EPISODE 1.15

THE PRODIGAL

Written by Tim Minear

Directed by Bruce Seth Green

Answering Questions about Angel

"The Prodigal" will probably be one of the most important episodes in the entire ANGEL cannon because it answers, if not completely then in substantial measure, two of the most important questions that have dogged the character of Angel since the episode "Angel" in BtVS.   These are –

In answering these questions in "The Prodigal", ANGEL borrows a technique from its elder sibling that it has not really used before. A very common practice in BtVS is to have two parallel plots, one supernatural and another, usually personal, running along side it. One counterpoints the other and thus helps draw out the points the writers wish to make. ANGEL has been much more into straight storytelling and sub-plots are few and far between. But here we do have two parallel stories each involving the relationship between fathers and their children. The first of these two separate stories involves Angel just before he was turned.  In the way that the relationship between Liam (as we must now call him) and his father broke down we see why Angel came to feel responsible for Angelus’ crimes.   And through the parallels drawn between this  and the second story involving Kate and her father we see how that feeling of responsibility affects he actions now.

Of course, in the context of the events in “the Prodigal”, Liam’s case is the important one. We first see the relationship between him and his father when it had already become a vicious cycle of low expectation and low self-esteem. Each reinforced the other, as revealed by this telling conversation between father and son:

Father:  “It’s a son I wished for – a man.  Instead God gave me you!  A terrible disappointment.”

Liam:  “Disappointment?  A more dutiful son you couldn’t have asked for.  My whole life you’ve told me in word, in glance, what it is you required of me, and I’ve lived down to your every expectations, now haven’t I?”

Father:  “That’s madness!”

Liam:  “No.  The madness is that I couldn’t fail enough for you.  But we’ll fix that now, won’t we?”

 We do not see how the relationship between these two reached its present depths. Perhaps Liam had tried to please his father, failed and just gave up. That would be consistent with his own description of himself as "weak" (a classic case of perception not having caught up with reality). Perhaps there was something about his father’s business that gave Liam real moral scruples. This was implied in the very first scene when he referred to his father’s sins and hinted obliquely at his corruption.  In the end though it doesn’t really matter.  To Liam his father was a hypocritical martinet.  He was a man who pretended to the world that he had high moral standards and a man who held his son relentlessly to those standards.  but he ignored them himself.   He refers to him as being

 "off to church by now, repenting of his sins, and well he should."

Conversely, to his father Liam was a wastrel.  He was someone born with advantages that most other people round him did not.  And he was willing to take the full benefit of those advantages  but was unwilling to do anything to earn or otherwise deserve them. Worse than that he betrayed the strict code of moral values that his father clearly believed in, as we see when he tried to seduce his father's servant, having already spent the previous night enjoying himself:

Anna:  “Why do you keep to the shadows, sir?  Are you not well?”

Liam:  “The light.  It bothers my eyes just now.”

Liam’s father:  “And I know the reason why.  Up again all night, is it?  Drinking and whoring.  I smell the stink of it on you.”

So, importantly, and contrary to my initial expectations, we were not presented with two "bad" fathers in "Prodigal". Indeed the title itself evokes the Biblical story of the son who treated his father with contempt and made a mess of his life.  But when he returned to his father, confessing his own sins he is med with only love and kindness.  Going by the title alone, the real story in this episode lies in seeing Angel's own fault.  If it had presented Liam's father as the real villain, then the former's actions in abandoning his family would have been much more excusable.  Equally, if Liam had been completely irredeemable, then his fate would have excited no sympathy at all.  In either case, the storyline would be thematically weakened.  Instead what we are presented with is a father and a son who cannot understand and cannot communicate with one another.  In particular, "The Prodigal" makes it clear that the problem Trevor Lockley and Liam’s father faced was that neither could make their children understand how much they loved them.   As we saw from “Sense and Sensibility”, Trevor might have had problems sharing his feelings with his daughter but as we discovered here he was prepared to compromise even his own values for her benefit.  And when Liam gets into a  confrontation over with his father over his lifestyle, it leads to anger and violence as his father first hits him hard enough to make his head spin round and then shouts at him:

“I am ashamed to call you my son.  You’re a lay-about and a scoundrel and you’ll never amount to anything more than  that.”

