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EPISODE 2.03 FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Written by: Shawn Ryan Directed by: James A. Contner
Who looks after the strong? As I have previously observed, ANGEL has to date offered us no real story arc. Instead, with the exception of the two Faith-centric episodes ("Five by Five" and "Sanctuary"), each individual episode has comprised a single, self-contained story. I have also noted the comparatively sparse use that the writers of these stories have made of sub-plots. They have preferred to focus on a single plot developed in a logical sequence. Arcs, of course, have powerful advantages in terms of depth of storytelling. But concentrating on telling a new story each week has strengths of its own. ANGEL's stand alone episodes are not only extremely cohesive but also very accessible. Someone who has missed a few episodes can understand what is going on in the next one without difficulty. In an arc heavy series, on the other hand, missing only one or two episodes can leave the viewer confused. However, the lack of sub-plots in ANGEL episodes is less explicable. BtVS episodes often use a sub-plot as a parallel or counterpoint to the principal plot, thus throwing additional light on it. This technique adds to rather than detracts from the focus of the episode concerned. And ANGEL itself has, on occasion, done the same thing to good effect. If you regard the story of what happened to Angel after he regained his soul as the sub-plot of "Five by Five", powerful use was made of it to explain and explore the journey Faith made some one hundred years later. And when a sub-plot can, while performing this function, be used simultaneously to advance an arc, then so much the better. For that reason I was glad to see that, in "First Impressions", there is a clearly defined "A" and "B" plot. The former follows Cordelia Chase as she struggles to save Charles Gunn from himself. The latter concerns Angel's disturbing yet, for him, oddly pleasant dreams of Darla. At first sight there appears no thematic connection between them. But at the end the connection is made obvious. Both plots pose the same question: can even the strongest of us really stand alone? The episode is full of examples of “first impressions” being misleading. Gunn misjudges the effectiveness of both Wesley and especially Cordelia. Cordelia initially sees Gunn as brutal and unfeeling when his problem is actually that he feels the weight of responsibility too much. David Nabbitt first appears a complete dork but his financial acumen stuns everyone. Gunn thinks he is a crook until Cordelia puts him right about the good things he has done. The vamp masquerading as the distressed partygoer fools Wesley. And of course the insignificant and innocent stool pigeon turns out to be the alter ego of Deevak. So, what we have here is an episode that is all about the difference between surface appearance on the one hand and reality on the other, especially in the case of two individuals. Both Gunn and Angel appear on the surface strong and in charge not only of their destinies but of others. But as we delve deeper into their respective situations we discover that all is not as it seems. They are far from being the self-sufficient leaders that on the surface they appear to be. And it is in this context that having the "A" and "B" plots really helps. It is by looking at Gunn's difficulties that we can better appreciate Angel's even though his storyline has much less time devoted to it and, unlike the "A" plot, there is no real resolution to Darla's nocturnal visits . That is because the "B" plot now launches ANGEL into its first fully fledged story arc so it is far too early to reveal exactly how Darla is to be used to undermine Angel's mission on behalf of the Powers that Be.
Gunn and his quest for self-destruction The bedrock of the "A" plot is a strong and interesting character study of the most recent and under-developed member of our quartet: Charles Gunn. In "WarZone", Gunn and his little band are fighting what is to all intents and purposes a loosing battle. But he doesn’t seem to care. As he says to Angel, it is better to die than to accept help from a “some middle class white dude that’s dead”. In these words we see not only a sense of fatalism but also a feeling of being alone. Ultimately the sense of fatalism did change because of the death of Alonna. From that point Gunn was no longer willing to throw away the lives of his people. But the sense of the members of his little group being on their own remained as strong as ever. This is shown by the exchange between him and Angel at the very end of "WarZone":
In our very first view of Gunn in "First Impressions" he reinforces this idea of a clear gulf between himself and the members of Angel Investigations. He treats them all with suspicion, even Angel for whose help he has come. The whole scene between himself, Cordelia and Wesley is a wonderful example of Gunn's distrust of the outside world. You can, I think, get a flavor of it from the following exchange:
Gunn can just about bring himself to work with Angel partly because he recognizes his power to help but also partly because, as he reminded Angel here, after the events in "WarZone" he was the one doing the favors. This obviously appealed to the sense of pride he had in what he was doing. More importantly it also meant that he wasn't asking for charity from Angel. But equally he recognized no connection with Angel Investigations that involved any call at all on his loyalty. He had helped the vampire out and now he was entitled to call in a marker. That was all there was to it. And because this was simply a pragmatic arrangement between two entirely independent and equal organizations, he recognized no need to act diplomatically with Wesley and Cordelia for whom he seems to have little time, either as individuals or as members of a team:
Wesley and Cordelia are not just outsiders; they are liabilities and Gunn has no time for people like that. He is openly dismissive of them, without apparently knowing very much about them at all.
