Happy 2004 everybody. And goodness, this is the anniversary posting of the Angel Odyssey, or the nearest I'm going to get to it, falling as it does four days after I wrote about 200 words on City Of.... Those were the days, I hear you cry. Meanwhile, Season One never really convinced me except for occasional flashes of Minear brilliance. Season Two blew me away. Season Three maintained the heady standard, and Season Four, the turgid supernatural soap opera, bludgeoned its way through sheer force of character into my heart. I finished the year feeling a little pensive about the power of Season Five, however. It had had the best standalone episode since Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been, in The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco, (proving that quality can mean quantity in titles: hence see mine above). But 'Lineage', which I enjoyed, did not deliver the palpable forward kick of so many seventh episodes in the Whedonverse, and I was left floundering in a puzzle as to whether the series was actually going anywhere, or just chewing the end of its executive biro wondering when it could clock off for the day.

Cue the greatest episode since at least Soulless...

5.8 - 'Destiny'

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, this is the best episode this Season, and I should quickly mention that I think the writing is consistently so superb in this episode that David Fury deserves a huge amount of credit. That Stephen DeKnight is a wonderful writer of course goes without saying.

I've been thinking a lot about brotherhood recently. It's partly come from peorsonal thoughts and partly from some marvellous external stimulus. This Christmas I went with my brother to see a Libertines concert in the Forum in London, a fantastic experience made all the richer by the shared company. On New Year's Day, I took my little half-brother, now nine, to see The Return of the King. I suspect it may have made him complacent about the brilliance of cinema, but rather that than indifferent. These people are, aside from glorious independent individuals, vessels in whom I can encapsulate my hopes for the future, my joys and anxieties, believing that the thread which fades over the horizon may tease itself out for fifty years. And that is an extraordinary, almost free gift. A good relationship with siblings is not a given, but it is something relatively easy to maintain when you are in constant contact with someone who has necessarily shared many formative experiences.

And yet there are powers, material objects, ideas, that can tear brothers apart. This is what makes Cain and Abel, used as source material for both Jeffrey Archer and John Steinbeck, a universal, fascinating story. And as I sat in the darkened theatre and the curtains drew back on The Return of the King, we were plunged, rather than into war or Isengard's fortresses or the forests of Fangorn, into an apparently idyllic rurality by the Anduin. Smeagol and Deagol, brothers and Hobbits, fishing quietly in all the greens and yellows of carelessness. In cinematic terms, this is extremely bad news when one knows that the result is the grey sallowness of Gollum, not so much butter spread too thinly over bread as butter spread over a whole loaf.

Smeagol's act of killing his brother in this paradise, this Eden-like quiet, had heavy echoes for me of Cain and Abel. In this story, it is on the surface level Smeagol's love for a material thing, seductive yet simple that makes him kill Deagol. As always, residing under the surface like the monster carp, is the theme of power, of possession of not the ring, but the person with the ring. We don't learn a lot about Smeagol and Deagol's relationship in either book or film, but we are left with the short hand of that very strong relationship corrupted, possibly the defining image of the ring's Evil, making seemingly irrelevant people commit an act that they otherwsie would never have dreamed of.

And so what of brothers. In the teaser of 'Destiny', we see the setting up of a brother's relationship between Angelus and William. William is the willing little brother, somewhat in awe of his mentor, and yet he is a brother nevertheless. Angelus allows him to believe that he is of the same generation; that he is another man who can share with him the confusing female wiles of Darla and Drusilla. There's a deformity in their brotherhood: the deformed grotesque of human brotherhood, the mockery - but for the moment there is the belief that some of the parallel qualities still exist, that of shared experience, of loyalty, even of consideration.

The music that plays over the flashback in London is really excellent: Rob Kral has delievered some of his best scoring this Season. Meanwhile, back in the present day, a plot twist that I had always assumed would be the denouement of some future episode is dealt casually to us before the opening credits. The flash of light, so unexpected, sudden and inexplicable, like a thunderbolt but without the bravado, makes Spike corporeal. And barely ater the audience have greapsed the enormity of the change, Spike is already indulging in the physical, mendacious pleasures of corporeality- drinking, making love and preparing for a little of the old ultra-violence. Careless throwaway lines are used magnificently in this episode, and Spike's sentiment that Angel's refreshemnt is 'bloody ambrosia' is a marvellous pun, made better by the lack of the italics where the characters stop a moment to acknowledge, or the underlining of a smirk. It is his mode of living, without which he would become a living skeleton.

