Could someone please clarify what seems to be a Season Four Plothole for me?
GabbyGerard
to me that Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy threw the writing team for a loop and
ended up causing some sloppy writing.
The whole issue of Jasmine being awakened by the memory restoration spell is
suspect enough to me (after all, there is that beautiful moment where Angel
asks Cordy if they were in love...the notion of Jasmine having just been
awakened ruins that for me) but I am willing to forgive it.
What truly DOESN'T make sense to me is why Jasmine (as Cordelia) wanted to
release Angelus--or, for that matter, why she even needed the beast to cause
such havoc--and why she bothered to kill Lilah?
If anyone has some words of wisdom to help restore my faith in Angel, I'd most
appreciate it! I'd much rather have this be a lapse in my thinking than the
writers'...
Gabby
Jillun
> If anyone has some words of wisdom to help restore my faith in Angel, I'd most
> appreciate it! I'd much rather have this be a lapse in my thinking than the
> writers'...
There will be spoilers.
"You can fool all of the people some of the time, or some of the
people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of
the time." Just replace the word "fool" with the word "satisfy" or
"please" or the words "make happy".
Traditionally, people who are really happy are content and quiet.
People who are unhappy will complain. And if they don't get enough
attention, will then complain loudly and about anything they come up
with. Now, this doesn't mean you. There are, however, people who are
under the illusion that they are really fans when they are the
complete opposite.
If you are a true fan, then instead of whining about things you didn't
like, you would come up with ways to make them work for you. For
example, I really shrieked when Cordelia had sex with Conner.
Fortunately that was solved later, because it wasn't really Cordelia.
Now, here's my take on the Rain of Fire, bringing Angelus back, etc
etc etc. The invader, later accepting the local name of "Jasmine" had
one intention: get born at full power and make all creatures
susceptable to her power worship her. And will they not worship her
the more when she comes and ends eternal night and drives out the evil
demons? She would practically have to expend no power at all. She
would have been the one to stop Angelus and return Angel (after all,
she was carrying around his soul anyway).
But the heroes persisted in fighting, and Angelus was not particularly
cooperative, accidently ending Eternal Night himself. And then Willow
restored his soul so all she was left with was get herself born before
they catch her because then her power will enthrall them.
Jillun
> release Angelus--or, for that matter, why she even needed the beast to cause
> such havoc--and why she bothered to kill Lilah?
And as for Lilah: Because she was there, in the way, and by nature of
being an evil, conniving lawyer the most likely to catch on that
something wasn't kosher with Cordelia?
Because Jasmine is evil? Make no mistake, she didn't come to save the
world or make world peace. She came to enslave and be worshipped.
Also have lots of munchies anytime she felt like it.
Ch...@nospam.com
<gabby...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
> What truly DOESN'T make sense to me is why Jasmine (as Cordelia) wanted to
> release Angelus--or, for that matter, why she even needed the beast to cause
> such havoc--and why she bothered to kill Lilah?
They never explained it, but the reason seems to be several fold
1. Let the Beast create havoc so that everyone was too busy dealing
with him to figure out that anything else was going on.
2. Release Angelus to add more havoc and to provoke getting rid of
Angel when they can't reign him back in (I suspect that Jasmine was
counting on Connor for this one).
3. make a muck of the town so that she could claim that she made things
all better, thus winning over early followers while she was building up
the strength to pull off her major plot.
and so on
himiko
> to me that Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy threw the writing team for a loop and
> ended up causing some sloppy writing.
I think it caused waffling. It wasn't just the pregnancy, it was the
not knowing how much she would be able to do. I gather she has some
problems at the end. They had to keep a lot of different options
open.
>
> The whole issue of Jasmine being awakened by the memory restoration spell is
> suspect enough to me (after all, there is that beautiful moment where Angel
> asks Cordy if they were in love...the notion of Jasmine having just been
> awakened ruins that for me) but I am willing to forgive it.
