EPISODE 1.19

SANCTUARY

Written by Tim Minear & Joss Whedon

Directed by: James Lange

Redemption for Faith?

In "Five by Five" we saw Faith reduced to her lowest point, a point she probably didn't realize she could reach.  She had been left without any shred of self-respect and was helplessly asking to be put out of her misery.  But she was still not yet at the point where she was explicitly looking for redemption.  Here I am happy draw upon the parallel between her and Marquez.  Both Marquez and Faith had souls and, as Wesley pointed out, both therefore had "deep down inside an urge to do what's right."  But that does not mean they will do so.  When trying to persuade Marquez to testify in the murder case, Angel had told him: 

"You're gonna have to face your demons sometime." 

In reply, Marquez said "What if I don't want to face my demons?"  Angel's counter is "Then you'll have to face mine." In other words Angel was saying to Marquez: "I will force you to testify."  And, while it is not made explicit, it may very well be that that is what happened.  Marquez testifies not because he sees the light but because the consequences of not doing so are more immediately painful.  Thus, although Marquez has the possibility of being redeemed, he may not have been.  With this parallel the writers may be telling us that redemption lies in Faith's hands but that she may still make the wrong choice.  And this possibility is reinforced dramatically by the scene in which, in a daydream, she repeatedly stabs Angel.  This is a reprise of the scene in "Who Are You" when she attacks Willow.  Later we see Faith with a real knife and Angel has to disarm her and she makes one attempt to run away. These instances warn us just how dangerous and unstable Faith still is.  Redemption is no certainty.

And yet in the end she gives herself up to the Police.  There are, it seems to me, therefore, two questions before us.   First of all, how credible is it that a person who has been given so many opportunities to change would do so now when she did not do so before?  Secondly is her action in doing so any form of redemption? Does it have a meaning at all or is it – a bit like the coma in which she found herself in  GD2 – a cop out?  If there has been one consistent theme in Faith's life it has been the importance of relationships in it. She had an alcoholic mother.  In "Consequences" she implied that (presumably before she became a Slayer) men had taken advantage of her sexually. Instead of a friend she seemed to think of Buffy as competition and she certainly resented her "holier than thou attitude".  Wesley as a watcher had let her down. As she said to Angel in “Enemies”

“Look, I'm not so good at apologies. Mostly because I think the world's out to screw me so I'm generally more owed than owing.”

That is the key to her refusal to take responsibility for her own actions.  It was always someone else’s fault.  For her, the key moment was when she killed Alan.  That was an accident.  But because she refused to face up to what she had done it led to her alliance with the Mayor.  The Mayor valued her and cared about her and she trusted him.  Everyone else had let her down. The rest: her first deliberate murder of the demon, trying to steal Angel’s soul and finally killing poor harmless Lester followed on from this.  On each step on the way down she justified her actions to herself by insisting she was the wronged one.  This is a picture of someone who had given up control of her life, abdicated any sense of responsibility for it.  As she said to Buffy on the roof in “Sanctuary”:

“You're all about control.  You have no idea what it's like on the other side.  Where nothing's in control, nothing makes sense.  There is just pain and hate and nothing you do means anything.”

It is not that she could not control her actions; it was just that, once on a downward spiral, it was easier not to.  It was easier to trust the Mayor.  And once he was gone what was left for Faith - just the hate of those who she believed had maltreated her and with it, because she had a soul, the pain of what she had done.  There are obvious parallels here with someone in the grasp of an addiction.  Deep down she wanted to change but she could not.  So she kept on taking the easier way out.  In “Five by Five” any time someone said something she didn’t like she resorted to violence without thinking.  In “Sanctuary” too she does the same with Angel – she hits him almost by instinct.   That is why he doubts that she can be “free”.  Freedom means being in control of your own life.

