EPISODE 3.11

BIRTHDAY

Written by: Mere Smith

Directed by: Michael Grossman

Note: This revised review was written after the events of season 4 had unfolded. For me at least those events put this episode in a rather different light so I have rewritten the review to explain my changed thinking. It is posted alongside the original so that the two can be compared.  If you haven't seen season 4 yet you will be spoiled by this review.
 

Who is Cordelia Chase?

I suppose that is in the six years we have been watching the Buffyverse, there is no character who has changed more than Cordelia Chase.  In a "Birthday", we were again reminded of the sort of person that she used to be.  Skip shows her – and us - us the party in which she met Angel for the first time after they had both left Sunnydale.  Her response to that chance encounter was characteristic:

"Well, it was nice seeing you, but I've got to get mingly. I really should be talking to people that *are* somebody."

Then she just walks away, leaving Angel to mutter to  himself:

            "It's nice that she's grown as a person."

That in a nutshell was Queen C.  She was never a monster.  She was, however, always the center of her own universe.  Everything that happened was seen and evaluated from her own point of view; the most important aspect of any question was how it affected her.  Since then, however, we have seen her change and grow as a character, especially since "To Shanshu in LA".  This development  can be traced back to her experiences of the visions.  These represented the outside world intruding in the most painful and forceful way imaginable into Cordelia's own little universe.  It’s not only the physical pain of the visions – the blinding headaches.  She has, on several occasions since the end of season 1, emphasized that she experiences the pain and fear of the victims she sees.  In “Dead End”. for example, she sees a businessman stabbing himself in the eye:

“He had to be crazy.  But he didn't feel crazy.  He felt normal, you know? Until he started stabbing himself."

This suggests that she feels what he feels.  So, with the visions constantly pressing in on her she can't think just about herself.  She feels she has to help.  As she said in “To Shanshu in LA”:

 "I saw them all.  There is so much pain.  We have to help them."

This connection with the victims was, it always seemed to me, to be key to understanding the "new" Cordelia.  When you literally have to walk in someone else's shoes, when you are forced to identify with them so closely that where you end and the other person begins becomes blurred, then it is simply no longer possible to see everyone and everything from you own point of view.

It seems therefore entirely in character for the new Cordelia that, even after having been separated from her body in the course of a vision Cordelia should be more concerned to pass on the details of the visions to the gang than she is with her own situation:

Angel: "It was a vision, wasn't it? She started to say something... a girl, then...

Cordelia: "That's right! She's in a house on Oak Street, middle of Reseda…feels like we got some time, but...but you can't hear me at all, can you?"

Because this has all been well-established, if showing us this change in Cordelia were all that "Birthday" had to offer, there would be little point in it.  That is why the important thing about the episode is that Cordelia is given a choice about whether she should continue to have the visions or give them up in exchange for what she has always yearned for - fame and wealth.   In other words she has a choice about whether she wants to be the old or the new Cordelia.  Skip shows her the party in "City of..." and explains how things were supposed to happen:

Skip: "You're on the sidelines over here, talking to a couple of wannabe moguls. Angel's downfield here. Now, instead of cutting to the middle  and meeting Angel, what if you'd been forced to counter? What if this man -- who happens to be a very powerful talent agent -- flanked you, and drew you offsides? What would happen then?

Cordelia: "I'd... score a touchdown?

Skip: "Metaphorically speaking? Heck, yeah. Inside every living thing, there's  a connection to the Powers That Be. Call it intuition, instinct -- deep down, we all know our purpose in this world.

Cordelia: "You're saying I was meant to be an actress?

Skip: "No. I'm saying you were meant to be an incredibly famous and wealthy actress. And The Powers can make that happen."

Cordelia: "They can do that? Turn back time

Skip: "They don't go in for that. Much. Think of this as... writing over history. From this moment on, you could live the life you've always wanted. No monsters, no visions, no dying. Not for a long time, anyway.”

Of course being presented with such a choice is, in many ways, the acid test of her new found desire to help others.  When you constantly live with the pain and suffering of others you can hardly avoid doing something about it – if only for your own peace of mind.   Helping the helpless simply becomes a case of making the best of a bad job.  She was going to suffer the pain anyway, why not make sure that some good at least comes out of it?   That way all the pain and suffering  serves some purpose and that is a comfort.  It would be far worse if it were all for nothing.  Giving Cordelia a choice means that she can, if she wants, wave goodbye to all the pain.  But at the same time she also would also have to wave goodbye to her ability to help others.  So, instead of accepting the latter as a way of easing the pain she must now decide between what is in her own best interests and what is in the interests of others.  The choice she makes but perhaps more tellingly the reasons why she makes it are what this episode is all about.  It tells us a good deal about Cordelia and where her priorities really lie. 

