Angel

5.17 Underneath-Solitary Confinement
Writers: Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft Director: Skip Schoolnik

In the beginning, Angel is alone and doesn’t know why. An urgent strategy meeting has been called, but nobody’s shown up. Angel asks plaintively over the intercom, “Why am I alone?”

Good question, Angel.

Except for Spike, belatedly joining the (absent) team with an attaché case full of beer, the Fang Gang has been pretty thoroughly disrupted. Gunn is still in the infirmary, recovering from being stabbed by Wesley, who in turn is having a strange conversation with Illyria...and stranger dreams. Lorne has unsuccessfully tried to retreat into a bottle, or rather a shaker of sea-breezes, telling people what they want to hear rather than the truth, which is too painful. And Fred is still gone...or is she? In Wes’ dream, she comments, “This is only the first layer: don’t you want to see how deep I go?”

Meanwhile, Eve is alone, still hiding out from the Senior Parners in Lindsey’s rune-protected apartment. And Lindsey himself is enspelled into a suburban hell of unremarkable everyday activities with Darla-clone wife Trish and son Zach, with whom he’s reviewing the layers of the earth, right down to the “soft, chewy center,” as though the earth were a Tootsie-Pop. But there’s some reason he’s reluctant to go into the basement to get a light bulb, at Trish’s request. More alone than he knows, Lindsey knows enough to be uneasy but not enough to escape the horror that awaits him.

Which is about the same position Angel is in. He knows, and tells Spike, that joining Wolfram & Hart was a stupid mistake...but he doesn’t know what to do instead. The Senior Partners have a plan, and Angel’s tired of being...in the dark.

Like a cellar, perhaps? In need of a light bulb?


Call to Arms

In gunfight movies, there’s a convention. The protagonist arms himself and strides deliberately out onto the dusty street. One ally joins him from one direction; another companion swings into step from another side. This continues until all the forces of good are aligned and moving toward confrontation with the Bad Guys.

This is what this episode is presenting us with.

The first and longest companion is Spike, finally “semi-officially” a part of the team that has no name. Not Scoobies; not (Spike hopes) “Angel’s Avengers,” though Angel seems to think that has a ring to it. Spike has finally paid whatever dues there were to be paid. He’s refused the blank check Angel offered him simply to get out of Angel’s sight. In “Shells,” Spike realized and chose what he wants-to stand and fight at Angel’s side. And he’s now become the one to whom Angel will confess his own doubts and concerns. Perhaps it’s because (leaving Harmony aside for the moment) Spike is the only one of Team Angel, as presently constituted, that wasn’t involved in l’affaire Connor. Spike hasn’t been mind-wiped-he’s simply ignorant, or innocent (your choice), of that whole ticking time bomb Angel is consciously sitting on and feeling guilty about, as demonstrated by Angel’s uncertainty of whether it was really Fred’s choice to come to Wolfram & Hart. Angel’s guilt toward Spike is an entirely different animal, and that has finally freed him to accept Spike as a confidante and a trusted, known quantity: snark, beer, nervousness about fire, and all.

Next should be Wesley, but he spends the whole episode in a tête à tête with Illyria (and Fred) on the general topic of confinement, limits, and layers. His first line in the episode is, “I thought I was in isolation.” His last line is agreeing with Illyria’s startling observation that “We are weak” (emphasis mine). From isolation, to layered Fred somewhere “underneath,” to “we”: there’s a journey going on in the discussion of loss and limits between Wesley and Illyria, and it’s gone from each daring the other to leave-by death or otherwise-to Illyria’s absent use of the plural, accepting her present state as a human among humans. What this portends is still unclear, but since nearly 1/4 of the episode is taken up with their philosophical, elevated phrase-turning, we assume there will be a payoff somewhere farther down the line.

Instead, it’s Lorne foregoing his misery and sense of helplessness to “strap the bells on and with a smile and a quip, go back into the belly of a very ugly beast and pretend like I can help. ‘Cause that’s what the green guy does." Lorne doesn’t wait to be summoned. He’s merely stopped retreating.

At about the same time, Gunn rejoins the team he feels he’s betrayed. Angel seeks him out in his infirmary bed to find out if there’s a legal means of protecting Eve from the Senior Partners. When Gunn is uncertain, Angel comments, not unkindly, that Gunn paid a high price for the legal knowledge in his head: might as well make use of it. With mercy Angel has not been conspicuous for showing this season, he points out to Gunn that although Gunn’s guilt and responsibility are real, this is a chance for atonement. Angel knows from atonement and knows that it never ends. And Gunn not only offers a legal means of taking Eve into Angel’s custody/protection...he knows how to find the source of far greater information about the Senior Partners. He knows, from past precedent, the Senior Partners’ “holding dimension” where Lindsey is being punished in proportion to Lindsey’s own sense of guilt. Apparently Lindsey’s guilt is quite high, since he’s having his heart ripped out (among other miscellaneous torture) on a daily basis.


