Good Omens S2E02 – The Clue
We’re continuing our conversation about Good Omens season 2, with Episode 2, The Clue.Our Patreon page is here. Join us now for loads of awesome rewards including access to our discord chat, full of lovely awesome people (and us, we’re there too).
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28th November 2023 @ 8:02 pm
Minisodes:
What’s the point of the minisodes? Well, not much. I saw them just as I did the first 30 minutes of episode 3 of season 1. It’s just a bit of fun. Neil said these minisodes would be the stories Aziraphale and Crowley tell each other when reminiscing and something happened to remind them.
We get some fun character moments. We get to some more information on how Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship and characters developed. As someone who watches shows 90% because of their characters, this is absolutely perfect for me. I just want to have fun with these characters and this episode’s minisode definitely does that. It’s a bit silly. It has some great character bits, like we see Aziraphale start his love for food. And seeing Aziraphale and Crowley dance around each other with their “what is good and what is evil” discussions is just something I adore.
It’s also so fascinating to me that you are talking about the angels and god and how they’re really not that good for this minisode. Like, this is nothing new, so I didn’t focus on that. What is new is how Crowley and Aziraphale engage with that. My focus was purely on them, not the information on god and angels and how awful Gabriel is.
You can see the topic of Aziraphale’s internal battle with heaven and good and bad at the end of the season come back. This minisode once again reminds us of this struggle he has. It reminds us that he doubts and goes back and forth. And in the end of the season, we see Aziraphale still having hope in heaven, despite everything. Despite everything he learned, despite all the pain he has seen heaven cause, he still beliefs he can make things better. Seeing these learning moments for Aziraphale in this minisode really underline this theme for him. Even though he doesn’t agree with what god is doing, he wants to be an angel. He only truly wants to do good. This struggle is so devastating and hits so hard in the last scene of the minisode.
I will probably keep saying this, and perhaps it’s very tainted of the way I watch television, but season 2 isn’t about the plot. It’s about the characters. It’s about character development. I also said this in my comment for episode 1: the Gabriel mystery is just a little fun to thread us through the development. It basically is all a big set up for the ending. And this makes sense, because this season exists to bridge between season 1 and 3.
What happened in between season?
Covid happened. And no clear communication happened. As told in the lockdown special, Aziraphale didn’t want Crowley to be there with him during lockdown because that’s against the rules. Crowley went to sleep for like, a more than a year or something.
Aziraphale also doesn’t seem to know that Crowley is living in his car. He has no idea that hell took away his apartment. And Crowley never tells him either (I haven’t watched the season again as preparation for this comment so I can’t think of the scene that hints at this). As becomes more blatant in episode 6: they’re really bad at talking about important things to each other.
This means Crowley rarely ever was in Soho in the past 4 years due to covid. When it comes to the people in Soho not knowing him, I think that has more to do with Crowley’s personality and the shops around to not be his kind of thing. I guess he’s much rather be in the bookshop when he’s around.
However, there is still the element that Crowley and Aziraphale grew closer and more comfortable. A detail that will never stop to make me giggle with excitement is that Crowley takes off his glasses when entering the bookshop in season 2.
Amnesia:
Amnesia is extremely fascinating and I can’t say I’m an expert in it, but I am a psychology student so I know a little bit. (also not using the proper vocabulary to make it simpler for me and for you. I’m tired. I used most of my braincells for today xD )
First off, there are two kinds of amnesia. One that affects what you already learned. So that is your classic forgetting. And the other is that you can’t create new memories. Jim/Gabriel clearly has the first one.
So the cool thing about memory is that there are different kinds of memory. There’s different ways to divide memory but I’m trying to divide it here in a way that makes sense to align to Jim/Gabriel, his memory loss and some of the confusion Michelle stated in podcast.
You have a memory for (motor) skills. You have a memory for biographical information (meaning information about yourself). You have memory for factual information. And depending on the kind of amnesia you have, one or more are affected.
I would say Jim/Gabriel mostly has biographical amnesia. He doesn’t remember who he is. He doesn’t remember the things relevant about him, his past, what happened to him, or the people he knows. The factual memory is a bit harder to say how much he has because he is an angel in the human world. Even without the amnesia he wouldn’t know a lot. His skills are still in tact (he can read and walk for example), so that is nice.
Ending notes:
Aziraphale entering detective mode is adorable. I love him and his enthusiasm. I love the car bit. I love Crowley being a bit baffled by it all (his facial expressions!).