EPISODE 1.04

RM W/A VU

Written by: Jane Espenson and David Greenwalt

Directed by: Scott McGinnis

A Home of Your Own

One of the most important stages in a person's life is moving away from the family home and into a place of your own. It is significant in so many different ways. It represents a break with your childhood and a birth of true independence from your parents. You are in a position to take control of your own life as perhaps never before. For all of these reasons you can almost say, for better or for worse, it is the definitive experience of anyone's move from adolescence into adulthood. But in finding this independence you have to face real difficulties. A move away from your parents and the support they can provide means taking on significant financial and other obligations, often for the first time. As a young adult you may be in full time employment for the first time and will not usually have the means to replicate as comfortable a lifestyle as you enjoyed while at home. This may mean accepting less than ideal living conditions. Alternatively accommodation of your own will only be affordable with one or more others sharing it, something that poses problems of its own. And whatever choice is made you are going to have to (literally) live with the consequences.

For Cordelia, in particular, the problems of moving away from home have a special resonance. In the conversation between Angel and Doyle right at the beginning of the episode we are reminded that her expectations from life were higher than most. Angel told Doyle that she was leader of a group of girls from wealthy families.

Doyle:  "And she was the richest one of all?  Because the way she talks it sounds like she had servants made of solid gold or something."

Angel:  "Pretty much.  Until her parents lost it all.  Riches to rags."

And the contrast to Cordelia’s present grim living conditions was made immediately apparent by the immediate cut away to her as she enters her apartment.  Her lights don’t work properly, the water is brown and spurts out all over her and the place is infested with cockroaches. So she flees. But why now, when she has been living there for so long? The answer is given to Angel: 

Cordelia: "Don’t even look at me!  I am such a mess.  I am the lowest of the lowest"

Angel: "What happened?"

Cordelia:  "My apartment.  It’s like the barrio – or the projects or whatever, and I live there!  I’m the girl from the projects!"

She had stuck things as long as she could but now she had enough. She was not a person who could survive indefinitely in sub-standard living conditions. Material things have always meant a lot to Cordelia. It is how she defined herself and her place in the world. She was someone because she had things. That is why she refused to speak to Aura. She was ashamed of what, in material terms, she had become. That was why she had to throw herself on the mercy of her friends. In short she had reached a crisis point in her life where her independence had vanished and her sense of self worth was seriously compromised.

Cordelia’s Inner Bitch Resurfaces

As a series, ANGEL was, in its early stages anyway, intended to explore the challenges facing young adults. So, for all of the reasons I have mentioned at the beginning of this review, the problem of finding suitable accommodation was an ideal theme for it. But cleverly in "Rm w/a Vu", the writers have made the most of it as a theme by relating Cordelia’s crisis of confidence to her inability to find a place to live. Cordelia’s plight needs a focus, a medium through which to explore it. Because of her materialism a search for suitable accommodation provides the ideal medium for this purpose. But perhaps even more importantly, it gives us a point of reference for her character that everyone can understand. It instantly makes her situation both more understandable and more sympathetic. Given the very fine line that Cordelia as a character often treads the latter in particular is very important.

It is by using the apartment as such a point of reference that the writers can look below the surface material discomfort to see what is really going on inside her head. When it was first shown to her, her reaction to the apartment is instructive:

Cordelia:  "I – I used to have this.  I – I was.."

Lady:  "I guess it’s your lucky day."

Cordelia:  "I used to have those, too."

Later on she says: "It’s perfect and beautiful.  It’s so me.  I need it!".  This is reinforcing the identification she feels between material possessions and her sense of self. And this is made still more explicit in the following exchange:

Angel:  "You know, this really is just a place to live."

Cordelia: It’s more.  It’s beautiful, - and if it goes away it’s like.."

Angel:  "Like what?"

Cordelia:  "Like I’m still getting punished."

Angel:  "Punished.  For what?"

