5.14--Smile Time: Muppet Madness
Writers: Joss Whedon and Ben Edlund     Director: Ben Edlund

OK, to get the obvious out of the way, first thing: this episode was funny! Fall down on the floor, frighten the cats, snort beverage through nose funny. Merely listing some of the most hysterical moments (courtesy of Lola M., who somehow managed to keep from snickering while typing, as I could not):

But although about children and screamingly funny, this episode was definitely not for children. All its elements--the language, the story, the meanings and unusually overt metatext--are not merely sober but disquieting, from the first orgasmic puppet-child interaction to the fade-out Fred/Wesley kissage. Enough so to have merited a parental warning far more than did story-appropriate Nekkid!Spike in “Hellbound.”


The Children

The child/children’s programming element of this episode can be interpreted a number of different ways, all justified.

Most harmlessly, it can be viewed as a riff on Anya’s bunny fears: Children’s TV isn’t cute and sweet, like everyone supposes.

It can be read as mild criticism of parental neglect, using TV as a babysitter and not regulating or restricting what messages TV as a whole puts into their children’s uncritical minds.

Given that the puppets are in fact demons, it conveys the message that TV battens on and destroys children’s innocence in a particularly nasty way under the guise of entertaining them/making them happy: puppet Polo’s interaction, in the opening sequence, with Tommy, with its insistence on Tommy touching the screen (skin to skin/felt contact) and combination of orgasmic cries and sated satisfaction from Polo and Tommy’s visible depletion and exhaustion/coma, and fixed, rictus, unchildlike smile, is very sexual and unsettling. The final FG invasion of the TV studio and “murder” of the puppets, while the indifferent camera crew looks on, filming and broadcasting it all live, is as violent as last season’s battle of the Fang Gang against the Beast. So what do we have? Sex and violence…targeted at children and gleefully exploited.


The Metatext

Gunn reports that the puppet maker, Gregor Framkin (played by longtime Jossverse writer David Fury, who must have a robust sense of humor, to play a puppet’s puppet!), signed a contract with Evil when his show’s ratings put it in danger of cancellation at the end of the previous season. The result of that bargain was much better ratings, but also invasion and occupation by demonic puppets who proceeded to change the content and purpose of the show beyond all recognition, enslave Framkin himself, relegating him to faceless servitude (towel over face), and eventually to dispose of him when they no longer needed him to front for them in public, the better to pursue their aim--sucking out all that was valuable in their audience and selling it to the highest bidder in Hell.

Last year, Angel the Series was in danger of cancellation. Auteur Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy were reportedly given another year’s renewal on condition that certain cast changes be made (nuff said), that the series be given a different direction (more stand-alone, Monster of the Week episodes, less focus on continuing story arcs), and that it have a lighter, less gloomy look and tone (suddenly we have necro-tempered glass, allowing more economical daytime filming, more storylines confined to a single set, more human-appearing or robotic antagonists, fewer expensive CGI vamp dustings). Hence, the Wolfram and Hart storyline and the series as we now know it. And ratings have been up.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of these restrictions as reported and gossiped about in the media and within the fandom; we’ve all certainly noticed that the gloom of shooting and of emotion hasn’t much lightened; and the series is as arc-based as ever. So I’m not presenting the above summary of the interactions between The Frog and Mutant Enemy as fact, merely as widespread rumor. Nevertheless, the parallels between the perceived public rendition of the “new direction” required by these interactions and Framkin’s downfall through making “a deal with the devil” are too many and too apparent to be accidental. Whether literally accurate or not, this episode is a savage parody of the process of “playing nice” with the malign forces which hold power over creative endeavor.

That “Smile Time” chances to be the first episode to air following the announced cancellation of the series at the end of this season--at least on the WB--only adds an even bleaker, more ironic layer to this heartfelt satire.


Heart-felty Angel

This episode largely turns on Angel’s being turned into a puppet. Angel’s being a puppet, and people suffering a loss of identity/purpose, losing the capacity for effective action, has been one of the running themes is nearly all the episodes of this season. We have a Necromancer who controls Angel’s will and intends to set another intelligence in his emptied body. We have a werewolf in danger of becoming dinner. We have cyborgs (Roger Wyndam-Pryce says of Angel, “He’s a puppet. He always has been. To the Powers That Be--to Wolfram & Hart.”). We have Spike’s helpless ghost-state, his becoming Lindsey/“Doyle’s” figurative puppet, and his loss of his hands/arms prefigured in “Hellbound” and becoming fact in “Damage.” That Angel’s a funny puppet doesn’t change the seriousness of this metaphor.

