From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V3 #107 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Thursday, June 21 2001 Volume 03 : Number 107 Today's Subjects: ----------------- da/finale ["Donald G. Keller" ] da/commentary ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 16:15:09 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: da/finale What Meredith Said about =Dark Angel=. Hi, I'm Don, and I'm a procrastinator. Many days ago, I had put together a (shorter, terser) synopsis of the =Dark Angel= season and the finale, but because I hadn't finished my commentary I was waiting to post the whole lot at once. Which left an opening for Meredith to step in and do a =much= superior job of presenting the important elements of the show. So I've discarded most of my season synopsis, with the exception of a few remarks: An X-5 is the science-fictional equivalent of a Slayer, as it were. Just in case anyone doubts my assertion that Giles and Angel on =Buffy= are doubles of one another, note that Logan neatly occupies both their functions in =Dark Angel=: he's the one who sends her on missions, =and= the one she has a should-we-or-shouldn't-we personal relationship with. (She's a mutant and he's in a wheelchair, after all.) Max has a thing about guns. In one of the frequent flashbacks to her childhood at Manticore, we learn she was traumatized by a shooting incident, and won't go near a gun now. At one point Logan tries to give her one as a gift, and she quite tensely refuses it. (She hardly needs one, after all.) Madame X (the new director of Manticore) actually has a name: Renfro. This is mentioned in passing by Lydecker in the finale, and that's how I will refer to her. Meredith's memory failed her only once (I do have all the episodes on tape, necessary since I had my brother tape them for me due to the scheduling conflict): Logan has, not "robot legs," but a motorized exoskeleton, a gift from a geeky superhero-wannabe; Logan's quadraplegic friend only helped him fix it. I'll indulge myself by discussing two more moments Meredith mentioned in passing. During the scene where Max transfuses Logan, she dozes off on his shoulder in the hospital room, and has a dream where she's wearing a beautiful gown (mostly she dresses like Faith) and coaxes Logan to stand up out of his wheelchair and dance with her. In the course of it Logan asks her if this is his dream, or hers? which of course sent me into fits of giggles. (Need I belabor all the parallels here to "Graduation Day"? Blood and dreams?) Very late in the season Max, feeling peculiar, lies down for a rest, and suddenly jumps up again, hearing what turns out to be a deployment of soldiers coming after her. She ambushes two of them, knocks one out, then forces the other one to undress, treating him much like Faith treated Xander in "The Zeppo"--when suddenly he turns into Logan. Max awakes (from what has obviously been a dream all along) with a start just as Spike did when he first dreamed about Buffy. That's when she realizes she's in heat. DARK ANGEL--FINALE SYNOPSIS--BIGTIME SPOILERS I'm going to go into a little more detail on the finale to preface my commentary. Logan and Max, with Lydecker in tow, are having a council of war with Zack and two other X-5s we hadn't previously seen. With some misgivings, they all agree to go in together on a plan suggested by Lydecker: take out Manticore. The four X-5s will infiltrate, blow up the DNA lab, and the bureaucratic aftermath will bring Manticore to an end. Logan and Lydecker will monitor helpfully from a safe distance. During preparations, a raven flies in and perches, cawing, on the warehouse window ledge. I'm oversensitive to such things, so I =immediately= got a mythic chill: I knew it was a harbinger of doom. I didn't really need Max's flashback to an incident in their Manticore youth where one of them shot just such a raven and accidentally killed one of the others, nor Zak's Ancient Marineresque shooting of the present raven: that was just double-underlining. Nor did I really need to check (until afterwards) in Jungian explicator Anthony Stevens' fine =Ariadne's Clue= ("a guide to the symbols of humankind") to corroborate, on p. 364, that "...in Europe and India [the raven's] reputation is entirely negative, being a messenger of ill-omen and death." The campaign is embarked upon. The four X-5s make their way into Manticore without incident, set their explosive charges in the DNA lab, and start back. At this point, Renfro, the new boss, who is onsite, suddenly gets wind of the fact that they