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Chapter I:
Lost at Night In the last scene in "In the Dark" Angel explains his decision to smash the ring of Amara. Doyle points to all the ordinary daytime people he could help from 9 to 5 with that ring. Angel’s response is very telling: “They have help. The whole world is designed for them, so much that they have no idea what goes on around them after dark. They don’t see the weak ones lost in the night, - or the things that prey on them. And if I join them, maybe I’d stop seeing, too.” The idea of Angel helping those lost at night in particular has always been a very attractive one. The foxes may have their holes and the birds their nests but those who exist outside society are at their most vulnerable after dark because they have no secure haven to retreat to. It has two great strengths. First of all Angel is himself a creature of the night who is also cut off from the rest of society. In “Warzone” this is very well expressed when Lenny Edwards asks him what he wants. The reply is: “What do I want? Good question. Love, family, a place on this planet I can call my own. But you know what… I’m never gonna have any of those things.” There was enormous scope to explore the parallels between hios experience and those of people in danger from the night. And who more fits that bill than homeless youth in LA? From stories about them we can get an authentic sense of the geography of the place - a very real late 20th century inner city urban environment. This is very different from the bland anonymity of Sunnydale. This is bound to make things more real and more meaningful. Moreover can anything more brutally illustrate the fracturing of society into the safe and comfortable on the one hand and everyone else on the other than the abandonment of children (sixteen year olds at least) to such an environment. It was the ideal opportunity for a very powerful social comment. Finally such a scenario was almost made for the introduction of a supernatural threat in the form of vampires. As Cordelia says: “God, 20 minutes ride from billionaires and crab puffs…kids going to war”. And it is in this context that the writers introduced the character of Charles Gunn in “Warzone”. He was the leader of a group of street kids who lived in squalid conditions. They “foraged” for food (that means they steal it). But their vulnerability goes beyond the mere economic. They are socially excluded as well. This is best illustrated by the speech of Knox, the vampire leader: “Street trash. That’s what they are. Just stupid human street trash. For seventy years we ruled this neighborhood. It was our neighborhood. It used to be decent people lived here, working people. Now, can’t even finish one without wanting to puke.” The ordinary decent working families have moved out. They were merely food sources for the vampires. These street kids are despised and rejected even by them. This hatred goes beyond the mere fact that they pose a threat to the vampires. It mirrors very closely the attitudes of the “working families” themselves, encompassing as it does a sense of superiority and contempt. People do not get any more marginalized. But even in the face of this adversity the street kids were never helpless. They are independent and self-reliant. As witnessed by the tactics they used against both Angel and the vampire gang they are clever and sophisticated. They seem united; they turn no one away and share what they have. They have a code of behavior that means that when Angel saves Alonna’s life they stop attacking him. In short they seem to have formed an alternative society of their own. Even after he had saved Alonna’s life and had come to warn them of their danger and offer them help, the kids’ reaction to Angel wasn’t exactly enthusiastic: Gunn: "I don't think we're interested." Angel: "Yeah. You should be. Who do you think that would have killed? We are fighting on the same side." Chain: "The same side of what?" Angel: "I didn't come here to kill you." Gunn: "It don't matter why you're here, or what you are. If you ever show your face down here again, don't count on any long good-byes." They simply didn’t care why he might be different from any other vampire they had ever known. The explanation for this is that it didn’t matter. He was not part of their little society so regardless of whom he was or what he wanted they would have nothing to do with him. This is an attitude that persists even to the end of the episode when Gunn says: “I don’t need no help.” Here we find the raison d’etre for Charles Gunn. He is the personification, the embodiment of the street kids and their struggles. His character and personality were formed by those struggles and he had little existence or meaning outside them. So, in our very first view of Gunn in "First Impressions" he reinforces this idea of a clear gulf between himself and the members of the Fang Gang. He treats them all with suspicion, even Angel for whose help he has come. But at least he can just about bring himself to work with Angel because he recognizes his power to help and, after the events in “Warzone”, he was the one doing the favors. 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. The picture we get here is of someone who is suspicious of outsiders but self-assured in himself and his own abilities. He will accept help but only on his terms. He is willing to use others but if they fall short in his estimation he has no time for them. Indeed even in relation to his own people, the street kids, he is appears arrogant, sure of himself, sure of his abilities and sure of his power to compel obedience. It is a very hard, even harsh exterior. But it is not too long before we begin to see just how brittle that exterior is. He is hard on his "subordinates" because he cares about them and doesn't want them dead. This was a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. And because of his feelings of responsibility, he can allow himself no weaknesses. This is why he has to he has to show the flint-like exterior to the world. That is why he is so brutal to anyone who lets him down. That is also why he has to constantly deride what he perceives as weakness, whether that be in the form of the prissy English ex-Watcher or the "barbie stick figure." It is also why he resents help.