Angel and Cordelia

As we have seen, when things start to go wrong Cordelia seems more worried about the potential victim she saw in her vision than she is about herself.  But that was before she knew the real nature of the choice she was to make:

Skip: “Cordelia, I want you to listen very closely. You go back into your body, you won't wake up. You will lie there, unable to move, unable to speak, until the next vision hits, and then you will die. That is how that life is destined to end.”

Cordelia: “But that's not fair. How's Angel gonna save that girl if I don't tell him where she is? He needs me!”

Here we see what really dismays Cordelia about having to give up the visions.   Her immediate reaction was to focus not on the consequences for the victim of her not being around but on the fact that Angel needed her.  If the important thing was to save the hapless victim, then wouldn’t it have been more natural for her to say “if I’m not around the girl will die”.  Her words here remind me very much of  a couple of things that were said in “That Vision Thing”.  First of all Fred told her:

“You're like Angel's Lassie. Sure, he does most of the saving but it's your visions that tell him that Timmy is trapped in the well, or the robbers are hiding in the barn. He really needs and depends on you."

Then Cordelia herself says to Angel:

“If I lose the visions, I wouldn't be able to help you anymore. You wouldn't need me."

The more that is dependent upon a choice the truer that choice needs to be.  The greater the consequences of the choice for you the greater the premium on making the correct decision.  But sometimes we are faced with Hobson’s choice, that is to say no choice at all.  As we have seen a straight choice between the headaches and helping people would tell us where Cordelia’s real focus now lay – with herself or others.  But Cordelia being faced with giving up the visions and living on the one hand or keeping them and dying on the other faces no real conflict between helping others and her own personal comfort.  She can’t help anyone if she’s dead.  But if it was a choice between dying on the one hand and living without a connection that for her was more important than her own life, that would be a different matter.

And as if to confirm that what was really at the bottom of her unwillingness to give up the visions we need only look at why her resistance to giving up the visions crumbled.   We see it in the following scene in which Angel was trying to contact the Powers:

Angel: “The visions are too much -- she's not strong enough to handle them.”

The Conduit: “Obstinate. It speaks and does not listen.”

Angel: “No, you're not listening! Cordelia's not a champion! She's a rich girl from Sunnydale playing superhero. Don't The Powers get that? She's weak!”

Cordelia: “Get me out. Skip, get me out, now.”

What the promise of certain death cannot accomplish, the thought that Angel doesn’t respect or value her -the thought that he doesn’t need her – does.  Cordelia decides to give up the visions.  The pain of what she evidently saw as personal rejection makes up her mind.

And as we saw on several occasions in this episode Cordelia’s feelings are more than reciprocated.   The two most obvious examples were Angel’s  impassioned complaints  to a catatonic Cordelia about the way she had hidden her condition:

“I know you can't hear me, but...there's something I have to say.  You really piss me off, you know that? I thought we trusted each other, but you've been lying.  MRI's, CAT scans; it's been going on for over a year. Why couldn't you let me in? I could've helped you. You make me so furious.”

 And his later admission that:

“I'm more afraid of her dying than she is? What is that?”

Now I will admit that, when I first saw this episode, I didn't like this angle at all.  I didn't warm at all to the idea of ANGEL as a series becoming a gothic romance where the principal characters’ actions are driven by love for one another.  And the juxtaposition of on the one hand Angel's  declaration of love for Cordelia and her sacrifice for him and on the other Cordelia's embrace of her calling as "Vision Girl" and Angel's helpmate in fulfilling his own destiny promised just such a scenario.  And my reservations on this point were reinforced by what I described as the "Mary Sue" elements of the story.

First of all there was the fact that TPTB seemed to be taking a very personal interest in Cordelia.   They took a great deal of trouble to persuade her to accept life as a rich and famous celebrity.  Yet they were unwilling to give the Angel the single word of explanation about what they were doing with her even when they were trying help her - which is what he wanted them to do.  And then there is poor Tammy.  She had the visions for a year.  Then they blew out the back of her head.  Where was the interest from the powers in Tammy? Who tried to persuade her to give the visions up?