This is a picture of someone who regards anyone who is not a member of his own little band as an outsider and who also regards any outsider as suspicious. But this is also a picture of someone who is self-assured in himself and his own abilities. As such it represents considerable continuity from "WarZone". But it is one of the strengths of "First Impressions" that the writers merely use this as their starting point. This is the surface Gunn only and the rest of the episode is spent getting past the upper layer and into the real man. For this purpose the most effective scene was when Gunn and Angel started to interrogate the supposed stool pigeon, Jameel. Both Angel and Buffy have often used violence in a very deliberate way to extract information from people. That was not, I think, what we saw here. When Jameel refused to talk Gunn just lost it. He didn't grab him and start exerting increasing pressure or pain to convince him to co-operate. He struck out in anger. Angel is certainly not the squeamish type when it comes to inflicting pain to get results. But he felt obliged to step in because he could see that Gunn was not acting rationally. As he asks him:
"What are you doin'?"
It was the suddenness and unexpectedness of Gunn's action that made it so effective as a piece of drama. He is supposed to be one of the good guys yet here he was acting as a bully. His violence was uncontrolled. The man he was beating up was much smaller than he was and wasn't a bad guy (at least so we thought). He was just frightened. We were brought up short and forced to ask: what is wrong with Gunn? This was the defining moment for the "A" plot. It set the basic direction of the story and everything else flowed from it.
As we followed Gunn in his search for Angel's car, more and more things started to fall into place adding to and explaining this initial outburst. First of all there was Gunn's attitude towards his neighborhood and to the outside world. In the scene in the parking lot he was quite relaxed about crimes against outsiders, especially affluent outsiders. Stealing cars from his own people was a very different matter:
Then there was the scene at the party where he got very defensive when Cordelia (insensitively it must be admitted) asked him whether he was friends with every criminal in town. He immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was saying that all "brothers" were criminal. He himself is only too ready to assume that David Nabbit must have been a criminal to become a billionaire and is openly scornful of Cordelia's protestations about his charitable works. These exchanges help identify, even more strongly than the earlier ones in the Hyperion, just what Gunn knows as home and who his people are. And the aftermath of the fight at the party showed just how deeply he feels about these people. In particular the scene in the Hospital where he beat himself up over the near death of Vanessa:
Gunn: "She almost died."
Cordelia: "But she didn't."
Gunn: "No thanks to me."
Cordelia: "It wasn't your fault."
Gunn: "I let my guard down and she's the one...".
Here we see the driving force in Gunn’s life. He was harsh, certainly. We saw that from his treatment of Jameel. And when he met one of his gang who had ignored his orders and went to a party instead of patrolling he is also tough. But that is because he doesn't want him or anyone else for whom he is responsible dead. As he says himself:
"Some people need discipline to survive."
That is why he will do whatever it takes to stop people from dying. And no matter how hard he is on others he is always twice as hard on himself:
"I can't take it easy. I can never take it easy. Not for a second, alright. The minute I forget that someone like Alonna pays the price."
This was a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Above all this explains why he doesn't understand concepts such as team work. The idea that an individual needs to rely on others to complement his strengths with their own is totally foreign to his way of thinking. It is because of this that he was so unwilling to see Wesley and Cordelia go with himself and Angel to see Jameel. Wesley's remark that he was riding "shotgun" passed right over his head. And in this context it has to be said that the pathetic performance that the members of Angel Investigations put up against the first Vampire attack would have, if anything, reinforced his prejudices.
