EPISODE 4.17

INSIDE OUT

Written by:  Steven S. DeKnight

Directed by: Steven S. DeKnight

Not What You Expected

When at the end of this episode Cordelia’s child is born, that which was inside her came out.  But this is not the only example that we have of opposites.

Yes, “Inside Out” is an episode full of opposites.  But more important that the opposites themselves is the way that they are used to illustrate the theme of the episode, namely the freedom of action that each of us enjoys and the responsibility that goes with that freedom.  As we can see from events shown and referred to in this episode, the word is full of confusing currents pulling us in opposite directions.  But ultimately the way we go is not down to those currents.  Rather it is a matter of choice for each of us to make.  And attached to the choices we make are consequences and for the consequences of our choices we are fully accountable and we cannot blame any outside influence.

The significance of the revelation about Skip lies not so much in the discovery that he is evil as in the way that discovery forces the members Angel Investigations to reassess their own histories.  They start of course with Cordelia herself.  They quickly worked out that the change in her was traceable to her return from the higher dimension and everything else then falls into place:

Angel: “It doesn't make sense. Cordy was made a higher being because she proved herself to the Powers by bearing their visions. This thing couldn't have…”.

Wesley: “Unless it maneuvered her to inherit the visions in the first place.”

Skip: “Uh, oh. Better step on it. The rubes are catching up.”

Angel: ““It wasn't just her ascension. Everything that's happened to Cordy in the past few years—all of it—was planned.”

But then Skip himself interjects to make them look at themselves and their actions as well:

Skip: “You really think it stops with her, amigo? You have any concept of how many lines have to intersect in order for a thing like this to play out? How many events have to be nudged in just the right direction? (looks at Lorne) Leaving Pylea. (looks at Gunn) Your sister. (looks at Fred) Opening the wrong book. (looks at Wesley) Sleeping with the enemy. Gosh, I love a story with scope.”

Here Skip was referring to Fred’s banishment to Pylea where Angel and the others found her and Lorne’s escape from the same dimension – an escape that enabled him to found Caritas.  Then there was Gunn’s sister being turned into a vampire, an event that led to his own change of heart and the beginning of his alliance with Angel. And finally we have Wesley’s increasing closeness to Lilah.  All of these events, seemingly either random or the result of our heroes own choices, are now made to appear to be the result of some master plan on the part of the Beastmaster.

And, at least on Angel and Wesley’s part, there seems to be an inclination to accept Skip’s statement at face value:

Angel:  “It was all there right in front of me. I couldn't see it. Thought of losing her to Connor…”

Wesley: “Did exactly what it was supposed to. Play on your emotions to cloud your judgment. Draw your attention away so this thing could continue to murder anyone it... Least you had a reason for letting it happen.”

But there is a different view – one very forcefully expressed by Gunn.

“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.”

It seems to me that, in this passage, the writers’ focus on our freedom of action.  There are always external constraints on the range of options we can meaningfully try to undertake.  And our success in carrying out any particular venture often depends on factors wholly beyond our control.  What Gunn was essentially saying was that the maneuverings of the Beastmaster may have restricted the freedom of choice of himself, Angel and the others.  Things may have happened over which they genuinely had no control such as Cordelia being given the visions.  Or, when they made certain decisions they may have been lacking certain crucial pieces of information.  Again to take Cordelia as an example, I am thinking here of her decision to accept “demon DNA” or to agree to leave Angel and ascend to the higher plane.  But in the end no choice made and no action taken by human beings can be dismissed as simply cause and effect.  There will always be a plurality of futures open.  A person’s choices or actions may be influenced by the individual’s psychology, cultural background, moral character or many other considerations that lie outside the control of the rational mind.  But it is an attribute of our being conscious and rational beings that we take the final decision and when we do so we accept responsibility for that decision. 

