EPISODE 4.13

SALVAGE

Written by:  David Fury

Directed by:  Jefferson Kibbee

A Ship on the Rocks

The title of this episode comes from something Faith says when she walks into the Hyperion for the first time:

“Arm yourself how you like, but I want you to carry the tranq gun. If I can't take him down, I want you to be ready to take the shot, yeah? In case anyone has any other ideas, this is a salvage mission, not search and destroy, OK?”

Here she is clearly referring to her desire to capture Angelus rather than kill him.  Only by doing so do she and the remainder of Angel Investigations have a hope of restoring Angel’s soul.  If they kill Angelus, then that is the end of Angel too.  However this episode is a salvage mission in an even larger sense. Salvage is the process of rescuing the hull, equipment or cargo of a shipwreck. Generally, it occurs when the ship sinks, runs aground or is drifting.  The crew has abandoned her or at least lost control. Well, Angel Investigation’s efforts to combat the Beast are pretty much a shipwreck.  And the remaining crew have certainly lost control of the situation. They have an enemy who they do not know how to hurt let alone kill.  This enemy is also continually one step ahead of them.  It destroyed the Ra-Tet and blotted out the sun, thus making LA  a demon’s playhouse.  Worse than that they now discover that this enemy is just a minion in the service of something even more powerful.  And at this point they don't even know that this Master of the Beast is actually disguised as Cordelia and is not only aware of their every move but actually manipulating them into co-operating with her plans.   And the icing on the cake is that the method they chose to fight back against the Beast involved getting rid of Angel, returning Angelus and then allowing him go free so that he could kill them all.  And now they are reduced to hiding in the Hyperion waiting for Angelus to come after them.  At one point, Fred desperately suggests:

“If Angelus is coming back for us, we can't just be waiting for him to drop by. We need to do something. Board up the windows, make it safe somehow.”

Hiding therefore is now the team’s idea of “doing something.”  I may of course have left one or two things out but that gives a good enough flavor of the situation, I think.

But it is at this point that the salvage operation really begins.  And fittingly enough it begins with Wesley.  I don’t propose to go over well trod ground again.  Suffice to say, the team’s parlous state is due in no small measure to their own failings: the way they allowed personal issues to distract them, to sow the seeds of distrust among them and to lead them into a state of despair and desperation.  In that frame of mind they took bad decisions for the wrong reasons, most particularly the decision to return Angelus.  And in all of this Wesley played a key role.  He was the one who cynically exploited Fred’s anger at Professor Seidel for his own benefit and tried to drive a wedge between her and Gunn.  He was also the one who pushed hardest for the return of Angelus, partly because of his own distrust of Angel and partly because he wanted to prove that he could be a “champion” in his own right by getting vital information when no-one else could. 

Conversations with Dead People

As I have observed before, Wesley is a decent moral man but there has always been a dark side to him.  And it is this darker side that has driven his agenda – even at the risk of dividing and weakening Angel Investigations just as it was struggling with the Beast.  But when confronted by the harm that this darkness within him has contributed to, he not only has to re-evaluate past actions, he has to decide what does he do about things from here on in.  And it is here that we see the importance of his conversation with the dead Lilah.  Only it’s not really a conversation with Lilah at all.  When she suggests that Wesley was trying to save her, he asks was that what she thought.  Her reply is:

“I'm not even here. I'm just a figment in your devilishly handsome head. So, clearly, it's what you thought.”

Wesley is having trouble severing Lilah’s head.  When he does so, he must finally accept that she is gone.  But before that he has to resolve his own very ambiguous attitude to her.  Despite his reluctance at times to acknowledge it, he really did have genuine feelings for her:

Wesley: “It wasn't a relationship.”

Lilah: “There's a signed dollar bill in your wallet I think proves different. You knew how I felt.”

But at the same time there was a part of him that was very uncomfortable indeed with those feelings.  As Lilah pointed out:

“Why so glum? It is kinda what you wanted, isn't it? I mean, deep down. Me out of the picture—utterly, finally. You can't get outer than this. It makes your life simpler, doesn't it? Cleaner?”

