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EPISODE 5.01 Conviction Written by: Joss Whedon Directed by: Joss Whedon
Everything Old Is New Again As I have said before in these reviews, we often find the theme of an episode of ANGEL illustrated in a vignette that is, in terms of the plot, essentially irrelevant to the story. The teaser of “Conviction” is just such a vignette. We see a blonde girl menaced in a dark alleyway. Heroic music swells and the lone (but not caped) crusader leaps into action, heroically saves the day and dispenses sage advice to the confused and frightened victim. In many ways this scene, superficially at least, echoes the very first scene of ANGEL. In “City of…” there is another such ambush in a dark alley with the helpless saved and the evildoer vanquished. But this time there are….complications. These arrive in the form of a Wolfram and Hart SWAT team, personal assistants, lawyers and sundry other hangers-on err…employees. They quickly turn a simple and straightforward rescue into something else: Notary: “This is to confirm that you have been rescued by Angel, C.E.O. and President of Wolfram and Hart, and this is to indemnify Wolfram and Hart…” Lawyer: “If we can just get a couple pictures of you two, that would be great. (to Angel in an aside) Now, uh, the vampire that you terminated, he actually did work for one of your clients. So, but, hey! First week, no one will squawk, ok? Blonde: “You run a law firm?” Angel: “No. I mean... well, sort of. Well, just lately.” Notary: “I need you to initial here concerning your immortal soul.” Blonde: “You did this for publicity?” The counterpoint between the teaser in “Conviction” and that in “City of...” illustrates two important points for our purposes. First of all things now are more complicated than they were at the time of the series premier and secondly Angel is not in control of them. His simple rescue has been transformed into a public relations stunt on behalf of his erstwhile enemies, a stunt that is no doubt intended to boost their image among some of their clients and perhaps be used as a lever with others. And because of this Angel’s actions now look self-serving. More than that, although he has the nominal title of CEO there is a very real question mark over who is really in charge. It wasn’t only the tracking device. One of the lawyers draws the boundaries for him: “Really would prefer it if you didn't leave a rescue scenario until we had a chance to control the scene. Of course, that is your decision, sir, but…” The title, the cars, the coffee all look more like ways for Wolfram and Hart to control Angel him rather than signs of his power. All in all this was a far better illustration of the ambiguity of the situation that the former members of Angel Investigations now find themselves in then the rather clunking piece of expository dialogue we hear between Wesley and Fred at the start of Act I: Wesley: “Well, I'm still stuck back at, "Why on earth are we here?" Fred: “What, because we're crusaders against evil and now the law firm that represents most of the evil in the world has given us its L.A. branch to run however we want, probably in an attempt to corrupt, divide, or destroy us, and we all said yes in, like, 3 minutes?” The possibilities and dangers of the situation Angel and the others find themselves in are illustrated by Eve: Eve: “ OK, let me tell you how this works.” Angel: “I thought I was in charge.” Eve: “Of the Los Angeles offices of a multi-dimensional corporation. Now, I'm stressing that last word because that's what we are. We're a business, and we have a bottom line. Now, you could take your new client list and start hacking away from the top down. A lot of our clients are demons, and... almost all of them are evil." Angel: “Almost?” Eve: “Things are always more complicated than they seem, champ. You can shut this place down, but... then...well, then you wouldn't have it anymore. If the place closes down, the connections dry up. Evil goes next door. This is the catch. I'm explaining the catch so you don't have to stand around wondering what it is. See, in order to keep this business running, you have to keep this business running. And that means keeping your clients — most of them, anyway — happy. And this is really what “Conviction” is all about. BTW the name of the character is a piece of anvilling I could have done without. The temptress who presents Angel with an apple before outlining the Senior’s partner’s Faustian bargain is too obvious either to be clever or amusing. But I digress.
