#for context Aziraphale shows Crowley that CD

[viceandmature]

Showing off their CDs

[sonkitty]

The Sideburns Scheme Post #99

(For reference: The Sideburns Scheme)

Crowley, Good Omens 2, Episode 6, Every Day, tidying

...

Sideburns Check

The sideburns are a medium length. They shortened after Muriel left but are not as short as what tends to happen after driving and being in human spaces. This length is likely due to the context of Crowley being a demon alone in a place that is like a second home to him.

...

Brighter Red Streak Check

The more saturated red streak of hair can be found.

...

Hairstyle Changes

Some of the top hair collects together into a defined curl going up to Crowley's right. The sideburns shortened a little though are still not human-space short.

...

Earthly Objects

(For reference: Earthly Objects)

My guess is two sets.

Putting the rug back over the magic circle is point #1.

Miracle touch on the bookcases is point #2.

Touching the chair with hands to shift it where he wants it to be is point #3.

The bookcases still moving while he's still moving the chair around with his hands is a clue these touches are part of the same set.

Crowley checking his watch for the time is point #1 of the next set.

Stepping forward on the rug is point #2.

Sitting down on the chair is point #3.

That's the second set.

...

Time to pay attention to the pockets.

In my looking to see if the Tied Hands retie, the earliest cut of Crowley has his back to the camera.

When he is shown from the front, tie clasp doesn't so much swing and strike a lapel edge so much as shifts slightly in his movement and touches a lapel edge.

Both index fingers are extended as part of the miracle touch.

The watch's face is visible but rather blurry with the movement. The bookshop clock is visible during the scene so might be the "time-teller" for this potential retying, especially since the strands push off Crowley's chest to show the clasps and tassels twist together..

The right thumb MCP joint looks like it does align with a jacket edge near the end of the cut with the extended index fingers for the miracle touch on the bookcases. Crowley has a self-made pocket with the right arm and his chest.

Crowley's left thumb CMC joint lines up closely with a jacket edge when he moves to touch the chair. Then it lines up all the more closely after he moves the chair a bit more and walks on the rug.

Crowley has various self-made pockets, and the most interesting one that I haven't seen yet is he creates a pocket with his left hand when he checks his watch for the time. The edges of this pocket are his actual left thumb, middle finger, and ring finger. Inside this pocket. This pocket does include parts of the tassels during some of it while it exists.

...

Crowley might get one left-side Overhead Light for his actual head.

His Belt Head doesn't seem to get any though the Belt Head itself is visible during the miracle touch on the bookcases and before Crowley sits down in the chair.

One of those little oddities I pick up on only because of checking something frame-by-frame is that his mouth is partly open and subtly closes just before Maggie and Nina enter.

...

His overall play suggests he wants the sunlight to beam down on him the way it does when he sits down. He was rather particular about choosing the position of the chair.

...

Story Commentary

Crowley finally has some time to himself in the bookshop. Episode 3 showed him alone after Aziraphale and Muriel left, but Gabriel was assumed to still be upstairs. This scene is then the one and only time Crowley is alone in the bookshop overall.

There is no dialogue.

The tidying is possibly a way of his coping with the stress of waiting for Aziraphale to come back. In the Good Omens book, Crowley's flat has rooms that are forever clean and perfect. The book says he spent an uncomfortable amount of time in these rooms waiting for the End of the world. He tries to sort his CDs into alphabetical order, but that was already done, same as as his bookcase and collection of "Soul Music". Of note, the Soul Music in question does not have James Brown in it.

...

Is Crowley expecting Maggie and Nina? He checks the time, sits down, and then they just happen to show up?

...

That's it for this post. Sometimes I edit my posts, FYI.

...

Main post:

The Sideburns Scheme

[egyptologist-that-never-was]

Bentley, the starter crank and the curtain. Series 2 spoilers.

