Angel

Destiny

"This town might not be big enough for the both of you."

Is it possible for life at Wolfram & Hart to get any loonier? I mean, you’ve got office parties with giant wicker effigies, a division responsible for helping people sacrifice their pets, and a vampire ghost walking through the furniture. Could this be a crazier place?

The answer to that would be an emphatic "yes." Thanks to a mysterious box that has been mailed to Spike, he suddenly becomes corporeal again, and the whole place goes haywire. Phones ring endlessly. Computers go down. Employees start attacking each other. The White Room - big kitty and all - turns into a howling abyss of nothingness.

And it’s all because of the newly touchy-feely Spike. Or rather, the fact that he sacrificed himself, thus becoming a champion, then came back as a ghost, then got his body back. Now there are two solid, ensouled hero vampires in the world, and it’s thrown that whole Shanshu prophecy for a loop.

Wesley is taking a leave of absence, so the guys seek the help of Sirk, that snooty Watcher (is there any other kind?) who is on the W&H payroll. He tells them that they need to find the Cup of Perpetual Torment, which is conveniently located in a buried opera house in Nevada. The pre-destined vampire will drink from it, suffer horribly, then regain his humanity and have his slate of evil deeds wiped clean.

Naturally, this becomes a game of one-upmanship between Angel and Spike. They race to the site of the opera house, while the episode regularly flashes back to their bad old days as partners in crime, when Angelus was Spike’s mentor in evildoing, and then started boffing Drusilla right under his nose, just to show him who was boss.

It’s this rivalry that plays out in the present day, as the two former "buddies" fight ruthlessly for the right to be the real hero. Their between-punches argument runs the gamut, from debating which one truly deserves the cosmic reward to pushing each other’s buttons about the Buffy thing.

Finally, Spike makes it to the cup first, and Angel asks him, in all seriousness, if he’s really doing this because it’s the right thing, or just because he wants to take something from Angel. "Bit of both," Spike admits casually, then drinks from the cup.

It’s Mountain Dew.

Realizing they’ve been had, they go back to the office. Things have gotten so bad there, Gunn has actually tried to strangle Eve, accusing her of being behind all the scary things that have been happening.

Wait, that’s not bad, is it? Somebody probably should strangle her.

Anyway, the Senior Partners miraculously step in and put a temporary stop to the madness. There’s time - but not much - to find the now-missing Sirk and figure things out. Gunn apologizes to Eve, then listens to Angel brood about the fact that Spike got to the MacGuffin before he did. "He wanted it more," Angel opines. "What if it means that I’m not the one?"

Meanwhile, Eve goes home. Her decorating scheme tends toward the Aleister Crowley school of design, with occult symbols all over the walls. She disrobes while talking to an unseen individual, revealing that they were the ones who ripped up the universe, catching the Senior Partners off guard. Apparently, the plan was for Spike to kill Angel, but Eve reports the second-best thing, which is that they made punching bags out of each other.

We finally see who she’s talking to as she climbs into bed. It’s Lindsey McDonald, former W&H lawyer who teamed up with Angel once back in Season 2, then disappeared. He was never a really good guy, but there seemed to be hope for him.

Guess not.

Episodes like this are why I’m glad I don’t read spoilers. I was completely surprised to see Lindsey McDonald in that bed, with his biceps and occult tattoos. The fact that he’s in cahoots with Eve was even more deliciously shocking. Not only is she the bad guy, she’s cuddly with the (possibly) even badder one. Cool.

Of course, this puts the whole season into a different light. I doubt if it goes back further than that, but it’s possible. And I won’t even speculate on what it all means or what’s going to happen next. I’d be wrong, anyway, and it’s so much more fun to see what Joss will spring on us next.

Besides, while this episode may have ended with a big freaky twist, it’s really about the very unsurprising relationship between Angel and Spike. It’s all stuff we know about them, illuminated in one heckuva kick-ass episode.

Superficially, they couldn’t be more different. In their soulless days, Angelus was a gourmet sadist who saw Spike as weak and ineffectual. Spike was an insecure hooligan with a soft spot for Drusilla, who saw Angelus as a personal threat. They were both more or less right, too.

Now, Angel is trying to be the Big Hero, saving the world for its own sake and all that, but he harbors a secret bitterness over the idea that he’ll never be rewarded for his deeds. Spike pretends not to care about anything much, but he’s still got that old romantic streak, and is trying to learn how to live with a conscience again. And, if it’s possible, the two of them hate each other even more than before. Why? Because they’re still hanging on to those longstanding resentments and jealousies. Each of them blames the other for his own shortcomings. Each of them thinks the other has it easy and is selfish and unworthy. Each of them has a grievance over a woman (or women, actually - Drusilla and Buffy). It’s no wonder they beat the holy crapola out of each other.

Lindsey and Eve (and whoever else is involved) know exactly how to wind Spike and Angel up like a pair of toy soldiers. They appear to do exactly what they were supposed to do, chasing after this fake hope of being the once and final champion, ignoring even the possibility that their childish rivalry might be their undoing.

The question now, mythology-wise, is what all this general craziness is about. Is the presence of two ensouled vampires really causing vast cosmic disruptions? Is it all being orchestrated by Lindsey and Eve? Why was it so easy to re-embody Spike, and what did Lindsey and Eve have to do with his resurrection, if anything? Where did the White Room and the conduit go? What role are the Senior Partners playing? What is Wesley currently up to (besides making time for Alexis Denisof’s honeymoon)?

Many questions, no answers yet. I love the way all this mayhem comes down to that last, brutal fight between Angel and Spike, with its anger and recriminations, stemming from their early days together. And that last bit with Angel, where he worries that maybe Spike is the real champion, the one who wants it badly enough to beat the mighty former-Angelus. That’s some fairly heavy stuff there, and you can bet Spike is going to get as much mileage as he can out of it. Any opportunity to get back at Angel for all those grievances, from stealing Dru to "making" Spike evil to being the true love of Buffy’s life. This is going to get a lot uglier before it gets any prettier. ||||||

Bring it on.

10 out of 10.