The Uses of Power... Without exception each new series of ANGEL has begun with an episode that foreshadows the key issue that must be faced in the following episodes. Season 5 will, I think, be no exception to this rule. The focus of this episode is not Fries and his attempts to save himself. This is simple the McGuffin. There are no great issues thrown up by his actions. His motivation is straightforward and easily understood – indeed almost comic book: Fries :”Either you get me off, or I drop the bomb.” Wesley: “Bomb?” Fries: “Let me put it this way: If they bring in a conviction, bye-bye, California. I say the magic word, the only people left standing are gonna be the ones that are already dead.” The nature of his threat is also without mystery or subtlety. The real focus is on the means available for preventing Fries from destroying LA. And in this context Fries is reduced to the status of a bystander since he personally does nothing to obstruct the search for an answer to his threat. Even the obvious moral dilemmas posed by Fries use of his own son are downplayed. The writers could have chosen to give Angel a choice between saving Fries’ son and saving LA. But they didn’t. Instead the concentration is on Wolfram and Hart, the resources it has and whether those resources can be used for good. Fries is, of course, one of Wolfram and Hart’s clients and it’s their job to get him off. The danger to LA is only their concern insofar as it might have personal implications for employees and clients of the firm and would, in any event, have been unnecessary if they had done their job. Angel and the others on the other hand have a rather different approach: ensuring no harm comes to LA and at the same time presumably seeing Fries gets his just desserts. We can, therefore, assume that there is a difference between the priorities of Angel and the firm of which he is CEO. Obviously someone needs a quick run-down on the concept of a conflict of interest. Be that as it may, however, this is where the real issue lies in “Conviction” – illustrated once more by Eve’s words: “Come on! Isn't anybody excited? This is a crazy time of fun. The most powerful evil around has given a pivotal position over to its sworn enemies. You're not scared, are you?” What the Senior partners have handed over is power. As Eve pointed out to Gunn, when Angel Investigations were safely ensconced in the Hyperion people like Fries were: “getting away with it while you were all sitting around your hotel waiting for the phone to jangle.” Now they have first and foremost the inside track. But for their connection to Wolfram and Hart they wouldn’t even have been aware of the danger let alone been able to do anything about it. But being aware of the danger is but the first step. Also available to Angel and Co now are -
The question is – can these resources be used for Angel’s purposes? As we have already seen, in the Teaser Wolfram and Hart’s resources were put fully at Angel’s disposal but simply ended up subverting him - by turning the good he was trying to do into a cheap publicity stunt for Wolfram and Hart – and controlling him. Can they not also subvert and control him and the others now in this much larger issue? Throughout this episode Angel, Wesley and the others keep on coming back to the trustworthiness of the firm. But in the end Wolfram and Hart seemed to serve them more than adequately. Their records enabled Fred to determine the true nature of the “bomb” that Fries referred to. They also allowed Angel to track down “Spanky” and thereby determine the identity of the “vessel” containing it. The Practical Science Division was put to use designing the antidote. Gunn was given the information he needed to compromise Fries’ trial and the knowledge of how to use that information effectively. And crucially the warning given to Angel by Harmony and the ability to use the company helicopter were instrumental in foiling Hauser’s ambitions to cause mayhem at the school. And here we see the significance of Hauser. As I have already said Fries was never Angel’s real antagonist here – it was Hauser. He represented the evil in Wolfram and Hart. Fries was simply selfish. His attitude was best summed up by his reaction to Angel’s comment that he would be convicted because he was guilty: “Of course I'm guilty. What the hell are you changin' the subject for? The point is, when Holland Manners was running things, this would've never got to trial. Now, I bring a lot of money into this firm, more than most, and I don't do that so I can be handed over to the frickin' law.” Being guilty was neither here nor there. What mattered was simply what he wanted. And when it came to looking after his own interested he let nothing stand in his was, not the deaths of millions of people and not even the safety of his own son. He had no agenda other than that; if Angel didn’t interfere with him, he wouldn’t threaten anyone. We are, I think, intended to believe, however, that Hauser was different because of his exchange with Angel at the end: Angel: “Agent Hauser, I'm honestly beginning to suspect that you're not part of the solution.” Hauser: “You really think you can solve the problem? Come into Wolfram and Hart and make everything right? Turn night into glorious day? You pathetic little