But when Liam stormed out of his home, his father tried to stop him:

Father:  “I fear for you, lad.”

Angel:  “And is that the only thing you can find in your heart for me now, father?”

Father:  “Who’ll take you in, huh?  No one!”

Angel:  “I’ll not lack for a place to sleep, I can tell you that.  Out of my way.”

Father:  “I was never in your way, boy.”

This shows that Liam’s father (just like Trevor two centuries later) really did care about his child and wanted to help him.  He just could not make Liam understand that and it was this that led to disaster.

One thing that ANGEL as a series has never ducked is the question of responsibility. A choice may be the result of human weakness rather than malice, it may be understandable but it is never whitewashed and it always produces consequences. Angel could have been a better son if he had tried harder. He could certainly have avoided the irresponsible lifestyle he chose for himself. The fact that he did neither was, as he later put it, an "offence".  He knew that what he was doing was wrong, he even admits as much to his father:

Liam's father: "Have you not had enough debauchery for one night?  Must you corrupt the servants as well?”

Liam:  “Servant, father.  We have *one* servant.  Anyway, everyone gets corrupted, but I find some forms of corruption are more pleasant...”

But while Liam would have admitted that he was wasting his life he would not have accepted that he was doing anyone else real harm.  So, it was an offence committed out of frailty not a conscious design to do evil.  And it was certainly made in ignorance of the trap that lay in wait for him.   And this is what adds the poignancy to Angel’s story. His meeting with Darla could have been averted.  If he had made better choices he would not have attracted her attention in the first place and would not have been where she could lure him into the alley. Symbolically she first saw him in an Inn and what caught her eye was the gay abandon with which he was drinking and fighting. 

Darla:  “He’s magnificent.”

Maid:  “Oh, yeah, God’s gift, alright.”

Darla:  “Really?  I’ve never known God to be so generous.”

Maid:  “Oh, his lies sound pretty when the stars are out. But he forgets every promise he’s made when the sun comes up again.”

Darla:  “That wouldn’t really be a problem for me actually.”

If he had been where he should have been, home with his family, there would have been no Angelus. The fact that that demon came into the world was, therefore, the result of Liam’s actions but it was an evil that was grossly disproportionate to the offence.

And here I have to say that this aspect remains one of the strongest and most compelling things about Angel’s story. It is in essence a tragedy in the classic tradition. Fundamentally it is a question of the arbitrariness of fate. He is a random victim of an almost biblical punishment that was, on the scale inflicted, undeserved. The pathos of his situation derives partly from this fact and partly from his reaction to it. In the classic tradition of tragedy, the true test of a character is how he responds to the situation he finds himself in. It is his dignity and integrity now in the face of what has happened to him that essentially makes his story a hopeful and not a dispiriting one. And the key element in the nobility (there really is no other word for it) of his reaction is the way he accepted responsibility for the actions of the demon.

Liam was irresponsible. His life was on a downward spiral of drink and debauchery. But instead of taking responsibility for that, he blamed his father. Angel, once he had recovered his soul, could also have been irresponsible – literally. He could have said that Angelus’ crimes were nothing to do with him. Instead he decided to take full responsibility for them because it was the choices that he made that led him (albeit unintentionally) to become a vampire.  He had embraced one form of corruption willingly.  This anticipated his corruption in a different and much more profound sense by Darla.  Eventually he also decided to make amends for what he has done. The counterpoint between post 1898 Angel and 1753 Liam is perfect and is emphasized when, after Liam’s father in Galway 1753 tells him he is ashamed of him and hits him, we jump to LA 2000 and the fight with the demon – part of Angel’s continuing effort to make reparation for past wrongs.