Cordelia:  "I don’t know.  For what I was?  For everything I said in High School just because I could get away with it?  And then it all ended, and I had to pay.  Oh, but this apartment. I could be me again.  Punishment over, welcome back to your life!  Like, like I couldn’t be that awful if I get to have a place like that."

We have already seen how Cordelia has been brought to the point where her sense of being in control of her life and of her own self worth have been compromised. Here we get the first sign of the effect that this is having. She has begun to look at herself, her life and the bad things she was responsible for. But she does so in a very Cordelia-like way. Angel recognizes that suffering can lead a person to seek change in their lives. That is why he tries to be understanding. When Cordelia compares his situation to her own he thinks she means that she will now be working for her own redemption. But that is not what she meant. Cordelia doesn’t see the need to change; she doesn’t want redemption. In fact, as the speech I have just quoted makes clear, what she really wants is for things to go back to being the way they were and the apartment is not so much a symbol of that but a means of achieving it.

The problem for Cordelia is that, order to get the apartment, she has to get rid of Maude. That is why the focal point of this episode is the battle of wills between these two.   For Maude is every bit as materialistic as Cordelia.  She has no real love for her son.  After all she cold bloodedly kills him because he fails to live up to her standards.  What she loves is her nice, neat successful life, insulated from all the lower elements in society.  As she says at one point to Cordelia:

“Your friends are dirty.  They ruined my nice home.”

Cordelia in particular represents everything she hated.  She is not only a reminder of the “streetwalker”, but she is poor and, in material terms, “a failure”:

“I knew you were trouble right from the start.  I’m surprised that my son didn’t smell the stench of poverty and failure on you.  I  can.”

The thing that hurt about this is that because Maude and Cordelia had the same values, Maude’s judgment echoed Cordelia’s own view of herself.  And while it does Cordelia cannot fight back. From the moment Cordelia responds to Maude’s fake telephone call things start getting bad for her very rapidly. Maude assails her, calling her worthless and a looser. Then she tries to kill her with a cable. Even when Angel and Doyle arrive matters do not improve; in fact the poltergeist activity escalates. The wind howls and things start flying around. Cordelia is reduced to helpless tears. Then worst of all she is separated from the others who are distracted and so unable to help her. Finally she is again confronted by Maude taunting her about the stench of poverty and failure. This is Cordelia’s lowest point. There is now surely no way back for her. But in the classic tradition, just when victory seemed inevitable, Maude overplays her hand. She uses the word "bitch" and that triggers something deep inside Cordelia. Suddenly everything is changed. Maude is the one who is powerless and Cordelia is in charge. She has taken back control over not only over the situation but over her whole life. And the fact that she does so leads Dennis for the first time to face down his mother and together they defeat her.  The key here lies in the word that reawakened the old Cordelia.  Cordelia always understood what she wanted and more importantly she understands why she wanted it. But, unlike the Cordelia in Sunnydale, she was not prepared yet to take it because her self-confidence has taken such a battering.   The word “bitch” reminds Cordelia of who she really is:

Cordelia:   “I’m a bitch.”

Maude:  “Take off the bed sheets, make a noose.  Go on.  It’ll all be over soon.”

Cordelia: “I’m not a sniveling whiny little Cry-Buffy.  I’m the nastiest girl in Sunnydale history.   I take crap from no one.”

Maude:  “You are going to make yourself a noose and put it around..”

Cordelia:  “Back off!  Polygrip.  You think *you’re* bad?  Being all mean and haunty?   Picking on poor pathetic Cordy?  Well, get ready to haul your wrinkly translucent ass out of this place, because lady, the bitch is back.”

Maude:  “Do you think that I’m going to take that from trash like you?”

Cordelia:  “I tell you what I think.  I think that you’re going to pack your little ghost bags and get the hell out of my house.”

