Chapter I:
The Anagogic Demon

Good vs. Evil

Sometimes characterization drives plot development.  At other times plot development drives characterization.  The latter can often be a lazy and untruthful process where we see established characters acting in unexpected and frankly unheralded ways simply for the convenience of the story the writers want to tell.  The worst single instance of this in ANGEL that I can think of is Angel’s obsession with making money in the wretched “Provider”.  But equally there are times when it is legitimate to introduce a character who fits a particular story and the purposes the writers want that storyline to serve.  Lorne (or “the Host” as he was referred to when he first appeared in season 2) was just such a character and for much of the season his character and the way it interacted with the others, especially Angel, added a great deal to the story of Angel’s fall.  But Lorne also illustrates the pit falls of plot-driven characterization.  The problem for the writers becomes, of course, what happens to the character after he or she has served their initial purposes.  This was a problem that the ANGEL writers never solved and arguably didn’t even try to.  But before we look at this, let us consider the way in which Lorne added to season 2.

In the middle of all the drama in “Becoming”, the season 2 finale of BUFFY, there was a major shift in the basic mythology of the Whedonverse.  It came with the introduction of the character of Whistler.  He was the demon who helped rescue Angel from life as a down and out in Manhattan 1996. Whistler seemed almost instinctively to understand Angel, in particular his flaws but also what might motivate him to pick himself up and help others.  This ability to understand Angel was what enabled Whistler to help him.   But he didn’t do so for altruistic reasons.  And it is here we come to the real importance of Whistler as a character.

He was only ever seen in the two “Becoming” episodes.  But his arrival there revealed, for the fist time, the context in which Buffy, Angel and the others carried on their struggle. It gave us a glimpse of a wider war between good and evil, a war in which Angel (and presumably others as well) are destined to play particular roles.  We get one glimpse of the destiny Whistler had in mind for Angel in “Becoming II” when he laments to Buffy Summers the effect of her moment of passion with the ensouled Vampire:

“It wasn't supposed to go down like this.  Nobody saw you coming. I figured this for Angel's big day. But I thought he was here to *stop* Acathla, not to bring him forth. Then you two made with the smoochies.  Now he's a creep again.”

In other words Angel was rescued from the gutter to play a role in protecting the world that had been forseen for him.  And  this idea of a special destiny for Angel in particular is brought out most clearly in the scroll he discovered in “Blind Date”

Angel:  "You know what it is?

Wesley:  "If I'm right, the Prophecies of Aberjian; for centuries thought lost.  I translated some of the text.  As I said, it mentions the children you saved today.  But that's not all.  I…I also believe I know why you were drawn to it.   There is an entire passage - about you.  It doesn't call you by name…but it tells of a vampire with a soul.  This doesn't surprise you?"

Angel:  "No."

Wesley:  "But you said you didn't know what it was."
Angel:  "I didn't, but…. "

Wesley:  "Somehow you did?"

Angel:  "Yeah."

Wesley:  "There is a design, Angel.  Hidden in the chaos as it may be, but it's there and you have your place in it."

And here we come to perhaps the most intriguing part of the picture – the nature of the struggle that is taking place.  Buffy’s first guess about Whistler when she meets him is a good one:

“What are you, just some immortal demon sent down to even the score between good and evil?”

This suggests that the purpose of Whistler’s intervention in the war was not to secure the complete triumph of one side over the other.  Rather Whistler’s own purpose in contacting Angel seemed to be to preserve an existing balance.  Acathla awakening would obviously have upset the balance between Good and Evil.  That was why Angel was needed to stop it.  And indeed the later hints about Angel being a major player in the coming Armageddon are consistent with this.  The purpose of this great struggle may very well be to prevent evil overthrowing the established equilibrium rather than help the forces of good destroy it.  This is certainly implicit in the words of the dead female oracle in “To Shanshu in LA”:

“Things are unraveling.  The dark ones broach our temples now."

All of this is something of a long preamble when it comes to discussing the Host of the Caritas Karaoke bar but it seems to me that his role in season 2 can only be understood against this background.

The Role of the Host

The Host is described in “Judgment” as “anagogic”.  Properly speaking that term describes a person who interprets sacred texts.  Nevertheless it does give us the flavor of his abilities.  The first attempt of the writers to answer the question about what the Host does isn’t that successful:

Wes:  "Psychic.  He's connected to the mystic.  When you sing you bare you soul.  He sees into it."

