Chapter I:
A Nutty Old Gooney Bird

Lost in Pylea

We first met Fred in Pylea; but there we never got never a proper sense of who she really was.  There are, it is true, certain deductions we can make about her: her intelligence, her determination and the fact that she isn’t easily scared for a start.   She had spent five years in the dimension as a despised member of a slave race, forced to perform menial tasks at her masters’ bidding, constantly under the threat of death for any one of a number of transgressions.  Indeed that is how we first get to know her, as a renegade Angel is asked to kill:

Mom:  "Sever the cow's head from its body!"

Fred quietly repeating over and over:  "Make it quick.  Make it quick."

Landok:  "It is a great honor to swing the crebbil at the bach-nal."

Angel:  "You want me to kill her?"

Mom:  "The cow is a runaway.  A scavenger, that sneaks down from the hills and plunders our food stores."

Angel:  "She was probably hungry."

Instead of crumbling in the face of her adversity, she not only survived, she fought back.  She had escaped and foraged for food.  Indeed when the AngelBeast fully emerges she doesn’t seem intimidated by it.  Having seen the creature literally rip two Pylean guards apart and escape, Fred then intervenes to save Wesley and Gunn from it.  She coolly lures it away with some blood and even seems able to calm it down.  And when Angel returns to normal, the only question she asks him is:

“Are you feeling any better?”

Or take her writings on the wall of her cave.  Seemingly random, these turn out to be her attempts to identify a formula to open the portal through which she can return home.  This is someone who is strong-minded and cool headed, a combination that is a little difficult to square with  the idea that she was mentally confused.  Certainly from time to time she did seem that way:

Angel:  "So, ah... So, you don't wanna talk to me?"

Fred:  "I can't, huh?"

Angel:  "Why won't you?"

Fred:  "Because - you're not real. - Or I'm not real.  *Somebody* here isn't real and I suspect it's you.  So if you're not real, that means that my head came off back there and that I'm dead now.  Dead.  And with me being dead and you not being real I can hardly be expected to have some big conversation with you at the moment, because it's just a little too much pressure, alright?!"

Angel:  "Okay.  Okay.   What's that you're doing?"

Fred (writing on the cave wall):  "Uhm, I think I saw it in a dream."

Angel:  "You've been here a long time."

Fred:  "Always….not always."

Angel spots something.  Picks it up.  It's a California drivers license for one Winifred Burke.

Fred:  "I had a dream.  I had a name." 

But if she had such a tenuous grip on reality as all that how could she have survived Pylea?  Moreover, tellingly she had not convinced herself that her grim present was an illusion and her much happier past was the actuality.  If someone had really lost a grip on reality this is what we might expect them to do – seeking to escape from a situation they cannot live with by taking refuge in a fantasy.  Rather what Fred seemed to have done was to try to cope with the strain of life in Pylea as well as her solitude, by convincing herself that her previous life was just a dream and that Pylea was the reality.  This bespeaks a powerful imagination certainly, but one at the service of an equally strong will both of which are allied to a determination to survive no matter what.

Adjusting to Reality

But from these hints we can, I think, get no comprehensive idea of who Fred was.  The circumstances she found herself in were so exceptional and the emphasis was too much on the immediate need to survive for that.  It was only as she began to adjust to her new life in LA that we could see what sort of a person she had been before she was so abruptly translated to Pylea and how her experiences there might have changed her.   From the very start of season 3 we were made aware of Fred’s attachment to her room and her unwillingness to leave it.  This was perhaps understandable.  She had escaped the horrors of Pylea but at the same time she had adjusted  so completely to Pylea being her reality that she found it very difficult to break out of that mindset, to re-adjust to life back in California.    For five years her only refuge in Pylea was her cave.  It was not only its comparative security; it was the fact that with its mathematical equations she could hope to free herself from the horrific reality all around her.  And in Pylea too she had found her very own white knight on a shining horse, the man who not only saved her from execution but went on the rescue her.  So, even in the face of the grim realities of Pylea, in her cave and with Angel she felt safe; even isolated from those grim realities.  On Earth the same pattern repeats itself.  She doesn't leave her room and indeed insists on covering it with the same decoration that she had used in her cave in Pylea.  We also see her dependence on Angel, as when for example she literally counted down the minutes while he was away.   In fact she seems to have developed something of a crush on him and to have convinced herself that he was someone special to him.   Again, given the fact that he had come to Pylea and not only saved her but also brought her out of the dimension where the monsters were, this is hardly surprising.  In her room and with Angel she was in a situation she felt safe in comfortable with; but it was also a situation she was familiar with, one in which she was not forced into confronting a new and very different reality that she was not yet ready for.

