|
|
|
|
EPISODE 4.09 LONG DAY'S JOURNEY Written by: Jeffrey Bell Directed by: Skip Schoolnik
A Classic Forbear “Long Day’s Journey into Night” is perhaps Eugene O’Neill’s greatest work. It is certainly his most personal and it is a classic of American, indeed World, literature. It tells the story of a once great Irish-American family that has tragically fallen into despair. This isn’t so much because of the faults or problems of each of its members, although these are real enough. No, the real problem for them all is the destructive rather than the constructive way that the family tries to cope with their problems. The tragedy is that this is a family where each member genuinely loves the others. But time and time again they go over the same old ground, resurrecting past grievances yet being singularly unable to come to terms with them. In fact these conflicts seem to bring out the worst in them all and some of the exchanges between them are very cruel. And as a result everyone takes refuge is self-destructive behavior - alcohol or drug addiction. It is this that ultimately provides the only sense of direction in the play – a long spiral downward to despair. The action takes place in the course of a single day, starting just after breakfast and ending at midnight. But this actual long day’s journey into night is but a metaphor for the family’s own descent into darkness. In parallel, this episode of ANGEL also tells the story of a journey from daylight to total darkness. But that story too is but a metaphor for the descent of another family (headed by an Irish-American vampire) into despair. And in the writers development of this metaphor in the ANGEL version of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” we find the same basic themes we find in the O’Neill play. First and foremost there is the burden of the past. In the O’Neill play, Jamie comments that he "can't forget the past". We are introduced to this idea very early on when Edmund tells an anecdote about a tenant named Shaughnessy on the Tyrone family land in Ireland. Tyrone is not amused by the story, however, because he could be the subject of a lawsuit related to ownership of the land. And this causes tension between the father and son. As we soon discover, each character in the play is at least partially controlled by his or her memories of the family's history. We learn that Mary became addicted to morphine 23 years earlier, just after giving birth to Edmund. The birth was particularly painful for her and Tyrone hired a very cheap doctor to help ease her pain. The doctor may have been inexpensive but he was also incompetent and prescribed morphine to Mary because it would solve her immediate pain. But he ignored potential future side effects, such as addiction. Both sons and Mary hold deep-seated grudges towards Tyrone for refusing to pay for a quality doctor for her and the problems that created are still very much alive. Equally none of the men are willing to believe Mary’s reassurances about her addiction being under control because she has broken so many promises in the past. Perhaps most importantly, Mary can never let go of the dreams she had as a young girl of being a professional pianist or a nun, both of which were destroyed when she got married. We see throughout the play her tendency to question whether she made the right decision and this tendency fosters a resentment towards Tyrone, whom she thinks was complicit in the destruction of her dreams. The tragedy is that each of these mistakes were made long ago but can neither be forgiven nor ignored. Instead, in the play, we hear the same arguments about them over and over again again. Letting go is impossible, and so the Tyrones are stuck because they cannot communicate effectively with one another. In one scene Jamie begins to confront Mary about her appearance, which we are to believe is somewhat haggard because she is on morphine. Mary, however, immediately decries the supposition and pretends not to understand what Jamie is saying. She will not admit even to her own sons that she has returned to her addiction but, at the same time, her sons will not confront her fully about it and force her to confess, even though they know that she is back on morphine. And, just as Mary uses morphine to escape her problems, in the drinking of alcohol, we see an attempt by the male characters to escape the problems that haunt them. By the end of the play all three men are drunk and Mary is mentally drifting after consuming a huge dose of morphine. The play begins in sobriety but ends in complete inebriation and the symbolism is hard to escape. And by putting these events within the structure of a single day, O’Neill suggests that this is just one of many similar days filled with fighting and excessive drinking until everyone goes to sleep. There is a cycle in each day for the Tyrones which leads to the pessimistic conclusion that the family's problems in this play do not resolve themselves; that their conflicts do not lessen. Each family member spends the day working towards inebriation, arguing along the way, and then goes to bed only to wake up the next day and begin the cycle over again. And it is this together with a sense of the past dominating the present and the inability of the family to communicate with one another that leads to an almost fatalistic sense. In particular, we see clearly Mary's tendency to blame the problems of the family on fate. She initially criticizes Jamie for his tendency to look for weaknesses in other people, but then she attributes the flaw to the way Jamie was raised, which he cannot help. This means that each of the characters is provided with an easy way out. Rather than really confronting Jamie about his malice, Mary simply excuses him. Likewise, she blames much of her own problems on her crushed dreams and disappointment, which in her mind leaves her with very little choice in her actions. The fatalistic outlook, in its removal of responsibility, is a barrier to solving problems. And it is this which ultimately leads to despair.