And it is this feeling of responsibility which has been Angel’s key motivating force since "Amends" and which has led him to try to save other potential victims of "evil evil things". And this seems to me to be the key link between the two stories in "The Prodigal". Angel is very strongly motivated to save Trevor; so much so that he ignores Wesley’s objections that he is going too far. The point was very well put in the following lines:

Wesley:  "At the very least he [Trevor] must realize that he is in league with someone who if not criminal is most certainly unethical.  It’s his choice!"

Angel:  "Yeah, I know all about it, Wesley, believe me.  But sometimes the price we end up paying for one bad choice isn’t commensurate with the offence."

Angel knows Trevor has made a bad choice by involving himself in wrongdoing but he sees in that choice a reflection of his own poor choices. He realizes too that Trevor’s choice, just like his own, was made in ignorance of the forces around him and recognizes that the consequences for Trevor will not be proportionate to his responsibility. The fact that Trevor is Kate’s father adds a poignancy, especially since the communication problems between the two reflect Liam’s own difficulties with his father. It was those communication difficulties that proved to be his own undoing and led to the death of his father. That is why Angel feels so strongly motivated to save another father and to do so without Kate knowing the truth. That way he saves the father/child relationship as well.

Tragically, however, there is another parallel between Galway 1753 and LA 2000, namely the consequences of the choices made by Liam and Trevor. Liam's led to that fateful meeting in the alleyway and his death at Darla's hands.  But while that tragedy was what motivated Angel to try to ensure that history did not repeat itself in Trevor's case, sadly it did.   And in this context I will make just two points . I like it when writers have the courage of their convictions and did not give us a pat ending. If Angel had saved Trevor the conclusion to the episode would have been so much less powerful than the scene we got with Angel looking on as Kate visited her father’s grave. Instead we get a renewed sense of tragedy - of the seemingly inexorable power of fate to exact a price from us in spite of our best intentions and best efforts.  This was reinforced by the way in which  the two scenes where the respective fathers died were themselves very effectively tied together in the person of Angel. In the one, because he was not invited into Trevor's apartment, he watches helpless to do anything as Trevor dies at the teeth of vampires. Because of the absence of the invitation Angel was unable to meet his own personal commitment to save Trevor. That personal commitment in turn related directly back to his murder of his own father as a vampire. That murder was committed because of an invitation given to him by his sister. The irony is clear and gives the two stories a very sharp sense of symmetry.

Of Humans and Vampires

Having looked at why Angel accepted responsibility for Angelus’ actions and the consequences of his doing so we must now turn to the other question I mentioned at the start of this review. What is the relationship between the personality of the vampire Angelus and that of the human Liam?  Here we do not get a complete answer but we certainly do get a much clearer picture of at least one way in which the latter influenced the former. The breakdown in Liam’s relationship with his father centered on his inability to please him. But the need to do so still existed. That need existed because Liam, in spite of everything, loved his father. Penn from "Somnambulist" does not seem to have shared the same need; hence his actions simply reflected a desire to wreak revenge by destroying his family over and over again. Angelus’ attitude, as a vampire, to his human family was much more complex. As Darla said:

"What we once were informs all that we have become. The same love will infect our hearts – even if they no longer beat."

Angelus did not love his family in the same way Liam had as a human. But the love Liam once knew left its legacy. Because of this legacy, no less than the human he once was, Angelus still felt the need to prove to his father that he had become someone special. Only, as a vampire, his definition of what this involved was warped. It was this which motivated him to kill the entire village rather than just some people in it. As he boasted to his father:

"You told me I wasn’t a man. You told me I was nothing… and I believed you.  You said I’d never amount to anything.   Well, you were wrong.  You see, father?  I have made something out of myself after all."