Resolving his own conflicting thoughts and feelings about Lilah will not only allow him finally figure out why he entered into a relationship with her in the first place.   The answer to that question will also tell him (and us) a great deal about who Wesley really is.  This is because what we see in the conversation between Wesley and DeadLilah is really a debate going on in Wesley’s own head about what  Wesley himself fundamentally wants in life.

As we have seen, DeadLilah begins the conversation by challenging him about his feelings for her:

“Come on, what are you worried about, Wesley? You hated yourself for being with me. Or maybe you just hated yourself for loving being with me. Hey, semantics. In any case, we both knew, sooner or later, it would come to a messy end. For one of us, anyway. So ease up on that furrowed brow. You're free now. No longer encumbered with the secret shame of our relationship.”

Wesley’s wants to do the right thing.  But he continued his relationship with Lilah in spite of the risks he ran doing so.  She was trying to ensnare him in Wolfram and Hart’s trap.  She almost got him involved in Justine’s murder.  And she successfully used him in “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” to get at Lorne’s memories. For him she represented all that he should be fighting.

For Wesley, Fred on the other hand did represent a degree of moral clarity that his relationship with Lilah did not.  And undoubtedly his decision to choose the side of good reflected his conviction that that was the same side that Fred was on. But as I observed in my review of “Habeas Corpses” it is simply not credible to suppose that Wesley’s decision to leave Lilah at that time was influenced exclusively by the fact that she was a servant of evil.  He had to long a history of ignoring such considerations.  The fact that Wesley could now see the prospect of Fred breaking up with Gunn must have something to do with his decision.  And his behavior in trying to win Fred over was cynical, self-centered and manipulative.  It was not, in fact, that far removed from some of Lilah’s own behavior patterns.  And if Wesley’s reaction to Lilah’s death was really one of relief that things had got much simpler for him now, we could say that perhaps the foundation of the attraction between them was that they were more alike than Wesley liked to think.

But then the conversation between them takes a very different turn.  DeadLilah tells Wesley:

“I know what it is. The reason you're having such a hard time with this. Why you're taking so long to—you know... The awful truth: you couldn't save me. And this is the exclamation point.”

At first Wesley is a little slow to understand what she is really saying so she has to elaborate for him:

“Wesley, you know that's not what I'm talking about. You couldn't save me from me…..For all your supposed darkness, edge of the razor mystique, there was always a small part of you that thought you could pull me back from the brink of my evil, evil ways. Help me find redemption.”

Then she goes on to invoke an interesting comparison:

“Angel's influence, I suppose. The whole not giving up on someone, no matter how far he—or she—has fallen. Oh, well. Too late for me.”

The suggestion here is that Wesley wasn’t attracted to the darkness in Lilah.   He wasn’t in the relationship with her because of the things she had done.  He was in the relationship in spite of all that.  He wanted to save her.  Of course he wasn’t perfect.  He didn’t do everything he could to save her and ultimately he bailed on the relationship for essentially selfish reasons.  In DeadLilah’s very first words to him, quoted above, he admits as much to himself.  But that doesn’t change the fact that he wanted to save her – to salvage her if you like.  And this was a philosophy that he shared with Angel.  In “Five by Five” Faith had tried to kill Angel.  And she kidnapped and tortured Wesley.  But still Angel wouldn’t give up on her in spite of everything she had done.  She was a human being and deserved a second chance and in “Sanctuary” that is what Angel fought so hard to give her.  And let’s face it: who now needs a second chance more than the members of Angel Investigations – Angel and Wesley included.  As DeadLilah admitted, for her it was now too late.  But for Angel it wasn’t.  As he had shown with Faith (and indeed on other occasions) he too was worth salvage.  And by not giving up on him  Wesley was at the same time showing that he too deserved a second chance.