She could not free herself on her own.  But for the first time she had real help: Angel.  By the end of “Five by Five” he had achieved a position of moral ascendancy over her.  He was the one to whom she had to turn.  In turn he was what she desperately wanted – someone who cared about her.  But instead of offering her the easy way out, he challenged her.  What Angel told her was that she had to start with her pain; accept it for what it is.  It meant that she had done wrong – not someone else.  There was no justification in what she had done and she had to take responsibility for it.  Only then would she be free.   He stresses that redemption is not a single change of heart.  It is a process in which Faith has to work through: the first five minutes and then the next and then the next.  And it has to be for life.  Angel puts it this way:

“Just because you've decided to change doesn't mean that the world is ready for you to.  The truth is, no matter how much you suffer, no matter how many good deeds you do to try to make up for the past, you may never balance out the cosmic scale.  The only thing I can promise you is that you'll probably be haunted - maybe for the rest of your life."

Here he is saying that she will never be completely free of the legacy of what she has done.  Instead she will have to struggle for the rest of her life with what she has done. 

There is nothing particularly profound here.  I don’t think we have been given any devastating new insights into the nature of sin or redemption.  But what it does say it says clearly and in doing so makes a great deal of sense.  First of all the way that Faith is brought to the point of deciding that she wants redemption is coherent, consistent with her past behavior (including all those times she has turned her back on help) and believable.  Secondly we are explicitly shown that this is not redemption itself.  This is just Faith getting to the starting gate.  There is a long road ahead and no guarantee of success.  She is where Angel was when Whistler found him in 1996.  But she is not Angel.  I remain to be convinced that she has the strength to carry the burden he is asking her to and which he himself does.  But that is what I like most of all about this episode.   The writers, in keeping with their message, have not themselves taken the easy way out e.g. with Faith just skipping town having agreed to re-examine her life.  That would be to trivialize the issue of facing up to her responsibility.  That would be to equate it with having a long think about it.  Instead she faces prison with all its the connotations of retribution for past sins and paying debts to society.  This is the hard road she has to take and is therefore of great symbolic importance.  But perhaps even more importantly, Faith ended up in prison voluntarily. In other words she took that road of her own free will.

Angel and his Mission

One of the things that I appreciate most about "Sanctuary" is that it was not simply about Faith and whether she can be redeemed.  Perhaps even more importantly it was also about Angel and how he is now approaching his own redemption.  Through the understanding of redemption that he helped Faith to reach, we can also see how he himself approaches the subject of his own salvation.  And in this context may I say how much I love the way Angel's character is used here.  In my review of "Five by Five" I commented on the unfairness of his attack on Wesley for the botched abduction of Faith.  I said that I thought it illustrated how strongly Angel felt about seeing Faith slip away into the darkness.  As it turns out this was an understatement.  As we see both in "Five by Five" and "Sanctuary" he really does understand Faith and strongly identifies with her.  That is not to say they are the same.  They are not.  But the choices they must make are and they are hard choices.  When Angel tells Faith, in the words I quoted above, that redemption is a life long struggle he is talking about himself and his own experiences.  So, if he really wants redemption himself he has to believe that Faith can achieve it too. He had spent a hundred years in misery without any hope of it ending.   Writing her off as someone who cannot be redeemed simply on the basis of her past might be seen as writing him off as well.

But, although Faith's case has a special resonance over and above any other cause he has taken up, there is more to it than that.   What we have in "Sanctuary" is the clearest possible picture of the way Angel sees his purpose generally.  I think we can see this from his conversation with Cordelia after Wesley storms out of the Office:

Angel:  "You understand why we have to help Faith, don't you?"

Cordelia:  "Totally.”

Angel:  "We can't just arbitrarily decide whose soul is worth saving and whose isn't."

He is no longer brooding boy, drifting helplessly under the weight of his remorse.  He is no longer just Buffy's boyfriend.  There was a time when she was the most important thing in his life.  Not any more.  In fact he isn't even comparable any longer to Buffy herself - the chosen one who at times rather wishes that she wasn't.  Angel is now a man with a Mission (capital 'M').   It is that which now defines him.  And that is why he reacts to Buffy in the way he does.  Just when he is reaching Faith, Buffy shows up. Faith is at a delicate stage and she threatens to ruin everything. So all he can think about is that he has to stop her repeating Wesley’s mistake (a possibility stressed when Angel himself reminded Wesley of that mistake in “Five by Five”).  That is his one concern and nothing else matters.  

