EPISODE 4.16

PLAYERS

Written by: Jeff Bell and Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft

Directed by:  Michael Grossman

Being A Player

The basic meaning of the word “player” is someone who takes part in a game or activity.  But from this straightforward definition the word has developed a number of distinct but related meanings.  So now it can mean a key figure in a particular area, someone who has a lot of influence and importance in that area or someone especially experienced or skilled in it.  Alternatively the term can refer to someone who manipulates others to their will.  In fact in “Players” the word is used in both senses.  More importantly the episodes links the two meanings in a way that is both interesting in itself and at the same time serves a useful purpose in the context of the season as a whole.

Near the start of the episode Gwen meets a man who has some information she needs for the job she is planning.  He is nervous.  Gwen on the other hand is quite relaxed.  The difference between them is that whereas he is new to this, she is an old hand.  He doesn’t know what to expect, sees threats everywhere and reacts accordingly.  She in contrast has done the same thing many times, knows exactly what to expect and understands their only danger comes from her companion’s erratic behavior.   So, she realizes that she has to try to calm him down and uses her experience to do so:

“You've never done this before, have you? Let me give you a tip, sugar bear. There are over eight million people in this city, and as far as anyone can tell, we're just two of 'em. Just a normal couple. Nobody's gonna give us a second look if you just stop acting shifty.”

Gwen is a player in this line of work.  She is experienced and skilled.  Her informant is neither. But there is another reason for the man’s nervousness.  Gwen’s target (and presumably the man form whom he stole the information) is also a player:

“Look, these are very powerful people that you're going up against. If they catch you, they'll kill you.”

In fact these powerful people are soon personified for us in one man - Takeshi Morimoto. Gwen explains her interest in him by telling Angel and the others that she was hired by a Company A to sabotage some work of another company and they took a young girl as a hostage in return, a hostage she says she wants to save.  Morimoto is

“the head honcho of the company I tanked. He's promised to kill the girl if Company A doesn't come clean about what they did.”

And we soon learn more about him:

“This dude's a serious player. Chairman Emeritus, honorary degrees, all kinds of charity work, cancer research, wildlife preservation, the Zoo Committee... Whoa, bank fraud, smuggling, money laundering…”

But all his power and influence can be a weakness as well as a strength.  When Gwen and Gunn turn up at Morimoto’s party they are both dressed as befits the occasion.  As Gunn says:

“I'm thinking James Bond never looked this fine.

Nevertheless, in order to enter the house they have to run the gauntlet of some sophisticated security measures including a machine that detects body heat, metal detectors and a scanner to check the electronic imprints of their invitations.  It is here that they run into problems and are about to be led off by the guards, their plans in ruins and perhaps even their lives at risk.  But then Gunn sees Mr Morimoto and seizes his chance to speak to him:

Gunn: “Mr. Morimoto, I'm Charles Gunn. We met at the zoo benefit last year. You don't remember me, do you? Your wife held that monkey right after my girlfriend did. Ugly little gray thing - the monkey, not my girl. Gwen, you remember Mr. Morimoto. We met him at the zoo benefit.”

Gwen: “How could I forget.”

Gunn: “Mr. Morimoto, in case we don't have an opportunity to speak later, please do me the honor of accepting this humble gift to thank you for inviting us into your beautiful home.”

And with that he presents the businessman with a small jade tiger.   By being well dressed, by presenting himself as someone who moves in the same social circles as Morimoto and by showing that he has exquisite taste in the present he chose, Gunn is also identifying himself as someone important and influential. And because he acts with such deference towards  Morimoto, Gunn is flattering him.  After all what higher complement could he be paid than having another “player” treat him with such respect.  But of course if Morimoto were then to refuse Gunn and his girlfriend entrance to the house he would be denying their status and therefore negating the complement.  He couldn’t do that.  It was therefore Morimoto’s exaggerated sense of his own status and importance, his own pride and arrogance that proved his downfall.   In other words it was his own view of himself as a player that allowed Gunn to play him.