And he showed it too by the way that he reacted to what appeared to be Angelus’ murder of Lilah.  We need not doubt the shock and grief that this caused to Wesley.  The fact that he had so much difficulty in saying goodbye to her is proof of that.  But it wasn’t only her death itself that hurt; Angelus taunted him about it in the most cruel way possible:

“Oh, geez, fellas—this isn't what it looks like. A little too tart for me, anyway. You know what I mean, Wes? Catch ya later.”

But when Connor demands they go after Angelus, Wesley calmly  points out that there was no need – the  vampire would be back.  And even more tellingly he adds:

“That's just the kind of reckless thinking that allowed Angelus to double back on us, giving him the chance to…”

It seems to me however that it’s not only that one incident when Angelus escaped that Wesley is thinking about here.  It is the whole course of the team’s actions (and especially his own part n them) that led to where they were now – to Lilah’s death.  So, he didn’t strike out in anger.  He didn’t seek revenge on Angelus.  He didn’t blame Cordelia for the spell that went wrong.  It wasn’t the cynical, self-centered and manipulative Wesley who reacted.  It was the decent moral man in him that recognized what needed to be done:

“We get rid of Angelus, then what? We still have a beast we don't know how to kill. We know it's working for something much worse, but we don't know what it is. We're caught in the middle of a maelstrom, and we can't get out without our champion. We're gonna save Angel, and I know who we need to help us do it.”

For a man who had tried to displace Gunn in Fred’s affections and sought to prove himself a champion by persuading the others to return Angelus and failed so spectacularly, these were generous words.  Not only was he admitting that Angel was the team’s champion.  He was also recognizing that someone else had to be brought in to clean up the mess he had helped create.  And that person was Faith – the same Faith who had tortured him in “Five by Five”.  The same Faith who blamed him for everything that had gone wrong in her life and the same Faith whose side Angel had taken over his.  It is hardly possible to imagine a person whose help he welcome less.  Yet it was to Faith that he turned.  We get some idea of the awkwardness of this decision for him personally by their opening conversation:

“Hello, Faith. How are you?”

“Still alive. Never thought I'd live long enough to see you paying me a visit.”

But it was the right thing to do in the circumstances and, in a clear departure form recent behaviour, Wesley chose to do the right thing regardless of his own personal feelings.

By these actions Wesley also showed he too was worth salvage.  And symbolically just as he turned this corner and started doing the right thing for the right reason, the tide started to turn (to continue the nautical metaphor) for the team as a whole.  In order to defend themselves from Angelus, Lorne suggests the Sanctuary Spell he had used in “Caritas”.  Connor is dismissive:

“Magic again. You people rely way too much on that junk.”

And certainly there have been many occasions when magic has gone badly wrong.  We can think for example of the spell Angel cast in “Forgiving”, the spell that ultimately created the portal through which Connor drove the sluks who killed poor Phil.  And most recently there was the dark magic spell which failed entirely to restore Angel’s soul.  But on both occasions, the attitude of those who cast the spell was also wrong.  In “Forgiving” Angel was intent on revenge against Sahjhan.  In “Calvary” Cordelia was taking advantage of the others’ desperation to get rid of Angelus because he had been uncovering all their dirty little secrets.  In this case, as Wesley said they were just using the tools at their disposal to help protect themselves.  And as a result the magic worked. 

Having Faith

But above all it was Faith who was the catalyst for change.  And she was able to make such a difference because she had no selfish agenda of her own.  She wanted to help – especially Angel – and she put that above her own personal interests.  We can see this quite clearly from the moment Wesley told her about what had happened to Angel.  When Wesley first asked for her help she pointed to the limitations of her circumstances:

“Well, uh, I hate to wet the paper for you, Wes, but I'm kinda unavailable right now. Maybe you want to check back in a few decades when my parole comes up.”

But when she realized why her help was needed she didn’t hesitate.  Her immediate response was:

“Step away from the glass.”

