EPISODE 3.21

BENEDICTION

Written by:  Tim Minear

Directed by: Tim Minear

Benediction

A Benediction is a formal blessing of someone or something.   It can be the way of concluding a religious ceremony or it can form the centerpiece of one.  In either event, it is intended to invoke God’s protection and guidance for the future.  In this sense it is a way of ensuring that those blessed take with them some lasting benefit from the ceremony.   One that is widely used today comes from the Book of Numbers where God tells Moses to instruct Aaron to bless the Israelites with the following words:

The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance to you and give you peace.

The important point about a benediction like this is that it isn’t just a pleasantry like “Have a nice day”.  It is to be taken as coming from God himself.  Indeed in the Roman Catholic devotion of the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, when the congregation is being blessed by the Host,  the Priest’s hands are covered as a sign that the blessing is from Christ and not him.  And by giving His blessing, God is saying that He actively wants to help and guide a person.  But of course implicit in this is that He can only do so where the recipient of the blessing lets Him.  Human beings have free will.  We can accept God’s help and guidance or we can go our own way.  It is in this that we see the significance of the title of this episode.  It is also here that we see the central theme of "Bendiction" and in particular the true significance of its closing scenes.

There are several people in this episode who are at crossroads.  They have a choice as to the path they can take.  But in deciding which path to take they are not alone.  There are always others who have an interest in the path they ultimately choose.  The question is: to what extent can these others influence the choice or perhaps, more to the point, should they even try to do so?  Or, like God, should they simply leave it to the person concerned to make the right choice.

Groo and Cordelia

Lets begin with Cordelia and Groo.  There is a nice little scene between Groo and Lorne at the start of the episode.  At first they seem to be talking about Connor and Angel and the latter’s willingness to let his son roam the streets.  But it soon becomes obvious that they are really talking  about Groo and Cordelia:

Lorne: “Well, sometimes nothing is the best something. If a thing’s meant to be, sometimes it’s best to just let it happen rather than try to force it. “

Groo: “But if a thing is meant to be, then how can it be forced?”

Lorne: “Well, I guess it can’t.”

Groo: “And if a thing is not meant to be?”

Lorne: “Well, then it really can’t. Just because someone hops a dimension or two is no guarantee things will work out….aren’t you just sneaky with the subtext.”

Although he doesn’t seem the sharpest tool in the box, Groo has obviously been thinking about his future with Cordelia…or lack of it.  There is no doubt about his feelings in the matter.  And if it were left up to him then the two of them would be together.  But he recognizes it’s not up to him.  The forgoing conversation was not about pre-destination; in fact, quite the opposite.  It was about recognizing that Cordelia was the only person who could decide her life.  And his sad little parting comment:

            ”It’s a beautiful day.  If my princess asks tell her I have gone for a walk…if she asks.”

sums up the situation perfectly.  Groo is on his own.  If Cordelia wants him, he will be there.  But he knows she isn’t interested.

There is a very obvious counterpoint here between Groo and Lilah.  We cannot doubt how much Groo wants Cordelia to make a decision in his favor.   But while he gives her the space she needs to choose for herself, Lilah isn’t about to allow Wesley the same privilege.

Wesley and Lilah

Let me say in passing how shocked I was by Wesley’s behavior in this episode.  I know he has had a lot to cope with but there is no excuse for eating a frozen dinner - especially out of its own plastic tray.  And the color of that wine didn’t look very promising either.  Clearly the man is beyond redemption.  But let us now turn to more trivial matters.  When Lilah lured Wesley to a bar to show him Justine in a trap, her ostensible reason was to give him revenge on  the person who had so nearly killed him and had ruined his life:

Lilah: “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to see the bitch that slit your throat and left you to die get a little of her own back?”

Wesley: “What’s going on here Lilah?”

Lilah: “Some source – I can’t imagine who – tipped her off that this place would be filthy with     vampires.  Which, as it turns out, is true.”

Wesley: “Right, because that same source tipped off the vampires that she would be here.

Lilah: “Seems she has been pissing off a lot of undead Americans lately.

Wesley: “And you thought I’d enjoy a box seat for the slaughter.”

But that wasn’t her real motive.  What was important to her was Wesley’s reaction to the news.  As Lilah put it herself:

“Will he go straight to his car or will he stop to warn her first.”

