EPISODE 4.22

HOME

Written by:  Tim Minear

Directed by: Tim Minear

Setting up Season 5

In my review of “Peace Out”, I said that I was somewhat surprised that the Jasmine arc ended before the season finale.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been.  ANGEL has evolved into a highly structured series.  A pattern has now been established in which each season finale sets up the succeeding season with the following premiere introducing us to the underlying theme for that season.  It was therefore only to be expected that “Home” would follow in that pattern.  And in one sense of course it did.  It appears that seasson 5 will now take place in the “Belly of the Beast” with Angel and the other members of his team taking control of Wolfram and Hart with all the dangers inherent in doing so -  dangers that were so clearly signposted here.  The really interesting part about “Home” however is not the fact that Wolfram and Hart are evil or that Angel and company taking control of them is bound to be a spectacularly bad idea.  It is why they collectively and individually agreed to do so in the first place.  And answering this question brings us right back to the same motivations that drove the members of Angel Investigations to make such poor choices throughout most of season 4.  In this sense, therefore, “Home” sets up the new season dramatically but thematically is really a coda for the past one.

We can best understand the nature of these choices and why they sum up what went wrong for Angel and the others earlier  in the season if we place them in context.  And I think the best place to start is with the debate over the meaning of what Angel and Connor between them did in “Peace Out”.  Lilah refers to it as “ending world peace” but Angel Investigations begged to differ:

Wesley: “Jasmine was creating a slave state.”

Lilah: “Right, where the slaves are full of giggly joy and love. Ugh, what a nightmare.”

Angel: “She was eating people.”

Lilah; “They knew what they were getting into.”

Lorne: “Her stomach?”

Lilah: “World peace comes at a price. Jasmine understood that. She consumed, what? Couple dozen souls a day? Now weigh that against ending the suffering of millions, but you fixed that.”

And indeed the implications of “ending world peace” are then made only too apparent as we see Connor walking through the riot torn streets of LA, with sirens blaring all around him as people loot shops and fight one another.  There are indeed two sides to this particular argument.  But then that is also true of so much else that we see in this episode – especially anything involved in the Wolfram and Hart offer.  Lilah refers to it in the following terms:

“What we're offering you is a turnkey, state-of-the-art, multi-tasking operation. What you do with it, well, that's up to you.”

So, when Fred is given her guided tour of the Science Division of Wolfram and Hart, she finds a huge laboratory, fully staffed and fully equipped. Knox, her guide,  refers to it as:

“Everything modern technology has to offer, right at your fingertips. Everything's state of the art, cutting edge.”

The capacity to achieve great things that will be of benefit people is evident.  But the one practical example of the laboratory’s work we see is instructive.  What seems a harmless enough personal organizer is far more subversive.  Knox names one of Fred’s friends and admits he used the “organizer” to get access to the information:

“Hacks into any electronic device within 100 yards. I—I patched in to your cell phone's address book.”

This device represents a serious intrusion into personal privacy and was used quite carelessly without Fred’s consent or even knowledge.  In fact Knox himself, while seemingly a male version of Fred – gauche, otherworldly and charming – puts us on our guard when he tells her:

“We actually have a dungeon. I can show it to you later.”

Given the nature and purpose of a dungeon he is remarkably matter of fact about it.

Then there is Wesley.  On the face of it, for him the big draw of Wolfram and Hart was their research capabilities.  Wesley’s guide, Sirk,  shows him a table on which a row of books is neatly lined up:

Sirk: “It's actually the most comprehensive collection of prophecy archives to be found anywhere. Choose something to read. Go on, anything at all. Something rare.”

Wesley: “All right. The Devandire Sibylline Codex.”

Sirk: “Translated or Sanskrit?”

Wesley: “Surprise me.”

Sirk: “I'm sure I will.

When the text of the Codex mysteriously appears on the blank pages of one of the books, Sirk explains:

“The, uh, template you're holding provides access to anything stored in the firm's locked archives relating to prophecies, omens, revelations and so on.”

Again this is a powerful tool, but the man showing him this on behalf of Wolfram and Hart is an ex-Watcher:

Wesley: “Impressive. And does the Watcher's Council know you stole the only known copy of the codex when you left?”

Sirk: “There is no Council.”

Wesley: “Not anymore, no. So you opted to, what, uh, play for the other side? Cross the line?”

Sirk: “These are complicated times. Lines become blurry.”

