EPISODE 4.15

ORPHEUS

Written by: Mere Smith

Directed by:  Terrence O'Hara

An Ancient Tale

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is one of the best known in the whole canon of Greek myth.  It is a powerful tale of love and loss, adventure and failure just when success seems assured.  But, as with almost all Greek myth, what happens is less important than why it happens.  The real power of the story lies in what it has to say about the flaws of even the greatest of human beings and how those flaws in the end set their virtues at naught.

Familiar though the story is, it is still useful for the purposes of this review to briefly recount it.  Eurydice was the centre of Orpheus’ life and their love was perfect and unbreakable.  Then, on the morning of their wedding, a shepherd god called Aristaeus, saw Eurydice's beauty and desired her.  She refused him but, being used to having his every whim indulged, he chased after her and tried to take her unwillingly. Running from him Eurydice stepped on a viper and the venom of its bite killed her at once.  Orpheus was inconsolable. His sense of loss is perhaps best expressed by the opening lines of a famous aria from the opera “Orpheus ed Eurydice” by Gluck:

“What is life to me without thee?

What is life when thou art dead?”

Unable to bear his loss, Orpheus took his lyre and descended into the Underworld. A normal mortal would have perished any number of times, but with his music he overcame all obstacles, even charming Cerberus, the three-headed monster dog of Hades who guarded the Underworld, into letting him pass. Now he faced Hades and his cold Queen Persephone whose own heart had been frozen by her abduction from the world above by Hades.  Orpheus sang for them of his sorrow at the loss of his love. At this, Persephone’s heart melted and a tear rolled down her cheek. Even Hades could not help weeping. So they agreed to let Eurydice return to the world but only on condition.  Eurydice would follow Orpheus into the light of the world and once she entered the sunlight she would be changed from a shade back to a woman. But if Orpheus doubted, if he looked back to see her, she would be lost to him forever.

Orpheus turned and left the dark hall of Hades behind and began his ascent back to life. As he walked he rejoiced that his wife would soon be with him again. He listened closely for her footfall behind him, but a shade makes no noise. The closer to the light he got, the more he began to believe that Hades had tricked him to get him out of the Underworld and that Eurydice was not behind him. Only feet away from the light Orpheus finally lost faith and turned around. He saw Eurydice, but only for a moment as her shade was whisked back down among the other dead souls. She was gone; this time forever.  Orpheus tried again to enter the Underworld and demand her return, but one cannot enter twice the same way - and no other way was open to him. All that was left to him was death.  So in this the most important thing to him in all the world, all his courage and determination and all his skill with music counted for nothing because of the small nagging doubt that he gave into.

Faith in the Underworld

We see many echoes of this myth in this episode.  The most obvious, of course, is the name of the drug which affects both Angelus and Faith – Orpheus.  And in Faith we have someone trying to rescue another, Angel.  But the differences between “Orpheus” and the myth from which it got its name are also pronounced.  Instead of Orpheus being the husband who tries to rescue his wife from hell, it is the instrument for sending someone there in the first place:

 Lorne: “That's what makes it so dangerous. Orpheus isn't entirely physical. It's an enchanted drug.”

Connor: “Magic. This is what it gets you.”

Lorne: “That, plus the biting, makes for some serious psychic psychedelia. And the more you take, the deeper you sink.”

Wesley: “It leads you down to hell…and leaves you there.”

And while Faith uses the drug to help engineer Angel’s return to his body, he isn’t the one who is in hell.  Rather, in the first instance at least, that person is Angelus.  And Faith’s purpose is that he should stay there:

“I've got one last job: baby-sit the psycho 'til they shove a soul up your…”

Once Angel’s soul has been restored Angelus will again be trapped.  As the Beastmaster reminded him in “Release” in an ensouled Angel Angelus is:

“Just beneath the surface, buried under all that goodness, fully conscious, fully aware, but trapped. Unable to move or speak, powerless to act on your desires. So thirsty, so helpless...it must be agony.”

And in a series of flashbacks we see Angelus reliving Angel’s past, showing us both what that state actually did mean and what a return to that state would mean for Angelus.