Cordelia had been putting the cart before the horse. She wanted to get the apartment because she thought it would help her recover her sense of self. As it turns out it was only because she recovered that sense that she got the apartment.  In the above quote there isn’t a word about Cordelia’s wealth or her parents’ social position.  What Cordelia is talking about is the way that she ruled Sunnydale High through the force of her personality – a personality that could get her anything she wanted.  Up to this point Cordelia had approached things on the basis that she was someone because she had nice things.  Now she learns that she is more than what she possesses and that in spite of being poor and, in material terms, a failure her inner strength is more than a match for Maude.

I have to say that in “Room w/a Vu” the writers have pictured Cordelia with great accuracy.  She isn’t the sort of person who would worry unduly about the effect of her actions on other people.  She looks at thing solely from her own perspective.  Other people have to look after themselves just as she has to look after herself.  If they are too weak to do so then that’s their responsibility and there really isn’t any one to blame but them.  So, even when she faces a crisis of confidence she doesn’t worry about making up for what she has done in the past.  All she worries about is getting back to what she defines as normal.  “Normalcy” is of course defined in purely material terms and here we see the great weakness of Cordelia’s materialism.  When you identify yourself so closely with objects such as an apartment, the lack of those things can affect your own sense of self when really no-one is just what they own.  This seems to be the lesson that Cordelia has now learned – that she is not simply what she has.  To an extent therefore this episode does seem to me to be an important stage in her growth as a character.  I have to say, however, that I do have two reservations about it.  The minor one is that, for an episode which is really about a person’s character being more than a matter of what she possesses, the ending is a little ambiguous.  She is right back to the Cordelia of old, enjoying not only a great apartment but a good gossip about who is wearing what in Sunnydale.  The lesson here is that she can get nice things (or at least the apartment) because of who she was.  But that still implies a link between character and material possessions.  This is something I am a little uncomfortable with.  It does seem to validate at least to an extent the connection between being deserving and having good things.

The other problem is that it dodges completely the issue of Cordelia’s responsibility for the misery heaped on others.  As I have said this is actually in keeping with Cordelia as a character.  But I can’t help feeling that the fact that an episode about Cordelia dealing with who she has become since losing her position should have dealt in some way with the way that she misused that position.

Plot

One thing I like about the episode is the accent on humor we find throughout the piece. ANGEL is not a social drama. The concentration has to be on the supernatural (which is after all the show's raison d'etre). But at the same time I am glad that the writers didn't make "Rm w/a Vu" a dark horror story. The discomforts involved in finding a place to call home tend to be exaggerated when first experienced. But the passage of time brings a perspective that means we become more conscious of the funny side of the experiences rather than what seemed at the time the grim reality. So the emphasis on humor in exploring Cordelia’s difficulties was an entirely natural one. Moreover resisting the temptation to incorporate too much slapstick of the "Cordelia puts her foot through rotten floorboards" variety also paid dividends. Instead the humor is character based with a concentration on the reactions of our principals to the situations they find themselves in.

This is illustrated by a number of finely conceived and executed scenes where Angel's self-sufficient, orderly and reclusive existence is totally disrupted by Cordelia. In the first one Cordelia just lands at Angel's doorstep and bulldozes her way over him. Here much of the physical comedy comes from the fact that Angel is semi-naked throughout the scene and Cordelia doesn't even seem to notice.  We have had quite a number of scene in which the principal male characters  in ANGEL and BUFFY have appeared shirtless.  Some are quite frankly gratuitous and that is a pity.  Nakedness (or rather this being network television semi-nakedness) can in fact be a very effective tool for any storyteller using a visual medium but overuse diminishes the effect.  Nevertheless this scene very forcefully demonstrates its strengths.  When Cordelia appears at Angel’s front door she interrupts him in the middle of a shower. He could have been doing a dozen other things – reading a book or just listening to Beethoven for example. But then the scene we were then treated to would not have had nearly the same impact. There was poor Angel dripping wet, desperately clinging on the Cordelia’s suitcases, the towel round his waist and his dignity while Cordelia, completely oblivious to his distress, was in full flow about what a shambles her life was. It’s hard to imagine a more uncomfortable situation for him. Then, she proceeds to take over his shower, his bed and his life. Buffy's "me, me, me" attitude comes across as a sign of immaturity and emotional neediness. As such it can be slightly pathetic. Cordelia's self-centeredness, on the other hand, comes across as a sign of self-possession and inner certainty. It's hardly a "nice" quality but it evokes a bemused awe.  In that scene we had Cordelia the force of nature and Angel as hapless victim. But in subsequent scenes there is a subtle shift in the emphasis. Cordelia is still treating the place as her own but Angel has recovered his equilibrium so there is much more of a conflict built into the situation than was possible with Cordelia walking all over him. This conflict develops round the incompatibility of their characters. She is careless; he is neat. She is materialistic ;he is austere. She isn't prepared to treat him with the respect due to the fact that she is living in his home but he isn't prepared either to make allowances for her or simply to order her out.

