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Post by Queen E on Jul 28, 2004 8:18:40 GMT -5
Please discuss, if you'd like.
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Post by Sara on Jul 28, 2004 8:38:57 GMT -5
Just wanted to say: excellent review, as always. I hadn't ever noticed the parallel between what Cordelia does to Angel's floor and what she's trying to do with herself, nor had I picked up on the recurring emphasis on smells. Terrific observations. I'm also intrigued by your understanding of which ghost did what to who; I'd always assumed it was Marie behind all of the assaults, but the idea that Dennis was the one lashing out at the guys does make a certain amount of sense. However, I always thought in "Five by Five" Dennis' actions were about trying to keep Cordelia out of the apartment and away from Faith rather than a reaction to who was with her. I'll have to watch that scene closely when we get to the episode. Again, great job on the review.
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Post by Queen E on Jul 28, 2004 10:41:50 GMT -5
Just wanted to say: excellent review, as always. I hadn't ever noticed the parallel between what Cordelia does to Angel's floor and what she's trying to do with herself, nor had I picked up on the recurring emphasis on smells. Terrific observations. I'm also intrigued by your understanding of which ghost did what to who; I'd always assumed it was Marie behind all of the assaults, but the idea that Dennis was the one lashing out at the guys does make a certain amount of sense. However, I always thought in "Five by Five" Dennis' actions were about trying to keep Cordelia out of the apartment and away from Faith rather than a reaction to who was with her. I'll have to watch that scene closely when we get to the episode. Again, great job on the review. Thanks, Sara! I thought that too, and I think that's a lot of the reason. But there is the sense Dennis has done this before; witness Cordelia's response when she takes Wesley to her apartment in "Five by Five": "Yes, he's jealous. (to Dennis) Don't worry. Hell will freeze over before I have sex with him." Seems to indicate a pattern with Dennis. Of course, all of my conclusions are just opinion.
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Post by Lola m on Jul 30, 2004 13:06:35 GMT -5
Another one hit out of the park, Erin! Love, love, love your description of Cordy. She struggles so much in this episode, and really throughout the first season of AtS in particular, to find her place. To become someone - someone other than just the rich, mean, popular high school girl. Your summary lines for her: are just so true. Eetah on Dennis! I too believe that the ghost pulling the clothes out of the drawer is Dennis and that mom is referring to him when she says the "what are you doing here" thing. I had never thought about some of the other events, like the stuff thrown at Angel or Doyle, but Dennis certainly shows a somewhat proprietary interest in Cordy in future eps. It's so sad and creepy thinking of all the years those 2 ghosts have been stuck in the same apartment - snipping at each other and the tenants - reliving their whole icky relationship over and over. Bleargh! Not the way I'd want to be spending my afterlife. Your list of parallels is very interesting. I had kind of thought of the apartment = Cordy thing myself, just because it's so clear that she is still at a time in her life when possesions and objects define her. But several of the others were very cool new insights for me. In the final part where you are summing up, I particularly liked: We see so much potential for both of these characters. Just another reason for me to be a little sad that we never got to see all those posibilities come true for Doyle. Thanks again, Erin! Lola
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Post by Nickim on Jul 30, 2004 17:15:06 GMT -5
Another great job, Erin. I loved the parallel you drew between Doyle and Xander. Doyle's answer to the "have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" line, always gets to me. Cordelia has so far to go before she could notice that Doyle isn't even aware of the apartment. The growth of Cordelia's character is one of my favorite things about AtS. And why Joss totally destoyed that character is one of the things I'll never understand.
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Post by Queen E on Jul 30, 2004 18:24:18 GMT -5
Another one hit out of the park, Erin! Love, love, love your description of Cordy. She struggles so much in this episode, and really throughout the first season of AtS in particular, to find her place. To become someone - someone other than just the rich, mean, popular high school girl. Your summary lines for her: are just so true. I had the hardest time with that scene...I kept wondering "Why is she doing that? That's silly...d'oh! Metaphor!" Cordelia's character was a fascinating one to watch, and I was very sad at the end of "You're Welcome." Or your current one! Bricking him up in the wall was just the sick extension of an isolated and controlled existence for poor Dennis. And he really never did move on; he got more "breathing" room and a pretty companion he was not related to, but he still was trapped. Not sure he even knew any other way. I've often wondered what happened to Dennis after they moved Cordy's stuff out... I think we got to see some of Doyle's possibilities. Amazingly, I've seen other sites where people have expressed dislike for Doyle, saying that he was a lying mooch who took advantage of Angel. I never thought of him like that...I thought he was troubled and unable to accept himself (as so many of us do when we are you), but that final moment in "Hero" when he jumps into the light, we see him morph from demon back to human into pure light. His past and his darkness were integrated. But I agree...there could have been so much more.
