VIOLENCE JACK (1986, 1988, 1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

If people say you can’t do something, then you want to do it even more. Things that are considered forbidden, means other people aren’t doing them yet! -- Go Nagai

From what spotty English-language reviews I found online, I don't get a sense that all, if any, of these three OVAs were totally faithful to Go Nagai's manga VIOLENCE JACK. But I have no doubt that they had total fidelity to Nagai's aesthetic of transgressive sex and violence. 

Before watching these productions, I read a few months' worth of the manga online, just to get a sense of its parameters, and I got the sense that it's a fairly loose concept. Such looseness was probably ideal for an OAV series, in that it wouldn't be expected to adapt an accepted continuity, and to date the original JACK material has proved too hardcore for even the Japanese to adapt fully into an anime series. In addition to being far more violent than even a lot of Nagai's other works, JACK is alleged to be the first manga/anime to delve into the post-apoc disaster genre-- which had been around a long time but was not usually melded with the genre of high-octane adventure. (Roger Zelazny's DAMNATION ALLEY was one predecessor.)  But this mainly allowed the protagonist-- a ten-foot-tall giant capable of brutal retaliation to protect the innocent-- to wander from situation to situation as he pleased. So I don't believe the original manga followed a strict continuity, and neither do the OVAs.

       

HAREM BOMBER was the first-released OVA in Japan, but it doesn't make any concessions regarding introducing Jack, and it only provides a sketchy backstory for its world. It all takes place in the Kanto region of Japan, which was so devastated by a meteor strike that it became a pocket world of ravaged human cliques. What happened to the rest of Japan, or the rest of the world? You'll never learn from the anime. As in many later genre-pieces, roving gangs of plunderers comprise the only authority, and the most powerful gang-leader is a warlord, Slum King, who comes into conflict with Jack. The two fight a bit, get separated, and the rest of the film concerns Jack protecting a young couple from the motorbike-riding looters. Slum King steals women to sell to sex slave-rings, and he's an equal opportunity employer, given that he has a whip-wielding lesbian henchwoman who sorts out the new acquisitions. Since Nagai probably intended to have some more climactic clash between the hero and Slum King down the line, the story's big fight concentrates on Jack vanquishing one of the warlord's henchmen, the titular Harem Bomber. In a twist of expectations, the girl lives and the boy dies, and there's a fuzzy reference to some Nagai concept about Jack has some sort of link to an ethereal bird-creature.

EVIL TOWN, the second OVA, feels more like an intro to Jack. A huge section of a Kanto city is swallowed by an earthquake, with the result that several humans are confined to the sunken area, unable to get back to the surface. The survivors break into three groups-- A, B and C-- and A's citizens are the ones who unearth Jack from a pile of rubble, where he's apparently been comatose. Jack at first tells the A-guys that he has no name but then dubs himself "Violence Jack" because he happens to have a huge jackknife with him. Though at first the taciturn hero defends the A-group from the freakish and malevolent denizens of the B-group, eventually Jack turns on both when he learns that the C-group is totally made up of women who have been abused and preyed upon by both groups. Though some of the women can fight-- particularly one muscular babe-- Jack defends them and makes it possible for them to return to the surface. TOWN seems to state a key tenet of Nagai's creative philosophy: that the "freaks" are not intrinsically less moral than the "straights," given that the latter group is willing to descend into rapine at the drop of a hat. TOWN is unquestionably the most extreme of the three OVAs, barraging the viewer with scenes of nudity, rape, bloody slaughter, cannibalism and even a little necrophilia.

HELL'S WIND, as well as being the name of a predacious gang of bikers, is the weakest of the OVAs. The gang menaces a small town seeking to get back to normal civilization, but the bikers, who report to the warlord Slum King, continually prey on the innocents. Long before Jack makes the scene, Hell's Wind assaults a young couple, killing the man and raping the woman, one Jun. She trains herself to become an Action Girl so that she can take revenge, but Jack more or less saves her the trouble, so that Jun doesn't have a satisfactory arc. Jack, though never demonstrative, seems to have a special liking for a young boy, and based on what little I read of the manga, I think that the two characters were intertwined in some way, though this never becomes explicit.

EVIL TOWN has the strongest sociological motif, implying that when men and women are confined together in a figurative prison with no outside contact, the men will become inveterate rapists. But though this is an intriguing idea, it's just a side-dish to the main course, which is loads and loads of sex and violence.

                       

BLOODY PIT OF HORROR (1965)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I've argued in a separate essay that BLOODY PIT OF HORROR is more than just another dumb horror flick about a menace in an old castle. Though its writers and director were probably innocent of any desire to make PIT "arty" in any way, I find it likely that they were aware of how routine many similar old-castle flicks had become even in the short period of Italy's investment in horror cinema. After all, PIT was being shot at the same Palazzo Borghese castle that had hosted two generic flicks, THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA and THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE. Whatever behind-the-scenes crew might have been in both of these as well as PIT, the only obvious point of continuity is the lead male player, Walter Brandi.

There's nothing very notable about the victims here than in the earlier two films. Since the "old dark house" flicks of the silent era, there was an established trope in which a group of vulnerable individuals get trapped/stranded in some house where a mystery killer seeks to knock them off one by one. In this case, PIT, like the two 1960 movies, ups the level of pulchritude seen in old dark house films. This time the group is led to a remote castle by Parks, a publisher of crime and horror books. I have no idea if Italian publishing houses actually went around looking for locations at which to shoot photos, and since one guy in the party dresses up in a skeleton costume a la Italian comics-villains like Diabolik and Kriminal, it's possible Parks is publishing fumetti, not "real books." Frankly, the location-scouting thing sounds more typical of movie companies, like the one making this film. In any case Parks brings with a couple of male assistants, his star writer Rick (Brandi), his secretary Edith (Louise Barrett), and four gorgeous models. Of the persons in Parks' party, only two get anything like two-dimensional characterization. Edith, despite not ever having seen the castle before, feels strangely drawn to it. Rick occasionally tosses out wry remarks about his association with this farrago, and we later learn he was a reporter and fell into writing horror books because it seemed easy.

Parks orders his people to break into the castle, thinking it deserted. The unnamed "master of the house" (Mickey Hargitay) and his whole two servants (both strapping men in outfits like those of Venetian gondoliers) order the group to leave. However, from a secret vantage the master sees and recognizes Edith, whereon he changes his mind, permitting the crew to remain for the night, as long as they keep clear of the castle's dungeons.

Now, it's likely dire things might have happened to the visitors even if they'd obeyed the injunction. But of course Parks can't pass up a chance to take dungeon-pictures, so he and his crew invade the dungeon and set up sexy scenarios. It's all fun and games, until someone loses a head when one of the torture-machines kills him.

There's no mystery about who the killer is, even after it's disclosed that the castle once belonged to a medieval torturer, The Crimson Executioner, killed by authorities in his own domicile. Once Edith eventually gets a look at the castle's owner, she tells Rick she was once engaged to actor Travis Anderson, renowned for having played "muscle men in costume films," Anderson, says Edith, left her without explanation, or even cancelling their engagement, and evidently purchased the castle because he admired the accomplishments of its medieval master. By this time, though, Anderson and his henchmen have already killed a couple more victims, and as in the persona of the scarlet-clad torturer, Anderson begins using his specialized devices to wreak havoc on Parks and the terrified models. He takes Edith prisoner as well, trying to get her to embrace a hanging mannequin with poisoned barbs attached. Meanwhile, Rick, the only one free, has a couple of running battles with one of the henchmen (not sure where the second one went). After the henchman thinks he's killed Rick with an arrow, the guy reports to his leader in the dungeon. However, Rick's death is a fakeout, and he shows up in the dungeon, beating down each of the two men in succession. (Nice of them not to gang up on the writer.) The Executioner conveniently runs into the "poison mannequin" and is semi-literally hoist on his own petard. Rick and Edith alone survive the ordeal, implicitly with some romance for both in future.