The Burden of Past Mistakes In the ANGEL version of "A Long Day's Journey", we also see the way in which our characters are haunted by events from the past. At the end of “Habeas Corpses” we see Angel’s bitterness and anger over the fact that Cordelia slept with Connor. He orders her to leave the Hyperion with her “new boyfriend”. The interesting part about his choice of words here is that, having gone to such lengths to rescue his son from the Beast, he can’t bring himself either to use his name or even to say the words “my son.” And we get a further indication of his state of mind in the Teaser where we see him brooding and alone in his room. What he obviously sees as a betrayal by those closest to him is dominating his thinking, no matter how he tries to pretend otherwise when Lorne tries to rouse him:
But Angel is not the only one on whom the past lies heavy. In Connor’s temporary quarters we see more evidence of its effect. The fact that she slept with Connor is now obviously lying heavily on Cordelia’s conscience: Cordelia: “Angel knows we slept together. That's why you can't go back to the hotel.” Connor: “He…” Cordelia: “He knows, Connor. All right? With his super-smelling and super-Tom-peeping and…I don't even know what else, but... he knows. And he's extremely upset with both of us right now.” Connor: “We didn't do anything wrong.” Cordelia: “We hurt him. That's enough.” Connor isn’t really worried by this, however. What does worry him is his lineage:
And throughout his conversation with Cordelia he reminds her of his super speed and his super hearing. This isn’t boasting. He specifically asks her: where did I get these from? And it is the suspicion that these characteristics somehow connect him to the Beast that bothers him. And it is because of this suspicion that he concludes that he has been rejected by everyone else. As we saw in “Habeas Corpses”, he believes that the reason that Cordelia discarded him was that she believed he was connected to the Beast. And now he believes that was the reason why Angel threw him out of the hotel and didn’t want him back:
And when Cordelia tries to persuade him to the contrary he is deaf to her arguments. The distrust we see here is quite obvious. But it is a distrust that is fully reciprocated. Gunn, for example, seems already to have made up his mind: Gunn: “I don't trust him.” Fred: “You can't say that. Connor hasn't done anything wrong.” Gunn: “Lately. You forgetting Angel's voyage to the bottom of the sea? Fred: “Charles, the little girl in that white room is evil. I felt it. When she said…” Gunn: “"The answer is among you." Come on, who else could creepy locks have been talking about?” Fred: “It was probably just some last-ditch mind game to get the Beast to come after us instead of her.” Gunn: “Baby, that's another thing. Connor's gone toe-to-toe with this guy twice and barely needed a boo-boo kiss afterward. You telling me that's not suspicious? Wesley: “Most of us have encountered the demon twice, and we're still here.” Gunn: “Yeah, but we weren't conveniently born in the exact spot that thing hatched.” And these are now fears that Angel himself shares, as witnessed by his conversation with Lorne: Angel: “There's nothing on this Beast, Lorne. I fought it once, it nearly decapitated me with my own stake. It's killed hundreds of people that I couldn't save. And it keeps showing up around my kid, my kid who's…” Lorne: “Not entirely unmaking with the moves on the girl who might have been?” Here, however, Lorne has put his finger pretty shrewdly on the real cause for Angel’s distrust of his son: his sense of personal betrayal. But Angel isn’t the only one to feel jealousy and to see that jealousy blossom into distrust. Cordelia herself now begins to see Gwen as a rival. When she first walks into the Hyperion and Angel tries to introduce her, Cordelia’s politeness is ice-cold: “I know who she is. Caught your little show on the omniscient higher plane channel.” And from then on she loses no opportunity to put Gwen down. When the latter tries to talk about the client that the Beast murdered, Cordelia cuts her off:
And later, she disparages Gwen's home, even before she has seen it: “Great, as long as it's not some non-descript tenement downtown...with discarded boxes in the stairwells and peeling plaster and the faint odor of dead people.” And at every turn Cordelia tries to ensure that Angel isn’t left alone with Gwen. She is unsuccessful in this when Angel leaves her behind to take the desert trip with Gwen, arguing that the combination of their powers may be needed. But Cordelia does later turn this argument very neatly on its head when she ensures that she and Angel take the watch over Manny together: “(To Angel) One super power per shift. (To Gwen) That way if horn boy shows up, we mere mortals might stand a chance.” The sarcasm of the term “mere mortals” is barely disguised. And then when Manny is killed, it is Cordelia who not very subtly points the finger of suspicion at Gwen: Gwen: “It means that somebody knew when you were gonna take over that watch, and somebody knew who's drinks to spike. You ask me, this is an inside job.” Cordelia: “Funny how you were inside at the time.” Nor are the relations between Angel, Cordelia and Connor the only example of distrust continuing to fester within the team. Gunn’s attitude towards Fred and Wesley is equally full of suspicion.
