred go? Like, for Fred's sake?) that it was just too much of a cruel tease to see Illyria slip in and out of Fred-skin but I've Come To Terms since then and finally decided to watch it, I don't even know why. But being able to buck up and watch those scenes again underlines that really, this is an episode with some thought and purpose behind it. The jarring campy finish on the Rome scenes isn't about Rome at all, it's about throwing the tragedy of Fred (and the illusion presented for the Burkles) into sharp relief.
I mean, how else was the show going to deal with Buffy? By making it not about Buffy at all (isn't it not even actually her? even more perfect than we thought) but about some actually unbelievable boogeyman that Spike and Angel can tell themselves was the thing in the way of themselves being the epic masters of evil they still were in their own minds, and was between themselves and Darla/Dru having love that surpassed vampire codes. The Immortal doesn't just lance their illusions that "their" women were ever damsels in distress, but indeed, that "their" women were ever theirs at all. The looming titan the Immortal makes even their tiny shreds of truth irrelevant. "We are the reason men fear the night" isn't technically wrong, but there are so many more monsters that go bump in the night, the esteem of men is still a trite and small way for them to brag.
Even the tiny goofy details. I thought Spike's accent was slipping, maybe Marsters lost it a bit not being around ASH every day, maybe nobody was paying attention, but dude, no, that "''Cos then, Aye'd haveta STAKE ya!" grotesqueness seems deliberate on re-watch. Because flashback-William's accent, which would've been much less natural for Marsters at this point, is the same as it has always been. This is Spike through Angel's ears. And that's why it has to be Andrew who shows them around. As cute as Dawn tormenting the two of them would have been, Andrew is the one who's all about the willful self-delusion (as opposed to Dawn, who started out as an illusion and made herself real). (People! She is so cute! More Dawn love!)
I mean, is Ilona Costa Bianchi (who is probably my favorite AtS one-shot character) really any more OTT than Angel himself? Oh, she's gregarious, outgoing, seems perfectly happy at W&H, is basically the anti-Angel, but she's no more an exaggeration of a persona than he is. And in a lot of ways, the Rome W&H is more real than the LA branch. The Rome branch recognizes and works with its demonic nature, operating at night, demons striding around in suits with briefcases, it's all more true than Angel's place in the sunlight.
I appear as I choose. But really, Fredyria is an OTT imitation of Fred, with her SRS BSNS TEXAS ACCENT hyper-exaggerated like it hasn't been since Pylea, overly sweet, overly enthusiastic, Daddy's little girl, Mama's grown-up scientist. She can't quite choose to be Fred. You're not her. Wesley, who has always seen the truth, even - no, especially - the hardest of truths, he's seeing both halves this episode along with us when Illyria in her Fred-suit stops smiling, tilts her head, and throws his anguish in his face. The idea that there's a rigid boundary between Fred and Illyria, that's Wesley's illusion. An understandable one, to be sure, one of the tenuous threads with which he's clinging to what's left of his sanity, one he needs as desperately as Buffy and then Cordelia needed the illusion of a hard, sharp boundary between Angel and Angelus. But it is no less a lie than Illyria playing Fred.
And given my subversive reading - FINE, noxious abhorrence, it's not like I've been keeping it a secret, THE VAMPIRE PLAYS CHILDREN'S GAMES, is my point here - of Not Fade Away, this is the perfect episode to lead into the finale. Because going out in the battle against the Senior Partners, no matter how much they know intellectually that their sacrifice isn't going to do anything long-term, it's the ultimate emotional self-deception, that there's any damn thing at all they can do that's any kind of meaningful offensive move against evil. But they give up everything for the illusion.
As you wish.
TGiQ is far and away the most meta episode of AtS. Yeah, there's a lot of it that's shoehorned in - it's a shameless play to get one more Darla/Angelus/Dru/Spike scene in, it's necessary for Spike to be in one of his unhinged fits of heartache if it's even going to be an outside possibility for him to go along with the INSANE POINTLESS SUICIDE MISSION that was NFA (BORED NOW, LET'S WAKE UP SOME UNSPEAKABLY EVIL DEMONS AND TIP THE WORLD INTO HELL, THIS HAS NEVER ENDED BADLY BEFORE; Angel, even you are not that thick), it's one last bit of sheer entertainment before the darkness of the INSANE POINTLESS SUICIDE BLAH BLAH BLAH (WHAT, YOU CAN TAKE OUT THE WHOLE CIRCLE OF THE BLACK THORN BUT NOT COVERTLY ASSASSINATE ONE MEASELY SENATOR, YOU SORRY EXCUSE FOR A CEO/SUPERVILLAIN), it deals with the ghost of the two Buffys that have been lurking about W&H since Spike sprung out of the locket, it brutally showcased the Fred left in Fredyria and shows us her attachment to Wesley (rather than the other way around) - SO MUCH for one episode! What the WHAT. It should be a mess!
