EPISODE 4.12

CALVARY

Written by:  Jeffrey Bell, Steven S. DeKnight and Mere Smith

Directed by: Bill L. Norton

A Great Ordeal

I have previously referred to the clever way in which ME gives to episodes titles which have different layers of meaning.  “Calvary” is a good case in point.  The word is derived from the Latin “Calvaria” meaning a skull.  And of course the episode turns around a dark magic ceremony which prominently features a skull.  But “Calvary” is only in modern usage because it is the Latin translation of the Aramaic word “Golgotha” used to describe Christ’s place of execution.

“And they bring Him unto the place called Golgotha which being interpreted is, the place of the skull”

Because of that association the word “Calvary” is used as a synonym for any great ordeal.  That great poet of the Old Testament, Isaiah, refers to Christ crucified in the following terms:

 "He was despised and rejected of men;
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief:
And we hid as it were our faces from Him;
He was despised and we esteemed Him not.
 
Surely He had borne our grief,
And carried our sorrows:
Yet we did esteem Him stricken,
Smitten of God and afflicted.
 
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement of our peace was upon Him;
And with His stripes we are healed.
 
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned every one to his own way;
And the Lord has laid upon Him
The iniquity of us all. “

This is the very definition of an ordeal.  But these verses also illustrate the fact that, in Christian theology, Calvary represented far more than just pain.  The cross of Calvary represents the cost of sin; a cost paid in suffering by God made Man for the redemption of sinners.  The principal characters in “Calvary” are Lilah, Wesley and Gunn.  All of them have “sins” on their conscience, not of course in the Christian sense of  the word – that is to say an act which transgresses the will of God.  Rather perhaps they are guilty of sin in the classical Greek sense.  The word used here is “hamartia”, which essentially means "missing the mark; falling short; or a departure". And it is because all have committed sins in this sense that they now suffer.  Of course their suffering is not an ordeal they accept in order to redeem their sins. In fact, we see pretty plainly that they go on making the same errors, apparently quite unable to learn from their own mistakes.  Nevertheless, in the ordeals that they go through, we do see the price of wrongdoing.  And to that extent their ordeal may be referred to as a “Calvary.”

Where Have All My Pretty Things Gone?

And here I would like to begin with Lilah.  In many ways what made her such an interesting villain was her humanity.  Vampires and other demons are evil.  It is their nature.  Lilah is human.  It was her nature to want to do good but she chose to do evil. I have described her as a self-centered materialist.  Serving Wolfram and Hart made her comfortable and it gave her power. And in the end these were the  things that really mattered to her.  As she ruefully admits to Wesley:

“I just…I just want my life back. All my pretty things. I'm selfish that way. That's why we wouldn't have worked out.”

She had no illusions about the things she did to get these pretty things; but she did them anyway.  She admits as much when she says:

“We’re the bad guys.”

And just in case we overlooked that part, Lorne reminds us of the way in which she engineered the extraction of information from his brain.  In my review of “Habeas Corpses” I suggested that the symbolism of Lilah escaping the Wolfram and Hart building as it shut down might mean that she could escape from the Law Firm in another way – by choosing to do good.  But that was always an unlikely scenario.  We get a pretty good idea of Lilah’s philosophy of life from the following exchange:

Cordelia: “Lilah, I know things look grim right now.”

Lilah: “Don't go watchtower on me Saint Cordelia. I don't think I could stomach it.”

Cordelia: “Man, I'd love to punch your face in.”

Lilah: “Are you trying to turn me on?”

Cordelia: “What's sad about people like you, Lilah – it  all comes down to fear.

Lilah: “Fascinating. Now that we've got that settled.”

Cordelia: “You're too scared to believe in anything because you're too scared to hope. You won't even open your eyes to the possibility.”

Lilah: “You don't get it, do you, twinkie? I'm what I believe in. And you think I got this far by sticking my head in the sand? The Beast that eviscerated me has a boss, and that boss is going to end life as we know it, and nobody is coming to save us! Not Angel, not the Powers that Be, and not the forty-damn-second cavalry! So if anybody has scales on the rise… it's you.”

