EPISODE 4.10

AWAKENING

Written by:  David Fury and Steven S. DeKnight

Directed by: James A.  Contner

The Frustrations of Being Angel

An important clue to discovering what this episode is really all about lies in the identity of those who shared with Angel the quest for the sword of Bosh Ma’d: Cordelia, Wesley and Connor.  Lorne’s absence was only to be expected.  He is still on the periphery of the team and did not, for example, go to the Wolfram and Hart building to rescue Connor.  Fred’s absence was more surprising.  She did accompany Angel and the others in their rescue of Connor. But the really odd absence was Gunn's.  After all he is now and has always been a key source of muscle for the team.  Why leave him behind  on such an important and potentially difficult and dangerous mission? The answer I think is that while relations between Angel and Gunn have never been smooth sailing, it is with Cordelia, Connor and Wesley that Angel has his principal difficulties.

Let us start with Wesley.  He is clever, a fact that Fred reminds us of when she confesses her inability to find a way to bring back the sun:

Fred: “Working on it: failing miserably, but working on it. I could really use some help deciphering some of these symbols…or, all of them, really. I need Wesley…his expertise.”

Wesley has valuable skills which no-one else on the team can match and Angel is, therefore, to a degree dependent upon him.  More than that, Wesley is also capable of acting with initiative and determination, as in his rescue of Angel from the ocean depths in “Deep Down”.  This is something for which Angel owes him a lot and is just one example of how important to him Wesley has always been.

But it is precisely because of these attributes that he can be so problematic for Angel as well as so helpful.  At the end of “Apocalypse Nowish” he was the one who most readily leapt to the conclusion that Angelus was the key to unlocking the mystery of the Beast’s agenda.  Not only that but he promptly went and fetched Wo-Pang, a dark mystic, to the Hyperion for the purpose of extracting Angel’s soul.  As the latter remarked somewhat incredulously:

“You brought a dark mystic here without talking to me?”

But in spite of Angel’s evident unhappiness Wesley persists in his plan:

Angel : “We're not bringing Angelus.”

Wesley: “You don't have a choice.”

Angel: “Actually I do. That was it. You want to hear it again? Not with the bringing.

And indeed this peremptory, indeed high handed, behavior, reflects much of Wesley’s history with Angel Investigations.  In “Loyalty” and “Sleep Tight”,  he was the one who translated the texts that prophesied that the father would kill the son.  But instead of trusting Angel or any of the others with this knowledge he acted unilaterally and precipitated the tragedy of Connor’s banishment to Quor’toth.  Wesley’s knowledge and his determination and initiative sometimes leads him into thinking that he is the one with all the answers and that he has to have his way whether others like it or not.  When faced with Wesley’s pressure for the return of Angelus, Cordelia points out:

“Angelus is the jumbo family-sized bad of bad ideas. He'd be a danger to all of us. You made the right call. Wesley, the others...they don't get it.”

She is right.  The brief glimpse of Angelus that Wesley got in “Eternity” could not have revealed to him just how dangerous a vampire he was.  But this lack of first hand knowledge didn’t curb his determination to bring back Angelus and to me his reassurance to Angel seems naïve:

“It's only temporary. We'll take all the necessary precautions in the interim, contain you. I'm not blind to the risks. I know what Angelus…”

The fact that he has already once brought disaster down on all their heads taught Wesley nothing.  He never accepted that he acted wrongly there and, indeed, blamed Angel and the others for their attitude towards him.  So, here is someone who has done Angel a great wrong but has never acknowledged the fact.  He seems incapable of learning from his mistakes, of accepting that he cannot be right all the time and that he cannot unilaterally decide what should and should not be done.  But because he has the abilities and determination to back up what he wants he is a very formidable opponent to deal with. It would be hardly surprising therefore that Angel would find him a hard man to win an argument against and accordingly a source of much frustration. And we see the evidence for this in the way that Angel does eventually give into Wesley on his demand.  Admittedly he only does so after Cordelia’s intervention. But that intervention, while effective, was too subtle to change his mind if he hadn’t already been wobbling before.  And certainly his change of heart came as no surprise to Wesley.

An ability to cause Angel frustration is something that Wesley undoubtedly shares with Angel’s son, although for different reasons.   I think that Connor does make an intellectual distinction between Angel and Angelus.  At no stage does he for example argue that the removal of Angel’s soul would in reality be a meaningless charade.  And he does seem to accept that there is some distinction between the soulless and the ensouled vampire:

Angel: “Look, I know you like to think that I'm the enemy, but if this works, I will be. I'm gonna become the one thing you were raised to believe I was. The thing I never, never wanted you to see.”

Connor: “I think I can handle it.”

But at the same time he never seems to have accepted that there is any moral difference between the two.  When  the members of the team are discussing how to bring back the sun, Connor interrupts them:

Connor: “You're wasting your time. The answer is among us (gestures to Angel). He knows. He's part of the plan.

Cordelia: “He doesn't remember.”

Connor: “So he says. You saw him yourself…making a pact with the Beast.”

Cordelia: “It wasn't Angel in my vision, it was Angelus.”