Then, there was Cordelia's celebrity.  In the alternative future she is wealthy, universally beloved, respected as an actress, incredibly successful.   The world revolves around her and she enjoys

“I love your show. Like, love love. You are just... you are my idol, Cordy. I want to be just like you.”

And the fruits of her celebrity were equally over the top.  Only the best hotel room will do for her and her every whim is attended to without question, no matter how absurd it seems:

Cordelia: "I want something... Hypo something...

Nevin: "Josh, let's get a large tub of ice water to Ms. Chase's dressing room pronto.

Cordelia: "No, that's not it."

Nevin: "Canceling ice water."

Cordelia: "Hyper... hyperbaric."

Nevin: "Josh, let's make that an oxygen tent."

Cordelia: "That's not right."

Nevin: "Canceling tent."

Not only did this make Cordelia look like someone with a truly exceptional destiny, it seemed to emphasize the nobility of her decision to turn her back on it all. Indeed, no opportunity is lost to pile on the pathos.  Cordelia  has been taking extra strong medication for year and has been telling no one.  As Fred said:

"If Cordelia was takin' a drug this powerful in secret, then the visions were probably doin' a lot more damage than she let on."

And of course the give away is the MRI  results.

Fred: "See, green is a "cold" color, usually signifyin' dead areas of the cerebrum. Normally you wouldn't see a scan like this.."

Gunn: "Unless the person was a cucumber."

This is a truly remarkable person who has suffered extreme neurological damage which would leave most people vegetables and yet continues to function normally.    Tammy could only last year before her head explode.  Cordelia's has lasted two.   In fact it is pretty obvious that in the Cordyverse LA things are so much worse than the " real L.A. "  Wesley only has one arm and Angel is a train wreck.  That shows just how important Cordelia really is to the work of Angel Investigations. All in all, this set up seemed to point to the writers wanting to create in Angel and Cordelia a truly heroic couple, perhaps with Cordelia acting as the "moral center" of the series.  Indeed it seemed to me at the time that it could serve no other purpose.  And frankly, I had no interest in such a development.

On the other hand, as I admitted in my original review, a scenario where Angel and Cordelia were principally  motivated by their feeling for one another can work very well where the idea is to show that human (or in this case inhuman) attachments lead to selfishness and blindness which have consequences for the protagonists.  At the time "Birthday" was shown  I didn't believe that ME had any real interest in exploring these ideas.  And I was confirmed in this prejudice by episodes like “That Vision Thing” and its companion piece “Billy” where the writers largely ignored the obvious moral and thematic implications of Angel’s single minded determination to save Cordelia at all costs simply because of his feelings for her.  But, as it turned out, I was wrong.

A Trap for the Unwary

In the season 4 episode "Inside out" we discover that Skip was working to an entirely different and much less benign agenda than was apparent in "Birthday".  From that episode we gather that he intervened here to persuade Cordelia to take on demon DNA so that she would be able in due course to act as a vessel for Jasmine.  And if we look at the developments in "Birthday" from this point of view a lot of aspects of the episode that I disliked or that made no sense at all, now take on a completely different meaning.

Let me begin with the "Mary Sue" elements.   In the light of subsequent events, it became clear that TPTB weren't after all taking an interest in Cordelia at all.  Jasmine cared for her as much as she did for Tammy, which is to say not at all.  All she wanted was to use her. And the fact that in the alternative future Cordelia was a celebrity and that Angel Investigations suffered badly through her loss was a necessary part of the trap. It was designed to make Cordelia think of herself as someone special in whatever choice she made.  After all it was only by creating the conditions in which Cordelia convinced herself that he destiny was as a higher being that Jasmine ultimately persuaded her to ascend in "Tomorrow".

As I have already said, deep down inside Cordelia has always believed that she was someone special, destined for higher things.  In Sunnydale she thought of that as marrying someone fabulously wealthy like the frat boy she had her eye on in “Reptile Boy”.  Later, in LA she thought of it as becoming a rich and successful actress.  And even inheriting Doyle’s visions doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference to this basic orientation. In “Birthday” what prompted her to give up the visions was the idea that she was weak and valueless to Angel.  What changed her mind was the idea that she was the most important thing in his life.  And that meant more to Cordelia than the needs of strangers.  Her attitudes to Groo and Wesley too were determined not by what they themselves deserved or needed but by what was important to Cordelia. That is not to say that she did not genuinely want to help others or that she did not make sacrifices to do so.  What it does mean is that she sees herself and what is important to her as having a “special place” in the Universe.  In this she really is the same Queen C that she was in Sunnydale High. 

