beginning | blinding torment | boils | lies | making me bitter | evil compounds evil | blah blah bity blah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

Angel 5.8: Destiny

 

Continuing their love affair with revisionist history, ME presents this very special episode of Angel rife with flashbacks intended to convince you that Angel really was a badass back in the day. I am not fooled. You shouldn’t be either. Flashing back to a time when he interrupted a wedding, clubbed the groom to death with his own arm and took off with the bride in his dumb sissy-ass hair, then slept with Dru just to piss off Spike because sissy-ass Spike told Angel that he and Dru were forever and meant to be and that she was his destiny does not make me forget that a) he’s a dumbass and b) the myth of him being a badass died as soon as they tried to show him being a badass beause they never lived up to their own hype. Also, having Angel and sensitive Spike pal around and joke like old cronies does not make me forget the argument they had, in that one episode who’s name I shall probably eventually look up, about Spike being an annoying, rash ninny who will get them all killed. However, out of all the grievances against continuity, this one’s at least easy to fanwank—I mean, I find Spike extremely annoying, I can see how Angel would eventually come around too after coming out from under the thrall of the cheekbones.

 

Don't mistake me. I do love the ladies. It's just lately I've been wondering what it'd be like to share the slaughter of innocents with another man. Don't think that makes me some kind of a deviant, hmm? Do you?

 

But I doth get too far ahead of the story. After a flashback introducing us to how Spike and Angel got acquainted, which included seeing who could hold their hands in the sun the longest because they are men and because this is network tv so they can’t just whip out their penises to see whose is larger, the episode kicks into the present with Spike bitching (just to be sure we keep up with the theme this season) and then ups the stakes a bit by sending Spike an empty package that flashes all bright and pretty and then, to quote Emeril, BAM! He’s corporeal again. So, uh, yay! Now he can bitch while touching things! Immediately he gets his priorities straight and drags Harmony off for a lunchtime quickie but then she freaks out about him and Buffy, starts bleeding from her eyes and attacks Spike, causing him to knock her across the room. I am amused to see that his pants are still up and it takes me back to the halcyon days of Smashed. Ah, Smashed…all we’re missing here is the sound of his extremely loud zipper coming down…

 

 

Yeah, right. Boo-hoo. Thought he killed his bloody father. Try staking your mother when she's coming on to you!

 

Chaos starts reigning supreme at Wolfram and Hart as more people bleed from their eyes and beat their co-workers dead over not replacing the toner—an urge any of us stuck in the office environment can appreciate. According to the tart known as Eve it’s due to two vampires with souls existing on the same plane or in the same area code or, know what? Totally doesn’t matter because it’s all a stupid, stupid lie.

 

It's metaphor. Please tell me I don't have to explain metaphor to you people.

 

Basically, some researcher dude who is not Wesley because Wesley has taken a leave of absence due to feeling bad about shooting his dad over Fred even though it turned out not to be his dad but a Cyborg Ninja Assassin in disguise, tells them that they’ve been reading the Shanshu Prophecy wrong and that they’re stupid to believe translations. Even though they are supposed to accept his translation. This man they are all ready to believe, even though he’s a complete stranger who works at an evil law firm so taking information blindly from him is sort of like taking candy from a psychotic stranger wearing a sign on their forehead that says “hey, I’m crazy”, tells them they’ll know which vampire gets to be the champion when he drinks out of some stupid cup. A stupid cup that’s in an old abandoned opera house in Utah. Or maybe it was Nevada? And once the vampire drinks out of this stupid cup in the middle of Utah or possibly Nevada, the universe will realign. It’s not even a plausible lie, and they’re lapping it up. Do you see why they have been dubbed Dumbass and Dumbass, Jr? Do you SEE? If not, consider this: Sirk TELLS them that there is no wrong here, that the drinker of the Mountain Dew, I mean "eternal" "torment" (same thing in my book), meaning the CHAMPION of the shanshu, is predestined. Ergo, they wouldn't need to race to the cup for the universe to realign because it's preordained which of them would win, so the universe would never really be out of whack because it would have known all along which vampire with a soul it fancied. See? Dumbasses.

 

Tell it to your therapist.

 

Spike and Angel bitch and posture at each other a bit and then they’re off, because they are stupid and so into besting each other that they don't take a second to stop and think about it. Or anything, really. For instance, Angel, in his infinite wisdom, opts to drive rather than take his fancy helicopter that got him to the school on time so many almost-interesting episodes ago, and races Spike in one of his many fancy stupid cars. To Utah. Or Nevada. Either way, I’m assuming their sports cars have magical gas tanks that don’t require either one of them to get out in the daylight to gas up, because we all know what great mileage those economical engines get.

 

Luckily, they get to the abandoned Opera house at night and proceed to taunt each other while searching for the holy grail. They find it at the same time and proceed to race for it in slow motion. They fight. They banter. They lack wit. Spike beats Angel and Angel decides now is the time to use reason, asking Spike to think about it because it’s a burden and is Spike really doing this because he wants a burden or because he wants to take something away from Angel, which is really the wrong way to phrase the question because we all know how people on this show love a good burden, to which Spike responds “a little of both”. And then he drinks of the warm Mountain Dew, and it was good.

 

Actually, it’s not okay, because it was a sham, see. A Mountain Dew sham. It wasn’t real. It was all just an elaborate ruse set up by ME so they could weave in flashbacks to “explain” why Spike and Angel don’t get along. (Apparently it has more to do with their constant power struggles over Dru and who's the coolest than the fact that they’re both annoying, whiny dumbasses.) But officially, it was all a set up by Eve and Lindsey to see, I guess, which vampire could beat the other up the bestest. (Yes, that’s right, I said Lindsey. They’ve almost ruined him with bad tattoos and long hair and tossing him into bed with Eve, but it’s still our Lindsey. I hold out hope for good things.) Everything is returned to normal, maybe by the senior partners, maybe not, and I’m not really sure that anything matters anymore because if the senior partners can’t even tell that Eve’s being a naughty, naughty girl, how powerful could they possibly be? But these, gentle viewers, are questions for another place, another time. February sweeps, if I were to hazard a guess.

 


 

Well...it's a start.



 

 

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