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EPISODE 2.05 DEAR BOY
Written by: David Greenwalt Directed by: David Greenwalt
Developing the Arc The principal advantage that a story arc has over a series of stand alone episodes is that it gives the writers time. It allows them to create a clearer sense that things are building towards a climax. This in turn makes for a greater sense of expectation and tension than can normally be found in a single episode story and a correspondingly more powerful climax. But story arcs, if they are to work, impose their own disciplines as well. One of these is that the writers must know when to turn build up into something more concrete. A second lies in the need to ensure continuity. In the "Darla" story arc we have had two episodes in which Angel has been haunted by dreams. These were not repetitive because the nature of the dreams changed. They moved from being comforting and, prima facie, innocent to something much creepier. There was, therefore, a sense of a single story moving somewhere. But if this sequence had been further drawn out it would simply have become annoying as we wondered where the writers were going. So the timing of the events in "Dear Boy" was perfect. But the creation of momentum is not itself enough. The direction in which the story moves must make sense. Of course we, the audience, do not have to see that direction at once. Keeping us guessing about what is going on is an important part of the story teller's art. But the resolution of the story must make sense not only in itself but as the conclusion of the sequence of events that preceded it. We must be able to look back on those events and see a sensible progression towards the climax. Otherwise it will be robbed of its meaning and much of its impact. And this is the acid test for the writers here. How did they fare?
The Two Agendas Well, the first thing to say is that they threw us a curve ball. All along we had been proceeding on the assumption that Darla and Wolfram and Hart had been acting in concert. Suddenly we find out that each have had their own agenda.
The storyline we had been watching develop in "First Impressions" and "Untouched" was all about control. In the former Darla sucked Angel into a comforting dreamscape, away from the world of reality so that he had trouble distinguishing it from fantasy and in his fantasy world what matters is not helping others but what he wants and enjoys. Then in "Untouched" Angel felt even more explicitly the tug of his demon past. Darla keeps him asleep and while she does so she controls his dreams. In those dreams he feels the passion, the excitement, the energy and the thrill of his former existence as Angelus. At one level this repels him because he he recognizes the significance of what he feels. He is experiencing once more what it is like to be a soulless killer. But at another perhaps deeper level he seems to be enjoying it.
And here "Untouched" raises a disturbing question. Could Darla use these dreams to reawaken the vampire instincts within Angel? At the beginning of "Dear Boy" we see clear evidence of the effect the dreams are having. Angel seems to have no energy. He spends vast amounts of time sleeping:
Cordelia: "Ah, you must be all worn out from sleeping for the last three days. It's like living with the world's oldest teenager. He can't be having a growth spurt at two hundred and forty-eight, can he?"
He is fatalistic about something turning up. His concentration has gone to pot. He dozes off and resumes his dreams in the middle of the day and is disorientated when he wakes up. He shows little or no sense of planning in how to deal with the demon Turfog and its followers and even forgets all about Gunn when he needs help. This is an individual whose higher reasoning functions are seriously impaired. He is tired, making the wrong decisions and what is worse doesn't even care he is doing so. After the fight with the demon Gunn pulled Angel up about his lack of teamwork and all he could say in reply was:
"Job got done."
It did, but no thanks to Angel. This is someone who has trouble controlling his own desires and wants, someone who is less concerned about helping others or doing the right thing. In short it is someone who is beginning to turn in on himself. Here the interesting thing is the way that he treated Harold and Claire. To Harold he was blunt to the point of rudeness, simply saying that his wife was probably guilty of adultery in a very dismissive fashion when Harold was clearly looking for reassurance. When he catches Claire almost in flagrante delicto he is equally offhand:
Angel doesn’t care that this is a marriage in trouble and that this is a couple who need help. Would it have hurt him to have tried to talk some sense into Claire instead of dismissing her so contemptuously? This is a man for whom Darla has become an obsession.
But how does this carry the Wolfram and Hart's agenda forward? Lindsey defines the plan in the following terms:
"There's no better way to a man's darkness than to awaken his nastier urges. Is there?"