These last words may indeed serve as the motto of the episode. Then there is Gunn who is taken to the White Room, a place synomymous with power.  As he says himself it’s for the “big cats”.  And of course the image that appears is that of a panther - large, strong and fierce.  As a symbol of the room it is very apt.  Certainly it is powerful, but also dangerous and a little sinister. 

Unsurprisngly, however, it is to Angel that the most comprehensive array of advantages Wolfram and Hart has to offer are laid out.  For him there isn’t only:

“Money, clothes, women. Did I mention we have a juice bar?”

The huge office with private elevator, the 12 cars and the necro-tempered glass which allows him a glimpse into the daylight world he has missed for so long are nice; but they are not the hook.  No, for him that is the promise of being able to help others with all the resources of Wolfram and Hart:

“Think of what you can do with the resources of Wolfram & Hart at your fingertips, the difference that would make. Nothing in this world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and it's cruel, but that's why there's you, Angel. You live as if the world were as it should be. With all this, you can make it that way. People don't need an unyielding champion. They need a man who knows the value of compromise and how to beat the system from inside the belly of the beast.”

And as if to drive home her point Lilah offers Angel something that would help Buffy out in Sunnydale:

“That nifty, little bauble comes with the file. Apparently, it's crucial for some kind of final battle. Guess they're in short supply up Sunnydale way. A bit gauche for my taste, but, hey, not a slayer.”

The Value of Compromise

Here we see the temptations that Angel, Fred, Wesley and Gunn face.  What they are being offered is not wholly evil.  But it is ambiguous.  There is a clear parallel with ending world peace.  That had an advantage and a disadvantage.  Fundamentally whether you thought ending world peace was a good or a bad thing depended on your moral perspective.  Do human beings have an absolute right even perhaps a duty to  be themselves?  Does the absolute nature of this right mean that no practical advantage derrived from giving up that right can justify doing so?  Or is human happiness a higher value?  Is the value attached to the lives of Jasmine’s victims such that you cannot justify sacrificing them even if doing so saves countless others.  Or is morality just another branch of mathematics?

So too here, there is a clear moral choice to be made.  Is it better to be an unyielding champion for principle and to refuse all compromise?  It is better to stand up for what you believe in?  Or should you give a little on your principles in the belief that it will help you in your search for some greater good?  Do you sacrifice the few for the many and do the ends ultimately justify the means?

Well, as Angel later shrewdly said, if you are in the belly of the beast, it’s because you have been eaten. Earlier Lilah had said:

“In fact, game over. Guess what? You win, which is why I'm here. I have been authorized to make you kids an offer.”

No-one could believe that Wolfram and Hart went to all the trouble of re-establishing their LA Office for the sole purpose of conceding defeat to Angel.  Equally they were hardly likely to hand it over to him out of the goodness of their hearts, what with them being…you know…evil.  Angel has warned anyone who took the limousine rise to the Wolfram and Hart offices:

“Before the ride's even over, before you even cross through their doors, you'll be corrupted.”

The Senior Partners were willing to see Angel and the others use their resources to accomplish some good because that was easier for them to deal with than unyielding and uncompromising opposition.  Angel Investigations would be in a position where their actions could be diverted away from matters that would do real harm so that Wolfram and Hart’s real agenda could be protected.  That was the compromise that Angel was being offered.

The interesting thing is that the members of Angel Investigations saw the two sides to the debate about world peace and had no difficulty making their choice.  Whether it was the right or wrong choice is irrelevant.  They brought a moral clarity and certainty to the decision and never doubted for a moment that they were right.  As we have seen, there are equally two sides to the choice that Wolfram and Hart offered to them.  But, as with world peace, just becase there are two sides to an argument it does not follow that the argument is evenly balanced.  And Angel in fact answers all of the questions I posed above with equal clarity.  When he tells Lilah to close the curtains on the necro-tinted glass he is symbolically turning his back on the bright vistas that Wolfram and Hart has so temptingly laid out before him:

Angel: “Make that good-bye. I'm not taking the job.”

Lilah: “It's not a job. It's an opportunity.”

 Angel: “Ooh, an opportunity to be part of the problem.”

Then he changes his mind.  And it is why he changes his mind that is important for present purposes. 

Saving Connor

The reason Angel took the tour of Wolfram and Hart in the first place was concern for his son.

“Missing persons? Mmm, I knew there had to be a reason you took the tour. Dead, not stupid.”