have intruders. She sets off the alarm, and the four X-5s are in serious jeopardy. The two new ones have to shoot their way out; Max and Zack get out with less trouble, but... (The charges are set off, and the lab blows up, by the way.) ...Lydecker, in the monitoring van, discovers to his dismay that, unbeknownst to him, a contingent of X-7s (i.e. two generations improved from Max and her "siblings") is still onsite; they're only kids, but it wouldn't be good for the X-5s to tangle with them. Max, escaping through the woods, suddenly comes face to face with an X-7 who appears to be a clone of her younger self; this is every bit as surreal for the viewer as for Max, since "Young Max" (for lack of a better name) is played by the same actor who has played the younger Max in all the many flashbacks all season (including earlier in the episode). "Do you know who I am?" says Max to her younger "self." Young Max doesn't answer, merely raising her pistol (we see her from Max' point of view) and firing. End Act III. As Act IV begins, Max knocks the gun away and she and her "clone" have a fierce hand-to-hand; Zak, coming to look for Max, distracts Young Max, allowing Max to injure her and bring her down; she stares impassively as Max takes her leave with Zak. They and the other two X-5s rendezvous at the van, and the six conspirators make their getaway. Cut to the bar where Max and her work friends, as usual, are hanging out; with them are the other X-5s, getting introduced. Max goes to the bar to order another pitcher of beer, "and another glass of ice water for my friend" (indicating Lydecker, a former alcoholic, who is sitting at a table by himself). Max discusses with an uncharacteristically smiling Zak how they don't have to run anymore. Taking the pitcher back to the table, she leans over to Logan and says, "Let's get out of here." (And I'm thinking, wow, what an unusual thing--a happy ending!) Max and Logan go back to his place, and at long last go to bed together. While they're there...the shadow of the cawing raven passes over them. In distress, Max cries out, "What's happening?!?" as she and Logan look at their hands to see that there's blood on them. BANG! (literally): cut back to the woods at the end of Act III: Young Max shoots Max through the chest. She falls. Young Max stares down at her impassively. Then turns and leaves. Zak, under attack from the other X-7s, takes a bullet in the shoulder and goes down. Logan has lost contact with Max. He goes after her, making his way to where she is lying in the woods. She's still barely alive, tries and fails to tell him something before falling unconscious. Logan weeps over her body. Lydecker comes after Logan, confirms that Max is dead, then has to knock Logan out to get him away to the van. A hospital emergency room. Max is wheeled in on a gurney; so is Zak, with a major shoulder wound. The medtechs work Max over with the electric paddles, but no response: one ventricle has collapsed, she's gone. Renfro, entering, receives this news and asks if any other organs are damaged: no. Zak jumps up from the gurney and grabs Renfro, shouting that here's a heart donor; she quickly points out that only an X-5 heart will do. Zak throws her aside, and, fiercely admonishing Max to promise to fight them, shoots himself in the head and falls across her body. Max wakes up in a hospital bed. Renfro comes in and mock-soothingly gloats over her, making sure Max knows she has Zak's heart transplanted in her, then leaves Max to her despair. Last scene. Many episodes end with Max sitting or standing on the Space Needle, with a voiceover that sums things up to that point; this last time it's Logan, who can't believe Max is gone and feels, somehow, that she's still out there. Blackout. End episode. End season. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 16:17:17 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: da/commentary So what's my point? It strikes me that the =Buffy= and =Dark Angel= finales this season are built from a similar set of elements, principally: - - the apparent death of the central character - - the sacrifice of one sibling's life for another's - - the grief of those left behind and I think =Dark Angel='s works, and =Buffy='s doesn't. The key element of the =Dark Angel= finale obviously is the sleight-of-hand faux happy ending. It's an insidious bait&switch, tantalizing us with a vision of Heaven (on earth) and then blindsiding us with a vision of Hell (on earth). And it plays fair, too, it seems to me: even a frequently-naive viewer like myself (though I was pretty much completely taken in by it) had a few wondering moments--"this is all too easy, rather odd Lydecker being in the bar, Zak smiling and relaxed seems out of character," etc.