Connor: “He is Angelus.”

I think that, by this, Connor means that soulless or ensouled Angel is malign.  We already got a glimpse of how Connor views his father from the confrontation between them in “Spin the Bottle.”  From his son’s point of view Angel pretends to be an upstanding citizen but in reality he is a hypocrite who has done more than his fair share of evil.  And since then there was further evidence which for Connor simply confirmed his malice; principally the way that Angel had quite deliberately ruined poor Connor’s life:

Connor: “Everybody thought it was me. Maybe even I was starting to, but it was you all along. You're the one who's working with the Beast.”

Angel: “I'm not.”

Connor: “Well, then, you're a puppet. Either way, everything's going to hell because of you. You're the reason that the sun is gone, that I don't have a home to go back to. You're the reason that she… It's you. You're the reason my life sucks.”

It is Angel’s fault that Connor was suspected of being connected to the Beast and his fault that Cordelia doesn’t want a relationship with him.  It therefore follows that if Angel were dead, then everything would be wonderful again.  Hence the enthusiasm with which the teenager responded to Angel’s warning:

Angel: “Look, one more thing. Since I'm gonna be out of commission for a while, I want you to, you know, take care of everybody. Keep 'em safe. That means, if anything should go wrong with Angelus, you're gonna have to kill me. “

Connor: “Ok.”

Angel’s problem with Connor is that he undoubtedly does love the boy.  As he says to him:

“Well, just keep in mind that whatever Angelus says, whatever he does…remember, he's not your father. I am. No matter what happens or, happened…I…I love you.”

And of course any father wants his son to look up to him and respect him.  That is why Angel was so sensitive about Connor seeing him transformed into the creature that he had been before the gypsy curse and getting an insight into the thing that he is most ashamed of - his past:

“Look, I know you like to think that I'm the enemy, but if this works, I will be. I'm gonna become the one thing you were raised to believe I was. The thing I never, never wanted you to see”

So, we can only imagine the hurt that Connor’s actual opinion of his father caused him.  He must wonder what he can do to change that opinion.  The answer seemingly is: nothing.

Then there is Cordelia.  From early on in this season we see how vulnerable Angel has felt without her.  In “Ground State” he still has his mission, he has Fred and Gunn at his side and above all he has Connor.  But none of that is enough.  Without Cordelia he is lost.  Indeed in “The House Always Wins” we see that Angel has lost his sense of destiny and are left to infer (although it is not spelled out) that this is because he no longer has Cordelia in his life.

But when he does get her back, his sense of helplessness is, if anything, increased.  She admits to Angel that she continues to love him.  But then she tells him of her recovered memories about Angelus and what he had done. And those memories seem to make a huge difference to her, so she tells him that they can't be together at least for the time being.  The odd thing is that  she doesn't actually leave Angel without hope.  She suggests that perhaps in the future everything can be all right.  But then she sleeps with Connor and Angel sees them together.    The next morning she had second thoughts and worried about sending Connor the wrong signals and hurting Angel.    But when she gets a chance to talk to Angel about what happened, her only expression of the remorse that she says she feels is extremely perfunctory.  Instead she seems more concerned to tell him to “get over it”.  So, once again everything is his fault.  But next she starts acting jealously over Angel kissing Gwen, suggesting that she does have feelings for him after all.  This behaviour is almost designed to keep Angel off balance - one the one hand believing that she really does love him and on the other suspecting that she cannot trust him.

And here, in “Awakening”, Cordelia suggests that Angel is actually under the control of the Beast without him knowing it and for good measure that Angelus is cleverer than he is:

Angel: “Well, if I am, then I'm already a danger to you, all of you.”

Cordelia: “Well, not like Angelus would be. I mean, he's…he's smart.”

Angel: “Excuse me?”

Cordelia: “Well, you know what I mean...”

Angel: “You're saying Angelus is smarter than me.”

Cordelia: “No, I mean....you're smart. He's just…”

Angel: “Ingenious.”

Cordelia: “But in that twisted, sadistic, ruthless kind of way.”

Angel: “Like the Beast.”

Cordelia: “Yes. Exactly. They think alike, always a step or two ahead of us. I mean, what is it about evil that jacks up the I.Q. points? It's like whenever...”

And significantly it is this vote of no-confidence in him which finally tips the balance for Angel and he agrees to have his soul extracted.

Cordelia was the person who meant most to him.  She said that she loved him too and her jealousy over Gwen seemed to confirm this.  But she rejected him because of his evil past.  She was the one who identified Angelus as the one who had the connection with the Beast and she seemed to suggest that he was himself a puppet of the creature.  She clearly didn’t trust him. And she chose his own son over him.  Given the fact that he needed her so much to carry out his mission it is hardly surprising that this played upon his own lack of self-belief.

And what of the Beast? Here I can only repeat what I said in my review of “Long Day’s Journey”.  The team is dealing with a creature who is enormously more powerful than they are.  This is a creature who can easily and quickly dispose of the members of the Ra-tet, in spite of the incredible power each of them has.  And Angel and the others can do nothing against it.  When they fight him the Beast wins – easily.  And Angel has no sort of authority at all in trying to rally the troops against it in “Long Day’s Journey.”