And of course saving Connor was the reason why Angel took the deal offered to him by Lilah.  In my review of “Peace Out” I said that Connor’s behavior seemed to me to be nihilistic.  That was based partly on his express rejection of all of the ideas that he had tried to believe in and his killing of his own daughter.  After all he did say:

“I tried. I tried to believe. I wanted it. Went along with the... the flow. Jasmine, she's...she's bringing peace to everyone, purging all of their hate and anger. But not me. Not me! I know she's a lie. Jasmine. My whole life's been built on them. I just... I guess I thought this one was better than the others.”

In this episode we see that deep down he does still want to believe in something – family.  It’s just that he cannot because all his experience tells him that people betray their family.  While wandering aimlessly through the riot torn streets he sees a cop on the roof and goes to talk to him.  The cop is confused, agitated and perhaps suicidal so Connor tells him to go home.  The cop then shows Connor a picture of his wife and daughter:

“That's Sarah, and that's Jill. That's my home right there, right there.”

But this seems only to make Connor angry.  He replies:

“That's your family.  That's your family, and you were just gonna leave them like that? How were they gonna feel if you didn't come back?”

He then attacks the cop punching him repeatedly for his betrayal.  Later in the Sporting Goods store, he tells one of the hostages that he isn’t holding his daugter right.  And when Angel arrives Connor’s main complaint to him is that he was abandoned by everyone he loved:

“My dead mother couldn't even love me.”

But he reserves his most deeply felt bitterness for Angel himself:

Connor: “You tried to love me. At least I think you did.”

Angel: “I still do.”

Connor: “But not enough to hang on, dad. You let him take me. You let him get me. You let him get me. Cordy... you swore you loved me. Where are you now?”

Here we see Connor’s feeling that he has lost love, lost a sense of being connected to others.  We see the feelings of lonlieness, betrayal, lack of self-worth and perhaps even guilt that derrived from his sense of loss.  It is interesting that he blames himself for not experiencing Jasmone’s “love”:

“I didn't feel anything! I can't feel anything. I guess I really am your son... 'cause I'm dead, too.”

In the cop contemplating suicide and even in the much more minor case of the father who didn’t, in his view, show enough love to his daughter Connor sees a reflection of the way he was himself abandoned and his expressions of anger at both men are reflections of the anger he feels inside at the abandonment he has experience in his life – by Darla, by Angel, by Holtz and even by Cordelia.

The fact that deep down he does want love and a sense of belonging means that he is not a nihilist in the strict sense of the term.  But the fact that he feels he has no prospect of such love or any sense of belonging, perhaps even that he doesn’t deserve it, makes him as good as one any way.  There is nothing he can believe in, nothing he can hope for.  There is only survival – the day to day existence of his life bereft of meaning and purpose. Is it at all surprising then that Connor doesn’t care if he dies or indeed if anyone else dies either.  As exemplified by this dealings with the cop and the father in the store, he has probably concluded the world and everyone in it was loveless.  They were better off dead.  And if you are not afraid of death and there are no other values or people that mean anything then why not embrace it. Death is the only absolute in life, we cannot be sure of anything in life but death, so why should we try to defer what we know is inevitable? Why not accept it and bring it about, not only for you but for everyone else?   As he said to Angel:

“There's only one thing that ever changes anything... and that's death. Everything else is just a lie. You can't be saved by a lie. You can't be saved at all.”

It wasn’t therefore enough for Angel to stop Connor killing himself and others in the sporting goods  store.  He had to give him a reason to live.  He had to give him a sense that he was loved and that he did belong.  In other words he had to give Connor a real family.  And that is what Wolfram and Hart agreed to help him do.  So, even though Angel predicted that anyone who got into the limousine would be corrupted, even though he knew the dangers that he was running by agreeing to Wolfram and Hart’s plan, and even though he had earlier rejected the deal on precisely those grounds, he now agrees to it, just to save his son.

The Personal Agenda

Nor is he alone in his personal agenda.  When Sirk showed him Wolfram and Hart’s library, Wesley displayed polite interest.  But he was clearly only biding his time waiting for his moment to strike.  He felled Sirk and went off in pursuit of what he was really interested in – and like Angel that was a very personal matter.  He wanted to help Lilah.  When she found him in the records room he was looking for her contract:

Lilah: “What are you doing, Wesley?”

Wesley: “Standard perpetuity clause.”

