Angel

I spent today on a marathon rewatch of Angel Season 5. And funny how watching it as one piece makes it all come together. This was kind of illuminating.

I suppose it’s not such a novel observation that Season 5 fits together far better as a whole as opposed to individual episodes. The same could probably be said for every Angel season - although I’d say the first couple of years were more comfortably reliant on standalone eps, "cases" for the gang to solve like a Dark Shadows-flavored X-Files - as well as the last couple of years of Buffy, and given what I’ve heard about the Mutant Enemy creative process - working backward from the ending sometimes - perhaps that shouldn’t be such a surprise. Like a mystery whose ending you’ve already read, the clues stand out obviously in hindsight, whereas in forward-playing real time they make little sense.

For example, I’ve come to realize it’s a sure sign when episodes don’t seem to link up, where dramatic promises aren’t followed up on, that these are signposts for plot steerage. The setup for the Illyria arc was full of such moments - sudden shifts in mood and character behaviour that were there strictly for plot purposes. In a more extended example, one of the most confusing segues from BtVS Season 6 was (to my mind) the transition from the grim intensity of "Dead Things" to the damply humorous squib of Buffy’s birthday party in "Older and Far Away." Buffy’s extreme beatdown of Spike, though a visual and emotional atom bomb, was not actually a setup for any kind of continuing character arc; in fact, it was barely referred to again after the event beyond simple continuity checks (e.g., Spike’s black eye and "what are you gonna do, beat me up again" line; Buffy’s "I behaved like a monster" admission in "Conversations with Dead People," about her relationship with Spike in general). So then, if the beating scene wasn’t there to create any kind of continuing dramatic tension, then it was there for a plot reason. Actually, it was there for two plot reasons. 1) to establish Buffy’s own self-hatred by virtually replicating the bodyswitched-Faith-beating-bodyswitched Buffy scene in "Who Are You?" and 2) to set up Spike’s soul quest with Buffy’s hateful "you don’t have a soul!" line. QED.

So, Angel Season 5. Viewed as a whole, it now seems pretty obvious why the episiode-to-episode continuity jarred at the time. The rules had changed, and nobody had told the audience yet. The tone was radically different to the previous season - from ultra-serious drama in S4 we had moved into the realm of dry satire or outright comedy. Moreoever, in Season 5, Angel moved out of the hero’s chair and into a much grayer place. Like Season 6 Buffy, Season 5 Angel acted in ways that often didn’t fit with what we had come to expect from the titular hero. In that context, Spike’s presence in S5 makes sense as part of Angel’s arc for the season. It’s actually rather entertainingly meta.

Angel vs. Spike Spike literally takes over the show in Season 5, ironically just as many fans feared he might... and it’s actually the whole point of his character arc. Like S4, which was really all about Connor, as a living embodiment of the tragedy of Angel’s inability to save even those he loves most, S5 was really all about Spike, and the tragedy of Angel’s inability to save himself.

Since the beginning of the AtS series, Angel has been portrayed as working toward redemption, trying to make up for his century-plus of evil by helping others in an approximation of the Protestant ideal of Good Works. The Angel we see in S5, however, is increasingly unsure, morally gray, constantly doubting both himself and his mission. "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco" can pretty much be taken word for word - Angel spends the entire season worried that he no longer has a hero’s heart, and the moral grayness of the Wolfram & Hart deal only makes matters worse. Angel no longers believes a reward is really coming; fighting Spike for the Shanshu and losing merely cements this belief. Even if a reward is out there, he doesn’t think he has what it takes to reach it.

So Spike then, in S5, is there for contrast - his appearance in "Just Rewards" (I’m ignoring the TV standard be-sure-to-watch-next-week! lead-in for the closing minutes of "Conviction") is The Hero Returned; promptly after his whirlwhind release from the amulet, we get a flashback of his world-saving immolation in the Hellmouth, a no-bones-about-it heroic moment complete with glowing golden light and chanting orchestral chorus. (Notably, the extent to which this sacrifice had to do with winning Buffy’s love is not emphasized; key moments from "Chosen" pertaining to their connection are skipped over.) From there on in, this message is only reinforced - this what a Champion really looks like. Everything out of Spike’s mouth is acutely observed, from identifying Wolfram & Hart as "Evil, Incorporated" "digest[ing]" Angel’s staff, to blithely blurting out the answers to puzzling cases. Angel tries to solve the ethical puzzles of good and evil intellectually; Spike coasts forward on instinct... and his instincts are almost always right. While Angel plays as impossibly jaded and losing hope, Spike comes off as essentially innocent, a sort of divine fool. He really wants the redemption Angel has given up on.

