EPISODE 4.01

DEEP DOWN

Written by: Steven S. DeKnight

Directed by: Terrence O'Hara

The World is a Cruel Place

Near the end of this episode Angel confronts the son who had taken a particularly nasty and undeserved revenge on him and says:

“Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be.  It's harsh, and cruel.  But that's why there's us - champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.”

And here in a few short sentences we get the entire theme of “Deep Down”: life sucks.  The episode starts with an idyll.  Angel has his whole family around him, including Wesley, Cordelia and Connor, those who in reality have deserted or been taken from him.  They are gathered around what looks like a typical Thanksgiving Table.  Thanksgiving is, of course, when we give thanks for the gift of life, as represented by food, and celebrate both home and family.  And in the continual references to food and family in this scene we see that this too is where  the writers’ emphasis lies.  The meal  is a moment of particular happiness for Angel:

"I wanna freeze this moment. You , Connor, all of us - safe and happy and together. Considering what we went through over the summer..."

But this is not the reality. It’s a hallucination.  And what works best about this scene is that the representation of the ideal serves to highlight the grimness of the reality.  Little by little discordant references are introduced – as the food passes Angel by and his hunger becomes more and more pronounced, the family gathering vanishes and the water comes to dominate all.  And to sum up Angel’s situation Connor picks up his earlier comment and gives it a very unpleasant twist:

“Freeze the moment, dad. It'll last forever."

Instead of being left forever with memories of a pleasant interlude, Angel is forced to confront the possibility of being trapped in a box under the seas, also forever – and all at the hands of his own son who appears to take an almost malicious relish in it.  This is indeed the harshness and cruelty of what is as compared to what ought to be.

Then we see Angel meeting Cordelia the way he should have in “Tomorrow”, with the latter declaring her love for him:

“I can't remember what it was like….not knowing you, not being close to you. I'm in love with you Angel. Deep down I think I have been for a long time. I needed you to know that."

But again reality intrudes when Angel has flashes of what really did happen when he was ambushed by Connor and eventually overpowered.

Angel’s third hallucination involves Connor.  We see vampires attacking the pair of them and father and son in turn fighting like a team. When a vampire comes up on Angel's blind side with a stake, Connor calls out a warning. Angel bats the stake aside and they quickly finish off the vampires together.  Again this is the story of what should have been, instead of what was.  And again we are slyly reminded of this by snatches of conversation such as when Angel says:

            “I’m not going anywhere.”

And Connor replies

            “No, you’re not.”

Of course, none of this is new to Angel.  It is in fact his life story.  As we saw in “Prodigal” he was hardly a paragon of virtue; but the fate that overtook him was grossly disproportionate to his fault.  Indeed the depths of misery he faced when he had his soul restored was precisely because he was basically a decent human being.  When he finally showed signs of getting his life together in Sunnydale, that too ended is disaster.  And when he felt that redemption was in his grasp, it seemed to be torn from him by the events at the end of "the Trial".  Even the joy of becoming a father ended in abject misery.  It’s no wonder self-pity threatened to overwhelm him:

"Life should be beautiful and bright. But, no matter how hard I try, everything I touch turns to ashes."

A Better Place

But the corrective here is at hand in the form of Lorne’s words:

“Snap to, buckaroo. The only one turning to ashes is that patricidal pup of yours.”

Yes the world sucks.  Angel and those in his orbit seemed destined for more then their fair share of misery.  But Lorne is saying that what is important is not what happens to you but what you do in response.  And to illustrate that point we must return to Angel’s hallucinations.  In these he is not just a passive figure to whom things happen.  He reacts – violently.  With Cordelia he first professes his need for her, but just when we think this is need in the emotional sense, he leans in to kiss the side of her neck, then vamps out and sinks his teeth in, drinking from her.  He pulls back and says "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry” before he returns to feeding.  Of course it is  here that we become aware of the fact that he is hungry.  But in biting Cordelia Angel is exhibiting no mere gag reflex.  He is aware of what he is doing and is perfectly in control of it.  He is simply willing to sacrifice even Cordelia to his appetite.   Then, with Connor, Angel turns into a smiling assassin.  He kills his own son presumably in revenge for the way that he had betrayed him.  But even more chilling than the fact of the murder was the calm, almost cold-blooded way that he did it.