But this was not a fair or honest choice she was leaving to Wesley.  Lilah was asking him to be a participant in a plan to kill another human being.  By giving him enough prior warning of the attack, she gave him the opportunity to save her from it.  But in order to do so he would have to actively intervene on her behalf.  Lilah knew that Wesley's anger at Justine would make it very hard for him to do so.  She was therefore making it as hard as possible for him to do the right thing, thus bringing him ever closer to the Wolfram and Hart school of ethics.  It would be but a small step but then if you want to build something securely you do it slowly and incrementally.  She didn’t even feel the need to push him to make a final choice.  All she wanted to do at this stage was to plant the seeds of doubt in his own mind.  That was the truly evil part of her plan.  She explained her decision not to force the issue with him in the following terms:

“And to prove we’re still friends, I’ll have her pulled out of there before anything really lethal happens so you don’t have to torture yourself as to whether or not you did the right thing.”

But this was less than honest.  If she had just let Wesley walk out on her he still might have warned Justine, no matter how hard that was for him.  This way he must now torture himself with the thought: “what would I have done”.  Of course there is no way he could be certain he would have done the right thing.

In contrast to Groo, Lilah is therefore actively pushing someone towards a life that they do not want.  She is doing it for entirely selfish reasons, just as we may be sure that Groo has taken the opposite view for reasons of genuine love.  This is a pretty stark counterpoint.  And, as usual with such a counterpoint, it is in the contrast to these two attitudes that we find the writer’s meaning.  This can be paraphrased as “love means having to let go.”  Or it can be put in these terms: if you really care about  a person you can’t try to control them into living the life you want them to.  In any event, the real focus of this message lay neither with Groo and Cordelia on the one hand nor Wesley and Lilah on the other.  It lay with the struggle between Angel and Holtz for the soul of Connor/Steven.

My name is Steven

The basic dynamic here is set up by Angel when he appears back in the Hyperion after finding Connor and letting him leave:

Angel: “He survived Quortoth this long. He can take care of himself.”

Fred: “Okay, so he survived an unspeakable hell dimension. Who hasn’t? You can’t just leave him alone in the streets of Los Angeles. “

Angel: “He’s got to come back on his own. He will, just as soon as he realizes what he needs.”

Gunn: “And what’s that?”

Cordelia: “A father.”

But who is Connor’s father?  There is little doubt but that Cordelia was referring to Angel as such.  But the very next scene shows us Connor checking into a motel and in doing so he refers to Holtz as “father”.     However, the important thing to understand when comparing these two scenes  is that this is not a simple dispute about the identity of a father.  There is no factual misunderstanding, no missing piece of information.  We see from the start that Connor knows exactly who his biological father is and how he came to be in Quortoth with Holtz:

“I never lied to you.  I always told you the truth about what your parents were…how you and I came to be together.”

The facts about both Angel and Holtz are known to Connor.  Both have a call on the title "father".  Connor's task is to understand who each “father” is and decide  what that person means to him.

In one respect Angel and Holtz are equals.  They both love Connor.  Holtz explains to Justine the way his feeling for Connor developed while they were in Quortoth:

“I knew I had to stay alive that I might pass on my legacy of hate.  But something happened in that place, Justine. Something changed. Amidst the most unspeakable ugliness, the hate turned into love. Love for a son. Hate’s not enough.  I found love is far more powerful.”

I do not think we need to doubt this.  He certainly had no reason to lie to Justine.  More to the point his whole attitude to Connor testifies to the genuineness of his feelings.  When Connor tells him how he got back to LA, Holtz’s pride in him is evident:

Holtz: “Quor-toth was never our home, son.  It was our prison. I should have known one day you'd find a way out.”

            Connor: “Cracks were there already... just made the sluks show me, that's all.”

Holtz: “Frightened rats forced to flee to daylight. My boy's smart.”

Equally there was the concern evident in his statement that he had to follow Connor.  These feelings mirror the very same feelings of pride and concern that Angel exhibits for Connor for example in the bar fight.  First we see  Angel being impressed by his son’s abilities but concentrating on him so much that he forgets to look out for himself.  There is therefore little if anything to chose between Holtz and Angel in terms of the strength of their love and affection for the teenager they both think of as “son”.