That is the nub of Gunn’s argument and that is the argument that subsequent events bear out.  Skip insists that there is really nothing that Angel or anyone else can do to change things.  When he and Angel first fight, Skip is so confident of his superiority that he boasts of victory before achieving it.  When he is trapped in the sand of the Red palm he calls it a child’s trick.  When he refers to the Beastmaster he talks of

“Something beyond your comprehension. To give it voice would rend your feeble brain into a quivering mass of…”

And of course as we have already seen, he tells the members of Angel Investigations how they have all been manipulated so comprehensively for years.  Indeed he goes so far as to openly talk about the way to find Cordelia and to stop the birth of the child, simply because he is so convinced that there is nothing that Angel and the others can do to thwart the Beastmaster’s plans.  But at each step of the way he is proven wrong.  Angel does defeat him, does bring him back to the Hyperion, does successfully bind him and does force him to talk.  And finally, despite Skip’s own assumption of his invulnerability, Wesley succeeds in killing him.  But above all, thanks admittedly to an improbable stroke of luck, Lorne and Wesley do find Cordelia’s whereabouts and Angel sets off to find and kill her.  As Skip says this means Angel has to

“Kill the woman he loves to save the world. Times like this? Really gotta suck being you.”

But that itself validates the idea that Angel does have freedom of action.  It is hard to imagine a more difficult choice for him make.  And yet against all his own personal desires, this is something he rationally decides that he has to do.

Choose Life

And this brings me to Connor, Cordelia and Darla and what I perceive to be the central issue in this episode, namely the issue of free will.  There is, I think, a distinction between freedom of action on the one hand and free will on the other, although the two are closely related.  The concept of free will relates to the moral responsibility that comes with freedom of action.  Of course, the question of whether a particular decision is blameworthy or praiseworthy will obviously have to take into account all of the extraneous considerations acting on the person concerned.  Here I am thinking about the factors referred to above such as the individual’s psychology, cultural background, moral character etc.  But ultimately, the episode argues for the classic Western ideal that if you accept that a person has freedom of action, you must also accept that responsibility for those actions and for the consequences of those actions goes with it.  And it is through the debate between Darla and Cordelia that we see this proposition advanced.

As I have already said, “Inside Out” is built around a series of opposites.  It is for example very clear that Cordelia really is Cordelia and not just something that has taken her form:

Skip: “That thing which has turned your life into a burning ring of fire? She is the real Cordelia. Or at least she's in there somewhere."

But her choices and her actions are the opposite of what you would expect from the real Cordelia.  Similarly Darla here makes an argument to Connor that is precisely the opposite of what you would expect of her.  And Connor now finds himself confronted by these two individuals who, having reversed their expected roles, now battle for his soul by presenting arguments that are diametrically opposed to one another.  And the great thing about this is not only does this allow us to unambiguously identify the arguments as opposite to one another, in a strange way it gives the arguments greater force and power precisely because they come from such an unexpected source.  We are therefore compelled to focus more clearly on what each argument itself means rather than simply getting our moral bearings from the person making it.

And the nature of the argument here is important.  Cordelia has, in Wesley’s words, been using emotion to cloud Connor’s judgment.  And always underlying her attempts to control him has been one message – that she, Connor and their child are special and that he has responsibilities to them over and above his responsibilities to others.  And now this is the argument she hammers into him:

“What does that mean, really? Being good? Doing the right thing? By who's judgment? Good, evil—they're just words, Connor. Concepts of morality they forced around your neck to yank you wherever they please. You're with me now. You don't have to live by their rules. You remember why?”

And when Connor kidnaps an innocent teenage girl so that Cordelia can sacrifice her, Cordelia reassures him that he is doing the right thing:

“I know what your heart is telling you, Connor, but it will lie to you if you let it. You have to trust me. Be sad, mourn for her, but never forget the truth. She's one of them. One of the average, normal people that fill this world. But what we're doing will elevate her life beyond that and give her death meaning. Her blood for our baby. That's more than fair, isn't it?”

Darla counters this assertion by reminding her son of his wider moral responsibilities:

Connor: “You don't understand. We need her for our baby to keep it safe.

Darla: “By anointing it in the blood of an innocent? You really think that safety can be plucked from the arms of an evil deed?”