But, just as in "WarZone" Gunn cannot escape the feeling that no matter how hard he fights or how careful he is, he is loosing. As he says to Cordelia:
" I can't stop 'em. I can't ever stop 'em."
When Cordelia was trying to convince Gunn he was in danger, she told him:
"Whether you want to believe it or not you are in big time danger. I'm vision girl. I saw you. You were at the end of your world, fighting for your life. And you were so scared."
His reply was:
"See, now I know you're trippin' 'cause I don't get scared."
But the truth was that he was scared, not for his own life but because of the fact that events were out of his control. His people were dying and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. It is all of this, but especially the feeling of helplessness and the anger within him that it generates, that leads him to the recklessness and harshness with which he behaves at times.
Of course to an extent the idea of a leader who takes his as responsibilities as seriously Gunn does and holds himself to blame for everything that goes wrong is a little hackneyed. But in terms of characterization it does add layers to someone who does at times threaten to become just another "angry young man". It not only shows him as a real individual with strengths and flaws. It explains his attitudes and actions in a way that makes him more not less sympathetic. And it adds to our knowledge of what drives him. And, because his weaknesses have already been foreshadowed in "WarZone" and are the obverse side of his strengths, the characterization of Gunn we get in "First Impressions" is both consistent and coherent.
Cordelia as Mother Hen
And it is in this context that we see the importance of the help given to Gunn by Angel Investigations in general, and Cordelia in particular. And here it is, I think, important to stress that there is no suggestion that Cordelia's interest in Gunn has anything to do with any romantic intentions on her part. It is of course a dramatic convention that characters who are ultimately intended to fall in love start out hating the sight of one another. This allows the audience to explore and understand the growing mutual attraction at the same time as the characters themselves. And admittedly the way that Cordelia and Gunn sparred together throughout this episode fits this convention very well. But here there is nothing in her attitude towards Gunn that isn't a reflection of the attitude she has towards Angel - a friendship borne out of shared dangers and mutual dependency. And indeed if that were not the case, if Cordelia were simply acting out of a special affection for Gunn the theme of this episode would be weakened.
Instead what we see is someone reaching out because of a sense that another person was in need and they could help. And this is a role that Cordelia is ideally suited for. She is the most balanced individual we see on ANGEL. Of course she has had her share of problems. But thwarted material expectations are not in the same league as the insecurities and fears driving Angel and Gunn, for example. And in any event Cordelia is the most self-possessed and self confident of individuals. She has a hard, practical streak to her that allows her to cope with almost any difficulty. This was the girl who, after being hung upside down and nearly sacrificed in WSWB, could only complain about her inability to get the stains from her dress. But because in her vision coma in "To Shanshu in LA" she saw the sufferings of so many people in trouble, she can and does now understand the extent to which others are in desperate need for help. And this has given her a new and very strong commitment in that behalf.
So, when she saw a violent vision of Gunn in danger her newly honed empathy with a humanity in fear and danger took over. As she said to Gunn:
"The things I've seen; sometimes I get downright terrified and right now I'm scared for you."
Of course at this stage she didn't think much of him. He seemed brutal, rude and unfeeling. But there is another side to Cordelia's practicality. It allows her to make the most accurate observations of people. Remember she was able to read Angel acutely after Doyle died. She sees things and people as they are, not as she would like them to be. While her initial impression of Gunn was not favorable, the more she saw of him the more she realized that, below the surface, there was someone who was damaged but someone who was also of real substance. And, as we found out in "Bachelor Party" and later, she also recognizes and appreciates substance in a person. Because of this not only would she see self-destructiveness in Gunn as an unforgivable waste, she would want to do something about it.