I've been thinking some more on my previous post about something timey-wimey going on, mostly in work as it's not been a particularly interesting week typing letters up. The joys of secretarial work. Something crossed my mind earlier. The Bentley. I've always assumed that it's some sort of sentient but I always thought that it's just me being me. I get overly attached to cars, hell, ours has a name and I talk to it. Yes, other people have noticed me doing this.

But she creeps along behind Aziraphale on her own accord, and then rolls back like she's been caught being naughty. All the CDs/tapes turning into Queen doesn't sound like Crowley's doing it, it seems to me that the car just likes Queen. She also starts playing 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square' as if she's saying 'Don't worry, there will be Nightingales'.

When she is destroyed in series one, Crowley uses the starter crank handle when they pause time at the airbase. I just assumed that it was just a convenient device as it would have been part of the Bentley so was there and designed to, well, start things.

Then Crowley uses a near identical one in the beginning of S2 Ep1 to start the universe going. If it's the same one... how's Crowley still got it after the fall?

Also, it doesn't look entirely right, all the ones I've seen are much longer, and a bit of a lunch-break google shows Rolls Royce/Bentley ones look different. But if it is some sort of macguffin hiding it an Bentley from 1933 (or 1926) would be a good plan as it would likely come with one anyway.

Also in the context of the numberplate, I know it's a reference to a Monty Python sketch, but it could also have a double meaning, that it is the curtain that is hiding something, like the starter-crank of time. If it can start time, can it rewind it?

The line from the Wizard of Oz comes to mind - 'Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain'. The big, floating head of Metatron kind of links into this as well, if he is the floating head, and the Bentley is the curtain, who is behind the curtain?

[halemerry]

you know how the instrumental version of the show must go on plays in the background while the metatron orders his coffee right? the first thing it made me think of is the moulin rouge movie where during that song satine prepares herself to go and break christian's heart to protect him from the duke. it fits nicely with the interpretation that azi isn't completely sincere and is doing what he's doing to protect crowley. but I don't know if moulin rouge is something that would inspire neil and co?? do you think it's at all possible or am I just reaching?

Ohh this is a very fun question for so many reasons, but it’s a bit hard to answer directly. I can’t speak for where any of the folks involved in the making of Good Omen’s is coming from beyond what they’ve answered themselves, but If I had to gamble on it, I’d lean toward the assumption that it’s not a direct inspiration like that.

That being said, I’m not sure how much that actually matters because whether or not people on the team making this movie sat down and said ‘oh we can do this like Moulin Rouge does’ or not there is value in looking at commonality.

And in this context especially I actually think it says more about the lexicon of culture the two pieces of media are pulling from than anything else. Because in a lot of ways they're pulling from the same one.

Both the Red Curtain Trilogy and Good Omens had their first installments release at around the same time. Good Omen's was published in 1990 and Strictly Ballroom released in 1992. They're pulling from similar palettes and touchstones which is why you get the Queen overlap. Baz Luhrmann's films, including Moulin Rouge, all lean very heavily on camp aesthetics. (It's worth noting this is partially thanks to Catherine Martin who is his go to production designer who has a heavy hand in the way his films look and is also Luhrmann's wife.) Queen is a natural choice in Moulin Rouge because the band also operates in camp spaces and is arguably the most famous example of camp from the era (which frankly have stuck around and continued to define what camp looks like to this day) and because the movie is wanting to pull big recognizable songs into it's soundtrack. Queen is camp and yet insanely popular and well received.

The joke with Queen in Good Omens also operates as a nod to the popularity of the band. I know a lot of folks that think of Queen in the context of Crowley liking the band but originally anything being left in the Bentley turning into Queen was a joke poking fun at how everyone who has any kind of physical music likely has a Queen's Greatest Hits CD.

I won't go off on a whole tangent trying to define camp here as much as part of me wants to but camp has always been tied to queer culture and queer history. Its campiness is why films like the ones in the Red Curtain trilogy (especially Romeo + Juliet imo) have had the impact they have on queer media. And Good Omens even in its original state was always something queer people looked at and thought that's me. They're both queer adjacent at minimum, they're both pulling from similar cultural touchstones which also happen to be queer and camp.