And here we see that central to our examination of the parallels between Faith and Angel is the whole idea of “moving on and taking control” .   Faith was adrift and out of control, just as Angel himself had been.  She had to move on and when she took the decision herself to surrender to the authorities, she did so. And in this too she was following in Angel's footsteps.  He had taken control not only of his own life but also the mission itself, as witnessed by his treatment of both Wesley and Cordelia and indeed as he demonstrated by the way that he had also taken control of the agenda when Faith tried to challenge him.  Of course in the way he does seize control of things, Angel does come across as pretty high handed.   In "Sanctuary" he alone knows Faith.  He alone can help her.  No-one else as the right to interfere. When people disagree with him he lectures them on what is right and wrong.  Talking about Faith to a still raw Wesley he says:

“She's a person.  In case you've forgotten - we're not in the business of giving up on people.”

But what is so great about the way Angel’s character has been written here is that it shows us precisely how people in his situation think.  They have been specially chosen to pursue their cause; they are uniquely qualified for it.  They are single minded and can often be insufferably opinionated, to the point of self-righteousness.  It is no wonder that many of the great saints of the Church came to such bad ends.    So, in effect what the writers have done in "Sanctuary" is to definitively nail both character and mission - this is what Angel is all about.  But then again I do not find his attitude all that unsympathetic.  Since when was refusing to abandon another human being to a thirst for revenge something to be sorry for?  And if we bear in mind what I have just said about his personal sense of identification with her is so surprising then that nothing else, not his friendship with Cordelia and Wesley, not even his One True Love, is allowed to interfere with his attempts to save Faith? And that is the point that Buffy in particular either missed or simply did not care about.  That this was not just about Faith; it was about Angel too.  To him it must have seemed that she was putting her petty and vindictive desire for vengeance above something that Angel considered of great importance to his own quest for redemption: his mission.

Buffy and Angel

And this is where I think bringing Buffy to LA worked so beautifully.  There is no reason to disbelieve her when she said that she was concerned for Angel's safety.  And we can all understand why she was so distrustful of Faith.  She had been given multiple chances in the past to reform and had refused to do so. Apart from that, as I have already said, the doubts that the audience might already have had over her had been reinforced by the time Buffy arrived on the scene.  So no-one can blame the suspicion with which she treated Faith. 

But this is where we see the contrast between Angel's sense of mission (and even that of Wesley) and her own attitude If you are lost and do not know where to go, trust is vital.  We see this first and foremost from the fact that Angel now for the first time really trusts himself.  This is a very clear and obvious contrast to his state of mind when, like Faith, he too did not know the way ahead.  In "Sanctuary" we see that he now believes he can understand Faith.  He believes he can reach her and if he reaches her be believes he can persuade her to save herself.  By extension, therefore, he believes in Faith, believes that there is in her someone who wants to be redeemed and is prepared to try.   That is why Angel was saying to Buffy - trust me. I know what I am doing. And she couldn't or wouldn't.  That, and not her inability to trust Faith, was the really significant part of "Sanctuary" from Buffy's point of view.

But why?  She was always the first one to make a distinction between Angel and Angelus.  He hasn't done anything since breaking up with Buffy to show he is untrustworthy.  And she is hardly in a position to complain about what he did in GD2.  Indeed if he was that untrustworthy why did she come to LA at all?  It seems to me that there is only one explanation for Buffy's attitude.  Buffy continues to think of Angel as her boyfriend - former - from Sunnydale.  She still defines him as he was then; someone who was dependent upon her for his sense of identity and who saw in their relationship his possibility of salvation.  In other words she cannot trust him in the way I have just described.  But worse even than that was the fact that in "Sanctuary" her cozy little picture of the relationship between the two of them is blown unceremoniously sky high.  Sure, Angel has fought with her before.  But she has always shown him who was boss, even if it meant a little "physical" coercion - for his own good of course.  He could always be persuaded to see things her way.  Not now.  Now, not only is he refusing to do what she wants, he is actually taking the moral high ground with her, the slayer.  That I why I think she reminds him of his murderous past.  On the face of it, it is simply a cheap shot.  But it reflects her inner confusion about their new positions relative to one another.  She is saying to him remember you are the one trying to redeem himself - don't come all high and mighty with me.