 And, this was the problem she faced when her parents arrived in "Fredless".    In them Fred was faced with a concrete reminder of her pre-Pylea past and the normality of the present.  Not only that, it was also the sort of people they were too – down to earth, solid people who saw the world head on and had few pretensions and few illusions either.  As such they were a threat to the whole mental comfort zone she had built up there and was not yet ready break away from.  That is why she tried to avoid them when they came looking for her.   And once Fred and her parents were reunited, Fred’s course of action seemed to be dictated for her.  Let her put things in her own words:

“I wanna go home.  I'm… I'm just not cut out for this. I mean, if Angel hadn't gotten me outta the way, you'd  all be laughin', in the morgue right now. Okay, maybe not laughin' but the point is, I think I should go back home, where it's  quiet, and safe, and monsters don't eat your family.”

On her return from Pylea, Fred obviously felt very vulnerable.  She felt unable to seek refuge in her family and in the normalcy of her old life because she did not believe she was ready to cope with these things.   So she clung to her room and to Angel as a comfort, a  way of compensating for that vulnerability.  Yet now the realities crowded in on her.  Her parents and her old life were real.   As she told them when they met:

"I got lost. I got lost, and they did terrible things to me, but, but it was just a storybook. It was just a story with monsters, not real.  Not in the world but - but if you're here and you see me then - then it's real! And it did happen. If you see what they made of me... I - I didn't mean to get so lost!"

The Pyleans were not in this world but she was now and Roger and Trish were too.  And she was really nothing special to Angel.  True he had saved her life yet again.  Only now she couldn’t even believe that this was because she meant something to him.  As she said rather matter-of-factly, it was what he did.  That’s all.  She probably felt that she was a burden on him, unable to contribute anything to Angel Investigations and always at the mercy of her fears of the monsters in Pylea.  She simply felt both weak and useless.  That is why she wanted to go somewhere it was quiet and safe.  And now that meant home. 

But what changed was the fact that it was Fred who saved the day in general and Angel in particular.  She was the one who figured out the truth behind the bug attacks, that one of their number had laid eggs in the Durslar demon’s head and when Angel brought it back to the hotel they had ended up tracking him to reclaim the eggs.   And it was Fred who destroyed the Durslar head with her little axe throwing device, thus releasing the newly hatched eggs to the adult bugs. The realization that this event brought about within Fred was expressed in the following terms to her parents:

“Look, I could go home with you and  pretend the last five years didn't happen. I might even be able to pretend to have a normal life, but truth of it is, well, I'm not normal anymore.”

This was an acceptance of reality.  She had been through a terrible ordeal and she had been changed.  In Pylea she had convinced herself that he past life was unreal.  In the Hyperion she had convinced herself that she was safe and secure in her own little cave with Angel.  These were ways of coping with the nastiness of what had happened to her – but they were still coping by seeking refuge in illusion.    But she had succeeded in dealing with the bugs by facing reality and in doing so she found the resources within her that allowed her to deal with it rather than run away from it.  She had got to know enough about demons to figure out what had happened with the bug eggs.  More importantly she had used her mechanical skills in a way that she would never even have imagined as a “normal” physicist – to make a device which Wesley described as a spring loaded decapitation device.  So she was now able to accept she did indeed have to face reality because she had convinced herself that she could do so successfully.  That must have helped dispel the feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty which provided the impetus for her to seek shelter in illusions.

