beer_good_foamy: (Default)
beer_good_foamy ([personal profile] beer_good_foamy) wrote2009-11-20 01:08 am

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

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]

[identity profile] spikesdeb.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 12:15 am (UTC)(link)
Great poll! And yeah, that always bothered me...

[identity profile] sl-podcast.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 12:49 am (UTC)(link)
Kate. part 2.
Edited 2009-11-20 00:49 (UTC)
deird1: Fred looking pretty and thoughful (French (singer))

[personal profile] deird1 2009-11-20 12:59 am (UTC)(link)
Why oh why didn't you make this a ticky box poll? I would have loved to choose about 6 of these...

[identity profile] rebcake.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 01:00 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] angearia.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] xlivvielockex.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 01:20 am (UTC)(link)
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?

[identity profile] menomegirl.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 01:42 am (UTC)(link)
I think the writers did mushrooms when they were busy writing this episode.
lynnenne: (angel confused)

[personal profile] lynnenne 2009-11-20 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
I picked toothpaste. And I would have paid good money to see that on screen.
ext_15284: a wreath of lightning against a dark, stormy sky (angel)

[identity profile] stormwreath.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] trepkos.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 08:04 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] kerkevik.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 10:17 am (UTC)(link)
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.
shapinglight: (Default)

[personal profile] shapinglight 2009-11-20 10:39 am (UTC)(link)
Either the option I ticked, or the truck would have rebounded off the invisible barrier with a cartoon-style BO-IING! noise.

[identity profile] candleanfeather.livejournal.com 2009-11-20 01:40 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/ 2009-11-20 03:31 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

random commenter

[identity profile] rowanda380.livejournal.com 2009-11-24 09:05 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] i-timan-i.livejournal.com 2009-11-25 07:48 am (UTC)(link)
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?"