But the most powerful indication of their changed relationship comes when she hits him and he hits her back.  I have to say that I am deeply schizophrenic about this.  It is a very powerful moment, not only for the punch itself but for Buffy's reaction.  She can't believe it.  She has hit him before but he has never fought back like this.  It was the ultimate demonstration of his declaration of independence from her.  I do not think dialogue alone could have encapsulated the meaning of that moment half so well.  And the writers were very careful to avoid any suggestion of physical abuse on Angel's part.  That was why they had him explicitly refer to her being a little bit stronger.  So, on paper and in terms of character, I do not think that Angel's reaction can be construed as particularly blameworthy.  Still, the image of this big man hitting a much smaller woman in what might be described broadly as a "domestic" dispute is disturbing. Nevertheless, this moment is deeply symbolic and the whole new dynamic between Buffy and Angel is, I think, summed up in her exchange with him at the end when he said:

"Buffy, this wasn't about you.  This was about saving somebody's soul.  That's what I do here, and you're not a part of it.  That was your idea, remember?  We stay away from each other."

As I have already said, the key to understanding Angel now is that he has moved on.  The gulf between himself and  Buffy and Angel is now an enormous one because she hasn't.  And it is the fact that she hasn't that illustrates just how great a distance he has come. .  As I have already said, no-one would blame Buffy for distrusting Faith in general.  But it is soon fairly clear what the source of her real problem with Faith is.  Faith was always jealous of Buffy but Buffy too has her own share of insecurities where Faith is concerned.  In “Enemies” and “Earshot”, for example, the mere fact that Angel pretended to be friendly to Faith was enough to trigger this.  I think the most revealing passage in "Earshot" is where she says-

“You know, I think she was hurting a lot. And some people, protective type people, might be drawn to that I guess... Well, the thing about Faith…“.

Buffy recognizes how much Faith needs people.  She recognizes in Angel someone who responds instinctively to that.  She may even deep down agree that Angel can reach her.  But I do not think she is prepared for the implications of this.  I think she fears Faith as a rival for Angel.  When she and Angel were together it was bad enough but now that they have broken up she has no claim to counterbalance Faith's.  And when she arrived in Angel's apartment what was the very first thing that she saw?  Faith and Angel in a compromising position and Angel, while scrambling to button the front of his shirt up, acting if not guiltily then in a very embarrassed manner.  Her response to this is instructive:

Buffy: “Giles heard that - that she tried to kill you."

Angel:  "That's true."

Buffy:  "So you decided to punish her with a severe cuddling."

There was her distrust for all to see and it had nothing to do with faith being a murderer. Then on the roof, when her anger at Faith spilled out the real cause of her anger spilled out:

“I gave you every chance!  I tried so hard to help you, and you spat on me.  My life was just something for you to play with.   Angel…Riley…anything that you could take from me, you took.  I've lost battles before - but nobody else has ever made me a victim."

So, these were her priorities - Angel and Reilly (significantly in that order).  I think the implication to be drawn from this is clear.  Buffy really cannot get past the personal - how Faith's behavior has affected her.  She hasn't moved on in terms of her duties as a slayer - her higher calling.  Essentially her attitude is the same as in GD2.  Her boyfriend (emphasis on the "her") first and foremost and let everything else take care of itself.  Here the most ironic comment comes from Buffy herself when she tells Angel about Reilly. 

"I have someone in my life now…that I love.  It's not what you and I had.  It's very new.  You know what makes it new?  I trust him.   I know him.”

