I think I had a bit of a breakthrough when
writing this review.
Previously I’d found Eternity an entirely annoying blip in a pretty good back-half a
decent season of Angel.
An episode that again leans into noirish-ness-ness with mixed results and then ends with a baffling
sequence featuring an ultimately anti-climactic return of what could be the greatest Big Bad
from Buffy.
But...on closer examination I think there were a few things I was forgetting.
101
Summary Angel and Wes are attending the opening night
of Cordy’s performance of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
She’s playing Nora who in the climax of the play, which takes place in the late 1800s,
gives up her husband, money, and reputation in order to get away and find herself.
A fitting role for Cordelia.
This opening is a pretty good bit as Wesley and Angel, who have faced horror itself are
in agony through Cordy’s performance.
And I do love the verbal dodges that Wesley and Angel invent on the walk home with her.
“Was I any good?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”
“You took the role and made it your own.”
During the walk Cordy spies starlet Rebecca Lowell emerging from a hot spot.
There’s a creepy looking car up the street.
Evil people always drive dodgy looking american muscle cars.
Angel heroes it up and Rebecca comes over to thank him.
When Cordy tells her that Angel doesn’t even know who she is, I love the miniscule
look of delight on her face.
It sells the experience of total loss of public anonymity so well.
And I was reminded of the story I saw in which Michael Jackson paid a group of actors to
fill a grocery store and ignore him so that he could experience what it was like to grocery
shop alone.
It’s a life that redefines what normal is, important later in this episode when questioning
motivations.
Rebecca shows up in Angel’s office later and shares scary notes with him that have
been written in blood.
201
8:00 “It’s not blood.”
- “How do you know?”
He turns down the job and Cordy goes all Cordy about it.
“He can’t help one defenseless actress from a psycho.”
“He likes her.”
Later that night at Rebecca’s place Rebecca is attacked by a stalker and Angel fights
him off.
I’m actually not sure how Angel got into her home without an invitation.
None was given in their previous two scenes together but whatever.
The stalker runs off and Rebecca sees Angel doesn’t have a reflection and realizes what
he is.
Her agent comes by and hugs her.
13:30 “I love you kiddo.”
His wording of kiddo, meant to be assurance that don’t worry - you’re not getting
older, is actually tacit endorsement of the idea that it is a problem for women in Hollywood
to age.
Angel stays behind and Rebecca’s curiosity puts Angel at ease.
Cordy is shocked that Angel took th e case and Wes makes an important point:
16:00 W: Angel’s moment of true happiness happened because he was with Buffy.
Do you realize how rare that is.
True happiness?
This is an important restatement of the idea that Angel’s curse is not tied to sex but
to the feelings of intimacy and closeness Angel felt for Buffy.
I’ve mentioned previously how, the way Surprise was cut, it seemed clear to me that it was
the post coital bliss with someone he was in love with that brought about Angel’s
moment of perfect happiness.
Which Wesley more or less confirms here.
Rebecca takes Angel to a play as her body guard and when they slip out the back they’re
attacked again.
Angel beats the attacker senseless and it turns out the stalker and the whole deal were
ploys by her agent to get her some free press.
“Nobody stays young forever.”
- *eye massaging Angel.
Rebecca takes Cordy out to get information about Angel’s history.
She reveals a bit too much and Rebecca heads to Casa De Angel.
She asks him to interlink arms with her which works as a symbol of their shared desires
revealed throughout the episode, along with Rebecca’s desire to become like him.
When he’s away for a moment she drugs him and
R: A toast.
To the end of an ending and the beginning of a beginning.
*Picard facepalm
Cordy realizes what she’s done and warns Wesley AND…
401
This scene is the reason I originally hated this episode.
Not for anything that came before.
This scene.
And, in an interview with Fandom.com, Tim Minear acknowledged that the scene was contentious
for fans.
Quote “I know there was a lot of criticism on
the Internet about the way Angel went bad, and did he really go bad?
The idea of giving Angel a variation of ecstasy—to me, that just worked.
I thought it was a really good way to bring Angelus into the series so that he could interact
with our characters for a moment, without doing some big ‘Angel has turned evil’
arc.
You sort of get to have your cake and eat it too in that episode.”
Except for me, as a fan, the trite simplistic nature of the phrase, “have your cake and
eat it too,” very well encapsulates my original frustration with this episode.
Let's have a quick primer shall we?:
*Angelus montage
Angelus was never cake, he was the entire meal, and arguably one of the greatest Big
Bad’s from all seven seasons of Buffy.
Angel’s turn in Season 2 was my hook for Buffy the show.
The point at which I knew I was completely in.
The moment Buffy turned to Giles and said, “You must be so disappointed in me,” I
realized me watching the rest of the series was no longer under my control.
I’d never before seen a show have one of the good guys turn in such a way and wreak
such painful genuine emotional havok on both the series protagonist and the audience.
To have him return in this fashion didn’t feel to me like cake.
It felt cheap.
Too easy.
A titan summoned by one-off character that didn’t even make the episode’s final scene.
And to build up the rarity of actual true happiness as this transcendental thing that
is beyond sexual intimacy only to undercut that with a physiological shortcut in this
episode felt head snapping.
401
To say nothing of the confusing modification it made to the lore.
DRUGS?
So...within the language of the curse...the soul...which we've established is an actual
supernatural thing with essence can be...put on pause...when the host is given a physiological
experience of true happiness rather than an actual spiritual experience of it?
That’s what appears to be happening if Angel’s soul doesn’t actually leave him.
A pause button.
It can’t just be the ecstacy.
Angel has admitted to sharing the evil desires of Angelus but to suggest the that the ecstasy
is only bringing forward the things that Angel finds pleasurable is to suggest that the only
thing Angel finds pleasurable are evil and murderous.