A Man Without A Future But at the same time he is weighed down by an almost palpable fatalism. In "Warzone", Gunn and his little band are fighting well but it seems that they do so in a loosing battle. Nevertheless all appear to be quite resigned about their future. When Angel says he can help them: “unless of course death is what your after. Then you’re on your own.” Gunn’s only reply is that he is always on his own. It is better to die in defense of their own self-sufficient society than to accept help from a “some middle class white dude that’s dead”. Here we see a sense that their lives only have meaning in the integrity of their little band, free from outside interference, and in the fight to survive in the face of the enemy. That struggle is more important even than death. At one point there was a very interesting exchange between brother and sister over Gunn’s attitude to the fight: Alonna: "We're dying here, Gunn." Gunn: "Everybody dies. I'm just trying to make sure that when we die, we stay dead." Alonna: "It shouldn't have gone down the way it did. You're getting reckless." Gunn: "I do what I got to do." Alonna: "No, you do more than you got to do. Three weeks, G. Three weeks and no teeth and you had to ring the dinner bell like that? You just couldn't go another day without getting a little death in, could you?" Gunn: "You think I like this?" Alonna: "No, I think you love it. And you won't quit until you get as close to death as you possibly can." Gunn: "You're wrong." Alonna: "I hope so. - Because I don't want to lose you, too." The implication is that the fight was the only thing Gunn was interested in and he was getting reckless about the consequences. In this respect I found Bobby’s death very interesting. Usually something like that is used as a piece of cheap sentimentality - an opportunity to show how decent and caring everyone one else is. Not here. Gunn seem really very unmoved watching a friend die. And when Alonna said that he needed to go to hospital I thought for a second that he was going to refuse, until Bobby saved everyone the trouble by dying. It certainly seems to me that Alonna was right and that death was what Gunn was after because there really was nothing else. And it is an attitude that is shared by others. It is not that they didn’t understand what they were getting into. They just didn’t care because they did not fear death. In spite of their resilience and their ingenuity they literally are hopeless. They have nothing to hang onto except the fight against the vampires, as Vampire Alonna later describes it – the rage and the grief. And it is interesting that in the season 3 episode “Double or Nothing” in a few well chosen and well executed scenes we get a fairly clear picture of his frame of mind during this period. We see him striding fearlessly into the domain of the demon Jenoff, refusing to be intimidated by anyone – even the Soul Sucker. This is indeed the: “Man of the streets, protector of the young and innocent. “ And he wants something. Or rather he needs something. We don’t see immediately what this is but it is later revealed to be the pick-up truck that is to become his principal weapon in his war against the vampires. And indeed this neatly fits Jenoff’s description of what he offers: “I don't traffic in "wants", I supply needs. Kinda things you gotta have right now or you'll die. They tend to be more valuable.” For Gunn the war is everything. He has no purpose in life outside that war. It is a war he doesn’t expect to survive. So, what is the harm in trading away something that he sees as essentially worthless – his future – for something that can be such a practical help now? So we see only despair in the Gunn of this period. But even the first real turning point in Charles Gunn’s life was all about his relationship with other members of his gang. Ultimately the point about "Warzone" is that there is more to life than just the struggle. The turning point comes when Alonna is made into a vampire and tries to tempt Gunn to cross over as well. She does so by portraying the vampire clan as the mirror image of the street kids: "We were on the right track - just on the wrong team. All that rage and hatred we got? We get to keep all that, only on this side there is no guilt, no grief - just the hunt and the kill - and the fun! And come on, how often did we go out in the daylight anyway?" Here Gunn was being confronted with the logic of his own life. If the fight really was all that mattered, then why not become a vampire? He and his gang would be faster, stronger and less vulnerable - altogether more powerful. And as Alonna also pointed out - no more being cold and hungry and no more running and hiding. On the other hand what would they have to lose? But here is where Vampire Alonna overplayed her hand because when she delved into their past as children, she unwittingly reminded Gunn of what he did have to lose: "Remember when we were kids - in that shelter on Plummer Street, hmm? Second floor was all rotted out. You used to dare kids to cross, and of course you were the best at it, because you were the ...you were the bravest. I wanted to be like you so bad, so I went up, and the floor gave out. I would have broken my neck, but - you'd been watching me the whole time. You were standing right below and you caught me." No doubt we are intended to see in this younger Charles Gunn the same lack of hope and the same fatalism that characterized his older self. That is why he took such needless risks, not just with his own life but with the lives of those whom he dared to follow suit. But, for Alonna at least, he did care. He wasn't prepared to see her sacrifice her life. As he later said of her: "She was the reason, man." There must therefore have been in Gunn some sense of the importance of human life and some hope that his sister may be able to enjoy that life. Because when she did he was obviously left with a sense of having lost something precious and irreplaceable. That is why for him Vampire Alonna was not his sister. When Chain later asks him if was going to kill any vampires, he replied: "I already did." That was all the thing he killed was - a vampire. And it was because he realized that, that he also realized the importance of protecting human life where it still existed. That is why ultimately he supported Angel's call for a ceasefire – to save the lives of his own people. But this realization simply increased the pressure on Gunn further. In “First Impressions” he and Angel started to interrogate the stool pigeon. Gunn just lost it. He struck out in anger. We were brought up short and forced to ask: what is wrong with Gunn? The answer to that was given by Cordelia. When she 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. The more he cared about preventing this the more his failures generated the feelings of helplessness and the anger within him and the more that fed the harshness with which he behaved at times. I found this picture a compelling and convincing one. Yes, the idea of a leader who takes his as responsibilities as seriously as Gunn does and holds himself to blame for everything that goes wrong is a little hackneyed. But it seems just right for someone like Gunn. It gives the character a depth and a substance. It shows him as a real individual with real strengths and real flaws. And what I always like most about such a development is that the weaknesses are the obverse side of the strengths. This is good and realistic writing. It is exactly the way someone with those sort of deep seated anxieties would react. And key elements of this picture are reinforced in “Shroud of Rahmon”. There the influence of the shroud shows up a number of Gunn’s obsessions – his preoccupation with the deaths of his sister and others, his sense of responsibility for those deaths and his unwillingness to trust others and to act as part of a team.