I am sure that this was more defensive than intended to be deliberately cruel.  She could see Angel's sense of independence and how he was forging a separate identity for himself based on his mission in life.  He no longer needed her as he once did.  She was trying to say she no longer needed him. But when Angel spoke of her moving on, he could not have been further from the truth.  It seems to me that what we are being given here is a picture of a couple only one of which has moved on, the other is stuck in the past.  Only the one who has moved on is not Buffy.

Wesley and the Council

Which brings us to Wesley.  I know that I can be a bit of a bore about counterpoint. But I love playing with it as a device and in Wesley I see the perfect counterpoint for Buffy. Wesley could not have been particularly blamed for accepting the Faustian pact he was offered by the Council.  He had every reason to disapprove of what Angel had done in relation to Faith and he had been very careful to protect him personally.  But, in a series of revealing remarks, to and about the Black Ops squad, we see how few illusions Wesley has about the Council now.  This is a very different Wesley to the one we saw in Season 3 BtVS.  He too has moved on.  He still doesn’t trust Faith but he measured his trust for Angel against his trust for the Council and the Council came up wanting.  Here the most significant remark was where he said:

“In point of fact I've confronted more evil - slayed more demons - in short, done more good while working with Angel than I ever did while in the Council's employ."

I have said before that they key to Wesley is his desire to make a contribution, to belong.  That was why he was so insistent on being part of the team in “Five by Five”.  Here we see that, as part of Angel Investigations, Wesley has found what he is looking for and because of that and the resulting bond of trust with Angel he is willing to set aside his own doubts over Faith.  This seems to me to counterpoint perfectly Buffy’s sad inability to do likewise  and was excellent use of character development.  Indeed it also counterpoints the inability of another person to move on.  The death of Kate’s father at the hands of vampires has traumatized her far more than we knew.  She is now obsessed with them and, for her, Angel is no different to any of the others.  This fact was nicely used in presenting the dénouement of the episode by bringing everyone down to the station.  It had no real consequences in and of itself but it certainly set up hugely interesting possibilities for the future.  Again this was another plus.

The Plot

Having spent so much time dealing with the character issues I will try to be brief about the plot.  There is a lot going on here.  Angel’s attempt to convince Faith about her redemption;  Buffy’s arrival, the way in which that interfered with Angel’s plans and how they reacted to one another over that; Wesley being tempted to the dark side and the intervention of the COW black ops team and finally Wolfram & Hart’s attempt to cover their tracks.  The sheer number and variety of different influences brought to bear means that something is always happening and we can never be sure of what is going to happen next.

Our first and greatest source of uncertainty and tension was over Faith.  Almost from the beginning when she had her horrific daydream in the elevator we could see how unstable she was.  She clearly wanted to change and Angel was getting through to her.  But this attack and her later attempt to run away established that she really could just give up on herself. So right at the beginning the writers set out the basic question for the episode – would Faith turn in the right direction.  And here we see the key to the success of the plotting.  Rather than all the other plot elements referred to above forming separate storylines on their own (to the confusion of the episode)  they are subordinated to this basic question.   Each element of the episode feeds into this central story – would Faith’s journey to redemption be successful - to propel it forward.  This gives the plot a tremendous unity, a feeling of a single story with different facets each contributing to rather than distracting from it.  And as the tale unfolds, the tension never lets up. 

So, a major confrontation between Angel and Faith, punctuated by violence, is followed by an uneasy understanding.  Angel has set out the basis on which Faith’s may redeem herself but we are still unsure what way she will finally turn.  Then, just when things seem to have reached a state of equilibrium, there is a sudden and entirely unexpected change of direction.  The attack of the Wolfram and Hart assassin not only adds some welcome action to the episode but it sets up the Buffy/Angel confrontation by providing a natural reason for Angel and Faith to bond and thus creates a situation where the former lovers are at odds over Faith.  This raises a number of questions.  Would Buffy be able to browbeat Angel into abandoning his attempt to save faith.  And, even if she didn't, would her mere presence on the scene spook Faith into giving up on herself again.

At the same time we were misled into believing Wesley might betray Angel and turn Faith over to the Council.  I have to say that the scene between Wesley and the Black Ops team in the pub were excellent.  When they shared their sorrows with each other in that darkly humorous way, you could believe in them bonding:

Collins:  "Who would have predicted this is where you'd end up."