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Post by Queen E on Jul 30, 2004 18:30:38 GMT -5
Another great job, Erin. I loved the parallel you drew between Doyle and Xander. Doyle's answer to the "have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" line, always gets to me. Cordelia has so far to go before she could notice that Doyle isn't even aware of the apartment. The growth of Cordelia's character is one of my favorite things about AtS. And why Joss totally destoyed that character is one of the things I'll never understand. Me too! She was a delight to watch develop. But I think there was a purpose to her arc...she wasn't wary enough of what was being promised to her. One must be extremely careful when someone is offering you power, when someone tells you how much good you've done. Because Cordelia likes power (very few of us don't). She made the right decision not to stay and be "Queen C," but slipped up big time in "Birthday." Because what Skip offered her was not "being ordinary" vs. "fighting the good fight"; he offered a glitzy Hollywood lifestyle with a top-rated show, fans, and minions willing to do her bidding, or, untold amounts of demon power. Even without Jasmine, Cordelia would have been on a dangerous path after she was demonized...regardless of her desire to do good.
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Post by Nickim on Aug 19, 2004 6:20:24 GMT -5
Me too! She was a delight to watch develop. But I think there was a purpose to her arc...she wasn't wary enough of what was being promised to her. One must be extremely careful when someone is offering you power, when someone tells you how much good you've done. Because Cordelia likes power (very few of us don't). She made the right decision not to stay and be "Queen C," but slipped up big time in "Birthday." Because what Skip offered her was not "being ordinary" vs. "fighting the good fight"; he offered a glitzy Hollywood lifestyle with a top-rated show, fans, and minions willing to do her bidding, or, untold amounts of demon power. Even without Jasmine, Cordelia would have been on a dangerous path after she was demonized...regardless of her desire to do good. You're right, Erin, Cordy should have told Skip, "I want a third option. A bit of demon, so the visions don't lay me flat for days, but nothing grand."
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Post by Queen E on Aug 20, 2004 14:24:45 GMT -5
You're right, Erin, Cordy should have told Skip, "I want a third option. A bit of demon, so the visions don't lay me flat for days, but nothing grand." I can understand it at first, but by the time she was doing the white glowing power thing, which, incidentally, was done to eliminate what was escaping Connor through the portal, and to keep Connor from killing her (protecting the father?), I would have been asking some questions about what the heck was the agenda of whomever invested her with these powers.
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Post by Linda on Jan 16, 2005 20:07:55 GMT -5
Hi Erin! I *finally* got to watch this episode along with your analysis. I love them both. OK, squee moment from your analysis: Cordy's not-yet-integrated self conclusion. *pets Erin's smart-n-pretty brain* I also liked: Hee! The past surely did leak and break and end up costing both Doyle and Cordelia more. Just like her commercial. Oooh! And, as you pointed out, smell is emphasized throughout the episode. Weren't the smells mostly stinky? Like trash that hasn't been dealt with? I *love* Jane E's eps. (Most of 'em, anyway.) And, although the details of Angel's Angelus past were not specifically brought up, Cordy *did* mention his SunnyD mansion. Which is someplace associated with Angelus's most recent, awful, Giles-torturing & Acathla past. So the cost of just throwing the past away instead of dealing with it bodes very ill for Angel. I never noticed how many signs and portents of this theme appeared throughout the series. And thanks to your analysis, I noticed a smallish thing about phone calls. In the beginning of the episode, the phone calls don't reach their intended recipients -- Cordy avoids Aura, Doyle misses Cordy's "eep!" call because of Griff. So ducking out on your past means that you miss out on connections to people in the present. And then in the middle of the episode, Cordy receives a false call from her nasty ghost disguised as Angel. Does that mean "Deal with your past or it will just come back under new guises"? And then Doyle and Angel connect with each other and expose ghosty's untruth because of their mutual concern Cordy. So connections can also be forged by caring about someone. And once Cordy has dealt with her nasty ghost, she is able to make that phone call to Aura. Oh, and another thing that struck me during a re-rewatch of the episode: Phantom Dennis's possession of Cordy caused her to break through that wall and expose Maude's crime -- or perhaps more importantly, Dennis's suffering and innocence. And the truth gives him the strength to get rid of Maude's ghost for good. All of which foreshadows the visions she would be getting later on from the PTBs. Like you said in your analysis: setting the groundwork for what she will become. (Side note: The fact that Dennis remains as a recurring character makes me wonder if he was a symbol of those people Cordy helps through her visions. Which would be the reason why we never hear about him again after the first(?) episode of Season 4. Phantom Dennis and the innocents they used to help are abandoned by them all. Huh.) I'm having so much fun watching AtS through the prism of your analyses. Don't let the fact that I'm soo far behind fool you. I have to watch each episode at least twice because I know you're gonna make me have a lot of new thoughts that I have to try to form into words. I dunno how you do an entire analysis from scratch. Kudos! Linda, and *still* fourteen Angelphiles behind. Yay me!