Chapter II:
Who Is Fred?

A Character in Search of a Personality

Of course “Fredless” still doesn’t tell us that much about her as a personality beyond showing us what a powerful imagination she had and how clever and resourceful she was.  Over the next few episodes we do find out something about her.  There is some attempt by the writers to give her a distinct personality by making her a little eccentric, by for example showing her enthusiasm for plastic flowers and her odd eating habits.  But this isn’t particularly successful because it is too cutesy and too reminiscent of early Willow.  Indeed the similarity to Willow was made all the more obvious by the writers stress on her as not only a physics genius but an expert in ancient texts too.  She seems to take the lead in deciphering the Nyazian prophecies:

"Oh, it's a simple equation, really. The ancient Roman calendar has fourteen hundred and sixty-four days in a four-year cycle. The Etruscan, Sumerian, and Druidian each have their own cycles. You work forward from the presumed day of the prophecy under each calendar, factoring in our own three hundred and sixty-five day calendar and accounting for a three day discrepancy for every four years and..."

I am not sure that qualifications in physics will be of that much help in deciphering or understanding ancient mystical texts.  Indeed it would have been much more realistic if we had seen a conflict between Fred’s scientific training and her experiences in the mystical world in which she now operates.

But even more unfortunate were the occasions when they strayed into melodrama when Fred got her heart broken in “Carpe Noctem” or the“Fred in Peril” scenario in “Provider.”  These were pretty clearly conscious attempts on the part of the writers to garner our sympathy for the character.  And as such for me they failed, partly because there were pretty contrived, partly because they were so cliche ridden but mainly because they emphasised the absence of anything that might be described as interesting characterization about Fred.   If the part had been properly thought out, there would have been no need for such obvious devices.

Fred and Gunn

As it was for the most part, late season 3 shows us a Fred and Gunn who are all about each other.  As we have already seen the existence of this pairing plays an important part in the Wesley arc.  But it suffers from two major drawbacks.  First I personally have no interest in the soap opera element of the series.  That is my personal opinion I recognize and other people have different interests (but then these are my reviews).  For me

Fred: "Oh, was I a pig? It's just that that first breakfast seems to go so quick, and I'm always still..."

Gunn: "Nah, I was wondering where it all goes in that little stick-figure body you got."

Fred: "Stick? You're a beast."

Gunn: "Ah, come on. You know you're gorgeous."

Indeed, the writers portrayal of the relationship is so completely superficial that I have some difficulty in believing in the relationship and even those who do like a good romance, won’t be engaged unless they can believe in it.  And frankly, a Wesley-Fred pairing seems to fit much better.  They have much more in common than Gunn and Fred, something even the writers themselves seem to recognize as when Cordelia tells Fred in "Waiting in the Wings" that:

           "I think you guys are perfect for each other. "

when she was actually talking about Fred and Wesley.

Instead, the only thing that the relationship seems to have going for it is that Fred and Gunn have "feelings" for one another and  spend an awful lot of time worrying about one another.  When in “Loyalty” they are ambushed by the three vampires, Gunn’s main concern is for Fred’s safety.  Seemingly obedient to his words, she then runs off.  But while Gunn is fighting one of the vampires, another comes up behind him.  It was only the fact that Fred returned in time to give him a warning and stake one of the two other vampires in the back that saved him.   Then in “Double or Nothing” we see Gunn try for the one last day of perfect happiness together with Fred and she senses something is wrong.  Gunn, for his part, knows her too well to believe that she would accept him losing his soul to Jenoff.   So, he tries to break up with her in as deliberately cold and harsh fashion as he can manage because he knows that, if she tries to interfere, then she risks her own soul as well.  But Fred isn’t fooled and goes straight to Angel.  And of course in “The Price” we see that Gunn was prepared to go behind Angel’s back in an effort to save Fred.  That they know and understand the other so well and that they are prepared to put each other first even over the loyalty that they owe to other members of the team is clearly intended to show the strength of the connection that they have made.  But that is about it and there is really not enough there to make an especially believable or interesting relationship. 

