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Post by marilyn on Oct 23, 2003 23:52:40 GMT
I have to say, as much as I enjoy nekkid Spike, it was totally unnecessary....other symbolism would have been effective....but not nearly as provocative as when he was bedding Buffy! I LOVE him and Fred, and his mentioning a hug twice makes me think that when he does get his body, he's gonna be handing out some touchy/feely contact to her! And he's really affected by the fact that she thinks he's worth saving....unlike Angel...lol.....Spike's having such a good time needling him every chance he gets! ;D
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Post by Cyrus on Oct 24, 2003 0:10:54 GMT
I have to say, as much as I enjoy nekkid Spike, it was totally unnecessary....other symbolism would have been effective... Agreed!  Nooo! Let him have some time with himself, and no girl!  It is quite funny... though will probably get old soon if that's all that happens between those two is picking on each other like a couple of elementary-aged schoolboys!  |
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Post by PokerKitten on Oct 25, 2003 19:23:54 GMT
Oh dear... M, you may want to start reading further ahead with the spoilers  Although ultimately I still would have hopes for this myself... Okay, so I am forced to disagree with you guys about the skin shots... even Fred in the shower, as at least that was tasteful and hardly revealing at all, kinda subtle. They could have just had the steamy bathroom and him writing on the mirror instead, with her in a robe or something, I know. But it was filmed very carefully and yet seemed natural. And I ranted and raved about the stripping of Spike at the drop of a hat on BtVS, I know. But here I thought it was fitting - it was meant to make him vulnerable and degraded (and I am SO glad they dropped the dress thing because that WOULD have taken it over the edge), and that is a much better way than seeing him chained up and beaten to a pulp. Again, it was subtly staged and filmed, and made it all the more dramatic when he was reclothing himself through the force of his own will. Anyway, I have never seen Fred interact so perfectly with any of the other characters on AtS - they really talk to each other, care for each other and "get" each other, I am convinced. She seems somehow more the "real" her when she is with him. And look, I didn't much like Fred before, too gushy, excitable etc. Around Spike she is written as able to be quieter, be a brainiac and less ditzy acting. And yet she is still passionate and caring. Well, actually more so than I have ever seen her. Their interaction in the teaser was just marvellous, Spike's charm wattage was enough to short out the whole of LA! And she responds a little, but is not silly with it. She knows he has been turning it on for her, but she likes him anyway. I liked how uncomfortable she was when she thought Wes was asking her to dinner. That ship is dead in the water! And her putting Angel straight on why they should help Spike was stellar. Spike has deserved a woman like this all his life and unlife....  There was a lot of time for relationships in this ep, which is admirable considering they were trying to reveal so much and spook us at the same time. So glad they did the Angel and Spike scene, and the couch banter. Their insults seemed half-hearted... they know they are expected to snark at each other so they do.... So glad the liking William's poetry stayed in. And Spike's dismissal of that compliment, coming from the Manilow fan ;D And whether Angel is right or not about them being doomed to hell no matter what they now do to atone, it was kinda good to see Spike working this through and accepting it after a minute or two with an "Oh well..." kind of gesture. Other things I liked a lot - the whole ep was kinda ookie and atmospheric. And apart from slightly too much of Spike wandering dark spooky corridors I thought the writing and direction of it was excellent - smoochies to SDK. Spike saying hello, vampire ghost here, not easily scared... and then having to put on his cocky face and swagger to investigate further was classic Spike. Very revealing. Us old Spike-aholics KNOW his badass persona is largely a construct, but this helps newcomers understand him too. The big electric shock when Spike touches Fred.... there would be fireworks if they ever got to do that on a more intimate basis! ;D The look of concentration on Spike's face when he was writing in the steam. And the fact that he wasn't ogling her all naked and wet... you can bet your ass that if the Furious One had written this he would have had him make some quick crass comment about her, even though he was mostly preoccupied with hell and stuff  Pavayne - he was first rate ookie and a fine actor. And I liked his line about "Dirty red things..." And "The soul that blesses you damns you to suffer forever" - chilling, frightening, heartrending.... (a thought - perhaps you condemn yourself to hell by brooding on past darkness instead of allowing yourself to be more positive and acknowledge the good things...) Gunn and the big pussy! Gunn and being teased by Spike about his cock! Gunn and his legal brain! Spike really not liking what Pavayne was saying about Fred. And Spike and Fred's last scene, which was touching, cute, warm.... and made me cry. But best of all, Spike looking down and out and tormented by Pavayne, but without his hard act and so doing it for real, fighting back - accepting his ultimate fate but absolutely defiant now. Working it all out about Pavayne, what he was, what he had been doing to all those souls, how he could touch things/affect things, and then taking him on. Of course he was going to put Fred first.... THIS IS SPIKE!! Spike at his best - bright, tough, strong (mentally as well as physically). The Spike we kinda saw towards the end of BtVS S7. More  to SDK! |
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Post by PokerKitten on Oct 25, 2003 23:10:17 GMT
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Post by PokerKitten on Oct 27, 2003 15:09:30 GMT
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Post by PokerKitten on Oct 30, 2003 10:47:28 GMT
Our poll verdict on the episode was "very good", basically because I totally loved it and skewed the result! Lol! Otherwise, folks thought it was good and very Spikey. You're a tough crowd!
