EPISODE 4.18

SHINY, HAPPY PEOPLE

Written by: Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft

Directed by: Marita Grabiak

Shiny Happy People

R.E.M. is a band known for songs that are deep, meaningful and often sad.  Indeed their songs were sometimes more unkindly characterized as obscure, morbid and depressing.  Good examples of these are “Everybody Hurts” and “Losing My Religion”.  The former tells people that they are not alone in their suffering and that there is hope if they just stick with it.  The latter has been the subject of many an argument with various different interpretations being put forward about its meaning.  These include obsessive love and a desire for privacy. But the title alone suggests someone at the end of his tether.  “Shiny, Happy People” is just the opposite of songs like these.  It is about people who are so positively happy that they seem to be shining.  And there is really no depth to it at all.  It seems to say: this is just a really happy song.  And so long as you’re happy who cares about anything else?  It is such an obvious contrast to R.E.M.’s other songs that a lot of people claim to detect a note of sarcasm in it.  They suggest that the band were so tired of everyone saying how dark and depressing their songs were that they wrote this one just to be smart asses.  Indeed I think Michael Snipe once said that “Shiny, Happy People” had no redeeming value and he wasn’t proud of it.  Be that as it may, there is very little doubt but that the song and its lyrics have no plot and no meaning.  It’s just full of empty, stupid (in the sense of careless or lacking in thought) fun.  And in the way that the title to this episode reflects the title to the REM song, we get a clear hint of what the episode is all about.

But to understand more clearly why “Shiny, Happy People” is so appropriate to the events of this episode we must first look at the way Angel and various other people felt before Jasmine’s arrival. 

Jasmine: “And I can feel all of it: the cold floor, the air, this skin. Everything is perfect.”

Angel: “No, it's not. I came here to kill you. I should be punished.”

Jasmine: “Angel, I can feel your suffering, but now that suffering is going to end.”

Here I don’t think that Jasmine was talking about the regret that Angel now felt for trying to kill her.  I think she meant the general suffering of his life, especially the way he has to endure not only the painful memories of his murderous past but also the scars of all the battle he has had to fight since coming to LA.  As the episode opens he has just become aware that his teenage son has helped in the murder of an innocent girl and that the woman he loved has become a vegetable.  As for Connor, he had long a standing animosity towards his father.  He had felt bereft of a family.  He had been conflicted in the obligations he felt towards Cordelia and their child on the one hand and the loyalty he felt to his friends on the other.  He had doubts about the things that Cordelia had asked him to do.  And he was tortured by having to choose between her and Darla and by the fact that the choice he made involved the sacrifice of the girl.  Wesley, Fred and Gunn also have each had more than their own fair share of sorrows.   Jasmine says as much to them:

“For so long, you've all been drowning in the fighting and the pain.”

But it’s not only the particular burden that this small group has to bear that is relevant.  When, after the fight in the Bowling Alley, Jasmine arrives at an outside café, one woman seems to speak for the rest when she says:

“All my life, so empty.”

And, at the very end of the episode, when Fred is moping into her breakfast we see the following exchange:

Guy: “Looks like you just lost your best friend. “

Fred: “All of them. I never thought…”

Guy: “Yeah, well, that's life in the big city.”

Indeed that does seem to be the human condition as it is portrayed for the purposes of this episode – unhappiness, emptiness and loss.  And it is the effect that Jasmine has on these feelings that is the focus of “Shiny, Happy People.”  She transforms the lives of all who come into contact with her.  We start of course with Angel and Connor:

Gunn: “Hope this thing's easier to kill than the Beast.”

Connor: “Kill? No. No killing.”

Gunn: “Since when?"

Angel: “Since we've all been saved.”

Fred: “Oh, well, that's, uh, crazy talk.”

Angel: “They don't understand.”

Connor: “No.”

Angel: “We don't want to kill her. We just want to find her so we can worship her. That's all.”

For both of them, all of their sorrows and feelings of hurt and loss are wiped away.  And soon all the weary struggles and petty jealousies and animosities of the other members of Angel Investigations   vanish as well.  The effect that Jasmine has  is best exemplified not so much by the advice she gives to Wesley and Gunn about Fred:

“You love her very much—both of you. Don't you see? You both have the same love. That should bring you closer together, not drive you apart.”

as the fact that they heed that advice.  This is indeed a remarkable transformation in their attitude given their long-standing rivalry over her.  Then in the outdoor café, the woman who complained of being empty added:

“That’s all over now, isn’t it?”