If it helps, the alternate interpretation of this is that the spell
actually awakened Cordy, the real Cordy, so that Jasmine had to speed
things up to keep her under control. I always thought that Jasmine's
original plan would have been to have Cordy a total amnesiac
throughout. Anyway, if you accept this explanation, that might still
have been the real Cordy who told Angel she had loved him although the
part about not being able to be with him due to having shared his
memories might be Jasmine asserting her growing influence.
There are actually a number of episodes there where I think Cordy was
still sorta Cordy...confused and fighting to remain herself. I think
we saw that with the whole Connor thing. Sleeping with Connor was ooc
for Cordy, but the reason she gave for doing it wasn't. I see that as
the result of two minds vying for control and Jasmine doing what
Jasmine did best, using what Cordy really was and then twisting it.
> What truly DOESN'T make sense to me is why Jasmine (as Cordelia) wanted to
> release Angelus--or, for that matter, why she even needed the beast to cause
> such havoc--and why she bothered to kill Lilah?
I think Jasmine wanted Angel dead. Turning him into Angelus made it
likely that the others would have to kill him. Killing Lilah framed
Angelus making it even more likely that the others (especially Wes)
would kill him. Killing Angelus kills Angel too, thus defusing the
prophecy about the role he plays in the final apocalypse; dead, he
will play no role at all. Both W&H and the PTB had a stake in that
role, but maybe Jasmine didn't. Depends on whether you think she was
the PTB from the getgo, or simply one, errant PTB, or whether you
think Skip was lying.
himiko
James Craine
Eldritch wrote:
> GabbyGerard wrote:
>
>
> At one point one of the characters speculated that descending from a
> higher plane was disorienting. That's sounds good. Maybe Jasmine got
> disoriented along with Cordy. The memory spell woke them both up.
> After that, Cordy seemed to be a multiple personality girl. At times
> when Jasmine needed things done, the Jasmine personality was in control.
> THe rest of the time, the Cordelia personality was in control. For
> me, that explained why Cordy would sleep with Connor and then regret it
> the next morning and tell him "never again."
I think that the 'never again' was just to manipulate
Connor. Give him a taste, withdraw, and he does whatever he
can to get back in her... 'tight embrace'.
Red Wind
"Eldritch" <Tiredo...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2t8s6rF...@uni-berlin.de...
> GabbyGerard wrote:
> But the whole Beast subplot seemed pointless in retrospect. His job was
> to bring permanent darkness to Los Angeles and the world, and that would
> release all the nighttime evils to run rampant and eat all the people.
> How would that help Jasmine? Would she reign in a dark world? In a dark
> world just over vampires and demons? That didn't seem consistent with
> what she attempted later, controlling the entire human world in daylight.
My interpretation of this was two-fold. First, Creating enough havoc would
distract Team Angel enough to where Jasmine could do what she had to without
interference. As Cordy, Jasmine had them all wrapped around her little
finger. Secondly, If Team Angel hadn't restored the sun, Angel's soul, and
destroyed the beast themselves, I fully believe that Jasmine herself would
have, thus backing up her ideal for making the world better that she would
preach about later.
>
>
> The Angelus subplot is just as pointless. She had nothing to fear from
> him. So there was no need to bring him out or to kill him later. The
> moment she birthed, Angel was immediately her supplicant, just like
> everybody else. He was powerless against her.
Again, I fully believe she only brought out Angelus so that SHE could be the
one to restore Angel's soul after she was born. Hence the reason why Cordy
stole the soul. It would have been a perfect showing of power for Jasmine
to make everything right.
>
>
> You might speculate that she was vulnerable while still gestating inside
> Cordelia and might have wanted a straw man to distract the scoobie gang
> from noticing her. But the Beast was way-over kill for that. The
> darkness the beast brought would only have been a problem for her to solve
> later.
All fuel for the fire, so that when Jasmine was born, she could make
everything right. Physical proof that she was the savior everyone believed
her to be.
And no speculation is necessary. Jasmine WAS vunerable while still gestating
within Cordelia. If Angel had suceeded in killing Cordy before Jasmine was
born, Jasmine would have died as well.
