Catching
up on all the Good Omens rambling I
missed over the summer because I hadn’t seen it then. Anyone who’s watched the
miniseries adaptation of this novel can tell you that the real headline of the
piece is Michael Sheen’s Aziraphale and David Tennant’s Crowley, particularly
the combination of the two together. Most who adore the miniseries will single
out these two as its greatest asset, and even many of those who dislike the miniseries will still admit
that Crowley and Aziraphale are great onscreen together. Whatever way you slice
it, this is what it all comes down to (some spoilers.)
Right
from “in the beginning,” Aziraphale and Crowley have had a complicated history.
After Crowley tempts Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil, and after Aziraphale gives the two exiled humans the flaming sword he was
supposed to be using to guard the gates of Eden, the angel and the demon meet
and aren’t altogether sure what to make of each other. They reflect on heaven,
hell, God’s Ineffable Plan, and the possibility that they may have bungled
which one of them did “the good thing” and “the bad thing.”
The
series later takes us on a scenic tour of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship
throughout history, hitting highlights such as Noah’s Ark, the Globe Theatre,
the French Revolution, and World War II. Throughout, we get glimpses of this
unseen tie that binds them. They’re ostensibly enemies, on opposing sides of a
holy war, but every time they run into each other early on, they’re congenial
with one another. And not only Aziraphale as you might expect, it being within
reason that angels would be nice to everyone – Crowley is also thoroughly
pleasant toward Aziraphale, going out of his way to greet the angel in a crowd
and make small talk. As time goes on, however, they go beyond even that, moving
from amiable acquaintances into becoming very genuinely important to one
another. About halfway through that tour of history, we start seeing a pattern
of Crowley seeking Aziraphale out, either to get him out of trouble or to
proposition him for a two-celestial-being ceasefire (reasoning that he and
Aziraphale, working for the forces of evil and good respectively, “cancel each
other out,” he points out that they could just not bother and end up with the
same result.)
But let’s
focus on where Aziraphale and Crowley are in the main time period of the
series, during the whole Antichrist/end of the world business. At this point,
there’s very little that’s reluctant or tentative about their relationship.
They regularly call each other, meet up for lunch or drinks, and discuss the
work of their individual sides. Call them friends, call them lovers, call them
frenemies, whatever you’d like – these are two celestial beings who are very
decidedly in one another’s lives. While it’s not a relationship they’re keen to
advertise to their own kinds, there’s no real pretense about them being actual
adversaries.
This gets
a little thorny for Aziraphale, though. As an angel, like I said, he’s pretty
conditioned to be friendly and nice, but he knows he’s also not supposed to
“fraternize” with demons. In their relationship, if one of them is going to shy
away or pull back, it’s usually Aziraphale. He’s particularly resistant when
Crowley suggests they team up to stop the apocalypse. It’s one thing for
Aziraphale to let his heavenly orders lie once in a while, but it’s quite
another to go against the Great and/or Ineffable Plan, especially working
shoulder-to-shoulder with a demon.
This is when he starts talking about sides and insisting that he can’t team up
with Crowley. Even when Crowley wins Aziraphale over to helping him (after all,
if the earth is destroyed in Armageddon, there won’t be any Stephen Sondheim
premieres in heaven!), the angel spends a good chunk of the miniseries trying
to deny what Crowley really means to him.
As with
the “Aziraphale and Crowley throughout history” flashbacks, Crowley in the
present day is pretty much all in, both on his plan and his relationship with
Aziraphale, which I find continually surprising. For all of Crowley’s growling
that he’s dangerous and not “nice” as Aziraphale repeatedly avows, there’s very
little that the demon isn’t ultimately willing to do on the angel’s behalf, and
he’s often the one fighting for the bond between them. It’s Aziraphale who
continues to be unsure. He’s caught between all he’s ever believed in and this
friend he technically isn’t supposed to have, one who keeps pointing out how
all he’s ever believed in doesn’t actually line up with what he holds most
dear. But no matter how often he tries to pull away, he can’t bring himself to
cut that tie completely. Ultimately, it comes to him and Crowley standing
together between humanity and the end of the world, and there’s no one the
other would rather be standing there with.
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