And by the general reaction to Jasmine we can tell that her feelings on this score are shared by (almost) everyone else.  Later still when Jasmine goes for a walk outside the Hyperion, an excited crowd follows her back to the hotel:

Girl 1: “I've never seen you like this.”

Girl 2: “I'm telling you, you have to meet her. Come on.”

And the final scene in the episode is, of course, of Fred fleeing all alone as everyone within reach of a television kneels in silent adoration, equally in thrall to Jasmine’s influence.  Jasmine herself described her mission in the following terms:

"Evil will be banished by the deeds we will do, Angel. Even the evil that's inside of you. That too will be gone, and all that will be  left is the beauty."

On the face of it, this is precisely what is starting to happen.  Then you have to add to this the peace of mind that Jasmine seems to bring to everyone she meets as well.  Is this not a pretty strong case in favor of Jasmine’s influence?  Local officials have one explanation for peace returning to the city:

“After several weeks of sky-rocketing homicide rates, finally this week a dramatic decrease in southland murders. The Sheriff's Department spokesman attributes the drop to their new "Tough on Crime" policy instituted last month.”

Lorne has a very different one:

“A little "Credit for the Divinity Behind the Scenes" policy wouldn't suck.”

Beauty, Truth and Harmony

 The unhappiness and strife within Angel Investigations had led not only to a great deal of misery for its members but more particularly to a series of spectacularly bad judgments.  And those misjudgments had disastrous consequences for members of the team and for a lot of other people too.  Aren’t the members of Angel Investigations better off now that their unhappiness is a thing of the past?  Do we not see this from the fact that they now work together like a well-oiled machine to rid LA of its invaders – something they have been too distracted to do until now. And the result of their combined efforts is pretty dramatic. The question we are invited to ask here is: is this not all to the good?

Well, no it isn’t.  And here we come back to the song “Shiny, Happy People”. As we have seen, that song seems to suggest that the feeling of happiness we see in its lyrics is superficial and meaningless.  And a closer analysis of what actually happened in this episode will show that the same is true of the feeling of happiness and togetherness engendered by Jasmine.  When Wesley first sees the effect that Jasmine has on Angel and Connor, he says:

“It's a spell. Think. Even before its birth, this thing controlled Cordelia, caused her to do unspeakable things. It's evil. Remember the Rain of Fire, permanent midnight, all the horrors done in its name…”

But he is then cut off by Jasmine and he too falls under her spell this unnatural happiness.  As Jasmine tells the admiring crowd at the outdoor café:

“I've come here for you to bring you the gift of peace. You will be freed from the pains you've suffered. The world will change forever, and you will know the power of my love. The chaos will fade, and harmony will reign.”

And Angel himself talks of his happiness in the following terms:

“Sometimes, when I look in her eyes, I've seen it too. It's overwhelming. The lies, the deceit...just melts away. Nothing left but the beauty.”

In other words for all of these individuals, while they are under her spell, Jasmine is love, harmony, beauty and truth.  She defines goodness.  When Angel first refers to her he says that they are all saved because of her.  Indeed the jasmine flower is the Hindu symbol for love.  It is because her acolytes believe that this is who and what she is that they are happy  and more importantly that define their own moral view of the world by reference to one thing and one thing only  - how does it relate to Jasmine?

And that is important because, in reality, she is the opposite of the harmony, truth and beauty everyone identifies her with.   Fred describes her real face, the one she keeps hidden:

“Her face—it's horrible, isn't it? Decaying, blood, things living there.”

But that ugliness is only symbolic of the deeper lie that she represents.  When Angel tried to interrupt Jasmine’s birth, he arrived on a scene where Cordelia had killed an innocent girl and Connor had co-operated with her. But under her influence all of  that is forgotten.

Cordelia herself had been controlled and exploited, then left a mindless vegetable.  How did Jasmine refer to this:

“Cordelia, thank you for protecting me and nourishing me. Your spirit has been my shelter, but you can rest peacefully now. I'm here.”

“Rest peacefully”, now there’s a euphemism for you – words intended to distort the real meaning of what was happening.  But then Jasmine and those in her thrall inhabit a world where euphemisms are necessary to cover up unpleasant reality.  The “unspeakable things” Wesley referred to earlier now become:

“All the events we've witnesses these past months, all the madness, it was birth pangs.”