Again we see events of the past burdening the present. In “Supersymmetry”, Both Angel and Gunn had tried to convince Fred not to follow the path of vengeance out of genuine concern for her. Wesley knew that following that path would have consequences but he encouraged her actions essentially to make himself look good in her eyes, hoping to use this as a basis for establishing a relationship with her. It was the fall out from her pursuit of vengeance that caused the rift between herself and Gunn. And that rift was now becoming ever wider even as her relationship with Wesley deepened. As we have already seen, Fred was on the opposite side of the argument to Gunn over Connor and in this she had Wesley’s support. But even more important was the way in which the three of them again divided over the significance of the killing of the second member of the Ra-tet.
Wesley and Fred have always been much more compatible intellectually than Gunn and Fred and here the way that their logical reasoning is so obviously in synchronization with one another leaves Gunn very much on the outside. Wesley even completes Fred’s sentences. And as if to reinforce this, throughout the episode it is Wesley and Fred who work together to find out the truth about the Ra-tet and to devise a plan to defeat the Beast.
And the nature of the plan that they agree on is not only illustrative of the intellectual difference between them, it represents a gulf of understanding that causes yet more distrust. For Wesley and Fred the past associations may be unfortunate but the portal is a logical necessity. But for Gunn those past associations mean so much more. It is yet more evidence that Wesley is now on the inside track working with and on Fred and seeking to supplant him, in part by reminding her that he murdered Seidel. The parallels between the O’Neill and the ANGEL versions of “Long Day’s Journey into Night” are plain. Just as in the case of the Tyrones, the members of Angel Investigations all care about one another. We see this in Angel’s sense of hurt, in Cordelia’s recognition of her guilt, in her jealousy over Gwen and in Angel’s concern for Connor when he sees him lying n the ground injured. We also see it in Gunn’s jealousy over the growing closeness between Fred and Wesley and in Fred’s reaction to Gwen: “Um, excuse me: not that I don't still bear a grudge against you, because I do...” But again, as with the Tyrones, it is that very closeness that gives each of them their power to hurt the others. And it is the memory of the past hurts that each has inflicted upon one another that so burdens the present: the sex between Cordelia and Connor, Gwen and Angel kissing, the murder of professor Seidel. But more important even than this, is the inability of our protagonists to communicate with on another to solve their problems that really leads to disaster. As we have seen, the episode begins with Angel brooding and alone in his room. When Lorne tries to draw him out of himself, he refuses to engage in any serious discussion about his feelings and asks him to leave. When Cordelia turns up he doesn’t want to talk to her either and she even has to reprimand him about ignoring his son.