The exit from Ellis Island in 1902 is the setting in which we see the physical discomfort inflicted on Angelus by Angel’s exile from human company after the restoration of his soul.  This is the nightmare that Angelus is now forced to relive:

Faith: “I'm guessing it's more like "Angelus, this is your life," because lack-of-hygiene world sure ain't mine. Seriously, man, did you miss the invention of the bath?”

Angelus: “The whole way over here, he crouched in the filth of animals just to avoid human temptation. This isn't my life—it's his!”

Faith: “Angel's?”

Angelus: “It annoyed the crap out of me the first time around. This sucks.”

Next we move forward in time to the 1920’s.  Angelus evidently remembers the scene as he freaks out and tries to leave.  But in the event both he and Faith witness Angel rescue a puppy.  As Faith happily proclaims:

“We're reliving Angel's good deeds—you are in hell! Wicked!”

From this it appears that we are seeing the effects of the drug from Angelus’ point of view and that he is the one suffering the torments of hell.  But Angel’s reaction after saving the puppy puts us on warning that all is not as simple as it seems:

Dog Owner: “Oh, gee, big fella. How can I thank you?”

Angel: “Get lost.”

Dog Owner: “Beg pardon?”

Angel: “Take a hike, Betty. Scram.”

Angel’s reaction here is an echo of his behavior on the ship coming to Ellis Island.  He kept himself away from humans because he was afraid of what he might do to them.  The next scene is a donut shop in the 1970’s.  As Angel enters a young couple leaves and Angel is aware of their heartbeats and clearly tempted by them.  As Angelus tells Faith:

“Every time he gets close, I feel it. Wanting to tear their flesh apart. The hunger. It's like a blade in my gut.”

But he isn’t the only one who feels this.  Angel does too.  When the clerk in the donut shop is shot and killed in a failed robbery, he is tempted and eventually drinks from him, much to Faith’s disgust.  But it wasn’t just the fact that he did so that worried her.  It was what Angel’s actions said about who he now was.  It was Angelus who pointed out the possibilities.  When Faith asserted that Angel was really trying to save the clerk, he countered:

“Or did he choose to be a little slow on the draw? Whoops! Dinner by armed robbery. Look at him, Faith. You're a murderer. You know just how good that blurry line tastes. You didn't think my hell was private, did ya?”

There have always been strong parallels between Faith and Angel.  Indeed, in the season 1 episode “Five by Five” the writers were at pains to draw these parallels out.  Both had a past as a killer.  Both suffered anguish because of it but, initially at least, neither knew how to make the pain stop.  They had each at one time been poised between two worlds: darkness and the possibility of something better.  Eventually both resolved their crisis of identity by seeking redemption.  And, as the one who started down this path first, as the one who seemed to have resolved his own internal struggles and as the one who had helped her see the way, Faith naturally regarded Angel as her model.  That is why she is so strongly committed to saving him - even at the cost of her own life.  Rescuing him would be for her itself a form of redemption.  As she said to Angel in the alley:

“I’ve rolled the bones.  You for me.”

That is why, when she meets Angelus at Ellis Island, she looks on her own death with equanimity and seems so smug about his discomfort:

Angelus: “Why do you get to be Marley's ghost?”

Faith: “ 'Cause I'm dying, dumbass.”

Angelus: “Not soon enough.”

Faith: “Way I figure, I've got one last job: baby-sit the psycho 'til they shove a soul up your…”.

But the fact that Angel ate from the dead guy shattered her view of Angel as someone who has already achieved redemption. It made her see him anew as someone ambiguous, with evil still within him.  After all that he had gone through to change – the separation from humanity and the occasional acts of kindness – the truth was that Angel hadn’t really changed at all.  And in this context it is I think instructive to note the strong physical similarity (even down to the clothes and the hairstyle) between Angel and the murderer of the clerk.  How different from that murderer was Angel?

And what did that mean for Faith?  She too had suffered a lot for the sake of redemption:

“It'll all be worth it. Is that what you try to tell yourself, Faithy? Is that the nasty little lie that kept those thighs nice and warm in your prison bunk?”

