Three episodes rising to the raw power of Angel grovelling in abject misery at having lost the one thing that he thought he had done right in his life. Betrayal, fate, love, and inter-dimensional portals. Great stuff
3.14- 'Couplet'
A key question for this episode is exactly which two people are being coupled. I think it's one of those questions which actually has a very simple primary answer, and lots of little secondary answers behind it. The primary answer is in those written words. There's something about words in ink instead of proclaimed which adds an inexplicable certainty to happennings, and Wesley's tidy matter-of-fact blocked capitals, written over three lines, with two words on each, make the prophecy as simple as it can be.
The subject, the action, the object. It could barely be simpler. The reason why it is an excellent climax to the episode is that Angel has just forfeited the other 'couplet' he had been considering, and decided merely to look after his son. And now we, the audience, an episode before Wesley and two before Angel, realise that his apparently easy choice is going to be far from it. We are left in discomfort as to what is to come, as Wesley is at the end of 'Loyalty', and Angel at the end of 'Sleep Tight'. The episode is fairly breezy early on, almost to the point of being a little too slow-paced. Here are a few things I plucked from the bumblings:
-Are we supposed to assume that no-one other than Numfar has taken over Pylea. 'The charismatic leader did the Dance of Revolution'. I'm quite happy to believe this, even if I completely misunderstood the whole reference. Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams. The crazy creator could be the King of a burgeoning Republic, couldn't he?
-The main parallel in this episode is of Angel with Wesley. Both are adapting to being rejected even before they really asked. It hurts them both, but both come to a decision to be gracious before the end of the episode. It appears that the status quo of the group might be maintained. Of course the irony is that although Wesley and Angel are having parallel journeys, and are both showing similar attributes of grace, emotional honesty and mental and physical strength, it is shortly to be their inability to understand each other which causes what may well be the most lasting wounds AI has ever suffered.
-Looking at the cases a little more closely: we first have the Angel/Cordelia/Groo triangle. Groo goes through several different versions of adversary to Angel in the episode, while never vacating his position exactly where Angel doesn't want him to be. Originally, we see how Groo can do what Angel feels he cannot. He feels once again that his vampiric essence is restricting him form being the true Champion. He, unlike Groo, cannot be the victorious warrior in sunlight. The very specific way the aftermath of the fight is shot, with the rest of the team cooing around him, and congratulating him on beingsuch a figurehead, reminded me very strongly of a couple of similar shots in 'Faith, Hope and Trick', where Buffy, shortly back from her summer's absence [pun not intended but noticed], sees Faith supplanting her newly-won role as the Slayer figurehead. Here Groo has become the Dark Avenger once again. And while he is given good advice from Cordelia, that Groo can never replace Angel, and that he is unique, it seems like a bitter pill to swallow coming from the woman who, (regardless of the reality), appears to have already made her choice. Now Groo is to Angel what Faith is to Buffy. Not completely, but remember we see Faith eyeing up Scott Hope. Groo even more successfully appears to take over Angel's life exactly when he thought he might just have the eveything symbolised by him with Cordelia and Connor at the end of 'Provider'.
-Two things knock Angel out of his annoyance. Firstly, we have the whole sucking tentacle debacle. Perhaps not the greatest or most original Monster of the Week, but it does an important thematic job. It allows Angel to realise that denying or maligning him self for his vampireness is precisely the wrong thing to do. Angel twice proves himself to be more qualified for the task than Groo. Firstly, with the skill of a more mature fighter, he counsels not to attack immediately. Of course Groo, the quintessential full frontal attack warrior, ignores the warning. Angel is shown to be more adept at fighting evil on his own turf. However, the more important aspect is how he defeats the monster. By not having a life-force, an energy coursing through him, he nullifies the creature's power. The very fact that he is a vampire has made him more useful than Groo in defeating the object. He has to use all of what he is to defeat it, not just deny a section in order to conform to a supposed 'ideal warrior' prototype. Because Groo, the 'ideal warrior' is not always more effective than him. The second consolation is Connor, the thing that makes him unique and normal and special all at the same time. What does it matter what Groo can do, when he has shown beyond argument that he can bring hope to the world?
