It's Lorne! And he's so cheerful, and happy, and a big bursty ball of energy like he always is, fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun!
Well, not so much.
And now with seven years' bad luck to boot.
The opening sequence (again, a long single shot following Lorne) begins with a muted strain of Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way," which segues into Lorne trying to sell a space adventure vision of "The Grapes of Wrath" -- it's got space battles, laser beams, explosions, a tale of interstellar poverty (Tom Joad, the dirt poor farmer, on a journey through the stars? That sounds vaguely familiar. One wonders if that was Joss' pitch speech for "Serenity.") Lorne is asked to dig up a leading man and he tells them he'll get back to him. Henry Fonda played the lead in the 1940 original, but it's a great discussion as to how limitless Lorne's power has become by his reputation -- what kinds of things has he promised in the past, and -- more to the point -- what kinds of things has he delivered?
Having a driven, helpful guy whose empathy has become a persuasive force on your side must be a pleasant thing. After all, Lorne hasn't slept in a month, so his powers of persuasion must have been building over this time. And with all the demanding demands demanding actors and actresses and agents and directors and producers have been making in all of Lorne's power lunches and Lorne trying to deliver -- and magically doing so most of the time, I'm guessing -- asking him to bring Henry Fonda back from the dead probably doesn't seem like too much to ask at this point.
Again, I bring up the notion that these people, these department heads, need some staff. Lorne's interaction with his assistant, Van, is fun, but if Lorne is as busy as he claims to be, he really ought to be delegating some of this activity.
It bears out what Fred was saying in "Unleashed," however -- everyone is working way too hard. Later in this episode, we see Fred and Wes both concerned over a mystical grenade that didn't work, and both of them -- along with Knox -- were heavily involved in the creation of it. I enjoyed the tension of division rivalry, but it felt like, um, don't both of you have better things to be doing?
Well, it makes sense that they'd want to be very hands-on since they were sending it out to help Angel, in this case fight a Thraxis demon. Leaving a task like that to underlings -- underlings who may want nothing better than to see Angel aloft in the breeze. But they themselves worked very hard on it and it didn't work, so it's kind of the same difference.
I liked that knowing feeling Wesley got when he knows something.
Back to Lorne's truck through the lobby and his exchange with Harmony. It's fun that they had a nice little vibe going -- "The hair, the eyes -- no wonder the fourth floor's got a crush on you." Angel's broody party-poopery was well established, which led us to a nice exchange with Eve. Who, so far as we can tell, got to hang out briefly with naked Angel. "Gentlemen's time" indeed. With this scene and the one in his office, David had to spend a lot of time with Sarah Thompson in advanced stages of //deshabille//. It was never as scandalous as many scenes in "Nip/Tuck," but it's pretty racy even for a Joss production.
Finally alone, Lorne enters his office. He has a beautiful office -- spacious, actually tasteful, with space-emphasizing and visually engaging statuary and muted earth tones, against which the vibrant Lorne collection shows forth like a blazing star. He takes a moment to collect himself, because it's obvious that the pressure of what he does is really getting to him and ... this is the first time I've noticed this. Lorne's reflection sings to him in the broken and he looks deeply troubled.
More than Lindsey's performance in "Dead End," I wonder if this is where he sees his final moments in "Not Fade Away."
One wonders if he can read himself ...
His reflective pep-talk over, his flicker of grave concern past, we sweep forth to the resumptive accompaniment of "Don't Leave Me This Way" and Lorne singing it into his cellphone as he strides forth and back into the fray.
He's got a party to plan.
It's one of the best uses of music in the series. Joss has a great ear for sound and story and the plaintive pleading message of that song -- "I can't exist, I'll surely miss, your tender kiss, don't leave me this way ..." -- was beautiful.
Lorne is self-destructing.
Roll the opening credits.
Lorne gets everyone together and the main point of the episode is the party. Party, party, party. He's all upset because everyone's kinda bummed out about it, and despite all his hard work and preparations, he can't get CYNTHIA! to focus on having fun or even relaxing a little.
But his powers of persuasion are kicking in, and he gets everyone in a party mood eventually -- even tho, during the party itself, for quite a long time the only person who's out there on the dance floor dancing is Harmony. But this is the best thing about Mercedes McNab -- how she looks -- so watching her dance is pleasant.
First, tho, he has to get the guest list.
The episode introduces a member of The Circle: Archduke Sebassis. We're not given his full significance -- it's not really even hinted at -- but Joss being who he is and adhering to his commitments -- no story arcs, simple, self-contained standalone episodes -- recognizes the potential for telling different parts of stories and making them even more amazing by weaving them together down the road. They overshot themselves with Jasmine, and this introduction, bit by bit, to the members of the Circle, actually seems like a better approach.
Sebassis is charismatic, charming, scary, a little too S&M with his nameless manservant, perhaps (who in this episode becomes the "Pee-Pee Demon"), and doesn't seem to be the party sort. We know from the Fareweel Angel Bash on TVTome that he's delightful, of course, and his aristocratic nature is wonderful. "Your contempt is fragrant" is a phrase I'd love to use sometime in my life.