This is certainly consistent with the idea that, by destroying his self-control and by reminding him of the thrill of being a vampire, Darla might allow those nastier urges to resurface and Angel might after all lose the battle for control of himself.
The next step Darla takes does fit in with the logic of this approach as she shows herself to him but only briefly and without giving him an opportunity to get close. When he sees her it only adds to his confusion. He knows it is her but logically it can't be. She is dead, dusted. This unsettles him even more. After the first encounter Angel's behavior becomes even more strange as he smells Cordelia's hair:
Angel: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I've been so out of it lately. Because of her. I saw her, here in town. Last night."
It is in this state that he confronts Darla at the hotel. And unsurprisingly here he seems dangerously close to losing control of himself. And all of this in the presence of witnesses. Indeed when Darla claimed she was Deetta Kramer and then ran out into direct sunlight into the arms of her husband this convinced both Wesley and Cordelia that Angel was losing it. But Angel himself only became more desperate to find out the truth and less amenable to others' objections. He was warned in clear and unambiguous terms about his actions:
This was good advice but, being Angel, he ignored it, as he was intended to. Instead Angel stalked Deetta, tracked her to the house and then he was framed for murder.
But if, as it seems, this was an integral part of the Wolfram and Hart master plan, it fails. Notwithstanding the clear effects that Darla's campaign has produced on Angel's reasoning abilities her appearance only serves to clarify his thoughts and sharpen his concentration. In the face of all the evidence to the contrary and Wesley and Cordelia's doubts his certainty never wavers
This Angel knows the difference between fantasy and reality and has no doubts about Darla belonging to the real world. This puts his dreams into a completely different context. He does not yet guess exactly what has been going on there but he is close enough when he says:
"Maybe I'm dreaming about her 'cause she's here."
From then on the dreams effectively loose their power over him. And, as events demonstrated, the trap laid for him not only showed no understanding of Angel's likely reaction. It also underestimated the loyalty of both Cordelia and Wesley (and even Gunn).
This is not in itself a problem. In fact it is readily believable that Holland and Lindsey misunderstand Angel and underestimate his ability to cope with their tactics. It is certainly believable that Darla would know Angel batter than they did and that she might have different ideas about how to tempt him over to the dark side. So, the real question is not whether the Wolfram and Hart’s attempted frame succeeded but whether it had a credible place in their design.
And here I have to say that the answer is far from certain. I think you can see a vague outline of where they might be leading. A confused, perhaps slightly deranged Angel finds his friends, already half-convinced he is crazy, turning on him because they think he is bad. The police will now be after him as well. He will have nowhere to go to and no-one to turn to. He will certainly be in no sort of position to help anyone. What could someone like this do but to turn to Darla for help and once back under her influence, who knows what might happen? But it is all very speculative. It leaves too much to chance to be really credible.
So, up to a point "Dear Boy" does follow the continuity of "First Impressions" and "Untouched". We have been able to trace the developing execution of Wolfram and Hart's plan through two successive episodes to the stage where they make the critical move which is intended to deliver Angel into the darkness. The fact that the plan doesn't work is neither here nor there. The problem rather is that with this final move the continuity does seem shaken.
Who is Angel?
From the point of view of further developments in “Dear Boy”, however, none of this matters because the Wolfram and Hart plan has simply been a vehicle to bring us to the real focal point of this episode and, indeed, it seems of Darla's resurrection. As the passage I have already quoted indicates Darla had very little faith in the likely success of the Wolfram and Hart plan. Instead she has always had her own agenda for dealing with Angel. And this agenda goes to the very heart of his character and indeed the series. It asks who is he really? More particularly it looks at the source of the darkness within him and where control of that darkness really lies. This is the question at the heart of the confrontation between them in the former convent near the end of the episode. But that confrontation is only the culmination of a whole series of scenes in the episode addressing the same question in a subtle, layered fashion.
A key early scene is where the followers of the demon Turfog are fighting each other
Cordelia: "Its disciples are human, they're killing each other. I think the fight is over how to fittingly worship it."
