AtS 5.12 "You're Welcome"

[dlgood]

Well, that was interesting.

It seemed to me that we got the Mary Sue Platonic Ideal of Cordelia Chase, and everybody got to experience her exactly how they would have wished to remember her. The Powers that Be gave her a gift.

In the meta-sense, it's exactly as the fan would want to have remembered the character - the PtB at Mutant Enemy giving the fan a gift.

But, of course, it wasn't real. The real Cordelia Chase never left her bed, never awoke from her coma, never talked to the MoG, and died quietly offscreen.

Take her out of every scene, and nothing in the episode changes. Cordelia only voices ideas they're each thinking, but would need to hear from another source. Things we'd want them to acknowledge, but have told to them, rather than hear them say it themselves. But again, it's not Cordelia. It's a fantasy.

But I'm left asking once again - how much, if any of this, is real? Were the "Powers that Be" that benevolent force that Angel, Doyle, Cordy and Wes wanted to believe they were back in S1 - or are they something far murkier - as Jasmine led us to question?

It would have been interesting to see Cordy confront what her life was, rather than everyone else's life. But this episode was never really about Cordy's story. It was all about Angel & the MoG holding on to the fantasy that they can be confident in doing the PtB's mission while running W&H. And getting to remember Cordy exactly the way they (and we) would want to remember her. Except that the PtB is bogus, and W&H isn't really under their control. And that's not really what Cordelia's life was like for the past few years.

And you can't be saved by a lie.

So is "Cordelia" setting Angel on his path, or is this a new manipulation down the primrose path?

Comments

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Agree about the somewhat Mary-Sueness of it, and like the thought that Cordy wasn't really there, in a way, but one thing she did that wouldn't have happened without her--stop the machine from whatever it was going to do to Angel. So in that way, she was there.

I dunno, I like best to remember her as the Bitca-Queen in Buffy. Wish she'd had just a few moments of that transformation, as long as it was all a whatever-it-was, but guess that didn't fit the story line.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

This CC character? Wasn't even remotely interesting. (Though I appreciate looking at her bosoms.) All she was there for, was what the plot required her to do, and what others were required to hear from her.

And the casting of the spell that took away Lindsey's tatoos, is what affected the machine.

Re:

[amezri.livejournal.com]

came over from mutant_allies

I disagree with you on the machine/tattoo connection. I don't believe the one had an effect on the other. Cordelia was able to stop the Beast from being released by removing the crystal-like item from the controls. The spell that removed Lindsey's tattoos allowed the Senior Partners to locate him.

But I could be wrong.

Re:

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Probably, but I think that's letting a minor detail hang up the larger theme of both the current season, and the last few. (The Babylon 5 homage.) And a big part of that theme is the fantasy and the dream vs. the reality of what we face. Cordelia, in this episode, was all about echoing the fantasies and encouraging the illusions that the MoG are trying to hold for themselves about the work they do and their place in the world.