Angel

5.13—Why We Fight: The WHY of It All

Writers: Steven S. DeKnight and Drew Goddard Director: Terrence O’Hara

So here’s Angel, thrust for dubious reasons into the role of the uneasy boss of an enemy vessel manned by competent but uneasy subordinates and carrying dubious cargo for probably unholy purposes. The mission is to somehow bring that vessel into the light.

A German U-boat? Or Wolfram & Hart?

Actually, both. This episode isn’t a full-blown allegory. There’s no one-for-one correspondence between the sub’s small (surviving) crew of American sailors, for instance, and members of the Fang Gang. However, it is a deliberate analogy—a significant comparison. A reverse mirror granting a different and illuminating reflection. And the pivotal character in both reflections, present and past, is Sam Lawson.

The Title

Why We Fight was an actual series of WWII propaganda films made between 1943 (the year in which the flashback portions of this episode is set) and 1945 by famed populist director Frank Capra and Russian-born Anatole Litvak. These films attempted to spell out the players and the issues of the war for the American public. The “we” of this episode is more focused—to a few people, a specific situation—and more open-ended, because it includes all creatures self-aware enough to wonder WHY.

The Situation

In many ways, this is a standard scenario. A prototype German submarine, advanced technology intact, has been captured and is to be delivered into Allied hands. Always, there’s a problem in such scenarios—either the technology fails, the captain blows a gasket, the sub’s attacked by the Allies, etc. Think The Hunt for Red October. However, in this episode, the problem is a bit unusual: the sub is infested with vampires who have already eaten a goodly number of the crew, including the captain. So an unusual remedy is required.

Enter two military types, into the glum New York apartment of glum Angel—in 1943, in his disaffected, rat-eating phase prior to “Are You, Or Have You Ever Been” (set in the 1950’s). Commander Petrie makes the initial running, setting out the basic scenario. But Mr. Fury (a shout-out to the authors’ fellow writer?) is there to represent the unexpected element: the covert position of the U.S. government on vampires. Mr. Fury is with a relatively new organization—the Demon Research Initiative...that we viewers can easily discern eventually morphed into the Sunnydale-based Initiative of Maggie Walsh and Riley Finn. The Initiative whose goal was to assemble superior soldiers from demon parts; the Initiative that coolly experimented on captive demons and implanted in Spike’s head the chip that utterly changed his unlife; the Initiative whose means included the drugging, conditioning, and chipping of its own operatives and whose ultimate (if inadvertent) achievement was patchwork Adam, who methodically set out to destroy all human life. At this point in its existence, the aim of the DRI is surveillance. Mr. Fury knows who and what Angel is, and both he and Petrie are prepared to “insert” Angel into this mission with or without his consent: "We figure we strap enough weight to you, you will sink, regardless of your interests."

Hmmm. Angel encumbered by weights at the bottom of the ocean. Has a familiar ring to it, doesn’t it?

That’s just the necessary set-up. The scene immediately shifts to the sub, where all hell has broken loose. The remaining crew are trapped behind a bulkhead they dare not open, no matter what sounds or screams they hear from the other side. They can’t reach the controls and air is running out. The ranking surviving officer, Ensign Sam Lawson, attempts to keep his companions from panic and leads them to investigate the strange noises coming from the torpedo tubes. Enter a dripping, glum Angel, fettered by the threatened weights, who assumes command and proceeds to take charge of the situation.

The Players and the Issues

The ship’s dangerous escaped cargo represent nearly the whole spectrum of vampires: Nostroyev, boastful early-European nobility (“I was Raputin’s lover!”), a la Dracula; The Prince of Lies, a wizened, fang-faced grotesque, a la Nosferatu; and the compleat chameleon, adaptable to the times—Spike: hair dyed black (the better to feast on virgin blood in swarthy Spain) slicked back, clad in an SS officer’s uniform. Angel’s childe, at one remove. Psychologically if not physically Angel’s son and a reminder of the gleeful, amoral evil of unsouled Angelus. Spike is an equal-opportunity vampire: he’ll eat anybody, captain and crew alike, German or American. And then there’s post-modern Angel—the vampire with a soul and a mission, if not a purpose. At length, there’s the Louis-like, Ann Rice style of guilt-ridden, self-questioning philosophical vampire: Sam Lawson.