Now, there's one minor sociological motif in PIT: that of purveyors of sexy/violent fiction get subjected to real horrors. But no one in the audience was likely to agree with the villain was justified in visiting these dooms on foolish innocents, even though they trespassed on private property. PIT doesn't possess, or claim to possess, internal logic. But given all the lovingly constructed torture devices Anderson has at his immediate disposal, clearly he's been at least fantasizing about subjecting victims to torture-scenarios for quite some time. One device is a huge spider-web with arrows rigged to fire if anyone touches the web-strands: Rick tries and fails to rescue one model (Moha Tahi) from this web of sin. Another is the poison mannequin, which Anderson calls "the Lover of Death." Curiously in the English dub. Anderson genders the mannequin as a "him" even though the dummy has long blonde hair. It would make more sense if Anderson had considered this mock-horror to be a representative of the perils of female sexuality and so would also be roughly congruent with the way the original medieval Executioner dies, by Iron Maiden. 

And why does Anderson want so badly to torture others? Well, the easy answer is that of compensation: he tortures others because he feels tortured. But assuming that the English dub represents the original Italian reasonably well, then the writers were also apparently having fun with the idea of a big strong muscleman who utters lines like "a woman's love would have destroyed me."

Sketchy though both Anderson and Edith are, their one long conversation suggests that Anderson, in pursuing a career as a "muscle man in costume films" formed the idea that he had made himself into "a perfect body." Since physical culture requires denial, Anderson eventually denied himself anything that detracted from his goal of bodily perfection. It's funny when Edith reacts to Anderson's declarations by calling Anderson an "egotist." Yet it's nonetheless true that the villain has validated his ego by worshipping not only his own body's physical power, but also the power that was once wielded by a long-dead master of torture-devices. Italian audiences would have also recognized that when Edith speaks of "costume pictures," she means a specific breed of historical flicks in which a male hero showed off a boulder-shouldered physique, the better to portray legendary heroes like Hercules, Samson and Maciste. The English dialogue does not allude to the fact that by 1965, hardly anyone was making "Hercules films" anymore, so all of Anderson's efforts to sculpt his body for the purposes of cinematic employment would have come to nothing. (And of course the writers would also have known that Mickey Hargitay played Hercules in one Italian-made spectacle from 1960.) However, the existing soundtrack emphasizes only Anderson's fear that somehow the love of a woman will compromise his male integrity. 

I've seen one or two arguments that PIT represents Anderson's rejection of his former fiancee as homoerotic in nature, and for a time I considered this possibility, given that Anderson's only two servants are musclemen like he is. However, the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed. If Anderson's concern is for keeping the integrity of his "perfect body," then a homosexual encounter would be MORE invasive, not less. It's more likely Anderson keeps around two hulking guards because they present no attractions for him, and also because they're the most effective guardians of his privacy. But when Parks' band brings sexy women into Anderson's domain-- one of whom is the woman he had at least dallied with-- then that occurrence reactivates his antipathy toward sex. As long as there were no women around, Anderson could lose himself in narcissistic dreams of his perfection and of the power once wielded by his idol, the Crimson Executioner. But once the female sex is on his radar, then he becomes obsessed with being a torture-master. 

              

And for my last point, I wondered in my other essay how the writers even came up with the idea of a big muscleman dispensing tortures. And one possibility is that if one or more writers were familiar with the major tropes of the musclemen films, they would have known that a great many of those movies place the bulked-up hero in some situation where he must conquer some infernal device (like a spiked wall) or some huge animal, etc. These tortures are visited upon the hero by men and women who cannot possibly fight the hero on his own terms, and in the case of the women, usually evil queens, there can be an element of sadism, the desire to conquer the noble crusader. I hypothesize that the writers of PIT, if only for the sake of variety, wanted to reverse that trope, so that the hulking protagonist would reveal his own impotence in torturing those weaker than himself.  

ANGEL SEASON 5 (2003-04)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*

The final season of ANGEL goes through some odd mutations as it shifts from "film noir mystery" to "working from within to take down the evil company." Further, according to a recent interview with James Marsters, when his character of Spike was resurrected for this series, this exigency may have caused the producers to cut Charisma Carpenter from the cast. This means the character arc for Cordelia is never really brought to a satisfying conclusion, at least in the teleseries. Still, in Season Four the writers had written themselves into a corner with respect to that character, so maybe they couldn't have done much with her anyway. And one more season of Spike, being brought into continuous conflict with his old hell-mate Angel, was probably a decent trade-off.            

CONVICTION (F)-- Season Four dropped the Fred-Gunn romance in a contrived manner so that by Season Five one can hardly tell they were ever together. This set up more unrequited agony for Wesley, who still loves her but can't seem to make a play. Gunn, for his part, gets super-charged with legal knowledge so that he can function as one of W&H's lawyers, just so he has a more definite function in the series than busting heads. Harmony is invited-- by Wesley, no less-- to become Angel's new secretary, but the Senior Partners also send Angel a new advisor, name of Eve, who serves as Hell's liaison. The main plot, about the team trying to prevent LA from being blown to hell, is just filler. The episode ends with Spike appearing in the offices of W&H, but as an insubstantial phantom.

JUST REWARDS (F)-- Not only is Spike a phantom, he also can't leave the evil law offices and so sticks around to bug Angel as much as possible. At the same time, Angel demands that W&H stop supplying a client named Hainsley with grave-derived corpses. Hainsley, a necromancer, threatens to take Angel down, and tries to get Phantom Spike to betray the noble vampire. The expectation set up is that Spike, who betrayed the Buffy team a few times, will do anything to get a body again, but it's no great surprise that Spike is not so much loyal to Angel as disloyal to the necromancer.

UNLEASHED (F)-- This is a decent filler episode in which the Angel Team protects a brand-new werewolf, name of Nina, from becoming the main course for a bunch of gourmets hungry for werewolf flesh.

HELL BOUND (F)-- Scofflaw though Spike is, he knows that all the things he's done in his vampire persona should doom him to eternal perdition. For the first time, the second "vampire with a soul" is faced with that fate, as a being called the Reaper, whom others at W&H cannot see, continually torments him. The existential confrontation with damnation, however, is circumvented when it turns out that the Reaper is the ghost of a sorcerer who's found a way to preserve his existence by sacrificing other spirits-- even though, technically, Spike is not exactly a ghost. James Marsters gets all the good scenes here, but the story is only adequate.

LIFE OF THE PARTY (P)-- And here's the first crummy episode of Season Five. Lorne arranges a Halloween party at W&H as a means of cementing the firm's relationships with its many demonic and sorcerous clientele. But Lorne has overextended himself by not getting enough sleep, and so he unintentionally starts commanding the other members of his group to do things against their will, much as Willow unintentionally did in "Something Blue." The foremost of these incidents is that Lorne's suggestion that Angel and Eve "get a room" causes them to have sex, though this doesn't have much overall effect upon the series as a whole. During the big bash, a Hulked-out version of Lorne shows up and tries to bash everyone to bits, and once the monster's defeated, Lorne vows to get some sleep.           

THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF NUMERO CINCO (F)-- This episode isn't all that good, but I give it props for trying to write a love letter to luchadores movies. Angel has a violent encounter with Numero Cinco, the W&H mailroom-guy, who walks around in a wrestler's mask-- but this is just a prelude to learning that Cinco is the only one who can stop a demon that feeds on heroes' hearts. The most significant subplot is that Spike, despite still being a phantom, hears some details of the Shianshu Prophecy, and wonders if it might apply to him, not to Angel.

LINEAGE (G)-- Finally one of the stories turns up the drama to eleven and does so in such a way as to reveal the psychological depth of the Wesley character. The opening scenes give the impression that the team is faced with just another new foe: a horde of cyborg assassins. Fred gets injured in these scenes while Wesley, who still has yet to make a romantic pass at her, becomes very guilty at having put her in harm's way. The script still plays it coy as to whether Fred reciprocates his feelings, because the focus here is not on Wesley's future but his humiliating past. His father Roger Wyndham-Pryce is trying to rebuild the Watcher organization that was wiped out in BUFFY's last season, and he wants his son to join him. Wesley, however, wants his independence, even if it does involve working for a hellish law office. The matter becomes irrelevant when it turns out that (a) Roger is a mole, trying to steal a weapon from the office, and (b) Roger is a cyborg, which Wesley only finds out after being forced to shoot his "father" dead. Though the real Roger Wyndham-Pryce is still alive and unaware of all these events, Wesley is once more put through a dark night of the soul, his third following Angel trying to kill him and his loss of Lilah.  