The mere fact that Connor has responsibilities to Cordelia and to their child doesn’t negate his responsibilities to everyone else.  By making this point Darla reinforces the real message of the writers – that Connor has a choice to make:

Darla: “You have a choice, Connor. That is something more precious then you'll ever know.”

Connor: “What choice? They're hunting us like animals!”

Darla: “Because you're acting like one. As a vampire I killed without mercy or remorse because I didn't have a soul. What's your excuse?”

Connor: “You think I wanna do this?”

Darla: “Then don't." 

Connor: “I have to.”

Darla: “Why? Because she told you? There are things happening, Connor, things that I can't—It has to be your choice. You can stop this.”

Here Connor is arguing that his actions are forced, that he has no freedom of action.  If he wants to save Cordelia and his child he must sacrifice the girl, even though he does not want to.  Darla, for her part, insists that he can choose.  And here it is important that she does not pretend that letting the girl go will be without consequences.  We can see from later events that, were it not for her sacrifice, Angel would have killed Cordelia and the child.  But that does not prevent Connor from having a genuine choice.  And it is this context that Gunn’s argument with Skip about freedom of action becomes crucial.   Just as the maneuverings of the Beastmaster may have restricted the freedom of choice of Gunn, Angel and the others in the past, so now Cordelia had created a situation where Connor had to make a difficult choice.  There seemed no way he could both save Cordelia and his child on the one hand and the teenage girl on the other.  But that still represented a genuine choice and Connor could not say, as he tried to, that his hand was forced or that there was only one possible course of action.  In the end therefore, when he made that choice, he was exercising his freedom of action and had therefore to accept responsibility for the consequences of that particular exercise, namely the death of an innocent girl 

And the writers drive home the point about his moral culpability in a number of different ways.  In the first place they emphasize the girl’s innocence by making a point about her virginity and dressing her in white.  More importantly (and less heavy handed) is the way that Cordelia counters Darla’s attempts to influence Connor.  When Cordelia sees Darla she says:

“I see the lies.”

Then the argument continues:

Cordelia: “It's your father. This is how much he hates you.”

Darla: “I love you. Please.”

Cordelia: “Torturing you with this sad imitation of your dead mother.”

Darla: “Don't let her do this.”

Cordelia: “Are you going to let them do this to us? Are you going to let them kill our baby?”

Darla: “Connor, listen to me...”

Connor: “You are not my mother!”

Darla described Connor  as the one good thing that she had done in her life.  She justified her sacrifice of herself for him because she and he shared a soul and because she felt the good in him.  But Cordelia calls that a lie. And Connor believes her.  Worse, while justifying murder on the grounds of her own love of her child, Cordelia makes Connor implicitly accept his father hates him and deny his mother.  And when Connor watches as Cordelia slaughters the girl he sees Darla being killed. Connor here denies his own goodness, his own parentage and in doing so he denies himself.  Symbolically he ends up with blood on his hands.

Man and Superman

As I have said before, the idea of free will is the leitmotiv running though this season.  Wesley asserted in “Deep Down” that everyone could decide for themselves how they reacted to tragic events in their lives and that allowing those events to dictate your life was a self-imposed form of slavery.  Angel expressed similar sentiments when he said:

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

But Gunn, Fred, Wesley and Angel made their choices in favor of slavery and failed to rise above their own suffering and disappointed hopes and, as a result, innocent (and not so innocent) people suffered.  Had Angel paid more attention to his son and brooded a lot less on his loss of Cordelia, had Gunn and Wesley not been in competition over Fred, had Fred not been so intent on revenge over her exile to Pylea who knows how different things would have been. 

