Analyse de la saison 5

Sujet: Analyse de la saison 5 Mar 05 Oct 2010, 18:34

Un essai qui analyse la saison 5, trouvé ICI.

Citation :: SEASON 5
September 2003 - May 2004

OVERVIEW OF THE SEASON

Destiny

If season 4 was all about choice, then season 5 dealt with a closely related topic – destiny. In the earlier season the writers explored the issue of free will and in particular stressed the importance of having and exercising properly the power of choice. But in season 5 they then went on to look at the way in which Angel, even though he had this power of choice, allowed his life to be dictated by his own past and the psychological baggage he carried with him from that past. They also focussed on how this in turn allowed outside forces instead of himself to control his destiny. Finally they showed what he needed to take back that control into his own hands.

One of the really crucial episodes for the development of the season’s theme comes early on and I am going to take some time to review it. “Hell Bound” tells the story of the attempt of various people to escape from a fate that looks very like the Christian vision of Hell. This Hell implied the existence of some universal judgment meting out a just punishment to the wicked for their sins. Of course no-one would voluntarily submit to such torment. And indeed the employees of Wolfram and Hart who died on the service of the Evil Law firm tried their best to escape from it. Their lack of success was revealed to Spike by a character called Pavayne:

Pavayne: “Died themselves - here, in the service of Wolfram & Hart: little ants, scurrying from the flames.”

Spike: “Their spirits hung on…tried to keep from tumbling into Hell. ‘Till you gave them a shove.”

Pavayne: ”Burning now. Screaming forever. Like you'll scream.”

But only Pavayne himself seemed to be able to escape from Hell. He was at least as deserving as the Wolfram and Hart employees of eternal punishment:

“Word spread of his unorthodox practices... fled to California, still under Spanish rule at the time. His arrival coincided with a rash of brutal, ritualistic murders. Pieces of the victims placed in a manner suggesting an intimate knowledge of the dark arts."

But he seemed to have become the master of his own fate:

“All rules are mine. Reality bends. My desire. The way it was meant to...”

He actually helped to damn others in order to save himself from Hell. For this purpose he relies on sheer willpower. In contrast to Pavayne, Angel seems to believe that, for him, no salvation is possible. Angel’s story has been about his attempt to redeem his past sins and at the very end of the first season there was a hint about a concrete manifestation of success in doing so – the Shanshu prophecy. But Angel no-longer has any belief in it. As he says to Spike:

“The prophecy's a bunch of bull. They all are. Nothing's written in stone or fated to happen, Spike. You save the world, you end up running an evil law firm.”

And even Pavayne eventually meets his match. After being re-corporealized, he is easily overcome by Angel. Then he is trapped in a restraining cell only a few feet wide. He is strapped in by metal bars, with electrodes attached to his head. A door is shut on him revealing a single small window with a view down an empty and bare corridor, the only view that Pavayne will ever see again. And Angel says the last words that he will ever hear:

“Welcome to Hell.”

If not even Pavayne can escape his fate, then we must ask: is Angel right about his own fate? Is he really doomed? Does he have no choice in the matter and no hope of salvation?

The answer to that is: “No”. In “Hell Bound” we see someone else who was threatened by Hell but who did manage to avoid it – Spike. When he first hears of the Shanshu prophecy, all he is concerned about is whether there is any hope for him in its existence. When he becomes concerned about being drawn into Hell he refers to Angel “breaking out” of Hell and later describes the effect of his good deeds as the “big brass ring”. It is clear therefore that he thinks of helping people simply in terms of the reward that it is to bring Angel. It is a way of escaping punishment and not something to be done for its own intrinsic merits. In short it is an attitude not too far removed from Pavayne’s own. But in contrast to the latter Spike did escape Hell. And it was because, despite his own essentially self-centered approach, he did help someone when, far from being of advantage to him, it harmed him to do so. He did really like Fred and seemed genuinely grateful for her efforts to help him. So, when at the crucial moment in the episode he was faced with a choice between his salvation – through becoming corporal again – and her’s, he chose the route of self-sacrifice.

Earlier on in the episode Fred told Angel why they should be helping Spike:

“It’s about doing what’s right. Remember?”

Angel replied:

“Some people just can’t be saved.”

Well, here Spike did the right thing. And in contrast to Pavayne, he came out of it pretty well:

“Don't have it so bad, really. Plenty of room. Good company. Even picked up a few new tricks. I guess there's worse things...than being a ghost.”

This is not salvation. But it implies that the door to salvation is still open because Spike did the right thing and because, therefore, he was “worth saving”.

Hell as defined in this episode simply represents the fruits of the sinner’s own will. It is only inevitable in the sense of being the natural consequence of the choices an individual makes. It is not a fate willed for a person by someone else. Pavayne continued doing evil for as long as he could with full knowledge and no regret. He simply wanted to avoid the due punishment. He did not damn just anyone, only those who had themselves willingly done evil. So the message remains (just as it was in season 4 that we can control our fate because we can still choose our own actions. And by choosing good over evil we can all earn our own salvation.

This is a message that was re-inforced in “Just Rewards”. Here Angel has to deal with one of Wolfram and Hart’s clients - a Necromancer named Hainsley who, symbolically, can manipulate him at will. Angel can only restore some balance between them by again relying on the weapons the Senior Partners gave him. That shows his weakness, the extent to which he has now come to rely in the law firm. The same episode shows Spike in a fairly parlous state when Wesley learns how to destroy him by destroying the amulet that brought him back. So, like Angel, his fate too is in the hands of others and he seemingly just has to decide whose agenda he follows – Hainsley’s or Angel’s. As Hainsley himself later says:

“Control. That's all anyone really wants, isn't it?”