The important point here is that, in both cases, the cruellest, most shocking and nastiest parts of the hallucination were these violent attacks by Angel rather than the realization of the trouble he was himself in.  In other words, in contrast to the scene in the teaser,  the writers concentration here is not on the difference between the way the world is and the way it ought to be.  Rather it is on Angel’s reaction to it.  In his hallucinations we see Angel’s need for food and desire for revenge.  The brutality of these feelings is no doubt magnified by the demon within.  But what makes them so shocking is that we know they are not the way Angel would behave.  Indeed, on both occasions in his underwater tomb he reacted with horror to the vision of his own violence. He would never sacrifice Cordelia for his own selfish reasons and he would never seek that sort of brutal revenge on Connor. To take up the words quoted at the beginning of this review, it is by showing us Angel reacting in this way that the writers emphasize that he now does live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.

So, when Angel grabs Wesley by the throat but subsequently recognizes him, he allows his former ally to pull his hand away having now let go of the outburst of anger that overtook him in “Forgiving”.  Then, when Wesley offers Angel his blood he takes it.  But he does not abandon himself to blind hunger.  He doesn’t vamp out and only takes some blood, even though the quantity he took was clearly not sufficient to restore his health or even assuage his hunger.  In this Angel rejects the desire for revenge  and the need for blood he gave in to in his hallucinations.  In doing so he says that his time at the bottom of the sea, when he could contemplate his own miserable situation as well as dealing with the ways he was tempted to react to it, lent him:

            "a kind of M. C. Escher perspective." 

The use of the word "perspective" here is an interesting one.  In one sense it can mean the art of depicting on a one dimensional surface, a three dimensional object so as to express the different dimensions.  In another it means the perception of how one thing relates to another.  M. C. Escher was famous for using perspective in the first sense to explore perspective in the second.  About this he once said:

"I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity."

I am sure you will see the significance of the first sentence in the context of what Angel said to Connor in the quote with which I began this review.    In his works Escher created structures such as a waterfall where the water appears to flow uphill and a building with an impossible staircase which rises or falls endlessly yet returns to the same level.  He described the latter in the following terms:

"Here is a perspective drawing, each part of which is accepted as representing a three-dimensional, rectangular structure. The lines of the drawing are, however, connected in such a manner as to reproduce an impossibility. As the eye pursues the lines of the figure, sudden changes in the interpretation of distance of the object from the observer are necessary."

As in all trompe l'oeil art, the purpose of perspective here is to trick the eye - it is a game that artists use with spectators to raise questions about perception - how and why we see things.  In looking at the Escher waterfall we can at first see no mistakes, but what we are presented with is a clear impossibility.  So by this trick of perspective Escher forces us into taking a second, a third and a fourth look and really ask how does water move downhill.   At the bottom of the Ocean Angel found himself in a position in which things could hardly be worse. But he was forced to look again and again and again at what his situation really meant.   By doing he concluded that he didn't have to be moulded by the evil done to him.  He could rise above it.  Connor's perspective was life sucks - Holtz was dead and his real father was a monster.  So he had to get some revenge for the suffering caused to him.  In doing so he simply continued the destructive cycle that he felt had victimized him.   That is where Angel's perspective differed from Connor's.  Each had suffered but what made the difference between them was not the reality but how each saw himself as relating to that suffering - their perspective on it.  And by the perspective Angel gained, he gave the lie to Justine’s assertion:

“He'll turn on you.  He won't be able to help it. That's what he is. Sooner or later he will turn on you and all your friends."

In these words Justine reveals far more about herself than she does about Angel.  To illustrate this I can do no better than to quote the following exchange between herself and Wesley:

Wesley: "You were always a slave, Justine. You just couldn't see the chains."

Justine: "Thanks, Swami, I'll meditate on that."

Wesley: "You think she would be disappointed?"

Justine: "Who?"

Wesley: "Your sister. That's where it all began, isn't it? Sister murdered by a vampire, consumed by a need of revenge..."

The murder of Justine’s sister was another one of those “ought not to have been’s”.  But it was.  And once it had happened the important question for Justine was how to react to it.  She did so by acting on the hatred that her sister’s murder engendered.  To wage war on creatures that fed on other humans, to prevent others from suffering her sister’s fate would have been a courageous and praiseworthy response.  But to let her actions be dictated by blind hatred, regardless of the merits of its target, this was as Wesley pointed out a form of slavery.  It was to become a reflection of what happened to her sister – and by extension the cruelty and harshness that exists in the world.  It was to make herself no better than her sister’s murderers.