By means of the debate between Gunn and Skip, the writers remind us that none of them were victims of a master manipulator.  All of them made rational choices.  And by means of the debate between Darla and Cordelia the writers emphasize that they were each and every one of them responsible for their actions and for the consequences of those actions.  These are important statements, both in themselves and in the context of season 4.  The concept of responsibility isn’t some academic game.  It is rooted in the idea that we all owe obligations to ourselves and to others.  To ourselves we owe the duty to be true to our beliefs, to understand that there are actions which are right and wrong and that our own selfish desires are not the final arbiter of our conduct and to act accordingly.  To others we owe the duty not to sacrifice them on the altars of those selfish desires.  This was after all the mission statement for Angel set out in “Epiphany”:

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

Kate:  "And now you do?"

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

So, in “Inside Out” we have the fundamental moral compass of ANGEL reasserted.  But it needed reasserting because Angel’s behavior in season 4 was, in large measure, a repudiation of this mission statement and it is that repudiation he now has to redeem in his actions from this point onwards.  It is by showing us this that the episode helps focus on the meaning of the season as a whole.

It was therefore more than somewhat disappointing that even as Gunn was asserting that, when he and the other members of Angel Investigations made decisions or took actions, they were exercising their freedom of action, he made no mention of their moral responsibility.  So, for example when he was explaining his philosophy to Fred in the passage quoted above neither of them added:

“So we have to accept killing Professor Seidel was our responsibility.”

And even though Angel must by now have realized how spectacularly Connor had gone off the rails, he makes no mention of his own responsibility for this when he worried so much more about his disappointed love life than he did about his own son.  Yet again the writers of ANGEL can be accused of soft-peddling the implications of their own storylines.  Yet again they fail to do justice to the very moral principle that they are supposed to be setting out in front of us.

Nor is this the only problem.  Cordelia’s arguments to Connor are a statement of classic Nietzschean philosophy.   Nietzsche  himself was a proponent of freedom of action but genuine freedom of action, according to Nietzsche could only mean freedom from all external artificial constraints on one’s behavior.  Moral obligations owed by one person to others were just such an artificial constraint.  No other sanction on a person’s conduct would be necessary than the natural punishment involved in the victory of the superior person over its vanquished enemy.   It is the wish of lesser people to secure themselves against interference from those who are better than themselves that leads to these artificial constraints.  Because they fear being overwhelmed by naturally superior people they place limits on the normal exercise of human desires. This has the effect of limiting their own freedom in the hope of persuading their superiors to submit to the same limitations. Thus, on Nietzsche's view, the fundamental self-betrayal of the human race is to submit its freedom to the fictitious demands of an imaginary God. Afraid to live by the strength of our own wills, we invent religion as a way of generating and then explaining our perpetual sense of being downtrodden and defeated in life.  In other words this was a freedom of action was distinguished from free will as I have been discussing it because it rejected the idea of moral responsibility and accountability what, in Western thought, is an inherent part of that free will.

Of course Nietzsche would accept some physical or practical limits on freedom of action.  But he would say that we are not responsible for these.  Nor are we responsible for our existence or indeed our nature.  These are simply facts that cannot be changed. So, he argues, it is the nature of human beings to defend themselves and to overcome the vissectitutes and tribulations of life as best they can.  “Responsibility” in the sense discussed above (that is being morally accountable for the choices made and the consequences they bring) is an invention.  He does not argue that moral value does not exist, but that it has been misinterpreted and misunderstood. He says that there is a morality in protecting one's own life but morality is false if it supposes that there are moral truths or values which are universal, or which are independent of the particular situations in which morality is applied.

In particular Nietzsche concentrates his attack on these moral concepts, which appeared to most contemporary Westerners to be universal and eternal. On the dangerous side of pity, Nietzsche writes:

“Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity.”

Or again one of the most influential Western concepts, love, is held by Nietzsche to be used by Christian thought as a tool to influence its subjects:

 “Love is the state in which man sees things most decidedly as they are not. The power of illusion is at its peak here, as is the power to sweeten and transfigure. In love man endures more, man bears everything. A religion had to be invented in which one could love: what is worst in life is thus overcome—it is not even seen any more.”

For Nietzsche therefore Darla’s arguments against the sacrifice of the teenage girl are actually a denial of freedom of action and are irresponsible because they would lead to the destruction of the naturally superior beings who had the power to defend themselves but were inhibited from doing so for no good reason.