Host:  "This isn't about your pipes, bro.  It's about your spirit.  I can't read you unless you sing!"

This doesn’t tell me a lot.  But later on in the episode a more satisfactory answer is given by demonstration, when Angel goes to him looking for information about a woman he has left to the mercy of a Tribunal of Judgment:

Angel:  "What can you tell me?"

Host:  "I can tell you're all business."

Angel:  "She's in danger."

Host:  "And you're feeling pretty guilty about that.  Hey, you made an honest mistake.  You killed her protector.  A lot of guys would have done the same.  Of course now she's gonna have to face the judgment with no champion and that's looking grim for her and the baby."

Angel: "Tell me where they are."

Host:  "Well.  Who's a little curt? Who's a little Kurt Jurgens in 'The Enemy Below?' The Tribunal will be wherever she is.  She can't escape it."

Angel:  "Where is she?"

 Host:  "My question first.  And answer true, because you know I'll know.  Why Mandy?"

Angel:  "Well, I…I know the words.   I kind of think it's pretty."

Host:  "And it is, you great, big sap!  There is not a destroyer of worlds that can argue with Manilow and good for you for fessin' up. She'll be at Forth and Spring.  The trial will be there."

This suggests that the Host understands not only  the moods and emotions of his subject; he also has some pre-cognitive abilities.  And this makes a great deal of sense.  He later defines his role in the following terms in “Dear Boy” when Angel tries to get his help to track down Darla:

Angel:  "So talk."

Host:  "So, no."

Angel:  "What do you mean 'no.' You won't tell me anything?"

Host:  "I tell you you're headed into trouble with a capital 'troub.'  Let her go, bro.  That way lies badness."

Angel: "What do you care?  You got murderous demons in here.  You give them free advice, but you won't help me."

Host:  "Hey, I set people on their paths, okay?  And this is way off your path, sweetie. Go home."

If we accept that the Host is intended to help people find their destiny then a simple empathic ability (such as the one Barney from “Parting Gifts” had) would not be enough.  He would have to be able actually to see the future of the subject, at least to some extent.  And indeed in both “The Trial” and more especially “Happy Anniversary” the Host himself confirmed as much.  In the former he referred to himself as being “prescient”.  And in the latter he described what he saw when he looked into Gene:

"I looked into this guy and I saw - he has no future after ten o'clock tomorrow night - and neither does anybody else."

Of course it does seem a somewhat limited ability.  He clearly cannot foretell the future in any detailed way.  For example in “Happy Anniversary” he goes on to describe what he saw in the following terms:

“This guy is gonna do something between now and tomorrow night.  I don't know what, but it's gonna cancel *everybody's* summer plans.  We got to find him and stop him."

Not much help to be had there.  So, what we have is a demon with a limited (but not perfect) ability to see the future and an understanding of what goes on inside a person.  Moreover his gifts are not just offered to those with souls or those who are “good” (whatever that term means).  As Angel points out in the passage quoted above they are offered equally to “murderous demons”, like the Lizard Demon from “Judgment” who sings: 

"I'm so excited.  And I just can't hide it.  I'm about to lose control and I think I like it.  I like it.  Tonight's the night we're gonna make it happen. "

The reason for her excitement is soon revealed:

"Well, I can see someone is feeling pretty zippy.  Liz, I know it's hatching time and you're looking forward to that.  But there is more to life than eating your young!  Now let me tell you what I see in your aura..."

It seems to me therefore that the Host is, in this particular manifestation, intended to be like Whistler, a “balancing demon”.  He is not himself a “champion” against evil.  Nor is his function necessarily simply to help those who fight on the side of good.  Rather he is there to help the forces of good and evil find the paths intended for them in the great design that Wesley referred to in “To Shanshu in LA”.  As such it seems to me that he plays a central role in the overarching mythology of the series.  His precognitive abilities and the way he uses them reinforces the idea that there is some pre-ordained plan and that Angel and all the others somehow fit into it.  That is not to say the writers have adopted a determinist view of the universe.  Rather they have set up a tension between the free will of the participants in the drama and the idea that there is at work in the world larger and more powerful forces to whom we respond.  Indeed this idea is reinforced by the way that the Host tried In vain on several occasions to convince Angel to ignore Darla because she was off his path.  A very good indication of that came in the dream sequence at the beginning of “First Impressions” where the Host warns Angel:

"Just that you've come to a *bend* in your own personal uphill road, bro.  Whether or not that slows you down... Well, that's up to you. 