The counterpoint between Justine and Wesley could not be clearer.  It isn’t that Wesley himself is against violence.  He clearly meted out some fairly rough “justice” to Justine herself by keeping her chained and gagged in his closet.  And it’s not hard to guess how he persuaded her to betray Holtz and reveal the secret of his death and Connor’s revenge on Angel.  The difference between Wesley and Justine, however, is why he behaved as he did.  Wesley was not acting out of a spirit of revenge.  Certainly, as he reminded Justine, he had every reason to hate her for the way she betrayed him and slit his throat.  And for reasons that are all too obvious to need repeating, he can have no real love for Angel.  But in spite of this Wesley’s still wanted to release Angel.  And while he was willing to do whatever it took to do so, once his mission was accomplished he had no further interest in Justine.  He even gave her some good (if not especially friendly) advice.  The fact that Wesley was no longer part of Angel Investigations was another of those things that shouldn’t have been but was.  As we were reminded here, because of Justine, Angel had lost his son and had tried to smother Wesley with a pillow.  Wesley could have felt anger and resentment against one or both of them.  Indeed he almost certainly does.  Ever since the events of “Sleep Tight” Wesley has shown no sign of remorse or even self-doubt.  When asked about Angel he says:

Wesley: "I have no idea where Angel is, Lilah, or what happened to him.  And I really couldn't care."

Lilah: "Wow. That was cold. I think we're finally making progress. Come on. Doesn't it bother you just a little bit? The not knowing?"

Wesley: "That part of my life is dead. Doesn't concern me now."

Wesley was certainly being economical with the truth here.  What he said was nothing but the truth but it was far from the whole truth.  He didn’t know where Angel was then but he was making considerable efforts to find him.  Moreover he allowed a hungry vampire to feed from him and that was a very considerable risk to take for anyone.  We need not, however, doubt him when he disavows any personal concern for his former colleagues.  This fact can be more than adequately demonstrated by the following exchange:

Gunn: "What took you so long to tell us about Connor?"

Fred: "You knew what he could do to us."

Wes: "You're human. He wouldn't have hurt you. I thought you were safer not knowing."

Fred: "We were safer? You really don't care anymore, do you?"

No, I don’t think he did.  His reasons for helping Angel were far from personal.  Justine was quite wrong in her assumptions about Wesley.  He was not interested in getting back into Angel Investigations or any other sort of “happy ending”.  His reasons are summed up in his challenge to Justine:

"You can continue to be a slave, Justine or you can live your life. Your choice."

Wesley accepted what had happened.  It was wrong and it had tragic consequences all round.  But he wasn’t going to spend his life a slave to those events.  He rescued Angel because it was the right thing to do and when it was done then so was he with Angel and the rest of his former friends.

Connor’s Future

But while we can see the theme of the episode reflected as much in the counterpoint between Wesley and Justine as in Angel’s sufferings, it is I think no coincidence that it was so clearly enunciated by the vampire to his son.  Connor in many ways has the potential to be a formidable force against evil (I refuse to take ME’s preferred word “Champion” seriously).  He has all the attributes necessary.  At the start of the episode he saves the day by intercepting an axe aimed right at Fred and returns it with interest, decapitating a demon who was too stunned by his speed to react.  And when  he, Gunn and Fred went after Marissa his hunting skills are even more pronounced.  Not only was he one step ahead of everyone in finding the quarry, he clearly outclassed them all in physical abilities.  But, at the same time, his behavior in “Tomorrow” and “Deep Down” must lead us to question whether these talents are matched to a willingness to use them properly.  As Gunn at one point observed:

“Offspring of two vampires. Last time I checked that's not supposed to happen. And jumping off a six-story without busting your coconut kind of sways me to the side of not just a boy. I mean, come on, Fred. His nickname back in Quortoth was the destroyer. And unless you put Conan in front of that, I'm guessing it's not a good sign."

Fred in particular (for most of the episode at least) treats Connor as just a teenager who has lost his father and desperately wants him back.  This is, however, just one more example in this episode of something that should be but is not.  Connor wants Angel where he is and far from being concerned to find him is only concerned to prevent him from being found.  Killing Marissa was hardly wrong.  But the deceit in letting her escape, killing her and pretending that he had no choice was, especially since it was designed to prolong Angel’s suffering.  That was not because Connor was intrinsically evil.  Fred reacted violently when she discovered the truth:

"I can't imagine what you've been through, Connor, being taken away by Holtz, raised in that place. It must have been horrible. I know you're still hurting but  I promise, it's not nearly as much as you're gonna hurt for what you did to your father."

