Angel Season 5 - episode 16 - Shells (part 1)
Sorry, been a while since I posted - Real life has been somewhat of a bitch....
Shells
Written & directed by Steven DeKnight
Part 1 (of 3)
When examining episodes with the Buffyverse you can do worse than start with the title; ‘A Hole in the World’ worked as a title for the previous episode not only because it was poetic but also because it was poignant. On one level there was the Deeper Well, a literal hole in the world that nobody even knew existed. Then there was the hole that Fred’s loss punctures into the world of Angel and co. And finally, there are other unspoken holes in the world, gaps in information, missing explanations, Connor, Cordelia and memories wiped. ‘Shells’ is the same. ‘Shells’ is not so much about the creature that has arrived to fill the Fred-shaped shell; it’s about the other shells that are left behind, the ones on whom Fred’s demise has such a devastating impact.
Shells are, in nature, protective armour that house particular organisms; think snails, turtles, oysters and the like… But once the creature inside dies the shell becomes almost pointless beyond ornamental purposes. They are empty, hollow, without substance. They are much weaker than they were while life was inside. Thus when we talk of somebody being a ‘shell’ it is usually describing someone who is struggling with pervasive emptiness. This is certainly an apt description of the remaining members of Team Angel. They have paid the price for going to Wolfram and Hart - nothing comes for free and the debt has been paid in blood, with Fred’s life and it has left them all with a painful void inside, a little less than they were before. Oh, but it’s not just Team Angel - no one avoids a lesson in this episode, not even the hell-god…
ILLYRIA
Let’s begin with the new arrival, the interloper. Illyria hatches and instantly assumes that it is still all that it was - a great and fearful demon king and that it’s plans have finally come to fruition after millennia upon millennia of planning and waiting and biding it’s time. It looks at humans as insignificant, beneath it, disgusting. Illyria is surprised and dismayed to discover that they haven’t yet died out, that they number as cockroaches and dominate the earth. But it’s not all bad news; the humans are also “stupid and weak” and it knows what it has to do - win back control of this world through force. It is Illyria; nothing will stand in the way of its desires. It learns quickly, it understands that the world is not as it left it but it can fix that…
Illyria’s first act is to reclaim, Knox, its Qwa ‘ha xahn (a high priest of sorts) and it’s second is to get some spiffy new threads. It is unimpressed by the pathetic stand made by Angel and company in order to try and control it:
Illyria: Two half-breeds and a band of primitives. This is all that challenges me now?
It is not intimidated. It has tricks up its sleeve. Illyria is strong - it throws Angel out the window with consummate ease. It can also manipulate time and is able to make its escape with Knox while Angel is still falling to the ground and Wes, Spike and Gunn are virtually frozen in action. Angel’s campaign is unimpressive; Illyria is right to feel confident. These people cannot halt its plans for supremacy. Nothing stands in its way.
Illyria and Knox go to open the Demon King’s temple, the seat of its power, to recall the Illyrian army that will enable it to reclaim the world as its own dominion. It seems all too easy. Illyria remarks that the humans are fragile (after it’s just killed one) and wonders how they came to rule:
Knox: Opposable thumbs. Um, fire, television. What they lack in strength they make up for with extraordinary sneakiness.
Sneakiness? What he really means is that the ability to think, plot, plan and dream has raised the humble human from being a cavern dwelling caveman to a heaven soaring astronaut. The ability to think makes them powerful.
The gateway is blocked.
Knox: Wolfram and Hart probably threw a lock on it. They’re big on things happening on their timetable.
So, the senior partners are happy enough to have Illyria pop by and mess with the management of the Los Angeles branch, but are not so willing to let it meddle in their own apocalypse-related plans? Illyria observes that the Wolf, Ram and Hart were weak, barely above the vampire, back in the days when demons ruled the earth. They beefed up and they didn’t do it by being Mr. Nice Guy and giving away branches of the law firm for nothing. They are ancient and they’ve worked their way up the hierarchy from pond scum to master puppeteers. It’s a timely reminder of exactly how powerful and insinuating Angel’s benefactors really are and it highlights the futility of trying to fight them from within. Knox performs a ritual to open Illyria’s portal. He’s been worshiping the demon since he was eleven, stands to reason he’s know a thing or two about its why’s and wherefores. Before they can enter the temple, Angel, Spike and Wes arrive. A short confrontation ensues. Knox is killed; Illyria is offended that they think it would care about his death. It uses its tricks and enters the portal to its temple.
