{"id":1428,"date":"2012-10-11T13:00:22","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T20:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2013-12-08T18:13:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T02:13:00","slug":"mark-watches-angel-s04e17-inside-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2012\/10\/mark-watches-angel-s04e17-inside-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches &#8216;Angel&#8217;: S04E17 &#8211; Inside Out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the seventeenth episode of the fourth season of <em>Angel<\/em>, Cordelia enlists Connor&#8217;s help with something terrible while Angel pays a visit to Skip. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to watch <em>Angel<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->As I said on Twitter when I finished watching &#8220;Inside Out,&#8221; this is the <em>S.S. Nope <\/em>sailing to Confusion Island and shipwrecking me. I&#8217;m done. Just <em>done<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>YES<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><\/strong>I fully support Gina Torres starring in every show I have ever seen.<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>I fully support long cons. I love them <em>dearly<\/em>, and it&#8217;s one of the reasons I love shows like <em>LOST<\/em>, <em>The Prisoner<\/em>, and <em>Rubicon<\/em>. A nicely executed long con is SO SATISFYING. Actually, what am I <em>saying<\/em>? I&#8217;m clearly missing one of the best ones: the <em>Harry Potter <\/em>series. It is so <em>satisfying<\/em> to me to have the past re-contextualized. It breathes a new life into it, and even if I ultimately don&#8217;t like where this plot is headed, I know it&#8217;s going to be a treat to relive this show with <em>this<\/em> episode in mind.<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>I fucking love Skip. Even when he&#8217;s evil. David Denman is perfect as him.<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>Look, I&#8217;ll address the absolute <em>hot mess<\/em> that is this episode&#8217;s plot and implications for the past, but I have hope that Gunn&#8217;s monologue on the steps to Fred is a <em>very<\/em> important point for the entirety of this show. Even if we are manipulated, and even if these people are pawns, when it comes down to the end, it&#8217;s always going to be about choice. What do we <em>choose<\/em> to do, and who do we <em>choose<\/em> to align ourselves with? That&#8217;s a powerful message, and I was happy that Gunn in particular was the one to deliver it.<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>It is a sign of growth (and of his understanding of the severity of the situation) that Angel truly was going to kill Cordelia to save the world. It&#8217;s awful, it&#8217;s heartbreaking, but Angel was willing to sacrifice someone who meant more to him than anyone else to save billions of people.<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>I fully support Julie Benz starring in every show I have ever seen. She is one of my favorite actresses ever, and my god, YES. YES. <em>DARLA IS BACK<\/em>, if only for a brief appearance, but what a grand appearance that was.<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>I am not always the biggest fan of the use of light and dark to emphasize good and evil, and I addressed how it can have racist implications last week. At the same, when done well, it&#8217;s one beautiful trope. Watching Darla and Cordelia argue with Connor over his moral path, while one is bathed in light in a white outfit and the other is shrouded in darkness in the shadows, was goddamn fantastic. Subtle? Nope. But I loved it.<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>The same goes for Connor&#8217;s hand being <em>literally<\/em> covered in blood. A very nice touch to emphasize that even if he didn&#8217;t swing the axe, he is guilty for the murder of that poor girl.<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>Guns never work in the Buffyverse, so it was a beautiful (if unlikely) thing to watch Wesley kill Skip with a gunshot through the\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 horn hole? Well, who knew I&#8217;d ever have to type <em>that<\/em> out?<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>The reference to Buffy&#8217;s return from a heaven dimension was GREAT.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>NOPE AND NOPE<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><\/strong>Okay, so this show is trying to be clever. I get that. I appreciate being tricked in a general sense. I do not appreciate being fooled into watching both Cordelia and Connor be raped and not have that addressed at all. Cordelia&#8217;s body was used without her consent, and Connor was tricked into consenting by believing he was having sex with Cordelia. I have about had it with shows (and the Buffyverse in particular!!!) adding plots that casually drop in rape like this as if it isn&#8217;t a big deal. It&#8217;s seriously gross, and <em>what the fuck were you thinking?