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 1, 2003 23:48:26 GMT
Neat review of "Hellbound" from Ron - www.slayage.com/reviews/000090.html#000090Good stuff about Spike and his character. It's too long for a single post so I have just posted extracts here. Hell is Other People
Angel Episode 5.4 Hellbound
AirDate: 22nd Oct 03
This week’s review doesn’t take its title from a song or movie, but from a quote by Mr. Jean-Paul Sartre. I won’t claim to have actually read much Sartre – let’s say I’ve mainly just read ABOUT him, but in trying to come up with a title that touched on the concept of Hell, I remembered this quote and went looking to see who originally said it. It falls into the same category of bang-on cynical quotes that I used for Angel 5.1, Morrissey’s ‘We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful’. I do love the bitter geniuses.
Okay, we’re here to talk about episode four of this fifth season of Angel, scripted by Steven S. DeKnight, who may or may not be bitter and/or a genius, and it was appropriately titled ‘Hellbound’. I liked some elements of this tale, but it’s still not the home run I’m waiting for, and the one that I know this staff is capable of. There’s a killer episode on the way – I can FEEL it! We just have to stick around long enough for it to get here.
<snip>
‘Hellbound’ revealed some more of the Wolfram & Hart backstory. It seems that when the Senior Partners opened the L.A. office, they needed to consecrate the ground in a completely unholy fashion, so they used the blood of a very evil doctor named Pavayne (it was either that or Martha Stewart’s lobster bisque). Now, nearly two hundred years later, Pavayne’s essence has hung around, and he’s figured out how to keep shoving the souls of dead W&H employees into Hell’s hungry maw to prevent his own descent into eternal damnation. Nice work if you can get it.
Pavayne also kept a few nasty spectral attorneys around as harbingers and minions, and you know what would have been really cool? If a couple of familiar faces made cameo appearances. What if Linwood or Gavin were the first spooks that spoke to Spike (stop that –Ed.)? It isn’t even something that would have to be explained to the new viewers, it would have just been a classic M.E. nudge for the faithful.
So Spike ran around for a while, playing Haley Joel Osment (or maybe Bruce Willis, since… never mind) and engaging in some cat & mouse with Pavayne, as Fred went above, beyond, and fairly CRAZY, to make good on her promise to bring Spikey back to a state of fleshiness.
This brings us to something else that I want to address. Eve returned in ‘Hellbound’, and enlisted Angel’s help in dragging Fred onto the carpet for the way she’s been burning W&H’s money like it’s paper (wait…). Angel’s been struggling with that mantle of responsibility where he wants to be loyal to his friends, but he’s committed to running Wolfram & Hart as a business. So instead of being able to say “Fred, do whatever you need to do and be careful”, he suddenly finds himself speaking as The CEO and busting one of his closest friends for going over budget. His willingness to side with W&H on a matter as black and white as this is probably a precursor to how he’ll handle himself in the more complex situations down the road. What happens when someone like Fred or Wesley’s operations are REALLY going against the best interests of the firm? Will Angel have the stones to fire them?
I love the theory that’s been kicked around the net lately (just a theory – not a spoiler at all) that a day might be coming where some members of the team finally get disgusted with the way they’ve been fighting evil – all the budget meetings, company memorandums, filing everything in triplicate, etc, and leave the firm to go back to their roots. But will everyone go, or will half the Fang Gang be too deep into the W&H way of doing things? Will each faction end up with their own ensouled vampire? It’s an interesting concept, and when contemplating how far they could take something like that, the mind reels.
If anything major was accomplished in this episode (aside from the eventual fate of Dr. Matthias Pavayne), it was the lessons learned.