He then reinforces the point by singing:

“There are hills and mountains between us always something to get over.”

As Nathan Reed told Lindsey and Lilah in “Blood Money”

Nathan:  "The prophecies all agree that when the final battle is waged, he plays a key role."

Lindsey:  "Good for him."

Nathan:  "Which side he's on is the gray area, and we're gonna continue making it as gray as possible."

The uphill road is the path that Angel must follow in his quest for redemption. He may not take it.  But the interest and involvement of the Host in Angel’s life, always encouraging towards the upward path and away from the roadblocks do tend to suggest that his true destiny lies along the upward path, if he knows how to take that path.

In this respect the Host seems to me to be the true inheritor of the role Whistler played in “Becoming”.  At one point the writers seemed to flirt with the idea of giving Doyle this role.  After all it was Doyle who first approached Angel in “City of…” with the whole concept of the good fight and saving souls.  But this was never a role that Doyle really fitted into.   As the character finally emerged we saw someone with “street smarts” enabling him to come to some shrewd judgments (as with the need to charge clients).  But he was a very fallible creature and it quickly became noticeable that in the major decisions that Angel had to face in the first eight episodes of the series Doyle was either ignored completely (IWRY) or acted merely as sounding board (“In the Dark”).

Hence I suppose the introduction of the Oracles.  But they were sparingly used mainly as a plot device and they had surprisingly little influence on the formation of the basic mythology behind the series.  In comparison, for the reasons I have already given, the concept and execution of the Host’s role seems ideal for the writers’ purposes.

The Host as an Individual

But a character in a drama series cannot remain merely a symbol, a role or a metaphor.  Indeed he or she will only function effectively as such when they appear as a rounded personality.  First the character must have a credible personality rather than simply being a stereotype.   An interesting personality is all the better.  But that is not enough.  If an individual is to play a particular role in a drama he sort of personality traits he or she displays must be credible for a person playing that role.  And this is one of the most successful things about the Host.  For most of season 2 there was little or no depth to him.  Throughout the Darla arc we never learned what motivated him, what his own hopes or fears were and how they might affect his behavior.  Frankly we didn’t need to.  His role was more limited than that.  He was not one of the core characters of the series whose own path we were supposed to care about.  He was more of a Greek Chorus.  He empathized with Angel.  He commented on the direction he was going in.  He expressed Angel’s innermost fears and anxieties, even when Angel was not prepared to admit them to himself.  Above all he was the person who recognized what was good and what was evil in a situation.  But classically the members of a Greek Chorus were bystanders.  The Chorus rejoiced in the triumph of good and bewailed the tragic fate of the protagonists in the play.  But it stood apart from the action; outside those same triumphs and failures.  In particular it made no attempt to act as any sort of guide.  Lorne in contrast interacted directly with Angel in particular to try to influence his actions.  So creating the right relationship in which he could play this part was crucial.  The writers’ success here was, I think, very important to the progress and resolution of the Darla arc in season 2.

In terms of the Host’s background about the one solid assumption we can make is his unorthodox sexuality.  It isn’t just the way he shamelessly flirts with Angel.  Their first exchange was fairly typical:

Host:  "Love the coat.  It's all about the coat.  Welcome to Caritas.  You know what that means?"

Angel:  "It's Latin for mercy."

Host:  "Smart and cute.  How about gracing us with a number?"

Angel:  "I don't sing."

And later he bemoans the loss of Ramone, the bartender who betrayed Angel in “Guise will be Guise”.

“The man was a world-class bartender.  He made a Sea Breeze that took you to Tahiti.  Mmm.  He's off the menu now."

Notwithstanding the reference to the Sea Breeze it doesn’t take a genius to work out what “off the menu” means.  Interestingly enough, however, in “Happy Anniversary” the Host on two different occasions made the sort of remark you expect to hear from straight men.  For example he refers to Cordelia in the following terms:

“Hot-o-rama! In the 'oh my sizzling loins' sense of the word, if you know what I mean.”