DESTINY (G)-- Up to this point Phantom Spike has been no more than an annoyance to his former pack-mate Angel, but a strange box arrives at W&H and it turns Spike to a solid being again. However, the same magic that works on Spike starts breeding chaos in the law offices and spreading to the outside world The Angel Team gets the info that they can cancel out the magic if the destined champion of the prophecy drinks from a magical cup. Naturally each of the two ensouled vampires thinks he's destined to receive the honor, and they end up having one of the series' best fight-scenes at the climax. This is also one of the last times the show flashes back to the period when Spike had been newly turned by Drusilla, and Angelus, the "big dog" of the vamp-pack, puts Spike to the test. More importantly, Young Spike is sincerely in love with the wayward Drusilla, and his first big quarrel comes about when Angelus, on the outs with Darla, seduces Drusilla. So this provides the genesis of the long rivalry of Angel and Spike, and from then on, their continuing love/hate affair bedomes the final season's best feature. The story also brings back evil lawyer Lindsey (Christian Kane), who's running some conspiracy with his lover Eve, W&H's link to the senior partners.

HARM'S WAY (F)-- This makes a good counterpart to "Disharmony," being a focus on how Harmony copes with being Angel's secretary. At the very time that the team is trying to manage a difficult summit between rival demon tribes, Harmony is framed for murder. She blunders about trying to prove her innocence and nearly kills some of the regular cast. One of the better funny ANGEL episodes. A minor development of the Spike story is that he stops talking about seeking out Buffy for a time, possibly fearing that if he sees her again, she'll reject him.

SOUL PURPOSE (F)-- "Hell Bound" put Spike through a hallucinogenic wringer, so now it's Angel's turn, reflecting his loss of confidence after being defeated by Spike. Many of Angel's delusions involve his seeing Spike taking over his position as champion and being feted by the other members of the team while Angel himself becomes the mail-boy. Meanwhile, Lindsey launches the next part of his hard-to-follow plot. He takes the name "Doyle," formerly that of the half-demon psychic who passed on his powers to Cordelia in Season One and convinces Spike to play vigilante.   

 DAMAGE (G)-- Here's a good callback to the history both Spike and Angel had with vampire slayers, as they encounter an insane young woman with Slayer strength. Dana (Navi Rawat) has been in an insane asylum for years following suffering abuse, but thanks to the spell that unleashed all Potential Slayers in BUFFY Season Seven, she comes into her power and breaks loose. Unlike Buffy and Faith, Dana's memory somehow taps into those of the last two Slayers-- the ones whom Spike killed-- so she's out to give Spike grief. The episode loses points for pointlessly bringing back the unfunny BUFFY character Andrew, though the climax does involve his command of other Slayers who take custody of Dana at the end.

YOU'RE WELCOME (F)-- And now it's time to say goodbye to Cordelia Chase as well. Angel, in the midst of contemplating defection from W&H, gets a call about Cordelia awakening from her coma. This may have been mystic flummery, for by the episode's end we learn that Cordelia's body never awakened, though something that looks and feels like the living Cordelia greets the Angel Team. She follows them back to W&H and has brief interactions with Harmony, Gunn and Lorne. She asks after Connor and finds out that Angel agreed to work for W&H in exchange for remolding reality to give Connor a happy life. Cordelia is not shy about telling Angel that he's gone down a bad road, though as in all the other Season Four episodes, she never reveals any details about how she got hijacked by Jasmine. The team learns that Eve has made an alliance with Lindsey to get revenge on Angel, though his actual plot never made much sense. Cordelia aids Angel in defeating Lindsey and sending him to some hell-dimension. The story concludes with Cordelia shuffling off the mortal coil to become a vision-thing of some sort. It's hard to believe the story was conceived as a guest-shot for Buffy.

WHY WE FIGHT (F)-- If nothing else, this one's a good change of pace, as most of the story is a flashback to Angel's years in the US during World War Two. In short, Angel, Spike and two other vampires get trapped in a submarine at the bottom of the sea. The frame story concerns how one of the mortals menaced by the vamps comes back to gain vengeance on Angel.

 SMILE TIME (F)-- I must admit that though there's nothing exceptional about the story, "the one where Angel gets turned into a puppet" remains one of the most memorable ANGEL tales. Spike's huge amusement at Angel's humiliation alone makes the episode, though he takes a back seat to the boss vamp's temptation to romantically pursue werewolf-woman Nina. In between the puppet-hijinks, Gunn begins to lose his downloaded talents and makes an unwise deal, while Fred finally breaks the ice with Wesley. Both lead to bad ends.

A HOLE IN THE WORLD (G)-- Fred is infected with the essence of an Old God named Illyria, which destroys her body and soul despite everything the team can do to prevent it. Even more than the BUFFY episode "The Body," "Hole" shows the utter inability of even super-powered mortals to stave off death, which I assume is the "hole" referenced in the title. A special perk is that for once writer Josh Whedon expands on his quasi-Lovecraftian universe in a fully mythopoeic manner, as Angel and Spike delve into a subterranean domain, "The Deeper Well," only to learn that even attempting to oust an Old God from her chosen vessel will cause untold destruction. Denisof and Acker ratchet up the waterworks to give Winifred Burkle a send-off, while introducing a new character for Acker, that of an incarnate god who has little patience with the fatuities of mortals.                      

   SHELLS (G)-- Wesley has not even a moment to mourn Fred, for he must immediately deal with Illyria, an Old God in human form. She remembers nothing of Fred's existence but is aghast to learn that the world has now been overridden by humans, who were a nugatory species on the level of pond scum. Angel and Spike return from England, having failed to reverse Illyria's possession of Fred's body. They question the W&H scientist Knox, who conspired to give Illyria her new form. Then Illyria abducts Knox, casting aside all opposition. On a minor note, Gunn learns that the process that gave him a permanent download was also involved in Illyria's incarnation, though this seems out of left field. Wesley does not react well to Gunn's accidental betrayal and stabs Gunn, albeit non-fatally. Illyria, with Knox's aid, successfully opens a gateway to a pocket dimension, from which she plans to revive an army of conquest. However, to her great consternation her soldiers have all perished over the centuries, and on top of that Wesley kills Knox. Despite the conflict between Illyria and the Angel Team, the former goddess shows up at W&H once more, having nowhere else to go.

UNDERNEATH (F)-- Eve wants the Angel Team to protect her from the senior partners, who already have Lindsey. None of them knows that for whatever reasons, Lindsey's captors have put him into a suburban paradise with a pretty wife and a child, though his familial pleasures are regularly interrupted by torture sessions with a S&M demon. Eve convinces the team that Lindsey can solve their problems with his insight into the minds of the senior partners, so Angel, Spike, and Gunn invade the holding-dimension to rescue Lindsey. In their absence-- during which time Wesley is still babysitting Illyria-- a hulking man in a suit (Alec Baldwin) invades W&H, trying to find Eve. However, though the hulk (name of Hamilton) is from hell, he's only here to take Eve's place as a new liaison to the firm, so she's not harmed. Gunn isn't so lucky. In order to expiate his guilt for having indirectly caused Fred's death, he takes Lindsey's place in the otherworld so that Angel and Spike escape with Lindsey.

ORIGIN (P)-- Naturally the writers don't really want Connor totally sidelined, since he causes Angel all sorts of grief. So one day Connor's parents bring their son into the W&H offices to find out how their son was able to survive being run down by a car. It doesn't make a lick of sense as to why Connor would still be half-demon if his entire timeline has been rewritten. The writers choose not to explain this, even though they make up a special demon, name of Vail, who's credited with having accomplished the rewriting. And yet there's some balmy prophecy that insists that Connor is the only being who can destroy Vail's enemy, the scheming Sahjhan from Season 4. The only good part of this mess is the scene in which Spike tries to "test" Illyria's powers, which makes for some decent face-smashings.

TIME BOMB (F)-- Though Wesley persuades Illyria to crash into the hell-dimension and to rescue Gunn, the team worries that Illyria's powers will soon build to a crisis point and she'll explode, destroying lots of Earth real estate in the process. Wesley devises a ray-gun to disperse her power, though for most of the episode the viewer is led to believe that he intends to kill her. While this goes on, Angel also has to deal with a legal matter about a sacrificial cult trying to take possession of an unborn baby from its mother. The episode's best feature is a series of time-distortions resulting when Illyria becomes "unstuck in time." Presumably the script was written when the staff hoped to be able to continue for a sixth season, which would have included Illyria becoming a regular, less reluctant team-member.