It's Always the Quiet Ones

It is really only towards the end of season 3 and in parts of season 4 that we begin to see even the vague outlines of a proper characterization for Fred.  In "Offspring", when the others are worried about destiny and what the meaning of the Tro-Clon was, she says:

“Screw Destiny.  If this evil thing comes we’ll fight it and we’ll keep fightin’ it until we whup it. ‘Cause “destiny” is just another word for inevitable and nothing’s inevitable as long as you stand up. Look it in the eye and say “you’re evitable”.”

Here we see a clear mindedness – an ability to get to the heart of the problem, to understand the real issues and to define the important questions raised.  This is, I think, a natural incident to her intellectual abilities.  And allied to all of this is the strength of character, courage and purpose, a willingness to see things through regardless of the cost,  that she showed in surviving in Pylea.   These are indeed formidable qualities but like everything else on ANGEL they can have a darker side.  And it was in this context  that we saw perhaps the only really interesting side of Fred.   When she and Gunn discovered that Wesley kidnapped Connor, she insisted on fully understanding  why he did it.  This was the clear mindedness, the determination at work.  But once she did so she applied her own moral judgment to his actions and it was an unforgiving one.   She refused to cut him any slack, to take into consideration his own fears and insecurities.  Nor did past friendship or service or even Wesley’s own sufferings sway her.  She held him to a strict standard and by doing so she effectively reduced Wesley to the harm that he has caused.  Of course our actions must always be subject to a moral judgment but if we believe that people are no more than the wrongs they do then we fall into the same trap that Angel did in season 2 with his vendetta against the EvilBeastLawyers.  The world with its many shades of gray is more complicated than that.  Lorne commented upon Pylea in the following terms:

"Talk about screwed up values.  A world of only good and evil, black and white, no gray.  No music, no art, just champions roaming the countryside, fighting for justice. Boring. You got a problem, solve it with a sword. No one ever admits to having actual feelings and emotions, let alone talks about them.  Can you imagine living in place like that?"

Whether it was a legacy of Pylea or something within her, it seems that Fred has to an extent adopted the same moral outlook as those who enslaved and would have killed her.  And as Angel learnt, the problems of a morally gray world cannot be solved by a sword; that approach leads only to you becoming an engine of destruction.  And that was where Fred’s willingness to look at things in terms of simple right and wrong and an unwillingness to concede to the sort of moral ambiguities raised by Lilah in connection with the Tro-Clon led her.

As I suggested in my review of “Spin the Bottle” we can see in Fred someone who is quite anxious to believe in the honesty and sincerity of her friends even when, in order to do so, she has to swallow some half-baked nonsense spun by them. But at the same time she is also someone who harbors very real fears about evil in the world.  And she is perfectly willing to see it even where there is no real evidence for it and where most reasonable people would say it does not exist - hence her belief in vast government conspiracies and evil aliens.   Again this is a reflection of the fact that she has no real room in her life for shades of gray.  Someone is either good or bad; there is little in between.  And if someone is bad, she doesn’t seem able to extend understanding or sympathy then.  Hence her judgment on Connor’s actions in “Deep Down”.  Hence her fury at Professor Seidel in “Supersymmetry”.  With Connor, as with Wesley, she wanted to believe the best of those she saw as innocent.   But when the evidence showed her otherwise, her reactions to Wesley and Connor went to the opposite extreme.   But in neither of those cases did she take matters further.  With Professor Seidel she did.  In fact she intended to take matters as far as she could – by killing him.  For her it was a matter of vengeance.  It couldn’t even be described as justice because that implies a proportionate response to wrongdoing.  Fred at least survived Pylea.  She intended Professor Seidel to perish.