In other respects, however, they are complete opposites.  I have already discussed at length their opposing views of the world.  In particular we see here that there is no sign of Holtz’s stay in Quortoth having modified his very black and white view of himself and Angel.  In the final confrontation between them, what Angel did to his family was never far from Holtz’s thoughts.  As he contemplates the prospect of Angel getting his son back, he muses:

“But every time you look upon his face, every time he calls you "father," you will be reminded of that which you took and can never give back.”

The hatred is still there.  There too is the unbending refusal to accept Angel’s remorse, even when he knows that it is there – when he knows that remorse is the sign of a decent man and not of a demon.  But there is a limit to how much the writers can keep hammering this theme of Holtz’s black and white view of Angel.  In trying to understand Holtz's attitude to Connor in "Benedition", this is important,  but only as background.  Instead the real focus lies in the differences in the way that the two men  manifested their love for Connor.

Will the Real Connor Please Stand Up?

In “A New World” Angel goes out looking for his son; but when he finds him he lets him walk away from him:

Angel: "No pressure or anything."

Connor: "No, uh..."

Angel: "But if you, you know, if you need a place to stay."

Connor: "I have to go."

Angel: "You're not alone. You know that, right?"

And, as we have already seen at the beginning of this episode, he continues to hold that line above objections to the contrary, no matter how much it costs him.

And this is the point.  It isn’t about what Angel wants.  It’s about what Connor wants.  Or perhaps more particularly, it’s about who Connor is.  And Angel’s love for his son means that the most important thing is that he fulfils his own potential, finds his own path.  So, when Gunn refers to the teenager as “Connor”, Angel corrects him:

“Steven; his name’s Steven now.”

 He does not do so in the knowledge that Connor will inevitably return to him.  In fact quite the opposite.  He holds this attitude in the face of a near certainty on his part that he will lose his son:

“He feels further away from me now than when he was first taken. All that time, I don't think I ever really believed that I'd lost him.  Not really.  Then he showed up again - and I knew I had."

Unsurprisingly, given all we know about him, Holtz has a rather different attitude to “Steven”.  When they are together in the motel, we see “Steven” recite as if long practiced the story of his father’s loss and Angel’s responsibility for that loss.  We also see how Holtz has drilled into Connor his side of the kidnapping:

“God delivered you to me, that I might keep you safe - and lavish upon you all the love I could never give to my first children.”

Angel would have killed “Steven” if he had been left with him; so this was God’s way of both protecting the child and balancing the accounts for Holtz’s own loss.  And the way that “Steven” uncritically repeats:

            “God gave me to you”

demonstrates the extent to which this idea has been inculcated in him.

Nor is this blatant manipulation of “Steven” a thing of the past.  As I have said, we need not doubt that Holtz followed Steven to LA out of concern for him.  But what was the concern about?  Was it his safety or the thought that, if he did find Angel again, all Holtz’s careful work with him would be undone?  And perhaps even more tellingly, it was Holtz who made the decision to send “Steven” back to Angel and in doing so he had a particular agenda:

“Walk in his world. Learn all you can. Discover what of him is in you - that you may fight against it.”

Ford Motors offered the Model T to its customers in any color they wanted – so long as it was black.  In Holtz’s conception, “Steven” was perfectly free to choose any future for himself, provided it was the one his father approved of.  Here Holtz was not letting his son decide for himself where his future lay.  Rather he was trying to better prepare him for the future he wanted for him.  And in this context we see perhaps the most significant utterance of the episode:

“But be on your guard. Remember what I've taught you. The devil will show you bright things. Many colors...”

The bright things he meant was Angel and attraction that he – Connor’s real father – had for him.

What this episode demonstrated conclusively is where – if left alone – Connor’s true path lay.  Connor tells Holtz what he knows he wants to hear: that he came to LA to kill Angel and was only sorry that he hadn’t.  Holtz though isn’t fooled:

“That’s not the real reason you worked so hard to get here.  You wanted to see him.”

In spite of everything that Holtz has taught him about his father, Connor still wants to see Angel.  There is a connection there that goes too deep to be ignored.  And we see the nature of that connection in the fight in the bar, where Wesley noticed the way the teenager moves “just like his father”.  As Angel later describes it:

Angel: “The kid was born for it... the way he anticipated. I'm telling you -- it's in his blood.

Cordelia: “You don't say?”

Angel: “There we were, and it was like we'd never been apart. He felt it too. I know he did. You should have seen us together.”