Chapter II:
Whatever Happened to Charles Gunn? It is all the more astonishing therefore, that having written the character in these terms the writers just ignore it all for most of the rest of the series. Throughout most of season 2 there was little effort at all to portray anything that Gunn did as a function of his personality. About the one thing that was distinctive about Gunn was his street-wise practicality. He doesn’t have Wesley’s book learning. But whether it was in figuring out that Angel should never have got into the murder-victim’s house without an invitation in “Dear Boy” or realizing that “nursery” might mean a plant nursery in “Reunion” or indeed in his understanding of the sort of things that go on in the streets in “Thin Dead Line” Gunn is often ahead of the others. But there is little else to distinguish Gunn; to make us realize that his actions or his attitudes were the product of the sort of person he is. And this is especially surprising in a series like ANGEL. As I have repeatedly argued, central to the series is the concept of a small band of people trying to achieve some sort of redemption from the dark legacy of their past, yet at every turn seeing that past constantly return to haunt them. In this context the importance of exploring Gunn’s past is to see how he can change and develop. How does he learn to cope better with his feelings of responsibility and the associated feelings of guilt? How does he become more a team player and less a loner? How does all of this soften him and make him more accessible to others? Or how do the demons left in him by his past – his fatalism, his anger, his recklessness thwart his efforts to change? There is simply nothing is Gunn’s behavior during the main season long arc that can be seen as an expression of the character and personality of the Charles Gunn of “Warzone” or “First Impressions”. Indeed when it comes to the most crucial point in the whole season of season 2, nothing Gunn does makes sense in terms of the character we saw in “Warzone” or “First Impressions”. As we have seen, everything about Gunn insists that his first loyalty is to “his people” and that he is not a team player but a leader. But in “Redefinition” he behaves as if, like Cordelia and Wesley, he is adrift without his own sense of purpose. In this context his words in the teaser had a ring of truth to them: “Hey this was just a side gig for me alright. The extra cash was nice but Angel wants to go all commando…no skin off my nose.” And the explanation for his change of heart when he later turns up at Caritas is just weak: “Hey I got a rep to maintain alright. I can’t have you all seeing through my brusque and macho exterior”. A major change like the one implied here, if it is to be credible, need careful explanation. There was none. Still less was there any explanation as to why this singular and difficult individual suddenly becomes a team player. During Angel’s descent into darkness he was a peripheral figure who hardly seemed to take an interest in what his boss was up to. But then he suddenly abandons his leadership role with his former gang to become a member of the reformed Angel Investigations where he quickly bonds with Wesley in particular and soon settles down under his leadership. Indeed such was his loyalty to his new friends that despite the fact that he had himself deserted his former associates he felt able to lecture Angel on the subject of his own abandonment of Wesley and Cordelia. And he was apparently totally unconscious of the irony. It was only towards the end of the season, particularly in the Pylea mini-arc, that there is any organized attempt by the writers to deal with Gunn’s past and relate it to his present actions. So, in episodes such as “Thin Dead Line” and “No Place Like Plrtz Glrb” that we begin to develop a renewed sense of who Charles Gunn is and what is important to him. In the former episode we see someone with a shrewd understanding of life in the streets and a passionate commitment to helping those who had to endure it. In “Over the Rainbow” and especially the season finale we see just how much he really does identify with the underdog, with those fighting the odds. This is Gunn as the social conscience of the group. As such he is readily identifiable with the same figure we saw in “First Impressions”. More particularly, however, starting in “Belonging” we do begin to see Gunn as an individual who is attached to two worlds – that of his former street gang and that of Angel Investigation. Does his loyalty lie with his own people, his own small unique group. Or should he work with Angel and the others to help a wider group of people? This was the dilemma crystallized when George and Rondell came looking for his vehicle. Gunn wanted to go further than simply supply them with equipment. He wanted to take charge himself: Gunn: "Count me in then." Wesley: "What about the Hacklar?" Gunn: "Angel gets a lock on its crib, page me." Angel: "Hacklar is living on the North Shore of Lake Hollywood. We better hurry. They've got a five K race starting there in half an hour."
Wesley: "Consider yourself paged." In an episode like “First Impressions”, Gunn’s first loyalty was to “his people.” He certainly would not have put the power walkers first. Yet that is what he did here; perhaps costing Rondell his life. The loyalty he still feels to his former gang is evident by the way he takes care to ensure that Rondell does not rise as a vampire. But the degree to which he is now separated from them is also shown by the following exchange: Gunn: "You should have waited for me." George: "We've been waiting on you for months, bro." These two worlds that Gunn now inhabits are thus brought into direct conflict. The implication from George is that Gunn cannot simply help out now and again. He has to give his undivided attention to his own. This is now the time to make the choice. In the end he does so and chooses Angel Investigations. When he arrives back from Rondell’s funeral pyre he is concerned about Cordelia but is caught in a dilemma: “Last night... I lost one of my crew. I shoulda been there, but... I'm sorry. Wes said the trip might be one way and... I just can't. I know that makes me... I don't know what it makes me. I just figured I owed it to you to tell you face to face. I wish you luck. I hope you find her.” There is of course no doubt that his crew does need him. But this is the language of duty and obligation. He is making a decision not because it is the one he wants to but because he thinks it is the one he should. But what makes him change his mind is the following phone call from Angel: “So as soon as Wes solves our scattering problem, we'll be leaving. Don't know if we're coming back. It’s 11:16. Cordy's been gone almost 24 hours now. I think I've covered everything...Oh. The mortgage for the hotel is under the company name. Lease is up in six months - at least, that's what they tell me, so... Well, I guess that's it. Take care of yourself.” As Gunn later says: “Sounded like the captain of the Titanic gettin' ready to go down with the ship.” What he responded to was in effect a personal connection. He saw the possibility that these were people he might never see again and decided that friendship with them was in the end the first call on him rather than any sense of duty to those he had evidently grown away from. As a proposition this is not without its problems. In a case where you cannot help everyone where does responsibility lie? Does it lie with those you can help most? That might favor his street gang where his skills might do more good than with Angel. Does it lie with those whose friend you are? Is that not self-indulgent.? On the whole I would have liked to have seen a greater exploration of the moral and ethical implications of the decision Gunn took. And even leaving aise the moral issues, there are the psychological issues as well. The most obvious way of looking at Gunn’s chocie is, as being between a past and a future. The past carries with it all the psychological baggage Gunn has to get away from: the sense of isolation, helplessness, the anger, the sense of being alone, the harshness and the rest. Angel Investigations presents the prospect of being coinnected to others, working as part of a team, a sense of making a difference – or put more simply it promises him a future. Nothing in the Pylea arc deals with this aspect of Gunn’s dilemma either. But at least the writers here give us some sense that they recognize that Gunn has a past and that it is different from his future, even if they do not explore why.