Interestingly she does not deceive herself about what she is doing.  She knows it is wrong.  That is why she deliberately lies to Gunn and Angel, pretending to be reconciled to their point of view while at the same time quite cold bloodedly planning to execute her own revenge.  And this is why she turns to Wesley for help.  She sees him as being morally compromised.  Her own sense of morality means that she cannot and will not try to persuade herself that what she is doing is justified.  But at the same time her own hurt and anger and her sense of moral outrage at what Professor Seidel has done are too strong.  They demand that she punish him.

And this also explains her attitude to Gunn in the aftermath of “Supersymmetry”.   Before the events of that episode, her view of Gunn was idealistic and she went for help to Wesley rather than him because she thought him a better person than Wesley.  At the start of "Spin the Bottle"  we see her struggle to overcome the legacy of what Gunn did in that episode.  His actions not only shattered her view of what he was capable of but created a huge problem about how she could now relate to him.    Hence the tension between the two of them from that point onwards in the series.

 But this brings me to a real difficulty that I have with the way the writers dealt with Fred after “Supersymmetry”.  A person with her clear-mindedness and determination as well as a sense of right and wrong would not simply stand back and allow herself to become the cause of a rift in Angel Investigations, especially not when it was so clearly adversely affecting their mission.  And surely she would react angrily if she thought that someone was trying to manipulate her – as Wesley clearly was.  But she did nothing.  Throughout the crucial period of the season when everything was going per-shaped she was almost completely passive.  So, when in “Habeas Corpses”, Wesley appears with news about Connor, she and Gunn snap at one another:

Gunn: “Oh, good. More bad news.”

Fred: “Can you just try to get along? He was your friend.”

Gunn: “Heavy on the "was."

But at no point does she try to resolve the difficulties between Gunn and Wesley or find out what their problems were with one another.  Indeed she doesn’t actually seem to understand the real nature of the dispute between them until “Soulless”.  I find all of that very jarring.

Consequences, What Consequences?

But perhaps even more disappointing is the way in which the implications of Professor Seidel’s murder were dealt with.  The whole point of the episode was that for Fred to pursue the path of vengeance, she would be haunted by the consequences and that:

“Once you've acted you can't go back. You'll have to live with your actions forever."

Well, Fred did pursue the path of vengeance.  True she didn’t kill Professor Seidel herself but she was as responsible as if she had.  And what’s even worse she involved Gunn in his murder.  So, what happened to the consequences that Angel from his own past experiences warned her about?  In one sense of course her actions did indeed produce consequences – for her relationship with Gunn and for the unity of Angel Investigations.  But there was no sign of the character and life-changing consequences that Angel and Gunn promised there would be in “Supersymmetry”.  The nearest we get in “Sacrifice” was when Fred says:

 “What we did, I felt it. Every bit of it. And, you know, sometimes when I allow myself to think about it, it eats me up inside.”

The problem with that is that there is actually no evidence of it.  And if the writers don’t show, we can’t believe what they tell. 

Secondly, despite the fact that she is so morally compromised, she comes to be seen towards the end of the season as a voice of moral authority.  In “Sacrifice” Angel began to believe that allowing his feelings for Connor or Cordelia to influence him only weakened his resolve and his ability to fight Jasmine.  That was why he was prepared first of all to beat Connor so severely and then leave him behind.  It was also why he was prepared to put Cordelia to the back of his mind.  These were major sacrifices for him.  But, as he said:

            “Hearts get in the way.”

And indeed to an extent Gunn too bought into this philosophy.  When he and Fred pursued the frightened and confused Matthew he told her:

“You heard Angel. Feelings don't enter into it anymore.”

And when they caught up with the boy, Gunn quite brutally knocked him out cold in order to bring him back underground and away from Jasmine’s influence.  But it was this philosophy that Fred directly challenged: 

“That the world we're fighting for? The right to be heartless, an uncaring shell? To be dead inside?”