This was for the pair of them the equivalent of a ball game.  In spite of all Angel’s concerns about losing Connor, he had come to him because that was what was meant to do – so that they should be together and fighting side by side.  And it was seeing this that triggered in Holtz the key realization of the episode.  When Connor says:

Connor: “Father. He was everything that you said. He tried to trick me. Thought he could deceive me by saving people. But it didn't work. I've seen his true face.”

Holtz: “And I've seen yours.”

By that Holtz meant that he now saw that, because of Connor's underlying connection with Angel, all his influence and the 16 years he had spent trying to mould “Steven” were lost.  The vampire had a hold on his son.  The reality of being with his father was the shiny thing with which the Devil had tempted “Steven” from the path of righteousness.  He, Holtz, had simply been trying to guide teenager so that he could fulfil his true destiny.  But Angel and his influence promised to thwart that.  This wasn’t jealousy or personal pique.  For Holtz Angel was a source of evil, a source that now threatened the son he loved.

Laying the Trap

So, when he and Angel confronted one another for the last time Holtz did not lie when he said he no longer had a taste for vengeance.  Nor was he lying when he said that

“I love my son. And it's the only way I know to ensure that he’ll go on loving me.”

Only for Holtz, loving him meant honoring his ideals and his wishes for Connor’s future.   

And thus we come to the letter and the events surrounding it.  The important point here is that it is meant to be read in different ways.  Holtz intended Angel to read it - he said as much to him.  And he clearly meant Angel to take the benign interpretation from it, at least until he found out what Holtz had done.  So, as he was reading the letter on that deserted stretch of road Angel concluded, as he was meant to, that Holtz had seen the error of his ways.  Angel and Connor were meant to be together.  But Holtz also meant Connor to read the letter.  And here is the clever bit.  Connor was supposed at one level to understand it in the same way that Angel did; that the man he had called father for 16 years was acting out of generosity and love.  But that letter was also intended to strike a different chord within him.  When he read that letter after finding Holtz’s dead body the letter was also intended to guide him to the reaction that Holtz obviously wanted.  When Holtz wrote:

"Your destiny lies with Angel. I know that now. You will have a better life with him."

It seems innocuous enough.  But couple those words with the following:

"I'm comforted by that certainty and the knowledge that with him you will discover your true purpose and come to know who it is you are meant to be."

And you get an entirely different meaning.  By, as it seems, killing Holtz for no reason beyond sheer malice, Angel has proved he was evil.  This was the call to arms for Connor and it was only by taking up the sword of righteous fury against him that Connor could become the man he was intended to be. The trap Holtz laid, and especially the way in which he wrote that letter, was his benediction on his son.  His was a blessing that was intended to help and guide Connor on the path he wanted for him, or at the very least a path that was acceptable to Holtz and his very black and white view of the world.

As I have already suggested, the first thing I liked about this was the fact that here the writers found an entirely new angle in exploring the motivations of Angel and Holtz towards Connor.  This helps sustain interest rather than have us look at stale ideas again and again.  But, as I have also tried  explain, this new angle is recognizably tied up with the dominant themes of previous episodes.  So Holtz’s unwillingness to let Connor decide his own future proceeds from his own black and white view of the world where there is only his moral certainty.  More than that, however, it fits very neatly into the dominant values of the series.  Increasingly the writers have emphasized the centrality of the human connection to moral decisions.  Ideas of redemption and responsibility are seen not in abstract terms but rather in how we treat others.  And the continual dichotomy between the putting of self first and the putting of others first as the touchstone of good and evil is again clearly reflected here.  Holtz’s attempts to control “Steven” is essentially selfish and as  such leads inexorably to clearly evil consequences: suicide, lies and incitement to murder.  Angel’s attitude, that the important point is what is best for Connor and not what he wants, is the counterpoint to this.  And it is this that offers the best hope for his son.  It was this and his desire to save others that challenged the notions that Holtz had fed Connor.  They created a bond of trust symbolized by the way they stood back to back in the bar and later the play fighting that went on between them.   Ironically, it is only when Angel tries to impose himself on Steven’s life – by going behind his back to see Holtz – that he hands Holtz the victory he could not have got any other way. By doing so he subverted the trust that he had created by his earlier restraint.  And it is because the events at the end of the episode turn around that misjudgement that the writers highlight this central point about why Angel was right before and why things went wrong later.  Not only is this thought provoking itself, it can also be seen as a nice little piece of social commentary: how to handle a rebellious teenager.