And yet, there’s irony here. As an actual puppet, Angel’s brooding constraint is set aside because puppets are by definition extroverted: they show everything they feel. As Wes deduces, observing Puppet!Angel, in being puppetized, Angel has kept his own nature but acquired the emotional volatility of a puppet. So in becoming a puppet, Angel is open and frank and vulnerable as never before. He speaks out and acts out his emotions. When frightened, Puppet!Angel hides under the desk in fear of rejection and humiliation from hopefully amorous Nina, as contrasted with his stoic retreat from her romantic overtures when still unfelted, earlier in the episode. When enraged by Spike’s unfettered glee, Puppet!Angel leaps and pounds on him despite the whole watching Wolfram and Hart world, himself disclosing the secret he wanted so desperately to keep, and afterward sullenly facing out their consequent amusement and (silent) ridicule. When moved by the offer of support, Puppet!Angel impulsively hugs Fred without worrying how silly he looks doing it.

And because puppets (Muppet-type puppets, anyway) are intrinsically cute as well as emotionally open, others open to him in a fashion they normally wouldn’t; in a way Angel would not normally allow. Immediately captured by his cuteness, Fred can’t help saying so and even trying to pet him, in a way that would normally have gotten her fired (fortunately, empty blustering here). Seeing him for the first time, Spike can’t help blurting with entire glee, “You’re a wee little puppet man!” and even repeats it, renewing the fight, when nobody else wants to declare in public the equivalent of shouting that the Emperor has no clothes. Spike speaks the uncomfortable truth, straight-out, as always. Spike is not PC and seldom self-repressed. And werewolf Nina both prompts Puppet!Angel to open up to her and reacts to his humiliating, undignified transformation with sympathy and acceptance, her offer of companionship and maybe more--maybe breakfast!--unchanged. Nina understands about transformations. Of course she also tries to eat him and knocks a good part of his stuffing out, but Angel always was a bit of a stuffed shirt, so maybe that’s just what he needed.

Part of Angel’s raw, gut-deep antipathy toward Spike is because of all things, Angel can’t bear to be laughed at; and Spike can’t help finding Angel’s glum pretensions rather ridiculous. But in surrendering those pretensions and his massive self-absorption, Angel becomes vastly more loveable…and perhaps can finally accept love in return, even if it falls safely short of “perfect happiness.” Two breakfasts coming up!


Gunn, and self-esteem

As we’d suspected, Gunn’s brain-upgrade is wearing off. Intensely dislikable Dr. Sparrow confirms Gunn’s worst fears: the “imprint” is fading, and Gunn’s neural pathways have almost completely reverted to normal. Dr. Sparrow then cruelly specifies what he considers that “normal” to be--what Gunn really is: “The ignorant street muscle, the high school dropout.” That, and no more. Someone he usually wouldn’t bother dealing with, either personally or professionally. Someone utterly beneath his notice…except with a hefty influx of cash or an equivalently large and nefarious favor.

Sparrow conjectures that the Senior Partners gave Gunn only a temporary upgrade so that he’d come to value it, depend upon it…and then lose it. Deliberately addicting him to the easily-implanted and easily accessed knowledge, then withdrawing it to have a hold over him and leverage to force him into a more permanent bargain that will commit Gunn to them…eternally.

Acute “Flowers for Algernon” syndrome, indeed!

Like Angel, Gunn is appalled by the notion of shedding all that gives him value in his own and others’ eyes. Unlike Angel, Gunn can’t let go of his pretensions and accept or assert the worthiness of who he really is, stripped of those pretensions.

The bargain Sparrow offers is a little greasing of the wheels for a shipment, an artifact, an ancient curio currently stalled in customs. At first, Gunn indignantly declines. However, faced with the seemingly absolute choice between what he believes he once was and the glib, uniquely knowledgeable, high-powered lawyer he’s now become, Gunn’s resolve visibly weakens. When next we see him, he’s spouting arcane chapter and verse of demonic law, as before. So we must conclude that like Gregor Framkin, Gunn has made a devil’s bargain--as Angel once did, doubtless recorded in the Library of Demonic Congress (which designation makes it sound much more unwholesome than the Library of Congress!) which Gunn has just been poking through with his freshly shrewd lawyer’s eye for vulnerability and dire skeletons hidden in closets less discoverably than Angel might think.