This fighting take place somewhere that Cordelia described as "sacred, in a twisted demonic kind of way". It turns out to be the site of a former convent, a place that Angel immediately shows an interest in:
The idea of worship (albeit of a demon) leading to violence evokes two separate comparisons with religious wars (the clearest being from Gunn recalling his Uncle Theo's advice). And the history of the convent deliberately mixes the sacred and the cursed. And this idea seems to me to set the scene for the central theme of "Dear Boy". I think that in it the writers are blurring the distinction between good and evil, not as concepts in themselves but in the way they find expression in the world. In particular the writers seem to be asking whether there is not also a blurring of the distinction between evil and good within Angel. We have Liam and we have Angelus and we have Angel. Three persons in one. Each is different. But none can be separated from the other. They are, if you like, an unholy trinity. Everything that Liam was went into shaping Angelus. And everything that Angelus was is present now in Angel. The inter-reaction between these three characters produces many interesting questions. For example how was the way Angelus related to his father shaped by the way Liam saw him? Where did Angel's interest in art come from? But in the final analysis there is only one question that is important - what was the source of the darkness; where did Angelus' particular cruelty come from? Did it only come from the demon?
I have already quoted the passage near the beginning of the episode in which Angel betrays his detailed knowledge of convents in Los Angeles, their history and especially the evil events that occur in them. Indeed he readily admits his fascination for the subject. This fascination obviously has its source in Angelus' preoccupations. Just before he turns Drusilla he muses:
"Convents they're just a big old cookie jar."
(BTW did they have cookies in mid-18th century England?). Later he brings Darla to St Bridget's and tells her
"You remember how much I like Convents."
The truth is that Angelus' fascination has less to do with a convenient source of food and more to do with his need to corrupt good. When he sees Drusilla for the first time his reaction is interesting:
In the same way as he mocked God by carving the cross on the cheeks of his victims in the late 18th century, for Angelus here too goodness was a motivating force for him to do evil. And the greater the good the greater the evil he felt impelled to inflict.
The writers have, therefore, it seems to me tried to make a connection between the ensouled Angel and his fascination with Convents and the excesses of cruelty committed by the vampire. It's almost as if they were asking: where does the good within Angel begin and the evil end?
But, as I have already said, in doing so they were simply laying the groundwork for the real exploration of the issue which comes during the battle of wills between Darla and Angel in the underground water tank. During this confrontation each have very different objectives and those objectives are informed by what they think of themselves. Darla's is revealed in her talk with Lindsey:
She still wants him. She still hankers after the time when they were together and shared everything. There is only one thing standing in the way of that - his soul. That she still hates. But she is now sorry that she rejected him along with his soul. For her the soul is not the essence of Angel. It changed nothing fundamentally. Deep down she believes he is the same Angelus that she knew and loved (at least loved insofar as a vampire is capable of love).
"This is no life Angel. Before you got neutered you weren't just any vampire. You were a legend. Nobody could keep up with you, not even me. You don't learn that kind of darkness. It's innate. It was in you before we ever met. You said you can smell me. Well I can smell you too. And my boy is still in there and he wants out."
On this reasoning Liam and Angel and Angelus were all fundamentally the same person. The only difference between them was that the human soul "neutered" that person by preventing him from fulfilling his dark potential. In this she is informed by her own experience. Reincarnated as human she is nevertheless as cold blooded a killer as she ever was, as witnessed by the calm way she passes off her "husband's" death with a joke. He wasn't a person he was only an actor. As she says herself:
"I'm still me"
Angel's attitude on the other hand is equally informed by his own experiences. In response to Darla saying she hasn't changed he responds:
Here he is, of course, talking about himself. It is because of his own experience that he makes the assumption that possession of a soul bring about a fundamental change in Darla. For him the soul is the essence of the person. He still feels the destructive impulses from the demon within. You can see this by the way he treats Darla when he first drags her to the water tank. He feels a passion for her, he vamps out and feeds from her and kisses her violently, just like in the dreams. The difference is that he is appalled by what he did. He calls enough, stops himself and reverts to his normal face. This difference is made by the soul. It doesn't just impose shackles on him that, in Darla's words, he can escape. It changes him fundamentally. And for Angel the proof of that fundamental difference lies in the comparison between his relationship with Darla and his relationship with Buffy.