Indeed in all of this there was only one thing that I disliked – Cordelia’s mystical purge of Connor.  This was so wrong in so many ways.  The effect of the purge was explained in the following terms:

Lorne: “That kid was toxic when he came here tonight. Heavy on the 'ick'."

Angel: "What actually happened out there?"

Lorne: "In my professional opinion? Well, Miss demon-y britches here gave that child some kind of 'soul colonic'. Flushed him out but good."

Angel: "Flushed what out?"

Cordelia: "It was that place, Quortoth. It crept into every part of him. He was sick with it."

Well, Connor clearly was toxic.  But that was because he had been taught to think in a certain way, to regard the universe in decidedly black and white terms.  These lessons were reinforced by his experiences in a dimension in which there were only evil evil things.  Here the only good thing in his life was his father, the man to whom he owed everything.  This man, however, had been the victim of his natural father.  Not only was there shame in being the bastard child of that demon (someone who was probably constantly warned against his own evil impulses) but there was even greater shame in the fact that deep down he wanted to meet this creature of the night.  In doing so he must have felt like betraying his real “father” and all the ideals this obviously God fearing man stood for.  Was his need to see his father not the temptation of the Devil?  Wasn’t it his duty to kill the creature?  But how could he?

This was where the conflict within Connor lay; this is where his eruptions of anger and violence derived from.  To treat this anger and violence as the product of the malign influence of a metaphysical evil is simply a betrayal of all the other thoughtful writing that went into creating these internal conflicts.  It is not only meaningless in and of itself, it flatly contradicts what the rest of the episode has to say about the real nature of Connor’s internal struggles and the influence his two father have on it.

It also makes a nonsense out of the ending.  The fact that Connor so readily assumes Angel’s hand in Holtz’s death and identifies him not as Angel but Angelus must mean that these internal struggles had not been resolved.  So much for the cure that Cordelia handed out.

When you see a piece of self-indulgent nonsense like this that tramples over plot and any thoughtful or intelligent theme or character analysis, you have to ask why it was included.  But we will leave the answer to that question for another day.

Plot

“Benediction” is very focused.  The one sub-plot concerns Wesley and Lilah.  But even this is disposed off in two scenes, the second and much more important of which is integrated into the main plot through the simple device of being set in the same bar in which Angel and Connor rescue  Justine.  Because of this focus the episode has a very simple structure.  This can be divided into three parts.  The first is set up. The purpose of  set up is to establish the basic dynamic of the episode, the problem if you like to be resolved.  But exposition is not itself enough.   The set-up must draw the audience into the story.  Essentially this means it must make us believe in what we see and make care about what is or might be happening.  If, for example, characters behave in absurd or ridiculous ways or if they are so two-dimensional or so dislikeable that it doesn’t matter to us what happens then there is no point in going on.  On the other hand the more real the characters seem and the more we sympathize with them, and especially where we have an investment in one particular outcome, the greater the impact the story will have.  And this is where for me “Benediction” really scores heavily.  This is an episode that depends for its effect on the shifting relationships of three people – Connor, Angel and Holtz.  Everyone else is reduced to bit parts.  Our reaction therefore depends on how we view this triangle.

In my review of “A New World” I said that I found the different ways that Connor reacted to Angel a little inconsistent.  I am not sure that these inconsistencies have been fully explained here.  But the writers have gone a long way towards doing so.  Connor it now transpires is no simple clone of his Quortoth “father”.  Both Holtz teaching and his experiences in Quortoth pull him towards being an engine of vengeance and destruction – perhaps even the destroyer the sluks referred to.  But pulling him in the opposite direction were his sense of himself and his own moral outlook.  On several occasions in this episode, Holtz referred to Connor’s need to see his father.  There was nothing sentimental about this.  I have already referred to Connor’s issues of identity.  He was the son of two evil creatures who had brought the man he called “father” so much grief.  He replaced Holtz’s dead children and yet he called himself “a demon”.  In these circumstances it is all to evident why he should feel the need to see and talk to his one surviving parent – to get some better understanding of who and what he is.  He would be a very strange person indeed if he wasn’t deeply schizophrenic about Angel.

Angel’s own need to see his son again is both obvious and well established.  I must admit that I am not entirely convinced by his “let’s be mature and let Connor decide for himself” line.  This is not exactly typical Angel behavior at the best of times and, if anything, the more important something is to him the less controlled his emotions are.  But it was the right thing to do and I think that we can cut the writers some slack here.