And in story after story, we see Spike’s motives are questioned - selfish? evil? petty? - and in every one of them, our initial negative impression is shown to be an illusion, a trick. He complains, whines, snarks, needles, acts like an ass... but his actions are all positive. He refuses to improve his personal situation if the cost would hurt someone else ("Hellbound"). He refuses to go behind Angel’s back when the Crockett-and-Tubbs team of Wes and Gunn ask him to help the helpless under W&H’s evil umbrella ("Soul Purpose"). He resists the temptation to take Angel’s offer of luxurious sponsorship and stays to help fight the Senior Partners instead ("Shells"). Just as in "Why We Fight," Spike isn’t so much a bad guy as he simply likes the look of the coat.

So the message is pretty clear - there is no Angelus-style bad side to this guy. There used to be - and it’s implied pretty strongly in ("Destiny") that this was largely due to Angelus’s influence - but not anymore. His worst character flaws are all laddish immaturities - boastfulness, restlessness, childish sniping, and a Bill Clinton-esque obsession with sex. (One wonders if the desktop-shagging sequence in "Destiny" wasn’t an explicit reference to Clinton, another essentially honest man with a similiar inability to keep his pants zipped.)

Therefore, Season 5 was a little dizzying for the initiated during its broadcast run because Spike virtually replaces Angel in S5 as the actual hero figure for the entire season, starting right off the bat from the second episode, and since the audience expects Angel to be the hero we’re taking our cues from... well, there’s your problem. In hindsight, however, it’s pretty clear what’s happening - you can virtually see the transference happen over the course of "Just Rewards." The Angel we saw in "Conviction" was recognizable as the dark hero we’d been following for years - conflicted, yet grimly committed to his mission, certain he’ll be able to find a way to use the "weapon" of Wolfram & Hart to do good. That character more or less vanishes the instant Spike appears; Angel becomes irritable, evasive... kind of mean. We find that he hasn’t told his team anything about the closing of the Hellmouth, or Spike’s soul. Spike accuses Angel of sitting on this info because it made him feel "less special," and he’s right. Typically, Angel airs his id out by saying one thing while feeling the exact opposite. He claims (forcefully) not to feel responsible for Spike’s death, but later quietly muses that it "should have been me." He bristles at any suggestion that he’s threatened by Spike when clearly he is. He insists that he hasn’t "turned in his cape and tights" to work at Wolfram & Hart, but in private he’s clearly anything but sure. "Soul Purpose" gives us our clearest snapshot ever of Angel’s inner conflict - he has performance anxiety of every stripe. Despite the fierce fight he put up in "Destiny," Angel is certain that Spike has him outclassed, that once under the spotlight he’ll be shown up for a fraud, empty. "The crowd’s turning on ya, sport," as Lorne says.

Then in "Not Fade Away," all this comes to its logical conclusion. Angel gives away the Shanshu he doesn’t really believe will ever come to him anyway. He decides his real unique gifts are for ruthlessness and big-picture artistry - the same things that made Angelus legendary. Essentially, Angel turns himself into the "weapon" he originally thought Wolfram & Hart would be, throws himself and his team’s into the fray because he’s come to believe that only the ends really matter. He takes his team into a huge battle against forces no one else could challenge because, as he tells Number Five, "we can... because we know how." Normal people couldn’t do it, but Angel and his followers can. He gives his team assignments to fit their pasts - Wesley, to take on the architect of the mindwipe, a move made necessary by the events set in motion by Wesley’s kidnapping of Connor; Gunn, to go back to his roots and take out a gang of vamps; Lorne he sends to kill Lindsey, handing the most morally gray action of the bunch to a demon whose own moral compass has sometimes seemed unclear; and finally, Spike, to rescue a baby... which is, as we saw in "Darla," was the same act that finally separated souled Angel from his failed attempt to recapture the glories of Angelus. Sending Spike on the baby-saving mission is symbolic for Angel - he’s passing the torch he himself has given up by deciding he can do more good with Angelus-like ruthlessness than he could by upholding the life of a hero. Pretty darn bleak.

