Hello everyone.

In some ways I'm lucky, since my relationship with my parents has never echoed the relationships of the parents and children in the Buffyverse. Biological parents are generally not shown in the best of lights. And although Joyce does a little for caring mothers, there's barely a father in the whole eight season spread of the show that is worth his salt. Fred's father appears to have done little wrong except for doxing off in front of Alien Resurrection, but the rest of them are almost to a man vengeful, neglectful jealous people.

And so when Wesley's father is mentioned in Sanctuary, we are unsurprised to find out that there relationship is less than rosy. The next year comes one of the best pieces of acting on Angel, Wesley's phone conversation with his father in Belonging. It is this persona, of the man ready to doubt his son's every move, give him little opportunity to shine, and question the morality of his choices, that we see so clearly in this week's episodes. Ultimately, despite some fantastic plot twists and some excellent dialogue, the episode loses itself a little bit in cross-purposes, but there's still plenty of food for thought about lineage and relationships.

5.7- 'Lineage'

Lineage's plot isn't the most original in the world. The Watcher's Council have for years been known to be less than entirely honest, and also prone to renegade charges disrupting the apparently trustworthy facade of the age-old institution. Five years ago, in a plot which was the advent of Wesley on the show, Gwendolyn Post appeared as Faith's watcher, only to turn out to be a power hungry outcast. If we learn anything from that episode, it is both to be careful who we trust, and not to take supposed representatives of the Watcher's Council at face value. It is Faith who is most scarred by the encounter, not being able to trust the apparent authority figure, and thereby beginning to lose trust in everyone. By the time that Wesley arrives on the scene, particularly as a kind of Ultra-Giles, he has already lost the Slayer.

But Wesley's transformation in the series is so great that by the Faith arc in the fourth Season of Angel, he is unrecognisable to Faith from the bumbler of Sunnydale or the object of torture in 'Five by Five'. It is that phrase that signals the apparent gradation of Wesley's change, him being able to get away with Faith's catchphrase without just sounding daft. Yet hidden away under the surface change, in a twist so ingenious that it vaults Season Four into orbit, temporarily at least, is the fact that Wesley may not have changed much at all.

The viewer who remembers back to 'Choices' knows that back in that episode, Wesley is willing to sacrifice Willow for the Box of Gavrok, or, more precisely, will not agree to the exchange, until Oz' wordless anger settles the issue. It is his tendency to attempt to win the battle despite the human cost which is just another reason to dislike him at this point in the series. In Los Angeles, Wesley's outer self changes completely, and is followed slowly by his inner confidence. We see the sleek Rogue Demon Hunter who still has the clownish klutziness to start with, but through episodes like Guise will be Guise, and particularly due to his heading of AI after Reunion, his confidence develops.

His underlying trait though, is still to do the greater good even if at personal cost. And so in Season Three, in the superb Loyalty, Wesley realises that the prophecy suggests that he must take Connor away. He does so without consulting with Angel, and at whatever cost to the relationship with Connor in which Angel has invested all his hope for the future. The reverberations of the decision create the deep and lasting schism in Wesley and Angel's relationship symbolised by the shocking end of Forgiving. Then in Season Four, with Wesley just back in the gang, he repeatedly reminds Faith that she must be happy to sacrifice him if it is necessary to beat the Beast and Angelus. Now, rather than this pragmatic approach seeming like the over-formality of a stuffy Briton, it comes across as brutalised and rejecting of human companionship. But it is still the same trait, deep down, that Wesley has shown since Bad Girls

So how does this lengthy history, part of which wiped from Wesley's memory, rebound on Lineage? We are shown fairly early on that Wesley remembers Lilah, a slightly surprising element of the backhistory that Wesley knows, considering how directly Lilah and Wesley's relationship relates to Connor. In 'cutting her into little pieces' Wesley is again forced to reject human closeness in the fight against evil. He is forced to look at the big picture, and keep the niggling little human emotions thing to a minimum.

Knowing so much of this about Wesley, are we forced, as viewers, to doubt his motivations? Can such an apparently cold, unfeeling person really be on the side of Good? Two things remind me particularly of Wesley's human character in this episode in particular. First is the conversation between his Father and Fred, where he attempts to resurrect a bird who has flown into his window, at age only eight. It's a touch sledge-hammery, but it's there for a reason, Wesley has always been fundamentally good-natured, aiming for the best. It is the way in which his character manifests these tendencies that makes him such a fascinatingly 3-D character. Secondly, we have Fred.

Fred is used in a rather complex way in this episode. Angel chastises Wesley for putting her in the firing line, telling him that he overlooked her safety. When Wesley, worried and self-aware of his own tendency to do this, attempts to apologise to Fred, she calls him for being patronising to her. Firstly, this shows that Angel's motives aren't entirely objective, motivated as they are by his memory of Connor's loss, as Eve mentioned. Secondly, it neatly shows Wesley stuck between two stools of his character, the over-patronising coddling intellectual, and the cold, heartless schemer. It is this tension in his character which makes him a fascinating watch throughout all seasons. The Head Boy plays the man who kills his own father.