She had been prepared to sacrifice her own life to bring Angel back.  Now she must confront the possibility that Angel himself may be such a flawed character that saving him is a worthless exercise.  What then becomes of her sacrifice.  What does that mean for her own redemption if it was measured in terms of saving him?  As Angelus said tauntingly:

“You'll just hang up your spurs and ride off into the sunset knowing you put the monster back in his cage. But, I'm always here, Faithy. Deep in.”

And now suddenly the true nature of what is happening becomes clear.  This isn’t Angelus’ hell at all.  Back in Ellis Island Angelus asked:

“All right, Miss Blow-It-All. This is my flashback. Why are you in it? “

Faith’s reply was less than convincing.:

“Don't know. Must be the magic side-effects of my incredibly simple ruse.”

But in the scenes in the Hyperion, it was on the comatose Faith rather than the comatose Angelus that we concentrated.  And as the events in the Donut shop make clear there was a reason for this.  This is Faith’s hell and Angelus is a part of it because he symbolizes what she fears most - the futility of redemption.  Moreover, just as Orpheus’ doubts caused him to lose Eurydice forever, so it is Faith’s own doubts that fashion hell for her.  And it is those doubts upon which the episode now focuses.

The Evil Within

Yes, it is true that the need for human blood is part of Angel.  The instinct to kill is also part of him.  And, in terms of personality, traits of Angelus have become part of Angel as well.  But ultimately our actions are not dictated by our physical needs or our instincts or our personality traits.  Rather they are governed by our conscious decisions.  These decisions are taken by what I conceive of as the spiritual entity called the soul.  This is distinct from body and personality.  It is the moral force responsible for the choices we make.  It is true that it makes those choices in response not only to its own moral compass but also in response to the needs and demands of body and personality - what Plato called "the leaden weights of being".  So, when Angel chose to feed from the dead clerk he was responding to those darker sides of his nature.  As he said himself:

“I'm not perfect, Faith. Even with a soul, I've done things I wished a thousand times I could take back.”

All the evil within Angel needs is a weakening of his resolve.  In the 1970's that weakening was caused by the thought - well the guy's dead anyway, what harm is there?  In the wine cellar in “Reunion” it was the thought that Holland and the others were evil people anyway; they deserve to die.  In both cases these considerations weaken Angel's moral objections enough to allow the vampire personality to dictate his actions.  But in terms of the soul, that rational and moral spirit that ultimately controls us, Angel is nevertheless distinct from Angelus.  The former is a human soul with a sense of right and wrong and a desire to do good.  The latter is a demon soul with the desire to do evil.  The human soul ultimately has the power of choice.  Even accepting the presence of evil within him Angel can still choose good.  Angelus himself recognizes this, partly in his never ending complaints about the choices Angel actually does make.  But also when he says:

“Choices, little girl. The ones you make with your heart of hearts.”

The fight in the alley between Angel and Angelus was therefore symbolic of the constant struggle within Angel, the struggle over the choices that Angel must make.  Will that choice be on the basis of the instincts and appetites of the demon or on the basis of the moral convictions of the human soul.  It was in this context that Angel explained to Faith:

“I used to think that. That there'd be a point when I'd paid my dues….You saw me drink. It doesn't get much lower than that. And I thought I could make up for it by disappearing… Our time is never up, Faith. We pay for everything.”

Faith was wrong therefore when she thought that her redemption lay in saving Angel.  That, just as much as Angel’s own self-imposed exile from humanity after feeding of the dead clerk, was hiding from the truth.  Angel said as much to her when she told him she was dying:

            “Yeah. It's a lot easier than redemption, huh?”

Real redemption is continuing to fight to make the right choices in your own life.  There may indeed be no point at which Faith or Angel can say that they have paid their dues.  But the reverse is true as well.  There is equally no point at which they can say redemption is no longer possible for us because of what we have done.  Redemption is a matter of choosing to do the right thing and continuing to make that choice.  And that is what Angel urges Faith to do.  Instead of allowing her to give up he tells her:

“I need you to fight ." 

And just as Angel’s fight with Angelus in the alley symbolizes his own struggle to make the right choice, so what happened when Faith decided that she had to “get back in the game” is also symbolic.  At that point she woke up, tackled Connor and saved the day.  This was a visible demonstration of what Angel meant when he talked about the need to keep on fighting. 

