Angel

Angel Episode 5 :3 Unleashed Teleplay by Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft. Directed by Marita Grabiak

Stranger at the Gates

Here we have your basic "monster of the week" tale. Innocent girl bitten by werewolf, becomes werewolf, is rescued from horrible fate (being eaten alive) by Angel & Co., affable farewell. It’s even framed by two scenes of the Fang Gang united, all working together and committed.

Except it’s not. And they’re not.

This, more clearly than the two episodes that preceded it, gives us the shape of things to come. How it will all fall out. And if we watch closely, we realize that it is falling. As Spike puts it, "Somebody’s slipping."

Things fall apart ; the center cannot hold is the image that the poet Yeats gave for the beginnings of total collapse in "The Second Coming." Here, as always, that center is Angel. And things are beginning to come unglued. His mission, as from the beginning, is "To help the helpless." And on the surface, it would seem that that’s what he’s doing. In a secret conference of the Fang Gang (hopefully) away from the prying hidden ears and eyes of Wolfram & Hart, Angel hears something amiss, borrows Wesley’s sterling silver pen (a gift from the Senior Partners), and kills a werewolf attacking a girl. A pretty, blonde, frightened girl. Who escapes, bitten and bleeding : to inevitably turn into a werewolf herself. The monster’s dead, but the victim isn’t saved. Isn’t even aware of her fate. And Angel has lost her before he ever knew her. The rescue isn’t a rescue at all.

Afterward, in typical Angel fashion, he obsesses over her to the exclusion of all else. He bends all the considerable resources of W & H, which he nominally controls through his department heads, the FG, to identifying and locating her. The FG set aside all other projects and concerns to do his will in this matter. And so she’s identified-one Nina, sister of Jill, aunt of Jill’s 9 year old daughter, Amanda. Nina is well along in the process of becoming a monster. Luring werewolf-Nina out of the house before she carries out her vision of chowing down on Amanda, Angel secures her in a cage at W & H until she accepts the reality of her situation and the peril she therefore represents to family members. There is no cure. The rescue is not a rescue.

Visiting her home, with Fred, to pick up some familiar possessions as reassurance, Nina is captured and dragged away by henchmen of one Jacob Crane, who has an unusual hobby : he hosts extremely exotic dinners. Tonight’s entrée is to be werewolf-gruesomely carved from the living beast. Angel breaks that up, leaving a traitorous W & H staff cryptozoologist, Dr. Royce (bitten in passing by Nina), to be next month’s entrée.

The period of the full moon has passed : Nina’s safe to be around for another month. There still is no cure : Nina will return for protective incarceration at next month’s full moon. She and Angel part on friendly, possibly even romantic, terms. The FG celebrate in Angel’s penthouse. All is well. Except it isn’t.

What are the off notes here ?

Spike, Spike. Oh, and Spike.

Like Angel, he is an ensouled vampire and a Champion of the Powers That Be. (Perhaps) unlike Angel, he’s being drawn into apparently a literal Hell. And absolutely nobody is doing anything about it. True, Spike is obnoxious. True, he spins a fabricated tale of past antipathy with Wesley to Fred, trying to jar her into actually providing the help she promised him while refusing help from anyone else. True, he has less than no sympathy for Nina’s plight. None of this changes the fact that nobody is more helpless, more in need of help, or more deserving of it through his past sacrifices and achievements, than Spike. And the FG collectively and conspicuously turn their backs. Their reasons : (1) they’re already overburdened (2) Angel is concentrating solely on helping someone else (3) they don’t trust one another anymore and are increasingly working at cross purposes (4) they have a traitor in their midst (5) Spike is not a pretty, innocent blonde girl ; and (6) Angel doesn’t like him and reallywishes he’d just go away-disappear forever-which Spike is in fact in the process of doing, although Angel doesn’t know it.