Now let me be the first to accept that a philosophical debate of this nature is very difficult to present in a way which does justice to the complexity of the argument and yet is also dramatically effective.  But  Nietzschean philosophy represents a fundamental attack on the assumptions underlying Darla’s arguments.  It is an attack that is both logical and coherent.   And it has to be countered before we can accept Darla is right and Cordelia is wrong.  If it isn’t then the whole superstructure of the argument in favor of free will and moral responsibility for the choices made comes tumbling down around the writers’ ears.  The only way to do so is to challenge in an equally rigorous way the assumptions on which Nietzsche built his case.

For example why is he wrong when he argues that sacrifice by the strong in favour of the weak leads to the decay of society?  Why is he wrong when he assumes that the basic impulses of humanity are in favor of self-preservation and that any contrary moral restraints are not only artificial but in the long run unworkable?  The moral case made by Darla is underpinned by the assumption that when people help one another, society as a whole is better and stronger to the benefit of everyone.  In contrast where charity and co-operation are absent the result is human egotism run amuck with disastrous consequences for all.  Further we could say that it was precisely to prevent this “dog eat dog” state of affairs that the universal moral truths and values that Nietzsche attacked became such an intrinsic part of human society and culture.  Here we see the grounds on which debate over the fate of the unfortunate girl could and should have been joined.  But instead of making that case, the writers seem to assume that firstly that Nietzsche’s arguments are self-evidently false.  And because of this they also seem to assume therefore that the sort of intuitive moralizing against which Nietzsche reacted so strongly is a sufficiently strong basis on which to found their own moral stance.  Neither assumption is warranted.   And the fact that the response to Cordelia (the response upon which the whole authority and clarity of the episode’s moral stance rested) was so lacking in any real intellectual rigor or weight  was a real disappointment and weakness.

The Plot

I must confess that I rather like mini-cliff-hangers.  Here I am not referring to the big, dramatic (or melodramatic) moments where, for example, our heroes are trapped in a building which suddenly explodes leaving us to wonder who survived.  No, I am referring to the sort of situation we had at the end of “Players” where Cordelia was unmasked, a moment full of meaning but also one which constituted a natural pause in the narrative flow.  You could almost imagine the characters themselves taking stock for a moment as they considered the full implications of their discovery.  And by giving us a break at that moment the writers leave us too asking questions such as “how did Angel know Cordelia was the Beastmaster” or “what happens next.”  And not the least of the advantages of this is that it allows the next episode to hit the ground running.  And so “Inside Out” opens in the middle of the confrontation between Cordelia on the one hand and Angel and the others on the other.  And we soon learn why it was that he decided that she was indeed the Beastmaster.  Unfortunately this piece of exposition wasn’t handled very well:

Angel: "My sweet." Same phrase the Beastmaster kept using when he was whispering in Angelus's head. Thought it was a bit femme for the booming macho act.

Cordelia: “That's it? I get away with bringing the world down around you and two eentsy words tingle your spider sense?

Angel: “What we already knew. What he found out as Angelus. All the circumstantial led to you.”

Now it was certainly true that there was a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence pointing towards Cordelia as the Beastmaster.   Cordelia has been central to Angel’s own crisis of confidence in himself.  She confessed that she loved him but told him she could not be with him because of his evil past.  She then chose to be with his own son rather than him and eventually slept with Connor.  She was the one whose vision established the connection between Angelus and the Beast. These were all crucial factors in establishing the basis for Angelus’ return and in Awakening she was the one who finally broke his resistance to that return.  Then she outmaneuvered Angelus into revealing what he knew about the Beast, when Angelus had manipulated everyone else.

Moreover, she not only seduced Connor but was also the one who suggested to him that he was connected with the Beast, thus simultaneously helping to create a divide between him and everyone else in Angel Investigations while at the same time creating a bond between them.  Her central role in manipulating all of these key figures in the developing drama is simply too consistent to be overlooked. Then there was the fact that Manny and Lilah had been killed and Angel’s soul stolen by an unknown hand.  As Angel said:

“those were surgical strikes. Not the smash-and-trash style of the Beast.”

