EPISODE 4.20

SACRIFICE

Written by:  Ben Edlund

Directed by: David Straiton

Love Changes Everything

This is an episode in which we see different and sometimes conflicting values and we are invited to try to understand the meaning of those values for various individuals.  And the medium through which we must try to do so is an interesting one.  At one point Wesley is captured by a demon who professes his love for Jasmine.  In the course of their conversation, he asks the demon:

“And how does your kind define "love"?”

The reply is:

            “Same as all bodies. Same as everywheres. Love is sacrifice.”

Sacrifice is something we see a lot of in this episode.  Each one is made in the name of someone or something that is important to the individual making it.  But they are not all the same and they don’t all mean the same thing.  And it is in understanding what, in each case, the sacrifice means and what that sacrifice involves that we can best understand the value for which it is made. 

And here we must begin with Jasmine.  The demon who captured Wesley continually refers to “love” for her.  And she too often refers to her power over others as “love”.  So, for example, when Angel and the gang try to flee the city they are confronted at a gas station by a bunch of Jasmine’s acolytes trying to stop them.  And from the mouths of some of them comes the voice of Jasmine herself.  From one of the men they hear:

“You can't outrun my love. It has wings made of radio.”

And through a little girl, Jasmine tells them:

“My love sings over the wires that bind this world.”

Then to Angel she elaborated what she meant by this:

            “The city is mine, vampire. All the tools are mine.”

In other words, now that Jasmine knew where Angel and the gang were, she was able to warn the police and they were even now converging on them.  So, here we can see that by “love”, Jasmine simply meant “control”.  Angel later referred to those who fought for Jasmine at the gas station as “a well-oiled, mind-controlled army of love”.  When he did so he was contrasting the disorganized rabble of the sewer kids to Jasmine’s acolytes.  But later they too fall under Jasmine’s thrall and when they do she asks one of them:

“Golden, my love, don't you want to hit them? Don't you want to kill them?”

Here we see an echo of the words she spoke earlier to Connor:

“Every moment that passes I grow closer to my followers. I feel what they feel, I see what they see. We're fusing together like the cells of a single body. They're my eyes, my skin, my limbs, and, if need be, my fists.”

For all her protestations of love, what Jasmine is actually doing for most of this episode is trying to hunt down and capture or kill Angel and the others.  Hardly a “loving” attitude.  But then for Jasmine, human lives count as nothing against her desire for power. 

Connor’s own relationship with Jasmine reflects the same values.  He defines his relationship to her as “belonging”:

“I'm finally part of something! I belong! I won't let anyone ruin that!”

And Jasmine picks up on this idea when she tells him to give his pain to her:

Jasmine: “To belong, to truly be a part of something, you have to surrender to it—completely. Cordelia has done that, but you...”

Connor: “I want to, really.”

Jasmine: “There's a part of you that you've kept from me—your pain.”

Connor: “I don't understand.”

Jasmine: “Pain has been the only constant in your life, the one thing that has never abandoned you. You think that pain is yours to keep and bear alone. But it's not. I want it. I want everything you are. Connor, father, let it go. Let me have it.”

And Connor, crying, submits.  Everything we know of the nature of Jasmine’s love points in the same direction.  It is all about controlling others, about taking everything about them into her hands (in Connor's case literally).  Hence the Mayor’s declaration of LA as the “citadel of Jasmine”, the Catholic Archdiocese’s decision to put up statues of Jasmine in churches, her pleasure at the Governor’s decision to hand control of California to her and her anticipation of her future residence:

“We will live in a palace built by the love of billions. It will make the pyramids of Giza look like the headstones in a pauper's graveyard.”

In the end Jasmine’s “love” comes down to her ability to control others.  It is nothing more.

And it is on this context that we understand the sacrifices made for her.  First of all when Connor needs to be healed, she has to eat five people to give her the energy for the purpose.  Then there is Cordelia’s fate.  Jasmine asks Connor to leave her alone with her mother and when he returns he finds that Cordelia is gone.  Jasmine will give no explanation about where she is gone:

Jasmine: “Connor, Cordelia's blood is a danger to us. If she falls into hateful hands, the hate can spread.”

Connor: “But where is she?”

 Jasmine: “She's where I want her to be. And so are you. Now come. Connor...”

