![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznetti...or the difference between being number five and number one.
Numero Cinco is not an analogy for Angel on one important point: he was alway one of a team of five heroes. Five equal heroes, it seems. Angel has always been alone, even when he had the AI team backing him up: it's always been about Angel, the hero, the champion. He wants a family, but he doesn't want a family of equals, or at least he doesn't want men who are his equals. I think there's something different in his romantic relationships with women, which are much more egalitarian: Darla, Buffy and Cordelia were all, in their own way, a match for him.
Angel's solitude is particularly clear this season because he's struggling under a burden of memory which is his alone. It's hardly surprising that it's in the middle of this episode, after the story of the brothers, that he reaches out to the character who has come closest to that fraternal relationship. But Angel's attempt to make himself less solitary only exposed the truth of the matter: there is no chance that Wesley will ever be able to play the role of supportive younger brother again, now that Angel has ironically enough made it inevitable that he'll rediscover his memories. That moment of recognition--that Wesley is a person to whom Angel could speak--ruled out any further rapprochement between them.
Having written that "never": are there odds on Wesley making it out of the season alive?
But Angel needs someone to whom he can unburden himself. Which brings us to Spike, because Spike is the best possible equal for Angel at this point. Another souled vampire, another champion: if they can get over the father/son thing, Spike is the companion Angel needs. And Angel needs to learn to see Spike as a person in his own right, rather than another unwanted appendage. Angel's language to Spike is all about what's "his": he needs to get over the fear that Spike will take something from him (if that's what it is--fear feels too strong a word, actually) and see the world, the mission, as something they share. This is the thing I tried to express in my last post about Angel's problem seeing other people as people--he was trying with Wesley, but he has a chance of success with Spike.
See, everyone gets some character development this way. Except Gunn, who needs a plot of his own, since he doesn't have that need to belong which defines Angel, Spike and Wesley. Gunn already knows that he belongs.
Numero Cinco is not an analogy for Angel on one important point: he was alway one of a team of five heroes. Five equal heroes, it seems. Angel has always been alone, even when he had the AI team backing him up: it's always been about Angel, the hero, the champion. He wants a family, but he doesn't want a family of equals, or at least he doesn't want men who are his equals. I think there's something different in his romantic relationships with women, which are much more egalitarian: Darla, Buffy and Cordelia were all, in their own way, a match for him.
Angel's solitude is particularly clear this season because he's struggling under a burden of memory which is his alone. It's hardly surprising that it's in the middle of this episode, after the story of the brothers, that he reaches out to the character who has come closest to that fraternal relationship. But Angel's attempt to make himself less solitary only exposed the truth of the matter: there is no chance that Wesley will ever be able to play the role of supportive younger brother again, now that Angel has ironically enough made it inevitable that he'll rediscover his memories. That moment of recognition--that Wesley is a person to whom Angel could speak--ruled out any further rapprochement between them.
Having written that "never": are there odds on Wesley making it out of the season alive?
But Angel needs someone to whom he can unburden himself. Which brings us to Spike, because Spike is the best possible equal for Angel at this point. Another souled vampire, another champion: if they can get over the father/son thing, Spike is the companion Angel needs. And Angel needs to learn to see Spike as a person in his own right, rather than another unwanted appendage. Angel's language to Spike is all about what's "his": he needs to get over the fear that Spike will take something from him (if that's what it is--fear feels too strong a word, actually) and see the world, the mission, as something they share. This is the thing I tried to express in my last post about Angel's problem seeing other people as people--he was trying with Wesley, but he has a chance of success with Spike.
See, everyone gets some character development this way. Except Gunn, who needs a plot of his own, since he doesn't have that need to belong which defines Angel, Spike and Wesley. Gunn already knows that he belongs.