This sparked off some debate about the true nature of the Host’s sexuality.  But this seems to me to miss the essential point about him.  In many ways the interesting point about this aspect of his character is not the question of whether or not the character is gay. What the Host does in his private life is hardly of interest to us.  It is the very deliberate campness, the open flirting, the mildly suggestive remarks which seem to me to be significant.  As I have tried to suggest the Host is not simply light relief.  He has a very serious purpose, especially where Angel is concerned.  To function as some sort of spiritual guide the Host has to be able positively to influence a subject as well as understand.  This alone implies a quick-witted intelligence, persistence and more than a little steel.  These are all characteristics the Host has shown and the slightly camp, wry humor plays an important part in it. 

We can, I think, see his intelligence by the way he always comes off best in the exchanges he has with Angel.  He always has the perfect come back.  For example in “Happy Anniversary”: 

Angel:  "Where did you learn how to drive?"

Host:  "Just now in your car.  Not bad for a beginner, huh?"

Angel:  "What? You nearly got us killed - four times."

Host:  "Someone had to drive.  You weren't exactly qualified, huddled under a blanket in back, hiding from the sun.”

He also displays his self-control, especially under pressure in the scene in “Dear Boy” when faced with a slightly out of control Angel who almost threatens him.   Here his temper is never threatened but he replies very firmly:

            "I *know* you're not gonna start anything in here.  You're a good boy. Have a drink before you go.  It's on me."

This combination of quick-wittedness and composure enables him to control whatever agenda he chooses.   For example in “Happy Anniversary” he clearly intended that Angel, by helping stop Gene, should begin to recover his appetite for the good fight.  But when Angel tried to distance himself from the task he wouldn’t let him:

Angel:  "Student yearbook/faculty publications going back past five years.  Lets see if we can't find your little madman bent on destroying the universe."

 Host:  "I like to think of him as *our* little madman.  That's just me, team player, you know?"

And once he takes control of an agenda his wit and intelligence always puts him that one step ahead, challenging and probing for weaknesses. In this context the way he tested Angel’s current frame of mind in “Happy Anniversary” was very instructive:

Host:  “Don't feel the need to offer your guest a frothy cappuccino or a hot cinnamon roll."

Angel:  "I don't."

Host:  "Man, you just get darker and darker. And the weird thing is, your aura? Beige."

Here the Host isn’t just poking a little gentle fun at our Hero’s flirtation with darkness.   He is making a serious point.  By equating Angel’s lack of manners with darkness the Host is suggesting that that is as bad as Angel gets and that he is only putting on a front for effect.  And he further emphasizes the point by referring to his beige aura.  The implication being that the best he can do is go a very light gray.

He never picks a fight.  He is never openly confrontational.  Bust as we have seen he never gives his subject an easy ride either. His approach is gently but relentlessly and remorselessly to wear Angel down until finally he gets what he wants:

Host: "Oh, this whole sour pussy mode of yours, it's starting to grate.  You know what your problem is? - Are you listening?"

Angel:  "Do I have a choice?"

Host:  "Your heart isn't in it anymore."

Angel:  "I don't have a pulse so technically I don't have a heart."

 Host:  "Technically, someone puts a stake through it you don't have anything anymore. So, Bubba, your heart counts."

Angel:  "I have no idea what you're babbling about."

Host:  "Yes, you do.  If the world were to end tonight, would it really, in your heart of hearts, be such a terrible thing? Now, now, sweetie, is that a fun place to be?"

And it is here that the wry, camp humor becomes such a wonderful weapon.  Whether it is offering drinks on the house, talking about “our” little madman, pulling Angel’s leg about his beige aura or even just throwing in the odd endearment such as “sweetie” he defuses any anger and annoyance caused by his probing and testing and thus skillfully prevents a confrontation developing in which the subject will clam up.  Indeed his whole manner suggests that he is simply indulging in trivial gossip for no real purpose at all can easily lull potential subjects into a false sense of security and lead them to open up about themselves even when they did not mean to.  This is indeed a formidable combination  of  talents.  But just as important it helps create a sense of  fun, especially fun at Angel’s expense.  It represents taking all the season 1 gay jokes that one stage further.  And it is an essential part of the so very entertaining verbal sparring between the Host and Angel that has been so entertaining, as in “Happy Anniversary” when he calls the dark and brooding one:

             “Mr. Get-to-the-point-y-pants.”

ANGEL as a series is essentially a serious one.  And the sort of humor we see here plays a very important role in balancing the more serious parts of the series.  Otherwise there is a risk of it being too monotone and too serious.  But apart from Cordelia in her early days there was a shortage of characters who could provide the necessary balance and perhaps the greatest difficulty is with Angel himself who is essentially a sombre figure.  But while he cannot play the comedian himself he can be  a superlative straight man.  In the Host he was given just the right character to play off and the results are wonderful to behold.  The refusal of the Host to take our hero too seriously and his own highly infectious and irreverent sense of mischief create sparks between them.