And final proof of his strength and power was to have been given by destroying his father and everything he held dear, including his own mother and sister. That need to make up for what the demon perceives to have been weaknesses in the human it once was by showing strength seems very typical in a Vampire. Remember Vampire Jesse in the BtVS episode "The Harvest"? As he says himself:

"Jesse was an excruciating loser who couldn't get a date with anyone in the sighted community! Look at me. I'm a new man!"

And yet in Angelus’ case the attempt to prove himself was doomed to failure. As Darla pointed out:

Darla:  "You’re victory over him took but moments."

Angelus: "Yes?"

Darla:  "But his defeat of you will last life times."

Angelus:  "What are you talking about?  He can’t defeat me now."

Darla:  "Nor can he ever approve of you – in this world or any other. "

It seems that the scale and intensity of Angelus’ killing sprees may, therefore, be linked directly to this need for the demon to prove to himself that he really was someone special and to deny the doubts about him that were held by his mortal father. But, as Darla suggested, these were doubts that he could never now disprove.

And now that he is ensouled Angel still wants to prove he can be someone of whom a father could have been genuinely proud. But herein lies part of the tragedy for Angel. His father will now never know how he has changed. This too finds its connection with Trevor’s situation. The fact that Angel’s father dies without knowing of his son’s change of heart reinforces Angel’s need to save Trevor. But it also highlights the shared sadness of Angel and Kate at the end. Both had essentially the same problem with their father, the gap of comprehension between them. Now, whatever issues both had with their fathers they will never be resolved.

On the whole I prefer the "slow striptease" approach when it comes to revealing the past of characters, rather than too much being revealed all at once. But the way that we see Angel’s past being used here is just right. The full story of how Angel became a vampire is an interesting one in itself and would have been well worth showing if only to satisfy our curiosity. But what is especially effective here is the use that was made of it as part of a wider character study. The flashback scenes show us Angel’s past and present and trace how the former has affected and shaped the other. In doing so "The Prodigal" is consistent with what we have seen of the Angel before, coherent and perceptive in itself and very moving. Even someone without any sympathy for Angel before now must feel some compassion for his situation. Even the title is a poignant one. The Biblical story was of a young man who wasted what he was given on a life of debauchery but eventually found forgiveness and peace in his father’s house. No such happy ending was available here.

And this brings us to Darla. The role she plays in Liam’s downfall is a pretty obvious one. But in two respects it does, I think, call for comment. I really did like the way the writers so quickly established a close relationship between her and Angelus. It wasn’t so much the obvious attraction Liam as a human had for her. The way that she shepherded Angelus towards his first kill  brought to mind almost a mother-child relationship.   When the groundskeeper appears he loos at her for reassurance about what he should be doing.  She tells him:

Darla:  “You know what to do.”

Angel turns back towards the groundskeeper and morphs into vamp face and bites him. After a moment Angel breaks off to look at Darla again, then finishes draining the groundskeeper and drops him.  He takes a couple deep breaths then turns back to Darla in human face.

Darla:  “It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?”

Angel:  “Perfect sense.”

This was the most meaningful look at what it is to be a "sire" in the vampires’ world we have ever been given. It really does stress just how close Angelus and Darla were. It also adds a very neat counterpoint by showing here at least was a parent who approved of her child and his actions.  And I personally had no difficulty with the insight that Darla is shown to have into the how to personality of a vampire is affected by that of the human it replaced and also into Liam’s relationship with his father. We just didn’t see enough of her in season 1 of "Buffy" to form a very clear idea of what she was capable of. But we did see enough of her to realize that she was capable of more than low cunning. It was she, rather than the Master, who hit upon the idea of using the demon inside Angel to lure him back to the Dark Side. So, while it is perfectly true that "the Prodigal" represents something of a development for the character we last saw in "Angel" I don’t find it a problematic one.