When the Beast arrives it slaughtered dozens of innocent people to create the rain of fire.  When it blotted out the sun LA was overrun by vampires who went of a killing spree.  How could the author of this chaos and destruction be an instrument of harmony?  And then of course there was John Stoller, the young guy who first saw Jasmine’s true face.  She touches his face with an expression of sympathy and encourages Wesley to call an ambulance.  But underneath the façade of compassion, the reality was that she disfigured the part of his face that she touched.

Time and time again there is a divergence between the reality that actually means something (the pain and suffering that Jasmine caused in the world) and the world that Jasmine’s acolytes inhabit where all that matters is the happiness that people feel because of Jasmine; the happiness built on a lie.  The R.E.M. song asks, if people are happy why care about anything else?  In this episode we are given the answer.  Whatever happiness Jasmine brings is grounded not in goodness, beauty, truth, harmony or anything else real and meaningful.  Rather it is grounded solely in people doing what Jasmine wants. Jasmine was on Earth to take control of things.  She explains her origin in the following terms:

Jasmine: “In the beginning, before the time of man, great beings walked the earth. Untold power emanated from all quarters—the seeds of what would come to be known as good and evil. But the shadows stretched and became darkness, and the malevolent among us grew stronger. The earth became a demon realm. Those of us who had the will to resist left this place, but we remained ever-watchful.”

Gunn: “You're a power that... was?”

Jasmine: “But then something new emerged from deep inside the earth—neither demon, nor God.”

Wesley: “Man.”

Jasmine: “And it seemed, for a time, that through this new race, a balance might be restored.”

Fred: “Guess we really let you down.”

Jasmine: “But you didn't. It was we who failed you. We became little more than observers. I could no longer bear to just watch all the suffering. I had to find a way back.”

Faith, loyalty and obedience to her was all that she wanted.  We see this even in the newly found unity, purpose and commitment that she brings to Angel, Wesley, Gunn and Connor.  Why did they hunt the vampires and clean out LA.?  Was it because it was the right thing to do?  No, it was simply because they wanted to serve her.  And that is no substitute for their real mission, even if (as events of season 4 showed) they get distracted from that mission from time to time or even if their ability to pursue it is compromised by personal agendas and squabbles.  How do we know this?  The answer comes at the end when Fred tries to kill Jasmine and fails.  The fact is greeted by general disbelief:

Wesley: “I can't believe Fred's evil.”

As well as a considerable amount of sadness:

Angel: “She was acting weird earlier, and I just thought it was Fred being Fred.”

And from this you can see the genuine affection both Angel and Wesley have for Fred.  And of course we had already been reminded of how much Wesley and Gunn love her.  But none of this now matters.  Fred had tried to kill Jasmine and that meant only one thing:

Angel: “We have to kill her. There's no other way.”

Wesley: “As long as she's out there, she's a threat.”

“Good” and “evil” have no objective meaning.  “Good” is what serves and protects Jasmine.  “Evil” is whatever opposes her.  For Angel Investigations going after Fred is no different to going after the vampires in the bowling alley.  In both cases they were carrying out Jasmine’s will and that was all there was to it.

The Problem of Faith

This episode, therefore, is really about the problem of faith; or rather a particular problem with faith.  Faith simply means trust or belief.  We all need faith in our lives – faith that the government and legal system will continue to operate, the economy will remain stable and that vital services like healthcare will be provided when we need them.  Unless we have that sort of faith we could not conduct our day to day lives: to plan, make decisions and act upon them.  But this is faith based on experience, knowledge and logic.  Faith can also transcend all of these things.  We know that governments can be self-serving and ineffective, that the legal system can be rigid, weak, arbitrary or slow, that the economy can boom and bust, that healthcare is expensive or fallible.  We can therefore feel betrayed by our faith in these.  But a transcendent faith starts with all the shortcomings of human beings, their institutions and society and offers hope nonetheless.  Here then is relief of our human infirmities.  Here is a hope for the salvation of mankind, achievable only by those who discover their true purpose – a purpose which is revealed as each of us works together for good of all.  Here is a belief in something that wipes away all of a person’s former cares and worries and replaces it with something that gives him or her life its meaning and purpose.  And because of that belief people are perfectly willing to accept anything that needs to be done in its name.  It doesn’t matter who gets hurt or what gets lost, if it is necessary to serve and protect your faith then you will not so much overlook the harm as enthusiastically embrace it.  After all what we are talking about here are  absolutes: concepts of good and truth that are rooted in human nature and which are objective and inviolable demands of a universal moral order.  And it is the nature of a moral absolute that everything else is subject to it.