But in the end Spike was in fact able to seize control of the situation. By being honest with Angel and by working with him (again doing the right thing) Spike was instrumental in defeating Hainsley. And by his actions he wins Angel’s trust. This obviously makes it inconceivable for Angel to destroy Spike. It would be going too far to say that Spike thereby took back control of his own fate. After all, the very last scene reveals how vulnerable he still was. But he did ensure that he wasn’t going to end up dead or spending the rest of his existence dancing to Hainsley’s tune and his actions were the deciding factor in Angel’s decision not to destroy the amulet. To that extent Spike, just as he was later to do in “Hell Bound”, reasserted control over his life and earned the benefits that his actions gained.

In contrast Angel, in “Home”, did the wrong thing and thereby effectively gave up his power to choose his own direction and purpose in life and ceded it to Wolfram and Hart. And throughout the early part of this season we see the fruits of that decision.

Controlling Our Life

As I pointed out in my review of “Conviction”, the opening scene of that episode, superficially at least, echoes the very first scene of ANGEL. Both involved an ambush in a dark alley with the helpless saved and the evildoer vanquished. But the second time around a posse of Wolfram and Hart flunkies quickly turn a simple and straightforward rescue into something else:

Notary: “This is to confirm that you have been rescued by Angel, C.E.O. and President of Wolfram and Hart, and this is to indemnify Wolfram and Hart…”

Lawyer: “If we can just get a couple pictures of you two, that would be great. (to Angel in an aside) Now, uh, the vampire that you terminated, he actually did work for one of your clients. So, but, hey! First week, no one will squawk, ok?

Blonde: “You run a law firm?”

Angel: “No. I mean... well, sort of. Well, just lately.”

Notary: “I need you to initial here concerning your immortal soul.”

Blonde: “You did this for publicity?”

Angel’s simple rescue has been transformed into a public relations stunt on behalf of his erstwhile enemies, a stunt that is no doubt intended to boost their image among some of their clients and perhaps be used as a lever with others. And because of this Angel’s actions now look self-serving. More than that, although he has the nominal title of CEO, there is a very real question mark over who is really in charge. Not only was he was under surveillance by means of a tracking device, one of the lawyers draws some boundaries for him:

“Really would prefer it if you didn't leave a rescue scenario until we had a chance to control the scene. Of course, that is your decision, sir, but…”

The title, the cars and the flunkies all look more like ways for Wolfram and Hart to control Angel rather than signs of his power.

And this suggestion is lent weight by subsequent events. In “Convicition”, Angel was faced with the threat a man called Fries poses to his own son as well as LA in general. Of course, he not only succeeds in protecting the boy and containing the threat from the “bomb” Fries had intended to use; he did so by using the resources of Wolfram and Hart, including Gunn’s “brain boost”. And in the end he destroys the “true believer” in evil within the firm. In fact Angel’s own verdict on this struggle is as follows:

Fred: “Is this gonna be our lives now? Fighting our own employees, our own clients? Are we really gonna do any good?

Angel: “Yes, we are. We're gonna change things. We came to Wolfram and Hart because it's a powerful weapon, and we'll figure out how to wield it.”

But this confidence seemed sadly misplaced. Lorne said it best:

“Of course, saving the day meant getting the scumbag who was ready to sacrifice his own son off on a technicality and then returning said son to said scumbag.”

In fact this outcome was far more in keeping with the Senior Partner’s agenda for Wolfram and Hart than Angel’s. It is hardly surprising therefore that, time and again throughout the first part of the season, we see how out of his control things were. In “Soul Purpose” Spike tells Gunn and Wesley:

“I told Angel, and I'll tell you. A place like that doesn't change... not from the inside. Not from the out. You sign on there, it changes you. Puts things in your head. Spins your compass needle around till you can't cross the street without tripping the proverbial old lady and stepping on her glasses. And it's not like I wasn't there, gents, like I wasn't watching you. Had to haunt the damn place. Remember?”

As I pointed out in my review of that episode, we find the truth of this statement in the indecision that grips Angel, Gunn and Wesley over what to do with Lucien Drake:

Gunn: “Got over a thousand followers. We're pretty sure they sold most of their children down the Hades river in return for some serious demonic mojo."

Wesley: “One more religious fringe group stockpiling weapons, but in this case, the weapons are black magicks of the most dangerous variety.”

When Wesley talks of being in a gray area here Angel explodes:

“Can we just get through one damn day without saying that?”

Later, in a moment of clarity he grasps what should be done.

“Let's kill them all. Warlocks, minions—they're all evil. Sold their kids to the devil. Let's just wipe 'em all out. We got the power to do that, right?”

But while Gunn and Wesley disagree about what should be done about the cult, it turns out that neither wants that. Instead they see Wolfram and Hart’s role in the following terms:

Gunn; “Not so much stopping as...”

Wesley: “…as redirecting their energies.”

Gunn: “See, a cult this big has alliances, connections. If we confront them directly, it could be very bad for business.”

A further illustration comes in “You’re Welcome” when in the Teaser we learn about a character Greenaway. As a client of Wolfram and Hart, Gunn made a deal with him:

“It was just a stupid racketeering charge. I told him we'd get him off with probation, so long as he shut down operations.”

It was not an untypical pact. Instead of Angel and the others forcibly “shutting down” Greenway's operations for him they bargain with him. They effectively write off what he has done until now on the basis that he will stop doing it. But that wasn’t enough for Greenway. So, he fled the jurisdiction and the fact that he needed a ritual slaughter of five nuns to do so obviously wasn’t going to stop him. After all, as Angel pointed out:

“He's a Wolfram & Hart client. Our client. Oh, and he's evil. What are the odds?”

If anything shows the one sided nature of the bargains that Angel and the others are now making, this is it. It was bad enough that Greenway got away with a serious crime by simply agreeing in return to abide by the law. Now he flouts even that part of the deal, five women are dead as a result and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Whatever minor benefits Angel and the others were getting from their Faustian pact, there is little doubt about who was really in control and who was getting the real benefit.