For Jasmine, Cordelia's fate – like everything else - is ultimately important only insofar as it affects her.  Just to be brought into the world meant putting Cordelia in a coma.  Now, because Cordelia was a danger to her, Jasmine felt free to deal with her in the way that suited Jasmine’s regardless of what that might mean for Cordelia and regardless of Connor’s wishes.  And of course there was that chilling final scene in which the injuries suffered by those that Jasmine claimed to care for in the battle with the remaining members of Angel Investigations are reflected on her own body.  She of course heals the wounds on herself instantly but it is a fair assumption that the same thing will not happen to those who suffered them for her.  Yet far from empathizing with those who made this sacrifice on her behalf she is laughing joyously because of the prospect that this battle will make her power more secure.

But perhaps it is the case of the strange demon from the other world that shines the most interesting light on Jasmine’s love.  At one level it simply reinforces the idea that Jasmine only cares about her own power because she clearly, to their great distress, abandoned the creatures who were so devoted her her.  That was why the demon in the sewers was there.  But more interesting than Jasmine’s abandonment of them was the way they sought to get her back.  The demon they sent described the sacrifice he was making for the purpose in the following terms:

“Mmm, this blood magic. Flesh magic. Older than words. More much power. This magic she will hear. She will hear and remember her true ones.”

He was not only utterly contemptuous of the people he was sacrificing – referring to them as “talky meat” – but he is in the end quite prepared to sacrifice himself for her.  And he is insistent that he and his people “loved her first”.  This is an obsessive and exclusive love.  It leave no room for values other than Jasmine and what Jasmine wants.  And it is in fact mirrored by the discussion that the members of Angel Investigations who were so recently freed from their own thrall have when they remember the effect that Jasmine had on them.

Lorne: “I hate to say it, Dr. Pep, but I've been lost for, like, 2 hours.”

Wesley: “Still, I miss her. I miss the warmth and the knowing what's right and that you're doing it just by loving her.”

Gunn: “Tough drug to kick cold turkey.”

Fred: “I remember the first time she took me aside at that fight at the bowling alley. Me, pale, frail Winfred Burkle, sitting with a goddess, and she was asking me what her name should be.”

Jasmine is the center of everything.  She is what gives life meaning and nothing else matters.  Hence the sacrifices made for her.  Hence the fact that she never even contemplates sacrificing for others.  But the traffic is so one way that all of these sacrifices made for Jasmine cannot properly describe love.  What all of them describe is worship; and that is something that is very different.

On Being Human

Of course, being the object of such veneration gave Jasmine great power.  And it was, in fact, in reaction to this power of hers that Angel tried to separate himself from any feelings he had.  He said:

“If we don't gut ourselves and burn out everything inside that gave her power over us, then we're lost.”

I don’t think here he was referring to the mind control that Jasmine had exercised. He and the others were now  immune from that.  Rather it seems to me that he was thinking of the way that Jasmine had exploited his feelings for Cordelia and Connor throughout the present season.  I have returned a number of different times to this issue; so I will not repeat myself any further here.  I will simply say that it is clear that Angel thought far too much about Cordelia, his relationship with her and her relationship with Connor and not nearly enough about his responsibilities to others.  And then there was the rivalry between Gunn and Wesley over Fred.  All of these arguments took place in the name of love.  But their only effect was to split the team apart and create an atmosphere of desperation, despair and rivalry which ultimately led, among other undesirable consequences, to the return of Angelus. 

As it was, confusion and hopelessness already pervaded the car on the flight from the Hyperion:

Fred: ”What are we gonna do? What can we do?”

Wesley: “There has to be an answer.”

Angel: “There has to be a way. We just need time.”

Gunn: “To hell with that. We need a damn break. But the universe don't seem to be handing breaks out to the underdog lately. No leads, no database, no weapons, no shelter.

Wesley: “And very little gas.”

The danger was that, as they had so nearly done before, personal rivalries, jealousies and ambition among members of Angel Investigations would doom them now at the very time they needed unity and focus.  The signs were not good:

Fred: “I doubt anyone under her control knows these tunnels better than you.”

Angel: “Yeah, it should buy us some time.”

Gunn: “Time to do what? Get all stanky and starve to death? I mean, what are we doin'?”

Angel: “You know what? I don't know what we're gonna do, Gunn. I don't have a plan. Now, I guess this whole Jasmine world order thing kind of took me by surprise.”