Nostroyev and the ancient, clueless Prince (who hadn’t even realized they were underwater!) are soon dispatched, leaving Angel between a rock—fresh-faced, well-intentioned Mom and apple pie Riley Finn clone Sam Lawson—and a hard place—Spike, who doesn’t yet realize Angel is ensouled and who’s behaving as much like a total jerk as inhumanly possible (following Angel around and whining for treats, throwing feeble insults) but from whom Angel cannot completely disengage himself. However reluctantly, he and Spike are connected; and both of them know it. He’ll protect Spike...and both of them know that, too.

Having been forced into this mission, no more Captain America (as a crewman imagines) than Spike is a Nazi, even though Angel figuratively wears that hero’s “uniform” as Spike wears the SS regalia (Spike has always had an affinity for leather), neither of them truly fitting the role for which they’re attired, Angel forces himself through the expected motions of delivering the sub to the Allies. But he has no personal involvement except to minimize the damage to himself and his vampire kin. Once free of the weights, immune to drowning, suffocation, and pressure, Angel has nothing to prevent him and Spike from exiting the sub and leaving it and its crew to their watery fates. To Lawson’s questions about motivation, duty, and opposing evil, (“Evil’s spreadin’, Sir, and...we’ve got to stop it! ...But I can keep it together...I can even handle dying...if I know it’s for a greater purpose.”), Angel can offer only vague, bleak invocations of orders (“Isn’t that the point? Following orders?”), the “job” of winning the war (which is not Angel’s war), and demanding Lawson’s blind trust: “You don’t need to know why”; “I need you to trust that I’m gonna get us all through this, safe and sound.” (Angel similarly has required the blind trust of the Fang Gang—blind, inasmuch as they still don’t know about Connor or the full details of Angel’s bargain with the Senior Partners that put them in control of W&H, LA.)

What Lawson wants is a reason—an ultimate WHY. And that, Angel doesn’t have to give him. He doesn’t know “Why We Fight.”

When depth charges incapacitate the sub and Lawson, who alone knows how to repair the engines, receives a fatal wound from a captive German officer, Heinreich (the lone survivor of the sub’s original crew), Angel does the expedient thing: bites this honorable, brave young man and turns him, so Lawson can survive to complete the mission. Had Angel done otherwise, he and Spike would still have survived, but the human crew, helpless hostages, would have perished, the Allies would have been denied their much-needed prize, and the Nazis’ experimentation on vampires—intended to create the perfect killing machine (a la Adam)—would have remained beyond the reach of similarly interested American scientists. (This is an analogy to the Reich’s actual secret experimentation with development of the atomic bomb, which the Allies were desperate to develop first.)

The Sons

In this episode, Angel repeatedly addresses Sam Lawson as “son”—both before and after he turns him.

In some ways, Lawson is a parallel to Spike: an essentially good man turned for expedient reasons, for the benefit of the group—in Spike’s case, to be Dru’s caretaker. (True, it was Drusilla who was Spike’s sire, but there is no least waft of Dru in this episode, and it’s his relationship to Angel that’s emphasized. So as Angel might say, with a pained expression, “It’s complicated.”) The difference, apparently, is that Lawson is turned, not by Angelus, but by souled Angel. The result, apparently, is that he retains some vague interest in the mission—the sub—if not its crew, whom he now regards as merely potential food (a la “Happy Meals on legs,” per Spike). In the following 60 years, Lawson has had a vampire’s normal bloodlust and string of victims, but has taken none of the joy Angelus and Spike had from their wicked unlives. He “feels nothing.” He commits evil but takes no satisfaction in it...and comes to wonder, learning that Angel was ensouled at the time he turned Lawson, if he himself might have inherited the spiritual side of his sire along with the physiological changes.

It’s not a stupid question. Lawson certainly seems to be quite a bit more like Angel, in the present-day framing story of Lawson’s revenge (?) and invasion of Wolfram & Hart, than he is like unsouled Spike or, by extension, Angelus or the other unsouled vamps we’ve seen. But Angel, looking surprised, puzzled, and troubled by the question, says he doesn’t think it works that way. Is this a fact or a dismissal of the question? The only human Spike turned while ensouled whom we get to know in any detail, Holden Webster (in BtVS “Conversations with Dead People”), also seemed to retain more intelligence and affability, and more of his previous personality, than the average fledge—violent and typically dumb as a box of rocks. Although Angel says no, the matter of any difference resulting from being turned by a souled vampire rather than an unsouled one seems to remain canonically unresolved.