And Getting Played

And the irony of that is that Charles Gunn fell into exactly the same trap.  When Angel is organizing the team’s response to the threat posed by the Beastmaster and to Cordelia’s pregnancy, he doesn’t seem to place much value on Gunn’s ability to contribute:

“Gunn, I want you to sit tight for now. It never hurts to have some muscle on deck.”

Lorne’s has his contacts, Wesley and Fred are useful for research and Angel himself is going to try to piece together what he can remember of Angelus’ dealings with the Beastmaster.   The way that Gunn clearly feels left out here echoes an exchange he had with Wesley in “Supersymmetry”:

Gunn: "So I'm the muscle, huh?"

Wesley: "Sorry?"

Gunn: "Angel's the man on the card. It's his world. I'm not a leader no more. I don't have that champion's heart like Cordy, and the brains, why that was you. So that leaves muscle."

The suggestion that he is nothing more than brawn is something that plays into Gunn’s deepest insecurities. He may never have had Wesley’s book learning but he was always the shrewdest member of Angel Investigations.  In “Reunion” he was the one who worked out how to find Darla.  He also managed to work out from a very brief conversation what actually did happen between Wesley and Fred in “Supersymmetry”. Indeed his very belief that being just muscle is inferior to having brains or being a leader is itself indicative of someone who is more than “just” muscle.  If he really were no more than a dumb bully, he would hardly admit to feeling that physical strength was not enough.  But Gunn seems unaware of this reality.  Here, just as in for example “Spin the Bottle”, he is quick to infer a lack of faith by others in him.  And this often signals a lack faith in himself.

So it is not at all hard to understand that Gunn was flattered by Gwen’s invitation to him to help out as well as her description of him:

"I need someone suave, a guy who can handle himself in a tight spot."

That was obviously much more to Gunn’s liking than the rather condescending attitude towards him than Angel exhibited.  And, as we have seen, he more than lived up to Gwen’s expectations both in his James Bond look and in the way he responded when they did get into a tight spot.  He did exactly the right thing at the right time and did it with confidence and conviction.  And of course later on he got to beat up a whole gang of bad guys:

“You know, I spent the last couple of weeks whacking on a giant lava demon and more vamps than I can count. I almost forgot how good it feels to just let off a little steam. “

Truely he could now regard himself as a player.  But it wasn’t only his importance to Gwen’s plan or the success with which he carried it forward that made him a player – it was what he thought he was doing.  As he said himself:

“Listen, I spent most of this year trapped in what I can only describe as a turgid supernatural soap-opera. The fact that I have a chance to go out and really help somebody...Well, you know, it feels good to be doing good.”

He was actually making a difference in someone’s life; something that had been missing from his own for some time now.  And it was because he was feeling good about himself in his new role that he overlooked a number of very obvious problems.

First of all why did Gwen choose him when not only was Angel seemingly better qualified but he wasn the one she had worked with before in trying to save the Ra-Tet?  Then there was the fact that Morimoto’s so-called hostage was in fact wandering about the party dressed in an elaborate traditional Japanese costume:

“Is that her? Shouldn't she be tied to a chair or something?”

The only answer Gwen gives in unconvincing:

“Tied up or dressed up, she's a prisoner. Look at the muscle around her. “

As anyone with Gunn’s intelligence would have known there are many reasons why a child might be accompanied by muscle.  But there is no-way that a hostage would be paraded around like that in public.  The risks of doing so would have been enormous.  There were too many witnesses to an escape bid and they would all have been wealthy and influential people.  And there was no reason for Morimoto to take those risks.  Then Gwen announces that the girl was going to be killed that night.  If that was the intention it would make bringing the child to the party even more bizarre.  But more to the point how did she find this out?  Did one of the guards just tell her?  But Gunn is too wrapped up in his own view of himself as the man who was going to save Lisa to think about any of these things.  Just as Morimoto’s pride and arrogance allowed Gunn to play him, so too did Gunn’s own pride and his ambition to achieve something worthwhile allow Gwen to play him.  So, he unwittingly became the distraction for her plan.