If Angel’s part in this episode was expected, Holtz’s wasn’t.  To date, he had been depicted as a man whose sense of right and wrong had been warped by a desire for vengeance; a man who was prepared to go to any lengths in pursuit of that vengeance.  In particular he was prepared to take a baby from its father and condemn him to a hellish existence simply out of hate.  While we could certainly understand Holtz, there was little chance of us sympathizing with him.  In this respect there was only a small difference between him and an out and out villain like Lilah.  In “Benediction” the accent changes; the focus is no longer on hate but on love.  Admittedly it is a selfish love, twisted even.  But even this makes him a much more sympathetic figure than ever before..

So, what we have here is not only believable characterization, but one which does invite the sympathy of the audience for all three principals.  Given the gulf separating Angel and Holtz, we almost instinctively know that no compromise or accommodation between them is possible.  Nor could Angel or Holtz easily reconcile themselves to the loss of Connor.  So, we have a confused teenager who will be forced to choose between his two fathers, inevitably destroying at least one of them in the process.  And while the audience is likely to be in favor of Angel regaining what was wrongly taken away from him, there is no “good” outcome to this situation.  Indeed,  it is because of the difficulty of the choice and the inevitability of tragic consequences that we feel it matters.

Of course, given the nature of the conflict within Connor, this could have been a very elongated process indeed.  And that would have been boring.  So, having set things up so well, the writers’ next task is to propel matters towards a conclusion. They needed a catalyst to bring the conflict over Connor to a head.  And this is also something that I think they did very well.  It would have been absurd and unbelievable if Connor had resolved all his issues in the course of a few hours with Angel.  But it is entirely believable that, even in a short period of time, the connection between them should become manifest.  And what could be more appropriate than for it to come out in a little mayhem and violence.  They bonded not in a touchy-feely way but as a team who moved and thought and fought alike.  That just felt right.  And while the bar fight did not itself settle anything it quite clearly pointed to the way in which matters would be resolved – in favor of Angel and against Holtz.

The fact that Holtz was in a position to see father and son bonding is hard to believe.  But again this is a piece of license I can overlook because it gives us the catalyst that the episode needed: Holtz’s realization that sooner or later he would lose out.  That he would react to this prospect was never in doubt; that he would try to separate Connor from Angel seemed equally certain.  But again this is where the plotting worked so well.  His reaction seemed one of acceptance; he seemed almost defeated.  He did not try to use the influence he still had with Connor to try to persuade him Angel was evil.  He seemed to welcome an opportunity to crown Angel as his successor.  But this was all simply to lull everyone, including the audience, into a false sense of security.  Only at the end was the reality of Holtz’s plan revealed and we could fully appreciate the twist in the tale. In the best classical tradition, it is at the point where things seem brightest for Connor and Angel that things move decisively and unexpectedly against them.  And the agent for this change is someone they both trust.  Moreover, that someone does not act directly against them, thus risking defeat himself  Rather he turns them against one another, thus leaving little chance of a way out of the tragic denouement.  Angel and Connor fall into a trap because they are basically too decent to understand and fight  the baser motives of those who would destroy them.  This is indeed very powerful stuff.

Overview (A)

This is an episode in which the dramatic and the thematic combine almost seamlessly.  Thematically it deals with our willingness to try to influence others, ostensibly for their benefit but in reality for ours.  There is of course a nice, if somewhat clichéd, element of social comment here.  But what really gives the theme its strength in this series was the way that it further develops and illustrates the differences between the principal antagonists here – Holtz and Angel – and fits in to what is increasingly the dominant strand of thought in the series as a whole.  More and more ANGEL is concerned with how people relate to one another, for their own benefit or that of others.  But, for once, an ANGEL episode works even better dramatically than it does thematically.  Dramatically, the theme is not illustrated by a simple little morality tale, in which one or more characters learn a lesson through their mistakes.  Rather, Holtz’s manipulation of Connor serves as the set up for what looks like a tragic ending to the bond of trust that was beginning to emerge between him and Angel.  And because that tragedy packs a far heftier dramatic punch, the evil of Holtz’s action comes across far more vividly.  Much of this season has dealt with Angel’s protectiveness towards Connor.  It seems both tragic and ironic that Connor now looks as though his only desire will be to kill his father.