Angel is protective of Lawson, giving both him and Spike a fair chance of escaping to land without becoming prisoners of the American military or DRI when Angel delivers the sub into Allied hands. (He later also jumps ship.) In other words, Angel’s treatment of Lawson is roughly equivalent (although less acrimonious) to his treatment of his other vampire “son” here. But there are different parallels. There was another son whom Angel had to kill for others’ benefit, seeing no other solution: Connor. Although in 1943, Angel had no foreknowledge that Connor would ever exist, in the present, Angel would be sharply aware of this “sonship” connection; and this awareness leads him to choose this horn of the dilemma with which Lawson presents him, as he did with Connor.

The Present Question

It seems that in the less persuasive present plot, Sam Lawson, the unchanging vampire that Angel made him, invades Wolfram & Hart to extort from Angel, not revenge, but one of two things: either the ultimate WHY—the reason—that Angel could or would not give him on the sub, or else a final release from that question that has haunted him ever since. Why is he the way he is? Why is he evil, committing atrocities, but taking no satisfaction in it? What is his purpose in existing? What purpose should he be following? (“Come on, Chief: give me a mission!”) Since he cannot ask these questions of a divinity who created him human, he quite reasonably directs the questions to the one who created him vampire.

Angel gives him the only answer he currently has: refusing the question and granting death. This time, a final one. Because Angel himself still doesn’t know “Why We Fight.”

Nan Dibble 2/13/04 Acknowledgement: As always, I am indebted for the gladly shared insights, wit, and general snarkiness of my fellow S’cubies: the members of the Soulful Spike Society.

MISCELLANEOUS

Effective, spooky, X-Files style opening! The rest of the episode doesn’t conform to it, but it’s still fully shiver-inducing! One of the few items of interest in the present plot is that Angel is still pursuing the matter of Eve and Lindsey. He wants to find out their present situation and what punishment, if any, the Senior Partners have meted out to them. There will presumably be further revelations on these matters in future episodes. Note also that Spike is quite plainly not invited to sit in on the Fang Gang discussion of these matters, even though the machinations of Eve and Lindsey certainly did involve and affect him. This is W&H’s exclusive concern, and despite the current cordial relations between Spike and Angel & Co., and despite the fact that he plainly comes and goes at will in the building with Angel’s approval, he is not a part of that organization. Another matter of interest is that it appears Gunn has a brain hiccup as he tries to specify how a new liaison with the Senior Partners could be arranged. He tries to pass it off, but something is plainly amiss with his download of various knowledge. (1) Is the download wearing out? (2) Was it not knowledge, but access to knowledge that he was given, and that access has been disrupted by the disappearance of the panther/conduit, leaving White Room empty and useless? (3) Has Gunn been, in effect, addicted to the knowledge, and now it’s being withheld to manipulate and/or control him? We’ve been given more than sufficient reason to be suspicious of the download and its ultimate effect on Gunn. Now, in this disruption, we see the first sign that Gunn’s about to pay a high price for the “free gift with purchase” of his role at Wolfram & Hart. Expect further developments about this, too. Fred admits that Knox has conspicuously messed up on something (“the entire Trask experiment,” whatever that may be), and Wes comments with blandly restrained glee, “Yes, he is unreliable. Good point.” Movement on the Wes/Fred/Knox front? At the opening of the episode, the sub’s crew estimated they had two days’ air left. With Heinreich dead, that would be extended slightly, perhaps making up for the time after Angel arrives (the vampires expend no air, using it only to talk and removing no oxygen from it in the process). So Lawson may take as long as two days to rise—not as rapid as it might seem. In 1943 it hasn’t occurred to Spike (who, unlike The Prince of Lies, knows he’s on a submarine) that it’s not such a great idea to eat all the crew because then there’ll be nobody left who knows how to operate the ship. (“How hard can it be?” he asks, and then, demonstrating how simple the controls are to handle, inadvertently sets of the klaxon. Real dumb, this Spike. Doesn’t think ahead. Fairly typical, if one-note and reductive.) It’s also a little odd (although explainable) that when later captured by the Initiative, he doesn’t appear to recall this brush with its prototype. Naturally, this story didn’t exist when the earlier one was penned. Still, considering this is now canon, one wonders, retroactively. Absent for almost all of the present portion of this episode, Spike arrives, muted and solemn, at its conclusion. Having been given “the Cliff’s Notes” version of Lawson’s invasion by Fred (Hey! Fred’s Spike’s friend!), Spike comes to Angel to be someone Angel can talk to. Because he’s concerned about Angel. And Angel quietly accepts his concern and his company. The tentative rapport we saw between them at the conclusion of “Damage” has apparently endured and may develop past the reflexive mutual snark into the actual partnership, support, and unique understanding that both the vampires with a soul so badly need. As they, like Lawson (and like us), need to discover their purpose...the WHY of it all.