Later there is an interesting echo of Darla's reference to Angel thinking he is touching God. When, to prove that he really is no different to herself Darla produces a cross and burns him she says: "God doesn't want you". Again we see the use of religious metaphors to express the duality in Angel's nature. Angel aspires to goodness and to humanity and this is identified as touching God. But at the same time religious symbols are harmful to Vampires and this symbolizes God's rejection of him.
And in this context I have to say a word about Kate as well. Since we last saw her in "To Shanshu in LA" her career has gone further downhill and she has been assigned to a post she refers to as "Siberia". Her friends and colleagues ignore her. She seems to be something of a laughing stock. Of course how she got a high profile murder case to run and a large SWAT team under her command is, by this token, something of a mystery but we will let that pass. Apart from this, however, her character hasn't changed much. Indeed in this episode we have confirmation of the real nature of her suspicion of Angel. She is neither mad nor bad. There was very good circumstantial and direct evidence that Angel had committed a horrible murder. She knew as a vampire what he was capable of so she had no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. But when confronted by solid evidence in the form of the picture of Darla and Gunn's persuasive argument about Angel's inability to enter the Kramer's house if they were still alive, she listened and acted reasonably. It is clear that by the end of the episode she no longer believes Angel to be guilty of the crime. But the basic objection she enunciated in "To Shanshu in LA" has not changed.
Angel is not a part of society. He acts outside the law. Because he does so, to Kate he is just as much a danger to ordinary members of society as the things he is fighting. This is a credible point of view, especially coming from someone with her history. And what makes it interesting is that Kate is unambiguously a white hat who is thereby placed in conflict with Angel. And this conflict is not so easy for him to deal with as the conflict between him and a black hat. But in this particular instance the real importance of Kate as a character is that it reinforces the essential ambiguity of Angel's situation. It highlights the link between his actions and evil consequences, albeit ones unintended by him.
I do not think that this episode resolves the debate between Angel and Darla over the true nature of the former. There is evidence and argument on both sides. The answer will only be given over the course of time. But that doesn't mean that the issues have been left hanging. Just before Darla made her escape into the light Angel threatened her:
"Darla, if you hurt anyone else I'll kill you"
This could simply have been Angel fulfilling his role as protector of the innocent, in the same way as he killed the blind assassin from "Blind Date." But it soon became obvious that there was more to his threat than this. Ultimately it seems to owe more to anger than justice. When Darla taunted him about the nasty things he said in his dreams he lost it and grabbed her again. This time the only thing that made him let her go was the cross. The anger was building up inside him. Who knows how long he was sitting brooding over these events in his room when Cordelia and Wesley came to the door. But certainly his anger had not cooled off, as is shown by the ominous words he utters to them:
"There's going to be a lot of trouble and I say bring it on."
Perhaps this will be the acid test for Angel. Darla may not be right in thinking that a desire for cruelty was always part of Liam. But Angel may not be right either in thinking that he is a fundamentally different person now to the demon. Is the vampire heritage still there? Is there an instinct for violence and destruction within him? His path has been upwards towards redemption. By playing the forces of evil at their own game, by unleashing the anger and violence within is he heading off that path? Is that what the anagogic Host meant? Certainly that is the direction this episode points in. We will see.
