Benediction comments

[thebratqueen]

Okay, turns out I don't actually have to lock myself up in an empty apt. with the air conditioner guy so may as well do

Whew. Interesting ep. Written and directed by Tim (who I've heard will still have his hand in AtS even with Fireflay so yay!) and it definitely had his hallmarks all over it.

Two of the most distinctive ones, I think were 1) The hide-in-plain-sight spoilers that were all over the ep (I won't say what they were until after Tomorrow airs) and 2) directing.

People ask me about Tim's writing and directing style and while I don't know if Benediction is the best example of Tim Minear writing, I will say it has what may be the best example of his directing: The shot when Connor reveals that Holtz is in town. Beautifully done. Watch how this is set up. Connor's in the foreground, Angel is in the back. The shot isn't even framed to draw our attention to him. He's simply there. And while he is there there is a subtle change of emotion on his face to indicate his rage. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Beautiful on the two levels really - one for how it's framed (Tim is amazing at putting details into all parts of his shot. It always behooves you to watch the background on the eps he directs) and two for the subtle performance he pulled from David Boreanez. Don't get me wrong - David B can do some stuff nicely but subtle is absolutely none of them. Look at this shot, see why it works, and you'll have the key to notice the full force of Tim's directing in other episodes.

The runner up for direction of the ep would be Justine killing Holtz. I liked how this wasn't a clean TV death. Justine kills vamps, not humans. And as the ice pick was going in you could see her horror, and see her react to the fact that she was hitting muscle, and bones, and whatever else she had to slide the pick through. Nicely done.

The rest of the ep had some things which were good but not amazing. I'd say those two shots get an A+, this stuff gets an A to A-, and there's some other things that flat out sucked. But let's get the rest of the good stuff.

Groo continues to grow on me as a character. It's a shame he won't be sticking around because I honestly liked him and who knew? Never let it be said I won't change my mind given the right evidence. Liked the scene of him and Lorne, so could tell the chemistry between them. Wonder how many Groo/Lorne lists have sprung up since last night.

Also loved the moment of continuity, yay! with Groo saying that Angel moved "Heaven and Tarkna" (sp?) to get Connor back - that was the same word for Hell used in Pylea. I can't remember offhand but something tells me it was Tim's Pylea ep too - just a guess.

Wesley - yum. So much yum. And then there was some yum on the side. Note to ME - Wes and Lilah have chemistry. Wes and Fred do not. Y'all know I'm a W/A shipper but I'd hop on board the Wes/Lilah train no problem. Hell, I'll conduct. I also have to give a shoutout to witchwillow who pointed out this was a clever way to establish that Wes knows what Connor looks like without arranging an introduction.

(Interesting side note re: Wes. In one of the scenes in Angel's room there's a globe. Was that globe always there? Because I could have sworn that used to be in Wes's office. If that's the case, that could have been a clever, subtle hint that those who think Wes is playing double agent with Angel's knowledge were correct. Or maybe Angel always had a globe in his room and I never noticed. I'm usually too busy trying to figure out the @#$%ing floor plans to notice the decor.)

I liked the Angel/Connor scenes (cough - so to speak). It felt like real father/son bonding between the two of them, and bonding in a way that made sense for Angel's socially stunted, non-verbal, often-violent way. Fight scenes were well coreographed and look! No slow mo! Another good moment of directing was when Connor showed up at the hotel and had the stilted conversation with Angel. I could actually believe Connor's nervousness, and I loved the look on Angel's face when he realized he was alone with Connor and, crap, that meant he had to think of words to say. Heh.

Gunn was hardly in the ep but I had no problem with him. Fred was in the ep in what felt like an overly convoluted way to discover Holtz was in town, especially considering that Angel found out from Connor anyway. Although I guess Fred and Gunn were the ones to tell Angel where Holtz was.

You can tell Tim directed this ep because Fred was back on the mildly insane, bookish stuff again. Which is fine by me because I think that's more realistic for the character. Tim also did a good version of Throw Me A Line - Fred's retrofitting a geiger counter to pick up magic waves. Just as I was about to bitch to myself that we've already established that she doesn't know magic, we get her twittering a line of faux physics technobabble. Good! See? That's all I need! Throw me a line so we know you remember she's not the demonologist and I'm content.

Fred also had a well-written line in the "You grew up in a Hell dimension, who hasn't?" thing. Sadly not well acted though. That line could've had more punch to it. Can't tell you if the fault there is in Tim's directing or Amy's acting though.

Random thought but when they cut to the club how many of you said "Cool! Babylon!" and then later "What are all those girls doing there?"

So, to sum up - directing good, Wes, Angel, Connor, Lorne, Groo, Lilah, Justine all good. Gunn okay, Fred believable if not tolerable.

So... the bad.