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>I am going to give this show the benefit of the doubt because I am ignorant. Straight up! I do not know what&#8217;s going to happen in the rest of season four or in season five. So it is <em>entirely<\/em> possible that this point I&#8217;m going to make will be deflated. The thing with writing a story about forced destiny is that it does a funny thing in hindsight: it kind of ruins character development. Not entirely, mind you, but as soon as Skip revealed that nearly every large event in these characters&#8217; lives was manipulated to get them to this point, it makes all those moments of growth seem like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, moves on a chess board. Suddenly, Cordelia&#8217;s growth as a person and her acceptance of being selfless is <em>actually<\/em> an attempt to get a being from another dimension to possess her. So how does the past of these people matter anymore? If it&#8217;s all just part of a game, does <em>any<\/em> of it hold any meaning? I don&#8217;t know. There&#8217;s probably going to be more of this, and I hope that Gunn&#8217;s monologue is brought back to focus on the idea of free will.<\/li>\n<li><strong><\/strong>I guess that I can&#8217;t fully believe that Connor would unconditionally give himself over to Cordelia, even over people like Fred. <em>Really<\/em>? This is less about the plot itself and more about the execution over season four. If anything, I feel like Connor&#8217;s characterization is one of constantly-shifting loyalties. For a kid who is so confused <em>all<\/em> of the time, he really stuck to this one thing with all of his heart. So why was this the exception? Why would Cordelia &#8220;carrying&#8221; his child be the one thing that gets him to stick to a side? I suppose that I just don&#8217;t understand why he would ultimately choose to believe that <em>killing an innocent girl was a good thing<\/em>. Protecting Cordelia? Sure, I can see that. But killing that woman was too far for me to suspend my disbelief.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the thing: I am going to exercise my right <em>as an American on the Internet<\/em> to reserve my full, definitive opinion on this until this season is over. I do these silly lists often, but this truly did have a point. I both love and hate what I just saw. And I don&#8217;t <em>truly<\/em> know how I feel about this. I admit that I&#8217;m intrigued. Obviously, I need to know who the <em>hell<\/em> that woman is, if Cordelia is alive, if these characters&#8217; choices matter, and if the S.S. Nope will ever return me to civilization. It&#8217;s possible all of my opinions will change in the next five episodes. I just wanted to vocalize my immediate thoughts for the sake of this. Otherwise, I have <em>no fucking clue<\/em> what is going on.<\/p>\n<p>Well, Gina Torres is on <em>Angel<\/em>, and that is fucking spectacular. I can celebrate that.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/markdoesstuff.com\/products\/mark-watches-angel\" target=\"_blank\">The video commission for this episode is now archived on MarkDoesStuff.com for just $0.99!<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mark Links Stuff<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; You can follow me on\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/markdoesstuff\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0for any updates and live commentary on upcoming reviews I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m writing.<br \/>\n&#8211; You should read this\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2012\/10\/hello-mark-does-stuff-community-lets-discuss-things\/\"><strong>very important post<\/strong><\/a>\u00c2\u00a0about supporting Mark Does Stuff!<br \/>\n-\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/category\/the-shoebox-project\/\">I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve started reading\u00c2\u00a0<em>The Shoebox Project<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0for Mark Reads<\/a>, the first fanfic \u00e2\u20ac\u0153series\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever covered! Join me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the seventeenth episode of the fourth season of Angel, Cordelia enlists Connor&#8217;s help with something terrible while Angel pays a visit to Skip. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to watch Angel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215],"tags":[369,368,370,217,371],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angel","tag-gina-torres-is-a-wonderful-human-being","tag-i-am-really-confused","tag-julie-benz-is-so-goddamn-lovely","tag-mark-watches-angel","tag-more-useless-tags"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->