Angel 3.2 That Vision Thing

‘That Vision Thing’ deals primarily with Cordelia’s visions and the physical manifestations that have lately been accompanying them.  Oh boy, wouldn’t you know it, Wolfram & Hart, the corporation of lawyers bent on…wait, what are they bent on again?  Anyway, Wolfram & Hart are messing with Cordelia’s visions through a hired associate with a lovely fez, played by Kai Penn.  When Angel finally confronts Lyla about this interference, she tells him that she has picked him specifically for a mission and if he wants to protect Cordelia, well, he’ll just get on up and do what the good lady says.  For some reason, Angel does the task, which involves removing a high-risk prisoner from some uber-prison from another dimension.  Our brooding, vampiric hero gives Lyla her boon and she promises to stop the harm to Cordelia.  For some reason, Lyla brought Mr. Fezzy Interference along for the shady exchange in the dark at the docks (drugs or inter-dimensional prisoner…) and just for some extra assurance, Angel throws a handy steel bar through the window of the nearest limo, giving our fezzman a shiny horn to go with his one and only Angel appearance.  The episode wraps up with a tiny continuation that is oddly reminiscent of Breaking Dawn.  We see Darla, pregnant with what looks to be the worlds largest set of manitees, trying to get some sort of magical abortion from anyone capable.  She is almost out of options so who better to turn to than the nice Native man rolling his future-predicting animal-bone-dice in his lovely teepee in the mountains of Honduras.  He takes some blood, mixes in some mysterious herbs and spices and, after rubbing the composite in his palms, presses his hands against her stomach.  Schade um, the technique fails and gasp! Darla is going to have Angel’s baby.  I swear Stephanie Meyer had to have been a large Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel watcher because this is the second time that a similarity of the large type has come up.  The first is of course the alarming traits that both Angel and Edward possess, especially early Angel.  Recall with me, if you will, the first few times we meet Angel.  He’s the strange, dreamy, hunky piece of man-meat who quietly watches Buffy while she sleeps.  Hmm, weird, it’s almost like Edward does the same thing.  The second crossover is this whole vampire baby thing.  First off, in both stories it is kind of thought to be impossible for one (and definitely two) vampires to make-a-da-baby but oh dear, love just transcends all of those physical limitations doesn’t it?  Also, much like Darla, Bella too quickly grows to the size of a tricked out station wagon with the offspring of her vampiric love.  Finally, both women  contain children that appear to be close to indestructible.  I can only hope Darla’s child grows up to fall deeply in love with one of her (or Angel’s) BFFs.

This episode was really great for a few reasons.  Cordelia, much like Xander Harris of the Scooby Gang in BtVS, is worried about her usefulness to the team and with good reason.  Before she had the visions, Cordie was no more than a secretary, but now she is a valuable and necessary member of the Angel Investigations squad.  Even though she is usually one of the less thoughtful characters in the show, we see that she understands this when she resists Lorne’s attempts to get the bottom of these interferences and maybe even fix her “vision problem.”  The usual perky and quirky Cordelia suddenly becomes a serious and almost tragic character, with her possible future contributions to the team hanging on her ability to survive the cuts, burns and, and diseases that have been accompanying her visions.  Gunn, in her absence from the funny person role, steps in and hits it of quite well.  This layer of the characters that the writers and producers are able to bring out is really great and I can only hope that now that equilibrium has been restored to the cast they won’t just fall back into their old roles again.

In other, slightly less connected or intellectual thoughts, Wesley seems to be working hard on transitioning from his pretty boy, “I am British and wear nice clothes” haircut to the ever-fashionable, wavy man-mullet.  Also, we get more of Fred in this episode and I am glad about that, due partially to the fact that Amy Acker playing a nervous, overly-talkative genius is totally adorable.

In non-Angel news, BigWhiskey and the GrooGrux King comes out very soon (June 2nd).  Am I excited?  Yeah, like, wet my pants excited.

How you like-a da rain, gurl?

Had the opportunity to hang out with some old friends and watch Twilight last night.  It’s a good thing that I was around cool, funny people because that movie is truly painful, as in, migraine kind of painful.  I can remember one especially poignant moment in which Bella walks into her classroom after coming in from the wet weather outside (Forks offers great cloud cover/weather for vampires in hiding, remember…) and Mike Newton comes in, shakes what I can only assume to be his cute, little umbrella over Bella’s head and says something to the effect of, “How you like-a da rain, Arizona!?!  Oh boy.

Seeing the movie did get me thinking about something worthwhile though.  One of my professors on Morris once said something like, “If we don’t read books to feel something, I’m not sure what we read them for.”  I read all four of the Twilight books and while I was in the thick of them, I was pretty sucked in, reading along as Bella stayed the same emotionally and Edward continued to be a domineering gentleman of the finest sort.  Yet, after I had finished Breaking Dawn, my affection for those books waned quickly, until I loathed the fact that I had liked them and wished I hadn’t wasted my time.  After watching the movie and thinking about why I no longer ‘Luv Bella + Edward, like, sooooo much’ I came to the conclusion that Stephanie Meyer had literally left me with no residual feelings for those characters.  Like a typical batch of greasy fast food, it took me a few days to clear that crap from my system and after I had, I regretted my decision to stop at the McWendy’s of the popular literature dining options.  I finished four books totalling almost an entire buttload of pages and all I have to show for it is a decidedly apathetic outlook on the characters, their motivations, (if they exist, has anyone conducted a search recently?) and the path of the story.  It’s true that no one likes to hear a whiner regretting things that can’t be changed but I do think that it is helpful to think about why or why things didn’t work for you in order to not repeat the same mistake again.

As an endnote to this post, a little something from my main man Dave.  This song reminds me of summer.  Bring it on, woot.