Exposing the Beastmaster

And the same theme is carried on in the events behind the walls of the Hyperion.  When Cordelia announces her pregnancy, she makes it clear to all concerned that this was something very special:

“I know it's hard to understand. None of you have ever had a living being growing inside of you. And this… my sweet baby—we're connected. I feel what it feels. I can't explain it, but I sense its goodness, its love. You'll see. My baby will be here soon, and then you'll all see.”

Her words here echo the line she has repeated so often to Connor, namely that they too are special and as such they share a special bond with one another.  And because of this and because Connor is the father of such a unique child  he has a particular responsibility to Cordelia and her child, a responsibility that takes priority over anything else. 

“What's important is that when I needed help, you were there for me. Now I know I can trust you. Completely. No matter what. See? Everything happens for a reason. Connor, before our baby comes, I might ask you to do some things...for us. And I want you to remember, there's always a reason.”

By giving Connor this sense of responsibility and trust, Cordelia is also implying  that he is in a unique position to influence events.  And this, together with her oft repeated assurances that he is special, also helps create in Connor the feeling that he too is a player.  Of course Cordelia is only doing this to manipulate him.  But such is her success that he cannot see that.  When she tracks him down in his “Fortress of Solitude” in the hotel, Connor is only too well aware of the fact that he almost killed his own father:

“All that stuff you said about Angelus. And Willow...she…she didn't open a gate to evil. She put back Angel's soul. I almost killed him.”

The fact that she tried to make him kill Angel for, as it turned out, no good reason at all disturbs him.  And that really should have been enough to warn him that he couldn’t take everything Cordelia says at face value.   Just as in the case of Morimoto and Gunn the warnings are there that things are not as he would like them to be.  But just like the others Connor too seems intent on ignoring these warnings because he likes having the position of trust and responsibility that Cordelia gives him - he likes being a player:

Cordelia: “Everything happens for a reason. Connor, before our baby comes, I might ask you to do some things...for us. And I want you to remember, there's always a reason.”

Connor: “I’ll remember”

The way in which Cordelia manipulates Connor (as indeed she had also manipulated Angel and the others) no less than her sense of destiny about the imminent arrival of her baby demonstrates that Cordelia is a player too.   But for all her cleverness she too can be manipulated.  And in many ways what happened to Morimoto, Gunn and Connor in this episode is intended to make us understand why, at the end of “Players” she fell for Angel’s trick.

The Beast had been destroyed and she no longer had its strength to rely on.  Now she was alone in the midst of her enemies.  She was by no means invincible, as demonstrated by Willow’s success in restoring Angel’s soul.  And now that he was back, he had all of Angelus’ memories of contact with the Beastmaster as well as any other knowledge that he had gleaned along the way.  Furthermore there was a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence pointing towards her as the Beastmaster.  Not least was the fact of her mystical pregnancy.  The speed with which it was progressing showed the baby wasn’t human.  And Angel knew that it was conceived during the Beast’s rain of fire.  Was the timing of this pregnancy simply co-incidental to the Beastmaster’s attempt to return Angelus?  Then there was the fact that Manny and Lilah had been killed and Angel’s soul stolen by an unknown hand.  As Angel said:

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

They would also have been most easily accomplished by an insider.  Cordelia was there when Manny was killed and Angel's soul stolen and, in Lilah’s case, Angel knew that Cordelia was alone in the building.  Everyone else was out looking for Angelus.  Surely, in these circumstances, caution would have been the watchword.  Apparently not, however.  As we saw at the end of “Orpheus” Cordelia openly announces the fact that she in pregnant and here she brazenly boasts of how special the child will be.  She is almost drawing attention to herself.  And we see the same arrogance in a very interesting exchange with Angel.  When the latter airs his suspicion that it wasn’t the Beast but his master who was responsible for the “surgical strikes”, Cordelia says:

“I'm his master….I'm his all-powerful master, and I'm gonna break into a guarded room, steal your soul from a safe - not by ripping it open, but by using the combination.  Then I'm gonna hunt and kill Lilah right under this very roof. Sure. Evil geniuses live for that playing with fire stuff.”

