4/1: Deep Down

[Lola m]

Episode 1 of Season 4
Original Air Date: 10/06/2002
Written by: Steven S. DeKnight
Directed by: Terrence O'Hara


Wes rescues Angel from his watery grave.

[Lola m]

We continue our countdown of the 2006 Sizzlin’ Episode Festival! Week four brings us the 7th most requested Angel episode – Deep Down.

Freeze the moment, dad. It'll last forever.





Gunn: Fred, Wesley doesn't give a damn about us.
Fred: Have we given him a reason to?
Gunn: He's made his choice. Now he has to live with it.



Lilah: What makes you think there will be a next time?
Wesley: Because you can't resist me.





I'll take away your bucket.



Oh, screw you! I'm *not* feeding that thing.
No. Your blood's too thin.






Linwood: This is outrageous! Are you actually telling me that you went over my head?
Lilah: Just under it, actually.






I can't imagine what you've been through, Connor, being taken away by Holtz, raised in that place. It must have been horrible. I know you're still hurting but - I promise, it's not nearly as much as you're gonna hurt for what you did to your father.
. . . .
He got what he deserved.
And how soon before we deserved it?






I love you, Connor. Now get out of my house.

Go ahead! Chat, squee, think deep or shallow thoughts, post wild-ass theories, write fic or poems in homage, discuss arcane points of interest, post pretty pictures, and just generally wibble on about this ep. We eagerly await whatever you’ve got to say or show!

Need help remembering lines and so on? Look here.

[Matthew]

lolam said:

So, I love love love the scene in Dead Things when Buffy goes to visit Spike at his crypt and they each stand on other sides of the door - touching with the door between them.

But I particularly love the song lyrics that are playing during it.

"When we die, we go into the arms of those that remember us...
We are home now, out of our heads, out of our minds
Out of this world, out of our time...

Are you drowning or waving?
I just want you to save me
Should we try to get along?
Just try to get along...

So we move, we change by the speed of the choices that we make
And the barriers are all self-made
That's so retrograde..."

(Not the full song, obviously, but the main lyrics during the scene.)


To me, it seems picked to represent each of them. Not Buffy's feelings or Spike's feelings, but both of theirs. Showing that they are much more alike than not.

What do you think?

Yes.

Or, alternately, tell me just how much you love tough-guy-half-looney-keeping-a-woman-caged-in-his-closet-Wes from Deep Down. And how can you possibly decide which is the "better" line?

"I'll take away your bucket."
Or
"Your blood's too thin." (And then, slice goes Wes' arm.)

The "bucket" one: because he just uses the Force to sense what Justine's about/contemplating doing.

Actual Rogue Demon Hunter Wes: a study in how effed-up and compelling you can make a character: how much he can grow and be shaped by the crap you fling at him. Oh, and I think he's at least three-quarters loon in that ep: the only thing that kept him from going full-out crazy was his mission in search of redemption: his attempt to undo the thing he did to Angel in stealing (all unawares) Connor's childhood from Angel.

And so freaking intense: we see hints of it, before, when Gunn confronts him in the Pylea arc, over his tactics: or shadows of it on his face when he's dealing with the Watcher's hit squad: but it isn't until he doesn't have a restraining presence on him, in the form of his friends and peers, that we see him with the throttle all the way open, heedless of ANYTHING in his path, or his own safety: this is the growing intensity in him that compels Lilah, and allows him to remain functional, even if not completely sane, while keeping a woman locked in his closet and having wild monkey-sex with a woman who clearly serves Evil with a capital E.

Wes stripped to the bone: the same Wes that shoots his father without hesitation when the person that he cares the most about is threatened. The Wes that wishes it actually had been his father, and not some nicely-disguised cyborg: the Wes that has bashed his way out of the cupboard under the stairs.

[Matthew]

"I can't imagine what you've been through, Connor, being taken away by Holtz, raised in that place. It must have been horrible. I know you're still hurting but - I promise, it's not nearly as much as you're gonna hurt for what you did to your father."

And then she whips out the taser.

Flat-affect-voiced hard-core Fred... Such a scarily good match for Wes, actually: when her voice loses that upper buzz, her throttle is stuck all the way open, too.