THE GIRL IN QUESTION (F)-- This is another silly concept. Angel and Spike journey to Italy to protect the decapitated head of a demon-clan master while simultaneously trying to pry Buffy from the clutches of a mysterious, never-seen seducer known as The Immortal. Naturally, since Sarah Michelle Gellar did not choose to come back for what would have been a cameo role, Buffy is only seen from a distance and is never involved in any story-action, any more than is the mysterious man she's now dating. In this comedy both Angel and Spike are played for fools, and even the perpetually uncool Andrew is allowed to shine. The only redeeming virtue of the episode is the writers are still able to keep up the great rapport between Angel and Spike, allowing the viewer to see glimpses of the amity they once shared before either of them got a soul. Flashback scenes also show their wenches Darla and Drusilla having been seduced by the ultra-manly Immortal, which seems like gilding the lily a bit too much.   

POWER PLAY/NOT FADE AWAY (F)-- There are some good moments in this concluding two-parter, but the myth-discourse is palliated by the attempt to shoehorn in all of the subplots, such as the overrated Shianshu Prophecy. (There was even talk of having Buffy make one last guest appearance, but though Gellar might have been willing, the idea was dropped.) In the first part, Angel begins acting evil, as if completely corrupted by running Wolfram and Hart. The rest of the team run around worrying, except for Illyria, who bonds a little with Spike in running around fighting evil. The subplot with Lindsey belatedly takes shape, though he doesn't do much beyond providing bits of info. Angel seems to be auditioning for membership in an elite convocation of demons, the Circle of the Black Thorn, who are the means through which the senior partners work their will upon the mortal plane. Not surprisingly, Angel's running a scam to deceive both the watchful Hamilton and the duplicitous Lindsey. In essence, the hero has realized that there's no point in seeking to use W&H "to change things from within," because the power of the senior partners will always be used to keep humans down. The best that heroes can do is to shake things up, to inflict substantive damage on the lords of Hell, even if they themselves perish. The two-parter finds time to work in character moments for minor figures like Connor and Harmony, and all the major players get to have big action-scenes taking out demonic forces, with Angel squaring off with Hamilton. Lorne, though not a fighter, gets an uncharacteristic final moment that nevertheless sums up his place in the world of champions. The final scene, in which the Angel Team takes arms against an irresistible tide of monsters, does much to redeem all the weak moments of this uneven but still important teleseries.                                     

  

        

  

TO KILL WITH INTRIGUE (1977)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

Otherwise known as JACKIE CHAN'S HAMLET! Okay, I'm the only one who calls TO KILL WITH INTRIGUE by that name but given that this obscure Taiwanese flick predates Jackie's jolly image, I could justify the name just on the basis that this has to be Chan's grimmest, most morose role up to this point in his career.

However, one of INTRIGUE's scenes made me think of the key HAMLET scene in which the hero renounces Ophelia, possibly (as some critics speculate) after he's made her pregnant. In INTRIGUE, young nobleman Shao (Chan) meets with Qian (Yu Ling-long), a maid in his father's court, and tells her to take a hike, despite knowing that she has a bun in the oven. Not too much later, he bursts into the court, telling all of the guests celebrating his father's birthday to get lost too. The guests leave, and Father Lei yells at Shao. Shao says he did it all to keep innocents out of harm's way, and he removes an item from his tunic: a dismembered hand with the image of a human-headed bee drawn upon it. Shao doesn't say how he came by this curious oracle, but he claims it's the calling-card of a gang of kung-fu bandits, the Killer Bees, whom Lord Lei attempted to wipe out. While the lord is conferring with his son, wife, and retainers about the incipient attack, four guests return to the court-- only to drop dead. A strange one-handed man shows up (maybe a cutesy reference to Jimmy Wang Yu's One-Armed Swordsman?) and demands the return of his hand. Shao flings the dead hand to the probably dead man and the latter bounds away.

Then the attack by the Killer Bees begins in earnest. Armed men appear on the estate-walls, and into the courtyard five coffins appear. The coffin lids shoot off, and up spring the assault's leader and four cohorts, all attired in flower-masks, as if seeking to conflate death and fertility. The leader is Ting Tan-yen (Hsu Feng), a beautiful woman wearing a half-mask over her lower face, and after swearing vengeance, she engages Lord Lei in sword-combat. A melee breaks out, but the Lei family is overmatched. Ting kills the hero's mother and father and easily beats down Shao's weak nobleman-fu. However, he manages to get a sword to Ting's throat. She invites Shao to kill her but only after she shows him the facial scar beneath her mask, a wound she got from Shao's father when she was still a child. Doubt, the curse of the Melancholy Dane, causes Shao to hesitate, and Ting knocks him out.

When he awakes, he sees Ting from behind and thinks it's his lost love Qian. Ting tells Shao that she spared his life so that he'd suffer as she suffered the loss of her family. Shao can do nothing but go looking for the woman he spurned, even for reasons he thought beneficent.

To be sure, Shao wasn't completely stupid about the risks of chasing off his pregnant mistress; he mentioned to his father that he sent a friend named Jin to look after Qian. Jin does show up just as bandits attack Qian, and he kicks their asses before taking Qian to his house. However, Jin doesn't seem to know why Shao disavowed his mistress. Qian wants to flee the general area and Jin obliges her, so that when Shao comes looking, no one's to home.

A disconsolate Shao stays at Jin's house. Ting shows up, twisting the knife by telling Shao his friend's gone off with his lover. Then she calls Shao a "beast," which just so happens to be what Qian called Shao when he gave her the kiss-off. Shao hallucinates that Ting is Qian, embraces her, and summarily beds her. It's not clear if Ting is aware he's mistaken her for someone else, though there's no question she could've stopped Shao if she'd wanted to. After they've had sex and Shao's passed out, he mumbles Qian's name and Ting runs off, jealous as hell. (I admit Hamlet didn't do quite this much bed-hopping, though a fellow named Freud claimed that he had a certain ambivalence about his mama.) 

Then Shao pays the price for a grudge against Jin, as three paid assassins break in on him. He fights them and he kills one, but the other two knock him out. Fourth Dragon, an older noble, shows up and tells his assassin-employees that they assaulted the wrong man. He pays them off but when they want to murder the unconscious Shao, Fourth Dragon drives them off. He has Shao brought to his home, apologizes, and tells Shao that Jin ripped off the cargo that Fourth Dragon's guard-escorts were protecting. Slightly later, Ting shows up again-- "I am your shadow," she mocks the anguished hero-- and though she won't tell Shao where Jin and Qian are, she tasks him with not even having the filial piety to bury his slain parents. Further, she says, they were buried by none other than his recent benefactor, Fourth Dragon. Shao, unable to find his lost love, sublimates his desires by pledging loyalty to a "second father," joining the Dragon's guards. Does Fourth Dragon take the place of Lord Lei, the father whose virtue became suspect? The clan of the assassins attacks the guardians, and Shao leads the fight against them, calling himself "Fifth Dragon." But the assassins really start losing when Ting Tan-yen joins the battle, without explaining why she interceded. She leaves Shao in the care of Fourth Dragon for the time being but later persuades him to let her take Shao to her own domicile. 

On top of all these sturm-and-drang incidents-- Shao finding a new father to replace the dead one, or having his life preserved by the woman who killed both parents-- Fourth Dragon meets the governor, to whom his life is forfeit for losing a precious cargo-- and it's none other than the robber Jin, who is ALSO the head of the assassin-clan. Basically, everything Jin has done has been to advance his clan's power in the region, and he even takes credit for eliminating the Lei family. This may have been an overreach on the author's part, since Jin doesn't seem affiliated with the Killer Bees, who aren't mentioned or seen again after the opening fight. Jin fights and kills both Fourth Dragon and his aide, and then proceeds to his estate, where he uses honeyed words to persuade Qian to marry him. She agrees, wanting to protect her child and grieving because she's been told Shao is dead. 

Now, thus far INTRIGUE hasn't had anything like Hamlet's ghostly father, or even the Devil whom Hamlet half-suspects of having sent the paternal apparition. However, there is a slight sense of passing into another world when Shao is taken to Ting's estate. Ting heals Shao but won't let him leave if he can't beat her in kung fu. He practices continually, but he's unable to up his game. He challenges her anyway, and she punishes him in various ways, which reminded me of the ordeals heroes would undergo from goddesses. (Admittedly the Classical deities didn't make their acolytes swallow hot coals or suffer having their faces burned). Finally, in contrast to the majority of chopsockies, Ting realizes Shao can't equal her. She feeds him a drink mixed with her own blood, and this empowers him so that he can now destroy Jin and save Qian, even though Ting's implicitly condemned to a loveless existence.