No matter how many times she was told by Angel or Wesley or anyone else for that matter that there was another way, she didn’t buy it.  She had a contempt for people who tried to do good and a steadfast belief in protecting her own interests.  In the end redemption was to her an unknown concept.  And that is what made things so hard for her after the coming of the Apocalypse.  When she referred to Wolfram and Hart being the bad guys she should have used the past tense because they aren’t the bad guys any more.  There is no Wolfram and Hart:

Lilah: “Beast took everything. Killed them all.”

Angelus: “It's all the damage. He does have a flair for it.”

Lilah: “Not just at the office. Everybody. Field ops. Liaisons. People out sick that day. But not me. Not yet. Why is he picking on us?”

And without them Lilah’s whole world has fallen in on her.  It’s not only the material discomfort that she suffers – though to someone like Lilah that’s bad enough.  When we first meet her in “Calvary” she taunts Angelus for being in a cage and in retaliation he mocks her appearance:

“Yet managing to display better grooming habits than you. Look at yourself, Lilah. All these years wanting to meet me. Couldn't run a comb through your hair, maybe slap on a little lipstick. Evil doesn't have to mean sloppy.”

For someone with Lilah’s stylish dress sense and obvious pride in her appearance, the fact that she is reduced to this state says it all.  But we have only begun to scratch the surface.  Her appearance is readily explained by the fact that she has been living underground.  Worse than that, the injury the Beast gave her has refused to heal.  Even her “boyfriend” (as Angelus tauntingly calls Wesley) abandoned her after the attack on the Wolfram and Hart building because he was more interested in someone else.  It is no wonder she is desperate enough to try to bargain with Angelus.  After all, why should he help her by trying to kill the Beast.  She was no longer Head of Special Projects for Wolfram and Hart.  There was no Special Projects and no Wolfram and Hart either.  She couldn’t offer him anything and if she had let him out, she must have known what he would do next.  She even admitted as much later:

Cordelia: “Do you know what Angelus would do if we let him out?”

Lilah: “Kill you all in a bloody shower of violence, but hey - greater good.”

Now Lilah was never one for the greater good.  So the fact that she was even contemplating releasing Angelus so that he could kill the Beast says a lot about her state of mind.  Lilah defined herself by her work and the rewards she received for it. It’s what gave meaning to her life, as shown by the following comment:

Wesley: “With all the excitement, I thought you would have escaped by now.”

Lilah: “Well, I would have, but, um, it's Thursday, which means that everyone who should be in the weekly briefing is, um, dead.”

Now her whole world is gone.  It never occurred to her that she should have had nothing to do with Wolfram and Hart, that even now she has been given a warning to change or that she should heed that warning.  As we saw at the end of “Habeas Corpses” she had the opportunity.  If, even at that late stage, she had tried to change, something good might have come out of this for her.  Sadly though, all that she was conscious of was that everything that had previously meant something to her was now gone.  So she was lost and directionless. That’s why her decision to approach Angelus for his help in destroying the Beast smacked of desperation.  Killing the Beast might save her life. But, she was trying to make deals with someone who would end it in a heart beat – if she was lucky; much, much longer if she wasn’t.  And even if Angelus did kill the Beast and not her, that wouldn’t bring back Wolfram and Hart and it wouldn’t replace the hole they left.  But ironically even in this final desperate throw of the dice she was thwarted.  She had sought help against the Beast from Angelus when it now appears that he was brought back at the instigation of the Beast’s master, the person who presumably ordered the destruction of Wolfram and Hart.  And that same person - Cordelia or whoever is inhabiting her body – finally killed Lilah, thus completing the destruction of the Law Firm.  Life simply could not end in more complete and utter failure.  The only mercy was that Lilah never saw that coming.  But it is still a small mercy.  Otherwise her last days were indeed an ordeal.

Doing Wesley’s Work For Him

Lilah’s fate was the most terrible of all our characters.  But she was hardly alone in facing up to the cost of her wrongdoing.  Next, I will take a look at Charles Gunn.  Here we are reminded of where, for him, the rot started – the murder of Professor Seidel.  That of course was an action that he undertook because of his love for Fred and in order to protect her from having his death on her conscience.   But it didn’t work out like that.  As Angelus cruelly pointed out:

Gunn: “I did what I had to do.”

