raelissa

[raelissa]

Season 2 and Assumptions - Part 1

More random thoughts on Good Omens Season 2, trying to get through the hyperfixation! (Stay with me, this got longer than I planned.)

I'm starting to see the entirety of season 2 as one big allegory for the dangers of making assumptions. Crowley and Aziraphale have known each other for so long, cared for each other for so long, that they have begun to assume they know all of the other person's motivations without actually ever talking to each other about, well, anything substantial. I don't think it's intentional, after all they've been acting as secretly neutral agents in a cosmically large cold war for literal millennia. They were forced to communicate through implications and hints. Guarded looks. Secret phrases. Never able to just clearly say what's really on their minds on the off-chance one of their Head Offices were listening. Being forced to make assumptions about what the other person was trying to say without saying.

The problem is that they never break those communication habits, even after the Nopocalypse when they were nominally free of the two head offices. Six millennia of paranoia doesn't go away that easily. And let's face it, they never really give each other a reason to doubt the assumptions they have made about one another. We the viewers see it, but Crowley and Aziraphale don't.

One of the most destructive assumptions (if we take episode 6 at face value) is Aziraphale's assumption that Crowley is just "holding a grudge" against Heaven, because he was literally demonized for asking questions. There is a secondary assumption that goes along with this - Crowley was happiest as an angel, consistently does the "right" (Aziraphale reads that as Good) thing and dislikes Hell, therefore must want to be an angel again deep down and it's just the grudge holding him back. Aziraphale doesn't have a frame of reference for how Crowley truly changed when he Fell, intrinsically changed from angel to demon. Trauma changes you - Crowley tells Aziraphale he's not the same angel he was before, but Aziraphale just kind of brushes it off because he is lacking that frame of reference.

We see these assumptions at play in Season 2. In Episode 1, Aziraphale doesn't see anything suspicious about Crowley's obviously large trauma reaction to Gabriel. Doesn't ask him why Crowley has such an immediate negative reaction, why he is so adamantly against having Gabriel anywhere near them. Instead, Aziraphale gets sulky about Crowley's refusal to help Gabriel, because he assumes it's just Crowley's "Heaven grudge" rearing its head again. Crowley couldn't possibly have a valid reason to be having a trauma reaction to Gabriel and there's no reason to ask him about it, because Aziraphale has already assigned the motivation of "grudge against Heaven" to every reaction Crowley has regarding Heavenly-related matters.

Then in Episode 6 (again, assuming we take it at face value and knowing this will age poorly if Season 3 materializes), Aziraphale can't comprehend why Crowley would refuse Heaven. Through the lens of his assumptions, Crowley's refusal to be together with Aziraphale in Heaven can only be because Crowley's "grudge against Heaven" is more powerful than his love for Aziraphale. After all, he "knows" that Crowley was happiest as an angel and wants that back, right? Reinforced by their conversation after Job that Crowley didn't really support Hell, which means he must secretly still support Heaven?

Let's add another assumption into the mix - Aziraphale assumes that he will always take the Good and Correct action because he is an angel, and that's how angels were designed, right? Even after Job - his faith in the Great Plan may have gotten tarnished a bit, but Crowley's refusal to take him to Hell just reinforces that Aziraphale had done the right thing because he was still an Angel, not because it was the right thing to do in that particular situation.

So in Season 2, we see Aziraphale doing things that are distinctly grey, morally, but seeing them as Good because Aziraphale himself, a pure Good angelic being, is the one doing them. Pushing Nina and Maggie together, not because Maggie was suffering unrequited love, but because it made a good excuse for the Gabriel-hiding miracle. Aziraphale may have told himself it was Good for Maggie, but his initial (and I will go so far as to say overall) motivation had nothing to do with making Maggie or Nina happy. Maggie and Nina were at best a happy by-product of Aziraphale's need to cover for Gabriel.

Aziraphale uses coercion to get his way without thinking twice about it. The most obvious is changing all of the shopkeeper's clothes and personalities to suit his Jane Austen Ball, but he also uses emotional coercion to get Crowley to lend him the Bentley. It should have been very obvious that Crowley did not want to lend the Bentley out, but Aziraphale wanted it, and manipulated Crowley's friendship to get it. "Our car" and "our bookshop" may seem romantic and brave, and maybe they are, but using them in that context is also crazy manipulative. But Aziraphale's an angel! He doesn't "coerce and manipulate" his friend, he "asks nicely and stands his ground" until Crowley's resistance crumbles. And then he makes changes to the Bentley without asking permission! Aziraphale really strays as far from his Angelic ideals as he's ever been this season.

Okay, I think that's enough about the negative effects of assuming things on Aziraphale - next time, I'll tackle the assumptions made by Crowley that have equally negative effects on their relationship.

[raelissa]

A random Good Omens S2E5 thought

Looking through the wonderful GOS2 posts here, I just had a random thought. I've seen people discuss how Crowley talks over Aziraphale as he's getting the humans out of the bookshop, but I haven't seen anyone really remark on the fact that Crowley also kind of lied when he told Aziraphale he wouldn't leave him on his own. This is hand-waved in the show when Crowley does eventually come back and Aziraphale sees him and says, "You came back," but it's on an exhalation of relief.

The implication of Crowley's "I won't leave you on your own" is that Crowley is coming back to help deal with the demon situation - at that point, Crowley himself believes that. And Aziraphale innately trusts that, because he responds with, "I know," before trying to make his own suggestion. The problem is, Crowley doesn't come back to help with the demons. Crowley sees a way to possibly solve the entire situation with Gabriel and goes to Heaven with Muriel instead. He doesn't stick his head in the shop to let Aziraphale know he'll be right back; he just leaves on his own agenda.

To give Crowley credit, he assumes the demons will remain stuck outside on the street and that solving the whole Gabriel problem will also solve the demon problem. That's where the millennia-long issue of being a lone wolf, on-my-own-side kind of entity comes into play. It doesn't occur to Crowley that Aziraphale might expect him back immediately - in Crowley's mind, the immediate problem is still Gabriel, while in Aziraphale's mind the immediate problem is protecting Gabriel from Shax. In Aziraphale's mind, Crowley doesn't actually come back to save him this time, Aziraphale has to save himself (by almost starting another war, no less).

Crowley has broken an unspoken promise. Crowley didn't come back; Aziraphale faced the problem as he perceived it alone and had to resort to drastic measures. That's why Aziraphale sounds so relieved when Crowley comes back - it's not entirely that Aziraphale doesn't entirely know how to deal with the repercussions of "doing the thing with the halo" alone, but that he has no idea where Crowley has been and if he was coming back at all.

This is just another way that this absolutely beautiful, heartbreaking, amazingly written season shows us that love and familiarity are not enough to maintain a healthy relationship.