And for his part Gunn's attitude to Cordelia certainly changed. It wasn't so much her evident good intentions towards him as the way she proved that there was more to her than he bargained for. While I suspect that Gunn himself was close to panic when Vanessa was injured (and certainly he wasn't that much help to her) Cordelia was in her element. She was cool, calm and collected as she did the right thing at the right time, right down to the way she whispered to Gunn that she had to be taken to the hospital "now". Even then she was thinking about not causing panic to Vanessa. It was all very impressive and the lesson was not, I think, lost on Charles Gunn. Certainly Cordelia at least was someone he could rely on. He did not have to take the whole weight of the world on his shoulders.
But help for Gunn came not just from Cordelia. In the end, everyone in Angel Investigations acted together to save his life. When he and Cordelia are confronted in the garage by Deevak, he tries to take the demon on although he must know that he doesn't have a chance. In the course of the fight Deevak takes Gunn by the throat and morphs back into Jameel. But Cordelia digs mace out of her purse and sprays it in its eyes forcing Jameel lets got of Gunn. Then Angel and Wesley both arrive and start fighting Deevak's vampire minions. And it is Angel who finally kills Deevak with an axe that Cordelia tosses to him. Here was teamwork in action. As we have seen, Gunn is not very strong on co-operation. But as these events show, even the strong need others to help them survive and there is no confession of weakness and no admission of failure in that fact. After Deevak is dead, Cordelia turns to Gunn and tells him:
This is a little too close to anvilling for my taste but it does serve to drive home the point. Charles Gunn is a danger to himself, not because of his responsibilities but because of the way he reacts to them, especially the way he continues to try to keep everyone else at arms length. When Cordelia says he needs to get some help she didn't really mean it in the sense of someone to help change his attitude. No, she meant that he needed to be able to accept help from others in discharging his responsibilities rather than trying to shoulder them alone. Will Gunn heed the lesson? At the end he still seems to be unimpressed by what she says and tells Cordelia that he:
"ain't buyin' none of this Dionne Warwick crap".
This, as usual, is the ANGEL writers refusing to take the easy or quick way out of the corner they paint their characters into. Even the object lesson in the advantages of teamwork he had just been given and the way Cordelia followed it up by challenging him to look into himself, were not enough to produce a change of heart. That is why he seemed less than grateful for Angel Investigations' intervention. This is good and realistic writing. It is exactly the way someone with those sort of deep seated anxieties would react. All in all I would say this bodes very well for Gunn as a character. I await with interest what comes next for him.
Angel goes on Holiday
The "B" plot no less than the "A" plot was an exercise in characterization, this time for Angel. The writers wisely did not try to do too much. Instead they concentrated on setting up what is evidently going to be the first major story arc of ANGEL as a series. But the truly clever part about the writing was that they were able to do so in a way which fitted thematically so well with Gunn's story. At first it didn't seem so. Indeed, initially Angel's behavior in "First Impressions" seemed inexplicable.
Angel has come a long way since Whistler found him in the gutter in New York 1996. He has endured enormous physical and psychological suffering, great disappointments and undergone huge tests of will and nerve. He has passed through them all. He has made great sacrifices. And because he was willing to do this he has now, for the first time in his existence, gained a purpose, something he can take pride in. Remember how in "the Prodigal" Liam's father said:
Well, Angel has long since disproved that with a vengeance. And because he has done so he has the most important, the most eagerly desired goal of his life before him. He is now on his way to his own redemption and with it the promise of humanity.
What then is he doing with Darla? What is disturbing is not that he sees her in his dreams. It's his attitude towards her in those dreams themselves. He has evidently been having them for some time but doesn't tell anyone about them because he wants her to himself. Having her back feels "so strange...but good". And the reason it does feel good is the way they behave together. It is as if they were lost in an idyll of their own with slow romantic dances, sensuous bathing by moonlight, and the comfort of domesticity with Darla there to welcome a tired Angel home from his labors and comfort him.
Yet this was the woman who made Liam a vampire in the first place, who supervised Angelus' first kill and who shared so much in his life as he cut a swath of destruction throughout Europe. She was in short the reason for everything that the ensouled Angel hates about his past. They were the most natural of enemies. But the fact that he was having those dreams about Darla didn't disturb Angel in the least. In fact he can't wait to get back to them. As he said to Cordelia after the first fight with the Vampires:
"I just need to get some sleep."