Angelus: “I guess Fred didn't quite see it that way, huh? Wow. You do a chick a favor, you think she'd be grateful, but no. Mmmm. She still goes for the broody smart guy, all mysterious and tortured. I guess, when you think about it, for the first time in your life, you just weren't dark enough.”

Here of course Angelus is putting the worst spin possible on what happened.  But, in the way he chooses to antagonize Gunn, he puts his finger very clearly on the real reason why his relationship with Fred ended.   For her the fact that Gunn could kill another human meant that he wasn’t the person she thought that he was and she has not been able to cope with that.  That is why the relationship has been disintegrating ever since, not because she was attracted to Wesley.  But this is where Gunn too has compounded his wrongdoing.  The fact that he committed murder, damaging though that was, couldn’t end his relationship with Fred.  She felt that something had changed between them.  But at the same time her feeling for Gunn and her feelings of responsibility for his actions would not let her simply walk away.   As I pointed out in my review of “Soulless”, it was his insecurity, his jealousy and his distrust that were the problem.  And, together with his anger, they finally ended the relationship.  He was the one who needlessly confronted Wesley when in reality he and nothing to fear from him.  He was the one who started the fight.  And he was the one who, albeit inadvertently, hit Fred.  Starting with the murder of Professor Seidel, he was the one who destroyed the relationship:

Gunn: “What Angelus said about me ...I didn't mean to hurt you. I would never do that.”

Fred: “I know. I just can't help but think if you didn't attack…”.

Gunn: “Attack? That's how you see it? I attacked him! What do you call what he was doing in the office before I walked in?”

Fred: “I don't know what…”.

Gunn: “He was kissing you! Don't lie to me. It's the one thing you're not good at.”

Fred: “It just happened.”

Gunn: “Because you let it. I've never felt so much for anyone. I would do anything for you, but it's not enough, is it?”

Fred: “Charles, I'm…”

 Gunn: “I can't do this anymore, Fred. I'm tired of you looking everywhere but at me.”

Gunn, like Lilah, had been given a warning and an opportunity to change.  If he had done so then all might still have been well between himself and Fred.  But like Lilah he ignored both warning and opportunity because he did not see himself as being in the wrong.  He remained to the bitter end, in his own eyes, the innocent party, the one who has been lied to and betrayed.  And it was because of this that he and not Fred destroyed the relationship between them.  That was, in part at least, his ordeal.

Reaping As Ye Sow

And then there’s Wesley.  He too is driven by his insecurities but unlike Gunn his actions are more controlled and perhaps more cynical.  His wrongdoing is pretty obvious.  He chose quite deliberately to help Fred exact her revenge against Professor Seidel.  He may very well have thought that the Professor had it coming to him.  Certainly he may have considered that killing him might have saved others from sharing Fred’s fate.  But whereas Gunn took responsibility for Seidel’s death on himself to save Fred from that burden, Wesley was quite content to see her exact her own revenge.  All he was concerned with was using the opportunity to get closer to her.  Indeed, as I argued in “Soulless”, it seems to me that Wesley’s attitude to Fred fell some way short of genuine love.  Rather she seems to be more of a prize object and that he is engaged in a competition for possession of it.   Of course that does not mean that he did not want the prize very badly.  But he seemed to treasure it more because of what it meant to his ego rather than because of a genuine affection for her.  Then there was Lilah.  As I observed in “Habeas Corpses”, the two did appear to have developed a genuine relationship.  But as soon as Wesley thought that he had a real chance to win Fred over, he dropped Lilah.   But just as he might have felt he was on the verge of success with Fred, his former relationship with Lilah returns to haunt him.

Immediately after Gunn breaks up with Fred she goes to Wesley and quite deliberately consults him on the banishing texts; thus crystallizing Gunn’s own fears and perhaps also as a way of showing him that she holds him more responsible than Wesley for the fight.  Indeed Gunn almost conceded the field to Wesley when he leaves the two of them to research while he takes the flamethrower to guard Angelus.  This is Wesley’s chance:

Wesley: “Fred. What happened between me and Gunn… I didn't mean…that's not what I wanted. Could you tell him that?

Fred: “I don't think he'll listen. We're not…we're not together anymore.”

Wesley: “Oh. Not because of what I did?”

