The Ineffable Mrs Sandwich

Guys. Let's talk about the Eccles cakes. Shall we?

When Crowley orders six shots of espresso, Aziraphale considerately asks for something that "calms people down". Nina then suggests him to get Eccles cakes.

Now the word, "Eccles" originally means "The church". It foreshadowed the season finale where Aziraphale asks Crowley to join heaven. It is a callback to Crowley being the (sauntered-vaguely-downwards) fallen angel. Crowley was given a choice to join heaven again. To eat the Eccles cake. But he doesn't. He doesn't want to be calmed down and hushed. He has found his voice, his own side. He knows the truth about Heaven and Hell and God.

The Eccles cake is also called the "squashed fly cake' because the inside is filled with black currants. This could be a metaphor for hell. How Crowley was also asked back to hell and he said no.

Aziraphale ordering Eccles cakes shows the inner struggle that he is facing. He cares for Crowley. He wants to be there for him. But at the same time, he believes whole heartedly in heaven. He still thinks of God's plan as ineffable. As indubitable. He believes that Crowley and he will be happier in Heaven. He fails to see that even if heaven seems to be the side of "truth and light", on the inside it's all squashed flies. It's just as bad as hell. That when heaven ends life on earth it will be just as dead as hell ended it.

Something making me sad this lovely evening is that while Aziraphale had carved out a little niche neighbourhood with people around who he knows and interacts with on a regular basis, Crowley has Aziraphale, his car, his plants and… Shax. That’s it.

Crowley doesn’t have anyone he can consider friends. Demons can’t be friends, he said as much in season 1. And then Aziraphale’s constant “we’re not friends, we hardly know each other” overlaid on that and the observation that the humans all pass so quickly in S2.

The motif of loneliness is such a big thing underpinning the whole series - Aziraphale’s fear of the loneliness if he only goes along with Heaven as far as he can, Crowley’s admission that it is lonely to be the only one doing that, Crowley’s observation that Muriel must be lonely in Heaven, the simple fact that Gabriel and Beelzebub sought each other out so much and became everything to each other.

My little hope for S2 is that Crowley will have more than just Aziraphale. I want him to find other friends. I want Muriel to befriend him and him to find the joy he once had again in humanity. 

At the end of S1, he was so gleeful about how clever humans were and he seems to have lost some of that now that he and Aziraphale have both been recalibrating to this new version of their existence. Let him have a friend. Let him find that glee in the weird wonderfulness of humanity. Let’s see him smiling and cackling and doing silly things again.

Above all, let us see him gluing coins to the pavement with Muriel trying to Thwart him and him giggling himself silly over it.

Please please please please please please!🤞

Every time I hear Lola I cannot but be astonished that BBC executives went batshit over the usage of the Coca-Cola brand name but didn't bat an eyelid (sorry, it's practically impossible to resist a pun there!) at the whole "I'm not the world's most masculine man/But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man/And so is Lola" steadily progressing through the storyline.  

Just... HOW on earth?! Incredible.  Maybe it was well off their scale of comprehensibility, and yet...

Takin' Over The Asylum (1994) | 1.02 Fly Like an Eagle

No but like listen to me, the ENTIRE REASON that Gabriel could throw away everything he had for a happy ending with his demon love when Aziraphale couldn't is that Gabriel never actually cared. Abandoning heaven is easy if you don't believe in anything it stands for and were only ever in it for the power. But Aziraphale? Aziraphale is an idealist. Fundamentally, when he goes against the letter of heaven's law, it's because he believes that he's fulfilling a deeper obligation to heaven's true purpose.

Aziraphale's values and goals are good in the real sense of the word and not merely Good in the visible and performative way that most of heaven operates, but he still believes that heaven can and should epitomise that goodness. Conversely, Crowley (the one being Aziraphale has ever met who actually understands and shares Aziraphale's values) has given up on institutional salvation. He's seen both heaven and hell up close and knows they're functionally identical, except that heaven has nicer views. They want the same things, but they can't agree on how to get them.

Gabriel and Beelzebub don't have this conflict. Neither of them cared about anything enough to put it above their own self interest - it's just that their feelings for each other transformed that self interest into something softer, something that maybe grew into real empathy. This is why the path to their happy ending came easier for them, and Crowley and Aziraphale have to walk a more winding road.

oh BY the WAY

This scene proves, doesn’t it, that living in the car is Crowley’s choice. When Aziraphale comes back from Scotland, Crowley shoves the box at him before he gets to the threshold. He gives Aziraphale no option to even say, “won’t it be easier to leave the plants here” let alone to propose anything else. Was Crowley, by any chance, actively avoiding a conversation about him living in his car this whole time?

Crowley is absolutely not okay, we know, we know. He is frustrated, he is struggling; he is asking what the point of it all is. Yes, he is fiercely protective of his independence when he says “my car”, “the precious, peaceful, fragile existence I have carved out for myself”—and the same time, he is still not willing to talk. He probably does not even see a way to have important conversations safely; the fear of rejection might still be too much. His instinct remains to run away from trouble. With something as terrifying as vulnerability and openness, he needs Nina and Maggie to tip the scales.

He has the swagger. He acts like he knows what’s happening, like he has things figured out.

I think we’re just starting to see how much that has not been true.

the way crowley takes off his glasses before his confession?? like he puts away his shields and becomes so vulnerable?? the way he puts them back on as soon as he realises what aziraphale means???? AND HE KISSES HIM WITH THE GLASSES ON?????????? HUH???????

Hi Neil!

I was just wondering if the actors had any input on what their wings were doing in seasons 1 and 2?

Many thanks for the awesome show!

Not exactly. I mean, their wings are animated. When I saw the first animation tests of the wings, for Season 2, I asked for the animators to think of the wings as being half way between arms and eyebrows, and to be acting along with our angels. So the animators used the performances they had already given us.

Incredible! This literally empty face, these "cracked" words. Stained glass style nailed immaculately - and at the same time it's so telling.

Yes, I'm a bit obsessed with the TLV at the moment.

“Two almighty civilizations burning. Tell me… how did that feel? You must have been like God…”