They would also have been most easily accomplished by an insider.  Cordelia was there when Manny was killed and Angel's soul stolen and, in Lilah’s case, Angel knew that Cordelia was alone in the building.  Everyone else was out looking for Angelus. And finally was the fact of her mystical pregnancy.  The speed with which it was progressing showed the baby wasn’t human.  And Angel knew that it was conceived during the Beast’s rain of fire.  Was the timing of this pregnancy simply co-incidental to the Beastmaster’s attempt to return Angelus? 

There was enough there for Angel and the others to work out by means of some solid detective work; instead the writers chose to emphasise a throwaway line by Cordelia as the vital clue.  That is disappointingly lazy.

And so too was the way that Cordelia escapaped from the clutches of Angel Investigations.  And here I am not thinking of the rather contrived way that Connor was able to defeat Angel, Wesley, Lorne and Fred almost in the blink of an eye.  No, here I am thinking of the fact that they all knew that Connor followed Cordelia around like a puppy dog, was her number one fan, the father of her child and very unlikely to believe that she was evil.  So, why didn't they at least try to, distract his attention somehow.  The team’s failure to take this elementary precaustion was – how shall I put this kindly – unbelieveably cretinous.

But Cordelia’s escape did at least set up the two central points of interest for the episode.  The first saw Angel and the others painfully reconstruct past events in an effort to make sense of them.  And of course the important part of that involved the capture and interrogation of Skip.  I must admit I liked the way that they first of all worked out that it was Skip they should be talking to

Wesley: “Then let's go to the source. Whatever happened to Cordelia, it took place after her ascension to the higher planes. Maybe the Powers might be able to…”

 Angel: “Last couple of times I've asked the Powers That Be for help they made it pretty damn clear they weren't in the business.”

 Wesley: “But at least one of those was to save Darla's life. A mass-murdering ex-vampire dying of syphilis? A strong "no" is hardly a shock.”

 Angel: “You think the Powers couldn't see this thing was masquerading as Cordy? What it was doing to us? They didn't stop it because they didn't want to get their hands dirty. What we need is somebody who does. Somebody right in the middle of all this.”

And I think the way that the seemingly friendly and personable Skip was suddenly seen in a new light as both evil and arrogant while at the same time keeping a certain charm about him, worked terriffically well.

But I am afraid that his big revelation – that everything was down to some deep laid master plan – didn’t strike me as that plausible.  First of all was the fact that the examples he gave were not very good ones. Fred and Gunn’s involvement with the advent of the Beastmaster were pretty peripheral.  And I am not sure I can see how Lorne or Lilah’s affair with Wesley were at all relevant.  Missing from the list of events were Doyle’s death and the passing of his visions to Cordelia,  her falling in love with Angel, Wesley’s kidnap of Connor and most crucial of all Angel’s “beige” period and the way it ended.  If the arrival of the Beastmaster was connected with any actions by members of Angel Investigations these were the ones.  Perhaps the writers realize that there is really nothing about any of these events that even begins to show evidence of manipulation.  We are however expected to believe that they were and that the manipulation was so successful that all of the possible permutations which would have ruined the planning were successfully avoided.  That frankly challenges my suspension of disbelief.

But whatever my reservations on this score I found the other developments of the episode powerful and shocking.  What started off as a seeingly routine question about whether Angel would find Cordelia before her child was born suddenly and unexpectedly took a much grimmer turn when Connor was faced with a choice between sacrificng the teenager girl or risking his unborn child.

Present were all the elements needed to get an audience’s attention and keep it.  First of all the scenario with which Connor was confronted was a real one.  As Angel pointed out:

“Being inside a human makes it vulnerable, doesn't it? That's why it had to stay hidden. Why it needed to create something stronger to pour itself into.”