>Besides, they never got all that interested in Cordy's pregnancy. She was
>virtually ignored. Once she got stabbed with the arrow, she hid in her
>room and they didn't so much as up a dinner tray.
She wasn't ignored. They had no reason to think that there was any problem
as far as Cordy was concerned. Conner was constantly checking up on her, and
if she was in danger, he would have said so. With hell on Earth right
outside their door, Spending time with Cordelia was not priority one.
Besides, she made the occasional appearance, such as when Wesley brought
Faith to the hotel.
>
>
> And killing Liliah didn't seem to serve any purpose that I could see. Did
> she threaten the Beast or Jasmine? I don't think so. In fact, it caused
> a problem because finding her dead body would have made them try to figure
> out how she was killed. All it did was create a dramatic event that
> startled the audience, which is a good thing to do when you don't have a
> good plot carrying the audience along.
>
Killing Lilah was just adding more fuel to the already raging fire. Cordy
kills Lilah knowing that Angelus would find the body (and likely feed),
leading Team Angel to believe Angelus killed her, strengthening their focus
to handle the Angelus situation before he killed anyone else. It was a smart
plan that worked. Until Wesley brought Faith in, the gang was set to kill
Angel.
>
> In one of the commentaries in Season 4, one of the writers talked about
> how some things were set in motion in the first part of the season without
> having been worked out where they would lead. I think of that and her
> pregnancy throwing them for a loop is what you saw on the DVD's.
>
>
Personally, I think it was Charisma's pregnancy that screwed things up more
then anything else.
Lord Usher
news:20041012031620...@mb-m05.aol.com:
I don't think for a minute that the writers thought the situation
through as much when they were writing it as we have when trying to
explain it, but here's *my* monster set of fanwanks for the plot holes
of season 4:
1. WHY DID THE MEMORY SPELL WAKE JASMINE UP?
It never really made sense to me, either, that restoring Cordy's
memories would somehow cause Jasmine to awaken, but I came up with a
possible explanation while pondering a more minor WTF moment from the
end of the season.
That question was, why is there some giant bug monster in the WLHF
dimension who knows Jasmine's true name? If you have this big weakness
that destroys your power, why would you up and tell someone about it --
especially when the mere act of telling him *breaks your magickal hold
over him*?
So I decided that Jasmine mustn't have had a choice in the matter, that
she told the Keeper of the Name because she *needed* to in order to
bring about her plan. But we'd seen Jasmine take over on Earth, and
nothing in her plan here seemed to require that she tell anyone her
name. But what about the parts of the plan we *didn't* see?
That's when it occurred to me -- what if the Keeper of the Word was the
individual who birthed Jasmine into WLHF, and in order to start that
process Jasmine had to reveal her true name to the Keeper? That would
mean that on Earth, *Cordy* is the Keeper of the Word, and when she was
up in the Higher Realms Jasmine would've had to reveal her name to Cordy
to kick off the whole possession/birthing process.
How does that connect back to the memory spell? Well, if Cordy needs to
know Jasmine's true name in order to bring her into being, then the
process hits a bit of a snag if coming back to Earth gives Cordy
amnesia, doesn't it? But, when Lorne's spell kicks in, Cordelia
remembers Jas's true name, and thus the goddess "wakes up" inside of
her.
Complicated, I know, but it makes a certain about of crazy sense.
2. WHY IS IT RAINING FIRE?
From my most convolued fanwank to my simplest. I can accept the notion
that, for some random mystical reason, Jasmine could only be conceived
under a rain of fire. So she gets the Beast to cook one up, and at the
same time manipulates Cordy into knocking boots with Connor, and voila
-- we have conception.
3. WHY IS CORDY ACTING LIKE THAT?
Speaking of manipulating Cordy, I was never clear on the extent of Jas's
control over her. The writers establish that Jasmine started pulling the
strings after she woke up at the end of "Spin the Bottle," but was she
in full control all along, or did she sort of take over gradually,
allowing the real Cordelia to show through the rest of the time? And how
come possessed Cordy didn't act anything like Jasmine, spouting cackling
evil cliches instead of Jas's distinctive brand of big-picture
compassion mixed with arrogant indifference to individual suffering and
freedom?