Lilah: “You broke in here for my contract?”

Wesley: “I'm here to release you from it.”

Lilah: “Wesley.”

Wesley: “You've suffered enough. I want you to find some peace.”

When Lilah first returns, Wesley refuses to believe it is her.  Then when she refers to the way he decapitated her, and adds:

“It’s OK lover, I never felt a thing”

Wesley adds bitterly:

“I’m sure that’s true”

Wesley here is in denial.  At first he tried to pretend it’s not Lilah and then that there was nothing really between them.  The only reason for him to do so is that the memories far too painful for him to bear, especially since he is the one ultimately responsible for the destruction of any hopes they might have had of a relationship.  He was the one who left her because he wanted to get closer to Fred.  And ultimately it was his enthusiasm to return Angelus that doomed her.  Perhaps, apart from compassion, he feels that he owes her something.  Perhaps that was why he put himself through the ordeal of decapitating her just to ensure she didn’t rise as a vampire.  And perhaps that is why he was so desperate to terminate her contract, even at the risk of corrupting his own soul.

Then there is Gunn.  As we saw in “Players”, Gunn feels that he is an undervalued member of Angel Investigations.  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 security office and assumes that this is where he is being taken.  But he is wrong.  He is in fact being taken to the White Room, which as he said himself:

“Come on, you got the wrong guy in here. This room's for the big…”.

He then sees a big black panther appear and completes the sentence with the word “cats”.  The black panther then walks slowly toward Gunn, then stops and stands in front of him, looking up into his eyes. Gunn bends to look into the cat's eyes and sees his own reflection in them. Gunn smiles. The panther roars. Now the symbolism here is a little crude but effective nonetheless.  Gunn is being encouraged to see himself as a big black cat who is able to walk in the same world as all the other big cats.  Once again, this visit to Wolfram and Hart has started to be about what Charles Gunn really wants for himself.

So, here we have the core idea of the piece – that Wesley, Gunn and especially Angel were all motivated by personal considerations when they started to consider Wolfram and Hart’s offer and what advantages it might bring them.  Now, it must be said that certain peripheral aspects of the writers' treatment of this theme do bother me.  Fred is a passive observer, as indeed she has been for much of the season.  For example despite the fact that her plan to kill Professor Seidel played a major part in poisoning the atmosphere in the early part of the season, she is almost reduced to the role of bystander as Gunn and Wesley compete for her affections.  She never exerts any influence over the situation.  And here too, the temptation offered to her is pretty banal – a big, shiny, laboratory.  In contrast to her friends nothing in this is aimed at where she is emotionally vulnerable.  It’s no wonder she seems unimpressed and we are disinterested.  And since when did Lorne become so shallow?  The creature we see here is a parody of the anagogic host who acted as a sort of Greek Chorus in season 2.  He brought to bear an insight and understanding of the path everyone should be on and commented on and advised them when they departed from this path.  Now, he has no greater insight than anyone else and seems if anything more prey to the shallower vanities of life than anyone else.  What after all was the “apple” offered him?  The answer to that is the  most ephemeral of all modern vices – the cult of celebrity.  As his guide leafs through the list of all the “talent” that Wolfram and Hart represents, Lorne’s reservations dissolve:

“Uh, no, no, no, no. I don't think you have to tell me what you represent here, young man. I know. Evil. Pure evil in the…. Huh. Which is also apparently everyone I've always wanted to meet.”

Beyond a little cheap humor here, there is no depth, no characterization worth the name and no interest in anything Fred or Lorne do in this episode.

The same is, however, not true of the writers’ treatment of the others.  There is some credible (although flawed) characterization and there is also a great deal of interest which derives from the rather serious and troubling implications for the series of what we witness here.

Betraying a trust

Lets take Wesley first.  His relationship with Lilah was a fascinating one.  He was clearly attracted to her but at the same time he always wanted Fred too.  He has a view of himself as being on the side of the angels (if you pardon the expression) and realizes that a relationship with Lilah is incompatible with this.  He could certainly never bring himself to trust her.  So, he could never commit himself to the relationship.  Yet at the same time he could never distance himself from her either.  Hence the fact that he retained the signed dollar bill.  He took a big risk to try to save her from the Beast in “Habeas Corpses”.  His willingness to ensure that she did not rise as a vampire cost him a lot emotionally.  So, it is no surprise that he was willing to risk being corrupted on order to try to save her.  What is surprising is that he didn’t see the futility of his attempt.  I knew that simply destroying the physical evidence of the contract would do no good.  A Watcher of his abilities should have known better.  Even more surprising though is the state of mind that he was in after he left the records room.  He said:

“As much as it pains me to admit it, there's probably a great deal we could accomplish with the resources available here.”