Angel: “The Powers are sending us a wake-up call, people. Sure, we've been—I don't want to say demolished—beaten. And sure, it's slightly...demoralizing. But from here on out, we're on the offensive. We're gonna find out this thing's weaknesses, we're gonna go in prepared, and we're gonna fight smart. It's time to take down the Beast.”

Fred: “Uh, we're all behind you, Angel, a hundred percent, but how can we be prepared when there's nothing on this thing.”

Lorne: “And weaknesses? It's not a sure bet El Destructo has any.”

Worse than that they are always at least one step behind him.  This is a creature with an agenda.  Angel and his team are continually scrambling to keep up with that agenda.  Angel Investigations only found out about the Ra-tet when the Beast had killed three of them.   They only discovered what the Beast wanted from the Ra-tet when there was just one left.  They tried to protect Manny but somehow Angel and Cordelia were apparently drugged and someone stole silently in and killed him.  They had no idea where the Beast was going to carry out the ritual to darken the sun.  They only stumbled upon that secret by accident.  And, even though they have a plan to stop him, it fails miserably.  The sun is darkened and “Awakening”  begins with a sense of utter helplessness as people watch the darkness descend.  Nor has the team any idea where to even start to bring the sun back.  It is no wonder Gunn observes:

“Face it man, we're losing ground. Pretty much the only victory we can claim is that we're not dead yet.”

So here we have Angel’s frustration at

A Slave to His Demons

Is there a common denominator here?  I think so and to find it we have to go back to “Deep Down.”  Towards the end of that episode, Angel said to Connor:

"What you did to me was unbelievable, Connor. But then I got stuck in a hell dimension by my girlfriend one time for a hundred years, so three months under the ocean actually gave me perspective. Kind of a M. C. Esher perspective - but I did get time to think. About us, about the world. Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and cruel.  But that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be. You're not a part of that yet. I hope you will be.”

This statement helps illuminate the basic theme of that episode. At the bottom of the Ocean Angel found himself in a position in which things could hardly be worse. But he was forced to look again and again and again at what his situation really meant.   By doing he concluded that he didn't have to be moulded by the evil done to him.  He could rise above it.  Connor's perspective on the contrary was that was life sucks. Holtz was dead and his real father was a monster.  So he had to get some revenge for the suffering caused to him.  In doing so he simply continued the destructive cycle that he felt had victimized him.   That is where Angel's perspective differed from Connor's.  To let his actions be dictated by blind hatred of the person who wronged you was, as Wesley pointed out to Justine, a form of slavery.  It was to become a reflection of the cruelty and harshness that exists in the world.   And here Angel clearly articulates his desire to be better than that.

But he wasn’t.  After delivering his little lecture to Connor, almost without pause, Angel threw him out.  Was this not more an act of petty revenge than a genuine attempt to help his son?  Then there is his behavior in the next two episodes.  He was deeply unhappy with losing Cordelia.  This was another one of those “should not have beens” that we saw in “Deep Down”, like his imprisonment.  Did he rise above that?  No, he didn’t. Without Cordelia he is lost.  Throughout that episode he ignores the fact that he has a mission, a son and friends.  He needed her and nothing else mattered.  And in “The House Always Wins” this loss of Cordelia has driven him even further into despair – he has even lost his sense of identity and of destiny without her.

And the clue to why this is comes in “Spin the Bottle”  In TeenLiam we see someone who feels worthless, a victim of people and forces beyond his control and someone who was powerless in the face of those people and forces.  In other words someone who is lost and without control over his own destiny.  We have of course seen his greater connection with humanity (the central theme since “Epiphany”), but we are reminded here that we are seeing his success in dealing with his feelings, not evidence that they have gone away.  They haven’t because they are too  fundamental to the person that he is.  And it seems that, in developing his connection with others, Angel has become too reliant on Cordelia in particular for his sense of self worth and his sense of identity.  Without her things were bad enough but  everything that she has done since she returned to Earth has undermined his confidence – her rejection of him because of his past, her choice of his own son over him, her vision showing the evil within him co-operating with the Beast, the suggestion that he may be under the control of the Beast, even the slightly absurd hint that Angelus was smarter than he was. 

And it is because if that lack of confidence in himself that he finds Wesley so problematic to deal with: the fact that he knows more than Angel, the fact that he rescued him and the fact that Wesley so clearly and unambiguously now knows what he wants and is not afraid to go after it when Angel is confused about his own sense of identity and mission.

That lack of self-confidence is also at the heart of his problems with Connor. To the boy he was an evil thing and whether or not there was a part of Angel that agreed with him certainly he was deeply ashamed of the evil inside him.  Hence his hatred of the fact that Connor would now see that evil.  To Connor, Angel was also the reason that everyone suspected him of having a connection to the Beast.  And Angel now accepted there may be validity in that.  But above all, to Connor, Angel was his competitor for Cordelia.  And Angel was acutely aware that his own son had done something with Cordelia that he could not – have sex.  That was certainly pretty traumatic for his sense of self-esteem.

