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Date Posted: 07:20:11 10/09/05 Sun
Author: Tchaikovsky
Subject: Foraging for peace (Angel Odyssey 6.14)

So one of the hallmarks of Mutant Enemy's series was that they didn't follow up very special, deeply impressive episodes with complete dross. In my experience of Alias, which is generally considered in many respects to be a fairly high quality show compared to the average in network television, the really big episodes were inevitably followed up by some complete dross the following week. Luckily, MES follows the Whedon rather than the Abrams tendency, and so following the knock-out wondrousness of the Shakespeare romp, we have a very good episode. With one scene that I thought was as good as anything so far this Season. I'll come back to that...

6.14- 'The Order of Things

Working adequately as a mission statement, the title tells us what it's concerned with. Away from the fantasy of the forests and the iambic pentameter, there's still a very complicated factional jostling going on within the dark, deserted (of your average folk) street of Los Angeles. Here we study a few different ways of going about dealing with the situation. Gunn is attempting to bring together factions in an attempt to reduce the number of groups conflicting against each other, and thus hoping to reduce the conflict itself. Angel is keeping his eye on what he considers to be the priority tasks to prevent a later catastrophe, working from the principle that all is being controlled by someone who he can't quite see clearly yet, and that the easiest way of testing the water is discovering the roots of problems he doesn't yet understand, (Illyria/Fred, Drusilla, and even Nina). What Michael's up to remains as obscured as his passage through the streets, trackable only to someone intent on chaos only.

In the end, none of the philosophies seem exactly to triumph. In a very carefully written plot-line, the end is sobering for Gunn and Lorne as they attempt to reconcile the tribes who, after all, combined in a team effort to produce Adair, which everyone seems to agree was a positive conclusion. But if we're expecting the happiness of an Angel Season one or two episode, where careful listening can result in an informed decision to such monster-of-the-week mini-moralities-tableaux, then we're to be disappointed. Sometimes, hurt goes too deep for diplomacy to heal- and the fact that you may be hurting yourself and your family cannot always allow you to let go of your desire for revenge.

I mean, look at Fred. She may realise that there is a mutuality between her and Illyria, and she certainly realises that Illyria's attempt to kill her might end up killing them both, but she can't restrain a sardonic 'Darn' at the idea of Illyria being tracked by chaos. Eventually, integration is going to be the way to go, but for right now, the struggle no longer to live her life in shadow, the shadow of the usurping God-King parading with his armies the territories of her body, is just too much to be calm and rational.

Angel is trying to take everything as it comes, and to concentrate his attack on what he, with a mixture of objective reasoning and dark past experience (reflection, noblest; imitation, easiest; experience, most bitter), think s is the team's greatest difficulty. Or his greatest difficulty. The team is quickly fracturing, rather in the manner of Season Four Buffy. They still all know each other, but each have different prerogatives. Except for Spike, for some reason. I think this irony is one that Angel is quietly amused by. Spike certainly is.

And so to specifics:

-I assume the reason that the mentioned demon lives in Cleveland is due to the hellmouth there. I wonder what's up with all that craziness, and who else the cousin might meet there, (apart from certain moderators, who are probably in any case more likely to be in Peru or the Czech Republic).

-There's a lot of pairing in this episode, which brings its good rewards. Because most of these twosomes seem to have moments of real connection. There's the surface ones which have been running all season- Spike and Angel, Illyria and Fred. But we also have a couple of other rather interesting partnerships here. Lorne and Gunn have some moments of real understanding and camaraderie. Angel and Michael spend some time discussing which kinds of demons should be fought. It's ironic that Michael expresses a belief in fighting the demons who are right there in front of you, since he's the character who, both physically and more narratively, seems to disappear from sight at the moment you'd most like to see what he was doing. And then we have the little conversation between Hobbes and Illyria, where, for the first time in quite some while, Illyria appears to be given an order that she doesn't automatically sustain. I suppose that when Hobbes says stuff, (even with his hands), it's more than worth listening to.

-Echoes, this time of early season three in Fred's gleeworthy 'I also like to build things'. I think that line is one of the most cheerable moments in the whole Angel run, and it still makes me smile in its recycled form.

-GPA is all well and good, but the pay-off is Lorne moaning about empathy with students a little later off. Cos noone wants to be in the head of someone at school.

-I think the Old Yeller joke may just about have crossed my 'ew' boundary, particularly considering how, um, descriptive, the title becomes when attached to this particular aspect of the old dog.

-Drusilla, Spikelike, remains the joker of the season. What's she plotting, and what will come of it?

-There's an emphasis on the word 'Peace' in this episode, and its myriad meanings. Not only is the homophone game played, but you wonder if there's actually more than one kind of 'peace' under the apparent umbrella of this abstract noun. Peace of mind is not the same as absence of war, and spiritual peace is not the same as remaining without arms.

-Was that a fresne shout-out, cos if so, yay!

-Adair continues in the long tradition of quiet, hidden away females who actually have an immense skill. Unfortunately here, the classic mythical strand that her skill can bring together two warring neighbours is not resolved. This is not to say that, this being a serial and all, we won't come back to her though.

-Who's the most chaotic person in the episode? Illyria, who the little demon eventually latches on to, or Michael who the demon seems to spend about half the episode tracking? The answer to this question may resolve a lot of our questions about what exactly Michael is up to.

-What kind of a person doesn't own a car?

And so let me finish on the scene that knocked me sideways. I'll redeclare my interest here- I thought 'Not Fade Away' was startlingly good, but my favourite scene in it was not the fan favourite of Illyria lying to Wesley, or the final scene with the dragon, or even, as powerful as it was, the recasting of Spike's poetry. It was by quite some way, the final moments of Lorne. I've been invested in the character since the wonderful joke of his entrance as the first shot of Season Two, and he's always been the go-to character for meta. When the combination of his final line ('Good night folks') being gloriously non-fourth-wallish and the absolute lack of metaphor in his factual, stark killing of Lindsey with a gun, combined themselves into that last scene, I was flabbergasted, and sorrowful, and amazed. This is the guy whose show got cancelled and can maybe never get over it.

So here, as he recounts to Gunn, shares at last his deepest moment of despair, in shooting Lindsey, and explains why it felt so awful- why he had to be the executor and not mitigator, it was a great moment for me. And the whole scene, long, careful, accurate, is a masterpiece. There are a few lines which cross into territory that perhaps few so far this Season have, and become memorable and quotable in themselves, like so many on the show's five Season run. 'I'd be glad to have more singers', says Gunn, quires of meaning behind his metonym.

And eventually perhaps, in a world that strives on conflict, in a world where violence is inevitable, a keepsake handed down from founding fathers or rebels to Alliances, ['A History of Violence and 'Serenity', marvellous films], all we can do is pick moments of peace out of the waste left behind. Like the smiths who take scrap metal and turn it into elegant, artful fighting weapons, but kinda backwards. Like Lorne attempting to recover from an unconscionable act of violence of which he did not believe himself capable. Scour the wreckage, and in the moments between the incalculable, unavoidable conflict search for moments of quietness of spirit or absence of war.

Go foraging for peace.

TCH

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