Nor should we forget that Angel was not the only one to give up control of his life. In “Home” Charles Gunn too declared his intention to join up with Wolfram and Hart. He did so on the strength of a meeting with the Conduit which he saw as a big black cat. And from this vision Gunn recognized what he wanted for himself – someone who was cool, powerful and above all someone to be respected. And in seeming fulfilment of this promise the start of season 5 saw Gunn being given a Brain Boost in which he not only gained the knowledge and skill of an attorney but all sorts of other valuable information as well. In short he became what he always wanted to be – a key part of the team. And in return he swallowed the Wolfram and Hart message whole. It was he more often than not who, as he had done with Lucien Drake, preached co-operation and compromise and he was the one who negotiated all the deals, including the one with Greenaway. But when he was threatened with loss of these skills he makes another deal – a seemingly insignificant one but one which dooms Fred. And when he realizes his mistake he again goes to see the Senior Partners. Only this time he sees not a big black cat but his own mirror image. Just as before the form of the Conduit is a reflection of his own thoughts. And this shows that to the senior partners he is after all just Charles Gunn; not someone they have to bargain with or even respect but rather their creature to use and discard as they wish. So, when he tells the Conduit that it can have his own life for Fred’s, the only response is:

“I already do."

So, Fred dies and there is nothing that Gunn can do to prevent it. He has already given up his power to control his life. All he can do now is seek expiation for what he is done by sacrificing himself so that Lindsay may escape Wolfram and Hart's holding dimension and reveal to Angel their plans for the Apocalypse. He paid a high price for his Brain Boost and got little in return. He therefore surrendered to others control over his life. Now he is again making a choice only this time where he gets the better end of the bargain. He has to face pain and suffering but he is perfectly willing to do so. At the same time he is exacting a high price from Wolfram and Hart for that pain - higher than they would have willingly paid. Who is in control now?

Damage

So Angel and the others had the power to control their own lives. And as we saw in season 4 Angel in particular believed (or at least claimed he believed) that this power of choice was what made us human. But by joining Wolfram and Hart and by his supine acceptance of their rules he clearly gave up that power. Why did he do so? Why did he become what Roger Wyndham-Price referred to as a puppet? The answer to that lies in his past.

The effect of our cumulative experiences have on us all was an idea that was explored in some depth and to considerable effect in two episodes: “Lineage” and “Damage”. In the former we meet a facsimile of Wesley’s father, Roger Wyndham-Price. It is not long before we realize that Roger’s lack of trust in Wesley was the result of his own insecurities, the need to prove that he was right and that Wesley was wrong. In “Loyalty” and “Sleep Tight” Wesley had demonstrated a corresponding distrust of Gunn and Fred because of his own disappointed feelings for the latter. Her rejection of him in favour of Gunn had awoken all Wesley’s old insecurities. It was almost as if, in acting alone and trusting no-one in his kidnap of Connor, Wesley had been driven to prove that he knew best. Also in “Lineage”, in order to succeed in his mission, Roger attacked his own son. And while that attack wasn't especially deadly, killing Wesley was, as Roger later admitted, a line he too was prepared to cross. He was also prepared to kill Fred in order to make his get away. So Wesley cold bloodedly executes what he believes to be his own father. Nor is this the only time Wesley demonstrates a cold blooded ruthlessness, as in his attack on Lorne in “Sleep Tight” or his behaviour to the drug addict in “Release”. The parallels we see here between Wesley’s behaviour and that of this father shows the origin of so many of the former’s problems lie in his inheritance from the past and his father in particular – his lineage so to speak.

And this theme of the ability of the past to reach into the present and affect our behaviour is continued in “Damage” where we see Dana, the psychotic slayer who is at one and the same time a helpless victim and a monster:

“Her family was murdered in their home when she was 10. Whoever did it took Dana... and tortured her for months. She was found one day naked and bleeding, wandering the streets. Barely functional, nearly catatonic ever since.”

This past leads her to attack those to whom she attributes responsibility for her own suffering; even though they are entirely innocent. In holding Spike captive, Dana is now playing the part of the abuser not the victim and repeats to Spike the same promises and threats by which her own abuser sought to control her. She repeats to him words she would have heard time and time again: “don’t be scared…don’t cry…they can’t hear you”. Finally she also stabs Spike with a hypodermic needle, this time containing a yellow liquid, just as she was herself stabbed. Her intent was not to do evil; but the effect of her actions was. At the end of the episode we have this little exchange between Angel and Spike:

Angel: “She's an innocent victim.”

Spike: “So were we... once upon a time.”

Angel: “Once upon a time.”

Just as in “Lineage” the emphasis on the past here is important. Angel and Spike became something evil against their will. But with a soul they have full understanding of the difference between right and wrong, an ability to choose between them and therefore responsibility for their choices. They cannot claim to be innocent victims of forces beyond their control. But the legacy of the past, the “damage” done to them if you will, remains, as it also remains with Wesley. In Angel’s case it is the memories of all the harm that he has done and the separation from the world that such memories forced on him. In order to redeem himself he needed not so much to do good to balance the scales as to do good as a means of changing himself. In particular he needed to connect with others, to become more fully human. And Cordelia, his friends and in particular his son were the means by which he could do that. That is why loosing Cordelia and Connor had such a devastating effect on him; not to mention the trauma of learning that much of what he had thought of as his mission was in fact based on Jasmine’s lies. Hence we can see and to an extent understand his reasons for joining Wolfram and Hart as its CEO. Yes, it was a selfish decision; yes, it went against everything he said he believed in. He was co-operating with the plans of evil and he took away the power of choice of his own friends and even his own son. But that is what damage a traumatic past can have on you if you allow the past to control you rather than taking control of your own destiny.