And finally there was the Beast.  This was the Beast that had smashed Angel all over the place, the Beast that had been one step ahead of Angel ever since he arrived, the Beast that had blotted out the sun and sent all of LA into a panic without Angel having the first idea about how to bring it back.  And not least this was the Beast that seemed to have made Angel his puppet.  To say this creature makes Angel feel inadequate hardly begins to cover the case.

But of course nothing demonstrates Angel’s lack of self-confidence more than his decision to agree to Wesley’s plan to summon Angelus.  Bringing back the demon and losing control over himself is Angel’s greatest fear.  It is why he reacts so strongly to Wesley’s suggestion.  But ultimately he even gives that choice over to others: to Wesley, to Cordelia and even (indirectly at least) to the Beast. 

Search for the Hero Inside Yourself

Here then we see Angel’s state of mind as Wo-Pang began his work.  But that work transformed Angel into someone who was – for a moment at least – perfectly happy.  And the means whereby he achieves this transformation is a vision in which all of Angel’s problems disappear.  So in order to understand the episode it's obviously important that we understand what the vision tells us about what makes Angel happy. 

The first thing that Angel discovered in his vision was that, in order to kill the Beast, he no longer had to turn back into Angelus; he doesn’t have to lose control of himself again.  And in making that discovery, he also proved Wesley wrong.  When the body of Wo-Pang is examined and the truth revealed about the sword of Bosh Ma’d, he turns triumphantly to Wesley:

“Did you hear that? There's a sword. A sword to kill the Beast. And you wanted to turn me into Angelus by having an evil shaman cut off my head, not that that wasn't a swell plan, too.”

And in response, Wesley apologizes and not only agrees that he made a mistake but that he was actually careless and that his carelessness could have cost Angel his life.  That is a pretty big slice of humble pie.  That will teach Wesley to argue with Angel ever again, won’t it?

Of course now that the team has discovered that there is a sword that will kill the Beast and that it is under LA, they don’t need to rely on Wesley's arcane knowledge or skills any more.  The solution to their problems now lay in a straightforward action adventure with lots of danger and fighting, in fact something that would be right up Angel’s street.  So he is again recognized as the centrepiece of the team, not a potential source of danger to it.  Of course during the team’s search for the sword Wesley plays his full part, including saving Cordelia.  But when Angel proves how much more effective he is than Wesley that simply reflects even more credit on Angel.  When trying to get through the booby-trap corridor, Wesley springs one of the traps and Angel’s reflexes are fast enough that he saves Wesley both and himself.   Thus he repays the debt he owed Wesley for rescuing him in “Deep Down”.  He now owes him nothing.  And when he, Wesley and the others come to the seeming dead-end, the former watcher doesn’t make a very good show at getting them through.   The passage way is opened by finding the right combination of stones to push.  But Wesley first of all guesses wrong and is punished for it.  And even his second and better guess only achieves a partial opening and it is left to Angel (working with Connor) to get them all through. 

Then there is Connor.  From the start of the search for the sword of Bosh Ma’d the relationship between Angel and his son is dominated by their rivalry over Cordelia.  Interestingly she plays a much less significant role in the argument between them earlier on in the episode.   When the little group splits up, Cordelia must choose between Angel or Connor.  She chooses Angel.  Later Connor sees Angel and Cordelia kiss and runs away with Angel in pursuit.  They fight and Connor makes it very clear what they are fighting about:

“You don't know anything, Dad, except...except how to take things away from me.”

So its easy to see where , in Angel's entire relationship with his son,  his real concerns  lie.   As far as he is concerned the main problem between them is Cordelia.  And in the course of their fight we see who is really at fault here.  Connor accuses Angel of ruining his life.  He echoes Angel’s challenge to him at the end of “Deep Down” when he says:

“Nothing in this world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh and cruel—because of you!”

But the reality is that, when the teenager was recklessly walking around a booby-trapped room, Angel first of all takes a dart that was meant for him and Angel is the one who ultimately saves his life, even as Connor is blaming him for ruining it.  From this we see that the trouble between him and Connor is in fact all Connor’s fault for being immature and for misunderstanding him.

Near the end of the struggle between them Angel tells his son:

“It's not all about you, Connor. What you want isn't always what other people need.”

In other words it's really all about Angel.  Of course, he doesn’t accept this immediately but Connor does eventually understand.  Later he again references that conversation in “Deep Down”:

“You're right. It is harsh. And cruel. She was the only thing that made it hurt less.”

The contrast between the two references to the earlier episode is very telling.  They share a common idea that Connor’s life sucks.  But in the first, Connor was saying that this was Angel’s fault, mainly because he took Cordelia away from him.  The clear inference there is that he had no right to do so because Connor loved her.  But in the second quote Connor accepted that she really did belong with Angel.  That was a harsh and cruel reality for Connor to accept but he had to because it was the right thing to do.  And of course once he recognized that he had also to accept what a champion his father really was – someone who really was completely different from the evil Angelus and someone who could certainly defeat the Beast.  Hence the later conversation between him and Angel which also recalls “Deep Down”:

Connor: “Is this what it feels like, being a champion?”