Past and Present
There is really no denying the importance, the interest or indeed the sheer power of the subject matter of "Dear Boy", both in its own terms and in the context of the development of the series. This season started out with an attempt by Wolfram and Hart to undermine Angel's self-confidence and control, the more easily to win him over to their side in the forthcoming Apocalypse. And that of course is still the underlying issue here. But more important and frankly more interesting is the way that the writers have approached this issue. They have done so by looking at some pretty fundamental issues. ANGEL as a series is about a struggle of its titular vampire first of all to cope with a burden of darkness and then to achieve forgiveness for the way that darkness destroyed the lives of so many. It is, therefore, a story about change and progress. But the fact that the darkness belongs not just to the past but is present within Angel now must necessarily affect our understanding not only of Angel as a character but also of the struggle he faces as he tries to change. It emphasizes that this is not just a quest to achieve things for the benefit of others. It is a quest for Angel himself to become a different individual. Indeed it almost seems to say that unless he changes himself in this sense, he cannot achieve forgiveness. And this necessarily means understanding the relationship between the soul and the demon within him. It means looking at the extent to which the demon is not just a helpless bystander but is still capable of influencing Angel, if not by controlling his actions with rational thought then by influencing those actions by the pull of personality traits that it has moulded. And that is a much more subtle, and therefore more difficult, type of influence to defeat. And here we see unambiguously laid out the idea that the demon does indeed wield just such influence. How strong that influence is and how it can ultimately be used to shape Angel's actions are not yet clear. The writers are still at the point of asking us to consider the possibilities and they are nowhere near showing us their full hand. In this context it must be said that Angel's sense of right and wrong seem as intact as ever. Nor is there any credible basis for supposing that his moral sense may be so compromised by his vampire past that he could be prevailed upon to do anything evil. But the writers have clearly thought through the questions raised by this episode in considerable detail so I await with interest future developments.
But it's not only the ideas themselves that demand our attention. It is the way that they are opened up and explored. And this is where Darla is also so effective as a device. There is a very personal connection between herself and Angel. They know one another so intimately that no two people could be closer. At the same time they are on the opposite sides of the argument. And this is not an intellectual argument; it is deeply personal. For Darla this is her chance to get back what she once had but lost. For Angel this is about defending the new life and the new purpose that he has created for himself - the thing that has pulled him out of the darkness and despair that he knew. In the same way an adversarial justice system brings out the truth, so too the clash of ideas and values between these two helps us see Angel more clearly than before. But "Dear Boy" is more than just a series of arguments. The debate about Angel's true nature is well illustrated by the very clever and subtle use of flashback which shows us show how Angel's past as Angelus meshes with aspects of the Angel we see today. It is the flashbacks which show us that, far from being Darla's lapdog, someone who simply followed in her evil, we are at last being shown why the Master described the latter as the most vicious creature he had ever met. The refinement of his cruelty to poor Drusilla was beyond Darla's imagination and seemed almost to frighten her. It is the flashbacks which illustrate the fact that Angel's preoccupation with Convents and the evil they can attract are an echo of Angelus. This is important because we are much more likely to believe what we can see with our own eyes than what we hear characters (who each have their own agenda) saying. Angel is one of the good guys. We know this because we have seen him help people. Therefore when someone says that he harbors within him a tendency to evil, we might not be inclined to accept it. But when we see the evidence there we have to take that evidence seriously and it makes a more powerful impression.
The Plot
"Dear Boy" featured a pretty good self-contained storyline about Wolfram and Hart's attempt to frame Angel. The thing I liked most about it was the way in which it kept on taking different turns. At first it seemed that the principal focus of the episode would be on Darla's mind games with Angel. At the beginning of the episode we were shown how much Angel was "out of it" because of the dreams he was having. This was quickly followed by the first sighting of Darla at the promenade and the confrontation Angel had with her at the hotel. It was then that we were hit with the first surprise - Darla was human. The writers had been very clever here. No-one actually said she was still a vampire – we simply assumed it. Every time we had seen her beforehand it had been dark. We, therefore, had no reason to suspect the contrary. Indeed it was so unexpected that, when Darla ran into the light, I started looking for other explanations including a magical immunity to direct sunlight or even the possibility that she was a double. But from the point of view of plot development the most effective part about this twist was the way it seemed to confirm that Darla was indeed trying to push Angel over the edge. Wesley and Cordelia were already aware of their boss' weird behavior and the fact that he was claiming to have seen something that was seemingly impossible (Darla returned to the world as a human) sharpened their doubts. Wesley was especially important here. He was the voice of calm and reason, the perfect counterpoint to Angel's disorientation and lack of concentration. These differing perspectives looked as though they were going to be the focal point of the conflict in this episode.