 Chapter II:
A Part of The Team

After Darla...

In fact for all of the above reasons it seems to me that The Host made for a fascinating and entertaining character who made significant contribution to season 2 both in terms of the serious role he played in its underlying mythology and in the sheer sense of enjoyment that he brought.  But once the Darla arc ended, the problems for the character soon mounted.  First, as I have already said, his character in its original concept of a sort of Greek Chorus, worked best in the context of an overarching mythology – a titanic battle between good and evil that was never intended to have a winner but in which everyone had their own part to play, their own path to take.  In this context we can see the tension between free will on the one hand and the idea of greater forces seeking to influence people.  The concept was never abandoned and without going into detail it is easy to see how the Jasmine arc fitted in to it.  A Higher Being grew tired of the whole idea of a war without end and tried to resolve matters by intervening directly.  And the idea returned to play an important part on the series finale where Angel stressed the eternal nature of the fight for evil and the need for volunteers to continue the war.  But from season 3 onwards the emphasis of the series was resolutely on the internal struggle, the battle between the desire of each of the main characters to do the right thing and the combination of their flaws and histories which always seemed to sabotage the better angels of their nature.  There is a connection between the two and obviously season 2 was as much about Angel’s own psychological flaws as season 4.  But to the extent that the emphasis of the series switched away from the idea that Angel and the others had a path to follow, the scope for the sort of role we saw the Host play in season 2 was greatly diminished.  I can best illustrate this by looking at the contrast in the way that the writers approached season 4 as compared with the way they approached season 2. At the beginning of season 4 Angel had lost his sense of identity because he has lost Cordelia.  He had his friends, he had his son and he had his mission.  But the mission in particular meant nothing to him without Cordelia to provide meaning to it all for him.   Then not only Angel but everyone became obsessed with what was going wrong in their lives; they allowed the harshness and cruelty of the world to drive their actions rather than doing what they knew to be the right thing.  This is every bit a story of people going “off their path” as season 2 was.  Yet, the idea was never mentioned and Lorne played at best a marginal role in trying to put people back on their paths.  Take “Long day’s Journey” where we have the following exchange between Lorne and Angel:

Lorne: Room service. Hey. I brought you some nice O-positive here, freshly nuked for that right out of the jugular taste.

 Angel: Just put it on the table.

 Lorne: (looking at Angel's drawing) Mmm. Good likeness. You wouldn't mind if I ran screaming from the room, would ya?

 Angel: Shut the door on your way out.

 Lorne: Oh, all right. You want to play it this way, we'll play it this way.

 Angel: Play what?

 Lorne: Angel, sweetie. Why so down? (with a deep voice) Don't interrupt me, I'm brooding.

 Angel: I'm not brooding, I'm researching.

 Lorne: The apocalyptic Beast who's turned our city into his personal abattoir? Yeah, so's everybody else. Wesley included. Downstairs. Together.

 Angel: I work better alone.

 Lorne: Oh-ho-ho. That's it. I see. It's all about you. Silly old Lorne, thinking it was about saving the world from ending. Welcome to the big leagues, Angel. You're a champion. You don't get personal days.

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?

 Angel: You want to shove that into English for me?

 Lorne: I know about Connor and Cordelia. It's a—it's a vibe, it's a thing. I know. What can I say?

 Angel: You can say goodbye. Take a hike.

 Lorne: Connor's still gonna be your son, you know, when it's all said and done. And you may not find perfect happiness with Cordelia, but Angel food, you gotta remember, there's other fish in the sea.

Lorne’s insights here were right on the money.  Angel had gone wrong because he had made everything about himself.  And he needed to stop doing that.  But in season 2 Lorne was a constant reminder that Angel was “off path”.  He engaged with him not only in the sense of debating the issues but even to the point of directly intervening in episodes like “Happy Anniversary” to try to influence Angel back on track.  Indeed to a considerable degree he became our reference point for judging Angel’s behaviour.  Hence my comparison with the Greek Chorus.  But he plays no such role in season 4. Indeed in season 5 even worse was to come.