Fred: “Things just haven't been right. Not for a while.”

Wesley: “I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say I'm sorry, and I'm really trying to be, but…”

Things seem to be going well until Angelus drops the bomb:

Angelus: “Oh, come on, we all know it's for the best. Now you can go for the real prize. Mm. Man, I'm telling ya... man, if I swung that way... Look at him… all rugged and handsome and brains... man, he's damn-near perfect.

Wesley: “Thank you.”

Angelus: “Except the part about banging Lilah for the past six months. That kinda takes the shine off him.”

Fred’s response shows what she thinks of this revelation.  At first she doesn’t believe it.  Then, when Wesley’s guilty look confirms what Angelus said, her uncertain:

“No, it…it's none of my business.”

spoke volumes.  This isn’t being understanding or forgiving.  It’s saying that there is now and can never be anything between the two of them.  As Lilah observed in “Habeas Corpses” Fred doesn’t wear the color gray.  By that Lilah meant that  Fred would reject Wesley because he was morally compromised.  And of course, as, I have already shown, that he was.  But it wasn’t his cynical exploitation of Fred’s desire for revenge on Professor Seidel or his maneuvering to get between her and Gunn that caused his downfall.  No, it was the legacy of what appears to have been a genuine relationship between himself and Lilah.  Ironic isn’t it?  And perhaps that simply makes things worse for Wesley.  Wondering about the “what might have been” with Fred is part of his ordeal.  Worse still, he has now also lost any chance to rebuild a relationship with Lilah.  When the team surprised Lilah trying to bargain with Angelus at the start of the episode Wesley alone ran after her instead of making sure that Angelus didn’t escape.  When he caught up with her, he showed genuine concern about her injury.  And when she said she didn’t take Angel’s soul he believed her and was quick to defend her to the others.  It is pretty clear that Wesley still harbors strong feelings for Lilah.  So, it’s not hard to imagine the effect her death will have on him.   But by leaving Lilah in the hope of wooing Fred he only succeeded in ensuring that he lost both.  That’s pretty ironic too.  And it is also part of Wesley’s ordeal.  But most ironic of all was that it was his enthusiasm to bring back Angelus that doomed Lilah and ensured that he did loose Fred.  And this brings me to the most important aspect of this episode.

Escape from Alcatraz

Given the accuracy with which he exposed the flaws and failings of each of its individual members, it is perhaps appropriate that it is also Angelus who delivers the most pithy opinion on the performance of Angel Investigations as a team:

“Look at you—heroes. So tangled up in your own crap, you can't even find the world to save it.”

Angelus also, though this time in the guise of Angel, laid down the qualities that the team needed in the face of the Beast’s threat.  And in doing so he described the way the team should have been functioning all along:

“No more back-biting, fist-fighting, fraternizing, or vengeance. From now on, you focus on one thing: making it out alive. 'Cause I'm only going to say this once: what Angelus told you was a lie. I haven't and will never give up on you. We'll get through this thing. Together.”

But the truth was very different.  As I pointed out in my review of “Long Day’s Journey”,  the distrust the members of the team feel for one another, having its origin in their own insecurities and  mutual jealousies and hatreds, and their sense of powerlessness in the face of the Beast contributed to a feeling of despair.  This so warped their judgment that they convinced themselves – on the very flimsiest of evidence and in the face of powerful arguments to the contrary - that bringing back Angelus was a good idea.  Here too the team “fell short” of their responsibilities.  Even Gunn openly states that they made a mistake:

Gunn: “That shaman should never have been brought here. Now, instead of just worrying about the big bad Rocky, we got Darth Vampire living in the basement.”

Fred: “Bringing Angelus was our best chance.”

Gunn: “That you talking, or Wes?”

Fred: “You were pushing for it too, Charles.”

Gunn: “Then maybe I did the wrong thing.”

But in this exchange too you can detect the continued jealousies and distrust.  The implication is that Gunn now considers bringing Angel back a mistake because Wesley was the one who pushed most for it.   The problem is that, just like Gunn and just like Wesley as individuals, the team was collectively incapable of understanding where it had gone wrong and learning from its mistakes.  So, when Cordelia has a vision about the way to restore Angel’s soul without having possession of the Muo-Ping or vessel in which it was trapped, the team seize on her suggestion.  Yet they cannot say that they were not warned against doing so.  When the Shaman who took Angel’s soul was consulted, his advice was pretty clear:

Cordelia: “Angel's soul has been misplaced. I bet this sort of thing happens all the time. What do you have as a backup plan to re-ensoul somebody?”