I admit that Shao's quest for vengeance isn't responsible for the deaths of almost all of the principal characters, as Hamlet's quest causes the fall of the Danish court. However, a few times the English translation criticizes Shao's inability to tell good from bad, which is closer to Hamlet than most martial-arts heroes ever come. Shao's overly trusting friendship with Jin makes it possible for the evil plotter to end the lives of the Fourth Dragon family, and (maybe indirectly) those of the Lei Family too. It is a major error when Ting's Killer Bee allies just disappear. In a plot-sense Jin's assassin cult more or less takes the place of the recrudescent bandits, even though Ting clearly does not connect the two in any way when she cuts a bloody swathe through the assassins to protect Shao. While INTRIGUE was no more than a bump in the road of Jackie Chan's ascension to international success, it does deserve to be better known as one of the few kung-fu films to possess some psychological depth. I haven't seen all the films in Hsu Feng's repertoire, but I doubt any other role she played came close to that of the tormented Ting Tan-Yen.   

   

                 

ANGEL SEASON 3 (2001-02)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*






HEARTTHROB (F)-- Some time transpires between Angel learning of Buffy's death at the end of BTVS Season 5, and the beginning of HEARTTHROB. Angel has left the agency for some time to grieve, but his retreat is interrupted by a demon-attack. When he returns, he learns that the agency's guest Fred, whom the heroes rescued from Pylea at the end of Season 2, has stayed confined to her room because of her anxieties about contact with others-- except for Angel, whom she worships. Angel returns just in time to be guided, along with Gunn and Wesley, to save some teenagers from a vampire gang. The good guys kill the vamps, but a female, Elizabeth, was the romantic partner of a male vamp, James. The bereaved bloodsuscker undergoes an operation to make him more powerful than Angel, an operation involving his heart-- which also relates to the story's romantic metaphor, as Angel deals with surviving the broken heart he carries due to Buffy's passing. The episode ends with the revelation that Darla has somehow conceived a child from her last interaction with Angel.

THAT VISION-THING (F)-- Cordelia's visions start to carry dangerous consequences, and the detectives suspect that someone is interfering with the messages sent by the Powers That Be. Lilah has messed with Cordy's visions in order to extort Angel into performing a task, and he reluctantly agrees. He travels to another dimension, where he must defeat a powerful demon in order to liberate a prisoner. Angel surmises that this prisoner, later revealed to be a human named Billy Lane, will serve some fiendish purpose for W&H, but he exchanges Billy for the termination of the curse, and then follows up the deal by killing the curse-sender.

THAT OLD GANG OF MINE (P)-- Since Gunn started working for AI, his former vampire-slaying gang is taken over by a new guy named Gio. Suddenly someone starts killing off harmless demons, so one guess as to the culprit. The gangbangers invade Lorne's club, which doesn't have wards against human violence, and the Angel group has to curb the gangstas' enthusiasm for demon-killing. There's a cute scene in which Cordy finds out about the implicitly sexual transaction between Angel and the female Furies, which is one of various early signals the writers put forth as to a possible romance between Angel and Cordelia.

CARPE NOCTEM (F)-- This is a lighter episode despite some dangerous moments. An old man named Marcus has been using his ability to switch bodies to live it up in other people's bodies before returning to his own body and leaving the original owners to perish. As the detectives investigate these anomalies, Marcus switches bodies with Angel, who's then confined to an old-age home. Marcus then provides much humor as he tries to figure out how things work in Angel's domain, and when he learns he's immortal he plans to keep the vampire body for good. After all returns to normal, Angel gets the news that Buffy has been restored to life. A meeting between the two of them is indicated but was never filmed.     

FREDLESS (G)-- Up to this point it's not been clear exactly why the ANGEL writers introduced Fred to the ensemble, except for the possibility that since Wesley provided the pedantic "Giles" of the group, Fred might've been brought in to be the wacky but incisive "Willow." Still, Fred is more a walking-wounded type than any BUFFY character, and the default attitude of the Angel group toward her has been bemused protectiveness. The episode FREDLESS offers the possibility that Fred may find better care from her parents, who arrive in LA seeking their missing-for-five-years daughter. There's a thankfully brief subplot as to whether the cornfed parents might be something sinister, but the main plot concerns the inexplicable attack of a giant bug-demon. Fred initially does not want to see her parents because seeing them makes her whole Pylean experience too real, though she finally resolves to return home with her family. However, Fred realizes that she can't return to being the innocent she was before, and her Pylean experiences, however negative, have made her uniquely situated to help the noble mission of Angel Investigations.  

BILLY (G)-- Though both BUFFY and ANGEL executed a number of stories, good and bad, about how women often get the short end of the stick throughout history, BILLY may be the best meditation on how the XX sex were short-changed by biology. Billy Lane, rescued by Angel from a hell-dimension in THAT VISION-THING, was liberated because W&H owed a favor to Billy's rich uncle. However, Billy hates women and possesses the psychic talent to exacerbate the negative feelings of men towards women. Billy gratuitously gives Lilah a demonstration of his ability by causing her legal rival Gavin to become incensed against her, battering her severely before the spell wears off. Cordy's vision-powers clue the heroes into what Billy's doing. Lilah, somewhat less than charitable toward Billy, informs Cordelia that Billy can activate a "primordial misogyny" in men. Billy uses his power to make Wesley attempt to assault Fred, a sequence made more harrowing by the fact that Wesley secretly likes the super-genius. The climax kills Billy dead in an inventive manner, and in a minor subplot, Angel begins teaching Cordy hand-to-hand combat, which gives her a little more resemblance to a certain vampire slayer.

OFFSPRING (F)-- A few previous episodes hinted at earlier conflicts Angelus and Darla had with Holtz, a 16th-century vampire killer. OFFSPRING opens with Holtz's first big scene, at a time in the 1700s when Holtz has captured Angelus but loses him to a rescue by Darla. In modern times, the Angel Team investigates an apocalyptic prophecy, but a more pressing problem raise its head when pregnant Darla shows up at the hotel. The writers don't immediately address how Angel was able to impregnate a fellow vampire, but Cordy almost immediately blames Angel for the little stranger. However, Darla hasn't changed much, repaying Cordelia's kindness by trying to suck her blood. Darla flees and almost preys on a small boy, but Angel overtakes and fights her. Still, Angel spares Darla because she bears his child. Meanwhile, a demon named Sajihan brings a still living Holtz to the 21st century.       

QUICKENING (F)-- In line with prophecies that suggest Darla's baby will be a "miracle child," both W&H and several demon cultists dog the Angel Team's tracks, hoping to remove the baby from Darla's womb and use it for assorted mystical purposes. Most of the episode consists of fighting and fleeing, and concludes with Holtz confronting Angel, whom he believes to still be Angelus.             

LULLABY (G)-- I was never impressed by the Darla character, though actress Julie Benz portrayed her well. However, Darla's last hurrah is also her best outing. Though unlike Angel she has no soul, her child is human and she feels the effects of his spirit, which makes her regret all of the terrible things she did as a vampire. Angel, taken prisoner by Holtz and his demon-servants at the hotel, manages to break free. The demons later attack the Angel Team while they're caring for Darla, whose pregnancy is coming to term. The heroes speculate that the Powers That Be made the conception possible but that the Powers may fear that the miracle child may bring about an apocalypse. Holtz continues to attack and at the climax Darla, who's grown to love the child, realizes that if she gives birth, she'll lose her soulful quality and may even destroy her own offspring. Thus she stakes herself so that her body dissolves and the infant alone survives. An interesting DVD extra asserts that Darla has always had a loose mother-son vibe toward Angel, who's both her true lover and the only vamp she ever sired. But all of her past actions flowed from self-interest, while Darla finally transcends her evil in an act of self-sacrifice. Holtz sees Angel with the newborn and decides to take a new tack for vengeance.         

DAD (F)-- The writers, having set up a situation where Angel Investigations could be besieged all season by baby-hunting demons, have to do some fancy stepping to restore the status quo. Angel becomes hyper-protective of his child, now named Connor. Another wave of baby-hunters strikes the hotel, but Angel devises a set-up to annihilate the attackers. He then crashes into the office of current W&H big shot Linwood and makes clear that if the baby even gets a cough, Linwood will soon be coughing up blood. Meanwhile, Holtz dispenses with his demon servitors because he wants loyal soldiers in his crusade, and makes his first convert in a young woman named Justine. Also, Lorne starts hanging out with AI since his club has been closed again.