Hmmm...

Spike, the vampire linguist who knows Fyarl and a dozen other demon languages and who’s been kicking around Europe for decades, knows no German and asks, “Anybody here read Nazi?” Please!

Why is there no mention of Dru by either Spike or Angel?

Lawson’s “ace in the hole,” his easy capture and threatened hanging/beheading of Wes, Fred, and Gunn if Angel doesn’t do...what?...is just plain silly. It’s meant to parallel the situation of the helpless crew aboard the sub, but...really! In this case, the analogy is not persuasive.

Does W&H have no security at all, that Lawson is not detected? Earlier in the series, when an “unauthorized” vampire entered, alarms went off and “special ops” squads were deployed. What happened to that?

Memorable lines:

Angel (seeing Spike in an SS uniform): You’re a Nazi. Spike: What? (looks at uniform) Oh, no—I just ate one. They got you too, eh? (Angel nods) Nabbed me in Madrid. Sneaky bastards, the SS! Don’t ever go to a free virgin blood party. Turns out it’s probably a trap. Angel: You were crashing a free virgin blood party? Spike: I dunno—who’d have thought? One minute I’m asking a fellow why all the virgins look like Goebbels and the next minute I’m stuck in a box in the cursed ship!

Spike (of Angel): He likes to pretend he’s the boss. Nostroyev (to Angel): You may have made a name for yourself muscling around weaker vampires— Spike (indignantly): Hang on! Nostroyev: —but I am Nostroyev. I will tear you open and play “Coachman, Spare Your Horses” on the lute of your entrails! Get out of my way. Angel (after dusting Notroyev): We don’t kill the humans till we reach land. Is that clear? Spike (giving a two-finger salute—the British version of “the bird): Heil Hitler!

Prince of Lies: This bathysphere is perplexing!

Lawson: I recognize there’s a lot going on here that I don’t understand. Those monsters butchered my crew. Apparently they’re in the SS. Angel: Spike’s not in the SS. He just likes wearing the jacket. Lawson: Yeah.... It doesn’t help me understand why we’re working with him. Or keeping him alive, for that matter. Angel: I’ve got him under control. (Ha! And Angel perhaps thinks/contends he has things at W&H under control, too. Again Ha!) Lawson: That’s not the point. He killed my captain, Sir! Angel: We may be able to use them. We don’t have much of a crew left. Lawson: I don’t think we’ll need ‘em. Angel: They’re extra hands. (Hmmm...Spike’s hands.) Lawson: They’re monsters! And I don’t know why— Angel: You don’t need to know why! We’ve got to bring this sub in. Those are our orders. Isn’t that the point—following orders? Lawson: There’s a difference between orders...and purpose...Sir. I didn’t sign on ‘cause I needed directions.... Evil’s spreadin’, Sir, and it’s not just over there. It was on my ship. It killed my crew. And we’ve got to stop it! And I’ve been scared out of my mind since I signed on for this duty. But I can keep it together...I can even handle dying...if I know it’s for a greater purpose. Angel: We’ve got a job to do. That job is going to help us win the war. I don’t need you to understand every detail. Just know we’re fighting on the same side. I need you to trust I’m going to get us all through this—safe and sound.

Spike (entering control room): Come on! When am I gonna get a turn? Angel: In about never. Spike: I’m playing nice with the anchovies like you asked. At least let me have a go at the wheel. Angel: Pipe down-I’m trying to work. Spike: Oh, “pipe down.” That official sailor talk, is it? Well, ahoy, matey: you can just swab my deck. Angel: Spike— Spike: Captain. Angel: What? Spike: I want to be called captain. I mean, hell: I did eat him! Angel: Check the torpedoes before I stuff you in a tube and send you for a swim, “captain!”

Prince of Lies: You think I don’t know? I am as ancient as the darkness itself! (Shades of the First Evil.) Angel: Yeah, you’re real old. We know. Just calm down. Prince of Lies: They dare conceive such violations upon my temple! The Prince of Lies is not a slab of meat, to be set upon by insignificant maggots! (Learning of the pre-Initiative experiments, the Prince of Lies is murderously indignant.)