fairy.” Angel: “I'm not little.” Hauser: “That's exactly what you are. You're minuscule. A dust mote on the shelf of that great institution. Now, you think I'm just a trigger-happy jerk who follows orders, but I am something you will never be. I'm pure. I believe in evil. You and your friends, you're conflicted. You're confused. We're not. That is why you are gonna lose, because we possess the most powerful thing in the world... conviction.” In showing us the debate between members of the former Angel Investigations team about the true nature of Wolfram and Hart, the writers seem to be suggesting that it was capable of being used for both good and evil. At one point Knox says: “We've contained more plagues than we've ever designed. I'm not all about destruction here.” So Angel’s destruction of the “true believer” in evil within the firm, his success in protecting not only Fries' son but all the innocent bystanders Hauser had intended to kill and the achievement of the main goal of containing the threat from “the bomb” through use of the firm’s resources looks as though it was intended to reaffirm the triumph of Angel and the others in using Wolfram and Hart for good. The conviction of the title refers to Hauser’s conviction in evil – and we must presume that of the Senior Partners as well – and implies that the real test is whether that conviction is matched by the former Angel Investigations team's own belief in their mission. Angel’s own verdict on this struggle is: Fred: “Is this gonna be our lives now? Fighting our own employees, our own clients? Are we really gonna do any good? Angel: “Yes, we are. We're gonna change things. We came to Wolfram and Hart because it's a powerful weapon, and we'll figure out how to wield it.”
And Its Abuses... But this cannot be taken at face value. We had already seen the corrupting effects of Wolfram and Hart’s power on Lorne and Angel in the way they reacted to the trappings of power, be that in the form of access to showbiz or a lot of really cool cars. But here we began to see the more insidious effects that the use of the firms resources to fight evil had. Take Fred, for example. At the beginning we see the following exchange between herself and Knox: Knox: “I want you feeling 100% secure running this lab.” Fred: “Yeah, that'll never happen in this lifetime. Uh, evil aside, I'm not sure that I'm much of the running-things type. I'm more the running-away-from-things type.” Yet under pressure to find an antidote she reacts very differently: “Y'all are tired, I know. I just want you to understand that in a few hours a virus is gonna start spreading in this city that'll kill every person in it, and when blood starts streaming out of our noses, eye sockets, and fingernails, I'll have the intense satisfaction of knowing that I'm dying with the only people in the world that actually deserve it! Now, focus, people! Work the damn problem!” As Knox says in answer to this outburst she is indeed the boss. Is this the effect of power? Or, take Gunn. He had simply seen himself as “muscle” and perhaps a little superfluous muscle at that, given Angel’s pre-eminence in that field. Now he has more – knowledge and skills that no-one else on the team can bring to bear. Not only that; it is his knowledge and skill that effectively save the day when perhaps nothing else could. But he got this knowledge and skill as part of a deal with the Senior Partners, presumably when he met with the conduit in the White Room: Eve: “So you're not backing out?” Gunn: “You don't know me or you wouldn't ask that question.” Eve: “I
can see why the senior partners chose you. Have fun. There are reasons why deals like these are known as Faustian pacts. Gunn isn’t stupid and he knows the nature of the Senior Partners. He knows they are not giving him something out of the goodness of their hearts and he knows there is a reckoning to come. We can be quite sure of this because of the way he deliberately conceals his deal from the others: Gunn: “Look, it's me here. They didn't evil me up. All I got stuck in my head was the law. And for some reason, a messload of Gilbert and Sullivan. Eve: “Standard. Great for elocution.” Angel: “How can you possibly know they didn't do anything else? Gunn: “'Cause I saw the man in the white room. He does a lot of scary things, but lying ain't one of them.” If that were true he wouldn’t have lied about it. He is only fooling himself. And then there is Angel himself. He only bought into this whole deal in the first place to save Connor. And the thing that really engages his attention this time is the plight of Fries’ son. When he first finds out what Fries did he can hardly contain himself: Angel: “His son. He took a lethal virus, and he stuck it inside his son.” Eve: “Hits you where you live, doesn't it? Of course I know. You lost your son. Well, gave him up.” It is this that is the key to understanding Angel’s actions at the end of this episode. When Hauser and the others arrived at the school, everyone had been evacuated. Even when Hauser tried to kill him Angel has succeeded in immobilizing him. The important point was not that he killed Hauser but that he did so unnecessarily. Not only that but when Hauser claimed that “conviction” was the most powerful force in the world Angel countered by