But the episode gets around it by just going with it, by playing with perception in a way that is very enjoyable and clever. Any one of the nods to illusion and reality feels almost too obvious to say - Fredyria, Spike's coat, the fake Italy - but when they're piled up, the sheer volume and the layers they make gets interesting. I didn't rewatch this episode until very recently because I liked Fred so much (was anybody else sad to see Fred go? Like, for Fred's sake?) that it was just too much of a cruel tease to see Illyria slip in and out of Fred-skin but I've Come To Terms since then and finally decided to watch it, I don't even know why. But being able to buck up and watch those scenes again underlines that really, this is an episode with some thought and purpose behind it. The jarring campy finish on the Rome scenes isn't about Rome at all, it's about throwing the tragedy of Fred (and the illusion presented for the Burkles) into sharp relief.
I mean, how else was the show going to deal with Buffy? By making it not about Buffy at all (isn't it not even actually her? even more perfect than we thought) but about some actually unbelievable boogeyman that Spike and Angel can tell themselves was the thing in the way of themselves being the epic masters of evil they still were in their own minds, and was between themselves and Darla/Dru having love that surpassed vampire codes. The Immortal doesn't just lance their illusions that "their" women were ever damsels in distress, but indeed, that "their" women were ever theirs at all. The looming titan the Immortal makes even their tiny shreds of truth irrelevant. "We are the reason men fear the night" isn't technically wrong, but there are so many more monsters that go bump in the night, the esteem of men is still a trite and small way for them to brag.
Even the tiny goofy details. I thought Spike's accent was slipping, maybe Marsters lost it a bit not being around ASH every day, maybe nobody was paying attention, but dude, no, that "''Cos then, Aye'd haveta STAKE ya!" grotesqueness seems deliberate on re-watch. Because flashback-William's accent, which would've been much less natural for Marsters at this point, is the same as it has always been. This is Spike through Angel's ears. And that's why it has to be Andrew who shows them around. As cute as Dawn tormenting the two of them would have been, Andrew is the one who's all about the willful self-delusion (as opposed to Dawn, who started out as an illusion and made herself real). (People! She is so cute! More Dawn love!)
I mean, is Ilona Costa Bianchi (who is probably my favorite AtS one-shot character) really any more OTT than Angel himself? Oh, she's gregarious, outgoing, seems perfectly happy at W&H, is basically the anti-Angel, but she's no more an exaggeration of a persona than he is. And in a lot of ways, the Rome W&H is more real than the LA branch. The Rome branch recognizes and works with its demonic nature, operating at night, demons striding around in suits with briefcases, it's all more true than Angel's place in the sunlight.
I appear as I choose. But really, Fredyria is an OTT imitation of Fred, with her SRS BSNS TEXAS ACCENT hyper-exaggerated like it hasn't been since Pylea, overly sweet, overly enthusiastic, Daddy's little girl, Mama's grown-up scientist. She can't quite choose to be Fred. You're not her. Wesley, who has always seen the truth, even - no, especially - the hardest of truths, he's seeing both halves this episode along with us when Illyria in her Fred-suit stops smiling, tilts her head, and throws his anguish in his face. The idea that there's a rigid boundary between Fred and Illyria, that's Wesley's illusion. An understandable one, to be sure, one of the tenuous threads with which he's clinging to what's left of his sanity, one he needs as desperately as Buffy and then Cordelia needed the illusion of a hard, sharp boundary between Angel and Angelus. But it is no less a lie than Illyria playing Fred.
And given my subversive reading - FINE, noxious abhorrence, it's not like I've been keeping it a secret, THE VAMPIRE PLAYS CHILDREN'S GAMES, is my point here - of Not Fade Away, this is the perfect episode to lead into the finale. Because going out in the battle against the Senior Partners, no matter how much they know intellectually that their sacrifice isn't going to do anything long-term, it's the ultimate emotional self-deception, that there's any damn thing at all they can do that's any kind of meaningful offensive move against evil. But they give up everything for the illusion.
As you wish.