In the face of this reference to his own son’s vulnerability Angel feigns disinterest: “Well, you know, it does tend to show up whenever he's around.” Indeed, when Cordelia tries to convince him to talk to the boy, Angel is notably reluctant. Symbolically perhaps when he does see Connor towards the end of the episode, he can only express his concern from a distance. But Angel isn’t the only one with difficulty in communicating effectively. Connor for his part also keeps his distance from his father. He believes that Angel doesn’t want anything to do with him because he is connected to the Beast but he makes no attempt to approach him directly about it. And even Cordelia is complicit in the conspiracy of silence. When we first see her, she had no intention of going back to the Hyperion. She does so only because of her vision. And when she does get there she has no intention of talking to Angel about what happened between her and Connor. Yes, she wants him to talk to his son. And yes, she wants him to snap out of it and deal with the Beast. But when given the opportunity for a long talk alone with him about what was wrong between them, her reaction is instructive: Cordelia: “So, all this time alone together. Could be good for us. Maybe we should talk.” Angel: “Maybe we shouldn't.” Cordelia: “Valid point. “ And Gunn too, in spite of the conflict that is brewing between him and Wesley and the realization that all is not as it should be between himself and Fred, at no time makes an effort to talk thing through with either of them. He and Fred for example argue over Connor and the Ra-tet almost as a substitute for a genuine discussion about where their relationship is headed. Remarkably, as we have seen, the person to whom Gunn comes closest to opening up is Gwen, the woman who nearly killed him. Even with her he becomes taciturn when she gets close to a sore point. And when Fred and Wesley really annoy him over the creation of the portal (with its bad associations) he becomes positively monosyllabic. It is this lack of communication that elevates the jealousies and resentments between our protagonists into something even more sinister - outright distrust of one another. The team is dealing with a creature who is enormously more powerful than they are. This is a creature who can easily and quickly dispose of the members of the Ra-tet, in spite of the incredible power each of them has. They are intimidated, as we see when Angel tries to rally the troops: Angel: “The Powers are sending us a wake-up call, people. Sure, we've been—I don't want to say demolished—beaten. And sure, it's slightly...demoralizing. But from here on out, we're on the offensive. We're gonna find out this thing's weaknesses, we're gonna go in prepared, and we're gonna fight smart. It's time to take down the Beast.” Fred: “Uh, we're all behind you, Angel, a hundred percent, but how can we be prepared when there's nothing on this thing.” Lorne: “And weaknesses? It's not a sure bet El Destructo has any.” Worse than that they are always at least one step behind him. This is a creature with an agenda. Angel and his team are continually scrambling to keep up with that agenda. Angel Investigations only found out about the Ra-tet when the Beast had killed three of them. They only discovered what the Beast wanted from the Ra-tet when there was just one left. They tried to protect Manny but somehow Angel and Cordelia were apparently drugged and someone stole silently in and killed him. They had no idea where the Beast was going to carry out the ritual to darken the sun. They only stumbled upon that secret by accident. And not only do they fail at each step of the way, but each failure only served to reinforce the divisions in their ranks. As we have seen, when Angel tries (lamely) to galvanize the team he is immediately contradicted by Fred and Lorne. Trying to work out the significance of the Ra-tet caused divisions between Gunn, Fred and Wesley. Finding Manny caused trouble between Angel and Cordelia, as did trying to protect him. Even when they do manage to come up with a plan it causes conflict between Wesley and Fred on the one hand and Gunn on the other. Finally the one bit of information they have that promises to be of real help causes problems between them. The Conduit hinted that the answer was among them but what did this mean? Significantly this one clue becomes just one more thing to divide them. Angel is suspicious of Connor and that sets him in conflict with Cordelia. Gunn seems certain that Connor is the answer and this puts him at odds with Fred. And Cordelia's final revelation causes everyone to look with suspicion on Angel. The murder of Manny looks like and inside job and they are asking themselves whether they are just fighting an extremely powerful exterior enemy or are they also fighting an enemy within? The struggle isn't bringing them together. It is driving them into factions distrusting of one another. And because of this instead of coming together as a team they argue among themselves unable to resolve the problems the Beast poses for them. Collectively the members of the team are both scared and frustrated. Angel in particular seems to feel powerless. And part of his problem appears to be the fact that, having been rejected by Cordelia because of his past and then having seen his own son replace him in her bed, all his old sense of insecurity seems to have returned. But 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. The distrust they feel for one another, having its origin in their mutual jealousies and hatreds is taking its toll as well. The team understands that, until they know much more about Beast, they are at huge disadvantage. The question is what lengths are they willing to go to and what risks are they prepared to run to get that information. 