Kate

Although I have concentrated on what Angel’s struggle to save Trevor meant to him, the way her father’s death affected Kate should not be forgotten.   Trevor’s fate also serves as yet another turning point in the rocky road on which Angel and Kate are now embarked. Every time they seem to be moving to some mutual understanding something else happens to come between them. At the beginning of "The Prodigal" Kate was still having a very hard time coming to terms with what she had discovered but she was making an effort and what was helping was that she still had a belief that Angel was basically on the right side. But she still viewed him as something that existed outside normal human society. As she said:

"I think you’re probably a pretty decent guy for a – You know, what you are, but lets keep this strictly business, all right?  We don’t get personal.  I’m not your girlfriend."

Things could not be the same as they were before but there was a modus vivendi there, as illustrated by her decision to pass information on to Angel to help with his investigations. But it was one which could not survive her father’s death. When she saw that it was a vampire that killed her father the fact that Angel too was a vampire assumed a new significance.

"My father was human and you don’t know anything about that."

Now she could not have even a business relationship with a creature of the sort that had killed her father. The gap between Angel and human society was now, as far as she was concerned, unbridgeable.

I thought that the evolution of Kate’s attitude in this episode was expertly handled. It would have been easy to show her as much more hostile towards Angel from the beginning and that would have made the writers’ job in portraying her anger towards him at the end so much more straightforward. But then we would have been deprived of the drama of the sudden change in her attitude and the uncertainty as to whether this change was only temporary. It would also have been easier (if a little hackneyed) to have her blame him directly for killing Trevor. But then the blame would be based on a misunderstanding and could not have convincingly survived the truth. This way Kate’s attitude may not be fair but it has a solid foundation. We have yet to see how this turn of events fully plays out. But it is usually a good sign when writers take a storyline to its logical conclusions by using it as set up for another. They obviously thought quite hard about the consequences of what they were doing and that shows the sort of careful planning that has been a hallmark of this season’s ANGEL.

The Plot

In all of this the story of the drug running demon in LA 2000 plays a slight enough part. Angel’s suspicions of the delivery driver was the product of a very fine piece of deductive reasoning for which the writers deserved credit:

             “Why a guy who drives a delivery van would be on a commuter train during his shift?”

is a question that could easily have been overlooked by the police.  But there is little else about this aspect of the story to hold our interest.  When Wesley carries out an autopsy on the demon Angel killed it is for the express purpose of determining whether it was a Kwaini or something else.  But Wesley’s initial identification hardly seemed to leave room for doubt.  The exercise was therefore hardly much more than a very transparent  excuse to put Angel on the trail of the drug runners through the discovery of its presence in the Kwaini’s body and the effect it has in it.  And the rest was a matter of very simple and straightforward detective work with the delivery  man leading Angel to Trevor and Cordelia to Kel’s Exotic Auto.  And that is it.  There is no great mystery to figure out.  There are no twists or turns in the plot.  Indeed, so inconsequential is the drug running operation to the plot that we have no clear idea why the drug was being imported or how the Kwaini’s were involved in the first place.  At one point, as if to suggest a reason why the drug operation had to be stopped, Angel and Wesley speculate about the consequences of the drug in the wrong hands:

Angel:  “So not only did this stuff turn the Kwaini violent – it enhances innate strength.”

Wesley:  “Times 20, I would say.”

Angel:  “Hmm.  What would happen if this drug were given to an already powerful battle demon?”

Wesley:  “I shudder to think.”

But the writers go nowhere with this. At another point there is a suggestion the demon was feeding the drug to the Kwaini to give their adrenal gland a "zing" to it. But that would make his taste for the adrenal gland both an expensive and potentially dangerous one and any other motive is a matter of pure speculation. The truth is that it really doesn’t matter because the only purpose the plot served was as a device to bring the paths of Angel and Trevor Lockley to the point where they crossed.  It is therefore a McGuffin pure and simple, and a pretty undemanding one at that.  But there is no great harm in that.  After all, given that the parallels between Liam on the one hand and Trevor on the other it seems only natural that, smuggling operation or no, Angel’s principal concern should be to try to save Trevor.  That is why his time (and therefore the focus of the story) is concentrated on Trevor while it’s left to Cordelia to tail the delivery guy to Kel’s Exotic auto.  The latter provides some needed exposition but doesn’t advance to story at all. 