Chapter III:
Finding A Future Nor was there much of an improvement in the way that Gunn was treated in season 3. As if conscious of the unsatisfactory nature of their treatment of Gunn’s choice in “Over the Rainbow” the writers in “That Old Gang of Mine” return to the subject of Gunn as a man who had to make a choice between his old life and a new future. Here Gunn tries to explain why he chose to separate himself from his old gang: Gunn: “I couldn’t keep my own sister safe. What could I do for the rest of you?” Alonna had been the victim of vampires. He had not been able to save her, just as he hadn’t been able to save so many others. So it was his fear of his own inadequacies that drove him away. It has to be said that for me the explanation doesn’t really work. In the season 2 episode “First Impressions” we see someone for whom responsibility is becoming an ever more crushing burden. It is perfectly possible to believe that Gunn would (as was also suggested in that episode) start to doubt himself. It is less credible that he would flee from responsibility altogether when we have already seen that Gunn’s reaction to this self-doubt was to try all the harder to discharge his responsibilities to others, efforts that led to violent and irrational behavior and even to the suggestion of self-destructive tendencies. Someone like that certainly could abandon himself to despair as suggested by “Double or Nothing”. But abandoning those who trusted him altogether? And even if he did, surely such an action would have left all too visible marks – of guilt and remorse. Indeed one might ask, if Gunn truly did believe that he had failed Alonna and would fail his other friends then why would he assume other responsibilities of an equally serious kind with Angel Investigations? It is true that Gunn’s history and its effect on the present did play a part in the rest of season 3. And the writers did return to the subject of how and why the Gunn who led his people in the gang war with the vamppires had changed. But they did so in a very particular context, namely Gunn’s role as the male half of one of the most sickeningly sweet couplings ever seen on a fantasy series; and as plot device. We can see this most strikingly in “Double or Nothing”. Jenoff had sent the Repo-Demon after Gunn because something in him had changed: Demon:
“You're planning on giving your soul to another, aren't you?” Gunn doesn’t deny it. And indeed, when he is reminded of his bargain with Jenoff, his reaction is: “I'm not... I'm not the same person I was back then.” The despair that led him to lose any sense of the value of his future has now been replaced by his love for Fred. The sort of future that the pair of them could look forward to now was illustrated by an elderly demon couple – the Frzylckas -whom they interviewed about a demon squatter problem they had. The Frzylckas had been together 300 years and it showed: Gunn: “Man. You hear those two? Fred: “It's beautiful. All that time and they're still in love. The way they finish each other's insults, it's so...beautiful. This illustrates the depth of the connection between them. And indeed Fred and Gunn now seem well on their way to developing just such a rapport. When Gunn tries for the one last day of perfect happiness together Fred 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: Fred:
“I know I said he said those things to me, but he would never say those things
to me!” That each of them know and understand the other so well is a testament to the strength of the connection that they have made. And for Gunn, it is this connection that he has forged with another human being that is the really important thing in his life. This connection is his future. As Cordelia said
Cordelia: “You and Fred have your whole big bright futures ahead of you and I'm
here to tell you, it's all right to enjoy it. Life goes on. The moral here is clear enough. No-one is guaranteed anything. We none of us have control over what will happen to us in future any more than Angel could control what happened to Connor. But we cannot allow the possibility of bad things in the future to destroy the meaning of what we have here and now. And equally we cannot allow the circumstances we presently face – no matter how grim - to deprive us of our hope of something better. So long as Gunn refuses to despair, so long as he remains open to the possibilities of a connection with others, then he has a future. Where he went wrong seven years ago was in his willingness to abandon that hope because, even though he did not know it at the time, he had a future. It was his own act of despair in making the bargain with Jenoff and not the grim circumstances in which he found himself that eventually threatened to destroy that future. Of course this fits in very nicely indeed with the general “only connect” theme of ANGEL as a sereis. But is has some obvious flaws. Most striking off all is Alonna. Gunn had a very strong bond with all his people, but his relationship with Alonna was exceptional. That was love too. If Gunn was able to see a future through his love for someone else, why couldn’t he do the same through his love for Alonna? The answer is that, surrounded by death and the fatalism that brings with it all Gunn thought of was the fight. It was Alonna’s death that made him conscious of the value of life. So even though you love someone you can still be so distracted by other thinsg that you see now future. Equally, even without someone to love you can become conscious of the importance of a future. And surely Gunn’s switch of allegience from his old gang to Angel Investigations is a statement that helping others – itself a reaffirmation of the value of life – is itself the thing that give him a future. And surely the struggle within him between this desire for a future and the old anger, despair, harshness and feeling of being alone should have been played out in the context of this aspect of his life rather than the cloying sweetness of the relationship between himself and Fred. But, for better or for worse, that is where the focus remains and season 4 is largely an examination of Gunn’s weaknesses and failings in the context of his feelings for Fred. And here we are not talking about the self-destructive tendencies that manifested themselves so clearly in “Warzone” and “First Impressions”. The writers really showed little or no interest in exploring these. Rather they concentrate on classic feelings of insecurity; the same feelings referred to in “That Old Gang of Mine” but which are very hard indeed to reference in the Gunn of early season 2.