We are left with the three plot-strands of the episode, opposing, intertwining, cancelling and, for once, all showing some thematic and character resonance simultaneously while having a gigantic, blood-curdling (if that's the phrase) fight. Plot The First: The cup of Perpetual Torment. Plot The Second: The unrestrained anger of the workers with the psychotic eyes. Plot The Third: The flashback with Drusilla. The wickerwork of the basket is as intricate as anything in ages, and I found it totally exhilirating. I treat them in reverse order.

3) The nineteenth century story hinges on a betrayal of the teaser's set-up. While William believed Angelus was a brother in arms, he was not expecting limbs to be those of his sire, Drusilla. In between, the two of them comes gestures of anarchy, of possession. Angelus, freed from the religious tyranny where Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, In earth as it is in Heaven pleads God's dominion over all things, like a careless father with a heavy rod, sees vampirism to an extent as hedonism. There is no belonging, no desiring, merely the fulfillment of pleasure. He remembers his former self, this Liam, so clearly however, that he insists on calling William Willy. Playing with the sexual connotations of the name of course, (and heightening the betrayal in the process), but how much does the Londoner's latter two syllables still rile the heart of the most fearsome vampire in Europe? This is why he denies the Liam in William, fearing it, still denying its power over him 127 years after Darla explained that his Father had not lost merely because he was dead.

Spike believes that Drusilla is his destiny. There is still, despite the siring, the poet within him. Of course, it would reside within him for centuries, until creating this Season's most memorable line to date: 'It's in the poetry'. Yet this destiny is merely a whore with whom Angelus can play. A creature who he created with the explicit intention of corrupting innoncence, forestalling sanctity and devotion, imbuing merely meaninglessness into a girl whose intuitive narrative ruled her. When Spike sees that his destiny has been torn away from him, he is angry and confused, but he also takes time to learn a little from Angelus' explanation, to become more like what he is due to Angelus' advice. And this is to become crucial later. Of course, this tearing away by Angel of Spike's destiny is foreshadowed gently as the opposite of what will happen in the present day, that now Spike will drink from the cup of Angel's future, and quench his destiny. This is the minor fall, and it seems at one stage to come to pass.

2) Away from this compelling relationship storyline, we have a sub-plot which is unusual in its subtlely. Gunn and Eve are paralleled, particularly interestingly in the scene where Gunn, responding to Eve's pleas of ignorance claims that he 'is just a mild-mannered attorney'. The implicit rejection of this sobriquet hints at two things: both his tenure back on the street in his youth, a fact that was slowly being forgotten amidst the corporation in Season Five, and that he believes he himself has a dedtiny within the company: to explain the conduit. And yet, for now, the conduit, the white room, the cat, is disappeared, and the anarchy of Angelus ensues. Now no-one trusts anyone: or understands their motives. The joke about the man obsessed with toner hints at what we later see in the stories of Harmony and Gunn. There extraordinary anger is abnormal, but what they are actually saying has personal truth to them, like Wesley in Billy. Harmony doesn't want to be treated like a possession by Spike, (a sly back-reference to Drusilla's own freewheelin' attitude one hundred years earlier, but also a reaffirmation of her character's belief), while Gunn is genuinely suspicious of Eve, both as a threat of Evil and as a competitor to himself. It is Gunn's over-arching ambition, his worry about how his colleagues may be more powerful than him, that is the underlying danger that the anger expresses. He dismisses Fred, conferring that unreal innocence on her when he offers to explain what a 'nooner' is, but feels much more threatened by Eve.

In this episode, we see a facet of Eve played by Sarah Thompson that Lilah could not have been used for, and the episode is strengthened because of it. In response to Gunn's anger she seems wounded, and a little disorientated if not altogether lost. We start to feel a little bit of empathy with her, a belief that her false confidence is precisely that, feigned for the gang by whom she is intimidated. But then in one of the 'Gah!'-iest moments since The Trial, we see the twist at the end where it turns out that she has been causing the chaos, and doing so with, who would have guessed, Lindsey. This coupled with Angel and Spike's history in this episode powerfully denies any affirmation that the writers are rejecting the past. They have portioned off plot-lines, but the backstory is still utterly crucial.