Escape from prison was risky even for someone like her.  Then there is the fact that the Government takes an understandably dim view of escapees.  She could either look forward to a life on the run or a stiff increase in her sentence on her return to prison.  Furthermore there was the question of her own redemption.  Serving time for what she had done was after all a necessary part of that process.  There was much in these considerations that deserved careful weighing.  But none of them played any part in her decision because she was not thinking about herself at all – she was thinking about Angel.  And it was that fact that marked her behaviour as so different to everyone else (including Angel) to date. And it is this fact that helps her see with stunning clarity why releasing Angelus was such a bad idea:

Faith: “Unleashing Angelus to help you stop this demon who put the lights out. That's just...”

Wesley: “The Beast. The demon who put out the lights—called the Beast.”

Faith: “Gas to the flame's all I'm saying.”

If Angel Investigations had looked at the matter with similarly uncluttered minds they would have seen that too.

It is the same clarity of purpose that she brings to saving Angel.  She tells Wesley straight out:

“I'm not gonna kill him, Wesley. Angelus. I don't care what you thought you sprung me for. Angel's the only one in my life who's never given up on me. There's no way I'm giving up on…”

Here I do not think that we see a personal agenda as such.  She is identifying her intent to save Angel with his own philosophy – Angel at his best, if you like.    As I have already pointed out and as Faith admits here, in “Five by Five” and “Sanctuary”  Angel wouldn’t give up on her in spite of everything she had done.  The same chance is what she wants to give him.  And as we have also seen it is here that Faith is joined by Wesley:

“I know. That's why it had to be you. Just wondering if you're up to it.”

It is through their joint commitment to giving Angel a second chance that they also help salvage the fortunes of Angel Investigations.  She and Wesley are clearly operating on the same wavelength.  And Gunn too seems to respond very positively to her challenge:

Faith: “Love the name. I hear you're a good fighter.”

Gunn: “I hold my own.”

Faith: “That's a shame. You're with me, Wes, and the kid. “

And her attitude to Cordelia also is very businesslike:

“Cordelia, you have every right to feel that way about me. You have no reason to trust me, but I don't have loads of time, so why don't we save it until after this is over. Cool?”

Again and again we come back to this central idea she has – this is not about Faith; it’s about helping Angel.  And the importance of that change in attitude is symbolized by what happens at the end of this episode.  Unexpectedly, just when the situation seems hopeless and the Beast is about to kill Faith and tow vampires are about the kill Wesley their fortunes turn dramatically for the better.  This time it is their enemy who sabotages his own cause as Angelus kills the Beast and brings back the sun.  Thus Angel Investigations is given its first major success.

A Lost Cause?

And here we turn to Connor.  Because in contrast to Faith, for Connor it really still is all about him.  He resents being told what to do and he refuses to let go of his personal vendetta against his father:

“You think you can just breeze in here, telling everyone what to do? You're not a part of this. If you think I'm not gonna kill Angelus if he comes at me, then…”

But Faith will let nothing stand in her way.  When Connor threatens to get out of control she puts him in his place:

“Are you a murderer? 'Cause I am. If it comes down to you or Angelus, you haven't shown me a thing to make me want to take your side.”

And with that she sent him home – and he went.  Not only that but his admiration and respect for her seems to grow.  When the Beast is destroyed and the sun returns, he credits her without knowing the facts:

“She must've fought it. Faith. The Beast must've attacked her, and she must… It's gotta be.”

An earlier conversation between Gunn and Lorne had posed the crucial question about Connor:

Gunn: “Connor. The first chance that boy gets, he's gonna kill Angelus."

Lorne: “Yeah, more likely die trying. Trouble is, we can't keep that boy in check. “

 Gunn: “Yeah, well, Angel aside, who could?”

Gunn here may have meant that only Angel could keep Connor in check.  But the reality is that it is two women who here are battling for his soul, assuming of course that Cordelia is really still human.

She and Faith each stand for very different values, very different ways of doing things.  Faith, as we have seen, throughout this episode stands for doing the right thing, without regard to your self-interest or your own personal agenda.  And encouragingly, as we have seen, she eventually makes a powerful impact on young Connor with this message:

“I had no idea what a slayer could do.”

