Jasmine Jingoism

I finished watching Angel, season four a couple days ago. The second half of the season is much better than the first half, and much better than I remembered. The first time I watched it, I remember not liking Jasmine, the villain played by Gina Torres, and I really hated Connor, Angel's son played by Vincent Kartheiser. I'm not sure who more deserves to be called "The Wesley Crusher of the Buffy-verse", Connor or Dawn. I feel kind of bad saying that since Michelle Trachtenberg passed away. Well, you know, on my recent rewatch I was impressed how well the initial Dawn stories conveyed a credible relationship between sisters. Dawn had a very credible mixture of resentment and admiration for her older sister. So, yeah, I'll call Connor the Wesley Crusher of the Buffy-verse, though I don't find him as annoying as I used to and it's effectively tragic how he continues to worship Jasmine even when he's unaffected by the charm spell she uses to keep the world enslaved.

Angel season 4 always seemed like Joss Whedon's dry run for The Avengers. Loki in the first Avengers movie, which Whedon went on to write and direct not long after Angel, had the same argument Jasmine has in the penultimate episode of Angel season four. Which is that, as bad as she is, in the long term, fewer people die. With everyone forced to be her cheerful minions, there's no chance for the routine massacres that occur between humans. The price is just that she eats a dozen or so people a week. Oh, and free will, of course. People lose that. But not Connor, the dumb bootlicker.

Fallout season 2 just posed the same question. Is free will really worth it when it means lots of people inevitably die? Would life truly not be worthwhile if we didn't have choice? Angel doesn't really provide a final answer to the question but it's more satisfying in its ambiguity than the Fallout series was. Things get even murkier when Angel and his crew take over the evil law firm of Wolfram and Hart with the aim of bending the considerable powers of evil to the effecting of good deeds. Season four ends with a big moral question and season five takes over with an unrelenting moral challenge. I still think season five is the best thing Joss Whedon has ever made and I'm looking forward to watching it again.

The question may be a moot point considering absolute power is only truly attainable in fantasy. There's always a revolution ready to go, always someone who holds a contrary view to the wouldbe god. The decisive battle only lasts until the question inevitably comes back to the floor. Jasmine's own defeat is perhaps the best counterargument.