Holding Patterns

The suburban hell mind-wiped Lindsey has been thrust into is reminiscent of both Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives. Opening the identical front doors of uniform tract houses, the dad units all go out to collect the newspaper as though a starting gun had been fired. The mom units are all pretty and loving...and send the dad units to the basement each morning to collect a light bulb-a token of illumination-refusing to take “no” for an answer. Presumably, in each house, a child unit and a dad unit review the layers of the earth. The mom and child units don’t appreciate any deviation from the prepared script-especially one that would remove the dad unit from thrall and provide actual illumination: an understanding of his situation; his true memories.

Not surprisingly, an amulet is involved. (Where have we seen that before?)

When Angel, Spike, and Gunn arrive in the magic-controlled Camero (having left Eve guarded/protected by Lorne and Harmony), Lindsey doesn’t remember them and tries to throw them out. Instead, Angel rips off the amulet and Lindsey collapses, in full awareness of what’s been happening to him. As they try to take Lindsey away, the mom and child units open fire with machine guns, not to mention the milkman et al., outside...where the Camero should be and isn’t. Like an experienced horse, it’s returned to the stable...to collect Eve, Lorne, and Harmony, who attempt to escape in it from the Terminator-style pursuit of Hamilton (another from the Whedon revolving stock company: Hamilton is played by Adam Baldwin, formerly Jayne Cobb, of “Firefly.”)

The only way out appears to be via the basement. Through Gunn, they know that the only way back is through “the Wrath,” but they don’t know what that may be. All that un-spelled Lindsey knows is that horrors happen here. The walls are decorated with implements of torture, and Spike finds, next to a table, a pile of human hearts-Lindsey’s. One is removed, then apparently grown afresh, each day, to begin another jolly morning of togetherness in suburbia. This is reminiscent of the torture visited on Prometheus, in Greek myth, for the crime of befriending humanity, specifically by giving them fire-he was chained to a rock and his liver was eaten each day by vultures. The body part differs, but the principle is the same. And in what fashion has Lindsey ever befriended humanity? That, perhaps, is still to be revealed.

When the torturer arrives, Angel and Spike put up a good fight but are unable either to disable or even seriously hurt him. But the torturer unexpectedly stills: Gunn has put on the amulet.

A vacuum is impossible. If one leaves, one has to take his place. Gunn takes that role, atoning for his complicity in Fred’s being hollowed out and then inhabited by Illyria, and fastens the amulet around his neck. The furnace door, charmed shut, opens. And for all his uneasy chatter about fire during the episode, Spike wastes no time following Lindsey and Angel into the flames.


One Good Turn

In removing the amulet, Angel has removed the scales from Lindsey’s eyes. Made him know that “This whole life is a lie.” It seems only fair that Lindsey returns the favor, once back in Angel’s office. He informs Angel that Angel’s life is likewise a lie: that all the good Angel’s been trying to do is only the ruse the Senior Partners have been using to distract him from the actual situation-an apocalypse, THE apocalypse, has been in progress for some time. Angel’s role at W & H is just stage dressing to bench Angel...safely out of the game and on the wrong side (pardon the mixed metaphor). Smoke and mirrors, to keep Angel from looking...beneath the surface.


Shells, Layers, and Centers

Not surprisingly, the previous episode, “Shells,” was about surfaces. This episode conspicuously deals with what underlies those surfaces. We get Illyria, who may have more of Fred than the mere shell, if Wes’ dream is to be believed. Illyria is frustrated and frightened by the limits she finds enclosing her: the shell (of Fred; of the world) is a bad fit. She’s going stir-crazy in Fred’s apartment and doesn’t feel she can “open her jaws” properly until Wes guides her to the roof and the open air of a small world.

We have peaceful suburban facades with grisly torture deep within. We have a natty-suited Terminator-type, Hamilton, who is heaven-knows-what underneath-Eve’s replacement, the ominous new liaison with the Senior Partners. We have Spike’s attaché case...containing beer.

Instead of a “hole in the world,” we have an earth of layers with a “soft, chewy center” of final sweetness.

Instead of “From beneath you, it devours,” we have something more like “The truth shall set you free.”

Surfaces are deceptive. It’s what’s underneath that matters.

What the apocalypse will consist of, what Illyria’s role (or Fred’s) in it will be, whether a shanshu of a souled vampire will be involved, whether the earth itself will survive-all these are unknown at this point. Angel’s forces are plus one (Spike) but minus two. Two soldiers down, as Hamilton remarks, spookily quoting Cordelia, the second of those soldiers to be lost; the first was Doyle. If only two, then we should expect to see Gunn back in the action at some point, since Hamilton didn’t count him as “down.” But it seems as though down, toward the center, is the way home, the way to the truth. And for good or ill, it seems as though Angel is finally on the right track.


Nan Dibble
4/19/04
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.


Memorable lines:

Spike: (sound of can tab opening) What? I’m listening. With beer.
Angel: Forget it. This isn’t a meeting, this is you being annoying.

Lorne: What I know is...I started drinking the moment that I found out that a girl I loved was going to die. Every time I get to the bottom of the glass, I hope that that last drop’s going to take me the distance. A simple plan. It failed utterly. Which is why I’m gonna heave my tuchis off this stool, strap the bells on, and with a smile and a quip, go back into the belly of a very ugly beast...and pretend like I can help. Because that’s what the green guy does.