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. Would anyone on the team, in their right minds and under normal circumstances, say that bringing back Angelus was a good move at any time? And when there was already an enormously clever, unpredictable and uncontrollable killer on the loose, when LA was plunged into darkness and about to become a magnet for every evil creature in the hemisphere, might they not think that it was self-evidently a profoundly stupid idea? Would it not make a bad situation worse, especially since getting Angelus back meant losing Angel? But these were not people in their right mind or operating under normal circumstances. Their inability to get anywhere near dealing with the Beast reinforced by their own internal divisions has left them in a state of despair. This has been a long day’s journey in which the baleful influence of past wrongs have divided this once close family. These divisions have refused to dissipate because the members of that family can’t communicate with one another, alternating between brooding in silence or argumentative point scoring. And this combination looks likely to lead to an end that all will regret. And it is I think instructive that it is Wesley who takes the lead in demanding Angelus' return. Perhaps because of his insecurities, he is perhaps by nature the most distrustful of all of the members of the team (hence his mis-step with Lilah in "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"). And he evidently now does entertain strong doubts about Angel's trustworthiness. As we have seen from "Spin the Bottle", those same feelings of insecurity tend to manifest themselves in an anxiety to prove that he knows best. Indeed, the fact that, without Angel, he would assume leadership of the Angel Investigations and be the one best placed to get the information in question from Angelus must also have been strongly motivating factors for him. After all what better was to prove to others that their doubts about him were without foundation than carrying out successfully such an important and difficult role. We shall now apparently see.
Teenage Snits In the ANGEL version of “Long Day’s Journey” we see the flaws of our central characters laid bare under the pressure of events. In spite of all his good intentions and the promises he made at the end of "Epiphany" here we see the return of the Angel who saw things from a first person singular point of view. In his lack of perspective and the way events were judged primarily by reference to their impact on him, Angel’s basic attitude here was not dissimilar to his early season 2 persona. LA was burning around him but what really bothered him was that Cordelia slept with Connor. Who knew what effect that might have on a violent and unstable teenager? But all Angel worried about was his own injured feelings. Cordelia too, having told Angel that she could not live with the memories of his past and having slept with his son, now starts to exhibit classic signs of jealousy over Gwen. This is also someone whose view of the world is essentially self-centered. In Wesley’s case we were again reminded of his ruthlessness and his lack of empathy. He is quite deliberately getting between Gunn and Fred. In this he is thinking of what he wants, not what Fred does. And he shows no sign of worrying about the effect that this will have on his former best friend. And in Gunn we see the return of all the old insecurities. He feels vulnerable because Fred and Wesley were so intellectually compatible. And he saw things like their plan to create a portal as being a rebuke aimed at him. And these are not only developments from established characterization, they also have consequences - real ones. As we have seen, the lack of trust in one another is a key element in Angel Investigations being driven into state of desperation, a state in which they seem to be prepared to take an enormous risk. Perhaps the strongest part of the episode is this sense of people who mean well threatening to make things worse because of their individual and collective failings. This is so much more interesting than a united and resourceful team meeting fearful odds. This ANGEL episode seems to me to lack the emotional intensity, brutal honesty or intense pain of the O’Neill masterpiece. But worse than that it also seems to me to lack its truthfulness. The genius of the earlier work is to make us believe completely and without reservation that the Tyrones love one another at the same time as their own demons lead them to emotionally eviscerate one another. Their old sorrows really are “written in tears and blood” and they produce suffering of Shakespearean grandeur precisely because of their guilt and shame over their actions. It is just that the old habits of evasion and self-destructiveness have become too deeply ingrained to be helped. Dramatically and thematically the problems of our heroes (you understand I am using the words ironically here) suffer in comparison. Of course we should not be surprised at this. The O'Neill play is the work of a creative genius at the height of his powers revealing some of the most personally and deeply felt truths of his early life. But much of what we see in the ANGEL episode lacks a ring of truth in its characterization. Surely Angel's greatest cause for complaint against Cordelia lay in the fact that she slept with his unstable