Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

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Some odds and ends that I didn't have time to include last Thursday, before I had to go to the doctor, proctor a final exam, grade that exam, and then get started on Friday's work-load.

Maybe it's just me, but the idea of characters trading roles seemed to carry over into this episode, as well. In my reflections on "Time Bomb" (Angel 5.19), I noted that Angel and Illyria seemed to be trading roles, to some extent, over the course of the episode. But in "The Girl in Question" (Angel 5.20) the old 'switcheroo' was even more disturbing: Andrew (the only member of the nerd trio still living) briefly trading roles and cool with Angel and Spike. It was such a horrible idea that I'm not surprised I repressed it last time I had a chance to update my journal.

Yeah, maybe it's a stretch -- maybe it's even a Reed-Richards-of-the-Fantastic-Four type stretch -- but I'm pretty sure (if I had taken the time to read anyone else's updates in the past week before spouting my mouth off some more, I'd be completely sure) most everybody else has commented in one way or another on the nasty sense of deja vu that came from hearing Angelus refer to the Immortal (who barely deigned to notice that Angelus and Spike were even on the planet) as his "arch-nemesis."

Darla: "...I mean, he's not some common vampire, he's...I don't know what he is. A giant, a titan straddling good and evil, serving no master but his own, considerable desires."
Angelus: "Darla--!"
Darla: "And spiritual! Did you know he spent 150 years at a Tibetan monastery?...which, I guess, explains all the desires."
Angelus: "He's my arch-nemesis!"
Darla: "Oh, darling, it was just fornication. Really great fornication."

Shades of Warren referring to himself and Jonathan and Andrew as Buffy's "arch-nemesis...es" (or was that 'arch-neme-sissies'?) near the end of "Gone" (BtVS 6.11), back when Buffy's description of them as just being pains in her butt seemed far more realistic (before the fact that Warren could be both ridiculous and a dangerously messed-up misogynistic S.O.B. had really sunk in -- I should probably look up that Hannah Arendt quote on "the banality of evil", but I don't have the energy right now).

Throw in Angelus and Spike discovering that their swearing of blood vengeance against the Immortal didn't make them nearly cool enough or dangerous enough to even get on the Immortal's list and the dorky jacket Angel's Italian counterpart at W&H sticks him in, and the dweebishness factor starts to get real obvious. Angel and Spike even get a polite version of 'the bum's rush' from the Italian CEO toward the end of the episode, while they ineffectually protest to the door that's been closed in their faces, "We're heroes. We don't need any higher power. ...We make our own fate! We don't need anybody cleaning up our mess, you know. We're Champions!..."

To top off the cup of humiliation and inadequacy, the Immortal even wraps up their case for them and sends it to them neatly tied up with ribbon. (See Proverbs 25:21-22, as quoted by Paul in Romans 12:20: "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.")

Meanwhile, Andrew, as the archetypal nerd and weakest-but-sole-surviving-member of "the Trio", graduates from making his usual hilarious double entendres (revealing his little crush on Spike with every other phrase) at the beginning of the episode to being Mr. Cool in the tuxedo, speaking Italian and stepping out with two gorgeous ladies, at the end of the episode, after completely turning the 'Who-knows-the-score?' tables on Angel and Spike with his little lecture from the next room:

Andrew: "...But, turns out, Buffy fell for the Immortal on her own. And--and now she's happy. That's it!"
Angel: "But she's not finished baking, yet. I gotta wait 'til she's done baking, you know, until she finds herself, 'cause that's the drill. I'm waiting, patiently, and meanwhile, the Immortal's eating cookie dough!"
Andrew: "Uh, Spike? Is Angel crying?"
Spike: "No! Not yet."
Andrew: "You may wanna hold the waterworks, Big Guy. The Immortal's cool and all, but he ain't all that. He's got his flaws."
Angel: "Really? What are they?"
Andrew: [sigh] "The point is, she's moving on. You guys do the same, you might catch her one day -- one of you, anyway. But, you keep running in place, you're gonna find she's long-gone."
Spike: "It is a bit silly: us, chasing around like a couple of hen-pecked teenagers."
Andrew: "Buffy loves both of you, but she's gotta live her life. People change. You guys should try it, sometime."

I can only hope that, having been stripped of their cool and whatever complacency they may have harbored about themselves as champions or their relationships with Buffy, and having been sanded down to the very grain of their being by those abrasive encounters in Italy, our two undead antique heroes are ready to be re-glued and re-finished and make some positive changes (or at least make a start in that direction) in the little time remaining to us before the end of the series.

For some reason, that old Shaker Hymn (the one Aaron Copeland used in his 'Appalachian Spring' and that provided the tune for the newer hymn "Lord of the Dance" in the 1960's) "'Tis the Gift to Be Simple" started running through my head at the beginning of this journal entry.

Maybe it's just because my mind leapt from the idea of a turnabout of roles to music that exhorts us to keep turning, and I was afraid that "Turn, Turn, Turn" (the adaptation of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 that I always associate with The Byrds) was just too obvious and on-the-nose.

Or maybe it's just that, when you're trying to create true equality between men and women in a religious community by taking sex and procreation completely out of the picture and substituting singing and dancing in worship instead, the music's got to be powerful.

In any case, the lyrics that I recall go like this:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn, 'twill be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning, we come 'round right.

Hopefully, all the turning and turning that's been taking place this season, all the turnabouts and apparent turning-of-coats at times, will allow our heroes -- and especially my beloved champions, Angel and Spike -- to come around right, to a place of love and delight, in the end.

Either that, or maybe their occasional simple-mindedness will prove to be W&H's undoing in the end (you know the old saying about fool-proof evil plans and how there's no such thing, because fools are just so darn ingenious).

Meanwhile, on an unrelated topic, the word from the endocrinologist on Thursday was that it would be unusual if they ever do figure out what caused my sudden and severe vitamin D and calcium deficiency. Most of the time, it seems, they never do find out what's behind it -- not even enough to give it a scary-sounding mock-Latin name with which to impress one's friends and confound one's enemies. A mystery, in this day and age, without even a "syndrome" or complicated acronym to hang it on. Who'd have thunk it?

I'm meaning to write up my thoughts on "Hellboy" (especially as they relate to themes of redemption on Angel and Buffy) just as soon as I get a moment when I'm not supposed to be doing three or eight other things. Same goes for my review of "Van Helsing", which I saw on my way home from church on Sunday and quite enjoyed, in spite of the somewhat over-the-top use of CGI (so common in recent movies) and the fact that I really would have liked Hugh Jackman to take off his shirt oftener and for longer periods of time. (But then, that's my complaint after every Hugh Jackman movie: not enough 'nekkid' Hugh. Hmm . . . I wonder if he'd be interested in playing Tarzan?) Oh, well -- can't have everything.