Whose the Daddy?

And what happened to Connor in “Orpheus” also ties in quite neatly with this theme.  Like Angel, Connor too is caught between two influences – Faith and Cordelia.  We see the struggle between them by the way Cordelia reacts to Connor’s admiration for the slayer:

“What the hell is it with you and Faith! As if I didn't see the way you looked at her. She cracked her whip, and you liked it. You were practically in her leather-clad lap!”

The way he responds to her symbolizes the good in him.  Just like Angel himself there is no real malice in Connor.  But he has an obsession with family and a desire to be a part of one.  And it is this that makes him such an easy prey to Cordelia’s manipulation.  Time and time again she stresses the unique bond between them:

“We're special, Connor.”

That bond is cemented by the fact that together they are going to have a baby.  So, she says,  Connor has a unique responsibility to her and her child, a responsibility that takes priority over anything else.  And when Connor is convinced by Cordelia that Willow’s dabbling with magic is a threat to their child he is prepared to deceive his friends and kill Angelus, thus preventing Angel’s return:

Cordelia: “You know I have fought harder than anyone to save Angel's life, but there comes a time when you have to weigh risk versus reward. And as much as I love Angel...as a friend... killing Angelus now is the only way to guarantee our family's safety.”

Thus primed he ignores all the warning signs such as Cordelia’s explosive temper tantrum and the fact that she seems to have the power to negate the Sanctuary spell.  He is therefore about to do something evil out of a misplaced sense of love and loyalty.  The conflict within him between a desire to do good and a willingness to do evil in the face of temptation therefore parallels the conflict within Angel.  At the end of “Orpheus” he seems to accept that he was wrong:

“All right. I get it. I messed up.”

But saying this is one thing.  Truly believing it is another.  And for Connor the latter will involve turning his back on Cordelia and their child.  This is perhaps the ultimate test of whether he is prepared to fight and fight again to do the right thing.

Losing Focus

I found the twist on the myth of Orpheus quite interesting.  At first it seemed that  it was Faith who was destined to play the part of Orpheus as she descended into hell to rescue Angel.  But, as we have seen, it transpired that she was the one who needed rescue from hell and that it was Angel who was her Orpheus.  Not only that, but, instead of her doubts preventing her escape from hell it was those doubts that created the hell for her in the first place.  Ultimately, however, for me the attempt to give this twist to the Greek legend failed.   If the story of Orpheus means anything, it is as a warning about human imperfections.  In this myth, we see three things stressed.  First was the great love Orpheus had for his wife.  Nothing else meant anything to him.   Because of it he was prepared to go all the way and even dared to challenge the God of the Underworld in his own kingdom.  Secondly, we see the great power that he had.  It must be remembered that in Ancient Greece music was an art form that permeated society.  The Greeks incorporated music into every aspect of daily life, from religious rituals to private ceremonies to public events. A form of musical poetry, and perhaps dance, as well, existed for almost every activity or tradition.  And because it was so central to the Greek way of life, it was considered to have a great educative character – it praised certain virtues and values; it condemned other types of behavior.  And because of the mixture of the music, words and actions involved, it was thought to produce a particularly powerful effect in affecting behavior. Indeed, Greek philosophers recognized the power and influence of music in their society and developed the doctrine of ethos. This attributed ethical powers to music and  claimed that music could affect character; although there was often violent disagreement over the processes by which this worked.  Nevertheless in “Orpheus and Eurydice” we see a demonstration of the power of music to influence people for good with Orpheus’ extraordinary success in penetrating safely to the dark halls of Hades and winning back his wife from the dead – something that no-one had ever achieved before. But thirdly we also see that, ultimately, even the total commitment of Orpheus and the great power of music he wielded proved helpless in the face of human doubts.  Orpheus could not believe that his songs had really moved Hades and Persephone and so he sought proof – by turning round and confirming with his own eyes that Eurydice was following him.  But it was the very act of doubting the effectiveness of his own efforts that destroyed their effect.  Showing, as this episode does, how a will to fight on can overcome doubt is the very antithesis of the story of Orpheus. 