His Own Worst Enemy This Gunn is in many ways his own worst enemy. For Fred the fact that he could kill Professor Seidel meant that he wasn’t the person she thought that he was and she has not been able to cope with that. That is why the relationship started to disintegrate in “Supersymmetry”, not because she was attracted to Wesley. But this is where Gunn compounded his wrongdoing. The fact that he committed murder, damaging though that was, couldn’t end his relationship with Fred. She felt that something had changed between them. But at the same time her feeling for Gunn and her feelings of responsibility for his actions would not let her simply walk away. Rather it was his insecurity, his jealousy and his distrust that were the problem. And, together with his anger, they finally ended the relationship. In “Soulless” he was the one who needlessly confronted Wesley when in reality he and nothing to fear from him. He was the one who started the fight. And he was the one who, albeit inadvertently, hit Fred. So ultimately, he was the one who destroyed the relationship: Gunn: “What Angelus said about me ...I didn't mean to hurt you. I would never do that.” Fred: “I know. I just can't help but think if you didn't attack…”. Gunn: “Attack? That's how you see it? I attacked him! What do you call what he was doing in the office before I walked in?” Fred: “I don't know what…”. Gunn: “He was kissing you! Don't lie to me. It's the one thing you're not good at.” Fred: “It just happened.” Gunn: “Because you let it. I've never felt so much for anyone. I would do anything for you, but it's not enough, is it?” Fred: “Charles, I'm…” Gunn: “I can't do this anymore, Fred. I'm tired of you looking everywhere but at me.” Gunn clearly values his relationship with Fred more than anything else in the world, yet at the same time it is because it is so important to him that he fears loosing it so deeply. And for someone so insecure as Gunn this means living in perpetual torment in which the anticipation of loosing Fred is actually worse than the reality. That is why for him the easy way out was to end his relationship, accept the worst and end the torment of the anticipation. Again and again throughout this season Gunn responds to situations and events not as they really are but as he perceives them through the prism of his insecurities. In “Players” for example he reflects on the success he and Gwen had in stealing “Lisa”: Gunn: “Hey, I'm just the muscle.” Gwen: “Don't knock the muscle, buddy. Makes the girls go all knocky in the knees. But if that's all you were, we never could've gotten into that party tonight.” Gunn: “Oh, you would've gotten in. Of course, the damage would have been significantly higher.” Gwen: “Thanks to your brains-over-brawn approach.” Gunn: “Well, not so much brains as too many movies.” Gwen: “Man, they have done a number on you. You really believe this "I'm the muscle" crap.” Gunn’s underestimation of the contribution he made reflect his inner uncertainties rather than the reality of his qualities. Gunn may never have had Wesley’s book learning but he was always the shrewdest member of Angel Investigations. As I have already pointed out in “Reunion” he was the one who worked out how to find Darla. More to the point, he also managed to work out from a very brief conversation what actually did happen between Wesley and Fred in “Supersymmetry”. He also had a very good idea of Wesley’s motives in that incident and realized that the old Wesley he used to know wouldn’t have behaved that way. Hence his question to his former friend in “Spin the Bottle”: "What happened to you, man?" As for his leadership skills, in the same episode TeenGunn he exposed TeenWesley’s lack of knowledge and generally cut through some of the more ridiculous ideas that he came up with to explain their strange situation: Wesley: “Perhaps the whole point of this experiment is hair!" Gunn: "I vote he's not in charge." And certainly when it comes to organizing a search party, Gunn’s tactical knowledge and physical courage are evident in the way he decides to split the group into two and himself takes the lead of one of them. Indeed his very belief that being muscle is inferior to having brains or being a leader is itself indicative of someone who is more than “just” muscle. If he really were no more than a dumb bully, he would hardly admit to feeling that physical strength was not enough. But Gunn understands none of these realities. Hence when he is shown around the Wolfram and Hart Offices in “Home” he naturally assumes that Wolfram and Hart are really interested in Angel and that he is just along for the ride. His comment that: “Well, I see what the others got, Fred's big brain, Wes' training, Lorne's mind-reading thing. Guess I just don't know what you guys expect me to do around...” echoes the comments he made in the earlier episode. And it is at this point thet he sees the seciurity office and assumes (wrongly as things turn out) that this is where he is being taken. And it is because he allows an unwarranted feeling of being just muscle to drive his actions that he makes so many mistakes. And here I am not only thinking of the part that he played in undermining the unity and commitment of Angel Investigations in season 4 or even his decision to leave Fred. His decision to throw in his lot with Wolfram and Hart in “Home” was also the result of his need to overcome his low opinion of who he was and what he could achieve: “I'm doing this. Hope it's not just me, but if it is, that's all right, too.” In season 3 it could be said with some justice that we saw occasional flashes of character definition but nothing which approached genuine characterization. Well, here in season 4 we did see just such development. It was not really consistent with the Gunn whom we saw, for example, in “First Impressions”. There were superficial similarities. In