As to the first question, I think we have no choice but to conclude that
Jasmine's takeover of Cordy was gradual and incomplete. After all, in
both "Apocalypse Nowish" and "Long Day's Journey" we saw Cordelia have
*visions* that set parts of Jasmine's plan in motion. If Cordy was
completely under Jas's control, the visions make no sense. Why would
Cordelia experience hints and premonitions about something she already
knows everything about? She wouldn't need to, say, see visions of
Angelus's meeting with the Beast when she could just as easily *pretend*
she'd seen these visions and provoke the same reaction.
As to the second question, I absolutely reject the notion that Evil
Cordy's behavior is all Jasmine, that she's showing her true evil nature
before taking on the false persona of a benevolent goddess. The fully-
formed Jasmine has no reason to lie; her followers are compelled to
follow her anyway, so if her true nature is to be a cackling evildoer
like Evil Cordy why pretend to be something else? Moreover, to say "Oh,
Jasmine was just lying about her peaceful intentions" is to dismiss
everything that's interesting and unique about the character, another
big no-no, IMHO.
So where does the cackling evildoer persona come from? For an answer,
I'd go back to the idea that Jas's control of Cordy seemed gradual and
incomplete, and suggest that Evil Cordy was Jasmine's will, filtered
through Cordy's own vanity and impatience. For example, it was Jasmine's
desire that Lilah be killed, but it was Cordelia's prickliness and
contempt for Lilah that motivated the Cordemon to call her a "stupid
bitch" while swinging the knife.
This might even explain why Evil Cordy's behavior seemed so inconsistent
and stereotypically evil -- perhaps it was Cordy's flailing attempt to
make sense of "instructions" from Jasmine that she herself did not
completely understand. If you suddenly felt compelled to seduce your
best friend's son and block out the sun and stab lawyers in the neck,
and you couldn't even explain to yourself why, I suppose you might
conclude, "Gosh, I guess I'm just evil now," and adopt some half-assed
evil persona.
The interesting thing is, there's actually precedent in the series for
the idea that Jasmine's control might work this way. Because in
"Birthday" Skip informed us that every person has an unconscious
connection to the Powers That Be that informs her of her true purpose in
the world. And, no, Skip is hardly a reliable source of information, but
Cordy's experiences in that episode seem to bear him out. Even when all
her memories are rewritten, Cordy still somehow knows that she needs to
be out there helping the helpless, and even intuits exactly what she
needs to do to help the particular person she's supposed to be helping.
Now, since Jasmine is one of the Powers That Be, it sort of makes sense
that she would control Cordy by manipulating this particular sense. That
is, instead of seizing control of Cordy's mind or heart, Jas had control
of Cordy's *destiny*. She didn't make Cordy want to block out the sun;
she made Cordy believe that she was *supposed* to block out the sun, as
strongly as she believed she was supposed to rescue that girl in
"Birthday." And it was up to poor Cordy to explain to herself why she
had such a strong and unshakeable conviction.
4. WHY DID THE BEAST DESTROY WOLFRAM & HART?
Another easy one, as far as I'm concerned. Not only is Wolfram & Hart
evil, but its mission is to convince humans to bring forth hell and
entropy on Earth by their own free will. That's pretty much anathema to
a being who wants to bring about heavenly peace on Earth by taking away
humankind's free will. Jasmine surely knew that W&H would be opposed to
her plan, and perhaps she was afraid they'd have the power to stop her.
5. BLOCKING OUT THE SUN. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?
Here's another place where I must disagree with one of the common
explanations, that Jasmine blocked out the sun so that she herself would
be the one to bring it back later, thus making her big entrance more
impressive. Jasmine's brainwashy aura ensures that everyone who sees her
is instantly super-impressed no matter what she does. So she has no
reason to jump through a bunch of hoops just to impress people a little
more.
It's also been suggested that perhaps Jasmine blocked out the sun as
sort of a trap for evildoers, to lure them to L.A. so that once she
rises she can wipe them out with the greatest efficiency. That
explanation is pretty sensible, but it still seems unlikely to me.