That was perhaps why Cordelia needed the Beast.  And it also explains her vulnerability against Willow.  You could say that the helplessness is perhaps overstated.  Manny was hardly helpless yet she was able to kill him.  And she was able to deploy a number of effective weapons against Willow.  These are absent from “Inside Out”.  But I think that is being a little over critical.  I don’t have a problem with the idea that Angel could kill Cordelia if he found her before the child was born.  And the logical solution to this problem was to bring the child into the world early.  And again it is quite plausible for this to involve a human sacrifice.

Of course, we are left in no real doubt as to which is the right course of action or Connor to take.  We the audience know that Cordelia is not only deceitful but evil.  We feel perhaps she and her child should be destroyed.  On the other hand, the would-be victim is genuinely innocent.  And to reinforce this point, Cordelia’s arguments are themselves based on lies – lies about Darla and about Angel.  And she is making an argument that completely subverts the whole moral concept for the show.

But we also recognize that Connor himself has a different perspective.   He doesn not see the deceitfulness of Cordelia.  He loves her and of course there is also the life his own child at stake.  He is also very much under Cordelia’s influence.  In “Release” and “Orpheus” we see him having to choose between his loyalty to Cordelia and their child and other responsibilities – to his father and to his friends.  Ultimately we see him having to decide whether there are lines he should not cross, no matter what the consequnces.  But this is where Connor has always had a problem.  He has a soul.  He knows right from wrong.  But, whether because of the influence of Holtz or his upbringing in Quortoth, he lacks judgment as to what is right and what is wrong.  It was after all his twisted sense of justice that, in “Tomorrow”, led him to trap Angel at the bottom of the sea.  So of course he will be torn over whether or not to help Cordelia kill the girl.  But we recognize from the start that there is a strong possibility that he will do so.

And this is where the strength of the episode lies, the struggle for Connor’s soul with its continually shifting fortunres.  First it appears that Darla is making no headway at all.  Then she almsot convinces Connor only to have victory snatched away from her at the last minute.  Until the end, we were left in a state of uncertainly as to which choice Connor would make.  And because we the audience willed Darla to succeed in influencing her son, the ending of the struggle has great shock value.

But perhaps in retrospect, the debate between Cordelia and Darla could have had no other ending.  It would I think have been a little unexpected for Connor to repudiate Cordelia.  It was also the outcome that created the greatest problems for Angel, both in terms of the future of his son and in terms of thwarting the Beastmaster’s plans.  And for those reasons alone, the writers’ choice was the correct one.

Overview (B+)

This was a strong but flawed episode.  One of its strengths lay in its very clear concept of freedom of action and the clever way it examined and ultimately vindicated that concept.  It showed a far less certain touch when dealing with free will.  Cordelia’s arguments against Darla are based on Nietzschean philosophy. This represents a powerful and coherent critique of traditional concepts of free will and in “Inside Out” and I am afraid the writers don’t really succeed in getting to grips with these arguments.  Instead we are left to assume on almost an intuitive level that the fundamental assumptions underlying Cordelia’s case are wrong and that Darla’s arguments are self-evidently right.  As I have said you cannot make either assumption.  And given the centrality of the debate between Cordelia and Darla to the whole theme of the episode, this represents a major problem.  I also thought that trying to suggest that so many crucial events in the history of the series were manipulated was overly ambitious.  As a result Skip’s revelations did lack some credibility.  And of all the reasons which Angel might have given for figuring out Cordelia’s secret, the one the writers chose was about the weakest.  It would have been so much better had the writers spent some time in piecing together all the clues that actually were there.  But in the end these weaknesses cannot detract from the heart of the episode – Connor’s help in Cordelia’s murder of the teenager.  There seemed no good way out of the dilemma with which he was faced yet we, the audience, were never left in any doubt about what he should do. In the end he did something that was morally wrong but dramatically and in terms of character right.  This sets up a very strong springboard for the final part of the season.  In this part Angel and the others will have to deal with the consequences of his actions in terms of the arrival of Connor’s daughter and in terms of what he did to ensure that she was safely delivered.