-Simultaneously, we have the Wesley/Fred/Gunn triangle. One has to feel for Wesley. No-one else involved in the actual triangle understands how deeply hurt he is. And his only real confidant, Cordelia, is too busy living a paradisal dream with Groo to be grounded and supporting. And yet, like Dawn at the end of 'Potential', but without the pep talk, he gets on doing what is important- in two ways. Firstly, despite the pain the Gunn/Fred relationship causes him, as best friend of Gunn and suitor for Fred, he tells Gunn that the relationship is OK by him. That Wesley/Gunn scene is one of the most beautiful character moments the series has delivered. Wesley, deeply pained, acting as the protective older brother instead of letting his anger vent at the wrong target. The economy of words- a Whedon trade-mark. And secondly, we have his diligence in research, trying to find something on Connor. This is partly because, as we see Wesley's story co-inciding with Angel's, we see how important it is to Wesley for Angel to know everything about his son. But that's before the thunderbolt of the final shot.
-Groo dresses exactly as Angel. Cordelia wants Angel really, but without the complications. Doesn't she? I can't see the two of them coming back from holiday a happy couple at all, although I'm [always] willing to be surprised, if it makes logical sense.
A sturdy episode, if missing the excellence of the next or the sheer superiority of 'Sleep Tight'.
3.15- 'Loyalty'
Right. I need a very strong cup of tea. Frankly, whisky was required after 'Sleep Tight', but this was nerve-racking enough. Two things I loved about this episode. Firstly, that Mere Smith was given the opportunity to write a really crucial, turning point episode. She has done such wonderful jobs with somewhat inconsequentially placed opportunities so far, that the chance to really show off was overdue, and she provides a stunner. Secondly, that this is the first episode entirely dedicated to Wesley. When you look back through the last few Seasons, he's worked his way into being a wonderful character without really having any obvious show-piece episodes. He has portions of several excellent shows, but isn't given the time Cordelia or even Gunn have been. Here we really get inside his motivations, with wonderful results. In fact, this is so far inside Wesley's perspective that we actually see his dream at the start of the episode. A non-lead character getting a dream sequence is extremely unusual, (outside the set-piece 'Restless'), with only the supreme Spike dream in 'Out of My Mind' immediately obvious to me, (that may just be my watery memory though).
-The dream sequence sums up the two things I highlighted from the last episode fairly succinctly. We have the slightly over-egged Fred and Gunn, (nicely hammed up by Acker and Richards), and then Wesley's desperate delving into the prophecies, only to learn that the prophecies tell of blood. It is an important point, I believe, that the blood is on his hands. Not Angel's. Angel drinks from the baby later, in a truly terrifying spectacle, even though we know by this stage it cannot be real. But it is Wesley who feels the responsibility. It's entirely illogical, but it is also a telling motivation for all his subsequent actions. He believes, sub-consciously at least, that having found it, he has become responsible for it happening. This is why he decides to hide it. Maybe initially he has the excuse that Angel hearing it would not be wise in his current situation (unjustifiable- he denies Angel freedom of self-determination which is so important), but by 'Sleep Tight', it is clear that telling Angel is the most sensible option. But he is wracked by guilt that Connor's death at Angel's hand will be his fault. Of course, ironically, in believing this, his actions become indirectly responsible for Angel's actual loss of his child.
-Watching Wesley slowly crumble in this episode is beautiful. The giant hamburger scene, while superficially amusing, is underneath disturbing. Of course it's a subversion. Smith is almost taunting the audience. Look how ridiculous I can make something and still make it tell uncomfortable tales. It's almost like the title 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. It begs people who don't get the joke to misunderstand, and is not at all weakened by those who don't get it. But the portents, if campy and melodramatic, are powerful. Then we see Wesley on an apparently kamikaze mission, when he visits Holtz. Originally I thought, he we are at exactly the same point as 'Reprise' last Season, and here is Wesley mirroring Angel's descent into despair. I believe that parallel may still be intentional. With it, an interesting difference between Wesley and Angel is revealed. Because while Angel was so riled he was willing to take all hell on, Wesley actually comes to Holtz with an entirely sensible plan. To investigate and infiltrate. To sound out and try to decide just how trustworthy Holtz is. He comes to the decision that he does have some morality. He steps back, and returns to AI unharmed. Wesley's eternal catchphrase might just be 'Softly, sofly, catchy monkey'.