They also both operate in spaces - as camp often does - more concerned with emotional impact more than realism. And the Show Must Go on is a very emotional song. Even outside the context of the lyrics itself. The album it is on was recorded during the last year of Freddie's life and was a struggle to record both physically and mentally. It's an intense song. It's over the top and unapologetic.

It's a song about soldiering through the tough times with a smile. Of carrying on the performance under pressure even if it's hard on you to do so because it's worth it. Which is basically Aziraphale in a nutshell. It's also what Satine does in the scene you're referencing. And I quite like the idea of it as evidence that Aziraphale is putting on some kind of a performance here, even if I suspect it's less taking inspiration from Moulin Rouge and more the song being well suited to these two stories operating in similar spaces.

[hakureiryuu]

part 1

episode 2, and I just noticed the episode titles that call the flashback b plots minisodes. what's that about?

not-quite-a-liveblog ahoy!

crowley looks so effing weird in this outfit?? maybe it's the glasses, they're so anachronistic, almost steampunk.

I actually thought he was talking about isaac or something here lol

birds flying away after crowley firebombs the goats lmao

saying that eve was the first human birth implies that she is adam's daughter???? which I guess makes about as much sense as a single breeding pair populating the planet, we all know how much inbreeding that would take.

(side note: I remember this Flood adaptation movie that had emma watson in it. noah wanted to kill off all the humans and just let the animals survive. he said while watson was pregnant that if her twin kids were boys, they could live and humans would just die out. but if they were girls who could grow up to be mothers, he would kill them. and I'm like, implying that their father/grandfather/uncles would be the ones impregnating them? nevermind the incest, what about the age gap??? but anyway)

ofc when gabriel claimed to be an expert in human birth I immediately thought of mary, but that hasn't happened yet. I mean it makes sense that this idiot would think eve counts, but couldn't he at least make it to cain??

there's something to be said about this story and elspeth's story connecting virtue with economic status. aziraphale appears to think about that when it's pointed out, but takes entirely the wrong lesson from it, as we see with elspeth later.

"but no one would ever find them- actually that's a great idea" it reads as aziraphale not wanting to deal with gabe's bullshit rather than agreeing with it, as though he hasn't done variations of the same thing for years. I still laughed tho XD

oh hey, "every day" was gonna be the original opening song for the first season! what a cute reference that will likely have little to no further relevance!

this was the point where I was like "why the hell is crowley just hanging out in that same alleyway all the time? wait a goddamn minute, did shax take his apartment?!"

it's so cute how maggie takes aziraphale's social cluelessness in stride.

the jukebox at the resurrectionist is just like the bently turning cds into queen, what a cute reference that will likely have little to no further relevance!

trumpets sound, archangels approach.

saraquel miraclling a ramp lmao

gabriel's attempts at flyswatting never work!!!!!!

I'm assuming all those newspaper clipping say "every day" etc? for some reason? someone correct me if I'm wrong, I would really love to know.

also why is he DRAWING gabriel? later he just needed it to show someone, but why not take a picture? I'm sure you have an ancient camera where you have to hide under a blanket lying around somewhere.

shooing motion miracle at the pub, hahaha

I was a good deal sus of this plan to ship nina and maggie when nina already has a partner, but that was before I realized lindsay is a piece of shit. still, it's not like they know that either! ineffable homewreckers, they are.

everyone's talked about how crowley's first thought re: romance is taking shelter from the rain 😊

but my asexual brain is somehow always teetering over the gutter, so when he said "get them wet" I blinked a bit XDD

JANE AUSTIN WHO???!?