The obvious examples of such an approach are, of course, to be found in religion.  Because the Cathars of mediaeval Europe rejected the priesthood and sacraments of the Catholic Church it launched a crusade against them which effectively amounted to an early form of genocide.  In the name of their own concept of God, Cromwell’s Major-Generals enforced a strict puritan morality in England and Parliamentary forces conducted savage repression of the Catholic Irish in the mid-17^th century.  And in our own time Moslems crashed passenger jets into the Twin Towers because they thought that was the will of Allah.  But faith of this nature isn’t simply a religious phenomenon. Madame Roland was a French revolutionary and leading light in the Girondist party.  When that party fell because it was deemed by left-wing idealogues to be working against the interests of the people, she was executed and as she walked to the Guillotine she is reported to have cried:

            “O Liberty what crimes are committed in thy name.”

In the last century local communist officials in the Soviet Union also in the name of the people and to advance communist dogma brutally enforced the collectivization of agriculture by mass executions and deportations. 

Jasmine too, as we have seen, represents just such a moral absolute and like the other examples given she too justifies suffering and death as being necessary first of all to bring herself into the world and then to keep her safe.  After all it is only under those conditions that she can achieve the good that her acolytes believe she will.

But as we have also seen, this is a claim that the writers, I think, very successfully undermine by showing its internal contradictions and the lies on which it is based.  Jasmine defines her purpose as freeing people from pain and suffering and promoting harmony instead of chaos.  And her physical appearance clearly also plays a major part in her appeal – hence, for example, Angel’s reference to her beauty.  There is nothing in any of her claims which covers issues which human senses, logic and reason cannot fully address.  Faith in Jasmine ought therefore to be transparent to human rationality just as for example the ideals of the French Revolution or Russian Communism were.  And when we see a casual disregard for ordinary human beings in the Rain of Fire, the blotting out of the sun, the return of Angelus or the way Cordelia was discarded, logic and reason dictate that Jasmine has no great respect or love for people.  How then can she claim to hold out hope for their salvation or happiness?  How can she say that she wants to promote harmony when she breaks up friendships?  How can she maintain she wants to destroy chaos when she doesn’t distinguish between Fred and vampires but holds them equally evil?  And when we see that Jasmine’s appeal lies in a deception about her real appearance, logic and reason tells us we cannot trust anything about her.  Logic and reason, therefore, reveal the truth about Jasmine just as it revealed the truth about a Revolution that extolled the virtues of fraternity but was rent by a murderous factionalism or about a system that claimed to defend the interest of ordinary Russian workers even as it declared war on a large proportion of them.

To the extent therefore that “Shiny, Happy People” was intended to argue that truth should be determined by reason and factual analysis rather than faith, it succeeded very well in the limited terms that it set itself.  And in this context it also, incidentally, made a case in favor of free will.  There is one enormous difference between France of the Terror or Stalinist Russia and Jasmine’s LA.  In the last of these, people had no free will.  They were under her spell.  In the case of the other societies people did make their own choices.  The problem was that too often too many made the wrong ones.  But in LA we have no reason to believe that, given free will, Angel and the others would make a similar mistake.  Indeed Fred’s reaction when she finally understands the truth demonstrates as much.  Free will does not therefore guarantee people will do the right thing.  But it is a necessary pre-requisite for them to be able to determine what the right thing is by reason and factual analysis.

Having said that, there is quite a lot of religious imagery used in the episode.  Angel describes Jasmine as "saving" them. He also says she is deserving of worship. There are a number of references to her as a divinity and the reaction of most people when they first encounter her is to kneel in adoration.   Then the conversation between Fred and John Stoller takes on a decidedly religious character when they discuss how Fred should react to the discovery that Jasmine was not what she claimed:

Stoller: "You've been called too."

Fred: "Called?"

Stoller: "Called. To the mission."

