What started out as a steamy episode of Angel ended with Fred and Gunn slowly climbing the stairs to their bedroom. You get the feeling that there will be no hanky or panky tonight. Quite a lot happened in that one hour of television. Fred steps back into the world of physics and publishes her work on string theory. String theory attempts to explain the universe and why everything happens as it does. Gunn, like many of the viewers (this one included), have no idea what most of it means. I’m sure that if pressed, Fred could explain it to a layman, but that’s not the point. She’s thrilled to be coming back to this world that she inhabited before Pylea.
It is obvious that Fred is a genius and the question is — is she “wasting” her life hunting demons? Should she be in academia where she can advance the theories that try to explain our world? I’m sure that all of that is going through her mind during the episode. With physics Fred is in a world where she is given respect of a different sort than she gets with her friends at Angel Investigations. They think she’s smart and a little goofy. They don’t understand the brain that seethes behind those glasses.
In some ways Cordelia is going through the same sort of things. She’s trying to reclaim her memories and understand her place in this world. She fled from Angel’s house and took refuge with Connor, but that has implications. She uses pictures of her friends to try to spark some memories. She wants to find happiness — the question is will she know it when she sees it? She takes a giant leap forward by coming to Angel and asking about their relationship. The show ends with Cordy asking Angel if they were in love. I will be interested to see how Angel answers that.
Community is very important — studies have repeatedly shown that if you hang around successful people, you will be successful and of you hang around happy people, you will be happy. So what does that say about Wesley? We see Wesley reading a magazine and it looks like the same journal that Fred’s article was published in. Sure enough, he shows up at the lecture. What he’s left in order to attend, was a hot date with Lilah. Well, date is a relative term with Lilah. So Wesley hangs out with the evil lawyer, Fred hangs out with people who aren’t as smart as her, Cordelia hangs out with Connor, who is a bit emotionally stunted. What’s it all mean for their futures?Fighting evil was the thing that used to tie them all together. Can they recapture that? You see some cracks in Fred and Gunn’s relationship, even before the end of the episode. Can they overcome them? Should they? What about Wesley? I miss having him around, but I can imagine that what he’s been through has fundamentally changed him. He almost died only to be attacked by his former friend and ally.
“Supersymmetry” feels like a pivotal episode — and given the title, that makes sense. All of these people are vibrating at different frequencies (I don’t know much about string theory, but I know vibration matters) and the question is, can they all come together in harmony?