Gunn: “Well, I ain't eatin' no rats.”

Angel: “Good. Neither am I. “

Gunn: “All right, then, plan's comin' together.

Angel: “Glad to see you're on board.”

So, Angel had good reason to fear that, with Cordelia and Connor in Jasmine’s power and with the team under so much pressure, allowing emotions such as love to cloud the atmosphere still further was asking for trouble.  That was why he was prepared first of all to beat Connor so severely and then leave him behind.  It was also why he was prepared to put Cordelia to the back of his mind.  These were major sacrifices for him.  But, as he said:

            “Hearts get in the way.”

And indeed to an extent Gunn too bought into this philosophy.  When he and Fred pursued the frightened and confused Matthew he told her:

“You heard Angel. Feelings don't enter into it anymore.”

And when they caught up with the boy, Gunn quite brutally knocked him out cold in order to bring him back underground and away from Jasmine’s influence.  Here was another sense in which we saw a sacrifice, not only the sacrifice of people (Connor, Cordelia and Matthew) but the sacrifice of feelings and emotions for those people – and all in the name of defeating Jasmine.

But it was this philosophy that Fred directly challenged: 

“That the world we're fighting for? The right to be heartless, an uncaring shell? To be dead inside?”

Angel and Gunn were looking for a way to beat Jasmine and for them that way simply involved cutting themselves off from her influence.  Hence the great plan to “get out of Dodge”, for all the good that did them.  Fred’s point was that this was no answer to Jasmine’s influence.  As we have seen Jasmine is the one who does what has to be done regardless of the cost to others.  Jasmine is the one who sacrifices others for her benefit.  Jasmine is the one who feels nothing for those she claims to love.  Angel’s attitude in coldly casting off Cordelia and in leaving behind his own son is, in fact, a mirror image of her attitude.  But Fred's attitude is very different.  This is best illustrated by the exchange between Gunn and Fred over Professor Seidel and their respective roles in killing him. Of course Gunn for his part initially tries to take the blame for it on himself.  Fred contradicts him and assumes her proper share of the guilt

Gunn: “Whatever. Point is, when the circumstances called for it, you did what you thought you had to. Didn't matter what anybody else thought

Fred: “You're right about all of it except for one thing. What we did, I felt it. Every bit of it. And, you know, sometimes when I allow myself to think about it, it eats me up inside.”

 Gunn: “Yeah, me, too.”

 Fred: “Well, I don't know about you, but... I'd take that over being a shell any day.”

As an acolyte of Jasmine, Fred would have killed for her and known that what she was doing was right.  If she had followed Angel’s advice, she would have killed to defeat Jasmine without pity and without remorse if that was what it took.  Anyone and anything could be sacrificed for the cause. 

But, for Fred, to be human was to have a different set if values. Sometimes it was necessary to make a sacrifice for a higher good; sometimes as a human you sacrificed others for less noble motives.  But to be human was to understand and to face the consequences of that sacrifice.  What was the point in sacrificing your feelings to defeat Jasmine when such a sacrifice made it difficult to distinguish you from another one of Jasmine’s acolytes?  After all it was those very feelings and emotions which made Fred, Angel and the others different from someone who only lived to serve Jasmine.  And we can see Fred's point illustrated by a comparison between two scenes at opposite ends of this episode.  Near the beginning the team are all trapped in a room with Connor pounding on the door and reinforcements from Jasmine’s other followers on the way.  Angel tells his friends to escape and when they hesitate he says:

“Run! Get the car! Get out of here. I'll hold him off. Someone who knows the truth has to live through this. Go!”

Then, at the end of the episode, the team are again trapped in an enclosed space with Connor and the National Guard trying to break down the door.  This time Wesley has provided a portal into another dimension which only Angel can use and he tells him to escape:

“Someone who knows the truth has to live through this. Angel, that's you.”

In spite of everything Angel has said about abandoning feelings and doing whatever is necessary to defeat Jasmine, he too hesitates.  He too feels badly about leaving his friends behind.  It seems he cannot follow his own advice.  For example, when he was newly arrived in the sewers and was inspecting the defenses of the kids’ hideout, Matthew saw blood on his hands and asked him whose it was.  His answer was:

“Somebody I knew who tried to do bad stuff to my friends.”