teenage son. Yet he exhibits as much resentment against Connor as he does against Cordelia. Angel is supposed to love his son. Where is the concern for him and the way that his encounter with Cordelia might affect him? More importantly how can he justify nursing his bruised feelings with an Apocalypse happening all around him? Notwithstanding Angel's capacity to be self-centred and his penchant for brooding, I have some difficulty in believing he would react quite like this. Equally, Gunn becomes petulant because the only way that Fred and Wesley devise to prevent the Beast from plunging LA into darkness has personally painful associations. Is this the practical, problem-solving Gunn of old? But the most peculiar case of all concerns Cordelia. She was the one who initiated the sex with Connor – on completely spurious grounds. Then the next morning she had second thoughts and worried about sending him the wrong signals and hurting Angel. In this episode she starts off by trying to keep her distance from Angel but after she has her vision she rushes to him in spite of the fact that it doesn’t actually contain any new information. But when she gets to Angel she is more concerned to talk to him about what happened between her and Connor. Only her expression of the remorse that she says she feels is extremely perfunctory. Instead she seems more concerned to tell him to “get over it”. Then she starts acting jealously over Angel kissing Gwen during a time when she wasn't even on the planet because she'd chosen to become a higher being rather than be with him. This behavior is so wildly inconsistent as to be inexplicable. But there is an even more significant problem. The power of the episode, as in so much of ANGEL, must come from the sense of good people being driven to do bad or stupid things by their own flaws. But where these flaws (in contrast to the O'Neill characters) make our characters look so petty and immature and where their jealousies and hatreds appear to be well within their ability to control if only they wanted to, this sense is undermined. If tragedy is to have a meaning, then it is the protagonists' struggle against forces beyond his or her control, whether those forces are fate or their own flaws or their own flaws expressed as their fate. O'Neill's writing reaches these heights. The struggle we see here cannot.
The Plot In my review of “The Trial” I complained that medieval imagery and trappings jarred with me when set against the background of contemporary LA. Then in “Loyalty” we had the Loa in the form of a giant talking hamburger statue. And here we get yet another mystical creature in an oddly mundane form. Manny was an entertaining character partly because of the fact that he was an immortal and powerful being in the form of someone who would look at home in the Pink Pony Lounge buying lap dances. Partly it was his line in sharp one liners: “Right, Super Hunk and Spandexia. This thing takes out Mesektet, and you two are gonna protect me?” But it is also because of his rather sardonic view of the world which leads him almost to mock the near certainty of his own death: “There's more to me than meets the eye. For example, I'm immortal. Unless I'm ritually murdered, of course.” But while Manny represented a very successful marriage between modern LA and the fantasy world of ANGEL, the darkening of the sun didn’t. It is all to the good that the Beast represents a power with really serious consequences, rather than just being threatening. And we have already seen the rain of fire and the mass murder. Now the sun is blotted out. The problem is that these consequences are too obvious. There was a certain amount of fun to be had with the idea of a world which keeps coming to the brink of ending with no-one any the wiser. But this also saved us from having to address too many awkward questions. If the chaos in LA was as obvious as it seemed why didn’t we see attempts by the human world with its huge military, scientific and intelligence resources to meet the threat? The explanation for this was of course that we couldn’t because once such power was brought to bear it would change the Angelverse past recognition. I have to say that the writers had already become too casual for my liking in creating situations where humans had free contact with demons. But here they have created a situation where the supernatural has intruded too obviously into the real world for everything to revert to the status quo ante as if nothing had happened. I will be disappointed if they try to do this. As far as the storyline itself goes, one thing I like about “Long Day’s Journey” is the way that it uses the resolution of a smaller mystery to develop the larger one. And the smaller mystery wasn’t at all a bad one. There was a certain amount of contrivance and co-incidence about the set up and some of the developments. Angel Investigations had known about the Conduit for quite some time now. It is hard to believe that Wesley has only investigated it now and discovered the link with the Ra-tet. It is even more difficult to accept that one of the constituent totems of the Ra-tet was the link between the Senior Partners and the “earthly contingent” of Wolfram and Hart. Would the Senior Partners trust such a vital job to someone or something that wasn’t entirely its creature? It is also a bit of a coincidence that Ashtet was a client of Gwen’s and that she happened to be present when he was destroyed. And why was Gwen so anxious to investigate his death that she went straight to Angel? She wanted to go to Tahiti anyway because of the Beast. She saw