Unlike Gunn and Angel he had already lost what he wanted to achieve.  He had nothing more to gain from a bargain. The simple statement that someone with their resources could achieve a lot begs the question – to whose benefit?  And the defeat he had just suffered in his attempt to save Lilah amply demonstrated the price of making a deal with Wolfram and Hart.  But just as we saw a duality in Wesley's character in the way he was torn between Lilah and Fred, so too here does the same duality emerge.   In Sirk we may perhaps be intended to see Wesley’s mirror image.  Both are English, both ex-watchers and both skilled researchers.  Lilah says:

“I think you'll find you two have a lot in common.”

Of course  Sirk is obviously simply out to do the best he can for himself.  Despite his protestations about lines becoming blurry, Wesley doesn’t doubt but that he did cross the line, especially when he stole the codex from the Council and handed it over to Wolfram and Hart.  Why then would Wesley follow on the same path? Perhaps because the promise of knowledge and power was attractive to Wesley.  After all, as we saw earlier in the season, he was still grappling with his own insecurities.   It is interesting that, of the three main protagonists here, his endorsement of the deal offered by the lawyers was the most equivocal equivocal; very much in keeping with his own highly ambiguous actions.

Gunn is even more problematic because his endorsement is unequivocal:

“I'm doing this. Hope it's not just me, but if it is, that's all right, too.”

Like Wesley, Gunn clearly stood to gain personally from the deal.  His ego had just been given a boost.  Here was a powerful enemy showing that it respected him and valued his abilities.  But in order to understand and accept why this was enough to justify Gunn’s decision we have to buy into the writer’s analysis of his character.  And I just don’t.  A major theme of the season for Gunn has been his feelings of insecurity.  We saw this as far back as “Supersymmetry” and certainly it was a strong element of “Spin the Bottle”.  But it was in “Players” that we saw the events of this episode foreshadowed when Gunn bridled at the idea that he was just muscle and clearly enjoyed playing a very different role with Gwen in the heist. Now, Gunn was never just muscle.  He was always the shrewdest member of Angel Investigations.  In “Reunion” he was the one who worked out how to find Darla.  He also managed to work out from a very brief conversation what actually did happen between Wesley and Fred in “Supersymmetry”.  Indeed his very belief that being just 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 I can accept that Gunn was  unaware of this reality.  His very quickness to infer a lack of faith by others in him does I think signal a lack faith in himself.  But the idea that he would sign up with Wolfram and Hart just because they massaged his ego I find implausible.  This was a character who had grown up on the mean streets, who had seen family and friends killed by the sort of people whom Wolfram and Hart calls clients.  This was a man with a burning sense of the injustice of the world and how that injustice was perpetrated by the rich and powerful against the dispossessed and helpless.  That he should forget all this is scarcely credible.  Moreover, his obvious interest in Lacey also grates.  Lilah tells him that the two of them have nothing in common, implying that all Gunn is interested in is her physical attributes.  And yet Gunn seems entirely comfortable with this saying at one point:

Gunn: “You're not gonna try to corrupt me, are you?”

Lacey: “Wouldn't dream of it.”

Gunn: “We'll have to work on that. “

All of this is a sign of a character without any depth.  And because of his it really does ultimately lack conviction.

And this brings us to Angel.  Of course, his concerns with Connor certainly do not suggest any lack of depth.  The teenager is his son and he is on the verge of self-destruction.  And it is partly at least Angel's fault.  It is readily understandable why he would be desperate to do anything he could to help Connor.  You cannot compare these concerns with Gunn’s venial enjoyment of flattery or the company of a beautiful woman.  I also think it is in character for Angel to behave as if the world revolves around him.  That was, after all, the central point of season 2.  It was part of the vampire psychology for him to see everything from a very narrow first person singular point of view.  And a good deal of the first half of the season was devoted to the fact that his obsessions with his personal life shaped and formed his actions in a way that was very unhealthy.  But then hasn’t Angel already seen where that leads – the mess that the team found themselves in with the return of Angelus and the birth of Jasmine?   So, while his concerns are “understandable” his "choice" is not.  And the emphasis here must be on "choice".  As I have said before, an individual’s freedom to choose and the responsibilities that goes with that freedom are the central concepts of this season.  Indeed Lilah reminded both Angel and us of this when she tauntingly quoted back to him his own words from “Deep Down”

“Nothing in this world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and it's cruel, but that's why there's you, Angel. You live as if the world were as it should be.”