Part of this coldness at the heart, as manifested explicitly by Spike and implicitly by Angel, is, I believe, just a facet of their being vampires. It would appear, from copious lore and observation, that Jossverse vampires are essentially self-centered : some to a greater degree (like Angel) and some (like Spike, with his century of loving and protecting Dru and then his love of Buffy), less. Angel has learned, as we’ve seen watching from Season 1, to empathize with and relate to humans. His sense of "us" has slowly extended to the FG itself, and then to humans at large if they’re helpless and in trouble. But Angel’s sense of "us" does not extend to other vampires, or to monsters of any sort. Spike has, in his evolution, developed similarly : first Buffy, then Dawn, and then all the Scoobies are people who, however unwillingly, he categorizes as "his" people, whom he will, if necessary, risk or even sacrifice himself to protect. Though other opinions and interpretations are certainly possible, I see no reason to conclude that Spike has moved beyond this. He’s become one of the "good guys," but he’s not just itching to find someone to do good to. Unlike Angel, he has no benevolent inclinations toward people at large. They’re not part of his "us." He has no doubt that the affaire Nina will end badly, and is tactless enough to say so : "Here on out, she’s in the kill or be killed club…. After she goes all growly, won’t be easy taking her out." She’s become just another monster, after all : the sort that both he and Angel have dispatched in the past without a qualm. Trapped and tethered at W & H, he’s surrounded by strangers, except for Angel and Harmony ; and none of them wishes him well. Distracted, Angel actively dislikes him ; and Harmony hasn’t forgiven or forgotten his mistreatment of her when they were lovers (and it seems significant that in this episode, we don’t see Harmony at all).

Some have contended that we are judged not by how we treat family and friends but by how we treat the stranger at the gate : the one we encounter in need who has no claim on our assistance : the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this present case, Angel is all gung-ho to offer and even force assistance on the pretty blonde ; the snarky blond is left wandering aimlessly through the halls, his disappearances lengthening and increasingly harrowing, unnoticed by anyone but himself. A clear case of out of sight, out of mind. Spike, the neglected Samaritan.

There are other off notes. The FG are on edge, overburdened by the difficulty and enormity of accomplishing anything with the twisty tools with which W & H presents them. In this episode, to wit, Dr. Royce-full of information on Lycanthropus Exterus, a non-native species with trivial differences from native American werewolves (like Oz) but prepared with a drug, calendula, that can block Lorne’s psychic readings. He is the traitor that delivers Nina to Crane’s cutlery and cuisine. Significantly, it’s through following the course of oblivious Spike, wandering semi-materialized through walls, that Fred finds the vial and thereby identifies the traitor in their midst : however unintentionally, Spike is the true guide to where falsehood and betrayal reside within W & H. Remember this : it’s gonna matter.

Everyone is suspicious of what may have been put, or taken, in the process of Gunn’s force-fed mental upgrade in all matters legal ; and Gunn resents their perhaps-well-founded suspicions. He’s odd man out. Fred is obediently keeping the secret of Spike’s predicament and may be overfraternizing with the enemy, namely her assistant Knox, whom she’s under, or over, or something like that. So she’s odd man out. Wesley is too tired to handle the chore of ordering Chinese take-out. He’s odd man out, contributing nothing to the solution of this episode’s surface problem except his engraved sterling pen. And Lorne, having likened Angel to Atlas, the mythical giant with the weight of the world on his shoulders, attempts to tell Angel a few home truths : "You know, you’re fighting so many enemies around you, Angel, your punches are getting sloppy and we’ve got the bruises to prove it." Lorne’s concerned complaint is shrugged off (pun intended) and dismissed, as was Gunn, a few moments before, after injecting the close relationship the original werewolf had with Santa as a demonstration of Angel’s self-absorption and inattention. Both Gunn and Lorne are odd man out, as far as Angel is concerned. And Spike is the oddest and most out of them all. Whatever neglect and indifference and oblivious focus on his own agenda and priorities with which Angel is treating his closest friends and supporters, he’s showing threefold toward Spike. Spike is the touchstone, the canary in the coal mine : whatever happens to him will happen to them all eventually. The effects show there first.

In this episode, we see Angel considers that only frightened blonde humans have a claim on his attention, sympathy, and assistance. Nobody else gets any help or support from him at all. His concern is in inverse proportion to the distance : the farther away a person is, the more interested Angel is in their welfare. The closer they are, the more he ignores them. So by that standard, implicitly, Spike is the closest of all. It’s not unlike the situation with a werewolf : the people in greatest danger from them are those who are closest. That’s just how it is, with monsters.