It isn’t exactly realistic for Cordelia to be oblivious to the fact that there is a half naked man standing in front of her or, while a guest in someone’s home, to cut up his linoleum. But character based humor like this is often at its best when there is a degree of exaggeration in the storytelling. Such exaggeration, while it has to bear a reasonable resemblance to real life and be faithful to the characters concerned, can bring out the inherent absurdities both in the situations they find themselves in and in themselves as individuals. Properly done, as it was here, this not only makes the humor more meaningful but (because we see ourselves reflected in them) actually tends to engage our sympathies for the characters at the same time as we find their actions amusing.  And it is an undoubted strength of the episode that all of this humor co-existed with some fine quality drama. 

Up until Cordelia’s search for an apartment of her own starts, there isn’t really much of a plot at all.  Rather what we have  are a series of loosely connected, pretty light hearted scenes. But ANGEL, just like BUFFY, needs an edge. Almost any dramatic scenario works best where the central characters are threatened or otherwise put under pressure. But more particularly the idea of using the supernatural as a metaphor for the nasty things that happen in life is robbed of much of its force unless there is something supernatural in an episode which carries real threat. So, I am glad to say that in "Rm w/a Vu" we do not simply have a piece of light fun but a story that skillfully weaves the humorous with the serious. The warning sign of what was to come was there for all to see when Cordelia discovered her "perfect" apartment. There had to be a catch somewhere. In fact it was revealed pretty much straight away in the form of a ghostly apparition pressing its face through a wall.  The apartment was obviously haunted.   It might have been better to delay the surprise until Cordelia's first night in the place. Nevertheless from that point onwards the tension and the pressure mount. At first the tone is not too threatening - moving furniture and clothes, not much more. In fact by morning Cordelia convinces herself that all really is still right with the world. Indeed our own conventional expectations are that ghosts only operate at night. But having built up a degree of tension, released it and lulled us all into a false sense of security things start to go wrong again. At this point Angel and Doyle arrive and this adds further to the tension as Cordelia tries to keep the fact she has a ghost quiet. This is a very well designed sequence which keeps the audience's attention and leaves them wondering what is going to happen next. But this is rally only set up. In plot terms it establishes the problem for Angel and Doyle to solve – why is the apartment haunted and what can be done about it.

As a piece of drama I thought this worked terrifically well. It’s greatest virtue is the sense we have of things running out of control. After we learned that the apartment was haunted,  we were quickly presented with an apparent solution - the banishing spell.  But having been set up to believe that this spell would solve the problem we were surprised to see that it failed utterly and the threat was escalating. This left us with the question: what can be done now?  Not only that, the mixture was even further complicated by the arrival of the Kaliff demons and their henchman.  This was not only unexpected in and off itself  but it effectively took Angel and Doyle out of the picture in terms of defeating Maude. We had been looking to Angel in particular to figure a way to solve this problem.  But now, not only was Cordelia left completely on her own, she is also seemingly reduced to her weakest.  The situation did therefore really seem quite hopeless. 