But that was only a few hours after he had got up. As she herself observed:
"That seems to be all you've been doing lately."
And when Wesley woke him in the middle of a dream he was actually annoyed that he made Darla go away. From this we can only imagine that his attitude towards Darla in the dream was an accurate reflection of what is going on in his own mind. By that I do not mean that I think he is in love with Darla. Rather I think that it means that Darla is filling some genuine need for Angel.
In his little fantasy world she is always there for him when he comes home from a hard day's work. She notices when he is tired. She appreciates what he does for others when everyone else takes it for granted. She flatters him. She looks after him, meets his needs for comfort and pleasure. In short she takes the weight of the world of his shoulders:
"Now, you just relax and let Darla take care of you."
He has to strive for his own redemption by saving others; but who is there to look after him? Sure, he has friends in Cordelia and Wesley. But friendship sometimes isn't enough. They have their own lives. They can't make him and his needs the center of theirs. And this is what Darla is offering to do for Angel.
Darla: "Save any lives
today?"
In his naive response to her offer we get a clear idea of what loneliness really means and what responsibility does. And here too, especially in the last couple of scenes, the parallels with Gunn are made clear. Angel too feels the crushing burden of responsibility. It’s just that his reaction is different. Instead of clinging on to duty Angel retreats into a fantasy world where he doesn't have to take responsibility, where everything is done for him. It's simple, it's safe and its selfish, perhaps dangerously selfish. We know almost instinctively that nothing good can come out of a dalliance between him and Darla. Right at the very beginning of the episode in his conversation with the Anagogic MC what is at stake for Angel in his dream world is made clear:
And the truth of this statement is to be found in what happens in the rest of the episode. Patently his mind is only half on the job. His main preoccupation is with sleeping and dreaming, a preoccupation that led him to ignore the calls for help by one friend and almost to kill another. Thus the selfishness of his dream world is now being reflected in the selfishness of his concerns in the real one. And this is something Darla is, I think, relying on. She isn't just making Angel feel safe, wanted and valued. She is quite deliberately drawing a contrast between that feeling and what he is getting from his battle with evil. And she is inviting him to choose between his fantasy world and his mission:
Angel: "What are you thinking about?"
Darla: "You. Us."
Angel: "You seem sad."
Darla: "It's just...I have to go."
Angel: "Where?"
Darla: "Away."
Angel: "I'll go with you."
Darla: "You can't. I'm in danger."
Angel: "I'll protect you."
Darla: "You're too busy protecting everyone else."
Does he choose to continue to protect everyone else or does he choose to protect only the one person who cares about him - Darla. It seems to me that the groundwork is being laid here for the most testing challenge to Angel's resolve and commitment. Truly Vocah was right when he spoke of Darla's raising in "To Shanshu in LA" as being:
And the degree of success that Darla has had to date shows just how very real a threat this is. Of course it is all too simple for us to think for a moment that Angel will get careless about his mission and abandon it for a life of self-fulfilment. But what we are seeing is a feeling of discontent with his life being engendered. Where this feeling of discontent is leading is anyone's guess at the moment. But the events in Angel's bedroom at the very end of the episode suggest that Darla is becoming ever bolder and ever closer to Angel. And this can only mean that the danger can now only get worse.
The Plot
Right from the beginning of “First Impression” the whole "A" plot was set up so that Deevak would appear to be a mortal danger for Gunn in particular. The meeting in the Hyperion was called for the purpose of dealing with the demon. And then, after Cordelia had seen a vision with Gunn in trouble, Deevak turned up and made a direct threat against him. This was followed by an attack on the party Gunn had joined. But this was all an elaborate red herring. It left us watching for one story when something very different was happening. In this sense it is very like "Eternity" with its faux stalker plot. All the time we were looking for the threat from Deevak to materialize we were actually watching the writers explore the character of Charles Gunn. We thought he was on a path to destruction but it was self-destruction, not death at the hands of a demon. And I think that this worked very well for a number of reasons. First of all the set up generally seemed to make perfect sense, with an aggressive and self confident Gunn posing a danger to creatures like Deevak it would only be natural for the demon to try to kill Gunn. And Deevak's fearsome reputation was established by the fact that Gunn had to go to Angel for help and Angel too showed him great respect. The stool pigeon's fear of him underlined this. Then, although the major part of the action seemed to be taken up with Gunn and Cordelia looking for Angel's car, Deevak or his cronies keep on popping up at regular intervals just to remind us of the threat they pose. It all looked as of it is leading up to the big attack on Gunn that Cordelia foresaw.