But in doing so she really missed the point.  For Connor, Angel was not his father – Holtz was.  Connor’s reaction to Angel was conditioned not by anger over a single incident.   When the latter told him how he had spent his summer Connor’s reaction was curious:

Connor: "You deserved worse."

Angel: "Because I killed Holtz - except I didn't. I tried telling you that while you were busy offshore dumping me, but I didn't know the whole score.  Holtz killed himself. Actually he had your buddy Justine do it with an ice pick. Just to make you hate me."

Connor: "Even if …you still deserved it."

Connor doesn’t put up much of a struggle before accepting what Angel says.  It’s almost as if he knew all along.  But the anger and hatred he felt was real all the same.  It seems to me that here we see all the attitudes inculcated in “Stephen” – hatred of vampires and a desire for justice for the wrongs done to Holtz – surfacing.   From his perspective, Angel being alive and Holtz being dead was also an example of a state of affairs that shouldn’t be but was.  Connor had no control over these feelings, but he was responsible for the way in which he reacted to them.  And here we come to perhaps the real nub of the episode.  As we have seen there are four characters who have, or believe they have, been dealt with harshly and cruelly.  As Angel demonstrates that harshness and cruelty does not have to dictate how they behave.  He describes to Connor the ethos of Angel Investigations as set out in the opening quote of this review.  He adds:

“You're not a part of that yet.  I hope you will be. I love you, Connor. Now get out of my house."

Angel’s motive in expelling his son remains to be seen.  If we are to take what he says at face value,   he is not being dictated to by feelings of revenge, but rather by a hard headed assessment of how to do the best thing for his son.  He chooses to leave Connor on his own as a way of bringing home to him an important lesson.  He is emphasising the sovereignty of the human will and the responsibility that goes with it.   If Angel can make the right choice in response to evil then so too can Connor.  And if he doesn’t do so he cannot plead what happened to him in  Quortoth to absolve him from that responsibility. But it struck me as very odd that Angel gave his little speech to Connor shortly after threatening him:

"Wesley told me everything that's been going on. So, as far as I'm concerned what you *deserve* rests on one answer: Did you do something to Cordelia?"

Suppose Connor had done something to Cordelia.  The implication here is that Angel would have done something very nasty to him.  Did Angel really think that what would be no better than personal revenge was some sort of act of justice?  I couldn’t.  Then what becomes of Angel’s proud boast about showing others the world as it should be.  Wouldn’t it ring a little hollow?  And isn't the juxtaposition of Angel's expression of concern and hope for his son with his expulsion of him a little hard to take?  Is there not a degree of ambiguity about this ending that suggests Angel's words cannot after all be taken at face value?

A Better Angel?

At the beginning of the series, Angel’s mission seemed a fairly simple one – do enough good that you even the score for all the evil Angelus did and you become human as a reward.  There was nothing wrong in that concept but it did seem limited.  Season 2, however, saw a revolution in which it was abandoned in favor of a very different one.  In “Epiphany” Angel described it in the following terms in a conversation with Kate:

Angel: "Well, I guess I kinda worked it out.  If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is - what we do, now, today.  I fought for so long.  For redemption, for a reward  finally just to beat the other guy; but... I never got it."

Kate:  "And now you do?"

 Angel:  "Not all of it.  All I wanna do is help.  I wanna help because  I don't think people should suffer, as they do.  Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness  is the greatest thing in the world."

Here we see the writers drawing out the implications of this mission statement.  And in doing so they concentrate not on the emotional aspects but the moral.  In fact this episode can be read as rejecting what often seems the central tenet of BUFFY as a series – the importance of feelings.  Fred was so taken up by the way she felt about Connor that she herself reacted with anger.  This was not only uncomfortably close to Connor’s own ways of behaving but was also self-defeating.  It was the last thing to make him change.  Instead Angel cautioned against reacting on the basis of what you feel and instead on the basis of what was right.  And his definition of "right" was based not what he or anyone else had suffered at the hands of others or what he felt about that treatment but rather on the principle that there are standards of behavior that are more important than that.  This is a particular example of the general message of the whole series – a message that insists on the rejection of self and the elevation of empathy with others as the arbiter of behavior.  As such it has in microcosm the strengths of this message.  Because it never endorses a mainly emotional reaction to situations it avoids the overly sentimentalized or histrionic.  It  also avoids being too simplistic or moralistic.  Admittedly it is not especially profound to say that a person should do the right thing rather than allow their actions to be driven by the evil that has happened to them.  Nevertheless there are real issues of right and wrong in "Deep Down" and they are (in the main) dealt with honestly and fairly.  We are given a fair and balanced understanding of why each character reacts as they do.  We see the attraction of revenge at the same time as being given a solid understanding of why it is wrong.  So, we are left not with the empty and false feeling of moral superiority that so much television seems to strive for these days but a sense of genuine exploration of the moral context in which human beings operate.