This half confession is almost toying with Angel.  It is as if she thinks that she is so much smarter than he is that she can get away with attracting his attention to the possibility she was the Beastmaster.  Angel responds:

            “You don't understand. This thing was in my head. I've heard him, and he's insane enough to pull those kinds of stunts.”

And indeed Cordelia is prepared to take insane risks.  When Angel is trying to visualize some text that might hold a clue about the identity of the Beast, Cordelia seems quite prepared to spill a cup of coffee over it – something that would be bound to cast suspicion on her.  But by now she is so convinced of her own superiority that she seems quite oblivious of the risks that she is running.  And it is this that gives Angel the opportunity to play her.  And he does so by goading her: 

“No, I mean like deluded and demented. He spoke to me in this cheesy, self-important voice. I bet he doesn't even have a master plan—he's just making it up as he goes along. Hey, don't worry. We'll figure it out. Come on, anybody as daredevily as this guy will slip up sooner or later. When he does, he's dead.”

By casting doubt on whether she was, in fact, quite so important and clever as she believes herself to be Angel was in fact daring Cordelia into proving herself.  Did she really have to try to kill Lorne?  She had fooled him before.  She may very well be able to do so now.  But then again, what better way to prove that she really was so much superior to Angel, what better way to make him eat his words than by killing one of his friends right under his nose.  But such was her conceit that she couldn’t see that she was actually being set up.  When Angel’s soul had been restored he was clearly worried about the Beastmaster, hence his efforts to find out more about it.  And the facts alone surely indicate that it was not to be taken lightly.  After all it had tricked them into bringing back Angelus and had killed Manny and Lilah and stolen Angel’s soul all under their noses.  Angel’s outburst was too complacent to ring true.  And Lorne being alone in the hotel basement to perform the cleansing spell was far too convenient for comfort.  Yet in spite of all this, arrogance and hurt pride led Cordelia to take the bait – to her cost.

Pride Goes Before A Fall

In the Bible, it is written in Proverbs:

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.”

This was a piece of ancient wisdom shared with the Greeks. A common feature of Greek myth was to see hubris or overweening pride being inevitably followed by Ate or Nemesis.  Ate was the Goddess of rash actions and their consequences, sometimes seen as madness. Nemesis was the Goddess of revenge and destruction.

The Jewish authors of Proverbs thought in terms of religious duties owed to a single personal God who in His person and in His will defined goodness.  For the Greeks what was right and wrong in everyday life involved a study of humanity and why and how it behaved. It is therefore interesting that two such divergent philosphical approaches should each embody the same basic teaching on pride. Aristotle, for example, recognized that humanity functions within a range of possibilities and limited conditions and that it functions best at a point of balance within these ranges. He compared a man in a state of passion to a man asleep, drunk or insane. He therefore saw nothing wrong in a proper pride in one’s achievements.  This was necessary to maintain standards.  But when pride was the extension and enhancement of our feeling of achievement into comparisons with others, then it became destructive.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition the sin of Pride is seen essentially as preoccupation with oneself.  If one amasses wealth and power to achieve things for society that is obedience to the will of God.  If you amass power because of what you get out of it, for example so that you can feel yourself superior to others, then that is opposed to the will of God and therefore evil.  Your focus is upon yourself and your own glory. That's preoccupation with self. That's pride. And if this is the case for you, not only are you already suffering from pride, you're setting yourself up to be totally consumed by it.

In both traditions, pride becomes undesirable when it leads to a feeling of superiority.  And it is this feeling of superiority that, in both traditions also, contains the seed of self-destruction.  For self-importance leads to people ignoring risks (perhaps on the assumption that the person concerned is so superior that adversity cannot come to him). That is why pride blinds people to reality.  And in the real world control over the direction of our lives tends to be more illusory than real.   For Morimoto, Gunn, Connor and even Cordelia the idea that they were special, that they had an important role to play and that they were uniquely in a position to influence events all proved illusory as, one by one, they discovered that events were turning out not according to their intentions but according to other people’s.