--but not enough to trip my suspicion alarm. And a brilliant stroke to 1) set up the bird-omen 2) bring it back as the signal the vision was about to end. What is it doing there, story-logicwise? I think it is most easily read as Max's =future= life passing before her eyes: visualizing "how can I disarm my opponent before she shoots me?" and then everything else falling in place like a row of dominoes in her imagination. Brought up short, of course, by her actually being shot. The sibling-sacrifice makes better sense as well: as on =Buffy= (to anticipate the other argument I'm still constructing) there is an original candidate to save a life (Renfro), and then a substitute (Zak); and as in "Graduation Day" (Buffy's blood instead of Faith's) but =not= in "The Gift" (Buffy's blood instead of Dawn's) Zak makes a logical and appropriate sacrifice to supply a heart to transplant into Max. The whole complex of motifs, it seems to me, is somewhat reminiscent of the two "rewind" episodes on =Buffy= ("The Wish," where a vision of Hell rewinds to restore Purgatory--i.e. Life As We Know It) and on =Angel= ("I Will Remember You," where a vision of Heaven--Buffy and Angel Together Forever!--rewinds to Purgatory)... ...and even more reminiscent of 1) "Prophecy Girl" (Max, like Buffy, dies and is brought back to life by technological means) 2) "Becoming" (Max, like Angel, suffers a massive wound and is sent to a kind of Hell) 3) "Graduation Day" (Max, like Faith, suffers a massive wound and winds up sequestered in a hospital) 4) "Restless" (Max has a both summarizing and prefiguring dream-vision) 5) "The Gift" (death, sacrifice, and resurrection). And note that the parallel works =least= well with "The Gift," since it's Zak who is the parallel to Buffy the sacrificer. Another difference among the similarities is that =Dark Angel= takes the situation a step further, i.e. past the "resurrection" step: Max is alive (again? still?) at the end. This =increases= the tension of the situation rather than alleviating it, since she's now "in captivity," and anyone who would want to rescue her is either dead themselves (Zak) or thinks =she='s dead (Logan, principally). It's more of a cliffhanger, intrinsically (i.e. within the discourse of the storytelling, pardon the jargon) than the =Buffy= situation (because Joss Whedon doesn't like that kind of cliffhanger, preferring resolution and closure as much as possible); but it's =less= of a cliffhanger, extrinsically; we've had the most important question (how does Max survive?) answered, and been given the setup for the next season: we know what we're dealing with. Whereas with =Buffy=, it's an =extrinsic= cliffhanger, since however "resolved" Whedon wanted us to think the situation was, we =know= that he's going to resurrect Buffy next season. We just don't know how. And I think that's a weaker position for a show's writers to be in: an extrinsic cliffhanger is even less satisfying than an intrinsic one, to my mind. And an important proviso: even if Joss Whedon has the world's cleverest idea for resurrecting Buffy (and he well may), it's =still= not going to make me buy the way he killed her off. In short, I think the =Dark Angel= finale is thoroughly Whedonesque, and in fact out-Whedons Whedon himself on this particular occasion; the episode, I agree with Meredith, is the best finale I've seen this season, and by itself raises the whole show a notch (just as "Restless" saved =Buffy='s 4th season, and just as, I'm afraid, "The Gift" rather damages the 5th.) I'm not finished with my diatribe (let's call a spade a spade) against "The Gift," but it occurs to me there's a final point I ought to make about this phase of it. The success of the =Dark Angel= finale in comparison to "The Gift" has nothing to do with =Dark Angel= being science fiction and =Buffy= fantasy (i.e. because science fiction is a superior, more logical kind of fantasy). One of my fundamental critical tenets is that fantasy is in every way the equal of any other genre (science fiction or realistic fiction, say), and subject to its own individual internal laws. When I speak of "logic" in relation to storytelling, it's not =scientific= logic; it's what I tend to refer to as the algebra of symbolism. But more of that when I get back to my earlier thoughts on the subject. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V3 #107 *****************************