Food metaphors in 'Unleashed'. AtS 5.03.

[elisi]

This always struck me as a complete stand-alone, with not much to do with the rest of the season (except for introducing Nina, which was of course a Good Thing). Thanks to my AOQ inspired re-watch and yhlee's review I now have some actual thoughts:

The thing is - there is a lot of food in this episode, and a lot of food imagery. It starts off with the team having a picnic (in the park, far away from W&H, hiding from their employees) eating mu shu, and ends with them hanging out in Angel's apartment (looking down on the town, at the center of W&H, above their employees), ordering mu shu. Nice bookending there, straight away. And (shared) food ties in with the 'dinners' in 'Deep Down' and 'Home' - singifying family, closeness etc. And also - I think - mindwipes, fake happiness. Angel has all his friends back, but would they be there without the mindwipe? Fred tries to see if she can spot the Hyperion from Angel's apartment:

FRED (points): Wow, is that the hotel?
WESLEY: Where? No I think that's the Center for Scientology.
FRED (giggles): Oh, right. They look nothing alike at all.

No indeed. Their actual past is nothing like what they remember. It has been replaced with something fake (Scientology), and they can't tell. Nice writing there.

But going back to the food:

NINA: Blood. Jill, my sister, she was cooking meat. Oh, my God. I...I smelled the blood. It was making me...Oh, God, Amanda, my niece.

Because it's always about the blood, isn't it?

"Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead."

There is a *lot* of blood this season. Smelling it:

GUNN: So you what, heard his scream?
SPIKE: He smelled the blood. Nothing grabs a vamp's attention like the ruby red.
'Numero Cinco'

ANDREW: What's it smell like? Blood, I mean?
SPIKE: Oh...metallic, sorta. You ever taste a penny?
'Damage'

Drinking it:

Harmony saying how there's otter in the blood she brings Angel in 'Conviction', Angel pouring himself blood from a crystal decanter in 'Hellbound', Spike pinching Angel's mug in 'Destiny' and pronouncing it to be 'bloody ambrosia', Harmony's blood being spiked in 'Harm's Way', Spike 'tasting' Cordy in 'You're Welcome', Angel turning Lawson in 'Why We Fight', Spike joking about drinking humans halfway through the first act of Les Mis in AHiTW - and of course - Angel spiking Sebassis's slave's blood.
There's probably more, but this is what I could come up with on the spur of the moment.

There's also monsters who devour, some simple, some not:

ANGEL: She's OK, and so's your sister.
NINA: No, you don't get it.
ANGEL: Nina, it's OK.
NINA: No, it's not!
ANGEL: You didn't-
NINA: I wanted to rip her throat out!
ANGEL: It wasn't you. It was that thing inside.

Angel parallel right there - because Angel *did* rip out his sister's throat and devoured his family. No wonder he's trying to distance himself. And - he also cut Connor's throat and devoured him in a different way.

But going back to when Angel first lets Nina out of the cage:

ANGEL: What I'm trying to do, Nina, is help you.
NINA: Said the psycho rapist.

And that is why this show is so great. Because - he was a psycho rapist when he was evil! And now... he has mindraped his friends. Angel's deep in the dark muddled waters.

The diner is of course when taken at face value extremely silly. But - it is a fairly transparent metaphor for vampires, who also eat their victims alive.

ANGEL: Jesus, they garnished you?
NINA: No, get away! Just let them choke on me.

ETA: That - right there - is Angel at W&H. He's being eaten alive and he knows it - he just hopes they'll choke on him!

Just such a wonderful line. There's food lines all the way through, I've only just scratched the surface:

LORNE (notices the bar): Look at this. I'm home! Hey, cosmos all around?

'Home' - mindwipe, a toast to family...

ANGEL: I'm buying.
LORNE: Ladies and gentlemen, hell just froze over.

It's so *wrong* and they can't see it. All their problems hidden beneath a spell. If it seems too good to be true, then that's because it is:

FRED(to phone): We moved, actually, to a law firm. Uh-huh. Different. No, nice. OK, um... one mu shu chicken, two beef and broccolis, one cashew shrimp ... umm maybe some lettuce wraps...

No. *Not* nice. Dear Fred, you'll be devoured and eaten up. Because of course the main food metaphor of all of them came in the previous episode:

Spike: I know you, Angel. What do you think you're doing? Made some devil's bargain to take over this company. Thought you'd use it to fight the evil of the world from inside the belly of the beast. Trouble is you're too busy fighting to see you and yours are getting digested.
'Just Rewards'

And he's right. Of course he's right. And - Angel knows it:

LILAH: People don't need an unyielding champion. They need a man who knows the value of compromise and how to beat the system from inside the belly of the beast.
ANGEL: The beast's belly? Doesn't that usually mean you've been eaten?

And straight away we see the bind that Angel's in, and that he now can't get out of. (Essay on Spike & Angel coming on Monday...)