Angel and Gunn were looking for a way to beat Jasmine and for them that way simply involved cutting themselves off from her influence.  Fred’s point was that this was no answer to Jasmine’s influence.  As we have seen Jasmine is the one who does what has to be done regardless of the cost to others.  Jasmine is the one who sacrifices others for her benefit.  Jasmine is the one who feels nothing for those she claims to love.  Angel’s attitude in coldly casting off Cordelia and in leaving behind his own son is, in fact, a mirror image of her attitude.  But Fred's attitude is very different.  This is best illustrated by the exchange between Gunn and Fred over Professor Seidel and their respective roles in killing him. Of course Gunn for his part initially tries to take the blame for it on himself.  Fred contradicts him and assumes her proper share of the guilt:

Gunn: “Whatever. Point is, when the circumstances called for it, you did what you thought you had to. Didn't matter what anybody else thought

Fred: “You're right about all of it except for one thing. What we did, I felt it. Every bit of it. And, you know, sometimes when I allow myself to think about it, it eats me up inside.”

 Gunn: “Yeah, me, too.”

 Fred: “Well, I don't know about you, but... I'd take that over being a shell any day.”

As an acolyte of Jasmine, Fred would have killed for her and known that what she was doing was right.  If she had followed Angel’s advice, she would have killed to defeat Jasmine without pity and without remorse if that was what it took.  Anyone and anything could be sacrificed for the cause; without compassion and without regret.  But, for Fred, to be human was to have a different set if values. To be human was to have beliefs and feelings of your own.  You were free to act on the basis of those feelings and beliefs and if they led you to do wrong (as in her decision to seek revenge on Professor Seidel) you had to face the consequences of your actions.  That was what made Fred, and indeed Angel and the others, different from someone who only lived to serve a cause.

This can of course be seen as a clear minded statement of the value of being human; in some ways the statement of the anti-Wesley.  It suggests that unlike him Fred elevated feelings above results.  She felt no pressure to prove to others that she was right or that she could succeed in whatever she wanted to do.  Of course she often showed a level-headedness, an intelligence and a courage that commanded respect – especially in “The Magic Bullet”.  But unlike Wesley she wasn’t obsessed with her feelings of inadequacy.  She wasn’t fixated on proving herself to others.   But I think in Fred’s case we were being invited to see it as more than that. I think we were being invited to see this as yet more evidence that she was a person who inherently reacted with a natural empathy towards others.  In this context I need only refer to the season 5 episode “Hole in the World” where we get heartfelt encomiums about Fred the ultimate in civilized behavior.. She is, of course, both intelligent and logical, as she showed by her comments on the cavemen vs. astronauts battle and the potential disparity between the two sides:

Fred: “But that doesn't make any sense.”

Lorne: “I just call it like I see it.”

Fred: “But the cavemen have fire. That's what they live with in their caves. The astronauts should at least have some sort of weapon.”

But much more important from this point of view is her kindness, her concern for others - the teamwork in the equation, if you like.   Take the way she was so anxious not to hurt Knox’s feelings or better still the way she boosted Lorne’s self-esteem:

“Winifred Burkle once told me after a sinful amount of Chinese food, and in lieu of absolutely nothing, "I think a lot of people would choose to be green. Your shade, if they had the choice."

Here we see the driving force behind the anxiety of all of the others to help her.  Indeed, it is even the driving force behind Knox’s whole plan to allow Illyria to take over her body:

Gunn: “You couldn't stand the thought of Wes winning her, so you kill her?”

Knox: “No, I meant everything I said about her. I chose Fred because I love her, because she's worthy. You think I'd have my god hatched out of some schmuck?”