Thematically then this episode, on one level, simply illustrates a commonly held truth about human psychology, a truth that has been the subject of countless morality tales such as that of Arachne (the woman who wove cloth better than Athena only to be turned into that ultimate weaver, a spider).  It has also formed the basis of the most important episodes from the Bible including the fall of Lucifer and that of Adam and Eve. 

But it is at another level that we see the real importance of the theme.  The confirmation to Angel and the others that Cordelia is the Beastmaster is obviously a crucial point in the development of the season-long arc.  The team are no longer completely in the dark.  They at last know who the enemy is and are at least that much closer to knowing what it wants.  In other words we have moved a decisive step towards the final confrontation between Angel Investigations and the Beastmaster.  But the impact of this moment would be lost if that revelation were not handled in a credible way.  The Beastmaster is not only powerful but clever. It has been ahead of the game all along and Angel and everyone else have been dancing to its tune.  That is what has lent this season so much fascination.  If it were exposed in some way that diminished its power or cleverness this effect would have been undermined.  But what the writers have shown us in “Players” is the Beastmaster falling into a trap that the powerful and clever are especially prone to.  This is therefore a very intelligent and satisfying use of the theme of the episode to make the Beastmaster’s mistake credible.

The Plot

The storyline for the Gunn and Gwen caper starts with one pretty big strike against it – to discontinuity between what  is happening now in LA outside the walls of the Hyperion and recent events there.  At Morimoto’s party one woman says:

“Meteor showers, earthquakes, that strange thing with the sun. I find it an exciting time to be in Los Angeles.”

That “strange thing with the sun” involved LA being invaded by hordes of vampires and other demons and mass slaughter on the streets.  Now everything is suddenly back to normal as if nothing had happened?  No curfews, no martial law, no hordes of troops patrolling the streets.  And people are having parties.  Yeah, that sounds about right.

And then there is Gwen herself.  Not only has she arrived back from Tahiti in double quick time but she has already been able to devise and execute a plan the break into Morimoto’s home almost as soon as she is back.  If you tried hard enough you might be able to come up with some sort of explanation for this.  You could say for example that she had been planning this for some time and the “strange thing with the sun” had interrupted matters.  But the writers don’t even try to explain things.

And this is symptomatic of a general sloppiness and lack of thought about the plotting for this caper.  For example, the main twist in it is the discovery that Gwen’s story about a child kidnap victim was just a ruse to get Gunn to create a diversion for her.  Yet almost as soon as she and Gunn get into the party we see “Lisa” there and realize that her story cannot be true.  Even then it was obvious that the girl was in fact Morimoto’s daughter and that Gwen was using Gunn to steal something from the house.  There was no attempt to build a genuinely interesting mystery for the viewer to figure out.  It was all just too obvious.

Then there was the whole sequence of events inside the house.  I have already analyzed thematically Morimoto’s decision to let Gunn and Gwen in despite the fact that their invitations had the wring electronic imprints.  Whatever the merits of this scene thematically, dramatically it made no sense at all.  A “player” does not put into effect elaborate security measures to protect himself and his family and then simply disregard them when they actually work on the basis of a vague half-remembered conversation with a complete stranger.  That is simply stupid.  Worse still, the writers went to some lengths here to show that Charles Gunn was more than just muscle.    But he knew Gwen was a thief who specialized in stealing things from high security establishments.  He saw the little girl at the party.  Anyone with half a brain would have realized that kidnappers do not bring their victims to high society parties.  He had only Gwen’s word that she was a kidnap victim.  He didn’t even think to ask one of the other guests who the little girl was.  It doesn’t occur to him to wonder is Gwen was playing him.  Instead he accepts her lame explanation for the child’s presence and then believes her when she tells him the girl is going to be killed tonight.  He didn’t think to ask which of the guests had told her that – or was it one of the guards?  Stupidity doesn’t even begin to cover this.