Shaman: “There is no other way known to me. Without the Muo-Ping… you're screwed.”

This makes sense because the Muo-Ping actually contains the soul.  And the team don’t have the Muo-Ping.   But still they ignore this hole in their plan.   They also ignore the fact that they are trying to restore a human soul with black magic.  Even Angelus sees the stupidity of that:

“Have you all lost your mind? You're going to use black magic to restore my soul? People, this never goes well. Am I the only one paying attention?”

But one cannot avoid feeling that, just as with the decision to bring Angelus back, the team were so caught up in their own petty squabbles and jealousies that they were not thinking straight.  Angelus not only constituted a danger that they suddenly felt unprepared to deal with, he was also exposing the weaknesses and wrongdoing of each of them.  They would have taken any risk to get rid of him.  And when Angel seemed to be back, they almost fell over themselves to accept that he was because that was what they wanted to hear.  Can there be any other explanation for Lorne’s ecstatic:

“Yes, yes! The aura has totally changed, and the vibe screams soul! Ha ha! Oh, bless you and your beautiful land line to the PTB, honey!”

or the rush to accept his reassurances.  But in the end the team’s carelessness  only succeeded in providing cover for Angelus to escape, with all the dangers that he poses.  As Connor correctly states:

“He would go to the place where he could wreak the most damage.”

That must be a prospect that the members of the team regard with horror.  And it is because of this that they now realize that they have no option but to kill Angelus:

Wesley: “Our only advantage is Angelus might think we want to capture him. I think we're all agreed that's not an option anymore.”

Gunn: “Angelus is on the loose 'cause we brought him in this world. It's our job to take him out of it.”

Wesley: “Take the shot, any shot you can get.”

And of course that means the last chance of getting Angel back also disappears.  That too is an ordeal for the team. 

Is This Really Calvary?

There are some things about this picture that I can really applaud. ANGEL is not so much a series about redemption as a series about the struggle for redemption.  There is an important difference between the two.  On the one hand you have characters who believe they have a mission, want to succeed in it and are prepared to work and suffer for that.   On the other hand these same characters are all burdened with an accumulated baggage of experiences and inherited characteristics which together strongly affect their behavior. It is the clash between the best and the worst in them that makes for me the heart of the series.  And we see this struggle is resolved depends upon the choices that each makes.  These choices have consequences and it is when those consequences are bad that their moral accountability for them become crucial.  Otherwise we are not taking seriously the power to choose or recognizing the importance of the decisions taken.  And when those choices are so poor and are arrived at for such self-indulgent reasons, when those taking them have such a strong responsibility not only for their own redemption but for others’ safety, then the disastrous consequences flowing from those decisions are brought into especially sharp focus.

So the fact that we see, in this episode, consequences for the behavior of Gunn and Wesley is all to the good.  And there is almost a poetic justice about the fact that to an extent these consequences are visited upon their own heads.  I like even more the fact that the connection between their wrongdoing and those consequences was hammered home by the fact that everyone concerned was offered an opportunity to change and refused to take it. Gunn destroyed his relationship with Fred by responding with anger and distrust to the threat Wesley posed.  And the team collectively ignored all warnings (especially the mistake they had already made over Angelus) to compound their error and allow him to escape.

And for me the comparison between the Angel Investigations team and Lilah also works well, despite the differences between them.  After all Lilah’s sin was essentially one of selfishness and how else can you describe the wrongdoing of Gunn and Wesley in particular?