-Before we leave the subject of Eve, I should file my one objection, which is that if she says 'kids' any more, I'm going to throttle something. Three times in one scene is at least twice too often.

-Lorne plays a cursory role in this episode, but of course his head's hurting again, just as at the beginning of Season Four. A sure sign of brewing danger.

1) Another fascinating cursory note to this episode is the casually tossed in reference: 'We're closing Pandora's box'. The dangerous attributes that fly away into the ether are all Angelus' trickery, artistry and sheer calculated anger. But just before the end of the episode, Pandora's box is indeed closed, with Hope still left inside, when the Cup turns out to be an elaborate Eve-organised hoax.

Before this, we have the prolonged fight scene between Spike and Angel, which, due to the snatches and longer sections of dialogue propel it into on eof the greatest mixed action sequences in the show's history. At one stage, it looks like the end of the story is to be about the re-affirmation of Angel's power. After all, it is his own show, and to be beaten in a fight by the supporting character just seems wrong. And yet this outcome, 'the major lift' we might call it, is also rejected. And so what are we left with? Two compelling characters in parallel, at loggerheads, learning form each other, raging at each other, winning each other's respect and derision. And it's magnificent writing and direction. Just a few of the synapses my brain triggered are touched on below:

'This town ain't big enough for the both of you'. The comment by Eve sets up a very Western style of fight scene for later on. The two fear-instilling characters, almost too big for the screen at times, almost too big for one show named Angel, battle.

The absent brother. The long period of exposition tailed by Spike's leaving strongly resembled Edmund leaving in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe; he learns what he needs to know and then leaves to embrace his destiny in a way that the others in the family could not have counted on. It also enables me in apparent seriousness to suggest that Eve is Mrs Beaver. OK, let's move on...

'It explains a lot'. Harmony's ironic retort to Spike's explanation about his mother, and the way in which he has turned Drusilla and Buffy into kinds of mothers for himself. Harmony is not so stupid as to not notice this, but it is not Spike's parents that are the important players in this episode. Or at least, only parents in terms of sires.

'Right, so what's in it for me?' Spike, succoured as always by celebrity, (cf 'Restless') puzzles through the advantages of being the famous vampire. It is not fully made clear to us whether his motivation is in the end a rejection of Angelus' influence in his life, a simple malicious scuppering of Angel's ambition, a genuine belief in the good that he can do, or something else. Spike appears to act out of self-interest, but what's going on behind the facade? Do we sense the reluctant Hero, the supposed cad, once again hiding valiant intentions behind selifshness. Or otherwise...?

The desire for a soul. Spike has done something that Angelus never sought, in asking for a soul. He has saved the world, and painted the stripes on his leopard instead of them being enchanted gypsies handcuffs: [re-read this sentence: does this make any sense? How many mixed metaphors are permissible? Oh well] He also believes that Angelus 'made him a monster', an epilogue on his thanks to Buffy in the Gift with him a monster treated as a man. This shifting of the blame is interesting. How much can we blame the tormentor, the master vampire who can brush Darla's absence aside by bedding Drusilla, for making out of the impressionable William the Spike of the Boxer Rebellion? And how much, despite having no soul to orientate him, is it entirely his own actions which have led him to this point? Free will and determinism strikes again, with Spike's explanation seeming a little too much like an excuse for his atrocities for my taste.

And so finally, Spike takes the Cup, and it's a fake. We don't get the minor fall for Angel, but neither the major life. We get the chromatic rejection of tonality. It's not about who is destined to do something, it's about what they can do. Spike claims that Angel has chosen Evil already at Wolfram and Hart. And despite Angel's confusion and lack of focus, that is still over-simplistic: he is trying to do good from within, with extra resources. It should not be about his destiny.

Finally, he still puzzles through how Spike beat him, how William stepped out of the shadow of his grandsire's former name to overpower him. Spike wanted the destiny more. The question is, why should Angel seek destiny at all? Is it up to him to become human? Is he doing good merely because it's the right thing to do, and how do conviction and doubt and brotherhood fit into all this. At the end of the episode, Cain and Abel, Smeagol and Deagol, me and my nine year old brother have fought, and both are still alive. Now we have to work out how we fit in to family, in to work, and into the world. And that's called life.

TCH