It is, of course, all too often the case that those with  religious belief characterize those not sharing it as heretics who must be fought because they are a threat to the truth.  Perhaps the funniest religious joke ever illustrates the point:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: "Stop. Don't do it."

"Why shouldn't I?" he asked.

"Well, there's so much to live for!"

"Like what?"

"Are you religious?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Me too. Are you Christian, Jewish, Moslem or Buddhist?"

"Christian."

"Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"Me too. Are you Episcopalian, Methodist or Baptist?"

"Baptist."

"Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

"Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

He said: "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915."

I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off.

So, by using concepts such as a calling or mission with their religious overtones the writers are suggesting a war between competing religions.  Now, if the aim of "Shiny Happy People" was to attack the concept of faith itself or to show that faith was necessarily inimical to human rationality or free will, this episode failed.  It failed first because faith covers matters which rationality and factual analysis is inherently incapable of addressing but which are (or at least may well be) real nonetheless.  Take the religious beliefs that grounded the cruelties I mentioned earlier.  You cannot by reason and factual analysis demonstrate the truth or falsity of the proposition that there is a blissful eternal life, that that eternal life is reserved only for those who do the will of God or that the will of God demands that we follow certain beliefs and actions.  But if you start off from the proposition that all of the forgoing is true, then logically any amount of suffering on Earth can be justified on the grounds that it promotes the salvation of more human beings.  The fundamentals of the religious beliefs just described all dictate that what happens here on a temporary and imperfect Earth is nothing compared to the eternal and perfect afterlife.   On the other hand most Religions in interpreting the faith bring reason to bear.  So, nowadays for every fanatic who thinks that you serve God by killing the innocent, there are far greater numbers of people who  reach startling different and more humane conclusions about what faith will and will not justify.  Among these people there will be greater recognition of different valid paths to God, less willingness to put absolute trust in leaders, more belief in the inherent goodness of the intent of others.  And in many of these approaches human rationality will play its part in interpreting the requirements of faith.  There is therefore no necessary contradiction between faith on the one hand and rationality on the other.  Nor is there any such contradiction between faith on the one hand and free will on the other.  In the divergent approaches to faith referred to above, we see the exercise of free will.  And it is a fundamental tenet of Christianity, for example, that while God makes a free offer of salvation to us all through his Gift of Grace, it is our free choice whether to accept it or not.  So, if “Shiny, Happy People” was intended to argue that human rationality and free will were somehow inimical to faith then it failed because neither are.

The Plot

Having seemingly prepared the way for some great world-shattering evil to emerge at the end of “Inside Out”, the writers threw us something of a curve ball when the “Big Bad” of the season now turns out to be radically different in nature to what we had expected.  In making this Big Bad someone who seemingly wanted to do good but in their choice of methods revealed a far more questionable set of values rather than someone who wanted to do evil, the writers are thinking outside the normal box.  And that is all to the good.  When the audience is confronted by something unusual they have to think about it more.  They have to work out for themselves how to react to the strange combination that Jasmine represents. 

It also means that it is necessary to allow a little time for the pieces of the jigsaw to fit into place.  And so the first part of “Shiny Happy People” was really set-up.  Here we were presented with all the relevant information about Jasmine.  In particular we were allowed to hear her manifesto, see the way that Angel, Connor and the others were put  in some sort of thrall and given an opportunity to relate what we saw of Jasmine now to all the other relevant information that we had banked away during the course of the season.

The last was important both from two points of view.  As I have already said, it helps us evaluate our own reaction to Jasmine.  We can use the information to define where we stand in relation to her.  But secondly, it gives us an opportunity to set this latest twist in the context of the arc as a whole.  As I have said before, the principal advantage that a story arc has over a series of stand alone episodes is that it gives the writers time. It allows them to create a clearer sense that things are building towards a climax. This in turn makes for a greater sense of expectation and tension than can normally be found in a single episode story and a correspondingly more powerful climax. But story arcs, if they are to work, impose their own disciplines as well. One of these is that the writers must be able to sustain interest over a prolonged period. A second lies in the need to ensure continuity.

