Quick fanwank poll: "Because I never invited you in"

[beer_good_foamy]

OK, the invitation rule is always fun. If a vampire hasn't been invited into a private residence, there's an invisible barrier keeping him or her out. So in "Epiphany", if you recall, Angel has to save the gang from a bunch of funky demons with eyes in the back of their necks holding them hostage inside a house belonging to the late Sharp family, former non-paying clients of Angel Inc. Angel does this by driving Lindsey's truck straight through the window. One of those hero moments he does.

Now, luckily for him (and less so for the Sharps) everyone who used to live in that house is dead, which means Angel can enter without an invitation. And this is in an episode where the invitation rule is a pretty big theme.

The trouble with that, of course, is that while we know that the Sharps are dead, Angel doesn't. In fact, since the demons want to impregnate humans, it would have made sense for them to NOT kill the people in the house. So say, hypothetically, one or more of the Sharps was still alive. Say the invitation barrier was still up. So a vampire drives a heavy truck at full speed towards a house where he hasn't been invited.

What happens?

[Poll #1487771]

Comments

[spikesdeb.livejournal.com]

Great poll! And yeah, that always bothered me...

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I wouldn't say it bothers me, but... Lady Luck smiled on Angel occasionally.

[sl-podcast.livejournal.com]

Kate. part 2.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I'm actually surprised more people haven't chosen this. Saving his friends should be at least as important to his turn-around as saving Kate, so if the TPB had let him into her apartment only to then have him fail later in the episode, that would make them... well, as incompetent as they're shown to be throughout the whole show, I guess. :-)

[deird1]

Why oh why didn't you make this a ticky box poll? I would have loved to choose about 6 of these...

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Because I'm evil. Duh. :-)

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

I voted toothpaste, but my heart tells me, from watching way too many movies, that The truck would have gracefully slowed down, coincidentally stopping halfway through the window just before Angel's toes hit the barrier.

Stoopid coincidence.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Funny how that always happens, isn't it?

[peroxidepirate.livejournal.com]

Hee. I ticked graceful slowdown because, as you say, that always happens in movies/TV.

As for what would be most consistent with the actual mythology of the universe, I think the truck would go through the window and Angel wouldn't, and it would just be a crap shoot whether some part of the truck severed his head & turned him to dust on the way.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Re: when he had to get into Kate's house to safe her when she OD's, I wonder if she might have momentarily died, kinda like how Buffy died before she was resuscitated in Prophecy Girl. If being gone for a minute is long enough for a new Slayer to be called, I bet it's long enough for vampire barriers to drop.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Good point, though that would somewhat ruin the idea of the PTB directly intervening to nudge him back on track. And I like the idea that they did.

(Besides, if she were dead, a cold shower wouldn't have helped much.)

[next_to_normal]

Cold showers can be very invigorating.

[xlivvielockex.livejournal.com]

I went so visual on the Angel like toothpaste in a tube. I don't think that is ever going to leave my mind. Now whenever I rewatch it, I'm going to see it.

Just to sort of wank all over here, could it be possible that since Angel could smell that Wesley had sex with a blonde, he could smell the Sharps' death as it were and knew it was safe to just go right through?

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Yay for imprinted visuals!

Just to sort of wank all over here, could it be possible that since Angel could smell that Wesley had sex with a blonde, he could smell the Sharps' death as it were and knew it was safe to just go right through?

Possible, I suppose. Though he was a lot closer to Wesley at the time. And also, not in an old truck (and you know Lindsey kept that truck since he was a teenager, so smelling things in it...)

Now I'm reminded of an old Bill Hicks quote.

"You know, if you quit smoking, you get your sense of smell back." I got news for you. I live in New York City, I don't want my fucking sense of smell back. *sniff sniff* "Is that urine? I think a smell a dead guy. Honey, look, a dead guy! Covered in urine! *sniff* I'm so glad I got my sense of smell back, now I can enjoy the wonders of nature. *sniff* Aaaaaaaaaahhh."

[menomegirl.livejournal.com]

I think the writers did mushrooms when they were busy writing this episode.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Really? I love it. Though those 3-eyed demons... yeah, they were passing something around in the writer's room. :-)

[menomegirl.livejournal.com]

Oh I liked it too. But that error in continuity was very bothersome to me.

[lynnenne]

I picked toothpaste. And I would have paid good money to see that on screen.

[libco.livejournal.com]

me too

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Because it's Angel, I voted that the truck would have stopped just before he hit the barrier. Possibly he would have been flung out safely at an angle.

If it had been a random vampire, they'd have been crushed against the back of the truck, and probably dusted at the moment their spinal column was shattered.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Which brings us to the exciting question of exactly what it is that kills a vampire. We know a vampire can survive a broken back. Just how severed does the head have to be from the body, and how far down? Did Spike get lucky and break his back below his heart, or how does that work? Is it the nerves or the bones or the blood flow (which they have, somehow) that needs to be cut off between heart and brain, or is it all just magical? Am I thinking far too much about this? Where's my coffee?

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

He would have been able to hear how many human heartbeats there were inside the house, so he would have known that only his people were alive inside.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Over a revving V8, from across the street? And how does that tell him that none of the people living there aren't just out shopping or visiting friends? :-)

[kerkevik.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I do confess that, in clicking the toothpaste through a tube option, that I'm being totally evil, becasue after an eternity of the brooding hero it would have made my inner-Spike cackle like a loon!

:-)

Still under Willow & Tara's spell,
Ray.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Yours and mine both. :-)

[shapinglight]

Either the option I ticked, or the truck would have rebounded off the invisible barrier with a cartoon-style BO-IING! noise.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I really like that idea.

[candleanfeather.livejournal.com]

Went for the toothpaste option. Who can resist to this "toon going wild" version? :)

But the one-episode free pass option wasn't bad either.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Man, Angel really should have done a Looney Tunes episode like Farscape did. :-)

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

How about the truck punches into the house but then Angel still can't get out of the truck into the actual house because the barrier has bulged inwards to accommodate the truck but not in fact been broken. A rubber barrier in other words. After all, they do normally bounce off them.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, that's a really good idea too. I like it.

random commenter

[rowanda380.livejournal.com]

interesting poll, I would have to select other though. Now in the law there is a lot of convo as car as personal property/residence for those who live in cars and when it comes to search warrents and the like, now I fall into the car as personal property therefore not searchable without a warrent camp, there for he enters the house inside of his car then he would be ok because he would still be in the car...now getting the demons into the car so he could fight them, that would be the tough part.

Re: random commenter

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Ah, but if that's how it worked, how did he get into the car in the first place? It's Lindsey's car, after all... :-)

Re: random commenter

[rowanda380.livejournal.com]

oh yes, I forgot....:0)

[i-timan-i.livejournal.com]

I think the result can be best summed up using a Warner Bros. Analogy:

"Wily Coyote has just dropped from a hundred foot cliff. He his closely followed by an anvil, which was up unto this point, held over his head before the fragile ledge he chose as his spot to catch the Road-Runner gave way. What Happens?"

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Good point. Though canonically (http://www.vrya.net/bdb/clip.php?clip=788), the Roadrunnerverse and the Buffyverse work according to different laws of physics. :-)

[i-timan-i.livejournal.com]

You could still picture Angel springing up like a jack-in-the-box with the sad trumpet in the background (also, I've heard Angel has trouble with directions when passing through Albuquerque)