Jasmine is a big-picture girl with an ultimate goal of taking over the
entire world and wiping out all EETs everywhere. So if all the EETs are
eventually going to die anyway once she achieves full power, why would
she risk her whole plan with a complicated and dangerous sun-blocking
trap, just to kill a few more of them right now?
I guess I could fall back on the same explanation I suggested for the
rain of fire, that somehow eternal night was necessary for Jasmine's
prenatal development. But the darkness is dispelled early and that
doesn't seem to harm Jas's development, so I don't know if I can really
buy that.
But here's another possibility. What if blocking out the sun was never
really the point at all? What if the point was tying up the essence of
the Sunset Totem so Wolfram & Hart couldn't use its power to
reconstitute themselves?
We know from "Long Day's Journey" that, with Mesektet gone from the
White Room, W&H's agents on Earth were cut off from the Senior Partners.
We also know from "Home" that W&H was eventually able to restore the
link to the Senior Partners by plugging some new mystical conduit into
the White Room. Well, what if the essence of the Sunset Totem, which the
Beast sucked out of Mesektet, was the thing that W&H needed to summon a
new conduit?
Obviously, Jasmine wouldn't want W&H to summon a new conduit and get
back on its feet. But how to stop them? Easy -- get your Beast to
perform a ritual for which the Sunset Totem is a key ingredient. As long
as Mesektet's darkness is being used to block out the sun, W&H can't use
it to reform their link to the Senior Partners, thus keeping them out of
the game until Jasmine is firmly in power.
6. ANGELUS? HUH-WHA?
Angelus is the part of Jasmine's plan that I have the hardest time
fanwanking. The official explanation is that Evil Cordy manipulated Our
Heroes into bringing him back as a "distraction," a way of taking the
heat off herself as she killed Manny, slaughtered the Svea priestesses,
etc. But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense; it's a distraction
that's way too complicated for its own good.
Why set up this whole elaborate scheme to take heat off yourself that
requires you to perform even *more* suspicious activity for which you
can't even blame the person you're trying to frame? (I mean, Angelus
obviously didn't steal his own soul, so as soon as it's gone Our Heroes
know that there's still a mole out there.) And why bring up a connection
between Angelus and the Beast that might actually prove helpful to Our
Heroes in bringing you down? (After all, it is Angelus who tells Our
Heroes that the Beast has a boss.)
Why not do a simple frame-job on someone who can't implicate you at all
-- like Gwen, for instance, someone Our Heroes already didn't trust?
I guess we have to assume that Jasmine specifically wanted to take Angel
out of the game, since he's the big monster-fightin' champion who might
succeed in taking Evil Cordy down. And perhaps she wanted to do it in a
nonlethal way, so she'd be able to bring him back once she'd been born
and taken over.
But then why let Angelus out, to run amok and possibly get killed? (Or
run amok and screw up Jasmine's plan, which is exactly what he ended up
doing?) Wouldn't Angel be just as much out of the picture if Angelus had
stayed locked up in the basement?
I guess we're supposed to believe that Evil Cordy needed to let Angelus
out to cause more "distraction," otherwise Our Heroes might get hip to
the fact that Cordy had manipulated them into unleashing Angelus in the
first place. And I guess that makes sense, if we accept the idea that
Jas needed to get Angel out of the way to begin with.
But, jeez, couldn't she have just, say, hired a thug to shoot Angel with
a slow-acting poison or something? That gets Angel out of the picture
and distracts everyone without unleashing an unpredictable evil vampire
with knowledge of the Beast.
Alas, my powers of fanwank are all used up. Defeated at the last. Ah,
well.
--
Lord Usher
"I'm here to kill you, not to judge you."
Terry
"Lord Usher" <lord_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns95858C6A376...@216.40.28.72...
> Alas, my powers of fanwank are all used up. Defeated at the last. Ah,
> well.
I, for one, am impressed. I just chalked it up to "enjoying the ride,
worrying about the details never."
Terry