-Then there's the final couple of scenes with Wesley, and the most wonderful piece of writing again. Because we are fed the switch, only for it to be a mis-lead. Brilliantly perceptive viewers might not have fallen for it, but I certainly did. Here we are, with Angel happily with his baby in his arms, realising just how ridiculous prophecies really are. It's about living: making good decisions, having fun, singing, not regretting or over-analysing. He breaks into laughter, a laughter as powerful as Giles' in 'Grave'. When we here Giles laugh, we want to cry, (and I usually do, but I reckon you'd guessed that already). Because everything might just be alright. It's Whedon's laugh at a wondefully depressing Season. It's Giles' laugh at the ridiculousness of plot, and life. And Buffy, who is us, joins in. Here, Wesley can laugh. He can realise that these world-shattering events just seem like the campy melodrama of 'Dawn's a total klepto. Xander left Anya at the altar. And I've been sleeping with Spike', when stripped to bare essentials. It's about what moments of joy we can accrue, and the hope in Connor and in our own lives....
Then the turn. The respresentation of Hope, Life, Freedom nearly killed. The portents coming true exactly as claimed. Earthquake. Fire. Blood. And Wesley realises that this melodrama is painful because of the very real suffering. Angel's, Connor's his own. And, after being offered not a simple, trite ending but a genuinely hopeful one, perhaps what I'd call a Buffy ending, we are instead given the darker, more insistently powerful, more disturbing and thought-provoking one, as Wesley starts to crumble again. Superlative.
-There are also some other interesting character questions in this episode. What exactly does Sahjhan want? It remains a mystery.
-We have the fascinating droplet of Lilah's amnesiac mother. Why exactly? I've always liked the drawing of Lilah's character, just like Kate Lockley. It's been really tidily done. She is an intensely human character, even though she not only has the capacity for immense evil, but the routine inclination to it. But there's always that human side, the vulnerability, the cry in the wine cellar of 'For God's sake, help us!' This is part of the reason we see the scene. But also because Lilah's Mother has become her nightmare of existence. The harmless, confused woman with no control over her life. Lilah is a woman fiercely in control. Almost as if compensating for that lack of control in her mother. And, in a tiny, sad brushstroke from the writer, she hangs up hurriedly when Sahjhan appears. Her work will always be her priority, and may be something which will always keep her that touch less than a fully functioning human being.
-Aubrey, the mole who has lost her son to vampires, is a very tidy and beautiful way of explaining how Holtz was in a similar position to Angel. Angel really sympathises with her story, because his son means more than anything in the world to him. But Holtz, the man who lost his own son's to Angelus, also understands her. Holtz's revenge is going to be, as befits his character, completely Old Testament. 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life'. In this case, the knowledge of the life of a child. And Holtz's complete failure to realise the wrongness of his Melvillian monomania is highlighted by his lines to Justine. 'The world is not black and white. There is good and evil'. 'Angelus is Evil'. He understands how wrong it is to think in simplistic terms about the world, and yet when it comes to Angel, he has had a blind spot, inflicted by the pain of loss. I'm not going to even attempt to recall the Holtz's actore's name (beautiful but tricky to master), but his voice is really quite something. It has that resonance and yet, at the same time, a certain deadness in it. Good acting as well as fluky casting, I suspect.
Really brilliant, and yet still surpassed by the absolute ratings-buster, [yes you can rate 12 on a 1-10 scale]...