But in direct contrast to her stands Cordelia.  She seeks to influence Connor by an appeal precisely to his self-interest and his own personal agenda.  She chooses the moment when the Beast is destroyed to tell him of her pregnancy:

“All I know is there's a life growing inside of me, and it's ours. We're connected now. You and me. Forever.”

This is an appeal to Connor not to do what is right but rather for him to honor the personal connection he has with Cordelia and the exclusive responsibilities that he has to her and her child.  The timing of this appeal clearly demonstrates an agenda.  Cordelia is seeking to manipulate Connor in the same way that she manipulated him before – by speaking to the worst in him.  This is the part of him that allowed his attitude to Angel and Angelus to be colored by his own personal animus.  She is playing on the same tendencies in Connor that, when they surfaced in Angel, Wesley and Gunn led to distrust, division and despair.  Starting with Wesley, and now with Faith on the case, it seems that Angel Investigations are well on their way to salvaging the control of their own lives from these self-destructive tendencies.  The question is whether this salvage operation will embrace Connor as well.

A Turning Point

One of the things I like about season 4 of ANGEL is the way that it tells a classic story in a classically structured way.  Most of the season up until “Long Day’s Journey” shows the way in which the flaws and failings of the individual members of Angel Investigations led them to make a catastrophic mistake.  In “Awakening” we see that mistake and in “Soulless and “Calvary” we see the consequences of that that mistake.  Here in “Salvage” we see the team begin to recover from it.  And what for me works so well is the way that this recovery ties in so neatly to everything that went before.  So, the catalyst for change is Wesley.  As I have already pointed out, it was Wesley who facilitated Fred’s plan to murder Professor Seidel.  That was the step that marked a turning point in her relationship with Gunn and Wesley too was instrumental in further dividing them.  He was also the one who most enthusiastically embraced the idea of returning Angelus.  This was partly out of a distrust of Angel and partly out of a misplaced sense that he could prove his worth by getting the information they needed from Angelus.  So, it is ironic that he was the one to suffer most of all from that decision.  Angelus ended any hope he had for a relationship with Fred when he revealed Wesley’s affair with Lilah.  And he ended any possibility of a relationship with Lilah when he killed her.

But it was that murder that proved the catalyst for Wesley.  Looking at what he had lost and why that meant so much to him made him realize what was fundamentally important to him.  He had pursued Fred as if she were a prize in a contest to see whether he or Gunn were the better man.  And for that purpose he had acted in a cynical, controlling and ruthless way.  But his self-centeredness and insecurity were only part of Wesley’s nature.  Because of them his sense of morality could spill over into self-righteousness and his desire to do the right thing could spill over into dogmatic certainty.  But it was the realization that he wanted to help Lilah that showed Wesley there was another side to his – a side that really wanted to do good for others.

I find this a very believable epiphany.  Lilah’s death was certainly a powerful enough event in his life  to make him question what his relationship with her meant to him, thus provoking questions about what he really wanted.  And in this context “Salvage” doesn’t ask us to disregard the darkness in Wesley’s past actions.  Nor does it magically banish that darkness either.  Indeed the episode explicitly recognizes the conflict raging within Wesley and the significance of his previous wrongdoing.  But it shows us why Lilah’s death suddenly gave him a different perspective on his earlier actions and made him realize that they did not represent what he really wanted.  This not only had far greater depth than Wesley repenting because he blamed himself for Lilah’s death.  As we have already seen from “The Price” Wesley has a highly developed facility for persuading himself things were not his fault.   So what we saw here was also much more credible. 