Here too the single most important issue was the extent to which the Wolfram and Hart’s Senior partners’ offer led our heroes off their path again.  This is an issue that has been debated on a number of occasions between the former members of AI.  And indeed the idea of “destiny”, whether Angel had one and if so what it was, became very explicit in this context.  In the course of the season the writers looked at the way in which Angel, even though he had this power of choice, had all too often allowed his life to be dictated by his own past and the psychological baggage he carried with him from that past.  They also focussed on how this in turn allowed outside forces instead of himself to control his destiny.  Finally they showed what he needed to take back that control into his own hands.

But the voice that has been most noticeably absent from the various debates surrounding these issues is that of Lorne.  Indeed, his principal concern throughout this season seems to be more with his role as a mover and shaker in the entertainment world, as witnessed by the teaser in “Life of the Party”.  There is astonishingly nothing to indicate that Lorne had any views at all, one way or the other, about whether accepting the Wolfram and Hart deal was on or off Angel’s path.  And, while he seemed to act as “morale officer” for the team, there is again no evidence of him trying to use his talents and skills to influence the path that they are on. Instead he became essentially a peripheral figure for most the show’s last three seasons, all too often reduced to giving relationship advice to Angel and Cordelia in “Waiting in the Wings” or becoming a plot device as when his kidnap brings Angel to Las Vegas in “The House Always Wins” or when he helps to restore Cordelia’s memories in “Spin the Bottle”. 

And when we do get a flash of insight from him it really only serves to illustrate for the audience the moral and emotional problems our protagonists face.  The exchange in “Long Day’s Journey” was an example of this.  There were others such as in “Forgiving” when Lorne and Angel discuss the missing Wesley:

Angel: You think Wes is...?

Lorne: I don't know. I hope for the best. Angel, there's a bigger picture here. And in that bigger picture there's a glass.

Angel: If the words glass is half full are about to come out of your mouth, don't.

Lorne: No, this is more a glass half full of spiked blood. If Sahjhan and that lady lawyer had pulled off their feeding plan you'd have Connor's blood on your hands.

Angel: Don't I anyway?

Lorne: No. You think there was something more you could have done? You did everything you could with the knowledge you had...just like Wesley. Maybe the way to start forgiving yourself is by starting to forgive him.

These insights help our understanding but are of limited significance in terms of the developing storyline.  Instead we notice Lorne mainly through his trademark wit and humor.  A good example from “Deep Down” at the start of season 4 comes when he appears in one of Angel’s hallucinations:

Angel: Why is it like this?

Lorne: Well, that's the age-old, bubby. I'll fire you off a postcard if I noodle an answer.

Angel: Life should be beautiful and bright. But, no matter how hard I try, everything I touch - turns to ashes.

Lorne: Well, there goes that encouraging hug I was planning. Snap to, buckaroo. The only one turning to ashes is that patricidal pup of yours. Hell, I'd take him out myself if I wasn't just a crappy hallucination.

Wesley: How is he?

Lorne: How do you think?

Justine: He won't shut up.

Angel: I have to stop him.

Lorne: You wanna bitch-slap sour-puss over there for practice? I'm your cheering section.

But this time, in contrast to season 2, the dialog is largely for decoration.

The Harmonies of Music

This was a pity because at the end of season 2, the writers did make an effort to give Lorne the sort of back story that would allow an audience to understand more fully what motivated him as a character and why he acted as he did in season 2.  It was interesting and it was well thought out.  But in the end really very little was made of it.  Appropriately enough in this context music was, I think, important as a metaphor for what was important to Lorne.

The Florentine humanist Leon Battista Alberti is often seen as a model of the Reneissance “Universal Man”.  He regarded mathematics as the common ground of art and the sciences.  But it was the mathematical and proportional aspect of music which held for him the greatest interest.

"We shall therefore borrow all our Rules for the Finishing our Proportions, from the Musicians, who are the greatest Masters of this Sort of Numbers, and from those Things wherein Nature shows herself most excellent and compleat."

Pythagoras had observed that when the blacksmith struck his anvil, different notes were produced according to the weight of the hammer. Number (in this case the amount of weight) seemed, therefore, to govern musical tone. Equally when a string was played, number (in this case the amount of length) again seemed to govern musical tone. And when two strings were played the sound depends upon not only their length but the proportionate relation one has to the other.  Thus, for the Greeks, musical notation was expressed mathematically.  Indeed this came to be seen as a starting point for a general philosophical view of the relationship between all things.  Plato in his dissertation on the Composition of the Soul, maintained that there was within the universe of space and time a series of inter-dependent harmonies expressed by the relationships within a set of numbers.