Angel: “Pretty much”.

Now that Connor has accepted that he was wrong to resent and hate his father, he too could rise to the status of Champion.  He stands at his father’s side in the final battle, something incidentally that neither Wesley nor Gunn may do.  Even Connor though was not on the same level as Angel.  After all, as we have seen, Cordelia chose Angel over him, Angel defeated him at the same time as saving his life and he plays a clearly subordinate role in the defeat of the Beast.

And that defeat is in many ways the final proof of how heroic Angel is.  Angel sends everyone else off to safety as he faces the Beast alone (at least until Connor arrives).  The Beast wants to be allies with him; but Angel shows his dominance by rejecting these overtures:

“We could rule this world. Why do you oppose me?”

“Rain of fire, blocking out the sun, and you just kinda piss me off.”

Thus he demonstrates that he is not the Beast’s puppet and that, unlike the Beast, he is not evil.

But of course the icing on the cake was Cordelia.  As we have seen, almost from the time he was rescued by Wesley Angel has felt lost without her; even going so far as to lose his sense of destiny.  And once she returned to earth he endured endless frustration over her unwillingness to trust and believe in him and her willingness to choose his own son over him.  Because of this she was the one always pulling the strings and he was merely reacting to her moves.  She was even instrumental in his agreement to bring back Angelus.  But now their roles are reversed.  He is the one who is dominant.  When given a choice between Angel and Connor, she chooses the former.  Not only that but she accepts that, when she had rejected him because of his evil past and when she had chosen Connor over him, she had been wrong:

“No, it's…you need to know that I can look back and see every horrible thing you've ever done as Angelus, and it doesn't matter anymore. Because when I'm with you, all I feel is the good you've done as Angel. I know I've hurt you. I know I don't deserve forgiveness.”

Here she is accepting that Angel is not his past; Angel is all the good that he is doing now.  And even more crucially:

“I'm sorry for what happened, for what I let happen with Connor. I was lost and frightened, and I thought it was the end, and…I wanted to be with you, but I couldn't. Oh, God. Angel, what I did…”

So, when she slept with Connor she really wanted to sleep with Angel; only Connor was the one who just happened to be there.  So, it was all just an accident.

So with Cordelia, as with Wesley and Connor and the Beast all of Angel’s insecurities are resolved

And that was even before the climax to the episode when, having removed from his mind all sources of anxiety and self-doubt, he moves on to enjoy his moment of perfect happiness with Cordelia.  But it is this that puts me on my guard.

Building the Arc

ANGEL at its best resembles a novel more than episodic television.  It takes different facets of the experiences and personality of its characters (especially its eponymous hero) and weaves them into a single multi-episode storyline.  In this arc the decisions that a character makes are the logical outcome of the different aspects of his or her history.  When done properly this can bring a great subtlety and depth to a story because things do not happen at random; they happen for reasons found in the characters of our protagonists.  So, as I have been saying, through the early episodes of this season we can trace the developments in our characters which led up to the events in this episode.  There is Angel’s loss of Cordelia, his sense of being lost without her and his loss of a sense of destiny.  Even an episode like “Spin the Bottle”, when we got TeenLiam long before he knew Cordelia, helps fill out the picture by showing us his basic insecurities.  And when Cordelia did return we saw how she played on those insecurities, especially the impact that her sleeping with Connor had on him.  Then there was the way that events in “Supersymmetry” created divisions between Gunn and Fred opening the way for Wesley to come between them.  Finally we had the emergence of the Beast, its dominance over the team and the sense of distrust that was fostered between all members of Angel Investigations, partly because of their own internal jealousies and suspicions and partly because of a sense of helplessness in the face of the Beast.  It is sometimes said that literature is a quest for identity.  If so then this season of ANGEL has been, an admirable attempt at a synthesis of plot and character for that purpose. Plot elements dramatize characters' identities by providing opportunities to show who they are. These opportunities come in the form of severe stress: the loss of Cordelia, the murder of Professor Seidel, Cordelia sleeping with Connor.  But the characters of the individuals themselves also drive the plot.   Here, in particular, the decision to bring back Angelus is driven by Angel’s insecurities and the sense of distrust - especially of him - that now pervades his team.  So character and plot are tied so closely together that one cannot understand one without the other.  And the overall picture we get is consistent; it is coherent; it is understandable; it has great depth and is not only interesting in itself but has created a very interesting dramatic situation.