And a believable epiphany was a necessary stage in the arc.  Angel Investigations’ failures to date were due in large part to their individual and collective flaws and failings.  Accordingly, any renewed sense of  hope must be based on a realization of the need to change.  It is perhaps one of the weaknesses of the episode that we do not see the same realization drawn out in the case of either Gunn or Fred.  This is, however, not the same problem it might otherwise have been because at the same time “Salvage” suggests very strongly that even with a new perspective on their behaviour to date, actual change for the team was beyond its own collective power.  The rot had set in and the state of despair and distrust that had pervaded “Angel Investigations” could not have credibly vanished without some outside agency.  And this is where the introduction of Faith worked so well.  At one level of course, a slayer was an invaluable ally against Angelus or the Beast for that matter.  But as we have seen Faith’s impact in this episode came not through her physical prowess but rather through her attitude.  She provided a breath of fresh air with new thinking and a new spirit.  For her, it was not a matter of “what does this mean for me”.   For her it was a matter of “how can I help others”. And it was this that Gunn and, to an extent, Connor responded to.  Gunn pretty much summed her impact up when he said:

“I like her.”

It is because of Faith and her attitude that we can now see a genuine sense of a new direction and renewed hope.  And that is what really works about her reintroduction to Angel’s world.

The Plot

The central problem facing Angel Investigations throughout this episode was how could they capture Angelus without killing him.  Of course, no-one was going to take seriously the danger that anyone might actually kill Angelus so it was a wise move on the part of the writers to play down that issue.  Instead, from the moment that Wesley and the others interrupt Angelus as he feeds on Lilah’s dead body, they leave us asking “who here is in pursuit of whom?”  Faced with a posse that includes not only Wesley but also Connor and Gunn, Angelus finds himself for the moment overmatched and he makes a hasty exit.  But, with the possible exception of Connor, he is clearly more than a match for each of his opponents individually.  And he certainly has the skill and stealth to ambush them.  Wesley recognizes this:

“From now on, we all stay close.”

And indeed, as we have already seen, they also take sensible precautions in the form of the Sanctuary spell.  But for the episode theme of salvage to be meaningful, the team could not simply stay in hiding.  And this is where Faith comes in.  Our very first view of her is as she almost effortlessly disarms and savagely beats an attacker.  And this impression of how formidable she remains is only increased when a guard observes:

“I mean, who'd be crazy enough to try to take you out?”

Indeed Faith’s sense of purpose is powerfully reflected in her actions.  As we have seen, when she learns of the nature of the problem in LA she reacts instantly and decisively by breaking out.  And the way that she did so (although on the whole straining credulity) serves to emphasise the power of a slayer.  And this is a message rammed home even further by the way she disposes of a few vamps thrown in her path by Wesley.

So, when she announces that she is going after Angelus we have to take her very seriously.  The hunter has become the hunted.  But then the writers hand us yet another change in direction.  As she and Wesley close in on their prey, Faith mutters:

“Something'll turn up. A trail of bodies, tell-tale clue... maybe a carpet fiber.”

She then looks up at a huge sign hung from the side of a building that reads "WELCOME FAITH".  The two of them have run into an ambush and soon find themselves fighting for their lives: Faith against the Beast and Wesley against two vampires.

Then once again things change.  Just as the Beast has Faith at his mercy, Angelus betrays and kills him, seemingly giving him the upper hand against Faith.  But, by doing so he restores the sun and thus not only saves Wesley but also indirectly provides Faith with a means of saving herself.  There is therefore one change of direction after another.   The problem is that for the moment at least Faith isn’t fighting anyone who can engage our interest to the same extent as she can.  The events of this episode prove that Angelus was right in his assessment of the Beast.  It was simply a slow witted (though physically powerful) minion.  The exchange between EvilCordelia and him proves this, especially where she rebukes him:

“What about you? Letting him bait you into a fight like that. I haven't spent all this time and energy so you can mess it all up with your petty jealousies. You know Angelus is crucial to my plan.”