saying that mercy was more powerful. This was not a philosophical debate. Hauser was saying that conviction was his motivation and Angel was saying that mercy was his. Mercy was simply more powerful because Angel intended winning. The mercy – here clearly meant in the sense of an act of compassion - was clearly for the boy. But Angel equally clearly had none left for Hauser, hence his parting comment that the surviving SWAT team member had seen the last of it. To that extent what we saw here was less an Angel mainly concerned to protect the helpless and more an angry and vengeful father. But perhaps not even that is the worst of it. Consider the outcome of the episode itself. I can do no better than to record Lorne’s description of that outcome: “Of course, saving the day meant getting the scumbag who was ready to sacrifice his own son off on a technicality and then returning said son to said scumbag.” There were mitigating circumstances and given the situation it may well be that nothing better could have been hoped for. But the fact remains that this outcome was far more in keeping with the Senior Partner’s agenda for Wolfram and Hart – as outlined by Eve – than Angel’s. And yet Angel and the others seem to conclude from this outcome that they can use Wolfram and Hart for good and escape corruption seems. It’s not so much that this confidence simply seems somewhat misplaced at the moment. Rather it is all of a piece with the fact that Angel and the others seem entirely unconscious of (or perhaps it is simply unwilling to admit) the obvious. They seem almost wilfully deluding themselves and that seems to be the most sinister thing of all because their own “conviction” that they are on the right path when they are so obviously not leads me to suspect that the Senior Partners’ plan is working.
The Road To Hell There are some quite obvious holes in the development of this theme, not least concerning Agent Hauser. One of the basic premises for the whole Whedonverse over the last eight years is the distinction between the human and the demon soul. The latter “rejoiceth in iniquity”. Because of greed or selfishness the human with a soul on the other hand is quite capable of doing evil. But his or her instinct is to do good. So I find Hauser’s speech that he is evil out of conviction very jarring. Moreover it does tend to undermine the theme as I have tried to outline it. The reason why it is wrong to kill humans but right to kill demons is the distinction between the redeemable and the irredeemable. To the extent that the writers blur the distinction between the human and demon souls they are undermining the rationale for this difference. In effect it becomes harder to argue that Angel was wrong to kill Hauser so casually; yet I think he was clearly intended to be seen as wrong in this behalf. Over and above that, however, the episode does seem to me to hang together thematically pretty well. What I liked especially was the way that the episode was, at first sight, a success for Angel and Co. when the more you examined the reality the less justified that confidence became. From the moment Lilah came to Angel at the end of season 4 it became obvious that season 5 would be about Wolfram and Hart's attempts to corrupt Angel. In my review of the season 4 finale I expressed reservations about whether it was believable that all the members of the team should fall into such an obvious trap almost without demur. These reservations remain. But at least here I think we begin to see the way in which Wolfam and Hart plan to trap them. In one sense Angel and the others could congratulate themselves for saving the child. But in a larger sense they had actually furthered the goals of the Senior partners, That is to say they had themselves helped evil. To an extent there is a degree of predictability about this, in contrast to the season 2 Darla arc where it was really only in "Reunion" that we fully understand Wolfram and Hart's plan. But nevertheless in "Conviction" we can see that the potential for corruption is very real, interesting and threatening. This is because it plays up to the established character flaws in the former members of Angel Investigations. For example we already know the insecurities Gunn feels about his ability to contribute to the team. At the same time, while the dangers of his actions are obvious, they are not imminent. So his actions here are both in character and realistic. So too are those of Fred. She is clearly an obsessive personality who can get so locked into things that she can lose her judgment. Once she started to focus on the scientific problem she began to play things the Wolfram and Hart way. Angel’s sensitivities over his son, his ability to obsess and lack of control of his anger are equally well established and we can certainly see how they drove his actions here. None of them, not even Wesley, seemed to bring an objective eye to the problem. Not least of the strengths here is that, while we can recognize the foolishness – indeed in Gunn’s case the recklessness – of their actions we never lose sympathy for the characters because we understand why they are behaving as they do. And because of that, while we are not sure that they will do so, we can hope they escape the trap. And herein lies the tension.