The words minimized his connection with Connor but the flashbacks told a different story.  This showed just what having to beat his own son cost Angel.  As Fred said, when he hesitated before entering the portal:

            “Hearts get in the way, right?”

This is a deliberate echo of Angel’s own words earlier, only the meaning is subtly different.  Angel there was justifying heartlessness.  Fred was acknowledging that what Angel has found out was that neither he nor any of the rest of them can be heartless.  So, Angel felt the cost of his friends’ sacrifice just as he had felt his own sacrifice of his son and it was this which proved his essential humanity.  It was what proved he was different from just another one of Jasmine’s followers.

Free Will

In their expression of what it means to be human in this episode,  I think that the writers have set out the address the fundamental issues posed by a choice between world peace on the one hand and free will on the other.  The first thing to notice about this is that, by doing so, they implicitly accept that it was not self-evident why free will was a higher virtue.  Nor is it.  The scale of evil in the world is vast.  The human misery it causes is incalculable.  What is so great about free will to tolerate the continuation of this evil?

And the next thing to notice about the way the writers approached the issue is that they seem to recognize that  the dark side of Jasmine’s vision of “world peace” is not in itself sufficient to justify free will.   As we have seen, her mind control involves objective evils which go well beyond a simple loss of free will.  If you simply attacked the way Jasmine behaved that will not, therefore, provide much of a justification for free will itself.  More particularly, if the choice between free will on the one hand and even Jasmine’s mind-controlled society on the other were determined simply on the balance of objective evils, then that balance would probably fall in Jasmine’s favor.

So, the writers instead concentrate on arguing that free will is an inherent part of who we are and that, without that, we lose something that makes us human.  And they do so not by contrast to Jasmine’s followers and their artificial state of “love” but rather by contrast of the philosophy expounded by Angel – their idea that they should burn out all their feelings and emotions.

I do have a reservation about this because the term “free will” is used only once in this episode when Gunn refers to Angel Investigations as “the free will gang” at the gas station.  And in the debate between Fred on the one hand and Angel and Gunn on the other over what it means to be human it is language such as feeling, heart and caring that is used. Nowhere do we find expressly articulated the connection between emotions and feelings and free will.  The closest the writers seem to get is when Fred and Gunn and talking about the death of Professor Seidel and  explicitly refer to their joint and collective feelings of guilt.  And indeed in some ways there are very important distinctions between emotions and free will.  “Free will” operates at the level of thought.  It means, as I have said before, taking moral responsibility for our actions.  In contrast we have no conscious control over emotion.  In addition, emotions are a morally neutral state.  One cannot talk about moral responsibility for feeling anger or love.  The moral responsibility relates to the way we consciously respond to those feelings – through our actions.

But equally free will does not mean random behavior.  It may be supposed that a person’s actions are the product of everything that makes that person who he or she is.  When given a choice a person will respond in a particular way because of all their own unique emotional and psychological baggage, their own gifts of reason and intelligence and their formative experiences and environment.  And we can see this from the example of Fred and Gunn’s actions over Professor Seidel.  In “Spin the Bottle” we were given an interesting insight into the formative characters of each of the members of Angel Investigations.  In Fred’s case, we saw someone who was anxious to believe in the honesty and sincerity of those who were close to her; but also someone who had a very strong sense of evil in the world.  This suggested that she had a very black and white view of things – someone was good or bad; there was little room for gray.  And this tendency would, if anything, have been heightened by her experiences in Pylea.  This was, of course, a world where everything was black and white – a world where you could be executed for simply stealing food.  It was also a world where Fred suffered horribly.  So, from both points of view, it must have left a mark on Fred.  Hence her willingness to judge transgressions harshly, hence her personal bitterness at her own suffering.  In short, hence her willingness to murder even though she knew it was wrong.

As for Gunn, his distinguishing characteristic appears to be his insecurity, especially over Fred.  And when he saw how Fred had initially turned to Wesley to help her kill Professor Seidel he must have realized that this might give his arch rival an opportunity to get closer to her.  That too, and not just a concern to shield her from the consequences of her own actions, must have played a part in his decision to actually kill Professor Seidel.