And even odder is the attempt to use the Greek myth as a background against which to explore the importance of the will to fight as a means of redemption from a legacy of evil.  This sort of moral dimension is entirely absent from the story of Orpheus.  Eurydice was the innocent victim first of an intended assault and then of a terrible mischance.  That is how she ended up in hell.  Orpheus tried to rescue her through the power of his music to stir emotions and failed ultimately because of his own lack of faith in his power.  The need to make the morally correct choice simply doesn’t enter into it. Orpheus was a hero in the Greek sense of the word.   For them the word came to mean specifically a dead man, worshiped at his tomb because his fame during life or unusual manner of death gave him power over the living.  It had nothing to do with being moral. 

 Ultimately therefore the echoes of the Greek myth in this episode are superficial only.  They contribute little to our understanding of its theme.  And for a  series that had often made powerful use of literary and other parallels for this very purpose that is a great disappointment.

But the theme itself is both important and directly relevant to the ongoing saga of season 4.  After all for most of this season we have been watching various members of Angel Investigations, including our titular vampire, making stupid and immoral choices.  So, it is important that the writers show us that choices like this are not the result of malice; but rather of human weakness.  I think that in ANGEL we are given an absolute standard for evil - vampires like Darla,  Drusilla and  Angelus.  We are intended to see a distinction between them and even humans like Lilah.  Ultimately even they are redeemable.  And certainly there is a distinction between them and Angel, Wesley, Gunn and the others.  Sometimes what they do is simply questionable.  At other times it is clearly wrong.  But I do not think we are meant to see them in the same light as someone whose basic orientation is evil.  And it is in the way that they recognize that they have done wrong and try to make amends or at least try to do better in future that the writers show us the difference.  And in Angel’s fall from grace by feeding off a human and in his reaction to that fall (by becoming the stinky rat-eating alley guy) the writers show us in a particularly striking and powerful way how much of a struggle he has to put up to avoid falling back into evil and how much he wants to do the right thing.  And that is an important corrective we have to bear in mind when we contemplate the harm he has helped cause.

And it follows from this that it is also important that the writers make the point that, even after making the wrong choices, there is always a way back.  As I have said before this is a series about redemption.  So, it is important that we see Angel assert the need to fight and fight again, especially after everything he has done wrong this season.  But  it is here we come to the real problem I have with “Orpheus”.  As I said in my review of “Release” it is sometimes useful to shift our attention away from our core group of characters to give the audience a fresh perspective.  But our focus must ultimately remain with this core group.  And the story of an outsider like Faith (no matter how interesting a character she is in her own right) is only important to the extent that it tells us something about our core group and the struggles they face.  And at this stage of the season the message we see in this episode is important for Angel, Gunn and the others.  It is a message that they can and must put the past behind them by discarding their selfishness and insecurities, by thinking of others first and fighting to do better.  They failed to prevent the damage the Beast caused.  But the Beastmaster is an even greater threat and defeating it would surely be for them a form of redemption from their past failings.  It is clearly around the struggle between Angel Investigations and the Beastmaster that the rest of the season will revolve.  Faith will play no part in this.  But here the writers have made Angel the Orpheus character who rescues Faith from hell by giving her a message that is more appropriately addressed to him (and Wesley, Gunn and Fred).  In Greek tragedy, the most important question is: “what is the meaning of life?” And typically it addresses this question by looking at what our experiences (or rather those of our protagonists) tell us about human nature, about the mixed motives in each of us and about the subtlety and deceitfulness of human psychology.  The chorus in “Agamemnon” by Aeschylus recites:

            "Zeus, whose will has marked for man the sole way where wisdom lies, ordered one eternal plan: Man must suffer to be wise."

In “Antigone”, the chorus counsels Creon that suffering is wisdom's schoolteacher. It is through suffering that the protagonist gains insight about himself and the world he inhabits. From the tragic perspective, wisdom based on experience is of supreme value, even though it must often be purchased with the hero's death. So, in “Orpheus” the real point of the story was not the hero’s love for Eurydice, nor his bravery and determination in trying to win her back or the great power of his music.  It was what he learned about himself and his lack of faith in his own power. 

 In my overview of season 3 I quoted that great political genius of the early Italian Renaissance, Alberti who wrote in his autobiography:

            “A man can do all things if he will.”