The point that Angel was making to Connor there was that simply because bad things happen in the world doesn’t mean that you should allow them to dictate the choices you make. Everyone should make their own choices based not on what happened to them but on what was right.  Yes Connor was in trouble and yes it was right for Angel to try to help him.  But he could have helped him the right way.  He knew or should have known what Connor really wanted – family – and he should have done everything he could to provide him with that family, gain the teenager’s trust and shown him that not everything was a lie.  Instead he chose the easy way out – the magical quick fix,  bought at a terrible price.  And that price was not only acceptance of Wolfram and Hart’s offer.  It was the abandonment of everything the said he believed in. 

Jasmine offered world peace through the sacrifice of everyone’s power of choice.  What was Angel’s reaction:

Jasmine: “I offered paradise. And you chose this.”

Angel: “Because I could. Because that’s what you took away from us. Choice. “

Jasmine: “And look where free will has gotten you.”

Angel: “Hey, I didn’t say we were smart. I said it’s our right. It’s what makes us human.”

Presumably Angel really does believe this.  Otherwise he would not have sacrificed world peace for it and, as we saw from the start of the episode, remained so unrepentant about it.  But if he really did believe that then how could he justify depriving not only Connor but all his friends the freedom to choose their own destiny?  He calls his unilateral decision to accept Wolfram and Hart’s offer an "executive" one.  The decision was taken out of the hands of everyone else.  Not only that, but he also took from them any memories connected with Connor.  And in Wesley’s case this included his kidnap of the infant.  That isn’t a mercy.  It also deprives Wesley of a chance to learn from his mistakes.  That’s unfair.  And as for Connor himself, with the best will in the world he is now living a lie, a comfortable and friendly lie to be sure – but a lie nonetheless.  And didn't Connor say:

            "You can't be saved by a lie."

The Power of Choice

ANGEL as a series is about redemption.  If it isn’t then it isn’t about anything.  It deals with the efforts of a small group of highly flawed and damaged characters to become better through doing good.  It is about the transformative effect of helping others and making connections to them.  Of course an inherent part of this is to show the opposite – to show the harm done when members of Angel Investigations do become self-obsessed.  After all we cannot understand one without the other.  But you have to ask: what now is actually left of our characters’ journey towards redemption or of helping others?  As I have said repeatedly what attracts me to ANGEL is the fact that our protagonists are essentially decent people, trying to do the right thing but people who are often brought low by their flaws.  No-one can guarantee that the better angels of their nature will prevail. But ultimately it is the way in which people face their demons that earns them respect and sympathy.  A tragedy is not a tragedy if the protagonist deserves to be destroyed.  And in “Home” feelings of respect or sympathy for our characters are certainly endangered.

Let us consider the fact that, at the start of the season, we saw Angel all but abandon any idea that he had a mission simply because he had lost Cordelia.  He even seemed to have lost his motivation to help his son Connor.  Then when Cordelia returned she began to manipulate him.  She rejected him because of his past as Angelus.  She then slept with Connor.  She began to suggest that Angel has some connection to the Beast.  And finally she persuaded him to agree to bring back Angelus by subtly suggesting he was smarter than Angel.  The driver here was Angel's sense of insecurity, his feeling of being a victim driven by circumstances and people beyond his control.  He had a choice about how he responded to all the troubles piling onto him but he chose to let those events control him, not the other way around.  Nor was he alone. Wesley and Gunn too have their own insecurities to deal with.  And these feelings of helplessness in the team are only reinforced by the divisions among them.  With feelings of powerlessness common to most of them and a lack of trust and confidence in one another and a consequent  inability to rely on the normal team spirit, the way is open for a move that may well represent a catastrophic misjudgment – the return of Angelus.

