Helen wrote: <I remeber being very angry at the end of Trial, when Blake and Avon looked at Vila after the crack about intelligent fleas, and started to laugh.>
I agree, though the person I was most angry with was the screen-writer. It is very un-Blake-like to mock someone to their face (unless it's an enemy, or Avon-and-he-asked-for-it) and it is very un-Avon to laugh at his own 'wit' like that. The same set-up - the two of them sharing a reaction to something Vila said - occurred a couple of times before: in Redemption, where Vila said that line about germs (Avon gave Blake that line about 'crude but accurate' and a lovely if superior smile) and in Shadow, with Avon's 'plain man's guide' crack and the look on both their faces. In both cases it's in character and, while a tad superior, not gratuitously crude or cruel.
It's also very forced, which prompts me to suggest - since we *can't* simply cite Bad Writer Syndrome - that it's more for a reaction for each other's benefit, as part of the sort-of-mending-fences 'pax' thing indicated by Avon's open-hand gesture, than anything to do with Vila.
Yes, they're shutting him out, but then the two of them *do* that to the others sometimes. Blake was decent to Vila most of the time, better than nearly all of the rest overall, but he was hardly saintly - he could be brusque or short, could turn that formidable temper on (Shadow) and could be less than fair. This was definitely one of the latter moments, but then Avon was always more important than Vila ...
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