And I thought that this focus on Trevor did work very well.    The threat to him was simple and direct.  For the smuggling operation, he had been useful but he had also been misled and given the risk that he might blow the cover on their operation he had become a liability that had to be eliminated.  There was no room for doubt about what was going to happen to him.  So the danger was real and believable.   On the other hand I think that we did want to see him saved.  This was partly because of the parallel with Angel and a realization of how much emotional capital he had invested in this.  It was also partly because of sympathy with Kate.  But primarily it was because here we started to see Trevor himself as essentially a sympathetic figure, someone who truly loved his daughter even to the extent of sacrificing his principles and self-respect for her.  When the vampires in suits try to discover what Kate knows, Trevor’s reply says a lot about his attitude to her and his view of what he himself was doing:

 “You mean you were afraid she wasn’t crooked like her old man.  She’s not!  And she’ll never have to be, I’ve seen to it!”

So we do care about what happens to Trevor.  And this helps create a good deal of tension over his fate.  But for me the real strength of the plotting lies in the way his fate was sealed.  Those after him were vampires; he would have been safe if he hadn’t invited them in.  He might have been able to defend himself if he had known whom he was dealing with instead of relying on a perfectly useless gun.  Above all if he had only trusted Angel and let him in, all might have been well.   Salvation was there.  The escape route kept on being opened and we waited to see if he would make it though it.  In the end he didn't but that fact had nothing to do with an unbelievable degree of stupidity on his part or an unconvincing coincidence.  It didn't because he was ignorant of the realities of the creatures he was dealing with.  And this was neatly foreshadowed by his own daughter's reaction to the Kwaini demon that Angel killed:

Kate:  “It’s uhm...it’s not a person, is it?”

Angel:  “No.  Demon.”

Kate:  “Is it...”

Angel:  “Dead?  Yeah, Kate, it-it’s dead.”

Kate:  “So they – so they die then.”

Angel:  “Yeah.”

Kate:  “Sorry, I guess I’m still having a little trouble with this otherworldly stuff.”

And this for me worked far better than simply having a conventional race against time to see if  Angel got to the apartment first.   While the action was being played out there was genuine doubt as to how it would be resolved until the last moment.  But because of Trevor ignorance about demons in general and vampire in particular he could not have taken the steps needed to safeguard himself.  And it was this that help lend the air of tragic inevitability to his end that I discussed above.

Overview (A)

"Prodigal" just gets better every time I watch it. The storyline may be slight but it is the characterization that makes this episode. We have a clearer sense than ever before of Angel, his past and how that past lives in him today. In giving us this picture the writers have made the sense of tragedy all the clearer and thereby reinforced the mythology underlying the character. Here lies the heart of this episode and it is a very dark heart indeed. Just how dark is illustrated by the fate of Liam’s little sister. This provided us not only with a totally believable explanation as to why Liam took the name Angel but also (without descending to gory details) gave us a chilling insight into how pitiless vampires are. A human may out of a sense of anger kill a father with whom he had fought, but that was truly inhuman. Nor should we forget the tragedy that took place in LA2000. This too made its own impact, not least because we too saw it through Angel’s eyes and with him made the connection with the other deaths in Galway 1753. But in order to relieve the bleakness, the writers made very clever use of both humor and a combination of visual imagery and some beautiful music. Too much humor would have been out of place here but the little moments (Angel’s dry comment about the 2 x 4 and Cordelia happily sawing up the dead Kwaini) worked well to break up the tension. There was also one quite good running joke (about the alarm system) that succeeded not least because it was integrated into the plot. The montage scene where Darla turns Liam was beautifully shot; Liam’s rise from the grave is a visually striking image and the use of music both there and at the end was superb. It all combined to give the tragedy an almost poetic feel to it that emphasized the pathos but stopped it from becoming too depressing.