You would think that, after Angel was restored, he would have a renewed appreciation of the importance of free will – the power to control our own destiny and not be blown around at the whim of fate or the designs of others.  And of course the struggle against Jasmine becomes a struggle to defend free will. In “Sacrifice” and “Peace Out” we see that free will – the power to choose - is what makes us who we are.  And that is important enough to give up even world peace for.  As Angel said in “Deep Down” it doesn’t matter what life throws at you, you have to make the right choices for yourself and others.  But no-one in Angel Investigations seems to understand or accept that their conduct in the period leading up to this was itself a betrayal of those ideals.  Fred and Gunn come closest to this when they admit to one another that their decision to kill Professor Seidel was an exercise of their free will and that they would have to live with the guilt of that.  But even here there is no sense of them or anyone else taking responsibility for the mistakes that they made or trying to resolve never to do so again.  To the contrary they are now repeating their betrayal of the very ideals they claim to stand for.  And in Angel’s case the betrayal is especially egregious because, behind the backs of his son and his friends, he takes away their power of choice; the very power he fought Jasmine for, the very power that made us human.  This is why "Home" can be properly regarded as a coda to the rest of the season.  It is all about choice, the importance of having it and the importance of using it correctly.  Only "Home" shows our heroes denying these very values instead of embracing them.  Given

does this not raise questions about how much Angel in particular actually does believe in  free will?  And if he doesn’t then what becomes of his journey towards redemption?  If his actions are not governed by his own choices but rather by dictates of his emotions then what future does his hope for redemption have?  After all, fundamentally redemption means for him overcoming the accumulated baggage of inherited characteristics and experiences which together so strongly affect his behavior for the worse.  That must be a matter of making conscious, responsible, moral choices and not dancing to Wolfram and Hart’s tune.  Nothing in this episode suggests that Angel in particular is now capable of making such a choice.  And if we are left with such a lack of confidence in the integrity and purpose of the central character of the series, where then does this leave it?

The Plotting

For me one scene at the start of this episode stood out – the prolonged silence when Lilah first made her offer.  It was a gutsy thing to do and it could have backfired very badly.  But it rang very true.  I have been at meetings like that.  You feel that you have to say something.  The situation demands that you do.  But speaking up means that you run the risk of volunteering for something unpleasant or bearing the brunt of a nasty argument.  It then becomes a test of nerves waiting to see who breaks down first.  In this case it was Gunn.

And this dramatic pause has another benefit too – it prolongs the tease about what actually Lilah was offering to Angel and the others.  And, unless you had been spoiled, I really don’t think you could have guessed what it was.  But not only was it a surprise. In many ways it was an entirely logical development.  From the end of season 1, it has been clear that Wolfram and Hart’s priority has not been to kill Angel but to corrupt him.  Indeed this is one of the things that has made the dynamics between him and the law firm so interesting.  It has never been a trial of strength.  Presumably Wolfram and Hart would have won that one. Rather it has been a battle of wits and wills.  This not only makes the contest more even, but also leaves the audience guessing what is coming next and who really is winning or losing. So, the fact that Lilah’s offer to allow Angel Investigations control of the Wolfram and Hart’s LA offices continues in the same vein is also a plus.  The dangers are obvious.  The Senior Partners probably figured out that Angel wouldn’t accept the deal unless he felt forced to because of Connor and that gave them a hold over him.  Angel could not therefore take over the firm with a clear cut wrecking mission.  He too has something to loose.  So, he had to run their operations on a good faith basis as well as using Wolfram and Hart’s resources to fight evil.  As L:ilah suggested this almost inevitably meant compromise: sacrificing some interests to serve others.  But once you start compromising with evil, you also start accepting it.  And your values become distorted.  Perhaps you allow some types of evil to continue simply because others are easier to stop.  So you prevent the obvious and less dangerous evil and allow the more insidious and more dangerous to thrive – under your nose.  It’s logical and clever.  And as such it sets up a most interesting concept for season 5 to play out.  ANGEL as a series is now clearly arc-heavy and it seems obvious that next season will see our heroes deal with (and probably come to regret) their choices here.  But it is also why it is a deal that should never have been accepted by Angel or any of the others.  And while I agree that, on Angel’s part, acceptance of the deal, though wrong, is plausible the same cannot be said for either Gunn or Wesley.  It is also why even the hint of Angel doing so should have split Angel Investigations wide open. 