As I said then, this is a seminal statement of human dignity and could be almost the motto of Renaissance humanism.  Towards the end of season 3 and especially in "Tomorrow" we saw Angel's quest to achieve a connection with his friends, with Cordelia and above all with his son sorely tried.  The ultimate source of his trouble lay in his own past and the effect that past still has on himself and others.  And in this clash between the best and the worst in Angel and between his past and his hopes for the future we see the quintessential humanist struggle to see whether Alberti's words can indeed be vindicated or whether Angel’s own failings, past and present , will defeat him.  "Deep Down" picked up on this idea by saying that no matter what goes wrong in life a champion always rises above it.  But season 4 then set out to show the flaws in Angel and the others that meant he failed to rise above the hazards of his life.  To be true to the ideal of tragedy, this is something his experiences must bring home to him.  But the last time we saw Angel as a character he had a self-indulgent obsession with his own narrow concerns and was so consumed by self-doubt that he was persuaded against his will to bring Angelus back.  Now we see him with a clear insight into where he went wrong and a firm judgment about where Faith (and by extension he) should go from here?  At the end of the episode, before Cordelia’s interruption” he is about to give a “rally the troops” speech:

Angel: “So, we're back.”

Wesley: “It would seem.”

Angel: “Look, I know things have been…”

From this, from the symbolism of Angel being back and from the guidance he gave Faith, we are I think meant to see this as the decisive turning point of the season, especially for Angel himself.  So then we have to ask: where did this come from?  The donut shop and its aftermath were ancient history.  They could not amount to the circumstances which led him to understand where he had gone wrong in season 4 and what he now needed to do to put that right.  In fact, not only do we not see these circumstances in "Orpheus", Angel doesn’t even refer to them.  The vague reference to him doing things he wished he could take back is the best we get and that could mean anything.  Where for Angel was the moment that corresponded to Orpheus seeing his beloved wife snatched back into hell and knowing that it was all his fault?  Without this there is a gaping hole at the very heart of this episode.  There is change without catharsis.  This may not render “Orpheus” quite meaningless but certainly it makes it thematically  unsatisfying.

The Plotting

There is certainly no shortage of things happening in “Orpheus”.  From the start we are left wondering whether Faith will survive a combination of the drug and having been bitten by Angelus.  And given the series penchent for killing off characters, I was not inclined to dismiss the possibility outright.   These doubts over her fate run parallel with the events taking place in her dream in which she watches Angel's past and wonders whether she will succeed in her mission to save him.  Then Willow arrives and begins the effort to re-ensoul Angel in the face of opposition from Cordelia.  And finally we are reminded of the hold that Cordelia has over Connor, a hold that culminates in her persuading him to kill Angelus before Willow can succeed in restoring Angel’s soul.  These are four separate storylines but they are all beautifully interwoven.  In the dream sequences, for example, we are constantly being made aware of the events in the real world.  Faith knows about her parlous condition and several times she refers to her imminent death.  And as she and Angelus follow Angel through the dream both they and we are reminded of the reason why Faith ingested the drug that brought herself and Angelus to hell in the first place: to ensure that Angel’s soul is restored.  This of course was where Willow came in.  It was through her agency that Angel was to be re-ensouled.  And the struggle between Willow and Cordelia over this purpose intrudes slyly into the dream when the latter’s attempts to warn Angelus manifested as an annoying buzzing sound.  But while, for most of the episode, there were obvious links between the four storylines, it was only at the end that they were all tied up in a very neat and satisfying way to form what amounted to a single plot. 

Up to the events in the donut shop things had been building pretty slowly.  But with Willow on the point of restoring Angel’s soul we suddenly realized that the dream wasn’t really about that; rather it was about whether Faith would live or die.  Yet it was only because Angel persuaded Faith to live that she awoke from her coma in time to save Angelus (and therefore Angel) from Connor’s attack thus ensuring the ultimate success of Willow’s spell.  And once the true nature of the story emerged things moved with great pace.  The battle between the Beastmaster and Willow escalated nicely and led quite naturally into Cordelia’s attempt to persuade Connor to kill Angelus.  And at the same time in the alley Angel was fighting two battles simultaneously – one to defeat Angelus and the other to persuade Faith to keep on fighting.  All were important, all were linked and this gave the story a feeling of terrific tension and excitement. 