Dangerous knowledge always comes at a huge price unknowable beforehand, without that knowledge. Gunn has wholly bitten into the apple Eve initially offered; dreadful things will doubtless result. It’s not only children’s innocence that’s being sucked in this episode. Whatever innocence remained in the man who once sold his soul for a truck is now exhausted and gone.


Blind, insightful Wesley

In his conversation with Angel (before Angel’s puppetization), Wesley shows he has an excellent grasp of the signals Nina has been putting out and of Angel’s refusal to either acknowledge or respond to them. Nina’s mode of dress, when she comes to W&H for her retreat during her monthly werewolf cycle, has been an open, sincere romantic overture toward Angel. Everybody has noticed and understood it--everybody but Angel. Wes has this on the best authority: the office’s womenfolk, who are unerring in spotting and interpreting such things. Wesley sees the signals, trusts the women’s judgment, and imparts this clearly and truthfully to Angel: Nina is attracted to Angel and would like to become closer to him. Wes gives Angel true information and excellent advice: that life is not all or nothing for Angel, in terms of an intimate relationship. It’s not a choice between perfect happiness (resulting in the release of Angelus and much following awfulness to those Angel most cares about) on the one hand and isolation, loneliness, and determined celibacy on the other. There are the counter-examples of Darla and even Eve. No soul-lossage from either of those encounters. And Angel listens and is persuaded by Wesley’s logic about emotion. Angel’s just too scared to do anything about it until puppethood erodes his monumental inhibitions.

Why then is Wesley so insightful about Angel and so blind to the signals Fred is manifestly waving in his direction? For one thing, it’s always easier to be smart about others’ emotions than about one’s one. For another, Wes has been burned too often: loving Fred from afar, hoping she reciprocates his feeling, and starting to make a move, only to find Fred oblivious and romantically fixated on someone else. First, it was Angel. Then it was Gunn. Most recently, it’s been Knox, as in the painfully understated scene in “Life of the Party,” when magically drunk, Fred wanted to confide in him…about Knox, and Wes again gulped down his hopes and again accepted Fred’s reducing him to a dear, close, platonic friend she wouldn’t dream of dating.

It would seem Wes’ apparent willingness to kill his own father to protect her, in “Lineage,” has finally opened Fred’s eyes to the actual situation, vis a vis Wesley. And she’s liked what she’s seen. She has gently but firmly disengaged from Knox, who’s now trying, not very subtly, to woo her back, with his attentions, belated Valentine’s Day cards, and twin cups of coffee (blatantly treating Wes as though he doesn’t exist) that Fred unselfconsciously shares with Wesley, neither of them really noticing how comfortable and casually intimate such sharing shows them to be, to the discomfited Knox. Finally, like Angel (and Gunn), Wesley lacks self-esteem. Instances showing this, through the whole of the series, are too numerous to need mentioning. And healthy self-esteem is one of this episode’s drums-banging, banners-waving themes…literally, since it has a theme song…repeated nearly ad nauseum. Unsure of himself, Wes needs some overt signal he can’t rationalize away (as he does Fred’s hint that he drive her home--he just treats her as a fellow employee with a minor difficulty about a car, and his solution…a different car) or misinterpret. What he needs is a kiss. And Fred gives him one. Once Wes is certain he’s wanted, it’s all good from then on…at least until next week.

Hoping that you’ll support one or more of the many “Save Angel” campaigns now running full-throttle, I leave you with a thought from Official Bloody Awful Poet Diane U.:

Felty Angel is so sweet
retracting fangs are also neat
Going gameface is even neater
When you find you're still the leader
Two feet tall is not so sad
Knowing you're the biggest bad
So the nose comes off, but please
He'll be death to Evil's knees!

Nan Dibble
2/19/04
Acknowledgement: As always, I am indebted for the gladly shared insights, wit, and general snarkiness of my fellow S’cubies: the members of the Soulful Spike Society, this week celebrating BeccaElizabeth, Lola M., Diane, and the letters S O S.


MISCELLANEOUS  




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