And the way the Beast allowed itself to be fatally sucker-punched just about defines stupidity.  This isn’t bad in itself.  It simply means that, whereas we thought it was the Beast that was always a step ahead of Angel Investigations, it turns out it was the Beast’s master. The Beast was simply a clever piece of misdirection that allowed the writers to conceal the identity of the real “Big Bad” for the season and getting rid of it now allows us more clearly to identify and concentrate on her as such.  And the fact that

adds further mystery and interest to that plan.  In passing let me say that the fact that Cordelia is pregnant is hardly a surprise.  But it is very economical plotting. At the time it seemed that her decision to sleep with Connor merely served to undermine Angel’s own self-belief.  Now we see it has an entirely different purpose.  But for the moment that remains background and, with the Beast reduced to the status of a mere pawn of both Cordelia and Angelus, the real opponent in this episode for Faith was Angelus.  And as a villain he is less than impressive.  We get our first clear impression of him in a seedy demon bar.   This scene was horribly misconceived.  There was no hint of menace about him.  Instead the accent was on humor as he was treated as a minor celebrity with his own adoring fan club.  These “fans” were faintly ridiculous and when Angelus meets their excesses with violence we cannot take this seriously.  And disconcertingly much of Angelus’ involvement in the episode continues in the same vein as he is accompanied by two stupid and fawning vampire acolytes in his search for the Beast:

Vampire 1: “Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the place (turning to his friend) - this is the place, right?

Vampire 2: “Hey, man, you saw the thing. I didn't.”

Time and time again the accent is on humor, as when he figures out that its Faith and not Buffy in LA:

            “It’s the other one!”

Or again we have his running commentary on the Beast’s fight with Faith.  Much of this was of itself highly entertaining but overplaying Angelus as a “fun character” I think meant he lost a great deal of credibility as an opponent for Faith.  And, while it was clever of him to manoeuver Faith into fighting the Beast, in some ways that lost him even more credibility.  It shows that, deep down, he is afraid of her.  Not only that, his vanity when he first met the Beast was all too evident:

“Look, you may have played those suckers at Angel, Inc., but I don't like having my strings yanked, and I don't like being kept in the dark... Figuratively, anyway. And if your boss was half as smart as he thinks he is, he knows I won't take orders from a lackey. What? You don't like "lackey?" Hmm. Or how about, uh, toady? Or lickspittle? Lickspittle's nice. Oh, wait, I got it. Flunky. That's it. You're just a big, stupid, butt-ugly,) slow-moving flunky. Ah, come on, Rocky. If that's all you got, you better throw in the towel and call it a night. When the Beastmaster's ready to peek out from behind your skirt, have him give me a call. “

This sort of attitude never suggests competence.  And the fact that he killed the creature for no good reason makes him stupider than he thinks he is.  He knows the Beast has a master, knows the master is very powerful, has evil intent and wants to make a deal with him.  Why not use the Beast to find out more about this person?  Indeed why take the risk that the Beast’s death might bring back the sun.

And as if to prove my point Angelus finally falls for a trick with swinging chains shattering darkened glass that was so obvious that even I saw it coming.  No, hard as it may be to believe the creature that was so menacing in “Innocence” and “Passions” is actually turning out to be the weak point of this particular stage of the arc.

Overview (A)

Salvage seems to be a genuine turning point for the team.  Wesley’s change of heart and the role that Lilah’s death played in it was pretty well thought out and this give it some credibility.  The scenes between the former watched and Lilah’s ghost were genuinely touching.  But the real success of the episode was the re-introduction of Faith.  She was a genuine breath of fresh air with her no-nonsense get it done attitude.  This was precisely what the team needed and stood in stark contrast to the way they had been behaving up until now.   We can, therefore, begin to believe they are moving at last in the right direction and now even have results to show for it.  The plot too maintained our interest with a series of twists and turns that kept us off balance and wondering what was going to happen next.  The one disappointment was the lack of menace from Angelus.  To this point he doesn’t appear to have killed a single human being and has actually been more of a hindrance to the development of whatever plans Cordelia has.  Of course the latest revelation form Cordelia at the end wasn’t exactly a surprise.  Nevertheless the mystery of who Cordelia is, what she wants and why does she have a special interest in both Connor and Angelus remains intriguing.  And these obvious strengths of the episode more than outweigh its one clear weakness.