So, when Skip comes along and confirms every suspicion she has ever had about herself, it is easy for her to believe him, even though what he actually said made no objective sense at all.  And so, it was because of this vanity, this need to be someone important, that Cordelia fell into what we now know as a trap.  For all her clear-sightedness, her ability to see and deal with the world as it was Cordelia was as human as the rest our little band.  She too could be seduced by the lure of something she really wanted.  By convincing her in “Birthday” that she was someone special and that Angel really did need her, Skip set the bait.  Cordelia willingly accepted the demon DNA just as Jasmine needed her to.  In “Tomorrow” the trap was sprung and she was brought to where Jasmine was able to possess her. 

And it is this revelation about Jasmine's own agenda that, in retrospect, lends credibility to the events of "Birthday".  It never made sense that TPTB were solely motivated by ensuring that both Angel and Cordelia fulfilled their own destiny.  Nothing we had seen to date indicated that it was the Angel's destiny to be the one inflicted with the Visions.  In fact quite the opposite.  If the prophecies of Aberjian mean anything they indicate that Angel has a very different destiny.  And certainly the Niazin prophecies would be completely foiled by this turn of events.  After all in this version of LA, Angel clearly was in no condition to father Connor.  On the other side of the coin the whole point about this episode was that Cordelia's destiny was not to become a famous actress - no matter what TPTB said.    Otherwise there would have been a contradiction right at the heart of this episode.  The actual denouement would flatly contradict the premise.  It was Skip's intervention on behalf of the Powers and his success in persuading Cordelia to accept her "destiny" that led directly to the discovery that it was not her destiny at all.  All  of this really only made sense if you assume that the Powers’ intervention was a cynical piece of manipulation.  Their real purpose in all of this was to get Cordelia to volunteer to become part demon.

And in this context, what was supposed to have been an alternative timeline really wasn't.  In my first review I referred to the very real problem caused the nature of the change that came over Cordelia’s world.   

The problems inherent in the alternative timeline concept were highlighted for me by the fact that the alternative Cordelia we see is a very different to the Cordelia we met at the party in " City of ....”.   She is, indeed, very similar the person we see that the beginning of "Birthday".  She treats her staff with some consideration and respect; her desire to stop something nasty but undefined is strong enough that she is prepared to go to a lot of trouble to track it down.   I mean she was even prepared to go to Reseda.  And when she sees Angel she is very compassionate towards him.  This, despite the fact that she only knows him as Buffy's ex-boyfriend and someone who once went psycho and started killing all her friends.    But above all, in the crucial moment when she recovers the visions and meets Skip again, we see the same person who left her own body in a coma; the person  whom Skip brought to the Mall and whom he tried to get to change her destiny.  This is the difference between " Birthday "and " It's a Wonderful Life. "  In the latter the James Stewart character was taken  out of the history of his hometown so that he could see how in the town had changed because he wasn't there.   He observed those changes as an outsider -someone who existed outside the altered history of the town.  Here we are asked to view Cordelia's as having her life changed but who ended up as essentially the same person she became with a very different life experience.  The writers are, therefore, treating Cordelia's as if her life had changed but the same time portraying her - like the James Stewart character - as existing independently of the changes in her life. 

But again this is all explicable if you assume that this was some sort of test intended to persuade Cordelia to co-operate with Jasmine's agenda.  We were not therefore dealing with a genuine alternative timeline at all.  Rather what we were dealing with was Jasmine setting Cordelia up to believe that she had such a timeline.  For example, when Skip tried to explain that Cordelia hadn’t been intended to meet Angel at the party in “City of…”.  Instead she was meant to be an actress, he said

“Have you ever had that vague sensation maybe you left the oven on? Or you were supposed to call someone, just forgot who it was? More to the point, you ever felt that way about your acting career?”

Then  later when Cordelia actually was a famous actress. and talking to her assistant Nevin she echoes the words Skip had uttered to her:

Cordelia: “Nev, you ever get a nagging feeling you're supposed to be somewhere doing something but you can't remember what?

Nevin: “No, I'm highly organized. Which is why you pay me pretty well, although with the holidays and all…”

Then, from somewhere within, her memories of the Hyperion surface and one thing leads to another until she comes face to face with an Angel inflicted with the visions and half mad.  It was almost as if Skips earlier words had planted in Cordelia's mind the suggestion that things might not be as they seem and that she should investigate her own feelings on the matter.

