With 'To Shanshu in L.A.',
Angel’s redefinition of itself
from noir detective case-of-the-week show,
to character driven arc-series comes to a close.
'Shanshu',
essentially a Part 2 to 'Blind Date',
is mostly concerned with setting up the board for the second season
and there is a LOT of foreshadowing here,
perhaps to the detriment of some of the character moments
...which felt a little rushed.
But it still makes a satisfying climax to 'Angel'’s very experimental first season.
"I get visions."
"We do things a certain way in L.A."
"I'M BAD!"
*To Shanshu in L.A.
Wesley is busy trying to decipher the prophecies of Aberjan
that Angel lifted from Wolfram and Hart in the previous episode.
"He sure gets testy when he's translating."
“This word is pivotal to what it prophesies about the vampire with a soul.”
Minor correction to something I said in the previous episode Guide.
The prophecy refers to Angel as 'vampire with a soul',
NOT by name.
Our trio gets an unexpected visit from David Nabbit,
who I still like but whose presence generally slows the episode to a crawl.
“You fight demons!"
At any moment one of them could walk right through that very door!”
Although, Angel sort of absentmindedly putting the axe on top of the filing cabinet is a cute little visual image I really like.
The mundanity of the supernatural.
Speaking of, some lawyers call forth a Vocah demon
...with a rather distracting butt-face.
Wesley figures out that “shanshu” means...
...Angel is going to die.
"Angel's doing to die?"
"Oh."
“Anything else?”
The demon has come to Earth for...some sort of raising
that requires the stolen scrolls to be pulled off.
“I am summoned for the raising."
"The very thing that was to bring this creature down to us…”
Interesting phrasing.
He sets about fixing the situation which involves
saturating Cordelia with all the suffering going on all around her all the time,
killing the Oracles
and blowing up Angel HQ.
Kate is still shadowing strange supernatural calls
and takes the time to give Angel more crap.
"My kind?"
"Your kind."
"The kind that killed my father."
"Did ya you think I would just forget about that?"
Soooooooo tedious.
Wesley is concerned about Angel’s blase attitude towards the scrolls
and makes an observation that has informed MANY of my perspectives on the Buffyverse.
"Angel's cut off."
"Death doesn't bother him because..."
"...there's nothing in life he wants."
“It’s our DESIRES that make us human.”
To demonstrate, Wesley takes Cordeila’s donut.
"Hey, I want that!"
“What connects us to life?
"Right now?"
"I'm going with donut."
Soooo by his own analogy, Wesley just took out a bite out of Cordy’s reason for living.
Messed up...
...in a hilarious way.
At the fair, Cordy gets vision infected at,
there is a dude singing an interesting piece of foreshadowing.
[--the devil, he can't touch me]
['Cause brick by brick, I'm building my own hell.]
I like it...
...buutttt...
why is that one dude standing so close to the dude singing?
He's the only one dancing and he's blocking the toy table.
Personal space, bro.
Cordy goes down to the vision poisoning
which brings Angel out of his apathy.
Charisma does SUCH a good job with these scenes.
Her performance feels real and VERY hard to watch.
Angel gets to the hospital.
“Are you family?”
“YES!”
Again...
...interesting phrasing.
Angel HQ blows up.
He saves Wesley.
Kate Kates things up.
"I’m glad we’re not playing friends anymore.”
Angel discovers the Oracles are dead.
Good riddance if you ask me.
I was reminded of another quick death in the Buffyverse.
--and a little more fun around here!"
[chains]
[screams of Anointed agony]
The Vocah, who now has the scrolls, starts the raising.
Angel interferes.
"Lindsey."
[Face off]
...hunh.
I wonder if he’s related to someone we know?
Lindsey finishes the ritual in his stead.
Pretty effective and epic special effects, for the time of course.
Angel cuts off Lindsey's hand before he can burn the scrolls.
And a slightly scorched Wesley closes the door on the relentless visions.
As the team comes back together, stronger than before, Wesley discovers the word "shanshu"...
Uhhh...
Oops.
actually means the vampire with a soul is going to become human.
"That'd be nice."
And the duality of the term, reveals the wordplay of the episode's title.
[To live and die in L.A.]
[Live and die in L.A.]
[It's the pla--]
In the last scene, we discover the thing Wolfram and Hart raised to sever Angel’s ties
...was Darla.
There is QUITE a bit going on with 'To Shanshu in L.A.',
making it a fitting wrap up
to this very experimental first season of 'Angel'
which has been,
in a word,
...uneven.
Stellar at times
and...
and clunky at others,
but overall, I would rate 'Season 1' as pretty successful.
The episode is roughly structured as a way of summing up the season's theme:
connection.
Doyle told Angel very early on:
“It’s about reaching out to people.”
"Showing 'em that there's still love and hope still left in this world."
"Hey, spare change?"
"What?"
"Get a job, you lazy sow."
And in the episode’s opening, Angel’s laissez-faire attitude about his own death
....is...
...cute.
“Angel’s going to die?”
“Oh."
"Anything else?"
Though his lack of interest in the prophecy of his own death,
ESPECIALLY given his familiarity with prophecies of death,
might feel a little negating of the season’s journey.
But I think it tracks.
This season he got his happy ending with Buffy
...before he had to give it up for the battle.
When he grew to trust the trio he was connected to,
the battle claimed Doyle.
After that, Angel began to withdraw
...again.
His development this season has not been a straight line
but an ebb and flow.