In the same vein (I promise I am going somewhere relevant here) Pythagoras taught that each of the seven planets produced by its orbit a particular note according to its distance from the still centre which was the Earth. The distance in each case was like the subdivisions of a string. This idea, which was inherited by the Romans (and called by them Musica Mundana), came to be referred to as Music of the Spheres. The sound produced by these spheres is so exquisite and rarified that our ordinary ears are unable to hear it. It is the Cosmic Music which, according to Philo of Alexandria, Moses had heard when he received the Tablets on Mount Sinai, and which St Augustine believed men hear on the point of death, revealing to them the highest reality of the Cosmos. This music is present everywhere and governs all temporal cycles, such as the seasons, biological cycles, and all the rhythms of nature. Together with its underlying mathematical laws of proportion it is the sound of the harmony of the created being of the universe, the harmony of what Plato called the

"one visible living being, containing within itself all living beings of the same natural order". 

Following on from this, for the Pythagorians different types of music produced different effects on the person who hears them. Pythagoras is said once to have cured a youth of what we would nowadays refer to as alcoholism by prescribing a particular melody. At the healing centers of Asclepieion at Pergamum and Epidauros in Greece, patients underwent therapy accompanied by music. The Roman statesman, philosopher and mathematician, Boethius explained that the soul and the body are subject to the same laws of proportion that govern music and the cosmos itself. We are happiest when we conform to these laws because

"we love similarity, but hate and resent dissimilarity".

And for Lorne too harmony with its ordered structure each different element of which is bound together in proportionate relationships with one another is a ruling principle.  He came from a dimension in which harmony was notably absent.  He describes Pylea in the following terms:

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

This is a world of disharmony characterized by opposites in conflict.  You were either one thing or the other – good or evil; a demon or a cow – and the only relationship between them could be one of violence.  And tellingly this was a world without music:

“Well, try this: they have *no* music there.  It doesn't exist.  Do you know what that's like?  No lullabies, no love songs.  All my life I thought I was crazy.  That I had ghosts in my head or something.  Simply because I could hear music.  Of course I didn't know it was music. All I knew was that it was something beautiful and - and painful - and right.  And I was the only one who could hear it. - Then I wound up here and heard Aretha for the fist time...  Well.  Don't kid yourselves.  Cordy's in a *very* bad place."

So here we see the disharmony and a lack of music of Pylea contrasted to Lorne’s ideal of music and harmony.

And from this perspective we get a slightly different understanding of Lorne in the Darla arc. Earlier I compared him to Whistler an individual intended by some higher powers to help the forces of good and evil find the paths intended for them in the great design that Wesley referred to in “To Shanshu in LA”.  But the Pylea arc show him as just someone trying to make his own way in a Universe over which he has no control and limited ability to understand.  He is just trying to live his life in a way that best expresses his own understanding of who he is.  He believes not in the opposites of Pylea but in a world in which everyone and everything is connected one with the other.  There is good and evil but they must co-exist on this world and how they do so; how they relate to and respond to one another is more complex than just fighting and killing.  This is not harmony in the sense of everyone living compatibly with one another; rather it is harmony in the sense that I have been discussing it – in terms of structured, proportionate relationships. That is why he offers his help to evil demons and humans such as Lindsey as well as those fighting on the side of good.  That is why Caritas is protected by the Sanctuary spell.  Angel’s descent into darkness in season 2 was an example of the Pylean approach to black and white and its disharmonies.  That is why he tried to dissuade him from it.  And here too we see the link between his instinct for harmony and music.  He reads people by listening to them sing.  And by reading them he helps them find their way in the world, a way that, for him should be characterized by the harmonies of life.

And of Life...

In a series whose stock in trade was the idea that evil and good were in permanent and irreconcilable conflict, this is potentially at least a new departure in thinking.  But the series never fully explored its implications.  True enough season 2 was largely devoted to notion that fighting the good fight meant more than just hunting and killing; hence the important role Lorne played in it.  And significantly, in “Judgment”, when Cordelia has a vision of a “nasty looking demon” it is quickly identified:

Wesley:  "Prio Motu demon.  It's a killer."

Angel:  "Ancient Ofga-beast, bred to maim and massacre."