It was in “Soul Purpose”, in particular in Angel’s hallucinations, that we get a chance to see how this psychological baggage from his own past is weighing him down in his struggle with Wolfram and Hart. First and foremost we see his feeling that he has lost his destiny. When DreamWesley apparently follows him back to his apartment he refers to Spike's arrival on the scene as being “fortuitous” in the sense of it being a lucky accident because Angel had already become irrelevant. And it is because of this “new situation” DreamWesley stakes Angel thus emphasizing that without his destiny Angel does feel he is nothing.

Later DreamFred visits. At first she removes all his internal organs saying:

“You're a vampire. You don't need this stuff anyway.”

In particular she produces his dried up little walnut of a heart, thus referring back to the debate over Angel’s heart in “Numero Cinco”. This emphasizes his difference to ordinary humans. Then she produces a license plate from his chest commenting:

“Came up the gulf stream, huh?”

This transparent reference to JAWS can have only one meaning. The license plate in that movie was removed from a soulless killer. So here too we are reminded of the fact that Angel was himself a soulless killer.

And finally we have Angel’s encounter with DreamLorne who, in real life, uses the songs others sing to help them chart their path. Angel, of course, doesn’t sing so his willingness to do so here is itself a sign of his desperation. But even so he cannot produce a note and DreamFred chimes in:

“I told you he was empty.”

Because of his past as a soulless killer Angel felt cut off from the world. His only hope of redemption, his only chance to feel that he was really worth something lay in following the path to humanity. But for this purpose simply doing good deeds wasn’t enough, if he didn’t feel a connection with those he was helping. It was by feeling a bond of common humanity for those he was helping that he gave meaning to his mission and thereby his existence, because that is the way his own damaged and battered soul is to become more fully human. This was Angel’s destiny because this was his path to salvation. This was what the Shanshu prophecy really symbolized. That connection could have been forged through his relationship with his friends, with Cordelia and above all Connor. The loss of that connection therefore, meant, not so much that he has lost the hope of some personal reward in the form of becoming human. Rather it is that he has lost a connection to the world of humanity – the connection that gives to him real meaning to the help he gives others. That was why he lost his sense of destiny. And that is why, without a connection that gives him that meaning he is just going through the motions.

And the truth of this was driven home to us in “Soul Purpose” where we see the difference between saving lives and saving souls. When Spike is persuaded to be the hero and rescue damsels in distress he treats them with indifference or even contempt:

Girl: “Thank you! Thank you! That thing was gonna kill me!”

Spike: “Well, what do you expect? Out alone in this neighborhood? I got half a mind to kill you myself, you half-wit.”

Girl: “What?!”

Spike: “I mean, honestly, what kind of retard wears heels like that in a dark alley? Take 2 steps, break your bloody ankle.”

Girl: “I was just trying to get home.”

Spike: “Well, get a cab, you moron. And on the way, if a stranger offers you candy, don't get in the van! Stupid cow.”

His idea of getting into people’s lives is asking the women he saved if they would:

“like to get a bottle of hootch and listen to some Sex Pistols records with him.”

It is the contrast between this concept of just saving lines and Angel’s mission as defined by Doyle way back in “City of…” that reveals the central importance in that mission of Angel making a human connection:

“It’s not all about fighting and gadgets and stuff. It’s about reaching out to people, showing them that there’s love and hope still left in the world. It’s about letting them into your heart. It’s not about saving lives; it’s about saving souls. Hey, possibly your own in the process."

Lacking A Heart

The consequences of this feeling of disconnection and consequent purposelessness are to be found in “The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco”. The central symbol of that episode was the heart. The Aztec demon Tezcatcatl could have taken Angel’s heart but didn’t and the obvious question was: why? And it is here that we see the purpose of the comparison between his situation and that of Numero Cinco, the luchador who, with his brothers, had been part of a team of heroes who like Angel had helped the helpless. It was when his brothers were killed by Tezcatcatl that everything changed for Numero Cinco:

“I tried to carry on...tried to help people. But after a while, the phone stopped ringing. The people went away."

So, from being a part of a team that had always been “connected” to one another and to their Chicano community, Numero Cinco now found himself abandoned – disconnected if you will. He began to wonder what difference did the brothers make? What did their sacrifice really mean? Numero Cinco later points out to Angel the futility of fighting Tezcatcatl:

“Say you stop it. Then what? In 50 years it's back, and nothing has changed.”

Here again we see the linked themes of disconnection and a feeling that perhaps all the good work really was for nothing after all. And it is from this that a feeling of hopelessness emerges, a feeling that anything Angel now does matters little. The loss of the human connections to those most close to him and the consequent loss of heart that led to Numero Cinco working as a messenger boy for Wolfram and Hart (thus showing who was the real boss) clearly parallels Angel’s journey. Angel is trying to do the right thing. But, as we have seen, this is in the face of his own sense of disconnection and his own consequent feeling of purposelessness. So he has little real heart for the battle against evil. For the purposes of my review of the episode I defined the term as:

“The seat of the affections, desires and appetites; that which influences the will in making moral choices which in turn directs the mind to institute the chosen action; the ability to choose; the ability to know what to choose; the control center of one’s life; the motivating purpose of one’s life.”

This is what he now lacks. This is why his own heart meant nothing to the Aztec demon. And later in “Soul Purpose” we see the natural consequences of his lack of heart. In one of his hallucinations, Angel sees his own powerlessness being exposed by Spike’s triumph in ending the Apocalypse. When Angel beholds LA burning he stands about ineffectively saying:

“I have to do something. I have to get out there!”