As opposed to art, philosophy, music, or love.
The soul is the moral compass and Angel’s is clearly absent in these scenes.
BUT...here’s the breakthrough I had when watching the episode this time.
YES.
The drug loophole is dumb.
But the curse was ALREADY stupid.
“If this - this girl - brings him even one minute of happiness.
That is one minute too much.”
Blame Uncle Gypsy stereo-type.
For my original rant on Angel’s big dumb curse checkout my review on Innocence at about
the 6:37 mark.
But in short, building a loophole into a punishment for an evil being that turns them evil again,
and then not telling them that, is not a smart plan and got Uncle Gypsy Stereotype and Ms
Calendar killed for how poorly thought out it was to begin with.
But all of us fans ultimately let that go.
And why is that?
*Buffy good montage
The truth of it is, Angelus was never interesting in Buffy’s second season for his character.
Certainly not like Spike and Drusilla.
Angelus was interesting for what he revealed about Buffy.
“No weapons.
No friends.
No hope.
Take all that away and what's left?”
“Me.’’
We’re all watching to make emotional connection.
And it’s something Whedon acknowledged.
He’d gladly sacrifice plotting to get to an emotional truth.
And when he DID in Innocence we promptly moved past Uncle’s stupidity.
Because what’s important is the poetry’s resonance.
So...okay.
Fine.
Drug pause button loophole.
Bring it on.
I now understand what I’m really here for Eternity.
As long as you keep finding ways to make me feel all the things, so be it.
Rebecca has drugged Angel with a drug that induces bliss.
In the moment when the drug is beginning to take over Boreanaz I noticed for the first
time that he actually cries when speaking of how much he missed warmth and intimacy
with someone else.
A beautiful expression of the toll his emotional balancing act has taken on him.
31:16
The scene the follows is actually nicely horrifying.
Angelus returns briefly and terrifies everyone, sharing Angel’s inner reflections that politeness
and civility, you might say his soul, had kept at bay.
Angel strikes at Wesley’s feelings of inadequacy
“You’re just inadequate,”
And Cordy’s fear that the life she thinks she wants is not the one she’s made for.
“You were truly terrible.”
I think it’s kind of brilliant how Cordy then baits Angel into hesitating with a wonderful
performance so that Wesley can be the one to overpower him, tackling him into the elevator
for a brutal and awesome stunt.
And in the final scene our core three have their emotional catharsis.
“But I really didn’t mean,” “Yeah you did.”
“Wesley, nice moves up there.”
Ahhh there’s some of the feels.
501
Analysis In that interview with Fandom.com I mentioned
earlier, Tim Minear did point out something interesting.
As we’ve talked about, Angel was originally intended to be an anthology series.
A case of the week format.
But the writers quickly realized that it was going to be difficult to create sympathy for
a character every week that was only going to be around for one episode.
Slowly the writer’s began focusing more on the regulars as the emotional core of the
show and you can definitely see that evolution in Eternity.
The episode opens with a focus on Rebecca but she isn’t even around for the final
scene.
Continuing with the trend of this first season, Rebecca’s character is very much a film
noir staple, the white-dwarf starlet.
Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.
Jane Hudson in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.
And my favorite, Betty Boop in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
“Work’s been kinda slow since cartoon’s went to color.
But I still got it Eddie.”
“Yeah.
You still got it.”
One of the consequences for me of this first season leaning so hard into these classic
storytelling devices is some fatigue and I felt a bit of that during the first half of
Eternity.
Without demeaning it’s cultural relevance, Rebecca’s struggle is one we’ve seen so
many times that the details of it aren’t interesting in and of itself.
What’s interesting is the way in which the writer’s interplay those elements with Angel’s
supernatural side and see what comes of the genre bending but Eternity feels like it takes
a little bit of time to get going.
And watching this episode made me realize how part and parcel the LA/Hollywood lifestyle
stories are with the noir slant the show started with.
As well as how tedious I find the La La Land tales.
Too meta.
Too up it’s own butt.
“I came out to here to find my dreams but they weren’t hiring.”
See she’s an actress on a show where she wants to be actress.
Get it?
Still, there’s some fun material here, especially emotionally once I could see past the curse.
Angel initially keeping himself at a distance from Rebecca for the sake of the curse is
good stuff.
It shows that that storm is always on the horizon for him.
And his then keeping track of her anyway is a revealing moment of his character . Heroic
but stalkery.
Think Becoming Part 1 and Pangs.
The few moments of vulnerability Angel was allowed actually landed for me.
15:17 You’re really not afraid?
I like how Rebecca's lack of fear initially plays against Angel's inner hatred.
"If this woman doesn't fear my demon than...maybe...maybe I don't have to hate it so much."
It also sets up the crushing disappointment for later.
There’s some nice interplay between Rebecca’s character and his along with some mirror symbolism
that never forms into a complete thought for me.
Rebecca and Angel both desire solitude and isolation and are kindred in that way.
The turning point in their relationship comes when the two of them are looking into a mirror.
Rebecca has them interlock arms, another visual of the way she thinks they mirror each other.
But maybe the fact that the mirror imagery never does really does reveal any particular
truth is the point.
Rebecca thinks the monster in the mirror is her aging form.
She ends up saying outright the mistake she makes with Angel.
“They think that I’m the character I play..”
And Angelus shows her what a monster actually looks like.
In the end I was able to strip away my own biases and have some fun with Eternity.
It is at times a little tedious and on the nose but there is some good stuff here.
The show’s evolution this first season is coming along as the emphasis continues to
shift to character arcs over single episode plots.
The first time I watched it seemed like there was going to be a straightforward but enjoyable
through line to the end of the season.
And then…