That scene, lessened in impact only slightly by the revelation that this Roger is merely a robot, shows an interesting facet in Wesley's personality. Here, the two aspects of his character outlined above pair up. We have the caring boy saving the helpless dead bird, and the man with brutal instincts to protect what is Good. Here Fred is good, and, after he has shown that he entirely understands the situation, that his Father will not shoot him while he has the ability to imbue Angel with his will, he shoots him coldly as soon as he endangers Fred. He learns the lesson of the beginning of the episode, where he allowed Fred to get hurt, but, interestingly, it's still not Fred who gets a weapon, but him protecting her above his father's life.

And so what of fathers and sons? Roger and Wesley's interaction to me never quite hits the heights it should have been capable of until the final scene on the roof. The Head Boy revelation is marginally interesting- mostly in showing that even in achieving something tangible, his supposed Father is not satisfied, citing the 'slim pickings' form which the school could choose. It becomes clear that it is not only Wesley's problems with Faith which have fuelled his Father's harshness, but that he has been critical of him even when he has done impressive and laudable things. That he appears to be finally winning some respect for Wesley is touching, but then, horribly and with excellent timing from Drew Goddard, we find out that all is not as it should be, and that Roger is not here for Wesley at all. As soon as Wesley wins a hint of respect, it is undermined, much like Giles' finding out about the glove to win Ms Post's approval in 'Revelations'.

Finally, if Roger the robot really is an accurate reflection of Wesley's father, we learn the real truth of the relationship. Sadly, this scene suffers in retrospect from much the same issue as Mad Eye Moody's characterisation in the Goblet of Fire. Although we see this fascinating character screaming 'CONSTANT VIGILANCE', the fact that we never see the real Moody invalidates to an extent what we have learnt- the human richness of the character. In the same way, I found the Roger-Wesley dynamic undermined in the end by the fact that what was portrayed was not really Wesley's father. Like Rowling, Goddard to an extent attempts to eat his cake and have it too. But assigning this robot Roger's characteristics for the moment, the real story is that Roger is worried about his son- the son that his mother labelled a prodigy, that read in foreign languages whil still in single figures, and that became Head Boy. He has been surpassed, and, unlike Giles in his relationship with Buffy, cannot stand it. That is a powerful message, if blurred a little by the logistics of the plot.

And so back to fathers and sons. What, ultimately do fathers, parents as a whole, do for their children? One of the more bleak interpretations of this episode is that they merely suck out the children's free will, leaving them with nothing but hollow targets and echoes of their parents' failure. It is not by co-incidence that Angel's free will is denied him. In attempting to live up to Roger's expectations, Wesley has made himself the multi-faceted character that he is, but has also inherited some dangerous and unhealthy traits. This is paralleled carefully both to Spike and Angel at the end of the episode. Angel killed his Father, but his spirit lived on so that he lived the waster for the next 150 years in his Father's shadow. Darla reminds him in The Prodigal that physically killing his father is not all. Spike talks about his Mother. Like Angel, he killed her, but it was not until Lies My Parents Told Me that he comes to the realisation that before Ann became a vampire, she did love him deeply. It is this moment of resolution (also in a Goddard script), that Wesley must aim for. Right now, he is somewhere between Angel- working slowly to outgrow his Father's shadow, and Spike for whom one epiphany was enough. Physically killing Roger, which as Wesley knows was what he did- there was none of the subconscious doubt that Fred posited- was not the end of his Father's influence over him. And so he, like Angel, tries to work towards some resolution with his Father, although he has the infinite advantage of the 'real' Father still being alive over in England.

A couple of footnotes:
-I loved the line 'Like MC Esher, excpet with wires and flesh instead of geese'. The robot aspect instead of the living being, a foreshadow, and also a hint that this season may turn out to be as labyrinthine as the last, in its own way?

-Spike is as self-obsessed as ever. He's certain that Eve is tracking him, which is only subverted tidily when the lights go out and he assumes it's Pavayne back to haunt him. Then later we get the fact that his information on Wesley is already known, and he makes himself look a little foolish talking about typing up reports. However, the moment of personal achievement doing something for the greater good, where he goes zen only to punch Gunn's adversary, is a nice nod to his attempts at joining the gang, even if only while still heavily bogged down in his own story.

And so the episode ends on a slightly wonky but interesting Waiting in the Wings type triangle- with Wesley, who has just killed his own father out of affection for Fred, once again being rejected in favour of Knox. Life is complicated, the billboards scream.

I thought the parallels in this episode were a little scrambled, and that the ideas lost a bit of emotional resonance from the lack of clear direction in the Angel/Wesley supposed parallel which never quite hit an idea. The dialogue was interesting and the themes fine, but the execution could have been a few notches better.

Thank you for reading, and remember, don't shoot your parents, they might not just be robot imitations...;-)

TCH