Much as I love Gunn, I don't think he was able to see all the sides of her that Wes was able to: this part of her scared the piss out of him: it didn't match his pedestalled vision: just as his ability to break Doctor whatsishead's neck didn't match her pedestalled vision of him(personally, I think he had to die no matter WHO did it: I don't think it would have broken Fred the way Gunn thought it would.).

And Wes had her on a pedestal, too: but when he came to her for vengeance, Wes was all "sure, no problem!" rather than "Are you sure you want to do this?" meaning he had NO problems with her seeking to destroy utterly that which took five years of her life from her. That it made absolutely perfect sense to him: he saw something of himself in her.

Gunn was worried about the fact that revenge is a self-destructive act: he couldn't see that Fred had already.. sorta been destroyed: that this was something she needed to be able to rebuild. That being held as a slave and a cow for five years, because of someone else's academic jealousies, of all the stupid reasons, had demolished her: that killing the prof was just unfinished business: sweeping up after the main event. Fred had to do that: it was part of her: she fought the way any good geek who is aware of the odds does: with maximum force, at maximum endurable cost. And killing that professor was nowhere NEAR the limit of the cost she could endure: having the weight of his death on someone else's hands, the hands of someone she loved and wanted to keep pure? That WAS past her endurance. She broke Gunn, and she hated herself for that, I think.

The way Gunn reacted to her righteous fury at Connor in this episode, trying to stay her hand was what... meant to her that he was "better" than she was: what meant that he was pure in her eyes, but she was monstrous, drenched in blood: killing the prof herself would do no damage, for she was already capable of it inside.

All from that little drop of about an octave, and the loss of a chipper buzz in her voice..

[Lola m]

Carrying these over from the main thread, 'cuz they all spring from Matthew's above post re: Fred, and I found them interesting and didn't want them lost.


Diane said:

Yes, she does get her Illyria on, doesn't she?

To which Lola said:

**nods nods nods**

You can see why they knew Amy could do it.

Makes me think of becca talking about seeing AA at a con and fans asking her to "do Illyria", and she just . . . became her in the blink of an eye. That even without the makeup, she was scary.

To which Matthew said, in response to Diane's post:

huh....

I don't think of Flat-Affect Fred being much like Illyria: there's less... transparant arrogance to her: when she's in that state, she's going at her absolute limits: no ability to hold a pose or a pretense: just raw passion and all her focus on her actions...

Illyria seems, despite her occasional seething rage and her low regard for what she's surrounded by, to be in control, most of the time. I'm among the first to argue that everything that Fred is influences everything about the way Illyria manifests itself in her: but I think the closest that Illyria came to acting and feeling the way Fred did in those most desperate times was towards the end of "Not Fade Away," with her "I wish to do more violence" line: and she still is keeping more control than Fred would, no matter how much control she/it feels she's lost over her/its emotions...

hmmmm. this bears more, much more thinking about. Did Fred's reaction to her seething inner emotions, particularly when she was in extremis, make Illyria act the way she did when she (screw the multiple pronouns: sex of her avatar) manifested? Illyria was nothing but primal passion, and disdain of shrimp.

To which Lola said:

So much of the questions come down to "how much of Fred was left in Illyria". I think we were definitely being led to an answer we would have gotten in season 6 (damn the network suits, damn the network suits, damn the network suits to the lowest pit of hell) showing us that much of, if not all of Fred, was in there somehow. Would we have seen an actual split into an Illyria and a Fred that were truly separate? Would we have seen Fred and Illyria alternating?

To which beccaelizabeth said:

if there was alternating, you'd have something resembling the Angel/Angelus split, but with a switch. So would staying 2 people be the healthy end result?

And Julia also replied to Lola's post and said:

I still think that the whole Chaos Theory and String Theory theme and Feigenbaum's name were laying the foundation that Fred existed as a fractal within Illyria, waiting to uncompact and become Fred again.

Julia, could be wrong, but it's such a Joss kind of thing to do

To which Riff said:

I agree completely, of course.

Sadly, I suspect this plot string will be abandoned in any spin off we might see.

And be nodded to Julia's post as well.