But the seeds of the solution were already there in the form of the Phantom Dennis.  We had already been aware of him and the fact that he disappeared when his mother died. This left a mystery. If Maude had died naturally why was she still haunting the apartment?  It was only after Maude was banished that the twist was revealed. Maude was an unquiet ghost not because she was angry and vengeful - so angry and vengeful that she murdered her own son.   From the dramatic point of view that was a very effective plot device.   Just as importantly, though, there was a very nice tie in between Dennis’ situation and that of Cordelia.  Dennis  had never been allowed to leave home. The cause for this was the fact that he wanted a relationship with someone of whom his mother disapproved and indicates the degree of control that Maude demanded over her son's life. Eventually, he was (quite literally) smothered by her. He remained trapped in the apartment with her unable to help Cordelia or anyone else. The implication of the final battle with Maude is that Cordelia, by remember who she was,  helped Dennis  find his own sense of independence as well.  It was therefore not only Cordelia's decision to stand up to Maude that saved her; it was Dennis' newly inspired decision to follow suit.  This not only provided an unexpected and satisfying twist to resolve the danger; it also very neatly solved the mystery.

Thus far I have very much concentrated on the A storyline. The B storyline is a slightly curious affair. In plot terms they are connected at two points. Doyle helping Cordelia to find an apartment was the quid pro quo for Angel helping Doyle out of his difficulties with the Kaliff demon. Then, as I have already said, the arrival of that demon and his friends in the middle of the confrontation with the ghost distracted Angel and Doyle long enough to allow Cordelia to solve the problem on her own. To that extent the episode made very good use of the sub-plot. Thematically there was a much more difficult fit. The B storyline was never actually resolved. We merely got an idea of the sort of shady lifestyle Doyle led (without at this stage any context). A clue comes in the following exchange:

Angel:  "Can I ask you something?   Why do you live like this?"

Doyle:  "Why not live like this?  I mean, what’s wrong with it?   Yeah, well, I guess, it’s the kind of life that keeps your expectations from getting too high.  Seems like you’d understand that."

Angel:  " I do."

Doyle:  "Yeah."

Angel:  "I just don’t know why that’s important to you.  This kind of life sort of picked me.  You don’t have to do it this way.  What happened?"

With a little hindsight it may be that here Doyle’s case was being used to provide a little counterpoint to Cordelia’s.  For all her doubts about her future and her place in the world Cordelia retained an inner belief that she deserved something good out of life. In the end that was what saved her. And once she recovered her confidence, the good things came her way.  Doyle, from these words, by contrast, seems to believe that his uncertain lifestyle is all he deserves. But we really do not know enough about him, about his life or about how he ended up in his present position to make much sense out of these hints.  Rather they seem more to be foreshadowing or set up for things to come.

Overview (B - )

This episode is something of a turning point for Cordelia. When we saw her in "City of…" she was on a downward spiral. Meeting Angel and getting a job stabilized the position but it was hardly much of a recovery for an American Princess. Tying this recovery into her finding her dream apartment worked very well thematically for someone like Cordelia who does think in material terms. Equally it worked from a dramatic point of view because the struggle with Maude over the apartment provided a focus through which her internal doubts were resolved. I have to say though that there wasn’t that much depth to the issues Cordelia wrestled with. The writers it seems to me deliberately avoided addressing head on the question of "redemption" for Cordelia. Admittedly being a bitch at school is a long way from being a mass murderer but if anything Cordelia was steered away from taking responsibility or making amends for the way she had hurt others. That is probably inevitable given the fact that Cordelia’s "I think it I say it" approach was intended to be one of the corner stones of the series’ humor. But it is still a weakness in any episode about Cordelia dealing with her past. It is one of the principal reasons I haven’t graded it higher. The other is the B storyline that, although it had its uses, really didn’t go anywhere terribly significant and if anything seems intended primarily as set up for later episodes.   The A storyline itself, however, worked very well, being a deft mix of humor, mystery, tension and action. Indeed, some parts, such as the final confrontation in the apartment, were genuinely scary.