Angel (leaving elevator): Harmony?
Harmony: Yepper.
Angel: Call security, put ‘em on red alert. Nobody gets in this building without clearance from me. I want a guard on every entrance, every elevator, every stairwell. Cover the whole building.
Harmony: OK, but you know how that never works?
Angel: Harmony!
Harmony: On it!

Angel: Gunn, I know you feel bad about your part in what happened to Fred. And you should. For the rest of your life, it should wake you up in the middle of the night. And it will. Because you’re a good man. You signed a piece of paper-that’s all.
Gunn: But I knew. Not about Fred, but...what I signed, I knew there would be consequences.
Angel: The thing about atonement is, you never run out of chances. But you gotta take ‘em. You can’t hide in some hospital room and pretend it’s all gonna go away. ‘Cause it never will.

Dream!Fred: You have a visitor.
Wesley: I thought I was in isolation.
..........
Dream!Fred: Tell me a joke.
Wesley: Two men walk into a bar. The first man orders a scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he’d forgotten and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor, shaking. And then through the floor and into the earth. He looks back up at the first man but he doesn’t call out to him. They’re not that close. (Theory: Wesley is both men in the joke. One “remembers something” that “doubles him over with pain.” This second man...remembers abducting Connor, perhaps. But remembering Wesley and present forgetful Wesley are “not that close” and can’t look for help to one another.)
.........
Dream!Fred: This is only the first layer: don’t you want to see how deep I go?

Illyria: In my time, nightmares walked among us. Walked and danced. Skewering victims in plain sight. Laying their fears and worst desires out for everyone to see. Just to make us laugh.... And now nightmares are trapped inside the heads of humans-pitiful echoes of themselves. I wonder whom they angered so, to merit such a fate?

Lindsey: The earth’s outer layer is?
Zach: The crust.
Lindsey: And underneath that?
Zach: The mantle?
Lindsey: And underneath that? Come on, you know this one.
Zach: The outer core.
Linsey: And under that?
Zach: The inner core.
Lindsey: And under that?
Zach: Underneath that.... Nothing!
Lindsey: Just the soft, chewy center!

Wesley: Are you telling me the great Illyria, idol of millions, was limited to one, small dimension?
Illyria: I traveled them all at will, I walked worlds of smoke and half-truths, intangible. Worlds of torment and of unnamable beauty. Opaline towers as high as small moons. Glaciers that rippled with insensate lust. And one world with nothing but shrimp. I tired of that one quickly. (Remember Anya’s line about the “world without shrimp”?)

Angel: Lindsey, this whole life...is a lie.

Spike: I’m on fire! (sees he’s not) Oh. Never mind.

Lorne: Where’s Gunn?
Angel: He stayed behind.
Lorne: Stayed behind? But you never leave a- (Sees Angel and Spike both looking grim and saying nothing) Or .. I guess we do. That’s what we do now

Angel (seeing Hamilton): Damn: he is well dressed!

Wesley: The walls don’t press in as hard when you can’t see them.
Illyria: They’re still here.
........
Illyria: All I am is what I am. I lived seven lives at once. I was power and the ecstasy of death. I was god to a god. Now, I...I’m trapped. On a roof. Just one roof. In this time. In this place with an unstable human who drinks too much whiskey and called me a smurf. You don’t worship me at all, do you?
........
Illyria: Your world is so small and yet you box yourselves in rooms even smaller. You shut yourselves inside, in rooms, in routines.
Wesley: There are things worse than walls. Terrible and beautiful. If we look at them for too long they will burn right through us. Truths we couldn’t bear. Not every day.
Illyria: We are so weak.

Lindsey: Look-it’s the hero of the hour.
Angel: I’m not your hero: I’m your warden.
Lindsey: It’s all how you look at the glass.
........
Lindsey: That’s what I like to see, the Angel of yore. Takes no prisoners, suffers no fools. How ’bout this? It’s here. It’s been here all along. You’re just too damned stupid to see it.
Angel: See what?"
Lindsey: The apocalypse, man. You’re soaking in it. (Note: a reference to a bygone dishwashing liquid TV commercial, in which a manicure customer discovers her fingers have been “soaking in it” showing how gentle it is on the hands.)
Spike: I’ve seen an apocalypse or two, I’d know if one was right under my nose.
Lindsey: Not an apocalypse, the apocalypse. What’d you think, a gong was gonna sound? Time to jump on your horses and fight the big fight? Starting pistol went off a long time ago, boys. You’re playing for the bad guys. Every day you sit behind your desk and you learn a little more how to accept the world the way it is. Well, here’s the rub. Heroes don’t do that. Heroes don’t accept the world the way it is. They fight it.
Angel: You’re saying, everything we do, it’s a distraction to keep us busy, from looking under the surface.
Lindsey: Ding! We have a winner. The world keeps sliding towards entropy and degradation and what do you do? You sit in your big chair and you sign your checks, just like the Senior Partners planned. The war’s here, Angel. And you’re already two soldiers down.

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