But this picture of Fred is difficult to square with her attitude towards Wesley, Connor and Seidel.  On three occasions she set aside feelings of sympathy, understanding, forgiveness or compassion.  Instead she elevated a cold unbending moral sense over these considerations.  She was, to use her own words, “heartless and uncaring” because it was more important to be the instrument and voice of moral outrage.   Her reaction to Seidel was understandable given her own personal suffering.  But where was the empathy towards Wesley, her recognition that he had meant to do the best for Connor but had misjudged things rather than acted out of malice?  Or where was her understanding for Connor’s position?  He was after a teenager who had been given an entirely skewed view of right and wrong and had acted as he did because of the way Holtz had manipulated his feelings.  Indeed one could even make a case for saying that, given Fred’s later attitude towards Seidel, she should have understood quite readily Connor’s desire for revenge.

Chapter III:
Summing Up Fred

Gender Stereotyping?

Rather than showing us how Fred’s flaws stop her from fulfilling her potential for good – as for example they did so successfully with both Angel and Wesley – the writers seem to treat them as a momentary aberration or at least something with no significant effect on that potential.  It is almost as if it becomes more important for the writers to show Fred as not only determined, brave and clever but also humane and understanding than it is to show is someone whose plans and ambitions to help others are continually being thwarted by their own weaknesses.   So, we have the planned murder of Seidel.  But it is Gunn who actually does the killing.  And there are no real consequences afterwards, despite all the dire warnings to the contrary.  Instead, Fred is actually invested with a degree of moral authority in “Selfless” which seems blatantly inconsistent with her characterization in “Supersymmetry”.  Moreover, it is noticeable that, when in “Soulless” Angelus is psychoanalyzing everyone and laying bare all the malevolent forces within them driving their self-destructive behaviors, Fred is spared. In that episode she is an entirely passive figure fought over by Wesley and Gunn.  Indeed the most significant even relating to her in the episode was the way that the two of them vied with one another to rescue her when she was caught by Angelus.    And time and time again she is reduced to this inert state.   As I have repeatedly said, for me the key issues for ANGEL as a series lie with the internal dynamics of the team: how and why its members reacted in such a flawed way to the external threats facing them and others.  And Fred was an almost completely passive figure in terms of the internal dynamics of Angel Investigations.  Take for example the way that this clear thinking, independently minded and determined woman acquiesced in Angel Investigations joining Wolfram and Hart without any clear reason why except that they would now be in charge and would turn the Law Firm into a force for good.  She did not apparently see the inherent implausibility of this.  She did not ask, well than what would be in it for the lawyers?  She did not even apparently notice how little in charge Angel in particular actually was, even though we saw this demonstrated conclusively in both the season’s first two episodes.  Indeed Fred seems to be conspicuous by her absence from any discussion about why she and the others were working for Wolfram and Hart, the compromises they were making or what their other options were.  Is this remotely credible?  No, but it is par for the course.   In season 3 the most important thing about Fred was her relationship with Gunn.  In season 4 a conflict arose over her relationship with Wesley but that conflict is between him and Gunn.  Bizarrely she seems to have played little role in it.   In season 5 the most important thing about her was her growing relationship with Wesley and the reaction he suffered when she died.  Yet again for an avowedly liberal organization ME resolutely adopts the most conventional stereotypical role for a woman – a passive figure whose principal importance lies in her relationship with men. 

And for a series whose stock in trade is the psychological drama involving its key members this represents for me complete failure of characterization.  Characterization which depends upon stereotyping is the very definition of shallowness.  Good characterization means that one individual can be distinguished from others, it means that someone's personality traits are consistent and coherent and are shaped to a degree by their past experiences.    But perhaps most important of all we expect the individual's actions to be consistent with their characterization and not driven purely by ephemeral plot considerations.  On all counts Fred fails.  The eccentric genius, the female character who is good and empathetic and whose role and purpose is defined by her relationships with others; this is all the stuff of cliche.  The one point of interest lay in her willingness to judge others harshly by a strict moral code.  Intuitively this simply cannot be squared with her supposed empathy with and understanding of others.  To see such jarring contrasts in characterization robs the character of much of its believability but almost worse the emphasis on the latter as opposed to showing us the real consequences of Seidel's murder almost to vanishing point my interest in the character.