Ultimately, however, it does not entirely satisfy because in pursuit of their concept for this season the writers have sacrificed a good deal of the credibility of our central characters – Angel especially.  I have repeated many times that what attracts me to ANGEL is that it is the story of flawed individuals.  That  interest is derived from the fact that our protagonists are essentially decent people, trying to do the right thing but people who are often brought low by their flaws.  It is in the clash between the best and the worst in Angel in particular and between his past and his hopes for the future that we see the very thing that gives ANGEL not only its interest but its very raison d’etre.  And it is the inherent goodness of the members of Angel Investigations that redeems each of them from their flaws and makes them sympathetic figures and distinguishes them from people who are intrinsically venial or completely self-centered in their basic motivation.  That is why they took on their mission in the first place.  Each of them had personal motives for doing so, demons of their own they were trying to exorcise.  But it was the fact that they responded to those demons by trying to help others that mattered.  It is no different now.  It is the way a character (especially Angel) reacts to his mission that shows us who he or she really is.  In season 2 Angel’s obsession with helping Darla and the fact that he saw her redemption snatched away from her in front of his eyes led him not to abandon the idea of helping anyone but to a redefinition of his mission, a twisting of it so that it became a mission of punishment, indeed of revenge.  This was not right, this was not helping people but it was credible and it still showed that at heart Angel was someone of considerable strength of character who was willing to fight for a cause no matter what it cost him.

But in this season so far we have seen Angel become lost and then all but abandon any idea that he had a mission simply because he had lost Cordelia.  He even seemed to have lost his motivation to help his son Connor.  Then when Cordelia returned she slept with Connor.  This sent our hero into a sulk.  LA was burning down around him, all he could do was brood about his injured feelings.  Having sex with Cordelia was potentially very destabilizing for a volatile teenager like Connor but Angel didn’t care about that.  It was his own wounded pride that really mattered to him.  The whole foundation for this edifice was Angel's sense of insecurity, his feeling of being a victim driven by circumstances and people beyond his control.  And we are clearly intended to see and understand this in "Awakening" because everything he saw in his vision was a reaction against those very insecurities.  he proves himself better than Wesley and Connor and both own up to it.  He defeats the Beast.  And above all Cordelia is not only in love with him but admits that everything she had ever done to undermine his sense of self-worth was baseless. 

But while Angel has insecurities that does not mean that he has to let them dictate his actions.  It is the way in which people face their demons that earn them respect.  No-one can guarantee to do so successfully.  Indeed the very essence of tragedy is to be found when people fail.  But even there it is how they fail that counts.  And it is in that context that I want to look at Angel's fantasy in "Awakening".

Here Angel's reactions to his insecurities seem venial and self-centred. Nowhere in Angel’s fantasy world is he addressing the real problems of others, even those he supposedly loves.  The only thing he seems concerned about is salving his own bruised ego.  Take Wesley. He was both insecure and determined to prove himself. This itself is a very dangerous combination: believing you have all the answers but that you have always to prove it to others because they will never give you your due. Then there was the fact that he was never at his best in dealing with people. He had no real empathy for them, no understanding of what made them tick. So again you have someone who feels confident in trying to understand obscure texts but who has no real feel for how people behave. And finally there was his ruthlessness; his willingness to sacrifice other people in favour of what he regards as the big picture. In his vision Angel’s concern, however, is simply with proving himself the better man – very comforting for his own ego of course but showing no interest in or even conception of Wesley’s real problems and how to address them. Doesn’t “perfect happiness” involve helping Wesley address his real problems to the benefit of everyone else?  As an aside I mention here the fact that Angel must be aware of the problems between Gunn, Fred and Wesley but the first two don’t feature much in his fantasy because their problems don’t directly impact on him. So much for caring about his friends.

And what about Connor? In his revenge on Angel we see a cold blooded calculation, a careful planning and execution, great self-control and a high degree of sheer cruelty.  This was not the result of a simple emotional outburst when confronted by some great grief.  We are dealing here with someone who can, I think, be justly described as “the Destroyer”.    And now he feels alone, isolated from not only Angel but Cordelia too.  She was once the only person with whom he had a connection; and now she too has rejected him.  Worse than that he also feels unfairly treated by Angel because of the suspicion that wrongly fell on him.  He retains a view of his father as someone who is evil and is angry and bitter at him even to the point where he is prepared to kill him.  And while Connor isn’t exactly blameless in all of this Angel has hardly handled him well and Cordelia has in fact betrayed him.  Yet all that concerns Angel is proving himself better than his son, proving that his son is wrong about him and above all that Cordelia really loves him.

Then there is the Beast.  It is obvious that there is more to his presence than meets the eye.  There is the rain of fire, the blotting out of the sun and the attempt to make a deal with Angelus when there is no obvious motive for it.  But again Angel isn’t interested in dealing with real problems – all he cares about is being heroic and defeating the Big Bad.

As for Cordelia, her behaviour since “Spin the Bottle” has been baffling. She was the one who initiated the sex with Connor – on completely spurious grounds.  Then the next morning she had second thoughts and worried about sending Connor the wrong signals and tried to keep him at a distance, thus increasing his sense of isolation.   She reassures Connor that he isn’t evil but she was the one who planted in Connor’s mind the idea that he was connected to the Beast.  In “Long Day’s Journey” she admits that she hurt Angel.  But when she gets to see him her expression of the remorse that she says she feels is extremely perfunctory.  Instead she seems more concerned to tell him to “get over it”.  Then she starts acting jealously over Angel kissing Gwen during a time when she wasn't even on the planet because she'd chosen to become a higher being rather than be with him.  In this episode she supports his rejection of Wesley’s plan to bring back Angelus but she was the one who revealed the connection between Angelus and the Beast and she was the one who fatally undermined his resistance to Wesley.  If Angel wasn’t so completely self absorbed, if he knew Cordelia as well as a person who really loved her should, wouldn’t he notice that there was something not quite right here? But no, all he cares about is that Cordelia confesses that she was wrong to distrust him and that she really only ever loved him.