And in this context the "Mary Sue" elements that I referred to were actually very important to the theme of the piece.  It wasn't only the personal concern TPTB were supposed to show Cordelia.    There is the alternative lifestyle she is shown for herself.   Only the best hotel room will do for her.   Her every whim is attended to without question, no matter how absurd it seems.  Her fans are adoring. All of this treatment is designed to make her think of herself as the center of the universe - the only person that really matters.  I contrasted this  to the whole thrust of her development as a character over the last season and a half of the series.  Remember what Wesley said in "Epiphany":

"Our Cordelia has become a very solitary girl. She's not the vain, carefree creature she once was... Well, certainly not carefree. It's the visions, you see. The visions that were meant to guide you. You could turn away from them. She doesn't have that luxury. She knows and experiences the pain in this city, and because of who she is, she feels compelled to do something about it. It's left her little time for anything else."

I now believe that this contrast was quite deliberate because central to Cordelia's motivation in falling into Jasmine's trap is her belief that she is indeed special.  So, when the choice of becoming part demon is presented to Cordelia the consequences are exaggerated to reinforce this belief:

“The process isn't easy.  It'll make your vision pain feel like a stroll through CandyLand. And even after the agony subsides, the effects of the transformation would be numerous and unpredictable. “

And the fact that, after the transformation, these dire consequences fail to materialize Cordelia would not worry about that.  And Skip's entirely unsolicited testimonial at the end:

"I was an honor being your guide, Cordelia Chase."

now in retrospect seems ironic at best and perhaps even mocking.

As I pointed out in my initial review of "Birthday" at the risk of some oversimplification, drama depends upon conflict.  Characters can face two sources of conflict – the external and the internal.  You can make perfectly good drama out of good, brave, determined and selfless individuals overcoming external threats to achieve something important.   But I regard that as inherently less interesting than the other sort of drama, not least because unlike external threats the internal demons can never be entirely defeated.   More to the point it is also out of character for ANGEL as a series.   This is not about heroes and heroines in the sense of people who do good and noble things because they are good and noble themselves.  If it means anything that it is about damaged individuals, misfits relegated to the margins of society because of their internal demons.  Their struggle is primarily with themselves.  It is through their fights with external demons that they learn how to deal with their internal ones.  In retrospect I think I can now see that this episode does indeed fit very well into this template.   We can see  that deep down Cordelia's is not so much attracted to the idea of wealth, fame and the good life as being someone special. In the end she was offered to opportunity of getting the former she blew it off with hardly a second's thought.  But that was not a selfless act.  That was because she was getting something more important to her than the material trappings.  So here was the last temptation of Cordelia Chase.  Skip was the Devil only not in the obvious way of trying to attract her with shiny new things.  It was a more insidious and therefore more interesting form of temptation.  But as with all temptation, the fact that Cordelia fell for it was down to her own human frailties so warping her judgment that they conspired with Jasmine to defeat her own good intentions and ultimately paved the way for Cordelia's  own death.

Overview (B)

What seemed at first to me as a sloppy and self-indulgent storyline becomes something very different in retrospect.   We can now understand what exactly was meant by “overwriting” history and this resolved a lot of the difficulties about the nature of the alternative universes and how they came about.   The exaggeration and hyperbole in the characterization of Cordelia, which I thought served  it very poorly now can be seen as something entirely different - flattery.  The former, if taken seriously, deprives an individual of their believability and much of their interest.  The latter becomes a trap baited with for someone who years to believe all these things of herself.  So, instead of establishing Cordelia as someone who wants nothing for herself but simply has an altruistic desire to help others and who is prepared to make any sacrifice necessary for the purpose we see her as still at heart a flawed individual  At the start of the series she is the epitome of self-centeredness.  She had bought into a value system where coming from the right home and having the right clothes and other accessories were necessary.  If you had them you were someone.    Hence the fact that she thought of herself as “Queen C", having a special place in the universe and as such destined for higher things.  Here we can see that she has left behind the material concerns of her past but not the basic self-absorbtion.  And contrary to my initial concerns this was indeed good character devlopment.  This is someone I can believe in and indeed sympathize with.  It is also someone I can take an interest in.   The only pity is that especially in view of what seemed to be a willingness to portray Cordelia only in favorable terms for most of seasons 2 and 3 and without the knowledge of future developments I was unable to pick up the clues in "Birthday".  Whether this is entirely my own fault, I will leave the reader to judge.