BIRTHDAY (F)-- The gang celebrates Cordy's birthday, not knowing that she's been suffering migraines due to the increasing pain of her visions. A vision strikes her and her body falls comatose, while Cordy's spirit floats free, unable to touch anything or communicate with anyone. She's visited by a spirit guide from the Powers That Be, and he informs her that the half-demon Doyle should never have given her his precognitive powers. Because she's fully human, the visions will eventually kill her. The Powers That Be offer to rewrite Cordelia's history so that she becomes a major TV actress. She refuses until her guide lets her hear part of a conversation where Angel petitions the Powers to release Cordy because she's "weak." Cordy angrily lets the Powers change her history, and so she gets to be the Big Star she always wanted to be. Yet in jig time her normal personality and sense of responsibility re-assert themselves, not least when she sees that in her alternate reality Angel receives the visions and goes half-crazy in reaction. Cordelia returns to her regular status with an infusion of demon-energy, ensuring that she can endure the visions painlessly.

PROVIDER (G)-- Ironically, while in the first season Cordelia repeatedly nagged Angel about getting more well-paying cases, this time Angel is desperate to rack up lots of money to help raise Connor. This causes the team to divide its efforts into too many directions. Angel undertakes a mission to clean out a nest of vampires, Gunn and Wesley protect a woman from her undead husband, and Cordy has to rescue Fred and Lorne from demons who want to separate Fred's ultra-smart brain from her body. Though many of the ANGEL comedies are a little too baggy-pants for me, PROVIDER has a better conceptual focus and delivers good payoff on all the plots. Also, both Wesley and Gunn become interested in Fred.

WAITING IN THE WINGS (P)-- Angel's extreme protectiveness toward Connor fades a bit as he and the others go out for a night at the opera (albeit leaving a resentful Lorne home minding the baby). However, after the first performance, Angel claims that he saw the identical prima ballerina in 1990, utterly unchanged. Angel and Cordelia, neither of whom has become conscious of the sparks between them, get trapped in a time-loop by a spell that makes them re-enact the romance of earlier lovers, one of whom is the ballerina. Nor surprisingly, Angel references his previous experience with this plotline in the BUFFY episode I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU. Gunn, Welsey and Fred come to the rescue and all the heroes fight harlequin-masked demons while seeking to solve the mystery of the cursed dancer. In other developments, Wesley loses the contest for Fred's heart before he even has a chance to fire a shot. Also, just as Angel begins considering that he might have feelings for Cordy, up jumps Groo, her old lover from Pylea.

COUPLET (P)-- Cordelia wants to have sex with Groo in the worst  way, but she's afraid, for no clear reason, that said activity might interfere with her ability to transmit visions, especially since she went through a lot of trouble to make them painless. Angel is as jealous as hell but will move heaven and earth not to reveal it, and even to help his potential new love get it on with her old flame. The actors seemed to be having a good time with the simple material, but there's still not much meat on the bones, and this time the team has to deal with two make-work menaces. However, the subplot about a cryptic prophecy reaches a culmination when it seems to foretell that Angel will kill Baby Connor.        

LOYALTY/ SLEEP TIGHT/ FORGIVING (F)-- Sajihan, Holtz and W&H all mount various attacks upon the Angel Team. W&H still wants to harvest Connor for some recondite mystical purposes, Sajihan wants Connot dead, and Holtz has decided that he can best make Angel suffer by spiriting the infant off to parts unknown. Wesley becomes so triggered by the prophecy's claim that Angel will kill Connor that the crusader steals the infant to protect him. However, Holtz's pawn Justine cuts Wesley's throat and steals the child from him. A frantic Angel swears vengeance on Wesley, and he and his aides show up in a four-way face-off against Sajihan, Holtz, and a W&H team led by Lilah. Holtz absconds with Connot by fleeing into a dimension-gate opened by Sajihan. Later, the Angel Team finds that they cannot open the same dimensional gate. They use dark magic to summon Sajihan, but they end up imbuing him with superior physical powers. Not only does he defeat the Angel Team, he also reveals that he faked the prophecy that deceived Wesley. Oddly, Justine, acting to save her own life, manages to bottle up the demon. The heroes learn that the injured Wesley was found and taken to a hospital. However, though Angel seems willing to forgive his ally his trespasses, the vampire goes berserk and almost smothers Wesley to death.      

      

DOUBLE OR NOTHING (F)-- This episode isn't anything special, but it furnishes some much-needed relief from all the heavy sturm-and-drang of the Connor Abduction plotline. Cordy and Groo return from their vacation, only to have their good spirits quashed by the doom and gloom in the hotel. Once all these ducks are in a row, it's time to reveal that many years ago, Gunn sold his soul for a mess of pottage, or something along those lines, and now a demon-gambler wants to collect. Prior to this conflict's resolution, Gunn and Fred enjoy some nice romantic moments, even if he does try to blow her off so she won't be harmed by his enemies. The actors are good even though the resolution is lame.       

THE PRICE (P)-- The team belatedly realizes that when they tried to re-open a gateway to the dimension to which Connor was taken, the gate is still letting bad things through to Earth. The make-work threat this time is at least suitably grotty: a small army of phosphorescent slugs that can possess people in their ceaseless quest for liquid refreshments of any kind. One visitor to the hotel dies from being infected, so Angel and the others attempt to seal up the place so that they can exterminate the brutes. Gunn soon realizes this won't work, and when Fred gets possessed, he seeks out Wesley. Wesley renders some useful advice but makes clear that he's not cool with having almost been snuffed by his old boss. The slugs are ultimately disposed of by a very contrived measure, after which one more visitor shows on AI's doorstep: Connor, grown to adolescence in his few days abroad.

A NEW WORLD (F)-- As soon as Connor appears, he tries to kill his dad with a stake-gun. He fails but escapes after knocking Gunn and Groo around. Connor wanders into the projects and saves a young female heroin addict from a dealer and his gang. The two of them find their way to a crib and they make out a bit, but the girl shoots up and kills herself. The dealer and his buddies track down Connor, but so does Angel. The thugs get routed, and Angel tries to reason with Connor, not knowing that (somehow) an aged Holtz has also crossed over. Holtz meets Connor at the end. It's clear that Connor considers the man who raised him to be his real father, but Holtz has deeper plans. In other news, a friend of Lorne seals the gateway, and Lilah, having found about Wesley's rift with AI, seeks to enlist him to W&H.

BENEDICTION (F)-- Holtz has evidently told Connor of his heritage, but he wants Connor to explore his feelings about his vampiric daddy. Just as Connor returns to the hotel, Cordelia has a vision: a gang of vampires are about to attack a woman at a night club. Angel, knowing that Connor is a warrior at heart, invites his son along for the fighting. As it happens, the woman who's going to be attacked is Justine, who's been preying on vampires since Holtz departed with Connor. Lilah invites Wesley to see the show, and though he repudiates her he nonetheless stays to watch, not least because Justine almost killed him. Angel and Connor arrive and help Justine fight the vampires. Though Connor comes close to killing Angel too, the youth experiences a bond with his true sire. Angel locates Holtz and seeks him out for a confrontation, but Connor finds out and fears that one father will kill the other. Holtz however tells Angel that he's had his pound of flesh but now wants Angel to protect Connor, since Holtz cannot. However, Holtz then proceeds to have Justine-- who thinks of Holtz as the father she never had-- to kill him in such a way that it looks like Angel bit his throat to death. A minor subplot shows Groo becoming aware that there's a romantic vibe between Cordy and Angel that neither is fully aware of.       

TOMORROW (F)-- Connor and Justine plot revenge for Holtz. Lorne takes his leave for the time being, and Groo will soon follow, realizing that despite his having hot sex with Cordy, she really cares most deeply about Angel. Lilah continues to tempt Wesley and goes the extra mile by sleeping with him. Connor returns to the hotel and feigns being reconciled to being Angel's son. Because of Groo's revelations, Cordelia begins to think seriously about the matter, as does Angel. However, the Powers That Be want their own pound of flesh. For having endowed her with demon-powers, the Powers suddenly want her on another plane of being. The season ends on a cliffhanger as Justine and Connor plot to end Angel's career for good.             