The Plotting You can, I think see, in "Conviction" certain echoes of "City of...". I have already referred to the most striking - the teaser when we see Angel saves a woman from a vampire in an alley. But that scene is there simply to counterpoint the differences between the old Angel Investigations and the new Wolfram and Hart set-up. And it is the need for the writers to introduce viewers to the realities of this new situation that we find a striking parallel to the series Premier. So, we see Fred getting lost on the way to her office. Wesley finds her and she tells him that her lab is “giganamous”. When her assistant Knox arrives Wesley asks him how long he’s been evil. We next run across Gunn who admits that he doesn’t belong there but argues that they can turn things around and make them better. Lorne passes by obviously enjoying himself with all the showbusiness side of Wolfram and Hart's empire. Then the Liason from the Senior Partners introduces herself even using an apple to emphasize the irony of her name. She points out that if Angel wants to use Wolfram & Hart's power to do good he will have to be prepared to do some bad too, saying, "In order to keep this place running, you have to keep it, well, running." So here (especially taken in conjunction with the events of the teaser) we have all the tensions and dilemmas of the Team's new situation laid out very neatly. We see the size and power of the organization, its instincts to do evil, its ability to tempt with the things that the members of Angel Investigations will like and enjoy and the threat or promise of temptation therein. And as against that we see the pious hope that Angel and the others may actually do some good. And all of this was achieved in a natural and one might almost say unnoticeable way compared with the rather clunking way in which Doyle's exposition intruded into "City Of". Not only that; the exposition was actually a very useful introduction to the plot of "Conviction" as well. When Fries in effect takes the entire city of LA hostage, Wolfram and Hart would have no trouble paying his price. He is their client after all. They want him to get off. Angel and the others have different priorities but then again they have to rely on Wolfram and Hart to achieve them. The set up helps us understand the basic dynamics at work here very well. But at the same time the fact that so much time was spent on this set up does cause a real problem. It means that the nominal plot of the episode really only gets under way pretty late on and there is a correspondingly shorter time left for it to be effectively developed. Perhaps there wasn't a great deal that could be done about that because the exposition is both good and necessary. But the problem it created was compounded by the addition of some quite superfluous scenes. Here I am not only thinking about Angel in the Wolfram and Hart garage but more particularly about the re-introduction of Harmony. Now let me immediately confess I have a problem with Harmony working for Angel. That problem, as I explained in my review of "Disharmony" is that such employment simply seems to me to be incompatible with her nature as a vampire. But leaving that aside, the scenes which saw her introduced to Angel as his new assistant serve to take time and focus away from where they should really be - the need to solve the dilemma posed by Fries' threat. Of course ultimately the plot stands or falls by the seriousness of this dilemma and choices facing our protagonists in response, the difficulties they face in overcoming them and their success or failure in doing so. And here "Conviction" is very much a curate's egg. An obvious strength is that Fries' threat places Angel and the others in a dilemma. Do they give into blackmail and connive at the release of a guilty man or do they see an even worse outcome - the destruction of LA? And this dilemma is made even more complicated by the fact that the container for the bomb is an innocent child - Fries own son (something that as I have already said Angel must take personally). So there are important things at stake. I know that someone threatening to destroy a city if they don't get what they want is a bit of a cliche. But writers resort to these conventions partly because they don't need very much in the way of introduction or elucidation and they still hit home hard. They are therefore a very efficient story-telling device. And add in the fact that an innocent child may become "collateral damage" and the audience will readily invest in the outcome. But in order to get the best effect from this set up you have to draw the audience into the dilemma. After all it is precisely in the conflict inherent here that much of the power of the plot lies. Will Angel have to sacrifice the child for Los Angeles or a just punishment for Fries either for the boy or for the city or both? If the audience is going to start asking themselves how they would react, these questions have to be addressed on screen. On the face of it these are different and conflicting goals. Normally this conflict would be handled by some sort of debate between different protagonists about how to handle the conflict. A good example of this is to be found in the BtVS episode "Choices" - does Buffy agree to ransom Willow or not? There the case against was put very forcefully and logically by none other than Wesley. Here, there is no corresponding debate. Instead we see the positions that different sides take up and we understand why they do so. For Angel, the safety of the child is not negotiable because of memories of his own son. For Hauser he simply has a job to do - prevent the bomb from going off - so no price is too high for that. The problem is that Angel's opponent takes such an extreme position:
No audience is going to take this seriously as a choice. Such slaughter is entirely unnecessary and choosing against that is a very different issue to having to choose between the life of a single boy and all of LA. So the effect of the dilemma is much reduced. Another source of tension comes from asking: not so much does Angel want to achieve, but what can he achieve. Alfred Hitchcock illustrated the importance of suspense by contrasting two scenarios involving two people sitting at a picnic table. In one we can see the bomb ticking away underneath the table, but they don’t know until it explodes. In the other the audience don't know about the bomb either until it explodes. In fact in the first scenario it doesn't even matter whether the bomb goes off - what counts is the apprehension of what might happen. The sudden explosion on the other hand is simply a set piece action. Well, throughout "Conviction" in contrast to the people sitting around the picnic table we are well aware of what could happen and we can also see that there are people in a position to do something about it. We are also aware how difficult a task that would be. From the start it seems that stopping Fries from being convicted is going to be very hard. As Fries' lawyer points out:
And the discovery that the bomb was within Fries' son added to the degree of difficulty. This was a set up that cried out for a structured narrative - investigation, understanding and problem solving that would have exploited to the full the suspense inherent in the situation. Instead what we got were a series of loosely connected scenes without any real there is little in the way of build up, little attempt to create suspense or apprehension about a solution: will it work, what if it does work and what if it doesn't? The basic information was handed to Angel on a platter. The research effort put in by Fred and Knox was standard stuff. People said "we are in a race against time" but there was no attempt to develop the idea of a race - picking up clues, engendering a sense of progress being made and posing the question: is this enough or how much time is left? Indeed for a scenario which was inherently a race against the clock, there was precious little sense of that. There was, for example, no attempt to relate progress or lack of it to the course of Fries' trial. In the end Angel's actual efforts centered on stopping Hauser killing the boy and his classmates rather than on solving any dilemma posed by Fries. And finally, in what was, I think, the biggest weakness of the episode, that dilemma and all the associated drama was solved neatly and quickly and completely out of the blue. We simply see Gunn arrive in Court and a few moments later Fries is free. It all had a sort of Deus ex Machina feel to it. It is a way out of a problem but it is unexpected in the sense of being divorced from any plot line, not terribly believeable (everyone missed the conflict of interest until Gunn arrives on the scene?) and the easy way out. It is I think simply an illustration of the general lack on interest shown by the writers in the actual plot of the piece.
Overview (B) This is hardly the first and it probably wont be the last ANGEL episode where plot is subordinated to theme. That is not to say that the plot was completely lacking in merit. The basic premise was a good, if somewhat cliched, one with plenty of inherent tension. It was simply that the writers showed little or no interest in exploiting that, even to the extent of introducing too many filler scene which helped strangled any hope of the sort of taut and structured response that the set up more or less demanded. Instead our focus was principally on Angel's rescue of Fries son and the Deus ex Machina solution was no more than a cheap way of solving the problem the writers caused by their lack of attention to finding an answer to Fries threat. So, in large part your reaction to "Conviction" will depend upon whether you are more interested in theme or plot. I have always been more interested in theme. And here there is I think enough to hold our attention. As I suggested above I still have difficulty believing our protagonists would fall so easily into this trap. And the means of corruption itself is a little predictable, if not downright obvious These two ideas perhaps being directly related). But the basic idea works well enough largely because the temptations facing Angel and the others can be related to their established weaknesses and flaws. And that is always fun to watch. |