The Holtz makeup is painful. I can't remember if I said that last week but even if I did it bears repeating. I really think they should have just died his hair and gone with regular "old" makeup, not the prosthetic crap. It looked faker than fake and it hurt my suspension of disbelief. Holtz's whole plan, too, seemed a little Rube Goldberg. I liked how he was playing Angel like a fiddle the whole time but I couldn't help but notice a lot of Mere Smith style problems, like what would he have done if Justine hadn't showed up? And shouldn't there have been more blood at the scene of the killing? (Unless Justine moved him?) And why were they outside for this anyway?

Although I'll admit I did like the letter ending with a line about Connor finding out who he is, which then cut to Holtz saying Steven and Angel saying Connor. It treads close to the world of anvils but I think it stayed safely on the side of symbolism. Your milage may vary. (Similar good edit - we had another "Family" line that cut to Wesley, which always makes me happy.)

Finally, the worst - Cordy.

Sigh.

We miss you Cordy, oh yes we do....

Where to even begin? Well her hair suggests itself. God. Did Charisma shoot the entire makeup department in the foot? She looks awful. That hair, frosted blue eyeshadow - gah! When Connor broke down sobbing I swear I could relate because I wanted to cry too. And hide my eyes.

Re: Angel/Cordy. I tried. Really I did. I tried to imagine that Wesley was on the other side of all of Angel's comments to Cordy and whether or not I'd call it slashy if it was. Honestly? No. These two have no chemistry. The only scene that vaguely worked for me was when Angel first came in and Cordy sat beside him and made comforting touches. That was the only one that felt natural and that, if we had more scenes like that, you could get me to a A/C ship from here.

But the rest just doesn't work. There's no chemistry, it makes no sense, and it's not even the real Cordy! Who is this girl who's filled with glurge and soft and fluffy advice? Okay, yeah, she said she didn't care of Angel killed Holtz, that's fine. But the rest? Huh? It. Makes. No. Sense.

Part of me wonders if part of the fault of the A/C ship problems lies with the fact that Charisma took time off. Maybe the original outline for the season had Cordy's slowly awakening feelings happening in the eps she turned out to be away for. And that would sort of explain why in these final eps we're getting it slammed into us like a fact "Oh, yeah, I've got a thing for Angel now and Groo's jealous of it. No really, trust us." If that's the case I can kind of - well not forgive because I still think they could have done it better but at least sympathize with the problems.

But plenty of time to rant about Angel/Cordy when Cordy has her Clueless-style revelation next week of "I love Josh!" - cough - I mean "I love Angel!"

Gotta talk about the purge. Hard to talk about the purge without knowing where they're going with this. I know some spoilers for Tomorrow but not all.

Taken just in the context of the episode, I can understand the purge as a classic Tim Minear moment (note that I call it "classic" and not necessarily "good writing'). One of Tim's big writing weaknesses is that he'll do something that makes no sense for the sake of having something else that's deep and angstful. I put up with this as a viewer because I'm all about deep and angstful. So part of me suspects that the soul colonic was done in the same vein, so to speak, as Angel's speech to Wesley at the hospital of "I'm not Angelus, I'm Angel" - remove all doubt that any nasty thing Connor does or is about to do is not his fault. Keep the fen out there from twittering that Connor grew up in a Hell dimension so his logic does not resemble our earth logic. He gets a clean slate, and any nasty stuff he does is his full responsibility, just like a souled Angel can't blame Angelus for the bad stuff he does.

And I'll admit that I at least liked the line that indicated that Connor felt like he deserved to be in Quor-toth, or however it was worded. Again classic Tim - adding layers of emotion to even the crappiest of stories.

I've got a problem with demon Cordy though. I still hate that she's a pretty demon. I liked that at least this time we got a line of her being tired after she did the purge, but I still hate that this "hard decision" that was "worse than the visions" has so far made her turn into a pretty demon. Where's the hard?? (And yes, I have read spoilers for next week. I'm still wondering where the hard is - but maybe actually seeing the ep will sell me on it.)

They murdered Cordy's character, and I'll talk more about that in my year-end wrap up review. But for now lemme do the flip side. Since we're obviously stuck with the murdered Cordelia, here's how I want to see them fix this: Go whole hog. You've done it, guys. You've literally made her a saint. She's a pretty, perfect light being who can pass on blessings with her touch. So go all the way. I want to see a Cordy storyline a la JC Superstar. Show me a Cordy next year who, yeah, is St. Corduffy the Perfect, but show me a Cordy who's struggling with that, who can't relate to people anymore (or have people relate to her) because she's been made to become this perfect being that is elevated above everyone else for the purpose of a higher power by the Higher Powers. Angst it up with a Cordy who was apparently destined for beauitful greatness who's got a vampire in love with her who's made of the most evil thing in the world. Pull out all the stops! But don't sit here with Cordy the pretty light being and expect us to swallow it.

And I think that covers it for now. Gotta go back and check on the air conditioner guys anyway. Later!