Wesley:  "Well, it seemed as good a place as any to re-evaluate my situation after being asked to resign my position with the Council.  And the weather …I find it - dry."

Weatherby:  "Wouldn't cough up the dosh for the airfare home, would they?"

Wesley:  "No, they wouldn't."

Smith:  "All those alchemists on the board of directors and they still make us fly coach.  Miserly bastards."

And this was an important point because it made Wesley’s seeming betrayal entirely believable, while at the same time hinting at his true opinion of the Council.   Wesley’s bitterness at the high handed way in which he was treated by Angel would be entirely understandable.  Equally the fact that he maintained that Faith was dangerous and should be locked up was logical.  Indeed, as we were reminded in “Five by Five” he had been down this path before and to all the world it simply looked as though he was simply repeating the mistakes of old.  His insistence that no harm should come to Angel added to the conviction that he was going to co-operate with the Council because it suggested that, for him, doing something about Faith was consistent with his loyalty to Angel Investigations.  And yet, in this loyalty and in the hints about his real opinion of the Watcher’s Council we could in retrospect clearly see why he eventually decided to swallow his own reservations and follow Angel.  So, while it was a great twist when Wesley revealed himself to be only playing along with the Black Ops team, the surprise was by no means an unfair one.

But the appearance of Buffy and the Black Ops team on the scene not only complicates the question of what would happen to Faith, it actually changes the nature of the struggle for her soul.  Instead of a discussion about what is going on inside Faith’s head, the struggle for her redemption now becomes physically dramatized.  We are being invited to see Angel and his way as the path to redemption but Buffy and the Black Ops as obstacles on that path.  This is what gives importance to the question: who will win?  Success for either Buffy or the Black Ops would surely mean that Faith's path to redemption was doomed.

And as if this wasn’t enough hanging over all of this was Wolfram and Hart plotting against Angel in an attempt to cover their collective backsides.  As with the scene between Wesley and the black Ops team the scenes between Lee, Lindsey and Lilah worked marvelously well because of the very black humor we saw throughout:

            Lindsay:  "We're lawyers.  It's a mistake for us to try to work outside the law."

Lilah:  "He's being ironic."

At first it was difficult to see how precisely this aspect of the storyline fitted in with the rest.  But the way that Lindsey incited Kate to arrest Angel and put him in peril, was actually the set up for the resolution of the episode.  It led to the surprise twist ending of Faith’s confession.  Not only was her willing submission to the police an indication that she was indeed on the road to redemption but it finally ended the interest shown in her by both Buffy and the Black Ops team and torpedoes the Wolfram and Hart plot against Angel.  And it made a very nice mirror to the start of the episode.  Where Faith had begun her journey by making an (imaginary) attack on Angel, she completed the first stage of it by saving his life.

Overview (A)

“Sanctuary” is not perfect but as an episode it works in so many different ways.  First of all it is a profoundly important turning point in the whole Buffy/Angel myth arc.  It does not mean that this pair can never be together again.  But it does mean that they can never be together as the couple they once were – slayer and boyfriend.  If they are ever to get together again it will only be as equals and in order for them to be equals it is Buffy who must do the growing.  There is a remarkable inversion of the Season 1 to 3 dynamic between them.  In this context it establishes in the most clear and convincing way who Angel now is and what his mission means.  He had to choose between it and a lot of things that mean a lot to him personally and he did not hesitate.  It also deals with Faith and her road to redemption in a coherent, consistent and credible way.  It further advances Wesley’s character development and may constitute an important stage in the use of Kate.  And it does all of this in the context of a story that never stops moving and where the tension never flags.  Even hose scenes (between Angel and Faith and Angel and Buffy) which are mainly discussions crackle with tension  because the emotion was running so high and how each individual would react to the intense pressure they were put under  was uncertain.  The plot also features a terrific extended action sequence (complete with helicopter attack)  and is illuminated by a lot of delightfully dark humor which fits in very well with the whole feel of the episode.