Angel

One has come to expect that episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel that are written and directed by the two shows’ presiding genius, Joss Whedon, are going to be high points of both series : think of the mostly silent "Hush" and "The Body" and the musical "Once More with Feeling," all on Buffy. On the other hand, he also wrote and directed his this season’s first episode of Angel, titled "Convictions," which was neither groundbreaking in technique or storytelling nor even better than average for the series.

But the point of "Convictions" was not to push the envelope in television storytelling but for Whedon to more fully establish the revamp for Angel that was introduced in last season’s finale. Up till now, Angel and his compatriots - Wesley, Gunn, Fred, Lorne, and the now MIA Cordelia - were a small and dedicated band "helping the helpless" by combating supernatural evils from their unlikely base in an old Los Angeles hotel. (Why did they need such a large building with so many rooms, that would require so much expense ? I suppose now we’ll never know.) Their perennial nemesis was the powerful law firm of Wolfram & Hart, whose stock in trade were dark supernatural forces. Whedon and company appeared to have written Wolfram & Hart out of the series last season by having a demonic Beast massacre the entire staff of its Los Angeles office, and even killing off Lilah, its most prominent member.

But Angel came very close to cancellation last season, and Whedon and his cohorts had to rework the show to persuade the WB to give it another chance. So Whedon and his staff brought back Wolfram & Hart with a twist. In gratitude for Angel’s success in defeating a mutual foe, the mysterious Senior Partners of this dimension-spanning law firm offered him and his associates control of their Los Angeles branch, allegedly to utilize as they pleased. Seeing the opportunities that Wolfram & Hart’s resources would give them in battling supernatural evils, and, at least in some cases, allured by the financial rewards of working there, Angel and his friends all accepted the offer. So now Angel and company would be based in a bright, glamorous corporate headquarters instead of a dark, musty old hotel, and the WB would feel the series had a more positive, inviting look.

It is made clear in "Convictions" that Angel and his companions do not have an entirely free hand to remold Wolfram & Hart to serve the cause of Angel’s mission, "helping the helpless." The mysterious, unseen Senior Partners ultimately remain in charge, the Los Angeles division of the firm is staffed by people who are, at the very least, amorally opportunistic, and the Los Angeles division must satisfy the demands of its clients, many of whom are sinister sorts, if it is to make a profit and thus continue to exist.

In other words, Angel and his friends cannot prevent all of the evil that Wolfram & Hart, or even its Los Angeles branch, commit. They must tolerate a considerable number of lesser evils in order to concentrate on wage war on major evils ; they must allow the firm to engage in wrongdoing so that they can also divert some of its energies towards achieving good. In short, by agreeing to run Wolfram & Hart’s Los Angeles office, Angel and his friends have consented to moral compromise. No matter how much evil they prevent through Wolfram & Hart’s resources, they are implicated in the other evil that they allow to take place. As head of the Los Angeles office, Angel would be both morally and legally responsible for its criminal actions. One cannot even finally view Angel as trying to control the evils of Wolfram & Hart from above as its leader.

Since the L. A. office is only one division of the firm, and the Senior Partners are in charge of the entire organization, Angel and company are really cogs in the machine. They have more power to effect change than most Wolfram & Hart employees, but in the end they are employees themselves.

Whedon and his colleagues have long contended that Angel is a more "adult" series than Buffy, although Buffy, in practice, has delved into much darker emotional and psychological territory. The premise for Angel’s fifth season makes it very clear the show is about the "adult" world : the workaday world, not the idealistic world of students. Angel Investigations was a small outfit, all of whose members had personal ties with and loyalties to each other, and who were all dedicated to the same idealistic philosophy. It was a surrogate family. Now its members are part of a larger organization, driven not by altruism or idealism but by profit-making, whose leadership is clearly dedicated to a philosophy that is in sharp opposition to Angel’s own.

Probably Whedon in part conceives of Angel’s situation at Wolfram & Hart as a metaphor for creative people working in Hollywood : making compromises, overcoming opposition, and contending with the corporate mindset in the struggle to realize one’s creative vision on the screen. But, more broadly, Angel’s situation at Wolfram & Hart can serve as a metaphor for the situation of any person committed to certain ideals who seeks to function within a commercial, corporate framework. This is not to say that corporations are necessarily evil, but to note how often they pursue the bottom line at the cost of inflicting damage on the interests and lives of individuals both within and without the company. In "Convictions," a paramilitary squad that disagrees with the directives of their nominal boss, Angel, tries to him. Here is an extreme metaphor for office politics, or, for that matter, downsizing. (For that matter, I think that the Mob in The Sopranos functions as a metaphor for the business world. Through the world of gangsters, the show dramatizes an American paradox : a man can engage in ruthlessness in his job, even killing co-workers, in order to provide a comfortable life for himself and the family members he genuinely cares for.)

Season 5 of Angel is yet another variation on Faust, and one that takes a particularly contemporary form. How long can one deal with the devil, even for noble reasons, before one is committing more evil than good ?

I still find myself puzzled by a scene from last season’s finale. In that last episode, Gunn, Angel’s African-American colleague, had a mystical encounter with a black panther, which seemed to change him in some manner that was not clearly defined. Knowing Whedon’s interest in classic Marvel comics, I figured that this sequence was an allusion to Marvel’s African hero, the Black Panther, who derives his powers from the "panther god." So I expected that Gunn might have become physically stronger, like Marvel’s Black Panther, perhaps even superhuman. Instead, it appears that the result of Gunn’s vision was his decision to be transformed, through some odd kind of mystical brain surgery, into a brilliant lawyer, thereby skipping over the otherwise requisite years of law school. So I still don’t comprehend why the show introduced the black panther imagery, and I wonder, if other characters visit the "white room," would they see the panther too, or would this being appear in a different form, specific to the person viewing it ? Well, I will assume that we will learn more as the season progresses.

This first episode concludes with the return of another vampire with a soul. Spike, who was last seen being incinerated as he heroically sacrificed his life in the finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It has been reported that the WB renewed Angel for its fifth season specifically on condition that Spike became a regular, and to judge from the emphasis the WB puts on Spike in its promotion of Angel’s new season, I wonder if they wish he were the show’s lead character instead.

I think that the interplay between Angel and Spike should be interesting. Both are "reformed" vampires, making them alike, yet they are polar opposites as well ; Spike is the perennial rebel and outsider, whereas Angel has become the conformist, joining the establishment in an attempt to change things from within. Hence, personality clashes between Angel and Spike should tie right into the this season’s theme of trying to maintain one’s integrity within a corrupt organization. Spike may turn out to be the voice of conscience, harassing Angel when he comes too close to selling out. At what point does moral compromise go too far ? At what point should one walk away from the corrupted organization, or is it one’s moral duty to stay inside the organization and keep fighting to change it, even incrementally ? These are the sorts of issues I hope the series addresses as the 2003-2004 season proceeds.