Maybe Angel hasn’t completely figured out how to balance his new responsibilities with his ultimate goal of helping the helpless, but his conversation with Fred in this episode at least provided a noticeable knock-knock-knock on his thick vampire skull. Now that they’re operating on such a massive scale, it’s easy to forget that an individual condemned to a fate he doesn’t deserve should be aided, budget constraints be damned (Fred: “It’s about helping people. Remember?”).
Spike and Angel’s chat on the couch about their shady past and the merits of redemption was great because these two have such chemistry together, but Angel’s pessimistic tone brings us back to the idea that no matter what these two have done since choosing a more honourable path, it will never measure up to the horrors they committed previously. Two former monsters, doing the best they can before their rap sheets eventually sink them forever. Poetic, isn’t it? And speaking of poetry, I feel like Angel’s compliment about Spike’s poetry was icky – they didn’t even know each other until Spike was a vampire, and was he even still writing them then?
Spike actually learned a valuable lesson from Pavayne -- that being a spectre, trapped between the living world and Hell, doesn’t have to mean you’re powerless. As the Reaper told him, it was sheer force of will that allowed him to stave off eternal torment. I think Spike has proven that he can handle just about anything (except maybe missing Passions), and he only needed this reminder to stop playing ‘Poor Ghostly Me’ and to take charge – first in materializing his clothes after Pavayne stripped them away, and then in his three instances of physical contact with Fred (the zappy touch on the arm, the word spelled out in her shower, and finally moving the coffee cup). If anyone’s going to just will themselves back to a corporeal state, it’s the guy who faced all those trials to get his soul back, who suffered and endured such unspeakable mental torture at the hands of the First, and who eventually sacrificed his life, complete with burning flesh, melting eyeballs and disintegrating bones, to save the world.
Additionally, Angel and the others who remained skeptical about Spike’s motivation also learned the measure of this man (err… vampire. I mean ghost). Spike could have very easily jumped into Fred’s one-shot recorporializer (can you believe MS Word doesn’t recognize “recorporializer”?), gotten his flesh & blood back, and headed off to Europe to find Buffy. But once again, he did the right thing – he gave up what looked like his only chance and saved Fred, helping to defeat Pavayne in the process. Game, set & match in the honour game goes to William the Bloody. Hopefully now the boys club will see him as a soul worth saving.
‘Hellbound’ closed with one of the creepier scenes in recent memory. In all this talk of redemption & rewards, Pavayne has now been damned to a fate worse than death. That touch of claustrophobia I carry around was jumping like a nervous kitten as Angel and Eve locked Pavayne away forever – bound tightly with nothing but an endless view of a long, dusty hallway and the memory of his crimes. I’m sure the double irony of Pavayne’s fate, both as a reminder of Angel’s watery prison at the end of season three and the reflective life of an immortal with so much blood on his hands, was not lost on the boss.
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Post by nightnurse on Feb 3, 2004 23:16:08 GMT
;D I loved this ep, and agree wholeheartedly with PK that this is the Spike of old, swagger hiding the frailties of William that we glimpse now and again.
The exchange with Angel was terrific...but being able to sit on the couch, and write on the shower cubicle before he knew how to touch things was odd, seeing as he's been unable to even lean on a wall in earlier eps.
Not hard to imagine an incorporeal Spike turning up in the bathroom and teasing Gunn ( hasn't James said that if he was a ghost he'd hang out in the womens locker room!)
Loved the mystic with attitude and her reply to Fred asking if they should hold hands...' only if you're lonely!'
Fred and Spikes scenes together were touching , and Pavayne was a baddie of the highest order....altogether a great ep from SDK
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BEEVR
Rev Harding
Posts: 15
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Post by BEEVR on Feb 6, 2004 18:11:12 GMT
I KNOW IM NEW BUT DID ANYONE ELSE NOTICE HOW DAMN GOOD JAMES MARSTERS' ACTING WAS IN "HELLBOUND"? I CAN WATCH THAT OVER AND OVER, EPECIALLY WEN HE KIKS PERVAIN'S TAIL...
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Post by PokerKitten on Feb 6, 2004 22:31:32 GMT
Yup, I think we noticed! ;D One of the best eps of the season, I think. The guy playing Pavayne was an excellent villain too, I thought. Great actor.
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Post by DeeDee on Aug 24, 2004 10:50:04 GMT
This is a brill episode from Spikes fading in and out and Fred saying he's worth saving (oh yes we know ;D)
Nekkid Spike and the re-clothing of himself finding out he can do it just by wanting it
Spike saving Fred insted of himself good writing good acting
Favorite Episode up to now ;D
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/roush/dispatches/