Gunn, Fred, and Why Illyra Didn’t Really Fit Other than that, there isn’t much else to observe. Gunn’s arc of street-fighter-turned-lawyer "sell out" is an essentially flawless standalone; it’s actually the only character arc that’s wholly consistent all the way through. The Illyria story that took over the last third of the season doesn’t really intersect with this story at all; anything that hurt Fred would have shown Gunn’s corruption, his willingness to sacrifice innocent lives for his own purposes and his subsequent remorse. Illyria herself is irrelevant. That Gunn is barely shown interacting with the character of Illyria clinches it for me; she’s an intrusion on a story already in progress, not so much a "hole in the world" as a hole in the universe; like a Marvel Comics character punching into a conference room on The Practice, Illyria is a jarring element, akin to discovering that the characters of ER are suddenly treating patients that have been stomped on by Godzilla. One can’t say she doesn’t belong in the AtS, a supernatural universe that can ultimately sustain anything, but she adds nothing to the Wolfram & Hart plotline. Her storyline, enteraining as it is on some levels, is a self-contained one, airlifted into the existing plot rather like the sarcophogus she appears from. (It’s kinda tempting to wonder if we might have gotten more explanation for Lindsey’s role in all this had not Illyria been introduced, although since Lindsey’s presence already made no sense as early as "You’re Welcome," that’s probably wishful thinking on my part.)

With Illyria’s intro, the season’s tone changes from a wry critque on business ethics and the qualities of a hero to a loud, supercharged opera filled with grief and betrayal and agony and madness; it’s Titus Andronicus minus the cannibalism (although you could also argue that element was covered by the earlier episode in which Nina is introduced). Wesley goes mad from doomed love, Angel enters his final downward spiral. Fred pretty much vanishes as a character for S5; her continued presence was for four main reasons: to be pretty (as in "Conviction," which included a superfluous inset shot of Fred lounging with her shoes off in the conference room so we could appreciate Amy Acker’s legs), smart ("Science Girl," as Spike calls her), sympathetic, and menaced. All four of these elements are in play as early as "Just Rewards" - the scene with Spike in the espisode’s closing minutes shows a pretty girl alone in her lab, approached by a guy who seems kinda sinister. This image is repeated again multiple times over the course of the season, notably in "Why We Fight" - Fred is downgraded to endangered damsel/love interest in Season 5, despite her protests in "A Hole in the World." She’s objectified, a victim; knocked out, held hostage, taken over by Illyria. She’s the one character that everyone likes and can relate to, and thus is the one character that must be destroyed to set all this in motion. Sigh.

It’s worth noting here, as an aside, that Fred was a character I used to intensely dislike. After her introduction as a slave girl in the Pylea arc, which was interesting enough, she was used all too often as sort of a multipurpose Mary Sue who I’d felt unduly pressured to like (a similar complaint could be made recently about the character of Andrew) but who I finally grew fond of after seeing her taser Connor in S4. By the end of that season, and the absolutely terrific Jasmine arc, she’d grown to be practically the most interesting character in the series.

In S5, however, Fred is less a character than "every woman... Wonder Woman!" as Lorne yells in "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco." She’s a symbol, a reminder of "the right thing to do" ("Hellbound"). That’s something that Angel can’t have anymore because S5’s arc is about Angel losing his reasons to fight. By the end of the season, Angel has become Lawson, the poor vamp he made during WWII would afterward could never figure out "why we fight." Angel, as someone who’s always been given his reasons for fighting from outside sources (Whistler, Buffy, Doyle, Cordelia, the Powers That Be), couldn’t keep going without a purpose. And there was no one left to give him one.

So yeah, I see how this fits together now. S5 is about losing hope, about suicidal gestures and futile stabs in the face of destiny. And even more weirdly, it’s a comedy.