Illyria: My army will rise. The world will be mine once again!
But…
The temple is in ruins. Its great effigy to itself is broken and crumbling. Its vast army is naught but dust. The great and mighty Illyria is crushed, bereft. It has become a shell of itself. Everything it depended on is gone, lost to the sands of time and it becomes irrelevant, stranded in a time and place to which it means nothing. Like a fish out of water. Illyria flees the temple but later returns to Wolfram and Hart, to Wesley. It is trying to make sense of its new situation; trying to understand the human world, the impact of grief, the importance of names and the fragments of memories that have fused in its brain while Fred was dying. Wesley is irritated, why has it come to him?
Illyria: I have nowhere to go. My kingdom is long dead…long dead. There is so much I don’t understand. I’ve become overwhelmed. I am unsure of my place.
Wesley: Your place is with the rest of your people; dead and turned to ash
Illyria: Perhaps… But I exist here. I must learn to walk in this world.
Illyria asks Wesley for help to find its place again, to find some substance that will give the shell meaning again.
LORNE
Lorne is completely bereft at the loss of Fred. The sunshine has left his life. He blames himself:
Lorne: I should’ve seen it. Knox, he sang for me and I should’ve seen this… If I had concentrated harder, read him better, maybe Fred…
He’s so sad and lost and guilty that he can’t even stay with the others and listen or contribute to contingency plans. He has nothing to give, nothing to offer, can be of no assistance to the team. He’s lost his sunshine and he is the one team player who never catches the infectious ‘let’s get her back’ hope that Angel is peddling. He saw what would happen the moment she sang. He knows there’s no hope to get her back. So he goes to his office to be alone and drink copious Sea Breezes and grieve. He is a shell. He’s empty and doubting himself. The skill he brings to Angel investigations is his intuitive gift of reading people and if he can’t do that right then . . . he’s left wondering, what the hell is he good for?
( Continued here... )
Shells
Written & directed by Steven DeKnight
Part 1 (of 3)
When examining episodes with the Buffyverse you can do worse than start with the title; ‘A Hole in the World’ worked as a title for the previous episode not only because it was poetic but also because it was poignant. On one level there was the Deeper Well, a literal hole in the world that nobody even knew existed. Then there was the hole that Fred’s loss punctures into the world of Angel and co. And finally, there are other unspoken holes in the world, gaps in information, missing explanations, Connor, Cordelia and memories wiped. ‘Shells’ is the same. ‘Shells’ is not so much about the creature that has arrived to fill the Fred-shaped shell; it’s about the other shells that are left behind, the ones on whom Fred’s demise has such a devastating impact.
Shells are, in nature, protective armour that house particular organisms; think snails, turtles, oysters and the like… But once the creature inside dies the shell becomes almost pointless beyond ornamental purposes. They are empty, hollow, without substance. They are much weaker than they were while life was inside. Thus when we talk of somebody being a ‘shell’ it is usually describing someone who is struggling with pervasive emptiness. This is certainly an apt description of the remaining members of Team Angel. They have paid the price for going to Wolfram and Hart - nothing comes for free and the debt has been paid in blood, with Fred’s life and it has left them all with a painful void inside, a little less than they were before. Oh, but it’s not just Team Angel - no one avoids a lesson in this episode, not even the hell-god…
ILLYRIA
Let’s begin with the new arrival, the interloper. Illyria hatches and instantly assumes that it is still all that it was - a great and fearful demon king and that it’s plans have finally come to fruition after millennia upon millennia of planning and waiting and biding it’s time. It looks at humans as insignificant, beneath it, disgusting. Illyria is surprised and dismayed to discover that they haven’t yet died out, that they number as cockroaches and dominate the earth. But it’s not all bad news; the humans are also “stupid and weak” and it knows what it has to do - win back control of this world through force. It is Illyria; nothing will stand in the way of its desires. It learns quickly, it understands that the world is not as it left it but it can fix that…
Illyria’s first act is to reclaim, Knox, its Qwa ‘ha xahn (a high priest of sorts) and it’s second is to get some spiffy new threads. It is unimpressed by the pathetic stand made by Angel and company in order to try and control it:
Illyria: Two half-breeds and a band of primitives. This is all that challenges me now?