And when Gunn does grab Lisa, he leads her down a corridor at a child’s walking speed yet somehow isn’t immediately surrounded by Morimoto’s guards or angry party guests who have just witnessed him kidnap a child.  And because he obviously wants to give them a fair chance to catch up with them he interrupts the already slow pace of his escape by ducking into a room for no good reason at all.  He is then detained in that room while he nosily beats up some of Morimoto’s minions before, clearly frustrated by the fact that he has still not been caught, he wanders back out again in search of some random bedroom (there are probably after all only a couple of dozen) where he happens by good luck to encounter Gwen.  Oh yes and all without bumping into anyone else because Morimoto and his guests are obviously having too good a time to actually go and look for his daughter or her kidnapper.  Have I missed anything?

But perhaps even more annoying than  this was the way the writers played fast and loose with Gunn’s characterization.  When we first met him in “War Zone” Gunn was the leader of a gang of dispossessed kids, living in squalid conditions foraging for food. But their vulnerability goes beyond the mere economic.  They are socially excluded as well. This is best illustrated by the speech of Knox, the vampire leader:

“Street trash.  That’s what they are.  Just stupid human street trash.  For seventy years we ruled this neighborhood.  It was our neighborhood.  It used to be decent people lived here, working people.  Now, can’t even finish one without wanting to puke.”

The gap between these kids and the rest of society is well illustrated by Cordelia’s words:

“God, 20 minutes ride from billionaires and crab puffs…kids going to war”.

Gunn’s social conscience, his loyalty to the weak and marginalized were the key to his character.  It was this that gave him his feeling of crushing responsibility.  And it is from this that everything else about him flowed.  Because of his feelings of responsibility, he could allow himself no weaknesses.  This is why he had to show a flint-like exterior to the world.  That is why he was so brutal to anyone who let him down.  That is also why he initially resented help.   But here he confronted by the safe and the comfortable (not to say smug), by those who could help the weak and deprived but won’t.   So where is the outrage?  Where is the social conscience?  Why is it the writers can’t see past the fact that he looks good in a tuxedo?  This is not only bad character writing; it contradicts the core idea of the series.  In “In the Dark” Angel defended his decision to destroy the gem of Amarra (which would have allowed him to walk about in the daytime) by saying of the “daytime” people of LA:

 “They have help.  The whole world is designed for them, so much that they have no idea what goes on around them after dark.  They don’t see the weak ones lost in the night, or the things that prey on them.  And if I join them, maybe I’d stop seeing, too.”

Here Gunn seems too comfortable with the wealthy to remember the weak ones lost in the night.

And finally there is the way he reacts to Gwen when he finally discovers her subterfuge.  Now here it is important to remember that first of all she induced him to kidnap a child, something which should horrify anyone just on principle.  Secondly he could have been shot and killed.  And even if he hadn’t been he could easily have been facing serious criminal charges.  And yet far from being angered by this he seems to feel some sort of attraction to Gwen.  I find this hard to take in principle.  And the only attempt to explain the attraction between Gunn and Gwen is a  pretty ham fisted one.  In the Hyperion after Cordelia’s pregnancy is revealed there is a conversation between Wesley and Fred where direct parallels are made between his relationship with Lilah and Cordelia’s with Connor and by sxtension Gunn's with Gwen.  In the course of making that parallel, Wesley says:

“It's not always about holding hands...”

By that he means that each side has certain emotional needs which they think the other can fulfill.  But of course for Gwen that is what she needs.  She cannot hold someone else’s hand.  Gunn, for his part, is a mass of insecurities:

Gunn: “Hey, I'm just the muscle.”

Gwen: “Don't knock the muscle, buddy. Makes the girls go all knocky in the knees. But if that's all you were, we never could've gotten into that party tonight.”

Gunn: “Oh, you would've gotten in. Of course, the damage would have been significantly higher.”

Gwen: “Thanks to your brains-over-brawn approach.”

 Gunn: “Well, not so much brains as too many movies.”

Gwen: “Man, they have done a number on you. You really believe this "I'm the muscle" crap.”