But he does nothing. Angel allows evil to run uncontrolled outside the windows of his office while he and Wesley, Gunn, Fred and the others are reduced to by-standers. There is nothing within him impelling him to make the right choice and to act to save the city. And when Spike succeeds where Angel didn’t even try we see the latter's hand feeling for the non-existent beat of his own heart just as everyone else is listening to Spike’s. Again the symbolism of the lack of a heart is very neat. The destiny Angel longs for belongs to someone because that other person has a heart in the sense that he recognizes evil exists and goes out and does something about it. The implication is that it wasn't Angel because of Angel's own lack of heart meant he was unable to do the same. So, in the last shot we see Angel, now transformed into a letter day version of Numero Cinco, sadly turning his back on the destiny that might have been his and pushing the mail truck along the corridor for the next delivery, nothing more than a servant of Wolfram and Hart.

And this is where the parasite in “Soul Purpose” is a perfect metaphor for the Evil Law Firm:

“It was a Selminth parasite. Its teeth inject an anesthetic, making the host oblivious to its presence. You'd never know you had it on you. Pumps neurotoxins into the body causing paralysis, hallucinations, fever dreams."

And the consequences would have been catastrophic:

Fred “So, if this parasite continued pumping its toxins into Angel...”

Wesley: “He would have been stuck in a permanent vegetative state.”

Wolfram and Hart’s invitation to Angel and the others is an hallucination, deluding them that they are doing good when what is happening is moral paralysis, a paralysis we can plainly see in the indecision over what to do about Lucien Drake. What should be simple becomes complicated for no reason other than they are thinking about the Wolfram and Hart agenda. And there is little doubt but that this course of action will ultimately lead to a permanent vegetative state, though a moral not a physical one. The Wolfram and Hart illusions are attacking Angel’s moral sense so that ultimately he could no longer tell what the right course of action would be. He would in those circumstances be entirely under their control. In other words without a heart for the fight, Angel is doomed to loose his own destiny and instead surrender control of his life to others.

Sujet: Re: Analyse de la saison 5 Mar 05 Oct 2010, 18:35

Citation :

Spike

And this bring us to Spike. As I said in my review of “Just Rewards” the introduction of Spike to ANGEL was a controversial one. Nevertheless, it had great potential value and in episodes like “Destiny” and “Soul Purpose” we can see that potential realized. There are obvious similarities between the characters of Angel and Spike but equally striking differences as well and a comparison between the two helps us to understand Angel’s problems. In “Destiny” we see William as he was when Drusilla turned him. He is obviously full of admiration for Angelus’ strength and power and the sense of control these gave him. But at that point William had no control over his unlife. His destiny was something he found in others: Angelus his mentor and above all Drusilla, his great passion. In the end that was what hurt so much when, as he saw it, the two of them betrayed him. That was what made him determined that he was never again going to be at the mercy of others. So, throughout “Destiny”, we see how different Spike’s attitude is to William’s. As soon as he becomes corporeal and realizes he can taste blood again he grabs Angel’s cup from his hand – without so much as a by-your-leave – and drinks deeply from it (thus nicely foreshadowing the way he will take the Cup of Perpetual Torment from him). His next move is to seize Harmony. Now, when he wants something he will go for it and won’t let anything stand in his way. In this episode he compares the way he got his soul with the way Angel got his:

“You had a soul forced on you…as a curse. Make you suffer for all the horrible things you'd done. But me... I fought for my soul. Went through the demon trials. Almost did me in a dozen times over, but I kept fighting. 'Cause I knew it was the right thing to do. It's my destiny.”

When Spike decided that he wanted something he just took it. And this is where we come to the Shanshu Prophecy and the Cup of Perpetual Torment. Sirk describes the effect of drinking from the cup:

"He will have the weight of worlds upon him, binding his limbs, grinding his bones to meal until he saves creation... or destroys it."

But that doesn’t worry Spike in the least. His reaction is:

“Uh...right. So, what's in it for me?”

And it is what he hears next that really interests him:

Sirk: “The vampire will have his past washed clean.”

Angel: “And live again in mortal form. Yeah, that part I know.”

Spike was not concerned about the implications of the prophecy for others, about the possibility that the vampire with a soul would destroy creation. Indeed he is openly contemptuous of Angel’s concerns for and desire to help others:

“Oh, yeah. Look at you. Thinking you're the big savior—fighting for truth, justice, and soccer moms—but you still can't lay flesh on a cross without smelling like bacon, can you?”

As he says himself he is interested in the Shanshu prophecy for what it means for him. But why he wants the cup is far less important than the fact that once he set his sights on it he let nothing stand in his way until he got it. There is clarity of purpose and single mindedness for you.

In contrast to Spike, in “Destiny” Angel feared the Shanshu prophecy, not just because of the torment promised in the course of the apocalypse but for the potential burden of guilt that it carried. So, when he hears about the Cup he doesn’t simply rush after it. He is if anything reluctant to go and only does so because it was the only way he could think of to stop the madness at Wolfram and Hart and because Spike forced the issue by taking off for Nevada himself. Then, when faced with Spike at the Opera House, he is indecisive, unsure what to do. It is Spike who forces the fight. It is therefore no wonder that it is Spike who wins. And the aftermath of the fight is equally eloquent. All Spike wants to do is get hammered. The Cup is no longer of any significance so he basically forgets about it. But Angel broods on:

Angel: “He beat me, Gunn.”

Gunn: “Who, Spike? Looks to me like he got as good as he…”

Angel: “No. He beat me to the cup.”

Gunn: “You mean the fake cup? The make-believe, fairy-tale cup? So what?!”

Angel: “No, you don't... He won the fight, Gunn... for the first time. Doesn't matter if the cup is real or not. In the end, he... Spike was stronger. He wanted it more.”

Gunn: “Angel, it doesn't mean anything.”

Angel: “What if it does? What if it means that... I'm not the one?”