"you think you know someone..." "she had balls!" "what?"

actually it wasn't a what, it was a well. as in "well that's not relevant to my point" like, sir, did you know this already? in what context??

meanwhile back in job's era they're having a bit of a tense discussion. this is explicitly after the flood so it makes sense that aziraphale absolutely does not believe that crowley wants to kill some kids. I wonder why lying is such a big theme in this episode? I haven't been able to really boil it down yet.

aziraphale's smug grin really breaks the tension though XDD

jemimah is adorable. the others are the product of rich parents.

these two are playing chicken with children's lives, but hey, it's about the trust 😌

"can I be a blue one?" I love her

aziraphale discovering food is so deliberately gross, why this?

so many complicated feelings from both of them about god actually talking to someone.

god's pronouns are she/they, approved.

crowley says see you in hell but the next day when sitis is about to flip god off he says actually let's walk this all back pfffft

"reach into his robes... no, higher."

when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, they share a very special hug...

aziraphale stating flat out with no equivocation that gabriel was awful is such a huge step forward for him 😊

(while pausing to write this I noticed that john hamm is credited simply as jim, love that for him)

this is the 2nd time aziraphale has insisted "our" in the face of crowley's "my" I'm sobbing

good omens inside good omens, gomensception

aziraphale really took that "see you in hell" seriously though huh.

the gentle, simple way he says "I don't think you'd like it" hurts me and heals me.

"you're not like me because you're a demon, you're like me because you don't want to toe the party line." y'know lining up their meetings - the wall of eden, the ark, and now this - must paint a very interesting picture of aziraphale for crowley. we always thought that crowley fell for this angel nigh immediately and spent the rest of time orbiting him. now I think aziraphale fell into crowley's orbit, and crowley gradually learned more and more contradictory (and therefore interesting) things about him. like the shelter of the wing, it's all reversed in this season.

[antiqua-lugar]

Book Omens and Omens Prime: “enough of a bastard to be worth liking” VS “enough of a bastard to be woth knowing”

I have been thinking about the differences in the portrayal of Aziraphale, Crowley and their relationship in the books and the series since I watched the first episode, especially since they changed Crowley’s “enough of a bastard to be worth liking” to “enough of a bastard to be worth knowing”, which I instinctively felt  encapsulated really well how their relationship change, how their characters changed and ultimately, how the series changed in the adaptation.

Since I was already writing to figure it out in my head and writing an entire essay for my own amusement, I figured out someone else might be interested.

As in the books and in the series, we start with Crowley.

Also I’m sorry but this is long.

Book!Crowley and Show!Crowley: The Flash Bastard? @wisteria-lodge has already a good meta on the main differences between Cool Demon Crowley in the show and Well Adjusted Crowley in the book, which I think most people have I already read. Personally, I think that everything you need to know about how different they are is in Crowley’s flat.

This is Crowley’s flat in the book:

Crowley’s London flat was the epitome of style. It was everything that a flat should be: spacious, white, furnished, ad with that designer unlived-in look that only comes from not being lived-in. This is because Crowley did not live there. It was simply the place he went back to, at the end of the day, when he was in London. The beds were always made, the fridge was always stocked with gourmet food that never went off (that was why Crowley had a fridge, after all), and for that matter the fridge never needed to be defrosted or even plugged in. The lounge contained a huge television, a white leather sofa, a video and a laserdisc player, an ansaphone line, and the private line […] and a square matt black sound system, the kind so exquisitely engineered that it just has the on-off switch and the volume control. The only sound equipment Crowley had overlooked was speakers; he’d forgotten about them. Not that it made any difference. The sound reproduction was perfect anyway. (251)

Moreover, despite the premise, whenever we see or hear about Crowley’s flat in the book, it all sounds quite domestic. He regularly takes care of his plants and updates all his technology, like his computer, because “a sleek computer was the sort of thing Crowley felt that the sort of human he tried to be would have” (251). Hell interrupts him quite often while he’s religiously watching Cheers on his huge sofa and when he is pacing around waiting for Hell to show up, he tries fruitlessly to finish a novel or re-arrange alphabetically his cd collection and his books. He leans on an executive chair in his office when waiting for Hastur and Ligur to show up. He might have magic-ed up his entire flat from the posh version of an IKEA catalogue, but it’s still a flat an actual human might live in and he has every day stuff lying around.

