My first glimpse of Fred: love at first sight
I'm a sucker for a good alternate reality arc.
I'd started watching Angel the Series (painfully at times, I admit, some of the plots were not so good) in real time, fresh picked off the network, after Angel's departure from Buffy. I was a hardcore Bangel shipper back then and hoped to see Buffy crossing over. They really hit their stride in season 2 (although I missed Doyle) and loved the idea of them springing down the rabbit hole ala Alice to Pylea.
Here's my Fred:
Immediately, what I could see about Winifred Burkle was that she was full-on, stark-raving, sack o'hammers nutty. And who wouldn't be after five years in a slave dimension? Fred, I came to understand, represented women caught in any kind of abusive situation from which they could not escape. She was pretty, apparently very bright, and yet none of that saved her. She had no super powers other than her two hands and that special organ between her ears. She needed to be helped certainly. However, she also saved her saviors right back. It's Fred who holds up a hand dripping with animal blood to keep the demon in Angel from slaughtering his friends. It's Fred who shelters him in her cave - in full knowledge that he is a threat to her. It's Fred who helps the team translate the intricacies of the Pylean government and culture. Fred did not merely adapt to Pylea or survive it. She managed to become a Margaret Mead of the Deathwoks to assist others in navigating, and eventually escaping, this dimension.
Angel the Series was on network TV and as Fred says, "The universe has rules." That can apply to what we see on screen.
There's little doubt in my mind that the Fred in Pylea was certainly tortured and by that, I mean beatings, whippings, being worked to death. It might have been psychological abuse ("I was born here. I-I mean, not really. I j-just... some-sometimes I think I was. I mean, I don't think it was my thought.") She was used as a slave - Fred in Season 5 of Angel says that her kind were killed like cattle. She might've even been (shudder to think it) raped.
What I find so special about Fred is that she is able, even after untold suffering and torture, to be a whole person and not a savage. She has not lost her ability to empathize, to comfort, to converse. She forgets words sometimes but is desperate to still communicate, to relate, to share the parts of herself that have become twisted from lack of connection and socialization. More than that, she becomes, in a short period of time, good friends with Lorne, who represented in appearance the very race that hurt and subjugated her for so many years.
Because I never saw it fleshed out on screen, I wrote Lorne's perception of Fred that summed up my feelings:
“Take a good long gander at me. Really, I don’t mind. Green skinned horned thing - hey, I know what I am - exactly like the thugs who tortured her for years. I wouldn’t put it past her to run for the Beverly Hills screaming every time I sashayed by. But Fred,” he paused. “When she looks at me, I know she really sees me. She looks right through to the heart. Takes a lot of it to do that.”
I hope you'll swing by here in the next few days to find even more reasons to appreciate the character of Fred Burkle!
I'd started watching Angel the Series (painfully at times, I admit, some of the plots were not so good) in real time, fresh picked off the network, after Angel's departure from Buffy. I was a hardcore Bangel shipper back then and hoped to see Buffy crossing over. They really hit their stride in season 2 (although I missed Doyle) and loved the idea of them springing down the rabbit hole ala Alice to Pylea.
Here's my Fred:
Immediately, what I could see about Winifred Burkle was that she was full-on, stark-raving, sack o'hammers nutty. And who wouldn't be after five years in a slave dimension? Fred, I came to understand, represented women caught in any kind of abusive situation from which they could not escape. She was pretty, apparently very bright, and yet none of that saved her. She had no super powers other than her two hands and that special organ between her ears. She needed to be helped certainly. However, she also saved her saviors right back. It's Fred who holds up a hand dripping with animal blood to keep the demon in Angel from slaughtering his friends. It's Fred who shelters him in her cave - in full knowledge that he is a threat to her. It's Fred who helps the team translate the intricacies of the Pylean government and culture. Fred did not merely adapt to Pylea or survive it. She managed to become a Margaret Mead of the Deathwoks to assist others in navigating, and eventually escaping, this dimension.
Angel the Series was on network TV and as Fred says, "The universe has rules." That can apply to what we see on screen.
There's little doubt in my mind that the Fred in Pylea was certainly tortured and by that, I mean beatings, whippings, being worked to death. It might have been psychological abuse ("I was born here. I-I mean, not really. I j-just... some-sometimes I think I was. I mean, I don't think it was my thought.") She was used as a slave - Fred in Season 5 of Angel says that her kind were killed like cattle. She might've even been (shudder to think it) raped.
What I find so special about Fred is that she is able, even after untold suffering and torture, to be a whole person and not a savage. She has not lost her ability to empathize, to comfort, to converse. She forgets words sometimes but is desperate to still communicate, to relate, to share the parts of herself that have become twisted from lack of connection and socialization. More than that, she becomes, in a short period of time, good friends with Lorne, who represented in appearance the very race that hurt and subjugated her for so many years.
Because I never saw it fleshed out on screen, I wrote Lorne's perception of Fred that summed up my feelings:
“Take a good long gander at me. Really, I don’t mind. Green skinned horned thing - hey, I know what I am - exactly like the thugs who tortured her for years. I wouldn’t put it past her to run for the Beverly Hills screaming every time I sashayed by. But Fred,” he paused. “When she looks at me, I know she really sees me. She looks right through to the heart. Takes a lot of it to do that.”
I hope you'll swing by here in the next few days to find even more reasons to appreciate the character of Fred Burkle!