Ep notes: "Release" and "Orpheus"

[snick_backup]

Regarding Willow/Fred: "I believe the subtext here is rapidly becoming, uh, text." And I pretty much loved the irony of Willow pumping Wesley, of all people, for Fred tidbits. I also enjoyed the scene for knowing the RL Alyson/Alexis romance going on at the time.

It was rather nice to see brand new Willow footage, however little she interests me by this point in her development. Also clapped with glee when Willow put the smackdown on Cordelia/whoever's magical attempts. Take that, Ats; over here at BtVS we've got a megawitch who can totally take your big bad. Hah.

I suspect that "Orpheus" is a very good episode for people who like Angel. Head trips are always fun, and I quite enjoyed the parts where Angelus and Faith couldn't hit each other and were stuck with talking. Angelus without his physical menace just isn't much, you know?

I'm actually a little disappointed with the Faith parts of these two episodes; this is very much Angel/Angelus's show, and she seems to be around mostly to play punching bag, both emotionally and physically. She had a number of nice moments with Wes, though. And I love that he thinks she has to be as vicious as Angelus to beat him, but that Faith's non-vicious plan wins the day. He's trying to hand on wisdom, but she's in a better place than him, now. She's climbed her way out of her dark hole, and he's still wallowing in his.

Okay, now I feel sorry for Connor. I mean, I've always felt sorry for Connor. He's gotten a bum deal all the way along; no question being fed propaganda while surviving in a hell dimension for 17 years could screw a person up. But we never got to see any of that; it was all tell.

Whereas this icky pod!Cordy manipulation just pulls my heartstrings for the boy. Serious, serious power imbalance issues in this, ah, "relationship". Kid has no basis from which to evaluate her words/actions towards him; is it any wonder if he ends up more confused than ever? I want to just take him someplace with plenty of vampires to stake and silly movies to watch and people to watch them with him with whom he has no previous history.

Comments

[shapinglight]

What do you think of Charisma's acting as Evil!Cordy? I think she's just terrible. You can tell her heart isn't in it.

[snickfic]

Well, it definitely feels off. However, I'd been writing that off as the being possessing Cordy just not being very good at pretending to be her. I'd figured the blatant insincerity was a deliberate acting choice.

It's the fact that the writers are going there at all - spending an entire season misrepresenting a character for the purposes of plot - that just enrages me. An episode or two, okay. But this is ridiculous. (Also, I'm coming up on the big Cordy pregnancy reveal and am aghast at all the parallels with, of all things, "Expecting," which is right up there as one of the worst episodes of the generally dismal S1. That's what they pattern a major element of their season arc after?)

[shapinglight]

I think it struck a lot of people that way. Fury later said that they had to fit Charisma's pregnancy into the season somehow. Personally, I wish they'd kept her as Sarcastic Voice Off on the higher plane all season.