We all feel cut off from time to time,
calling into question the “why” of 'why we fight'.
And occasionally having to wonder if everything just gets stripped away in the end,
then what is the point?
The butt-faced Vocah’s attempt to remove all of Angel’s connections to the Powers,
is the very thing that reminds him of the why.
“Are you family?”
“Yes!”
Simply,
...love.
Love in this present is something worth fighting for.
"Don't be embarrassed."
"We're family."
And one of life’s tragedies is that losing something is often the experience we need to be reminded of its meaning.
The Shanshu Prophecy, offers up an alternate motivation for the battle.
If Angel completes his journey of redemption
...he will one day be rendered human.
A reward.
A finishline to this toil.
We’ll be coming back to the Shanshu repeatedly over the seasons,
and how it relates to the show’s themes.
For now, I found it interesting to note that in the scroll itself,
...there is a dragon.
Some of the episode creaks a bit.
Buttface-McPhantom-of-the-Law-Firm being dressed
like a Hot Topic Robin Hood is pure camp.
Him being purely in service of setup doesn’t help either
as, for a time,
he feels like one of the most efficient and effective baddies ever faced in the Buffyverse,
decimating Team Angel with ruthless efficiency,
and then, once the writers have shuffled all the pieces to where they need them,
falling easily in an awkwardly choreographed wire fu fight at the end.
Again, making the pacing feel very strange.
Still, the direction Greenwalt hints at is exciting,
and both 'Blind Date'
and 'To Shanshu in L.A.'
raise a topic that has mostly just been hinted at in the Buffyverse:
Ethics.
There is overlap but they are not the same thing.
We’ve talked a LOT about philosophy
and, to this point,
the shows have used a recurring pattern when it comes to evildoers.
"I don’t have a choice."
"I didn't have a choice."
"Sometimes, you don't have a choice."
Typically, within the framework of the shows,
when a souled being is doing something heinous
their actions are framed by the belief that,
and I’m using Sartr-ian phrasing here,
they only have one option and that option takes undeniable precedence over any other,
...driving them from their conscience.
Since the soul is the conscience, unsouled beings simply act on selfish impulse,
always doing what they want.
In 'Lie to Me',
Ford believed his only choice was to trade lives to Spike in exchange for immortality.
Which lead to Buffy saying:
“You have a choice."
You don’t have a good choice, but you HAVE a choice.”
Ford’s real choice was to do evil,
or to accept his death with dignity.
Faith and Buffy dabbled briefly with ethics after Faith stabbed Allan.
"Anyways, how many people do you think we've saved by now?"
"Thousands?"
“And didn’t you stop the world from ending?"
"Because in my book, that puts you and me in the plus column.”
But mostly it was made clear that she was acting from a place of fear, abuse and self-preservation.
Defence mechanisms.
And that's been the formula.
Perceived lack of choice driving a person from their conscience.
The problem is that, in life, not all ethical dilemmas are so straightforward.
These two episodes of 'Angel' subvert that formula
and suggest that things are not always going to be THAT simple in the Angelverse.
In 'Blind Date', Lindsey, a regular evil doer faced with a heinous act says:
"Hey, I don't want to be here any more than you want to see me."
“I don’t have a choice."
And in 'To Shanshu', after picking Team Evil, Lindsey tells Angel:
“You said I had to make a choice."
"And you did."
As I mentioned in the previous episode, Angel’s actions are not so binary either.
It all ties together rather well thematically.
Lindsey and Angel’s ethical complications,
the double meaning of 'shanshu'
and even the Latin of the spell:
(in Latin): "Even as life and death are not two things but one..."
"... in darkness is the light,"
"in light is the darkness."
"Arise!"
It all inform(s) each other nicely.
Needless to say,
I love all the character stuff,
especially when Team Angel becomes Angel the family.
Cordy completes a major step in her character development.
She already has one of the better character arcs in the Buffyverse.
From high school alpha,
to reluctant do-gooder,
to 'I have bigger plans, but I’ll help',
to committed,
to now.
“We have to help them.”
"And we will."
One can only imagine the psychic and emotional damage incurred by feeling all of the suffering everywhere all at once,
and I think her arc has been very well grounded and justified
...so far.
Cordy getting the raw unfiltered pain going on at all times
is such an interesting exploration of the visions as well as the Powers That Be.
If she IS receiving the unfiltered volume of ACTUAL suffering occuring in real time,
it raises wonderful questions about the Powers That Be
and their gatekeeping of the visions for their own purposes.
Perhaps, there may be less benevolence there than anyone thought.
It has been an interesting journey,
and while unevenness in the first season of any show isn’t uncommon
the heights that 'Angel'’s first season reached
definitely put it near the top of my list for
favorite first seasons of any show.
When I first began this episode Guide,
I’ll admit I was nervous that I may not find enough to talk about.
I always found 'Angel' a little more...
... meandering.
And...
'Buffy' is one of the most written about shows in history.
And I have read quite a bit.
'Angel', perhaps,
has been stuck in that long shadow
and because it never gained the same following ended up more experimental.
But as we’ve gone deeper this season, I have regularly been surprised
at what an examination has revealed.
These are RICH characters.
And if there is one thing adulthood CAN do,
...it is meander.
The existential grind is real,
and the more you and I look at these stories of the Angelverse characters,
the more inspiring I find Greenwalt and Whedon’s creation.
And I can’t wait, to get into 'Season 2' with you.
[To live and die in L.A.]
[Live and die in L.A.]