This is Crowley’s flat in the series:

What is this. A flat where he flings dramatically on a bloody throne, everything is covered in dark marble and there are strategically places Dramatic Mementos and a secret revolving door to get in his offic—Crowley, you dramatic bitch.

Show!Crowley’s flat looks more personal – I know nothing about interior design but I’m pretty sure most of it was custom and he also had to drag around all his dramatic mementos through the centuries – but it’s also pretty much shown as just…well, an office. 

It’s a dark, lonely, a place where he’s constantly surrounded by reminders of who he is and what he has done, and it seems like he goes there only when he needs space to deal with his emotions and feelings. While many of the things he says about his Fall and the Apocalypse are also things he says aloud in the novel, they are said in a very different context and are presented as raw and vulnerable moments to him, talking not just to Aziraphale but also directly to God: “You shouldn’t test them to perdition”, “I did not mean to fall”, “I will never be forgiven, that’s the whole point”.

It’s also important to remember that show!Aziraphale genuinely fears that one day show!Crowley might decide to kill himself. He thinks of holy water as a suicide pill and he fears it more than he fears Hell going after Crowley, and he only yields when he has to choose between Crowley maybe hurting himself with it and Crowley certainly hurting himself when trying to get some. (The context also doesn’t help, because Crowley’s plan is ridicously complicated. Also like, you can buy holy water, a lot of Catholic places and sanctuaries even have gift shops. You can also just go to Lourdes and fill a tank. Or like, just ask your local priest or something, like Ryan Bergara from Buzzfeed Unsolved does in real life when he goes ghoul hunting. I’m an atheist and I have a souvenir Holy Kit from the Holy Land one of my colleagues got me on holiday. Either Crowley wanted Aziraphale to stop him or he wanted to put himself in danger.)

This is also the result of show!Crowley in a way being more disillusioned and cynical than book!Crowley, who drives a car on fire, even if he thinks that Aziraphale is gone and has no plan, because he always believes that “the universe would look out for him” (307). Show!Crowley has no such illusion and when he thinks that the Apocalypse is inevitable, his first instinct is to run to Aziraphale and ask him to run away together. The world is doomed, we gave it our best shot, but we can still make it, somewhere else. Even after Aziraphale refuses, what show!Crowley clings to is hope that Aziraphale might change his mind.

Only when it seems like Aziraphale is gone, he gives up:  he goes to a pub to get drunk and waits for death.

The Arrangement

As everyone and their grandmother has noticed, show!Crowley clings to  show!Aziraphale and he clings to Aziraphale hard. We get a beautiful cold opening expanding on their relationship through the centuries on top of all their interactions in the previous episodes which makes it perfectly clear that they genuinely like each other.

This is the worst Crowley’s look but this scene in particular is important because for the first and last time in the show we see Crowley being cold and closed off towards Aziraphale. Tellingly, it happens eight years after Crowley showed up just to ask Aziraphale if he had come to “smirk” at Jesus’ crucifixion: Crowley is interested only in befriending an Aziraphale who is good and questions how the system works, no matter how lonely life would be otherwise. He only turns to smile at Aziraphale only when he hears this:

AZIRAPHALE : Well, then let me tempt you—oh no, that’s your job, isn’t it?

Aziraphale is not just offering him dinner, he’s offering acceptance: he knows that Crowley is a demon, he knows they are on opposite side, he’s still interested in offering him dinner because he’s excited about food and likes Crowley and thinks that Crowley should try some. He’s momentarily forsaking his divine duty because he wants oysters and company. He’s being enough of a bastard to be worth knowing because show!Crowley is uncapable of doing things half-way. Once he has Aziraphale friendship, he’s going to keep it, not just because the Arrangement gives him a lot of free time, but because he likes Aziraphale.