He agrees to attend, and presumably all of the other hold-outs do domino in behind him.
One moment ...
Before we get to the crazy fun of the party, let me discuss a couple of conversations. One of the things I love about "Angel" happens, in fact, to be Angel, and I want to not fly past a couple of these exchanges so quickly.
First: Angel and Eve in the elevator.
Angel gives a show-so-far on what being in charge of the company he'd done everything in his power for so long to bring down is doing to his soul. He's conflicted, given to rationalization, he's done things he's completely unhappy about -- in getting to the low morale of the company, he's had to do a lot more violence than we've seen on camera. And he's never certain that any given move isn't exactly what the Senior Partners want him to do. That kind of second-guessery wears on a person.
And he did more confiding in that one brief moment than we've seen him do all season -- and it was with Eve.
His ties to his staff are clearly weakening.
Step ahead to Angel and Lorne in the limo on the way to Sebassis' estate.
He realizes -- almost surprised by it -- that this party being a success means a great huge deal to Lorne. And they talk about Lorne's position in the team. And they talk about it after that flicker of concern Lorne got when he may or may not have been reading himself in the mirror.
I'm on your team, he says. I don't have super-human strength, I can't do physics, I can't do spells. But this is what I can do, he says. It's something I can do.
Well ... yes and no.
He can, after all, do absolutely anything. He was the first one in the evil limo, he was entirely won over by the job, and he's right -- he is the Host with the Most when it came to Caritas (although that space got destroyed more than once even with the anti-violence spell in place).
He's the schmooze factor, the lubrication in CYNTHIA!s engine, the buffer between prickly personalities, the guy who's always there to hear everyone's troubles. And as we saw at the mirror, there's barely any of him left over to support himself.
He was strung out and stressed. A good leader would've talked to him about that much earlier than Angel did, but even Wesley, onetime head of the group, has been too wrapped up in his own stuff to check in with him and see how he's doing.
Course, as I said before, all of them are working way too hard, which supports my W&H-as-meatgrinder theory: Just try to be in charge of everything we're in charge of and //not// be evil.
The party was good, the spells were mostly harmless (although Angel shagging Eve may have been the "EW!"-factor that made her all but universally hated and earned her the title of "skank on a stick") And naturally shagging Eve is no road toward perfect happiness, tho Spike's enthusiasm for him "getting some" was part of why Spike was just pleasant in this episode.
And as lighthearted as this episode ultimately was -- Wes and Fred are fun together, even with Fred's unfortunate timing ("Let's be better friends than we are. We could be confidantes, confiding confidences -- Whaddyou think of Knosch?") Oy. That was so much fun I almost forgot about where they were -- the Psyche Component Storage, where people have apparently had their ennui removed, which was just fun -- it got very dark with the assassination by Lorne's Hulkster alter ego of Artode, and the Archduke threatening a rain of destruction.
This storyline resolved itself a little too easily, but to be honest, while this pathenogenic golem worked really well in BS4x17 - "Superstar," it's quite impossible to believe it in this case, mostly because no one had ever seen it before, it's a creature built entirely without stealth, and this is a busy enough law firm that someone would've seen it before (the mystics do regular sweeps for noncorporeals, fer Pete's sake, they would've found //that//). Course, they would've found Pavayne, too, so whatcha gonna do?
Since it was dressed as Lorne was dressed in that episode, it may have manifested that very day, but to be honest, wouldn't someone have noticed that?
Anyway, it shows up, goes "smash," kills Artode and the demon who came to the party as "hooman bean" -- leading to potentially the worst line of the season (and maybe the series) delivered, naturally, by Harmony -- "Someone really dipped his chip" -- a close second behind Eve's "What //would// you like passing through these lips?" in S5x01 - "Conviction" as really terrible lines from otherwise superior storytellers (those were some serious clinkers) -- and it is disappeared as Lorne finally settles down, has his sleep restored and takes a nap the way he's meant to.
But Lorne-centric episodes are few, far between, and just joyous -- and also, they tend to foreshadow, and they give the writers an opportunity to take a step back and give us a "show so far" perspective. And naturally, examinations of the green guy himself are always satisfying, and lend themselves well to metaphor. In this environment of pushing yourself so hard to meet challenges, to make yourself vital, it's really possible to try to do too much.
After all, what we //don't// know about sleep would overflow the Library of Congress, but this was ultimately a great storyline. Without any escape from it, Lorne's entire world had become a dreamscape bordering on nightmarish, and it was a very cool discussion -- when you try to please everyone, you end up ruining everything. Being vital isn't the same as being omnipresent.
No Gunn Watch, no "Powers-That-Sit-There" this week. It's enough discreetly not to have mentioned Gunn's unfortunate role in the episode except in passing.
Instead, the whole "Set realistic goals," and "Take a break once in a while," and "You're no good to anyone if you burn yourself out" -- that's a pretty good message for a one-shot.
It's not bad advice to take to heart.
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