Spike summarized the situation neatly, on the fly, in last week’s episode : "You made some devil’s bargain to take over this company. Thought you’d use it to fight all the evil of the world from inside the belly of the beast. Trouble is, you’re too busy fighting to notice you and yours are getting digested." In the present episode, we see that the digestion, with its central image of werewolf flambé with an appropriate sauce, is proceeding apace.

Fred’s image of the Fang Gang, expressed to Nina, in regard to Angel’s lonely, non-dating status : "It’s not as if he doesn’t have anyone. We all…we try to be there for each other." Nina clarifies, "Like family." Fred replies, "Yeah : a demon-hunting, helpless helping, dysfunctional family." The reality : after a month at W & H, the initial picnic is evidently the first time the FG have eaten together, and they delay getting down to their open-air business until Fred has checked for listening devices. Wes is late because he thought he was being followed. At the end, it’s the first time the FG have been in Angel’s penthouse-a custom decorated, sterile suite with a great view of places far away, from high above. Removed. Distant. As Angel himself is becoming. In these seemingly Rah !Team gatherings that begin and end the episode, not only are there discordances among those gathered but Spike’s absence is particularly conspicuous. The "us" of the Fang Gang is deteriorating…and Spike, a natural ally, a Champion of The Powers That Be, is excluded without a thought.

The surface text of this episode is clear and normal : bad guys defeated (the exotic supper club has been closed down, we’re told in a throwaway line : not that Angel apparently cared one way or another and was quite willing to surrender a traitor human as the next entrée), pretty blonde girl rescued and returned to her normal life (at least until the next full moon), and Angel musing wistfully on possible romance ("She gave me a look"). But the subtext of this episode is very dark and despairing, and despite Fred’s firm promise of help to Spike, the promo for next week’s episode suggests that it’s all downhill from here.

Nan Dibble 10/16/03

MISCELLANEOUS

That has to be the world’s worst gag, on Nina : it’s visibly loose as she’s wheeled out into the dining room. Wesley is visibly jealous and resentful of Fred’s warm relationship with her assistant, Knox. If you wondered how Angel got into the dining room, it appears to be a private club, not a residence : therefore no invitation required. Spike is much more obviously shaken, returning from his little sojourn in hell. It hasn’t done anything for his disposition, either. Fred offers to go to the Senior Partners, seeking help for Spike. He flatly refuses. All means are clearly not acceptable to him to escape his situation. He won’t even allow Fred to tell Wesley, since it would get back to Angel. That seems the bottom line : Spike refuses to appeal to Angel for assistance either directly or indirectly. It seems (very tentative) Spike tends to dematerialize when he’s angry or being conspicuously, deliberately ignored and rejected ; he materializes more solidly when Fred promises him she’ll find a solution-when he’s made some kind of friendly contact with a person. \

Memorable lines :

Fred to Spike, interrupting his account of a gruesome battle with a werewolf : Angel killed him with a pen. (mightier than a sword, perhaps ?)

Angel, to Spike : You know that whoosh thing that you do, when you’re suddenly not there anymore ? I love that.

Fred, describing herself to Nina : Standard issue science nerd.

Wesley : An underground, monster-hunting, military-style organization. It’s happened before. (Can we all say Initiative ? As in the Initiative that chipped Spike and tried to kill (werewolf) Oz ? In case we were in need of still another Spike connection with the surface story, here it is, folks. And if you need another, Gunn to Fred : Enough with the mocking. We get enough of that from ’Blondie Bear,’ (said in a distinctly sour and unfriendly tone.)

Royce : He’s scarier than you. Angel (going to game face) : Wanna bet ?

Lorne : Just consider me the Jenny Craig for the soul."

Lorne : OK, Atlas, how about a shrug.

Angel to Nina-the-entrée : They garnished you ?

Spike to Fred : Last gasp before eternal fire and brimstone : let’s party !

Lorne (in Angel’s penthouse) : Speak about a room with a view ! (title of a Season 1 AtS episode)