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Post by Queen E on Jan 23, 2005 4:14:58 GMT -5
Hi Erin! I *finally* got to watch this episode along with your analysis. I love them both. OK, squee moment from your analysis: Cordy's not-yet-integrated self conclusion. *pets Erin's smart-n-pretty brain* Ahhh, thank you! The whole lineoleum bit at first struck me as a "Oh, please get her out of my hair" moment; but since the whole episode is about unearthing the truth underneath the veneer, it definitely gave me an "Ah ha!" Especially since our initial impression of Cordy is that of someone shallow, or "plastic." Yes, Jane really has a nice ear for Cordelia! Nicely observed on the commercial; a trash bag commercial, then we have Maude calling her trash, her apartment is trash, and she's worried that even though she's left roach central, they've stowed away in her bag and followed her to Angel's place. Mind boggling, isn't it? I sometimes wonder how much was planned and how much was just the writers keeping excellent notes and using what they had as foreshadowing. Poor Angel. He really never does quite integrate Angel and Angelus. He's the master of the grand gesture, and Season 1 is all about the smaller gestures and has him closer to integrated than any other season (I'll talk more about this in my analysis of "War Zone"). Season 2, we see the grand gesture of him pushing everyone away because he can feel himself growing darker. Season 3, the grand gesture of "Connor back at any cost," and Season 4, Angelus returns and wreaks emotional havoc. He knows Angelus is closer to the surface than he thinks, and the more Angel is played by various factions, the more Angelus stirs in his chains, which scares Angel to death and keeps him from dealing with him and ignoring the signs in others of the danger of his behavior. Whose got the pretty brain now? Excellent observation regarding phone calls and communication. I think you're absolutely right about the "new guises." We're doomed to keep dealing with our issues under new iterations until we deal with them. As Faith says in "Orpheus": "You know what the definition of insanity is, baby? Performing the same task over and over and expecting different results." We see Cordy start to deal with her behavior by admitting her loneliness in "Out of Mind, Out of Sight," and give up, for awhile, her place as "Queen C" to follow her heart and date Xander, but later circumstances set her back to old behavior patterns and old standards. She goes a long way to integrating the power of her old personality with a sensitivity to the suffering of others that really hits its apex in "Billy." *sigh* I miss Dennis! That's also a great insight as a foreshadowing of Cordy becoming vision girl as well as Dennis as metaphor for the "helpless" AI was so focused on helping before Cordy went bad. There was a great discussion on the board awhile back about blindness; we see Cordy "blinded" several times on Buffy and Angel; her eyes whited out, for instance, in "The Witch." Seeing Cordy's visions making her "white eyed" in Season 4 should have been a red flag that she was possessed, if they'd recalled her possession by Dennis. For that brief time, Dennis was at the wheel. They should have asked, "Whose at the wheel now?" Visions are about "seeing"; a vision that makes you blind is perhaps not a good thing? I am so glad, because I am having so much fun writing them! I go between the episode and the transcripts; sometimes I pick stuff up I missed through my viewings by reading the transcript...certain words that keep being repeated as a big indicator of central themes. And the things that aren't said but expressed through action or facial expressions... Yay you, indeed! I'm looking forward to many more pretty thoughts!
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Post by jeff on Jul 10, 2007 23:03:20 GMT -5
I know I am only on my 5th Angelphile review, But Erin I must give you very Big Kudos for this review. You freaking knocked it out of the park.
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Post by Queen E on Jul 10, 2007 23:28:35 GMT -5
I know I am only on my 5th Angelphile review, But Erin I must give you very Big Kudos for this review. You freaking knocked it out of the park. Wow, Jeff! Now, that's inspiring. Now I feel like working again! *hug*
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