Of course the Cup meant nothing. But when he was fighting for it Angel believed it did. So, he lamented the fact that Spike won not because that victory had any meaning in terms of who was the "one vampire". He lamented because he realized that he lost because his heart was not in the good fight. He had tried to continue the fight because “it was the right thing to do.” But he failed because it meant nothing more than that to him. Spike had something to fight for. Alright it was a very self-centered indeed almost venial view of what was important. But Spike brought a clarity of purpose to his quest for the Cup that Angel so signally lacked. And it was the lack of the same clarity of purpose that bedevilled his struggle with Wolfram and Hart. What he needed in the face of such difficulties was a belief in what he was doing. For without that belief you have no basis on which to make the difficult choices involved and no grounds on which to persevere in those hard choices when frankly easier compromises are always available. In “Conviction” a minor character working for Wolfram and Hart justifies himself in the following terms:

“Now, you think I'm just a trigger-happy jerk who follows orders, but I am something you will never be. I'm pure. I believe in evil. You and your friends, you're conflicted. You're confused. We're not. That is why you are gonna lose, because we possess the most powerful thing in the world... conviction.”

Season 5 was really about the extent to which Angel had the necessary conviction to follow his mission. He had been faced with difficult decisions: how to help Connor, what to do about the lawyers and their clients. If his decisions had been grounded in a clear and unshakeable view of what was right and what was wrong, surely he would not have found himself trimming and compromising as he did and as a result handing control over his own destiny to the Senior Partners. Could he now refind his conviction and on that firm foundation regain control over his own destiny?

Cordelia Returns

In “You’re Welcome” Angel is finally confronted with the two different but complementary forces that were trying to control him. First of all there was Lindsey who, as Angel said, wasted a lot of time trying to make him doubt himself. Then there was the Senior Partners, or rather the “Fail Safe” that they had put in place. Described by Eve in the following terms:

“Look, the senior partners were never certain they could keep you under their thumb, so they created a fail-safe. Housed it in the sub-levels of the building.”,

this was the ultimate method for controlling Angel. And the key to solving the problem that these two pose for Angel is the emphasis that this episode puts his own sense of who and what he once was. And for this purpose the writers bring back Cordelia and show us Doyle for a final time. Doyle was the first soldier down. He not only sacrificed himself in "Hero" to defuse that (admittedly ridiculous) genetic bomb but he also passed on the visions to Cordelia so that she could continue to guide Angel.

“Doyle Pissed me off so righteously going out like that, but he knew. He knew what he had to do. Didn't compromise. Used his last breath to make sure you'd keep fighting. I get that now.”

Angel too was once cut from the same cloth. Cordelia describes him in the following terms:

“A guy who always fought his hardest for what was right, even when he couldn't remember why. Even when he was miserable, which was, let's face it, a not small portion of the time. He did right. And that gave him something. A light, a glimmer.”

This then is the message. There should be no compromise with evil. It is Angel’s mission to do the right thing, no matter how hard that is and without regard to the consequences for himself. And in the climactic scene of “You’re Welcome” Angel defeats Lindsey in hand to hand combat after being seemingly down and out:

"All those tattoos, all those new tricks you've learned... just don't matter. Doesn't matter what you try. Doesn't matter where I am or how badass you think you've become. 'Cause you know what? I'm Angel. I beat the bad guys."

This is the defining moment for Angel. He had to choose whether just to roll over and die or overcome the physical pain and weakness and defeat Lindsey’s new bag of tricks. And when faced with this extremity he did find it within himself to fight on. The reaffirmation of who he is and what he does irresistibly brings to mind Buffy’s own decision to come to terms with her identity in “Anne”. But it has the added emphasis of the last five words. Those words indicate that not only can Angel beat the bad guys; that is what he now believes he is supposed to be doing – not doing deals with them but killing them.

And symbolically in defeating Lindsey's attack on his self-belief, Angel is also defeating the Senior Partners own parallel strategy when he effectively takes control of the “Fail Safe”, thus emphasizing that he has again control of his destiny. In the end he says as much himself when he talks to Cordelia about Wolfram and Hart and their strategy:

“I know it's not even close to over, but I do feel like I can do this. Wolfram and Hart, whatever's coming, I feel like we can beat it.”

But in this final scene we find not just Angel’s ability to fight Wolfram and Hart being rediscovered. So too is the link between this and his own salvation. His downfall started with the loss of those he felt were connecting him to the world and it was with the loss of that connection that his loss of a sense of self-belief began. But as Cordelia pointed out to him:

“You know how you're always trying to save, oh, every single person in the world? Did it ever occur to you that you were one of them?”

In other words his mission would only ever be fully back on track when he found that connection between his own salvation and his ability to fight evil and help others.

Only Connect

It is in this context that we see the importance of “Unleashed”. This deals with the effect of a woman called Nina being turned into a werewolf. The whole theme of the episode is set up by the description of McManus, the man who had turned her into a werewolf and his earlier failed attempts to control the beast inside him:

“He left his wife and kids a couple years ago, kept moving, staying in the middle of nowhere most of the time. First year or so, a few mangled bodies showed up here and there, but the last 6 months, guy was leaving corpses like bread crumbs.”

It is Angel’s commentary on this that explains the significance of his experience:

“Probably tried to control it for a while and just gave up. Thought he had to fight it alone, ended up with nothing worth fighting for.”

Subsequently the episode follows Nina’s attempts to come to terms with her fate. She too is tempted to follow McManus and cut herself off from everyone she loves, her sister and her niece Amanda. But she learns that this isn’t the way to control her life. In order to do that she really had to want to keep the monster within safely locked up. In other words she has to have something in her life that for her is worth fighting for. And as Angel himself says if she does that:

“At some point you'll be at the grocery store or with Amanda, and the whole werewolf thing, it'll just be a part of who you are.”

And so this is the central theme of “Unleashed” - that you cannot save yourself by simply thinking about yourself but must instead reach out and connect with others to do so.