But most troubling of all is the climax of the episode as Angel makes love to Cordelia.  This is extraordinarily reckless but is entirely consistent with the rest of his vision.   And that is one of the reasons I have some difficulty in accepting this as a true picture of the character who was so self-conscious of the risk that he might loose his soul that he cut himself off from contact with humanity.  Remember this was the major theme of "Eternity".  And it is only when he is reduced to a state of perfect despair that he sleeps with Darla at the end of "Reprise".  Here was Angel seemingly in perfect control of his faculties, having resolved all of the issues that have been troubling him and with full knowledge of the risks of doing so having sex with the woman he loves.  And why?  The only explanation we get from Cordelia is:

“Whatever it is, whatever the reason or excuse or logic, we're here. Now. Together. Everything is the way it's supposed to be. For once. Angel, haven't we waited long enough?”

The Angel we see in this fantasy is someone who simply loves himself.  He doesn’t love Cordelia or Connor.  He doesn’t care about their problems.  He doesn’t care about his friends and their problems.   He is really only interested in proving that he is better than the Beast, not in actually saving people from it.  And finally he apparently doesn’t care about anyone Angelus might kill. This is not a character I can recognize or respect.  It is not someone with any strength of character or sense of purpose and certainly not someone who has any capacity for self-sacrifice or empathy for with others. 

But Angel is someone who possesses strength of character, a willingness to fight for a cause and a capacity for self-sacrifice.  I think the writers clearly meant us to understand that he does love Cordelia - hence his whole feeling of being lost without her.  And notwithstanding my reservations about the way he handled Connor in this season, I also believe that he does love his son.  And he has shown that he is prepared to put others that he cares about before himself.  Can we square these very different pictures?

 In "Deep Down" we also saw dream or fantasy sequences in which Angel acted out of character - feeding on Cordelia and killing Connor.  These were his subconscious reacting to his hunger and his sense of betrayal.  But these fantasies were not intended to be understood as his conscious reaction to these.  Indeed, quite the opposite.  We saw Angel's own horror at his fantasies and when, for example, he was released from his tomb, his real reaction was very different from his fantasy one.  So, he drank a little from Wesley; but he restrained himself.  And when confronted with Connor he acted in a reasonably moderate fashion.  I think the lesson from this is that in his fantasies in "Deep Down" we are intended to see the darker, more self-indulgent desires surfacing; that part of his nature his rational side was intended to keep under control.  And there is a clear parallel between these dream sequences and the extended fantasy in "Awakening".  In the real world Angel cared about Connor, Cordelia and Wesley, understood the nature of their problems and also understood his limitations in dealing with them.  It was in fact this empathy with them that ensured there was an insurmountable barrier between himself and "perfect happiness".  But that part of his subconscious that was really only interested in how Angel felt didn't care about anyone else and so didn't recognize the need to understand them or their problems or the need to help them.  It only understood the necessity to make Angel feel good about himself whatever that took to do so.  So, in "Awakening" we see an echo of Angel's fantasy in "Deep Down".  There the need to satisfy his hunger and get revenge on Connor were satisfied at any cost.  Here too Angel's need to feel good about himself was satisfied, even if that meant ignoring the needs of everyone else.

Looked at in this way, Angel's fantasy (or perhaps the Angel we see in his fantasy) while shallow and self-indulgent doesn't really say anything about him as a character.  It is simply one part of his personality speaking without the rational and the empathetic side to counterbalance it.  But herein surely is the problem.  As we have seen, there is nothing in the fantasy that constitutes an analysis of what is really wrong in Angel's life and in his relationship with Wesley, Connor or Cordelia.  But equally, given the distorting effect of the self-obsession in his fantasy, there is nothing in it  that give us an insights into his real state of mind in the sense of what is really important to Angel as a character.  And this is where I think "Awakening" fell short of its own high standards in storytelling.  What gives that storytelling its depth is the intimate relationship between plot and character.  We see situations created because of individual's characters and equally we see those characters change because of the pressure of events on them.  You cannot understand one without the other.  Even in "Deep Down" the important point was not Angel's fantasies but the way he in real life reacted to them, even imperfectly.  But here the fantasy says nothing about Angel as a character; its only point is to enable the "perfect moment of happiness."  As such it is nothing more than a plot device.  And that is disappointing.