Gwen’s yearning for emotional contact therefore matches Gunn’s yearning for respect and this is what is supposed to draw them together.  But the attempt to compare Gunn and Gwen to the complexities of Wesley and Lilah do the former no  favors.  For Wesley the genesis of his relationship with Lilah lay in his sense that his friends had betrayed him; yet he was always aware that Lilah was out to deliver him into the hands of his enemies.  He became attracted to her but hated everything she stood for.  He wanted to try to redeem her yet ultimately gave her up because she allied herself with evil.  And in making this decision he was himself making a cynical play for Fred. Yet to the end he was prepared to risk his life for her.  The complexities of this relationship makes Gunn and Gwen’s dalliance look truly banal.

And apart from the specifics of the situation, I should point out that it isn’t that long ago that we were supposed to believe there was some sort of attraction between Gwen and Angel.  And Fred and Gunn were after all supposed to be deeply in love.  After all didn’t he actually kill someone for her?  In other words what we see here is the sort of blatantly shallow romantic merry go round you would expect from bad soap-opera and not intelligent drama.

Happily, the episode is substantially redeemed by what was intended to be the sub-plot.  We had known since the end of "Calvary" that Cordelia was the Beastmaster.   And there has been something strange about Cordelia’s behavior really since she got her memory back.  But until now we have been waiting for Angel and the others to discover the truth.  Now that they do, there is a feeling of general relief, although it is by no means clear what tipped them off.  It can only really have been something that Angel remembered about Angelus’ dealings with the Beastmaster; but what?  That part of the mystery has yet to be revealed.  And of course now that Cordelia’s secret is out we can at last begin to move towards the final confrontation between the Beastmaster and Angel Investigations, a confrontation that will be the culmination of a season’s long arc.  And in that context it is both important and satisfying that we begin to get a sense that the Beastmaster isn’t quite as all powerful as it likes to think that it is.  Things are beginning to get out of the its control.

This feeling of a “player” tripping up over its own self-importance and finding to its cost out that it isn’t quite as clever or powerful as its believes is important because at last we feel that Angel and the others do have a chance.  It s satisfying because, whatever the philosophical implications of arrogance, we all enjoy seeing people who need it taught a lesson.  Hence the way Lorne sums up Cordelia’s unmasking:

Lorne: “ Has Cordy been a bad, bad girl? “

Magic 8-Ball: “Definitely.”

The 8 Ball is a fun game.  And Lorne’s phrasing also suggests a degree of enjoyment at the discomfiture of the enemy.  But Lorne’s deadpan delivery also hints at a deeper resonance.  After the initial shock we have become used to Cordelia as the Beastmaster.  But now we see things through Angel’s eyes in particular and realize how he must view this discovery.  And not only do we relive the shock again, we are forced to focus on the implications of the situation as Angel must now see it.  How is he to fight Cordelia or someone who looks like her?  Is the situation really improving now that he knows the truth.  Or have things got much much more difficult for them all.  This is indeed a powerful climax to a fascinating sub-plot.

Overview (C)

This season has been notable for its concentration on the arc, almost to the exclusion of everything else.  And in “Orpheus” we saw a major turning point in that arc with the return of Angel.  So it was somewhat unexpected that we would get an episode where the principal concentration was on a stand alone story that had nothing to do with the arc.  But that was, ironically, the one good thing about the Gunn and Gwen caper.  It gave us a little variety and a break from the coming Apocalypse.  I say ironically because I am afraid the "A" plot that was supposed to give us the breather wasn’t very good and by far and away the best part of “Players” was the story related to the Apocalypse that was supposed to be on the backburner.  The theme of the episode was directly relevant to the unmasking of Cordelia and worked very well to make this both a believable and interesting development. It is the saving grace of the episode. On the other hand the way the same theme was handled in the "A" plot simply made Gunn look like an idiot when he was supposed to look clever and sophisticated.  The actual plotting was careless and the whole thing was topped off by a frankly unbelievable and tacky foray into soap-opera territory.