But I do have reservations.  First of all the consequences that are visited on the heads of the team for their wrongdoing are a little weak.  The language of Isaiah quoted at the beginning of this review gives a feel for what an ordeal Calvary really was.  One only needs a passing acquaintanceship with Catholic iconography (especially that of the Mediterranean world) to understand the true horror of the physical and psychological torture involved.  The comparison between it and the “ordeal” suffered by the members of the team that the writers invite by the title given to this episode makes me more than a little uneasy.  After all what do their ordeals really amount to?  Lilah’s death was the standout event of the episode.  And that will certainly hit Wesley very hard when he finds out about it.  But, as we have seen, that was a function of her own choices as well as the decisions taken by the Angel Investigations team.  In terms of the consequences produced by those decisions alone, you are essentially left with two failed romances.  Gunn broke up with Fred and Fred turned her back on Wesley.  And it is far from certain that Wesley would have succeeded in wooing Fred anyway. 

There are, of course, far greater potential consequences now that Angelus is out of the cage.  These include the prospect of the team having to kill him and, therefore Angel (though that is obviously unlikely).  But for the episode to really work the team had to be confronted with the serious actual consequences of their choices.  The whole point in showing us the self-indulgent attitude of Wesley and Gunn (as well as Angel) is that this attitude stands in marked contrast to their responsibility to others.  It seems to me therefore that any consideration of the consequences of their failings has to concentrate on what their actions cost innocent victims.  It is only this way that we can fully appreciate the dereliction of their duty.  And this was what the episode really lacked.  Yes, we get a glimpse of the chaos on the streets of LA.  But that was due to the Beast’s darkening of the sun and the team’s responsibility for that is ambiguous.  Their chief failing, as we have seen, lies in the way they brought back Angelus and then allowed him to escape.  The fact that he was so ineffective in this episode means that we cannot point to a single consequence for anyone outside Angel Investigations of those choices.  And that takes away from the impact of the episode.

The Plot

Much of the impact of this episode comes from the two big twists.  And I like the fact that the writers gave us one half way through the episode and let us assume that that was it only to give us an even bigger shock at the end.  That’s the way to keep the audience off balance.  I have to say though that the writers didn’t really play fair on the first one.  As I had already observed I didn’t think that they would have gone to the trouble of bringing Angelus back only to get rid of him quickly and before he left the cage.  That would have been anti-climactic.  So I suspected that the return of Angel was a fake.  But when he refused to leave the cage I was convinced because there was no credible reason why Angelus would do so.  Even if he knew Cordelia would persuade him to come out in the end, why go to the trouble?  The only way that that would have worked was if he needed to allay suspicions among the team and he clearly didn’t.  The assumption must therefore be that the fake-out was aimed at the audience and that wasn’t fair.  But that isn’t the end of my problems with this aspect of the episode.   Of course the writers wanted to spring the big surprise on us so they have Angel suddenly attack Cordelia.  But why did he do it straight away, while still in the basement?  Why not a more considered and effective attack at a time and place of his choosing.  As it was the botched first attack meant that if he tried to maintain the pretence he would be discovered.  But that didn't mean he had to abandon the hotel.  Yet, instead of staying there and playing cat and mouse with Connor, Gunn and Wesley he goes out into the streets of LA has a change of mind and doubles back to attack Lilah and Cordelia.  This doesn’t strike me as someone to fear – it’s someone who is weak and indecisive.

For me therefore this first twist was simply mishandled.  The second twist is much more satisfying.  It has been increasingly obvious that there was something “wrong” with Cordelia.  And the way that she persuaded Angelus to make a deal with her in “Soulless” finally convinced me that she was manipulating events.  But that simply shows that the writers were playing fair all the way.  And indeed as I have already pointed out they daringly gave us a huge hint at the beginning of “Apocalypse Nowish” when she was watching

“Some old movie. Pod People or Mutant Pod Mushrooms or something.”

This was obviously a reference to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," when humans were replaced with identical aliens born of a pod.  And none of these clues, for me, took away from the shock of the last scene.  When Lilah says that Amgelus is going to kill them all Cordelia not only kills her but shows she actually is evil. 

Cordelia: “I know. Why do you think I let him out? You stupid bitch.”

And in this context I have to say that another of the things that I like about “Calvary” is that, while the main focus is on the ordeals that Lilah, Wesley and Gunn all go through, it nevertheless moves the main arc of the season forward in a number of important ways. 

There are one or two problems with these developments.  I dislike the way that Angelus revealed the Beast was simply a minion:

“The Beast I knew was big into smash and slaughter. Had the brawn to be really good at it too, but the big picture—not his strong point. But whoa! Flash forward. Now he's all rain of fire, destroying the Ra-Tet, blotting out the sun. Big moves for a guy whose head is made out of rock.”