the earlier episode we saw someone carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He has feelings of responsibility for those he thinks of as his people – those who live in his neigborhood, the poor, and the vulnerable. And it is from this that everything else about him flowed. Because of his feelings of responsibility, he can allow himself no weaknesses. This is why he has to he has to show the flint-like exterior to the world. That is why he is so brutal to anyone who lets him down. The Gunn we saw in “that Old Gang of Mine” shares the same sense of responsibility and the same fear that he will fail in discharging that responsibility. But he reacts in a very different way – by fleeing responsibility. Alonna had been the victim of vampires. He had not been able to save her, just as he hadn’t been able to save so many others. So it was his fear of his own inadequacies in the face of the crushing burden of the responsibilities that we see in “First Impressions” that drove him away. But the lack of continuity with earlier episodes aside there is much of interest in the Gunn we saw in season 4. In him we can recognize a person, who like Angel and Wesley illustrates the tragedy of the human condition in a way that has become the hallmark of the series. We all struggle to find our place in the world and to find personal happiness and fulfillment. And in that struggle we daily face disappointments and defeats. Often, perhaps mainly, these are because of outside forces beyond our control. We love someone and they love someone else. There is nothing we can do about that. We want to be valued by others but do not have the talent or brains or skill necessary. Again, we are helpless to change matters. But it is the self-inflicted wounds that not only hurt more but also raise the more interesting moral questions. In “Inside Out” Gunn told Skip: “Look, monochrome can yap all he wants about no-name's cosmic plan, but here's a little something I picked up rubbing mojos these past couple of years. The final score can't be rigged. I don't care how many players you grease, that last shot always comes up a question mark. But here's the thing—you never know when you're taking it. It could be when you're duking it out with the Legion of Doom, or just crossing the street deciding where to have brunch. So you just treat it all like it was up to you—the world in the balance—'cause you never know when it is.” This is Gunn’s defense of free will. Now, Gunn lost Fred, not because she loved Wesley but because he pushed her away. He wanted to make a contribution to the struggle against evil but, in “Home” ended up choosing to become Wolfram and Hart’s creature. He has and exercises free will and, to the extent he acts wrongly, he must take responsibility for it. But at the same time because he acts under the impetus of his own innate flaws he also deserves sympathy because he shares the flawed nature we all do. He is guilty of errors of perception and judgment rather than deliberate wrongdoing. And as this is something we are all guilty of to a greater or lesser extent his flaws should make up ponder to what extent he is both a victim and author of his own misfortunes. It is the behavior of people in this sort of situation that should cause us, the audience, think and argue about these vital questions. And that, for me, continues to hold the main interest in ANGEL.
Chapter IV:
A Faustian Pact Season 5 continues to develop this idea that Gunn’s motivation for throwing his lot in with Wolfram and Hart was to help resolve his own feelings of insecurity. This is where his “brain boost” in “Conviction” becomes important. Now he is far more than just “muscle”. In fact he has knowledge and skills that no-one else on the team can bring to bear. Not only that; it is his knowledge and skill that effectively save the day in “Conviction” when perhaps nothing else could. But he got this knowledge and skill as part of a deal with the Senior Partners, presumably when he met with the conduit in the White Room: Eve: “So you're not backing out?” Gunn: “You don't know me or you wouldn't ask that question.”
Eve: “I can see why the senior
partners chose you. Have fun. There are reasons why deals like these are known as Faustian pacts. Gunn isn’t stupid and he knows the nature of the Senior Partners. He knows they are not giving him something out of the goodness of their hearts and he knows there is a price to pay. We can be quite sure of this because of the way he deliberately conceals his deal from the others: Gunn: “Look, it's me here. They didn't evil me up. All I got stuck in my head was the law. And for some reason, a messload of Gilbert and Sullivan. Eve: “Standard. Great for elocution.” Angel: “How can you possibly know they didn't do anything else? Gunn: “'Cause I saw the man in the white room. He does a lot of scary things, but lying ain't one of them.” If that were true he wouldn’t have lied about it. He is only fooling himself. But Gunn has now become more self-assured because he now feels more valuable to the team. And because of this he becomes the number one supporter of the deal Angel struck with Wolfram and Hart. And in a way that is both so typical of ANGEL and so true to life, Gunn manages to convince himself that this deal is in fact in everyone’s best interests: “Look, I know our move to Wolfram & Hart hasn't been all flowers and candy, but we've been able to do some serious good while we're here. Lives saved, disasters averted, with all our fingers and souls still attached. End of the day, I'm thinking we made the right choice.” Gunn clearly convinced himself that his new abilities of his would serve the cause of right, just as he convinced himself that the Wolfram and Hart deal was in everyone’s best interests. But this was also the way he could achieve his own ambitions. Herein lies the ambiguity of his situation.