And at first the scene at the Kramer's house seemed to promise a continuation of the same pattern of trying to persuade Angel that he is loosing it. But things changed very quickly. As soon as Darla started talking to Lindsey through the microphone it becomes obvious that something serious was going to happen. So it did and we saw the murder, the frame and the escape in rapid succession. When Angel took off from the Kramer house it looked as though the rest of the episode would follow a fairly standard storyline with Angel trying to convince first the rest of the Fang Gang and ultimately the police of his innocence. There was nothing especially interesting in that. As it turned out, however, the murder and subsequent frame attempt were no more than a plot device to launch two very different and much more interesting confrontations. The key one, between Angel and Darla, I have already dealt with at some length. Its interest lay in the balance of argument and in the interaction of the two principals. Angel, as he proved several times, was the one who was physically in control of the situation. But he was also the one under pressure. He knew what Darla was doing and, because he was physically in control, he could confront her on his terms. But he was also tired, angry, perhaps a little shocked at the turn of events and what they revealed to him had been going on. And Darla was pushing him very hard. Angel's actions were therefore ultimately unpredictable. This is what really added spark to their scenes together.
The second confrontation, between Kate and the remaining members of Angel Investigations, was in part something of a tidying up exercise. Its principal purpose was to allow for the resolution of the "frame". That avoided the same sort of highly unsatisfactory situation that arose at the beginning of season 3 of BUFFY. There, after having been wanted by the police for the murder of Kendra, Buffy returns to Sunnydale only to be told that for some undefined reason all charges have been dropped. And the neat thing about the resolution here is that while it involved one small "deus ex machina" in the form of the picture of Darla, the real breakthrough was a piece of solid gold reasoning. How Angel had got into the Kramer house had been bothering me but the explanation was elegantly simple.
There was, however, one jarring moment and this concerns the reaction of Wesley and Cordelia to the potential of Angel going bad. First of all there was nice continuity between " Eternity" and this episode in the explicit recognition that Angel might go bad "as he has done before". Wesley and Cordelia have obviously considered the possibility (and let's face it why wouldn't they) and prepared against it. But they are not holding it personally against Angel. As Cordelia puts it:
"99% of the time he's good. And he's done a lot for us."
But the uncritical way they both maintain that Angel is innocent in front of Kate does stretch credibility.
Cordelia: "He wouldn't. Angel could never do a thing like that."
Wesley:" He's not that type of person."
As Angel sure. But Angelus? And only a few moments before uttering these very words weren't they both expressing the fear that he had gone bad? Putting up a common front is one thing but asking for the evidence rather than giving a flat denial would have been much more reasonable.
My principal problem, however, remains. I cannot work out how the frame fitted in with Wolfram and Hart's plan and I found that distracted from concentration on the events which unfolded afterwards. To that extent the scenario was a little jarring. But in the end it proved surprisingly effective because it was preparing the way for a radical change of direction for the episode.
Overview (A)
In following on from the previous two episodes, "Dear Boy" looked as though it would concentrate on an interesting but limited question; namely the ability of Angel to control his darker impulses. Instead, as the episode progressed, it became apparent that it was dealing with altogether more fundamental questions. These questions concern the true source of the darkness within. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly this is the first time that the series has addressed these issues in such a direct manner. And the way in which it did so, especially through the well judged use of flashbacks, was quite compelling. Moreover the context meant that this was not a dry academic debate. There was something important at stake for both Angel and Darla in the argument between them. Darla is attacking Angel's whole sense of self, the importance he attached to his soul and the sense of hope that this gives him for the future. Angel for his part is trying to save Darla by making her understand that her own deeply cherished sense of values are wrong. It is this clash that gives the episode the sense of tension that was so necessary when dealing with the subject matter. In terms of plot there were certainly some rough edges. The part of the plot where Angel was framed felt more than a little shoehorned into it. It certainly doesn't make a whole lot of sense at the moment. But at least things were tidied up neatly enough rather than left hanging over future episodes. Everything moved along at a brisk pace and the twists and turn of the story meant we were never quite sure where the episode was going. So it certainly sustained my interest throughout.
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