Therefore, while in the episodes after “You’re Welcome” we see re-iterated the idea of doing the right thing, of bringing moral clarity to the fight, of recovering a sense of purpose and gaining a new motivation nothing seems to happen. In “Why We Fight” Angel reflects upon his present purposelessness by drawing parallels between his time as CEO of Wolfram and Hart and the evil he once did to a fine young man. Just as Cordelia did in “You’re Welcome” Nina helps Angel in “Smile Time” through showing a belief in him. In “Shells” he repudiates the principle of rational calculation and compromise upon which his whole time in the law firm has been based. Instead he accepts the idea that it is his responsibility to protect others – at whatever the cost. And in “Underneath” the writers emphasize the need to break free of illusions and face up to the truth. All of these are reflections on past sins and promises of amendment. But they change nothing. It is indeed a s serious weakness in the season as a whole that, thematically at least, it is stuck in neutral from the mid point to so close to the very end. It is only with “Origin” that things really do begin to change. And that is because in that episode Angel found the missing sense of connection that “Unleashed” and “Numero Cinco” among others were really about.

In “Home” Angel took control of Connor’s life away from him because he could not trust Connor to do the right thing or even just to continue living. And it was this decision which at one and the same time separated him from the boy and handed control over Angel’s own actions to Wolfram and Hart. Even after the events of “You’re Welcome” Angel’s hands were tied because he thought of Connor as the Senior Partners' hostage. So, when Angel suspects that they are trying to use Connor against him in some way his reaction to this says a lot:

Angel: “The senior partners and I had a deal.”

Hamilton: “Yes, you did. They took your son—your raging psychopathic son—gave him a new family, changed his memories, changed everyone's memories, actually, in order to give him a new life, a normal life."

Angel: “And I came to work here!"

Hamilton: “And we couldn't be happier. The senior partners honor their deals. And believe me, they have no desire to upset such a...profitable partnership.”

Angel isn’t threatening to walk away from the deal. Far from it, he is emphasizing his own adherence to it and using that as a lever to ensure that the Senior Partners don’t take away the second chance that Connor has been given. In other words he is confirming what a hold the Senior Partners have over him.

But this was not the same Connor we saw in season 4. When his faux parents tried to hide from Connor the fact that they were seeking Angel’s help for him, he doesn’t resent the deception. Instead he seeks to reassure them:

“All right. Look, you guys... I'm not saying this isn't weird and all, but we'll get through it. You don't have to be scared.”

And it is the maturity of his reaction that demonstrates to them that they were wrong. As he says:

“Hey, have some faith in me.”

And in the end Connor’s memories were restored. He remembers his former sociopathic self, the fact that control of his own life was taken away from him by his father and is now conscious that he was made to live out a lie. His only reaction to this is:

“You gotta do what you can to protect your family. I learned that from my father.”

In these words Connor is telling Angel that he knows, understands and appreciates what Angel did for him. He can overlook the fact that he was lied to. He is now going back to his faux family and resuming his normal, non-violent life. Before, it was a choice that Angel had made for him. But from "Origin" onwards his destiny was not a gift of others but his own choice. Yes, giving the teenager a happy set of memories with a loving family helped him make the right choice but ultimately it was Connor himself who made that choice. He could have easily taken offence at the dishonesty involved as well as the implicit unwillingness to trust him. Again a major issue for Connor Mark 1 was the way that he was always being treated a “just a kid” who couldn’t really be expected to handle responsibility for himself. Well, here he showed differently. He took control of his own destiny.

And it was because of this, because Connor took control of his own life, that the hold Wolfram and Hart had on Angel disappeared. Angel was now not only free from their threat to Connor but he was able to re-establish a connection with the boy that he had previously severed. And we can see the importance of that connection from their scenes in “Not Fade Away”. Here he spends his free time before the final battle sharing in his son’s future by helping him write a resume for an internship. And after they fight Hamilton together we see this exchange:

Connor: “What do we do?”

Angel: “You go home.”

Connor: “Huh?”

Angel: “This is my fight.”

Connor: “That's some serious macho…”

Angel: “Go home...now.”

Connor: “They'll destroy you.”

Angel: “As long as you're OK, they can't.”

As I said in my review of this episode, it is to help ensure that Connor continues to have a future that Angel is fighting. It is not for pride, not out of revenge but because he cared about his son and had therefore his own connection with humanity. And because of this he cared about more than just his son. In fighting for Connor’s future he was fighting for the future of everyone. Hamilton could not understand what Angel had left to fight for once he had given up his Shanshu. Angel’s response was telling:

“People who don't care about anything will never understand the people who do.”

As we have seen, Angel lost control of his life because he lost heart in what he was doing. And he lost heart because he lost the meaning of the fight against evil. And he lost that meaning because he lost his connection with his son and therefore with humanity. Once he refound that connection, then what happened to Connor and everyone else really began to have a meaning for him again. That is why he decided to strike at the Black Thorn. In “Powerplay” Angel pictures himself and his team as all being trapped in a giant mechanism:

“We're in a machine. That machine's gonna be here long after our bodies are dust.”

As he later points out this mechanism is controlled by the Senior Partners through their agents – the Black Thorn. And by extension he and everyone else in it are doomed to play the part that the Senior Partners have designed for them and unable to control their own destiny. All they have been doing in Wolfram and Hart is running about in the machine playing by the Senior Partner’s rules while kidding themselves that they have been doing good. Angel knows that, by striking the Black Thorn, he is not going to destroy that machine. He knows that the Senior Partners are going to continue to try to destroy humanity both from without and from within. He knows that the silent thousand year apocalypse would continue. This is a terrible thought. It could easily lead to hopelessness, to despair and ultimately to compromise and perhaps even to paralysis. But because Angel now truly believes in what he is doing he now knows that the Senior Partners must be fought. And he was willing to fight them. That was the choice that he had the power to make. As he said himself of the them:

“Maybe they're not there to be beat. Maybe they're there to be fought. Maybe fighting them is what makes human beings so remarkably strong.”