First of all why would Angelus reveal this at all?  He wasn’t inclined to help over the Svear Priestesses and that was before Cordelia tricked him.  Worse still,  Angelus can only say the Beast was a minion because he had a basis for comparing its behavior in the past with its present actions.  We did not.  It is after all a significant plot point that there was no information available about the Beast without Angelus.  So, neither we nor the team could be expected to guess that the Beast wasn’t following an agenda of his own.  This is an example of keeping things unfairly hidden.

Then there was the mind altering spell. I didn’t like the device when it was used in season 5 of BtVS and I don’t like it here.  Such a spell involves changing the minds and memories not only of a specific group of people like Angel.  It also means altering the physical world by changing a large and indeterminate array or research works.   It also means altering the minds and memories of a much larger and indeterminate class of person who might have read those parts of the works dealing with the Beast.  I simply find this very difficult to swallow, especially since Cordelia (or whoever cast the spell) would have no knowledge of the things, let alone the people, she was changing. 

But in the main these are comparatively minor quibbles compared to the strengths of the plotting.  The number of different plot lines that are brought together to help move this arc along is an indication of how much is going on.  Yet they are tied to one another in such a coherent way that it is clear we are dealing with a single storyline to which everything else is subordinated. And such is the depth of plotting that the revelations referred to above make sense of much of what had up until recently seemed confused and confusing.  For most of the season Cordelia’s behavior was a puzzle.  Now we can see the way she undermined Angel’s self-confidence by saying she loved him and acting jealously over Gwen while sleeping with his son, expressing remorse over that to Connor but telling Angel to “get over it”.  And it was ultimately Angel’s lack of self-confidence she played upon to finally break his resistance to the return of Angelus in “Awakening”. We can see how, by sleeping with Connor, she not only fostered division between father and son but by hinting at a connection first between Connor and the Beast and then Angel and the Beast, she sowed the seeds of distrust in the team and established her influence over Connor.  And of course now, in retrospect, it seems clear that she killed Manny, slaughtered the Svear Priestesses and stole the Muo-Ping.

These same revelations satisfy to an extent our appetite to know what is going on and yet leave open a number of important issues still to be resolved.  Who is Cordelia?  What does she want?  Why in particular does she want Angelus back, if it has nothing to do with the Svear Priestesses? What happened to the real Cordelia?  And the stakes involved in the answers to these questions really are high, not just in terms of the threat to LA and beyond.  They are high in terms of the continued survival of Angel Investigations.  Angel is gone, only to be replaced by Angelus.  No-one knows how to bring him back.  And the team is still divided and despairing.  Cordelia is working against them on the inside and Connor is very much under her influence.  On the outside, the sun is still dark, LA is overrun and full of Vampires and the Beast is still seemingly invincible.  It’s safe to say the team don’t have their troubles to seek.  I’m looking forward to it.

Overview (B)

This is another strong episode in perhaps the most consistent run of them in the history of the series.  After having dealt extensively with the flaws and failings of the team members and having shown how these contributed to their decision to return Angelus, the writers now start to show us the consequences of those decisions.  These consequences include the death of a very significant and popular recurring character.  They also spring not one but two major surprises.  These surprises result in the release of Angelus and the revelation that Cordelia was manipulating events for this purpose.  This suggests that “Calvary” is a pivotal episode in season 4 and, as befits such an episode, the writers resolve a lot of the older issues only to set up the really crucial ones, the ones that will finally reveal the nature of the threat facing the team.  However, the episode’s flaws stop it from getting a higher grade.  First of all we see here a good example of the way in which the soap opera elements in ANGEL can adversely affect it.  The writers must intend us to view Gunn and Wesley’s disappointed hopes as “ordeals” and for them, they are.  But sadly I am somewhat lacking in sympathy and that makes it hard for me to regard them in the same light.  And for an episode that is supposed to be about suffering the consequences of past actions, that is a problem.  So too is the complete lack of actual consequences from the release of Angelus.  Indeed the mishandling of Angelus’ escape is a pretty big problem with the episode.  We can only hope he becomes a more effective menace in the next one.