In other words Fred and Gunn, their attitudes and the way they acted are the result of their own unique mixture of psychology and experiences and it was these factors which shaped the choices that they faced.  Free will means that, no matter what decision they took in response to these factors, they always have the possibility of saying “we could have chosen otherwise”.  And because of that, when they chose to do the wrong thing, they have to take responsibility for it.  But equally inherent in this is that it is important that they do the choosing.  If a person’s choices are somehow dictated or constrained by outside forces beyond his or her control, then it follows that their actions and therefore the course of their life are the reflection not of who they are but of whom another wants them to be.  There is an unbreakable link between the concepts of moral responsibility on the one hand and freedom of choice on the other.  You cannot have one without the other.  And freedom of choice for every individual necessarily involves the right to be who you are, even if that involves actions which are destructive of yourself or others.  Each person deprived of freedom of choice therefore looses the right to be themselves as well the responsibility that goes along with that right.  That is what Fred meant when she referred to what Jasmine was offering as being a shell.

Of course, this also meant that human life came with risk – risk from ourselves and our self-destructive tendencies as well as risk from others and the adverse consequences to us of their selfishness.  But perhaps this is the real sacrifice to which the title of the episode refers – we give up safety and security to be free to fashion our own lives.  And it is the enormous scale of that sacrifice that tells us how much we value that.

And for my own part I think that in this episode the writers do broadly carry their argument.  I suppose you can say that there is a strong element of subjectivity in their justification for free will.  As we have seen, Fred argues that the fact that she feels badly about her part of Professor Seidel’s murder is a price worth paying for the right to be herself.  I have to point out that if we looked at the equation from Professor Seidel’s point of view, things would look rather different.  And indeed if you were to look at matters from the point of view of all those whom the members of Angel Investigations individually and collectively sacrificed on the altar of their own humanity, Fred’s words would look rather hollow.  It is all very well Fred talking about how badly she feels or by extension Angel, Gunn and Wesley feeling badly about their own individual and collective failings this season but they are not the ones who have paid the highest price.

But leaving that objection to one side, the writers have to be given credit for tackling one of the most intractable problems of human existence and with having come up with a coherent and I think convincing argument to justify their position.

The Plot

If there is one criticism to be made of the plotting of this final part of the season it is that ever since Jasmine arrived, things have been a little static.  The nature of the threat that she posed has become clearer, a way to free someone from her influence has emerged but we have no sense of a fight back or indeed of any opportunity to change the status quo.  Since Fred’s ridiculous assassination attempt in “Shiny Happy People” no one has even looked like getting anything significant done against Jasmine.  And that is a problem.  Set-up or, in this case, build up is good.  It creates tension.  And that is certainly a strength of “Sacrifice” because right from the beginning we get a palpable sense of desperation, perhaps even something close to despair.  Angel mauls his own son and then leaves Cordelia behind, later somewhat coldly declaring that this was what had to be done.  But, having narrowly escaped from the Hyperion, all the members of Angel Investigations can now think to do is “get out of Dodge”.  And frankly their planning here is as absent as it was in Fred’s failed attempt to kill Jasmine.  In contrast Jasmine has never seemed more powerful.  She has the entire city behind her and her influence is spreading.  Even the attempt by Angel and the others to get out of LA flounders. 

But tension can only be sustained for so long before it has to be released.  Otherwise the audience just start to loose interest.  And the delay in any sort of release has started to get a bit wearing.  So, I am happy that here at last we get the break that Gunn was looking for.  Now at last we can see the possibility of events being steered towards their final denouement.  Better still the way that the team gets its break came in a most unexpected way.

Surprise is always an essential tool of storytelling.  If events are predictable they don’t make much of a story.  But sometimes creating a surprise is difficult and one way of achieving it is under the cover of a little piece of misdirection.  That was what we get here.  No sooner had Angel and the others escaped from Jasmine’s pursuit than they were launched into a new set of problems, seemingly unconnected with the main story arc.  And those problems were fairly involving.  The kids taking refuge in the sewers make believable and sympathetic victims, especially Matthew.  Golden’s description of how he came to be with the others:

“We found him in a pile-up on La Brea. Vamps laid tire traps on the road, havin' themselves a car-wreck picnic. He watched them murder his parents. They were comin' after him when we showed up.”

is a reminder of the price that so many people have paid not only for Jasmine’s ambitions but for the mishandling by members of Angel Investigations of their responsibilities.  The circumstances in which they found themselves – being hunted in the sewers by an unknown demon – was about as creepy and threatening as you could get.  This sort of claustrophobic, dark and atmosphere is ideal for ANGEL as a series, reinforcing its links with the horror genre.