This does not happen in the same way in the book: we only get glimpses of their relationship through the centuries, and the Arrangement is presented in a very matter-of-fact way (friendly reminder however that both Crowley and Aziraphale do often lie to themselves/try really hard to not think to certain things, and the narration oftens reflects this) :

On the whole, neither he nor Crowley would have chosen each other's company, but they were both men, or at least men-shaped creatures, of the world, and the Arrangement had worked to their advantage all this time. Besides, you grew accustomed to the only other face that had been around more or less consistently for six millennia.

The Arrangement was very simple, so simple in fact that it didn't really deserve the capital letter, which it had got for simply being in existence for so long. It was the sort of sensible arrangement that many isolated agents, working in awkward conditions a long way from their superiors, reach with their opposite number when they realize that they have more in common with their immediate opponents than their remote allies. It meant a tacit non-interference in certain of each other's activities. It made certain that while neither really won, also neither really lost, and both were able to demonstrate to their masters the great strides they were making against a cunning and well-informed adversary.

Ultimately, their relationship is as strong as in the series, but it starts very differently, and they need more time to admit to themselves and each other that this wasn’t just a matter of convenience because they are in very different places due to, as previously mentioned, the smaller role humanity plays in the series.  In the novel, it seems that they at first got closer by talking about humanity and their roles on heart and being critical of their respective party lines (to a point, in Aziraphale’s case). Their conversation regarding Armageddon in the park and in the bookshop are also way more practical:

Aziraphale spread his elegantly manicured hands.

"My people are more than happy for it to happen, you know. It's what it's all about, you see. The great final test. Flaming swords, the Four Horsemen, seas of blood, the whole tedious business." He shrugged.

"The prophecies differ," said Aziraphale, sliding into the passenger seat. "Certainly until the end of the century, although we may expect certain phenomena before then. Most of the prophets of the past millennium were more concerned with scansion than accuracy."

And also more disillusioned:

"You're saying the child isn't evil of itself?" he said slowly.

"Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality, waiting to be shaped," said Crowley. He shrugged. "Anyway, why're we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that."

"I suppose it's got to be worth a try," said the angel. Crowley nodded encouragingly.

I might actually embark on a scene-by-scene confrontation (of some scenes)  at some point because seriously, it’s fascinating how they are mostly saying the same things and mostly coming to the same decisions but in completely different ways. Show!Aziraphale still believes in Heaven while Book!Aziraphale is like “Oh, my bosses just really want Apocalypse to happen, what can you do, also between you and me prophecies are nice to read but useless and some prophets just were on too many drugs”.

Anyway, this passage also highlights another important difference in the Arrangement and in their relationship in the novel and in the series: in the book, Crowley and (usually) Aziraphale both know that this whole thing is bullshit, just names for sides. In the series, they still cling to those ideals of Good and Evil on some extent: Crowley is trying to be a Cool Demon and still on some level mourns his Fall, while Aziraphale, despite being repeatedly being shown that Heaven is full of wankers, still believes that everyone is a good guy inside and obeying will eventually lead to the greater good. This is also because in the novel Crowley and Aziraphale are straightforward subversions of what angels and demons are supposed to be like, while the series not as much.

Aziraphale and Choosing Sides

To write a complete meta about the differences between Aziraphale in the show and Aziraphale in the book would take me a week, mostly because Aziraphale is already a difficult character to analyze in the book and people better than me have already wrote about it. One of the best analysis I would recommend is from @nemeanlionblepping​, which focuses on how Aziraphale’s arc in the book is about him stopping to swim in the Nile and fully accepting that if both sides equally suck, then he is also not what he thinks he is. I mean, just look at this scene:

"I can't interfere with divine plans," he croaked.

Crowley looked speculatively into his glass, and then filled it again. "What about diabolical ones?" he said.

"Pardon?"

"Well, it's got to be a diabolical plan, hasn't it? We're doing it. My side."