His True Motives But, as was only to be expected, he was steadily drawn further and further towards serving his own personal goals and less and less in doing good for others. At the start of “Damage” he is in a fight with the DA: “Yes, I know, but he wouldn't have pled nolo contendere if he'd known about the exculpatory evidence being withheld by the prosecutor. Look, look, set up a meeting with Judge Braedon. Closed chambers. Screw the D.A. He's the one trying to pull a fast one. Let him read about it in the paper.” When challenged about this he replies: “Just a little professional rivalry. You want ugly, see us go at it on a golf course.” Here Gunn is revealing the true nature of his activities. What is meant to be a process for the discovery of truth and the application of justice has become a game. Is this an appropriate way to achieve those high purposes or is this simply a contest where the victim and the accused count for less than the egos of the attorneys? So, in Destiny he and Wesley disagree about the approach to be taken to a particular cult. But when Angel says: “Let's kill them all. Warlocks, minions—they're all evil. Sold their kids to the devil. Let's just wipe 'em all out. We got the power to do that, right?” he faces opposition from both. Gunn and Wesley see Wolfram and Hart’s role in the following terms: Gunn; “Not so much stopping as...” Wesley: “…as redirecting their energies.” Gunn: “See, a cult this big has alliances, connections. If we confront them directly, it could be very bad for business.” Or take the way he reacts to the proposal to fire Eve. There are no doubt good and practical reasons for staying Angel’s hand on this one. But when Gunn minimizes the seriousness of what she did by referring to her “alleged” efforts to harm Angel and laying emphasis on the fact that she was simply trying to put him in a permanent hallucinogenic coma as opposed to killing him, you have to wonder at his judgment. More and more you get the sense that it is Gunn’s own personal happiness with the work that he is doing that is actually speaking. I have already discussed his sense of insecurity and it isn’t hard to understand the way his newly found “rational” side, his ability to articulate reasons for a particular course of action and to sway the others to his way of thinking, gives him a sense of self worth that he was sorely lacking. It is equally easy to understand how this may sway his judgment. When at the start of “You’re Welcome” Angel announces he wants to quit Wolfram and Hart, Gunn opposes him by pointing to the obvious: “Any thought about what would happen to us if we tried to say bye-bye? The ramifications, I mean. You think the senior partners are just gonna let us breeze on out the front door?” But it’s only towards the end of this conversation that we get close to the truth. Angel challenges Gunn over the real reason for his opposition to Angel’s decision to quit the law firm: “And I'm sure that legal brain upgrade they gave you has got nothing to do with” Interestingly enough Gunn does not deny the importance of this factor. Instead he simply points out: “We all got something out of this.” Just how important Gunn’s abilities have now become to him can be seen from what happens when he begins to lose them. He visits a Wolfram and Hart doctor saying: “I can't lose this. This power, these skills, they've…they've changed me, given me...” The doctor finishes the sentence for him: “Meaning? And to have it taken away, it's... heartbreaking.” That is why Gunn agrees to do a small favor for the doctor as a price for getting his “brain boost” back. Then he discovers the price that he unknowingly paid – a deal to get a sarcophagus out of customs, a deal that will end Fred’s life. Herein lies the power of the situation Gunn placed himself in. Of course the fact that his actions so directly hurt Fred came as a shock to him. But as Wesley pointed out later: “Nothing from Wolfram & Hart is ever free. You knew that.” And Gunn indeed did. He even tacitly admits as much: “I…I didn't think it would be one of us. I didn't think it would be Fred.” By these words he implies that he realized that someone would pay a price for what he got, just not someone he knew. But worse than that, he tried to maintain the deception to protect himself, even when he knew that Fred was involved: “But you knew what was happening to her. You knew who was responsible and you didn't say anything.” Here we see exposed the lie upon which Gunn’s conduct was based. He fooled himself into believing that he was making his pact to help the team and through them, help others. But in Wesley’s challenge we see that where there was a direct and clear conflict between Gunn’s own interests on the one hand and those of Fred on the other, he chose the former. When Knox threatened to tell Wesley of his own part in the delivery of the Sarcophagus, he tries to shut him up. He reveals the fact that the sarcophagus was released from customs but when asked directly who was responsible he denies any knowledge. Not even when an obviously hurting Wesley apologizes for what was – unknown to him at the time – a well deserved rebuke, does Gunn admit the truth. And even when Wesley walks in on him and the Doctor, Gunn’s first instinct is to lie. We can only conclude, therefore that it was indeed for entirely selfish reasons that Gunn acted. And the self-deception involved in all of this was made even starker by his meeting with the Conduit. Until now it had always appeared to Gunn as a big black cat and from this vision Gunn recognized what he wanted for himself – someone who was cool, powerful and controlled; above all someone to be respected. But now he saw not a metaphor for himself but his own mirror image. And in case we missed the point, the Conduit explained: “The physical form of the conduit is determined by the viewer.” Throughout, their conversation is punctuated by violence with the Conduit introducing himself to Gunn by hitting him and ending the interview by punching him in the face repeatedly. In between they have the following exchange: Conduit: “This is the part where I need to be clear. I am not your friend. I am not your flunky. I am your conduit to the senior partners, and they are tired of your insolence. Oh, yeah. They are not here for your convenience.” Gunn: “I didn't come for a favor. We can make a deal.” Conduit: “Deals are for the devil.” Gunn: “You want someone else—a life for hers—you'll get it. You can have mine.” Conduit: “I already do.” Gunn had seen in the Conduit what the connection with the senior partners could mean for him, what it could turn him into: someone to be respected, someone they would have to listen to With the brain upgrade restored he assumed that he had become that person again. Now when he sees himself he must realize his mistake. To the Senior Partners he is not some big black cat at the top of the jungle food chain. He is after all just Charles Gunn; not someone they have to bargain with or even respect but rather their creature to use and discard as they wish. In fact as Gunn himself must have realized, through the Conduit the Senior Partners were actually mocking him and his pretensions. And in the senseless, pointless violence that Gunn deals out to himself here we also see the anger that he must have felt at this realization.