And the demon itself was genuinely interesting and not just a movable prop as so many are.  It gives meaning to the term the “banality of evil”.  It did the unthinkable in a routine, organized and systematic way, carefully even artistically arranging human (and vampire) body parts.  It obviously took a pride in its work and that work was important to it.  Yet the ugly, degrading and murderous nature of what it was doing didn’t even occur to it – hence his references to “talky meat” as if other creatures had no more importance than that.

But it was only as  events were unfolding that we began to understand the real importance of what we were seeing – the situation was being used by the writers to create the crisis that would provide the fulcrum around which this final part of the 4th season arc finally turned.  So, we had Matthew running off when he saw Angel’s game face, thus setting in train the events that eventually led to Connor and the National Guard pounding at the locked door behind which members of Angel Investigations were sheltering.  But more importantly, it led to the important scenes between the demon and Wesley  in which the latter discovered the demon’s connection with Jasmine,  a potential way to defeat her and a way for Angel both to escape from Jasmine and find this talisman.  That was all quite a clever piece of plotting, even though it did involves a number of improbabilities.

But these are really rough edges of the plot that can be overlooked.  I am rather more concerned about what now promises to be the way that Angel finally challenges Jasmine’s power.  Ever since the nature of her threat was revealed, the big question was: how do you negate her influence.  Her own or Cordelia’s blood was never going to be an answer.  It was scarcely believable that Angel and the others could use enough of it so widely as to affect a significant number of people.  But if we didn't have that as a solution, then what?  Having someone intent on world peace emerge as the big bad for the season was a strong concept.  It was unusual but at the same time it was well enough executed to make it a credible threat.  What it called for was an equally strong concept for how the threat was to be aborted.  And here I am sorry to say the writers seem to have gone for the traditional rather than trying to think outside the box when they suggested that Jasmine’s weakness is her secret name:

“You creatures! Throwing your names all over all the time! That's why you're so weak. Too many are knowing your names, takes your power away.”

Names have always been important in Western societies.  In the Judeo Christian tradition, when Moses asked God His name he was told “I Am Who I Am”.  In other words, that’s none of your business.  The tale of Rumplestiltskin turns on the discovery of a secret name, as does the opera "Turandot".  And to take a more prosaic example, it is the surest indication that you are in trouble to hear someone using your full name: “Paul Joseph Gerard, come here” is so much more intimidating than “Paul, come here”.  So, yes names do have power.  And that is because essentially we are conditioned to understand things through the medium of language. I will pause here to note that it seems odd that a culture that does not value language in the way we do should share the view that knowing your name gives power to someone over you.

My real problem though is somewhat different.  It is that, while this, as a solution would make some sort of  sense, it would also lack any real imagination.  It has been done too many times before.  It would be almost anti-climactic when dealing with a creature of such seemingly absolute power.

On the other had no-one could say that the end of this episode was anti-climatic as we saw Connor leading his troops in a savage fight against the remainder of Angel Investigations while Jasmine laughed maniacally at the evidence of the slaughter inflicted.  And at the same time Angel himself seems trapped and surrounded by dozens of the nasty looking demons.  That's what you call a cliff-hanger.

Overview (A-)

The centerpiece of this episode was in the way that it articulated the philosophical difference between Jasmine's concept of world peace and the concept of free will shared by Angel and the members of his team.  If the Jasmine arc has been about anything, it has been about the importance of free will.  Up until now we have tended to define Jasmine's actions as wrong because of her lust for power and the objective evils she has committed for that purpose.  But if the arc was going to mean more than "megalomania is wrong", the writers needed to explain convincingly why free will itself was important and why giving it up was wrong.  And I think that they managed to do  so here by articulating a coherent view of why free will was an essential element in what made us humans.    In addition to that, we also get a rather dark, atmospheric and scary story.  True there were a few rough edges in the plotting.  But here were helpless kids you could sympathize with (and whom the gang didn't end up betraying) and a nasty yet entertaining demon.  But best of all while the episode started out with a feeling of despair and helplessness, it saw real (and somewhat unexpected) progress towards the resolution of the Jasmine arc.  In particular there was a great closing sequence in which there was angst, action and what promises to be a strong set-up for the climax of the season as Wesley, Gunn and Fred in the sewers and Angel in the demon dimension each face hopeless odds.