3.16- 'Sleep Tight'
Well, I got pretty excited about that last one, so I don't know how much further I have to go really, but this is my attempt to summarise with as little 'Gah!'-ing as possible. Because Greenwalt is the King of 'didn't see that coming', and to pull it off in quite such a crucial episode, (these episodes are often Minear's domain), is a startling feat.
Oddly enough, I actually don't have many notes for this. I think it may partly be to do with the really marvellous plot-lines which required proper and full attention throughout. We start in the teaser with something seemingly marvellously irrelevant. The girl who suddenly turns into a monster in the middle of a Greenwalt-penned piece of music. The horrible out of the supposedly normal, which is exaclty Angel's perspective in this episode. Because while we have seen the mounting horror of Wesley's realisation in the previous episode, Angel, kept in the dark, [hey, they're not deliberate, promise], has seen none of it. That's part of the reason for the doting Father, which, while accurately portrayed and a necessity to offset the drama around Connor, I find wearing.
The changing girl turns out to be little more than a plot device, and yet once again adds questions. These are demons who pretend to lead normal human lives, but cannot stop their demon from occasionally coming through. Bingo to Angel, the vampire whose latent aggression and irrationality comes through at the same point in the episode. In short, blood-lust. Of course, as with most things in this most perfectly layered of episodes, this is deeply important for more than one reason, because, as well as allowing Angel yet another chance for self-examination, it finally pushes Wesley over the edge into believing the portents aren't lying, and that Angel is about to kill his son. Of course, the six word prophecy itself is not as clear as it seems. We still don't know certainly exactly who the Father and the Son are. Furthermore, although Death and Birth seem like the only two complete certainities of life, we have already seen this Season how the prophcy of No Birth was more a Macbethian prevarication than a reality, (forgot to mention that excellent line when I watched it- suffice it to say, Good Writing). Yet Wesley, as we can understand having seen his psyche, decides he has no option.
Simultaneously, we have Holtz and Justine preparing not for War, but for Vengeance. There's that line about Holtz not liking his drink in a Styrofoam cup. Trust Greenwalt, even at his most sad and gloomy moment, to inject that daft and wonderful humour. It also allows Justine and Holtz to bond in an important scene. Without this, the subsequent playing of Wesley seems without cause. We imagine Justine really believes she has been betrayed by Holtz. But if we watch this scene closely, it becomes clear that the mis-lead is readable. And so we have a whole complicated line of hurt loyalties. Wesley betrays Angel, with best intentions at heart. Then Justine betrays Wesley in turn, believing Hotlz's story that the child needs to be away not only from the vampire, but from possible spheres of influence.
And so, like the three-pronged viewing of Connor's birth, we here get a five-way perspective on the poor baby's continued life. Broadly dividing, we have Angel with Gunn, Fred and Lorne, Wesley alone, Holtz with Justine, Lilah and her nominal loyalty to Wolfram and Hart, (one important aspect of the title 'Loyalty' in the previous episode), and finally Sahjhan, the most mysterious of all. We wait slowly to see whose will will be done, and assess their different kinds of power.
1) Angel, Gunn, Fred and Lorne perhaps have the most honest quartet. They don't hurt each other, and are not a partnership of convenience. They have Angel, the one person who truly loves the baby as a baby and a son. Gunn and Fred, a broody couple, also have the understanding of the very humanity which aches through every pore of Angel's being when he has his child, even as a vampire. And then we have the ever-resident minder, Uncle Lorne, who has soul in so many different ways. This is clearly Connor's best environment, despite Wesley's doubt. If this group were to carry the day, it would clearly be the happiest ending.
2) Wesley has allowed himself to submit to prophecy and fate. He tried his best to resist it, but the way that supernatural urges toyed with his life in 'Billy', coupled with his aching loss of Fred and the events at the end of 'Loyalty' and then finally Angel's bloodlust, has made him decide that it will come true. His is the cerebral yet hunted outlook, and Connor with him might become a thoughtful and serious, if perhaps not particularly happy child. This ending would be deeply painful, but ultimately Wesley has shown a consideration and sense which suggests that Connor might be in a good situation.