"Ah, but it's all part of the overall divine plan," said Aziraphale. "Your side can't do anything without it being part of the ineffable divine plan," he added, with a trace of smugness.

"You wish!"

 Show!Aziraphale is worried and hesitant. Book!Aziraphale is a holier-than-thou sanctimous prick. This is a recurrent theme in the novel, where Aziraphale constantly casually mentions how Hell (and Crowley) are naturally inferior on some level and always destined to fail (see, there is a reason why he looks English!) and it’s one of the things he eventually gets over it at the end – see once again the meta from above.

(There is also a great meta about how Aziraphale’s line in the final confrontation is about Aziraphale accepting that he knew Crowley was good all along but he was pretending not to so he could keep lying to himself and I can’t find it.) 

This is once again quite different in the series, where Aziraphale is swimming in the Nile for different reasons:

Aziraphale’s belief in Heaven in the series seems to be grounded in the belief that Heaven is ultimately following God’s will and doing good. Notably, in the novel Aziraphale contacts Heaven in the bookshop because he desperately thinks the can rule-lawyer his way out of his mess by getting Heaven to kill the Antichrist, while show!Aziraphale desperately thinks that he can just talk with God and She will take his side. “We are the good guys”. “I want to complain about the conduct of some angels”.

 In the series, the main point of view shifts from Crowley to Aziraphale, who is given both book! Crowley’s resourceful moments and his optimism: even as Metraton tells him that they want to win the war, not avoid it, he still calls Crowley on the phone (even after Crowley just shouted at him that he was leaving forever for Alpha Centauri) because it can all work out somehow. His conflict is not about how much he likes Crowley (a lot)  and whether that’s all right (show!Aziraphale has no qualms accepting that Crowley is a good guy, even if show!Crowley does not), but on accepting that Heaven is wrong and his place is indeed at Crowley’s side. This conflict was already present on some level in the novel but it was a side of the many conflicts going on with Aziraphale, not the main one : show!Aziraphale instead is openly asked repeatedly to choose between Crowley and Heaven, and significantly, he is tempted: he wants to say yes, but he can’t because, well.

Humanity, The Ending and What The Main Difference Is (Probably)

A huge plot point in the book is that Crowley and Aziraphale are useless. And not just because they cancel each other out, but because humans are capable of greater acts of evil and goodness than either Heaven or Hell, who are just messing with them and making it harder for humans to just be humans. As previously mentioned, their relationship with humanity is the basis of Aziraphale and Crowley’s friendship in the novel: they love Earth and they are willing to stop the Apocalypse even if they fear that Hell might just produce another Antichrist:

"And without unopposed Satanic influences-"

"Well, at worst Hell will have to start all over again. And the Earth gets at least another eleven years. That's got to be worth something, hasn't it?"

It is important to remember that Crowley and Aziraphale are perfectly aware of how evil and how good humans can be - they are not romanticizing humanity or Earth, they see them exactly for what they are and are willing to risk everything anyway:

There were people who called themselves Satanists who made Crowley squirm. It wasn't just the things they did, it was the way they blamed it all on Hell. They'd come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully-functioning human brain could conceive, then shout "The Devil Made Me Do It" and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn't have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

They keep being useless until the end, where Adam fixes everything simply with a “No, thank you” and a wave of the hand and in fact accuses Heaven and Hell to having just messed with humans and made it harder. Adam in fact helps them – he somehow makes it all right with Heaven and Hell so they go unpunished, Aziraphale gets his body back and they also get back the Bentley and the Bookshop. It’s a really optimist novel, about thinking critically about how things are, realize that you don’t have to keep doing things because that’s how it’s supposed to be change your ways:

Everyone found their eyes turning toward Adam. He seemed to be thinking very carefully.

Then he said: "I don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out."  