If I had any criticism at all, it was that, because there was so much attention on exploration of character and the threat from Deevak was implied rather than actual, there was no little of imminent danger. Even in the fight scene at the party Deevak was notable by his absence and Gunn didn't look to be in much trouble. Indeed as the principal villain in the episode Deevak was a huge disappointment, being about as colorless, badly made up and unthreatening as it was possible to imagine. It was, therefore, no bad thing that there were quite a few entertaining individual scenes and incidents which kept our attention. I loved the way that Cordelia and Gunn sparked off one another. Cordelia kept on sticking out like a sore thumb but battered on regardless. Some of the scenes between Wesley and Angel were even better. The embarrassment all round when naked Angel landed on top of Wesley and then tried to choke him, the way Wesley clearly got the upper hand over his employer with the pink helmet and then the sly and totally unexpected head but of the party goer were all gems.
But of course while we were waiting for some form of threat to materialize from Deevak, we were increasingly made aware of the brittleness and vulnerabilities of Gunn. And I thought that was neatly done. In the end, however, the episode had to resolve the conflict between Angel Investigations and Charles Gunn on the one hand and Deevak on the other. Any other ending would have been anti-climactic. Therefore, the fact that the latter eventually burst in on Gunn and Cordelia was no great surprise, although I have to say the precise timing of it was. The fact that our attention was so taken up by the sparring between Gunn and Cordelia that we forgot about the danger they may be in from Deevak wasn’t exactly a good thing in terms of creating dramatic tension. But it did mean that Deevak’s attack came as a shock. This leads to the climactic battle in which Deevak and his gang are destroyed. This was a fairly satisfying and action packed conclusion to the "A" plot.
In the "B" plot nothing very much happened. But at the same time I found it quite absorbing. First of all it was very nice to see Darla back. But more to the point what intrigued me was the manner of her return. Ever since the end of "To Shanshu in LA" the big question was how Wolfram and Hart would seek to use her against Angel. I must admit, however, that I would never have guessed that she would turn up like this in his dreams - apparently welcomed. This gives the episode both an ominous air and a sense of expectation. On the face of it Angel seems happy but we know that nothing good can come of this. The question is what? And the building tension is only added to by the even more shocking ending. It is one thing to see Darla appear in Angel's dreams. It is something altogether different to see her on his bed. It was a daring end to the episode.
Overview (B)
In "First Impressions" the writers first of all took a good, hard look at Charles Gunn. What they showed us was consistent with what we had seen before but went much deeper. Like Cordelia, we can see many aspects of Gunn's character that are on the surface hardly admirable. He is arrogant, rude, dictatorial and brutal. But through this episode we came to see why. We saw into the darkest corners of his soul, into what he really fears and the crushing burden that these fears impose on him. And because of this we began to sympathize with him, without any of his less attractive qualities having been minimized in any way. I think this is a very considerable achievement. But far from being a pure character study, Gunn's story is merely the launching pad for an issue that is directly relevant to Angel. Gunn is trying to be completely self-sufficient, refusing to accept help and as a result is beginning to buckle under the burden of his responsibilities. His concerns here parallel those of Angel. For him too there is a crisis in the offing. He is at a crossroads in which his smooth upward progress seems about to be tested. On the surface he remains someone who dedicated to the cause of fighting evil but inside he is tempted by the prospect of being looked after by someone who will make him the center of her life. This is the struggle between self and his responsibilities. Which will prevail? In the context of this fascinating exploration of character and theme the fact that the plot is so thin is unfortunate but hardly fatal. And in compensation there is a good deal of fun to be had both in the way Cordelia and Gunn react to one another and in the even funnier exchanges between Angel and Wesley.
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