That is not to say that the writers' portrayal of the theme is without problem.   As I have already said, the whole theme of “Deep Down” was laid out pretty explicitly in the quote with which I started this review.  I appreciate that often writers are afraid of burying their point in subtlety and seeing viewers miss what they are trying to say.  I think, however, that even without Angel’s words to Connor, the theme of the episode was clear enough and hammering the point home so blatantly does come close to anvilling.  Moreover, in the same quote Angel presents doing the right thing as the prerogative of “the Champion”.  I have never been comfortable with this term and its use here shows one reason why.  It suggests that there are some people who are endowed with a moral superiority, who are by nature or experience suited to be a beacon to the rest of us, morally imperfect beings.  Cordelia being presented as a “higher being” is simply one example of this writ a little larger.  I have no interest in seeing morally superior beings preach to others.  If I thought this was what ANGEL as a series was about it would lose any interest for me.  What I have an interest in is a fallible creature who once abandoned a bunch of lawyers to their fate in a wine cellar because of his own damaged psyche but who eventually learned from his mistakes.  I want to see someone who is still as fallible and damaged as ever and who is going to make other mistakes as a result but who tries to do better next time and to share what he has learned with others.  But that is why I am intrigued by the possibility that Angel isn't quite the vampire that he says he is.  He was angry at Connor because he suspected that the teenager had harmed Cordelia.  And he expelled his own son onto the streets.  Perhaps  revenge on someone who had crossed him isn't quite so alien to Angel's way of thinking as he would have Connor and us believe.

Plot

The events of “Tomorrow” left us with two outstanding issues – the disappearances of Cordelia and Angel.  For us of course there was no mystery to either.  We knew what had happened.  But those left behind in LA didn’t and it was obvious that their search for answers would provide the main thrust of the plot in “Deep Down”.  But here we come up against a troubling anomaly.  The whole point about the ending to “Tomorrow” was to give us a visual contrast between the fates of Angel and Cordelia.  One sank to the bottom of the ocean just as the other ascended (or was assumed) into the heavens.  Angel’s danger was therefore manifest and immediate.  Cordelia was apparently in no trouble at all.   Of course all  that Wesley, Gunn or Fred knew was that both Angel and Cordelia had vanished after arranging to meet.  Yet watching this episode I was struck by the concentration on Angel’s fate.  You can rationalize this in Wesley’s case.  When we first see him he had already discovered what had happened to Angel and it was logical therefore for him to concentrate on helping where he knew he could.  The same could not be said for Gunn and Fred. It therefore seemed more than a little jarring that they should be preoccupied to such an extent with only one of the “disappeared ones”.

The second problem “Deep Down” presented us with was related to the first one.    Because we knew what had happened to Angel and could guess that it would not be long before he was rescued there wasn’t likely to be very much tension  derived from his rescue.  There was indeed an almost tacit acceptance of this fact on the part of the writers.  They didn’t really try to create any sense of uncertainty over the rescue.  We no sooner discovered that Justine was Wesley’s captive when learned that Wesley knew what  had happened to Angel and where to find him.  It was only a matter of time until he was rescued and, as there was never any sense of a race against the clock to meet a specific deadline, events could unfold at their own pace.

So, if Cordelia’s fate was a non-issue, if we could not share in the mystery of what happened to Angel and if we were left without any real suspense over his fate, what was there left?  Well, first and foremost even though the end result of the journey seemed pre-ordained, the writers gave us plenty of unexpected twists on the way.  Not least of these was Lilah’s sudden disposal of Linwood.  Now I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the sudden reversal of fortune but it did bother me.  The fact that Lilah had seen a Senior Partner without the fact being revealed to the audience beforehand was itself something of a deus ex machina.  Worse still it was a pretty implausible one.  Leaving aside the fact that it was the first time it was even suggested that senior partner’s could be contacted in this way, why would one of them trust Lilah? What Linwood had said about her was perfectly true. 

“Your failures at Wolfram and Hart outstrip your successes by and comfortable margin.”

She had already been put on probation once and only missed getting the chop because Lindsey left.  Since then things have been going downhill.  Of course Linwood wasn’t doing any better.  But that doesn’t explain why both weren’t purged.