In fact, the whole idea of having Good and Evil battle it out until only one remains is pointless because people are people, so they are going to be both

"It doesn't matter!" snapped the Metatron. "The whole point of the creation of the Earth and Good and Evil-"

"I don't see what's so triflic about creating people as people and then gettin' upset 'cos they act like people," said Adam severely. "Anyway, if you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive. If I was in charge, I'd try makin' people live a lot longer, like ole Methuselah. It'd be a lot more interestin' and they might start thinkin' about the sort of things they're doing to all the enviroment and ecology, because they'll still be around in a hundred years' time."

 In fact, Heaven and Hell are so useless that humans might one day end the world and wipe out the whales all by themselves! Ha! (I laugh so I don’t cry).

This reflects Crowley and Aziraphale’s arc in the book , which culminates once the Apocalypse is over and consists in admitting aloud that they like each other and they were friends this whole time while they decide to die fighting Satan just to save three humans:

He smiled at Crowley.

"I'd just like to say," he said, "if we don't get out of this, that . . . I'll have known, deep down inside, that there was a spark of goodness in you."

"That's right," said Crowley bitterly. "Make my day."

Aziraphale held out his hand.

"Nice knowing you," he said.

Crowley took it.

"Here's to the next time," he said. "And . . . Aziraphale?"

"Yes."

"Just remember I'll have known that, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking."

Because Crowley was a shitty demon and Aziraphale was a shitty angel, because they asked questions, they now have each other, and they gain their happy ending and the right to stay on Earth alongside humanity. Heaven and Hell are social constructs and while Aziraphale and Crowley still retain angelic and demonic instincts, they have also discovered free will – which was inside them all along – and are indeed free to do whatever they please – like, say, moving in together.  

The show has quite a different approach: most of the dialogues about humanity are cut out – we don’t even get the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse saying that they just went back “in the hearts of men” and they will never truly die (unless humanity changes) – and Aziraphale and Crowley’s arc end quite differently and it’s all less optimistic than in the book: they got a temporary reprieve but Hell and Heaven haven’t forgotten a thing. Their affirmation of love and friendship to each other seems to be the true prize: now they both know and accept that their place is with each other on Earth, and whatever happens they’ll be together. 

Probably because it’s 2019 and it gets harder to believe that everything will be all right just if you work hard enough unless you radically change the system, but you can at least still protect and cherish the things you love and get to keep them – when Aziraphale and Crowley ultimately have to “choose their faces wisely” it’s not for humanity or Earth, but purely for each other. Adam doesn’t save the world by giving a speech about humanity but by choosing to protect the things he loves and he gets to keep them. Additionally, Crowley and Aziraphale are not useless and their relationship with each other is now fundamental to the world itself: had he not loved and trusted Aziraphale, Crowley would have no reason to hang around on Earth once the Apocalypse started, and even less reason to go to Lower Tadfield and stop the Apocalypse. Had he not loved and trusted Crowley, Aziraphale wouldn’t have anyone to help him once Heaven turns against him. Adam would have been left entirely alone. It’s debatable whether this would make a difference for Earth and the Apocalypse, but it surely would have made a difference for Adam and everyone present.

Aziraphale is a bastard worth “knowing” and not “liking” because feelings, relationships and love are the main forces of the series and one must choose their own side because yes, love is what brings people together and makes them able to survive horrible things, but love has to be earned and having the wrong people in your life is what makes people suffer the most. Crowley’s deep issues in the show come from Hell but also from having Fallen by displeasing a distant authoritarian figure; Aziraphale’s from Heaven’s psychological abuse; the Them are momentarily subject to Adam’s terrifying whims and Adam’s life is almost ruined by external forces who just want to use him, and he can’t face alone. People have to be worth it, otherwise you are better off without them.

 It’s a more personal but also pessimistic and therefore consoling message than the original novel : thing were bad, things are probably going to be bad again, but at least you won’t be alone.

…I think. If nothing else I can link this everytime I get told that “but the book and the series are basically the same thing”.

Thank you for reading if you get at the end of this. Have a nice day!