The season 4 arc has been remarkably successful in managing the first of these requirements. After a somewhat slow start, the writers began to tease us with hints of a coming apocalypse.  And it wasn’t too long before that is what seemed to have arrived  with the appearance on the scene of the Beast, the rain of fire, the obliteration of Wolfram and Hart and the blotting out of the sun  But it quickly transpired that everything that had happened up to now was only in preparation for something else.  And in trying to find out about this the team brought about Angelus’ return.  This gave them a whole new set of problems to deal with and also brought the revelation that the Beast had a master and that Cordelia was it.  This was soon followed by the discovery that she was pregnant.  With the brief appearance of Faith, the destruction of the Beast, the despatch of Angelus and Angel’s return the way was open for the final piece of the puzzle – the birth of Jasmine. Something was always happening, new challenges emerged to replace old ones and there were plenty of unexpected twists along the way.  And now finally we have the final surprise with the revelation of Jasmine's nature.   Surprise is fundamental to good storytelling.  If the audience knows exactly what to expect you are not going to keep their attention for long.  And in this case the surprise was a very good one. 

But when you introduce a twist of this nature it places enormous demands on the writers to ensure that the arrival of a creature like Jasmine is consistent with the events leading up to her birth.  Let me, therefore, start by listing some of the ways that they succeeded.

First of all was the very clever spin that this episode put on the events of “The Trial” when Jasmine refers to

Jasmine: “The day Lorne sent Angel and human Darla into the trials to earn a new chance at life.”

Angel: “I failed.”

“No, you earned that life. And there it is. (points to Connor) All these events unfolded that I might reenter this physical plain.”

This also incidentally explains the relevance of Lorne to Jasmine’s detailed planning, something that was not obvious to me in the context of “Inside Out”.

The suggestion that Jasmine was a “Power that Was” also makes sense of a number of things.  Cordelia’s visions came from TPTB, they had catastrophic physical effects on her so she needed demon DNA, this introduced her to Skip (who had previously been a jailer to Billy – a Wolfram and Hart client) and he was also the demon who conducted her to the higher plane.  And it was there that Jasmine poured herself into Cordelia.  It is much more believable that these events involved TPTB (or at least one of them) than any alternative explanation, especially given Jasmine’s stated objective of acting against evil.

Then there is the Tro-Clon - a "confluence of events" somehow directly related to Connor which would have great consequences of the destiny of mankind.  Up until now, the significance of the Tro-Clon had never been explained.  There had been no overwhelmingly significant event for the World at large.   And it was far from clear what events flowing into one another might bring one about.  Well, now things are clear.  Among other things this “confluence of events” included:

And great consequences for mankind is obviously what Jasmine intends.

What is less successful is the idea that Jasmine was in fact able to manipulate these events.  It is very hard to believe for example that Jasmine had anything to do with Wolfram and Hart’s planning in relation to Darla.  More importantly, however, some of the things that crucially affected the course of events would have had to be micro-managed to make them fit in with a pre-conceived plan.  For example, there was the way Doyle fell in love with Cordelia and passed his visions on to her.  Or there was the way that Cordelia fell in love with Angel.  Are these things really susceptible to manipulation?  Then there was Connor’s banishment to Quor’toth.  That was never Holtz’s plan.  He originally intended to bring the child up in Utah. 

And this brings me on to my other great problem – the way that season 4 itself developed.  Of course we, the audience, do not have to see the direction of an arc at once. Keeping us guessing about what is going on is an important part of the story teller's art. But the resolution of the story must make sense not only in itself but as the conclusion of the sequence of events that preceded it. We must be able to look back on those events and see a sensible progression towards the climax. Otherwise it will be robbed of its meaning and much of its impact. And this is the acid test for the writers here. I don’t think they passed it.  There is nothing inherently unbelievable about Jasmine incorporating some “collateral damage” to humans in her plan.  As the events of this episode prove this is entirely in character.  The arrival of the Beast for example was a necessary part of creating the circumstances in which Connor would sleep with Cordelia.  And the reason for the destruction of Wolfram and Hart now becomes clear.  They were an organization who could have put things together quickly enough to pose a real threat to Jasmine while she was still in Cordelia.    But why blot out the sun?  To persuade Angel Investigations to bring back Angelus of course – but why did she want him?  The only explanation I can come up with is: as a distraction to prevent anyone taking too close an interest in her and what she was doing with Connor and finding out about her pregnancy.  But wasn’t the Beast enough of one already?  And, if Jasmine had the psychological understanding that her claims of manipulation would suggest, wouldn’t she know how unreliable Angelus would be?  He was the one who killed the Beast and he was also the one who revealed that the Beast had a Master.  That was what started the gang looking for the Beastmaster in the first place.  And the final piece of the puzzle there was provided by Angel when he returned with Angelus’ memories.  Bringing Angelus back was simply an unnecessary and therefore irrational risk.  And as such it made it very difficult to accept events from the arrival of the Beast to the manifestation of Jasmine as part of a single coherent plan.