And along the way there were plenty of twists.  In my review of “Release” I said I was surprised when Angelus seemed to get the upper hand in his fight with Faith and looked as though he was going to turn her.  I will freely admit that I couldn’t guess how the writers were going to get out of that one.  In a sense, of course, they did cheat a bit.  Here they showed us Faith injecting herself before being bitten by Angelus – something they didn’t show us in “Release”.  And that was, I think, unfair concealment.  But on the other hand in retrospect there was a clue about what would happen in the earlier episode.  In the scene when Wesley and Faith argued over the junkie from whom the vampires had been feeding, Wesley says:

“They shoot up, the vampires feed, use 'em like a filter. I've read the effects can be quite intoxicating...for both of them.”

In hindsight the writers were clearly preparing the ground for Faith’s ruse so, we can hardly say were had no warning.  Then of course, as I have already said, the whole story of Orpheus and Eurydice was given twist.  The dream sequence looked at first as though it was about Angelus being in hell and Faith being there to “baby sit” him until Angel’s soul was restored.  But that never really made sense.  How was Faith’s presence in the dream going to contribute anything at all to saving Angel? Then, with the events in the donut shop, the real purpose of the story was revealed and dramatically, if not thematically, everything did make sense in retrospect.

There were really only two weaknesses.  Admittedly Cordelia suggests that in a few weeks time she would be stronger, but the fact that Willow more than held her own against the Beastmaster did really make it look less than an overwhelming opponent.  My second reservation concerns the fight between Angel and Angelus.  This struggle is after all the central struggle of Angel’s life.  It underlies everything he does or fails to do.   It is very hard to do justice symbolically to a struggle this fundamental to the series so perhaps the smarter move would have been not to try.  You will note for example that the fight is never completed.  That is because Angel’s internal battle never can be.  And yet when the writers give us this ultimate confrontation it is anticlimactic when they fail to show a definitive outcome.  And it also because the fight between Angel and Angelus could not be resolved that it was in effect used as the background to Angel’s efforts to change Faith’s mind; a struggle that was.  And for their battle of all battles to be reduced to a supporting role simply seems wrong.

 Overview (C+)

This was very much a curate’s egg.  The way the episode handled its theme was, I thought, disappointing.  For a series that has in the past made great use of literary sources to illustrate the themes of episodes, the parallels between “Orpheus” and the Greek myth from which it derived its title were very superficial.  But worse than that, by concentrating on Faith’s doubts and by having Angel act as her guide towards a realization of where her path lay, the writers effectively turned their back on where their real focus should have lain.  This season is about the way that Angel in particular should react when faced with disappointment or temptation.  This is the test of a champion (much as I hate that word) and Angel, Wesley, Gunn and Fred failed it.  If they are to find redemption from their wrongdoing they must, as Angel said, fight and fight again to do the right thing.  But far from seeing how this message was driven home to Angel he was the one delivering it.  So, I have to ask if he understood this all along then why did he behave like a thwarted teenager for the first half of the season?  And if he came to that realization after “Awakening” then why didn’t we get to see it.  This, after all, and not Faith’s own journey of redemption is the turning point of the season.  Fortunately, dramatically, the episode works much better.  It starts of with a twist I didn’t see coming and ends with a highly dramatic moment which I wasn’t expecting either.  Why Cordelia chooses now to reveal her pregnancy and what she hope to achieve by it is something I am looking forward to finding out.  And in between these two moments there is a complex but involving web of different storylines which are expertly woven together into a dramatic and tense struggle for Angel and faith’s future.  And as an added bonus there was some very nice continuity with the introduction of Willow. There was a history between her and Cordelia and Wesley and it was nice to see the references to this. It was also nice to get just a hint of how someone who had known Angel and Cordelia in the past may have reacted to developments in their lives such as the birth of Angel’s son.  The distance between the two shows forced by the change of networks was always unnatural.  Apart from the close personal connections of the past they were after all supposed to be on the same side and I would have liked to see more evidence of that. So, what we get here is very welcome.