Lawson (to Spike, interpreting Heinreich): He says you’re an idiot. Angel: You speak German. Spike: Well, groovy! I’ll menace, you talk. (Not the only speech anachronism in this episode. Nostroyev also says “in the day,” meaning “in olden times.”)

Lawson: He says it’s research. Spike: What kind? Heinreich: (something in German, in which the word “vampire” is distinguishable.) Spike: What about vampires! Lawson: I don’t know. It’s technical. (glancing through papers) It’s something about stimulation...and control. They’ve been experimenting on them...and cutting into their brains. Spike (to Heinreich): That’s what got the Prince’s coronet in a twist, didn’t it? Found out you were gonna pop our tops and melon-ball us. Lawson: They’re trying to create an army...out of things like you. Spike: Yeah—explains why they nicked us. Cream of the crop! Want to build an army of vampire slaves, you start at the top: with the generals. Lawson (to Heinreich): It’s not enough what you already do in the world, is it? Only you and your Fuehrer could come up with something this sick! (Heinreich and Angel have a heated exchange in German.) Spike: Am I the only one who doesn’t speak Kraut? Lawson (to Angel): You already knew about this? You did! Angel: It’s part of the mission. Spike: What mission? Oh—I get it: you’re playing both sides against each other. Angel: Spike— Spike: No, I respect that. But if the Yanks are after this stuff too, I mean, the lot of them— Angel (as Lawson draws his pistol): Spike, stop it! I’m not getting trapped at the bottom of the sea! Spike: And I’m not getting experimented on by his government! (waves at Lawson) Lawson: We wouldn’t do that! You don’t win a war by doing whatever it takes. You win by doing what’s right. Spike: Yeah, let me know how that works out for you, Popeye. Angel: None of this matters. Your men are getting this ship and all aboard who are still alive—that’s all! Spike? Torch it! (hands him the papers) Spike: Damn skippy! (another anachronism) Heinreich: Nein! Spike (chuckles evilly—then sings “God Save the King” (the British national anthem)...in vampface...while setting the papers afire with his lighter and singeing himself...then falling down as the depth charges begin. Not something you see every day, even in the Jossverse.)

Lawson (listening to groans in the hull): We’re surfacing. Angel: Yeah. Lawson: Is that a sharp maneuver? The Jerries still trolling for us? Angel: We’re out of air. The crew’s not gonna make it if we don’t vent. Lawson: They sorta give their lives for their country: just like me. Besides, I’m hungry. Angel: They’re still your men. Lawson: But they’re not the mission. Are they. (goes to game face) Angel (subduing Lawson): You’re new at this. I’m not. Let’s take a walk.

Angel (to Lawson): Eight hours to sunrise, twenty miles from land. Lawson: I just might make it. Angel: I’m sorry for what happened. But if I ever see you again, I’m gonna have to kill you. Lawson: Aye, Aye, Chief. (looking around at sub) Take good care of her. She’s a good boat. Spike: Bloody brilliant! Turn the poor sod to save the ship, then make him dash for dry land before Mr. Sunshine scorches him a new one. You’re still a dick. Angel (grimly): Yeah. I am. Spike (obediently following Lawson up the ladder): Bollocks. (Notice, there’s no mention or indication of a lifeboat. The two vamps are going to have to swim for it.)

Angel (to Lawson, in the present): I never wanted to do this to you. Lawson: Oh, put your hanky away. I know how important the technology they pulled off that sub was in helping us stop the Germans. Sounded like a fair shake. One person down to make the world safe for future generations. (Remember Cordelia’s phrase about Doyle—“First soldier down”?)

Lawson (in the present): And through it all, I felt nothing. Sixty years of blood drying in my throat...like ashes. So what do you think: is it me, Chief? Or does everyone you sired feel this way? Angel: You’re the only one I ever did this to...after I got a soul. Lawson: Do I have one too? Angel: I don’t think it works that way, son. Lawson: Didn’t think so.

Lawson (as stake approaches his chest): Come on, Chief: give me a mission! (Angel stakes Lawson)

Spike: So sailor boy finally came back for a yo ho ho, did he? Angel: Finally came back. Spike: Took him long enough. I know revenge is best served cold and all, but his must have been frozen solid. Angel: I don’t think that’s what he was after. Spike: No? Then what was he looking for? Angel: A reason.

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