Having said all that, I must confess that I did like the final resolution of the Connor arc on which Angel’s final decision turned.  In many ways I suspect that the writers had painted themselves into a corner with the teenager.  He had already done many unconscionable things, including the slaughter of the innocent teenager in “Inside Out” not to mention his happy endorsement of Jasmine’s dinning habits.  Moreover, the conflict between himself and his father had run its course.  There was little mileage left in arguments between them over Angel’s past, what happened to Holtz or indeed with Cordelia.  This easiest way to deal with both problems was simply to write the character out.  The only question was how?  I think that precipitating a final showdown with Angel by showing Connor suffering what amounts to a complete psychological collapse and loosing faith in everything he has been trying to hold on to is not only believable but almost inevitable.  From the start he has been used by others, most notably Holtz, Cordelia and Jasmine as a tool to further their own agendas.  Even Angel, who professed to love him, let him down.  Instead of showing him what a real family was, he rejected him, not once but twice – in “Deep Down” and “Habeas Corpses”. It is in fact one of the disappointments of the final confrontation between Angel and Connor that the latter did not challenge Angel by asking why he did so.  In any event, it’s no wonder family became more and more important to Connor and yet at the same time more and more unattainable. And, as I have already explained, this seems to be the origin of his nihilistic frame of mind in the sportswear store.

And the encounter between him and Angel there was just terrific, by turns brutal and sad.  The fact that Connor was going to get himself into trouble was inevitable from the way that “Peace Out” ended.  It was simply a case of when we found out about it and what the details were.  In fact the scenario the writers gave us was well thought out, believable and dangerous.  The fact that others were in danger meant Angel had to save them from Connor. And the nature of the danger – explosives all over the place - meant that there was a very real question about whether he would be forced to kill his own son to do so.  That’s quite a poignant situation.   In the end perhaps this danger was defused (if you forgive the expression) too quickly and too easily.  We were never really brought face to face with the possibility of Angel having to make this particular choice.  But what happened next was a shock.  Angel seemed to kill his own son when he had him at his mercy.  On the face of it, it was so out of character and so hard to fit into the logic of the plot that it was unbelievable.  When Angel had rejected Lilah’s overtures and she drew his attention to the breaking news story about Connor, we immediately felt that there had to be connection.  Indeed the very fact that Angel was at Wolfram and Hart at all instead of looking for his son meant there had to be a connection between what she was offering and the teenager.  And it wasn’t too hard to guess what that connection was going to be.  Wolfram and Hart would help Angel save his son in return for his co-operation.  But then he kills the boy?

The clue of course was the fade to white which generally means some form of alteration to reality.  And then, just after announcing to his confederates that he had decided that they were all joining Wolfram and Hart after all we learned that Connor was still alive and that suddenly no-one apart from Angel and Lilah had any memory of him.  And suddenly everything was clear – a reality altering spell triggered when the father did after all “kill the son” so that he could be re-born into a new and better life.

There was a good deal of poetry to this, given the part that the prophecy played in Wesley’s kidnap of Connor and the boy’s downward spiral.  And I did like the upbeat ending that it gave to the season.  Whatever misgivings we had about the decision that Angel made, at least there was some good that came out of it.  I thought it was a nice note on which to end.

Overview (B-)

I suppose that in many ways Season 5 starts here and it has been set up as a struggle for Angel and the others to keep their sense of mission alive in the face of the compromises forced upon them by their positions within Wolfram and Hart.   And in fairness I have to admit that it is a scenario with a lot of promise.  But my reservations on the way that this scenario was created are substantial.  In part they are character related.   I regret the marginalization of Fred and consider the treatment of Lorne amounts to a caricature.   The characterization of Wesley (and his concern for Lilah) and Gunn (his feelings of insecurity) were fine but I do not think that they account for the choices that either made.  But in the main, my reservations stem from what I see as the central character's betrayal of their mission of helping others and of the guiding theme of season 4 - the importance of choice.  Angel's concern for Connor is of course readily understandable.  And I do think it is believable that, given his love for the teenager, he would agree to Wolfram and Hart's offer.  But when we say that we must be clear about what this means for the character.  To turn his back on the right thing just because of what he personally wants is a betrayal of Angel's own credo and the words Lilah quoted from "Deep Down" admit of no other argument.  And when that betrayal encompasses the very thing that Angel fought Jasmine and gave up world peace for - free will - then you add the charge of hypocrisy.  And the fact that Angel did this to save his son mitigates these charges not at all because Wolfram and Hart were not his only option.  I have to say I found this turn of events very disappointing.  However on the plus side I did like the final resolution of Connor's story and given how much I didn't like the price that was paid for it, it was nice at least to see some sort of happy ending.