(Review) Angel & Faith 1.04: Live Through This - Part 4

[stormwreath]

So, Angel and Faith #4. Pretty good actually, I thought, though it had a definite "end of part one" feel to it rather than being a big arc conclusion.

Comments

[lynnenne]

Did we see Angel ever wearing reading glasses on the TV show?

Once, during the Angelus arc of Season 4. But they weren't his glasses:

INT. OCCULT BOOKSTORE - NIGHT
Pan across the room. There's a sign reading "Aura Readings" on a table with incense sticks. A fire burns brightly in the hearth. Wearing reading glasses, Angelus sits by the fire, reading through the papers and book he took from Fred. He takes off his glasses and throws them at the shopkeeper that's lying on the floor. Terrified, the shopkeeper tries to back away.

ANGELUS
These aren't helping.

[stormwreath]

Angelus never was much good with technology, even if you can call glasses 'technology'. :)
Thanks!

[norwie2010]

Thanks as always for your fast review.

The obvious conclusion is they're planning to use it on Angel somehow, but maybe it'll be more subtle than that.

The logical conclusion is they're planning to use it on the Seed, somehow - after all, the three stooges are apocalyptic visionaries who want to usher in the "Second Coming of Twilight".

Which also serves as the big redemption thingie for Angel: By preventing "Twilight the Second Coming" somewhere down the season he's done away with his "Twilight - the first" misdeeds.

[stormwreath]

Thanks! It's an interesting idea, but I can't see how it would work. The Seed is an inanimate object, so surely Mohra blood will do nothing to it - no more than it turned the glass vials it was being kept in into sand again.

[norwie2010]

Well, ok. But the comics haven't got the whole "logic+internal consistence" down. ;-)

Thing is - using the blood on Angel - they could have done that already. On the other hand, there's this:

"Listen, you were trying to make things better. Help us evolve. That still needs to happen more than ever."

and

"The world we got now's like a chicken with its head cut off. Running around not realizing it's dead."

and

"What i need is someone who's willing to break a whole boatload of eggs to make a salvation omelet."

"Bring in the next stage of evolution."

That's the mission statement of our resident baddies.

So, even if they don't want to use it on the Seed, they somehow want to evolve the "dead chicken".

[stormwreath]

Sure; I'm not arguing that that's their plan. If they can't use Mohra blood on the seed, what else can it be used for? Maybe they plan to use tiny measured drops of it on human embryos to turn them into something else...

[2maggie2]

Nice review! Angel hasn't figured things out if he still thinks that bringing back Giles is a good idea. (Or if he thinks that bringing back Giles somehow would fix what he did as Twilight in general). I suppose we could say it's progress that Angel's noticed he does a lot of damage along the way. But he's hardly arrived if he hasn't figured out that his problem isn't just his means, its his ends.

[stormwreath]

Thanks!

But the problem is - Angel's "ends" are to make the world a better place, save innocent people, and make amends for the evil he's done in the past. Which of those do you think he's wrong to pursue?

Now of course you can argue that restoring Giles to life won't achieve those things. Faith would probably agree with you. But will the world be a better place with Giles back in it? Is he an innocent person who needs saving? Was killing him an evil that Angel did? Angel could answer "Yes" to all those questions.

Will resurrecting Giles have evil side effects, or do harm to others? We don't know - but that's exactly what Angel is asking Faith to keep an eye out for, and stop him if he becomes blind to the possibility himself. so he's got that one covered too.

That just leaves, is he on a fool's errand trying to do something that's impossible? Maybe. But facing the impossible and getting it done anyway is what Buffyverse heroes do.

[moscow_watcher]

Interesting analysis - thank you. I have to admit that the fight choreography was lost on me, until you explained it.

When I was reading the issue for the first tife, I took Faith's thought "Trust him? With my life..." as a deliberate Dollhouse homage and a clue that Giles had somehow been "imprinted" into Angel's mind. But after reading your suggestions, I'm not that sure about "imprint". You list such a wide variety of options, and every one of them has a lot of potential.

[stormwreath]

First time I read it I just thought, "Oh, they're fighting" - it was only a a closer look that showed it was actually more impressive than that.

We'll know they're doing deliberate Dollhouse references when Faith asks, "Did I fall asleep?" :-) But it could be anything - maybe the shock of the Seed breaking really did imprint Giles onto Angel's mind, the way the flash of the Hiroshima bomb etched the outlines of people's shadows permanently onto nearby walls.

[mikeda]

isn't the ideal solution

For more than one reason.

(Although Faith has gotten better on her impulse control issues.)

[stormwreath]

Trouble is, of course, that in the real world ideal solutions are rarely possible.