3) The bureaucrats of Wolfram and Hart have very few qualms about anything. They have already mercilessly used Connor's blood to make Angel seem unsafe around the child. As usual, they had no conception of how complex the chain of events they threw into being were to be, and, as Lilah quips, there will be a load of admin to be done. Terminally incapable of getting the right end, and yet, by their very mission statement to carelessly do evil, this might be a worst case scenario for Connor. Because, while Lilah supposedly wants Connor alive, this is probably only because she is tempting to lure Angel to the dark side. How much easier to do so by torturing a child into which he has put all his ideas of Hope and Future. This would be a dystopian, Season Two ending, with the glimmer of hope that Wolfram and Hart's tendency to be unable to control eveything means that Connor's return might not be impossible.
4) We have the bittersweet ending as well. While we have been set up to find Holtz as a villain, and while his inability to forgive, and much more importantly, his need to act on his feelings of pain despite Angel's changes have made him clearly a deeply flawed character, I imagine that the scene with Holtz as Father, Justine as Mother, Connor as Steven and Utah as Home is supposed to make us think that Connor might well grow up in a twisted kind of happiness. It may not be natural, but precious few details of his short life have been. We are not supposed to take this perspective, because we are in Angel's journey, and his loss of Connor is the most painful thing in the world to him, but this might perhaps be the end of Shakesperian tragedy- with a shaft of Hope in the purged next generation, like Fortinbras at the end of Hamlet. Angel might kill himself with depression, but perhaps Connor can live to be a better person than Liam ever was.
Yet Greenwalt playfully avoids all four of these. The happy ending, the alternative happy ending, the classically prolonging ME ending, and the bittersweet Shakesperian ending. He opts for the wildcard. We pointedly know nothing of Sahjhan's motivations, and hence, if this were a murder mystery, we would be right to be suspicious of him. He is introduced merely as plot device for Holtz to arrive. And yet his even more callous demands than even W+H and Holtz, to kill the baby, win the day. It is mysterious, impossible to predict, and leaves with the hardest ending of all.
Gladly, however, this is serial television. We are left with some questions which need to be answered. The tabula rasa of Sahjhan as a character will surely be clarified, as will the wholly mysterious jumping into Quortoth of Hotlz. Does he do so because this is his only option in keeping the living baby away from Angel? In making him suffer the way he had to suffer over his apparently living vampire daughter? Or does he know more? Is he in fact still in league with the 'impatient' Sahjhan? So many unanswered questions.
What is clear is the exceptional finale to a captivating arc this episode is. Just a couple of loose ends here:
-Lilah is offered her way out of the femme fatale role by Angel, but she denies it. She is becoming her work even more. Is the humanity implied by 'Loyalty' a mislead? I doubt it. We just need a little longer for the pay-off.
-The Wesley/Lorne scene is perfect plotting- a wonderful scene. Wesley's singing to the baby indicates his real concern, and thus it is symbolic that his love for the child, and hence Angel, gives away to Lorne the story of his motivation. Twice he is shown to be not the perfect triple agent. He cares too much about Connor to take him without suspicion, (although violence avails him), and then falls to the apparent brokenness of Justine. Although he tries to act alone, doing so in a caring way is shown to be well-nigh impossilbe.
-The final four way scene, devoid of Wesley, really brings to corporeality the myriad different fates possible for Connor. It's a compelling scene not just for the 'What Happens Next?' factor, but also because it is clear that the scene is standing right on the cusp of fate. It's similar to Robin Cook's resignation speech in the House of Commons. Just for a moment, it seemed, unthinkably, that his eloqence might catalyse a rebellion, then a vote against war, then Britain forced to opt out, and so on. It didn't happen, but that's why it was powerful for me. Here again, the fate of many is being decided. and of course it is the helpless one, beset on all sides by selfish wants, (except possibly Angel's), whose life is to be most altered. Wow, I'm starting to understand how OnM writes those wonderful posts after every episode. 4,000 words on these three episodes, and I still feel I haven't covered half of it. Thanks for reading so far. Surely Season Three can't get any better from here...;-)