     

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SEASON SIX (2001-02)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological* 

Death Comes for the Vampire Slayer-- but not permanently. 

BARGAINING PT. 1-2 (F)-- In the wake of Buffy's demise, the Scoobies seek to keep up the crusade of slaying vampires and demons. They also try to keep Buffy's death secret from the rest of the world (not counting, I guess, the honking big headstone with her name on it), in part by using the Buffybot to fight alongside them, despite the robot's many cognitive limitations. After Giles returns to England, leaving the management of the magic store to Anya, Willow decides to perform a spell to bring the (buried) Slayer back to life, though both Spike and Dawn are left out of the loop. A gang of motorcycle-riding demons learns that the patrolling Slayer is just a robot, so they disable the bot and begin razing Sunnydale (no cops are ever seen trying to stop them). Willow, Xander, Tara and Anya commence the spell, but the demons interrupt them, forcing the Scoobies to scatter. Unbeknownst to the Scoobies, the spell works, and Buffy is restored, albeit in a buried coffin. She's forced to claw her way to the surface, and when she emerges, she seems distanced from reality. After lots of Sunnydale violence, the Scoobies, except for Spike, witness Buffy regain enough vigor to trash the demons, though the question of her recovery is still up for grabs.

AFTER LIFE (F)-- Spike finds out about Reborn Buffy and expresses his extreme displeasure with the group having messed with a magical resurrection. Buffy seems to be regaining her memories, but now everyone in the group experiences weird phenomena, thanks to a "hitchhiker demon" that crossed over to Earth by riding Buffy's spirit. The demon's good for a few creepy effects but it's mostly a time-killer. Once it's destroyed, Buffy confides the truth to Spike: her spirit was in some heaven-like realm that gave her feelings of peace and serenity. Her return to life is thus a torment to the heroine.

FLOODED (F)-- With Buffy's return to life comes all of the problems of being alive: principally, that it costs money, and the Summers family doesn't have any. On top of regular difficulties, Buffy has a glancing encounter with The Trio, the "Big Bads" of this season. One of them, Andrew, made his first appearance here, where he was revealed to be the brother of Tucker, the summoner of the hellhounds in "The Prom." The next, Warren, created the robot girl in "I Was Made to Love You" and the Buffybot, and the last is Jonathan, an uber-nerd seen in various previous episodes. The three of them combine their talents with magic and mad science with the aim of becoming supervillains (though they only want to conquer Sunnydale), and they plan to get rid of the Slayer even before committing their first major evil. A subplot regarding Willow's over-use of magic is further developed when Giles berates her for all the things that could've gone wrong with her spell; Willow's outrage at being questioned is a good foretaste of things to come. The episode ends with Buffy getting a call to meet with Angel, which event follows up Angel's having been informed of the resurrection in a Season 3 episode of ANGEL. Their meeting is not depicted in either show.

 LIFE SERIAL (F)-- Getting past the peculiar pun of the title, Buffy's new life becomes a series of disappointments in relation to education and employment. Meanwhile, the Trio start testing Buffy with various menaces to learn her weaknesses. Nerd jokes abound, Willow again shows more indications of magical obsession, and Buffy finds it easier to hang with Spike than with the Scoobies.

ALL THE WAY (F)-- Halloween comes to Sunnydale once more, but of course not all the evils take the night off. Xander reveals to the group that he and Anya are now engaged to be married, though in private the young man expresses doubts about the nuptials to Giles. (Buffy also expresses doubt about the union to Giles, though it's not clear for several episodes what the Slayer's objections are.)  Dawn makes plans to rendezvous with a girlfriend so that the two of them can neck with a couple of high-school boys in the park. However, both guys are vamps, and they have a bunch of bloodsucking friends, forcing Buffy, Spike and Giles to come to Dawn's rescue.     

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING (G)-- All of Sunnydale is trapped in a "wacky Broadway nightmare," so that everyone, including the Scoobies, find themselves singing and dancing about their inner feelings, often regarding things they'd rather keep concealed. They even get invisible musical accompaniment, just as in musical theater and movies. A dancing demon named Sweet is responsible, though he can only work his magic if summoned. He initially thinks Dawn summoned him, and his price will be that she must join him in his hell-realm as his bride. (The true identity of the summoner is the episode's only flaw.) The unleashing of deep emotions endangers the romantic unions that musicals usually celebrate-- Xander and Anya, Willow and Tara-- though the greater menace is that surrendering totally to the emotional whirlwinds can cause one to spontaneously combust. And perhaps nothing better illustrates the series' trope of "hell is other people" than the song Giles sings to Buffy, about fearing that she's too dependent on him, a song that Buffy cannot or will not hear yet. This causes Giles to send his Slayer to face Sweet alone, and though he changes his mind later and all the Scoobies join together to rescue Dawn, the tumult in Buffy's mind leads to her to reveal to all of them the Big Truth: "I live in hell, 'cause I've been expelled, from Heaven." Sweet is defeated only because Spike, the only one in the group beyond ordinarily morality, saves Buffy-- thus paving the way for their romance, which is as doomed as all the others. I could do a separate essay just on the songs alone-- which combine existential despair and silly doggerel, and somehow make it work. 

TABULA RASA (G)-- How do you follow an act like "Once More With Feeling," which is all about hell being other people? Well, one might as well try a Divine Baggy-Pants Comedy-- though the comedy still comes from a place of tragedy. Tara is tempted to leave Willow after uncovering how Willow messed with Tara's memories. Willow swears not to perform any magic for a week, but almost immediately, magic junkie that she is, she sets a spell to make everyone forget their troubles. Instead, all of the Scoobies, including Spike, forget who they are, and try as best they can to re-construct their identities with raucous results. The external menace is a loan shark-- a literal shark-demon, that is-- trying to force Spike to pay a debt. But the memories must come back and have bad consequences for Tara and Willow and ambivalent ones for Buffy and Spike. Giles departs for England and does not return until late in season six.      

       

SMASHED/WRECKED (G)-- These episodes might as well have a Part 1/Part 2 label, because they're almost exclusively about (1) Willow's addiction to her magical "highs" even after Tara leaves her, and (2) Buffy's increasing attraction to Spike. "Smashed" begins with Willow using her increased powers to restore Amy-- changed into a rat in Season Two-- back to humanity. Though Amy's not a substitute for Tara, she encourages Willow to extreme behavior, setting her up for an even deeper spiral in "Wrecked." As for Spike, he makes the accidental discovery that though the chip in his head still keeps him from harming humans, Buffy's return from death has made her subtly different, so that Spike can hit her now without consequence. Since his past attempts to woo her with affection haven't worked, he resorts to calling forth her savage side by engaging her in fisticuffs. Buffy will later claim that her first intercourse with Spike was just her emotional reaction to losing Giles, but it's clear that she is drawn to his amoral roguishness but can only respect him (slightly) as a guy able to trade punches with her. The Trio starts another wacky plot. Dawn gets mixed up with Willow's descent as she foolishly takes the teen to a place that deals in dark magic. After incurring censure from Buffy, Xander and Dawn herself, Willow makes a sincere attempt to go "cold turkey." Though the parallels with drug addiction are obvious, the episode avoids falling into allegory thanks to the writers' appreciation of all the characters' existential problems.   

GONE (F)-- For some reason, the Three Dorks invent an invisibility ray. They accidentally turn it on Buffy, and though she doesn't know how her new unseeability happened, she takes great pleasure in feeling liberated from her immediate problems, much as Giles feared she would. Much as enspelled beer lowered her inhibitions, being invisible makes it easy for her to beard Spike in his lair and initiate sex with him. However, after sex, he kicks her to the curb, knowing that she's just using him. The Trio capture Willow and try to lure Buffy into a trap. They too become invisible. but not only can they not overcome the Invisible Slayer, all return to visible status and Buffy meets her "nemeses" for the first time. They escape but Warren has made a real attempt to kill Buffy. presaging his more ruthless acts later in the season.    