That was his destiny and whether he actually survived the final battle or not was a detail. It is by understanding and acting on this that Angel is giving his life meaning.

A Classic Tale

The great strength of this season was the way that it looked very hard at the question of what Angel's real purpose is and what the fight against evil really means to him. It reasserted the core principles of the series –

Angel’s purpose was the search for redemption through connecting with others;
the transformative power of that connection lay in the way that it could give substance and meaning to the values he claimed to stand for;
it is only because Angel finally found that meaning that he was able to take back control of his own destiny after a life in which he had too often been the puppet of forces and things over which he had no control.

These were the questions which have been at the heart of ANGEL really since the second half of its first season, when the writers largely abandoned the idea of using the series to explore the lives of young adults. And in this ANGEL’s final season we got not only a sense of resolution for these core principles but also for our main characters.

There were, of course, both moral and psychological dimensions to these questions. I think the writers laid out very clearly both the way Angel’s own psychological needs and weaknesses drive his actions, and sometimes lack of action. They also painted a vivid and interesting picture of the frame of mind to which he was reduced because these. And here too they remain true to the series and its eponymous hero. Duality has always been central to Angel’s character. We have seen this through the season 2 arc and in his reaction to Connor’s kidnapping when he took all sorts of unjustified risks which, for some, ended very badly indeed.

Above all in this context it is this focus on the moral as opposed to the psychological dimension of this conflict that appeals to me. With duality comes ambiguity. In season 5 things are rarely simple and straightforward. In “Home”, Angel made a decision. He chose to take control of the LA Offices of Wolfram and Hart. He did so no doubt thinking that he could turn them from a source of evil into an instrument of good. But he also did so because he loved his son and wanted to buy him a second chance. And he never disclosed to the others – who were all affected by his choice – why he made it. There was, therefore, a mixture of motivation. Angel believes – or chose to believe – that a synergy exists in this mixture. But there was always the near certainty of conflict. And this conflict was the key to season 5. And its power lies in the way in which, in that conflict, we see some of the classic elements of tragedy.

Tragedy asks essentially questions about the nature of human beings, our position in the universe and in particular our relations with the powers that seem to govern our lives. And, as we have seen, season 5 asks just such questions about our destiny, about the extent to which we have control over our own lives or are we really simply subjects of forces beyond our control and about the extent to which deaths of human beings negate the purpose of our lives and the things we wish to achieve.

Tragedy asks those question through the conflicts posed for our protagonists. In this case we see in particular Angel’s miscalculation of reality, a miscalculation which threatens to destroy him not so much physically as morally. We also see how he was brought to that pass by being caught between two conflicting principles. He was caught at the crossing point of two duties, both of which claim fulfilment: protection of his son and helping others. This is the most compelling tragic situation because it seems to say that we live in a cruel and unjust universe where the gods are unkind, unfeeling, or nonexistent.

And it is through the suffering caused by these conflicts that the final resolution is reached. It is a universal truth of tragedy that only through suffering does a person attain wisdom. The chorus in “Agamemnon” by Aeschylus recites:

"Zeus, whose will has marked for man the sole way where wisdom lies, ordered one eternal plan: Man must suffer to be wise."

As one critic observed tragedies follow a pattern of purpose, passion, and perception: the protagonist, seeking a goal, confronts opposition and suffers a trial by fire, but through this painful process gains insight about himself and the world he inhabits. From the tragic perspective, wisdom based on truth is of supreme value, even though it must often be purchased with the hero's death. And for this purpose tragedy pushes the individual to the outer limits of existence where one must live or die by one's convictions. Facing the end of life, a person quickly recognizes life's ultimate values. All the trivial matters which occupy our daily routine suddenly vanish. At this decisive point there is no turning back and no room for compromise. And that is the point that we reach in “Not Fade Away.” Angel having suffered the torments of self doubt and helplessness, learns from that suffering the truth about his own purpose. And having made that discovery decided to act in an uncompromising fashion.

And in many ways this extremism is the sole justification for the tragedy, and indeed the tragic hero's very existence. It is because he or she has the courage, the vision and the determination to test the boundaries of human nature and seeks to surpass their limitations and reach the unattainable in the effort to reach the final goal that they commands our attention and can be seen as an exemplar for us. Tragedy depicts men and women who, dissatisfied with the hand life has dealt them, challenge the rules of the game. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but always they demonstrate the power of free will to stand against fate or the gods or whatever outside powers seek to dominate them.

It is this tremendous strength of will to scale the heights and accomplish the impossible sets the hero apart from ordinary humanity, but at the same time it inspires us with a vision of human potential. Thus, tragedy, far from being a pessimistic view of life, is ultimately optimistic about the value of human achievement and the unconquerable strength of the human spirit. Of course sometimes the tragic vision encompasses the paradox of human freedom, admitting the possibility of great goodness and great evil. Hamlet and Orestes must kill one relative to avenge the death of another. Faustus sells his soul for knowledge.

As one writer states:

"Tragedy cannot entail extreme optimism, for that would be to underestimate the problem; it cannot entail extreme pessimism for that would be to lose faith in man. But its central theme has always been: victory in defeat, a man's conquest of himself in the face of annihilation. The message of tragedy is that men are better than they think they are. This message needs to be said over and over lest the race lose faith in itself entirely".

Confronting insurmountable odds, the protagonist's determination to act rather than submit often leads to disastrous results, but at the same time it tests the basic substance of humanity, proving its worth. And this is why the final message of season 5 in general and “Not Fade Away” in particular is so appropriate and so powerful. It is after all an uncompromising statement in favour of this sense of free will and its exercise even in the face of a seemingly unattainable goal.