The Plot

There isn’t a lot to say about the plot.  I have spoken before of the way in which the writers of ANGEL use the title of an episode to give us clues as to what it was about.  The title of this episode was pretty obvious.  “Awakening” obviously referred to the awakening of the demon inside Angel.  But there was a much more subtle clue about the nature of this episode in the text.  The centrepiece of the story was of course the adventure Angel, Cordelia, Wesley and Connor embarked on to find the sword of “Bosh ma’d”.  This is an unusual name: the “ma’d” part seeming to come from a different language group than the “bosh” part.  But it suddenly makes sense if we remember that “bosh” means nonsense.  That is what Angel’s quest is: “mad nonsense”.

For dramatic effect it depends upon the twist at the end, when the audience suddenly realizes that what it thought it was watching all along was very different to what it was actually watching.  And I have to say that for me this aspect of the episode did work very well indeed.  Yes, I will admit that I was taken in.  By the end of this episode I had forgotten that Angel’s quest had its origin in a seemingly futile and irrelevant attempt to restore Angelus.  So, as the camera pans back to see Angel’s soul in its container with Angelus laughing in the background, I was actually shocked.  But really I shouldn’t have been because the clues were all there.

In retrospect, this season to date was leading up to this moment.  In particular there were the clues about someone in the group with a connection to the Beast, Cordelia’s visions which slowly revealed it was Angelus, the battering of the teams’ self-confidence and trust in one another until they can accept the return of Angelus as a good idea and finally the great debate between Angel, Cordelia and Wesley on this very subject.  After this, it would have been very odd if the return of Angelus was simply the set up for a very facile victory over the Beast.  Gunn even gave us a clue when he asked incredulously after Wo-Pang seemingly tried to kill Angel:

            “This was all a set-up?”

And then the clues started coming thick and fast. First of all Cordelia’s vision was different.  She had white eyes, there were no flashes of the vision to see, this time there was hard, specific information and it was very conveniently timed to coincide with the deciphering of the markings on Wo-Pang’s body.  

The there was the very straightforward solution to the threat posed by the Beast. Suddenly when our heroes had been able to discover nothing about the Beast and when it had proved invulnerable to everything they could throw at it, they find out about a magic sword that could kill it.

Next, the apology scene between Angel and Wesley simply rang false.  Someone like Wesley who could hold himself the injured party when he had actually been responsible for Holtz’s kidnapping of Connor isn’t going to admit he was careless because Wo-Pang attacked Angel.

Similarly, the apology scene between Angel and Cordelia bore no resemblance to any other scene between Cordelia and Angel this season.  She had always been the one with the upper hand.  She had always made it seem as though things were his fault.  Remember after she confessed to Connor that they had hurt Angel.  Well the next time she saw him her words to him far from being an apology were:

            “Get over it.”

The only person who didn’t keel over and play dead in front of Angel during this episode was Connor and indeed the scene between father and son in the booby-trapped room was powerful and dramatic and it did allow both sides to ventilate at least some of their anger and hurt towards one another.  After the start of Angel’s vision it was the only really honest expression of feeling in the whole piece.  But even Connor in the end came round and revealed an instantaneous maturity and respect for his father that was frankly unbelievable. 

But of course the real clue to what was going on  lay in the increasing ease and confidence with which Angel dealt with all obstacles – the booby-traps, the disguise of the sword and especially the Beast itself.  And so ultimately we have Angel acknowledged as the hero, the one who is single handed responsible for saving the world.  There was only one thing left for him to do – get the girl.  And he even does that. The last fifteen minutes of the episode was such an obvious wish fulfilment on his part that the alarm bells did go off.  I was baffled and waiting for the twist.  But it was only at the last minute that I realized what it was.

The writers played completely fair – all the clues were there for those who had wit to see them.  And the trick here wasn’t like the usual “reset” button - a lazy way out for writers who have seemingly created an insoluble problem for our heroes.  Quite the opposite.  Here the writers had created a golden scenario and then with one bound our heroes were in deep – well the Douglas Adams’ phrase was “ju-ju-flops.”  That is the sort of set-up I like.

If I were to complain about the ending it would perhaps be over the continuing association between “perfect happiness” and sex.  I really do not think that things are as simple as that but that is all I am going to say on the subject.

Overview (B)

This is an unusually long review even by my standard because it seems to me to represent the climax of the first part of this season.  In retrospect everything thus far seems to be intended to create a situation where Angel and the others could believable agree to bring back Angelus.  And the thing I like about this is first of all the care and thought that has gone into the set up for this moment.  In particular the writers have not simply relied upon creating an outside threat which might lead to such a conclusion.  They have I think quite deliberately engineered a series of crises within the team (involving all its major members) to try to create the right psychological conditions for them to do something they will come to regret.  And this episode continues in the same vein with a good deal of interesting exploration of the tensions between Angel on the one hand and Connor, Cordelia and Wesley on the other.  This for me is perhaps the most interesting part of the episode.  What was lacking was a strong follow through.   Having Angel act in his fantasy sequence in a way that was immature and venial is by no means unbelievable once we understand that it is a fantasy.  But this means that the sequence only works as fantasy and that is disappointing.  Having said that I did enjoy the shock ending and I thought that the writers set it up very well.  We knew by the last fifteen minutes that things were going too well; we knew that there had to be a twist.  But they still fooled me when it arrived.