A Changed Man But Charles Gunn is basically too decent a man to be able to live with that. That is why he tells to Doctor: “Then take it back. Everything you put in my head, the law, all the knowledge, take it back. Everything. Take more, leave me a vegetable. I don't care. Just bring her back.” He realizes now that an ability like the one he was given, matched to purely selfish ends is purposeless, at least in terms of any sense of purpose that he understands. His whole existence with the brain upgrade is therefore hollow. Even as simple muscle – and we all know he was more than just that – he had a meaning and purpose while he was helping others. “Because I was weak. Because I wanted to be somebody that I wasn't. Because I don't know where I fit. Because I never did. Because a thousand other reasons that don't mean a damn 'cause she's gone. She's gone... and she's not coming back because of me. I did this, and I'm sorry.” Here we see Gunn taking an important step. He now knows that what he did was wrong and has faced up to it and taken responsibility for it. He isn’t just sorry because Fred died. He is sorry because he was, in part at least, the cause of it. This is the first stage. Making amends comes next. And this brings us to “Underneath”. When Angel and the rest of the team went to the Holding Dimension to get Lindsey out Gunn understood its nature and how it worked. When Angel sees Gunn put on Lindsey’s amulet Angel is horrified: Angel: “Gunn, no! What the hell are you doing?” Gunn: “What needs to be done.” Angel: “I'm not leaving you here.” Gunn: “You don't make the rules here. Wolfram and Hart does. If one leaves, one has to stay. A void is impossible.” So he volunteered to suffer in Lindsey’s place. At one point Hamilton even offers to release him from the Holding Dimension. But Gunn resolves that the advantage to him of release is not worth the price that the Senior Partners would ask. It is, I think, no exaggeration to say that Gunn’s whole way of looking at the world has changed, that he is much more sensitive to the consequences of his actions and much less willing to see things from the point of view of how they affect him personally. That was why when Illyria eventually did release him in “Time Bomb” he resolutely opposed the deal which would have seen a demonic cult purchase a human child. And from this point of view there was great symbolic significance in Gunn’s last day in “Not Fade Away”. He spent it in the company of Anne, the girl whom Buffy first rescued so many years ago and who Angel (during his “beige period”) had used to hurt Lindsay and Lilah. She was persevering with her work among the helpless: “Crack runaways, abuse victims, psychotics. The old gang.” It was while discussing her efforts to help these victims that there was a very telling exchange between her and Gunn: Gunn: “What if I told you it doesn't help? What would you do if you found out that none of it matters? That it's all controlled by forces more powerful and uncaring than we can conceive, and they will never let it get better down here. What would you do? Anne: “I'd get this truck packed before the new stuff gets here. Wanna give me a hand?” Anne doesn’t fool herself that she can solve the problems of the world. She knows that she is probably fighting a losing battle. But she knows that it is a battle that has to be fought. She is willing to do so because it is important to her. Or rather the victims on the streets, those who suffer from the evil in the world, are important to her. Our actions can be driven either by principle or by practical considerations. The latter result in compromise with evil and with an acceptance of it. From this evil only gets stronger. Gunn too was therefore turning his back on compromises based on self-interest. He too was accepting that only helping others unselfishly and with everything you have was the way to fight evil.
Chapter V:
For most of the series the character of Gunn was for me both a wasted opportunity and a disappointment. The writers had created a rich and interesting background for him. From that background they had intelligently and insightfully drawn out an underlying tension within the character – a tension which might have defeated the purposes he was trying to achieve, a tension which might have driven him to the edge of self-destruction. But essentially they made nothing of this. Instead Gunn and his character were forced to fit in to a scenario where they did not naturally belong, a scenario to which his rich and tortured past simply did not relate. I am, of course, talking about the break up of Angel Investigations caused by Angel’s abandoning of his friends and the aftermath of that break up. And even afterwards the most crucial part of Gunn's past, the thing that lay at the heart of his problems - his relationship with his old gang - is for the most part treated as an afterthought. We get no sense of how his past drives his present actions. Indeed we get little sense of an internal conflict within him at all. The closest we get is the suggestion in “That Old Gang of Mine” that he ran away from the responsibilities as gang leader because he was afraid he would fail his friends. As I have already said that carries for me little or no conviction. Instead, in season 3, the writers choose to centre their characterization of Gunn on his relationship with Fred. Now the gothic soap opera element to this is not in any event something that is going to recommend itself to me. And it is really too cloyingly sweet to count as good romance either. But ironically it was this element of season 3 that laid the basis for a transformation of Charles Gunn once more into an interesting figure. It created the competition between him and Wesley over Fred and it was in this context that we got the first really convincing picture of a man battling his own insecurities. Let me immediately say that there was a generic quality to all of this. After all ANGEL had already heavily featured both its titular hero and Wesley as people battling insecurities. But it was better than what had gone before. And the same sense of insecurity also featured in a different context too – Gunn’s propensity to see himself as a lesser member of the team. Again, as I have already said, this too lacks some credibility for me; but at least the writers were being consistent in their portrayal of the character and that is always important. Moreover these insecurities were a matter of high seriousness, going as in the case of Wesley to a person’s fundamental need to feel comfortable with himself and to fulfil his deepest needs as a person. And in Gunn’s case the writers in a very important respect went much further than they even did with Wesley. Gunn’s failings led directly to the death of a member of the core team in Angel when Fred was “hollowed out” by Illyria. This was a clear example of the sort of devastating consequences that such failings could have. But overall, my attention was never engaged with Gunn in the same way it was with Wesley. I never got the same sense of him as a possible danger – something that seems very odd indeed when one considers that he was the one with the greatest reason to personally distrust Angel. Equally I never really felt much sympathy for him. Perhaps that was because the main reason for that sympathy would naturally be the plight of the despised, rejected and vulnerable street kids whom he led but whom he also so abruptly left.
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