While tracking it down Angel comes across a lone woman and at that point the Prio attacks him and he kills it.  It is only then that he realizes that the demon was protecting the woman.  It attacked Angel only  because it mistakenly thought that Angel was a threat to her.  Angel had in fact killed the creature that was going to act as her champion before a mysterious “Tribunal” that had the power to decide her fate.  That creature, far from being a killer bred to maim and massacre, was just like Angel.  As the woman says:

“You guys with your missions, and ancient laws and medieval codes of honor!”

This clearly introduced the idea that the world was more complex than the simplicities of “champions roaming the countryside, fighting for justice” would allow.  But while season 2 emphasized the complexities of life, it did so in the context of Angel’s dealings with the humans of Wolfram and Hart.  It never came to grips with the implications of its message for the way Angel should treat demons.  So instead of following up on the threads about the Prio demon  left hanging in “Judgment” we get an episode like “That Old Gang of Mine” where Gunn’s old gang started killing harmless demons.  There the writers approached the issues on the basis of simple clichés amounting to “racism is bad”.  There is nothing there to try to give us a fresh perspective on the relationship between good and evil in the world.

For example, in the Whedonverse it is axiomatic that it is wrong to kill humans but right to kill demons.  This is based on the distinction between the redeemable and the irredeemable.  Humans can ultimately change; demons cannot.  But it has equally been permissible to kill humans in self-defense or the defense of others.  Now, you can also argue that if philosophically demons (such as the Prio) have a place in the world or a path to follow – be that a mediaeval code of honor or something else – then they too should only be killed in similarly restricted circumstances.  Such would indeed seem to me to be the implications of Lorne’s philosophy.  But obviously the focus of the ANGEL writers was elsewhere.  So, the series just didn’t develop in a way that allowed us to see Lorne facing internal conflict and doubt between his beliefs about the nature of the universe and his participation in Angel Investigations until the very end of the series.   Then we have a moment in which who Lorne is and what he believes in assumes some significance.  When Angel asked for volunteers in his attack on the Black Thorn, Lorne is significantly the last to raise his hand.  And afterwards he is the first, indeed the only one, to raise his voice in objection:

"I'm telling you, our fearless leader has fearlessly lost it. There's no part of this that makes any sense. We could be next."

Here we see the voice of fear and confusion.  Lorne was never the fighter.  He was the Host, the MC of Caritas where everyone could feel safe because violence was not allowed.  He was the demon who fled from Pylea because its endemic violence and black and white way of thinking was not for him.  He could always see the other guy’s point of view.  When he was given the opportunity to choose his perfect last day, it was singing to an audience and his choice of song was significant:

If I ruled the world,
Every day would be the first day of spring,
Every heart would have a new song to sing,
And we'd sing of the joy every morning would bring...

This says it all.  For Lorne happiness and harmony are the ruling considerations.  He had no heart for mass violence.  No wonder he says to Angel:

"I'm not a fighter, Angelwings. I never had the stomach for it. Looks like I'm your weak link."

But tragically it falls to Lorne to be the one to commit murder.  He kills a human, not in self-defense or defense of another and not even as a punishment for what he has already done.  He kills Lindsey because of what he might do in the future.  Whether Lindsey could change or not is debatable.  He even admits to Eve that if he survived the events of the night all bets would be off:

“As long as I'm fighting on his side, he'll play me fair. When the smoke clears, then we'll see where we stand.”

But no-one’s future is set in stone.  That is after all part of the whole ethos of this series.  And killing Lindsey for such a reason would be against everything that Lorne believe in.  And while it was Lorne’s doing, it wasn’t of his planning:

“It's not about what I think. This was Angel's plan.”

It was Lorne’s tragedy that he, who tried so hard to prevent Angel from becoming the dark avenger in season 2, now felt compelled to carry out Angel’s plan.  And that was why he contemplated his actions with such a heavy heart:

“It isn't my kind of work anymore. It's unsavory.”

Alone of the former members of Angel Investigations, he actually betrayed his own beliefs and principles.  He rendered for himself his part in that nights actions meaningless.  And in committing murder he defeated himself.  It was truly a tragic end for a character; but oddly enough an appropriate one.   Lorne had first been introduced as a character with a serious purpose; a character who underneath the camp and extroverted exterior dealt with dark and serious issues.  For most of the rest of the series, he had been shorn of that purpose.  But now in the end we saw a return of his importance.  Only this time, instead of being Angel’s guide as to what was his true path, he was an example of what was meant by going off one’s path.