It is not intimidated. It has tricks up its sleeve. Illyria is strong - it throws Angel out the window with consummate ease. It can also manipulate time and is able to make its escape with Knox while Angel is still falling to the ground and Wes, Spike and Gunn are virtually frozen in action. Angel’s campaign is unimpressive; Illyria is right to feel confident. These people cannot halt its plans for supremacy. Nothing stands in its way.
Illyria and Knox go to open the Demon King’s temple, the seat of its power, to recall the Illyrian army that will enable it to reclaim the world as its own dominion. It seems all too easy. Illyria remarks that the humans are fragile (after it’s just killed one) and wonders how they came to rule:
Knox: Opposable thumbs. Um, fire, television. What they lack in strength they make up for with extraordinary sneakiness.
Sneakiness? What he really means is that the ability to think, plot, plan and dream has raised the humble human from being a cavern dwelling caveman to a heaven soaring astronaut. The ability to think makes them powerful.
The gateway is blocked.
Knox: Wolfram and Hart probably threw a lock on it. They’re big on things happening on their timetable.
So, the senior partners are happy enough to have Illyria pop by and mess with the management of the Los Angeles branch, but are not so willing to let it meddle in their own apocalypse-related plans? Illyria observes that the Wolf, Ram and Hart were weak, barely above the vampire, back in the days when demons ruled the earth. They beefed up and they didn’t do it by being Mr. Nice Guy and giving away branches of the law firm for nothing. They are ancient and they’ve worked their way up the hierarchy from pond scum to master puppeteers. It’s a timely reminder of exactly how powerful and insinuating Angel’s benefactors really are and it highlights the futility of trying to fight them from within. Knox performs a ritual to open Illyria’s portal. He’s been worshiping the demon since he was eleven, stands to reason he’s know a thing or two about its why’s and wherefores. Before they can enter the temple, Angel, Spike and Wes arrive. A short confrontation ensues. Knox is killed; Illyria is offended that they think it would care about his death. It uses its tricks and enters the portal to its temple.
Illyria: My army will rise. The world will be mine once again!
But…
The temple is in ruins. Its great effigy to itself is broken and crumbling. Its vast army is naught but dust. The great and mighty Illyria is crushed, bereft. It has become a shell of itself. Everything it depended on is gone, lost to the sands of time and it becomes irrelevant, stranded in a time and place to which it means nothing. Like a fish out of water. Illyria flees the temple but later returns to Wolfram and Hart, to Wesley. It is trying to make sense of its new situation; trying to understand the human world, the impact of grief, the importance of names and the fragments of memories that have fused in its brain while Fred was dying. Wesley is irritated, why has it come to him?
Illyria: I have nowhere to go. My kingdom is long dead…long dead. There is so much I don’t understand. I’ve become overwhelmed. I am unsure of my place.
Wesley: Your place is with the rest of your people; dead and turned to ash
Illyria: Perhaps… But I exist here. I must learn to walk in this world.
Illyria asks Wesley for help to find its place again, to find some substance that will give the shell meaning again.
LORNE
Lorne is completely bereft at the loss of Fred. The sunshine has left his life. He blames himself:
Lorne: I should’ve seen it. Knox, he sang for me and I should’ve seen this… If I had concentrated harder, read him better, maybe Fred…
He’s so sad and lost and guilty that he can’t even stay with the others and listen or contribute to contingency plans. He has nothing to give, nothing to offer, can be of no assistance to the team. He’s lost his sunshine and he is the one team player who never catches the infectious ‘let’s get her back’ hope that Angel is peddling. He saw what would happen the moment she sang. He knows there’s no hope to get her back. So he goes to his office to be alone and drink copious Sea Breezes and grieve. He is a shell. He’s empty and doubting himself. The skill he brings to Angel investigations is his intuitive gift of reading people and if he can’t do that right then . . . he’s left wondering, what the hell is he good for?
( Continued here... )