DOUBLEMEAT PALACE (P)-- This is the first subpar episode of Season Six, and its gimmick reminds me much of something from Season One. Willow continues to battle her desire for magical stimulation, with her college classes being barely referenced after "Wrecked"). Apparently, Buffy was paying bills with the remains of whatever resources Joyce left the two girls. But now Buffy's broke, and despite a generous donation from Giles, she has to take a humiliating day-job, that of food service at a burger franchise, the Doublemeat Palace. Everyone goes on about the secret ingredient, and when some employees disappear, Buffy comes to suspect that it just might be-- PEOPLE! But that would be too easy, and so the entity responsible for the missing employees is just another one of the many make-work menaces abiding in the Buffyverse. Spike, Xander and Anya all have minor roles, though Anya's "vengeance demon" BFF Halfrek shows up briefly. Amy, wanting to undo Willow's resolve to resist temptation, charges up her powers, but this development has no consequences except that Willow unfriends Amy.

DEAD THINGS (G)-- In "Smashed," Spike briefly encountered the Trio and coerced them into analyzing the functioning of his brain-chip, but this episode is the first one where he's directly affected by one of the dorks' eccentric schemes. Warren invents a brainwashing device, and all three dopes want to use the device to lure women into sleeping with them. Warren first targets his former girlfriend Katrina, who spurned him after learning about his pleasure-bot, and he successfully brings her back to the Trio's lair under dominion. However, his control wanes and when Katrina tries to leave, he kills her. Warren then gets the idea to undermine the Slayer's confidence by making her think herself guilty of Katrina's death. The plot works, and Buffy is as torn up at the thought of having killed an innocent as she was when Faith did so. Despite all the consequences to Buffy's friends and family, she heads for the police station to turn herself in. Spike blocks her, they fight, and Buffy tries to exorcise her self-disgust at sleeping with the vampire by beating him to a pulp. But Spike's interference keeps Buffy from confessing too soon, so that in the police station she hears an officer mention Katrina's name and realizes that this is a Trio plot. In this episode, Buffy confesses her dalliance with Spike to Tara and begs Tara not to shame Buffy by telling anyone else.

OLDER AND FAR AWAY (F)-- It's another story where the main characters are stuck in a "haunted house," but this one's pretty good, as well as giving viewers a vacation from the Trio. The Scoobies plan to hold a birthday party for Buffy at the Summers house, but Dawn is still alienated by the fact that Buffy almost left her behind in order to atone for "killing" an innocent. While speaking with a school guidance counselor, Dawn innocently wishes that everyone would have to stay at home forever. And this comes to pass, because the counselor is a disguised Halfrek, making trouble for humans out of a perverse concept of justice. The party ensues, with Xander inviting a handsome young guy to meet Buffy, and Tara in the same house with Willow for the first time in over a month. Spike crashes the party with a (harmless) demon-buddy. But Buffy's accidentally brought in an even more malefic menace than Halfrek: a nameless demon with a sword, able to pop in and out of floors or walls. Ultimately Buffy vanquishes the sword-demon and Halfrek is obliged to cancel the curse. Both the fight-scenes and Spike's attempts to woo Buffy in secret make this a good basic adventure.               

 

AS YOU WERE (F)-- While Willow continues to battle her addiction, Buffy gets some indirect aid to throw off her besotted fascination with Spike. Riley Finn comes to Sunnydale and invites Buffy to join him in a thrilling monster-slaying adventure, which invitation she eagerly accepts. But the big egg-laying monster has less impact on Buffy's life than the revelation that in the year of his absence, Riley's married another kickass female, name of Sam (Ivana Milicevic). Buffy also suffers humiliation when her ex witnesses her debasing herself with Spike, who happens to be involved (very improbably) with the plot to unleash egg-monsters on Sunnydale. Riley and Sam take their leave, and Buffy breaks it off with Spike-- though naturally things don't prove so simple.

HELL'S BELLS (F)-- I assume the "bells" of the title connote the wedding bells that the show seemed to be leading up to for most of the season re: Xander and Anya. This episode, nominated for three Emmys, often seems to play for broad comedy as the wedding day transpires, forcing together two undesirable groups of guests: Anya's demon buddies and Xander's gross relatives. But then Xander meets an uninvited guest who brings him a terrible vision of his future with Anya, and he leaves her at the altar. The guest's vision is fake, but it uncovers real demons in Xander's soul-- though he does make an effort to overcome them in the next episode.

NORMAL AGAIN (F)-- Technically this is a decently done melodrama, in which Buffy is poisoned by a Trio-summoned demon. She then begins alternating between her regular existence and a world in which she's stuck in an asylum and her physicians seek to convince her that her entire Slayer-identity is a psychotic fantasy. But despite the cant about Buffy being disgusted with herself due to her sleeping with Spike, the idea that she buys into the fantasy and almost kills her friends seems incredibly contrived. Of more interest is the fact that Xander returns and hopes to mend fences with Anya despite breaking her heart.

ENTROPY (G)-- Anya does not want to mend fences with Xander; she wants him to suffer supernatural vengeance. But neither she in her mortal form nor any of her demon-kindred can wish a dire fate on her ex-boyfriend. She makes numerous funny attempts to fool one of Xander's friends into making a wish to hurt him, but though they all sympathize with her broken heart, none of them will do the deed. She gets the bright idea to try the same routine on Spike, knowing that he regards Xander as a wanker. This doesn't work as Anya intends, but her dialogue with Spike leads to an interaction that, if anything, torments Xander in a basic, non-supernatural manner. As icing on the cake, all the Scoobies who didn't already know about Buffy's dalliance with Spike-- excepting only the absent Giles-- get the benefit of a big soap-operatic revelation scene. However, arguably the real meat of the episode is a prolonged conversation between Spike and Anya about how repressed and uptight the Scoobies are, which holds at least a grain of truth.     

SEEING RED // VILLAINS // TWO TO GO // GRAVE (G)-- And so at least we reach the four-episode conclusion of Season Six. Even though a lot of time is devoted to the inevitable breakup of Buffy and Spike, the writers have been building up to Willow's crisis since the earliest episodes.

SEEING RED boasts one of the archetypal scenes of male-female conflict in the series. A day or so after Spike slept with Anya, he shows up at the Summers house with the intention of rendering some apology. However, Buffy isn't having any, and Spike's lust for her overcomes all reason, as he deludes himself that he can make things right by forcing intimacy on her. The filmmakers avoid the usual action-trope of two super-beings going at one another in a big throw-down. Instead, Buffy can't seem to marshal her forces against his attack, just as if she were an ordinary female against an ordinary male, and only at the last moment does she get things together to kick him away. Not long after that, the Trio make another attempt at super-villainy, with Warren using a mystic talisman to make himself a powerhouse. However, Buffy gets some covert help from Jonathan, so that she defeats him, though he escapes and leaves his partners in the hands of police. However, later still Warren shows up at the Summers place, and uses a mundane pistol to shoot Buffy. He only wounds her, but his indiscriminate firing also kills Tara, mere hours after she and Willow reconciled.

In VILLAINS, Willow tries and fails to bring Tara back to life. She goes berserk with grief, intending to slaughter not only Tara's killer Warren but the other two members of the Trio as well. She stokes up her power by invading the magic shop and draining power from the arcane books. Warren finds out Willow's coming for him and takes measures to escape, while Andrew and Jonathan cool their heels in jail. Buffy, Xander and Anya attempt to save Warren but Willow first tortures and then kills him. Meanwhile, Spike, wanting to do something to change his monstrous nature, leaves Sunnydale 

The title TWO TO GO tells it all: the Scoobies endeavor to keep Willow from killing both Andrew and Jonathan by freeing the duo from jail and seeking to hide them. The two nerds are something less than cooperative, though Andrew is still the bigger villain of the two. The Scoobies take cover at the magic shop, but Dark Willow thunders in, and only a spell from Anya holds her in check. Willow transforms herself into a powerhouse via magic, not unlike what Warren did earlier, and she and Buffy throw down. Willow finally neutralizes both Anya and Buffy, setting things up for the cliffhanger return of Giles.

I'm not sure I get the meaning of the season finale's title GRAVE, except that after Willow has her magical duel with Giles and saps his mystically-endowed powers from him, she has grave intentions for the whole world. In short, she forgets about Andrew and Jonathan-- who later escape the Scoobies and flee the country-- and decides to bring an end to the world's endless pain by destroying the world. Only Xander can stop Willow's vengeance, and he does so in such a way that counters (but does not disprove) the theme of the season's first half-- that "hell is other people"-- with the theme that "other people are also the only redemption from hell."

And so ends what some might deem the BUFFY series' best season. My memories of Season Seven, the last roundup for the show, are not quite so salutary. But then, Six could not have provided any sort of closure, even an imperfect one, so Seven may turn out to be something of a "necessary evil."