But if we leave these problems to one side, there is no doubt but that “Shiny Happy People” successfully defines the problem that our heroes must now face.  The set up that I have referred to earlier clearly and intelligently articulates all the reasons why we should oppose what Jasmine is trying to do.  And that defines the mission, if you will, for the team.  Moreover, it also sets out clearly what the principal problem to be overcome is – namely the hold that Jasmine has over them all.  There is nothing to indicate that she will be an especially powerful opponent physically.  No, her power lies in her ability to manipulate others.  But that is still a pretty big problem to be overcome.  For me the real question, though, is: if we clearly understand what the mission is, do we care about it?  Here I am a little ambivalent.  Philosophically I think free will is important.  I also think that nothing based on a lie can last.  But preventing universal happiness because it deprives people of their free will and is based on a lie just doesn’t have the emotional resonance of real mayhem and havoc.  It doesn’t really hit home that hard as a danger.  And that is I think a problem.

And in general, even allowing for the necessary set-up, just too little happened in "Shiny, Happy People".  Too often we saw the writers concentrating on things of little consequence.  We already knew the effect that Jasmine had on Angel and Connor so the scene where they got back to the Hyperion and surprised the others by their attitude was spun out too much.  The debate over Jasmine’s name was pointless, Fred’s visit to the hospital added nothing to the episode and the talk between Angel and Jasmine in the garden was mainly padding.

But even worse than that, while there were one or two highlights, the things that worked were overshadowed by the things that didn’t.  The things I liked included the slightly surreal fight in the bowling alley where Jasmine and Fred were having a cozy chat while Angel, Connor, Gunn and Wesley were dusting vampires all around.  And I thought that the way that Fred got Jasmine’s blood into her system was very clever and utterly characteristic.  But the bowling alley fight was for me all but ruined when it transpired that a bunch of vampires were strong enough to have taken over the place without being troubled by the Police or Army yet only a matter of yards away there were people sitting relaxing at an outdoor café – after dark.  And as for Fred’s behavior when she returned from the hospital, it deserved to get her killed.  Knowing the effect that Jasmine had on people she told Wesley what she knew and expected him to help her, then when he was obviously preparing to trap her she stood her ground and tried to kill Jasmine with a cross-bow when Angel and Connor were standing right next to her - with their reflexes.  How did she expect to kill Jasmine like that?  And most bizarrely of all, Jasmine had been presented with evidence that her influence could be overcome.  Given her lack of physical power that was a very big deal for her.  But she showed no interest in finding out why the guy in the hospital was immune.  And when she saw that Fred too was immune she just let her escape when Connor and Angel could have caught her very easily.  None of this makes any sense.

Overview (C+)

 The main focus of this episode was on on everyone's lack of free will, firstly by showing us the effect that losing it had on Angel and the others and then by showing us the rift that caused between Fred and her friends when she recovered her free will.   To the extent that the purpose here was to show that faith in a moral absolute can be misused and that people should never abandon their free will or their rational and critical faculties when confronted with absolute moral claims, "Shiny Happy People" is a useful and interesting though limited cautionary tale.  It is possible, however, that the writers were attempting to make a wider point by trying to show faith was somehow inimical to either rationality or free will.  But while such an argument on the face of it poses much broader and more important issues, it is ultimately doomed to failure.  And the thematic shortcomings of the episode are compounded by the fact that  there is nothing in the plot that really demands our attention.   The set up for the remainder of the season is professionally enough handled.  But ultimately too little of real interest happens.  And unfortunately the story is unecessarily marred by examples of careless plotting (such as the bowling alley vampires and cafe patrons co-existing so close to one another) and stupidites on the part of the main protagonists (Fred's attempt to assasinate Jasmine).  But perhaps above all I am troubled by the discontinuity between the events leading up to Jasmine's birth and what she claims is her purpose now that she has appeared.  In particular the return of Angelus, which was perhaps the single most important feature of the whole season 4 arc up until "Orpheus" now looks inexplicable. And ultimately that damages the season as a whole.