But in the end the machinations within Wolfram and Hart were peripheral to the events in “Deep Down” and the real interest in this episode lay in the twists and turns of the A and B plots – Wesley’s efforts to rescue Angel and Connor’s efforts to stop Gunn and Fred from doing so.  The first surprise here lay in the fact that Connor was living with Gunn and Fred in the first place.  His interest in doing so wasn’t obvious until I realized that he had the perfect motive– to make sure that the people with the greatest incentive to find Angel never succeeded.  Of course the fact that Wesley was – unbeknown to anyone in the Hyperion - obviously well on his way to finding Angel himself robbed this fact of much of its impact.  So instead of the audience wondering whether Connor was going to prevent Angel’s rescue, the real question became whether Fred in particular was going to discover Connor’s treachery.  And in a curious way I almost found myself hoping she wouldn’t.  She had completely taken his side, especially with Gunn.  As she said herself:

             "He's Angel's son. That's all that matters."

So it was easy to understand how crushing the truth would be for her.  But at the same time as we wanted to see her avoid the pain of this realization we realized that she couldn’t.  This fact alone lent Connor’s efforts to deceive her a horrible fascination.

Moreover the mere fact that Wesley of all people should be leading in the hunt for Angel was unexpected.  Of course the way that this aspect of the episode was introduced - through the fact that Wesley had Justine a prisoner – was itself a stunning surprise.  But more interesting still was the question why was he so intent on rescuing Angel in spite of their recent history? My first assumption was that there must be a hidden agenda.  Indeed it was only quite late on and through his conversations with Justine that I realized that there wasn’t and that his actions had to be taken at their face value.

But above all the very certainty of Angel’s rescue propelled us to wonder about Connor and what Angel would do when he finally confronted his son.  And I am sorry to say that this was perhaps the least successful aspect of the plot.  In the first place, the effectiveness of the final confrontation depended on us believing in Angel’s dominance of his son – both physical and moral.   I cannot accept that someone who had only just been released from months of captivity in a confined space and needed quantities of human blood to revive him was physically capable of matching Connor.  But worse still, Connor’s attitude of someone who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar made his desire for revenge on Angel look like a petulant act of a teenager instead of a piece of visceral rage.  If he had been serious then why cede superiority to Angel?  Why not confront him directly as the avenger of past wrongs?  Half guiltily saying that he deserved worse than what he got and sitting scrunched up against a wall as he was interrogated about Cordelia is weak.  It lacks any drama or conviction.  Worse still, there was astonishingly little to indicate any sense of loss on Angel’s part.  Instead we had Angel’s declaration of love for Connor followed immediately by his exile.  This neatly juxtapositioned  seemingly contradictory ideas.  It suggested that throwing his son out on to the street was intended more as an act of revenge on his son rather than being intended to help him.   But even this seemed curiously anti-climactic.  Angel’s son had dominated his life for over a year.  It had been a year of immense highs and lows.  Now faced with the realization of the gulf between the two of them, we get very little sense of what this means to him personally. This just rang false for me.  Instead the focus shifts to Cordelia and not in a good way either.  I had pinned a lot of hopes on Skip misleading her about being a “higher being”.  It now looks distressingly as though the writers were being serious. And so instead of the episode ending with a punch it ends with a lame joke. 

Overview (B)

There was a lot to like in this episode, especially in the development of the theme and the way in which it was combined with some very solid character work for Angel and Wesley in particular, but also Connor and Justine.  I like especially the way in which the writers so clearly lay out the basic idea that people should do the right thing even under the worst conditions and then have the nerve to subvert it by suggesting that Angel was acting out of a spirit of revenge while at the same time proclaiming he wasn't.  The biggest problem for the episode was that the storyline wasn’t particularly compelling.   The writers were left having to solve the mystery of Angel’s disappearance left over from the previous season’s finale.  This did them no favors because the audience knew in advance that Angel would be found before the end of the episode and there was no way (short of a premature end of the series) to engineer his rescue that would create genuine suspense.  And this is actually a very good reason to avoid contrived cliff-hangers.   Perhaps the best that could be said is that, within the limitations imposed by the fairly predictable way in which Angel's rescue to dealt with, the writers did quite a good job in leaving us enough twists and surprises to keep some interest.  There were, however, a number of key weaknesses especially in the absence of any evidence of concern over Cordelia and in all important but dramatically anti-climactic final confrontation between Angel and Connor.