it destroy Ashtet before her eyes; wouldn’t that simply harden her resolve to get out of town while the going was good? Then there was the fact that the last two Ra-tet were conveniently close at hand. And finally there was the co-incidence of Angel and the whole team going to fetch Connor just at the same time that the Beast showed up at his place to start the ritual. And why there? As the second part of Cordelia’s memories showed, the Beast had a connection to Angel, not Connor. So why was Connor’s home chosen? Nevertheless most our characters' actions were intelligent. They think things through. When they hear that two of the Ra-tet have been killed that they don't just jump to the conclusion that the Beast is after all of them. They wait until Gwen tells them about Ashtet. They also make logical choices from the information they have to hand. Finding the remaining Ra-tet, discovering from him what the Beast’s purpose was and hiding him somewhere the Beast won’t think to look were the obvious (though ultimately futile) moves. And when they do confront the Beast again it isn’t with their usual kamikaze tactics. Instead they came up with the idea of using a portal: Wesley: “We've tried conventional methods—firearms, the usual weaponry—none of which seem to work.” Angel: “But if we stand against it long enough to find a way to corner it, maneuver it into position…” Lorne: “Then maybe we can send this thing back to the Hell Sweet Hell it came from.” And all of this was against a background of a genuine threat. The consequences of the sun going dark over LA were real enough. But unlike the traditional apocalypse, these consequences weren’t so catastrophic that we could dismiss the possibility of the threat being realized. So, there was a fair amount of tension. And the fact that the sun did go dark just when it seemed that the team might have succeeded was a very nice twist. Indeed the ending was excellent with the growing physical darkness symbolizing the growing despair as the team begin to face the prospect of bringing Angelus back. And this leads me to the most important aspect of “Long Day’s Journey”, the fact that it marks an significant stage in the development of the season long arc. Some questions are resolved. We discover a good reason for the Beast’s rampage at Wolfram and Hart. We see that the hints about Connor’s connection to the Beast have been red herrings. Clearly it is the connection between Angel and the Beast that is going to turn out to be important. And discovering the nature of this connection looks as though it is going to involve the return of Angelus in one form or another. But other questions are posed and much remains ambiguous. First of all what is the nature of the connection between the Beast and Angelus? It can’t simply be as an ally. After all the Beast has swatted Angel like a fly. Then again what is the Beast’s real goal? It wasn’t just to bring down a rain of fire or to go about killing the good people of LA. Equally it seems clear that it isn’t just to bring about darkness, although if Angelus is involved that would certainly be useful. There is much interest and intrigue left in trying to work out what the endgame really is and how Angelus fits in with it. And it is by no means obvious that the Beast’s interest in Angel (which seems real enough) tells the whole story. If the Beast’s connection is solely with Angelus, then who killed Manny and how? It does seem unlikely that the Beast did it himself. He hardly needed to do so by stealth. He could have just used his normal bulldozer tactics. And how would the Beast have spiked the drinks and interfered with the electronic surveillance? These actions do look like an inside job so who is responsible? Is there a suggestion that Angel himself was the killer and that the Beast was somehow controlling him? If so that would explain an otherwise major plot hole - the fact that Cordelia can access Angel's memory of meeting the Beast but Angel himself can't. No, there is a great deal here still hidden and I for one am intrigued.
Overview (B-) Once again this is an episode with a strong soap opera feel to it because romances between the central characters plays such a strong role in it. Of course this is not romance for the sake of it. The soap opera elements do serve a very important purpose in pushing the storyline forward and in explaining the creation of the sense of despair that leads Angel and the others towards a decision to bring back Angelus. And this is certainly a very interesting idea. But ultimately I don't think it quite works, especially in the cases of Angel and Cordelia. Yes, both can be selfish and yes Angel especially can lose perspective. But I am not really convinced by what the writers show us. Angel's attitude towards his son and, at times, his mission is strange enough. But I frankly do not know what to make of Cordelia at the moment. Apart from anything else the pettiness and shallowness we see in both of them and the others leaves me dangerously short of sympathy towards their predicaments. I am normally a sucker for literary parallels with ANGEL episodes but the ones between the O'Neill masterpiece and this episode (while well crafted) do the latter no favors. Nevertheless, the mystery of the week was well thought out and executed and the bigger arc-long mystery has become very intriguing. What is the hidden agenda of the Beast? What does he want from Angelus? Who, if anyone, is the enemy within? Regardless of the failings of this as an episode the set-up has my attention and it is for this that I give it a relatively good grade. |
