ANGEL THE SERIES

October 1999- May 2004

Introduction

In writing the overviews of the individual seasons of ANGEL I have taken an essentially narrative approach.  That is to say I have looked at the theme of each season through the medium of the story or stories told by the writers in that particular season. For this series overview, I am adopting a slightly different approach.  I will try to identify and discuss the common themes that run through all of the series’ storylines.  And by doing so I hope to discover what, if anything, the series as a whole is about and what it has to say. 

Absolute Evil

I would like to begin by looking at the series’ treatment of evil, its nature and its causes.  I start here because it seems to me that evil is central to the writers’ storytelling.  The purpose of our protagonists is, after all, to combat it.  The extent to which they succeed in doing so is the yardstick by which we judge their efforts.  But that begs the question: what do we mean by evil or indeed success in this context?  Saving the helpless from those who would prey upon them is certainly success against a particular form of evil. At the end of “In the Dark” Angel refuses to join the “daytime people”:

“The whole world is designed for them, so much that they have no idea what goes on around them after dark.  They don’t see the weak ones lost in the night, or the things that prey on them.  And if I join them, maybe I’d stop seeing, too.”

He therefore defines his own mission as helping those “weak ones” by fighting creatures like Russell from the series premier or the vampire gang who tried to destroy Gunn and his people.  These are all examples of an absolute form of evil.  Even better examples are Drusilla and Darla.  In “Reunion” Angel described them in the following terms;

"Drusilla's insane, deadly, not in a good mood.  Darla - she needs to feed soon, okay?”

This was a description that was more than justified by the fact that during that episode the two vampires went on a casual killing spree which eventually included Holland Manners and many other Wolfram and Hart lawyers.  And above all there is Angelus, Angel’s own alter ego.   He is sometimes described as an animal.  And by that the writers mean he has a fundamentally different nature to human beings.  In “Offspring” Holtz pondered on the nature of a vampire:

“My only desire is to discover if a thing such as yourself can be made to pay for it’s sins.  You’re a demon.  It is your nature to maim and kill.  But you were also once a man.  If we beat and burn the demon out of your living flesh will there be anything left?  Anything at all?  I doubt it?”

And as Cordelia tells Connor in “Salvage”:

“Angelus cannot fight his true nature. It's who he is.”

For such a creature there could be no choice between doing good and doing evil.  The later is his whole raison d'etre.  But this means that vampires and similar demons are remote from the experience of human beings and as such have nothing to tell us about the real world or the challenges we all face in it.  They are there simply as antagonists for Angel and the others; and it is how the latter – the so-called “heroes” of the piece - react to the challenges that these antagonists pose that is really important for the writers' purposes.

We see this most clearly from “Not Fade Away”, the series finale.  Here Angel as much as admits that there is no preventing the silent thousand year Apocalypse planned by Wolfram and Hart.  Hamilton challenges Angel on behalf of the Senior Partners:

“You don't really think you're gonna win this, do you? You don't stand a chance. We are legion. We are forever.”

And Angel himself concedes:

“There's always going to be power, and there's always going to be corruption."

In the end he destroys the Black Thorn; but they are no more than (entirely replaceable) agents of the Senior Partners.  So even his success in this simply leads on to an even bigger struggle with their army of demons. And he has seemingly no way to strike successfully at the Senior Partners themselves. But the whole point of that episode was to argue that, so long as those same Senior Partners existed, they needed to be fought.  Indeed symbolically by the end of this episode all of the mortals are either dead or dying and only the immortals – Angel, Spike and Illyria - remain, symbolizing the fact that the fight between good and evil is not bounded by time.  In this vein, Vail taunts Illyria after Wesley dies in her arms:

“How very touching his meaningless death was, but this fight was never for mortals." 

Indeed even immortals like Angel are not the whole fight.  They are simply a part of it.  And that is why the ending of the series was left so open.  It doesn’t really matter what happens to Angel and the others as individuals – it is the will to fight on that is important. 

Ultimately, therefore, the finale tells us that, for the writers, success in the struggle against evil is not destroying it but rather it is a matter of human beings remaining true to their ideals in the face of our own weaknesses and failings.  It is in the struggle that takes place within humans and not between, on the one hand, beings representing some higher moral standard and, on the other, creatures representing absolute evil that we find the heart of the series. Indeed, even in “In the Dark” the real question that Angel had to ask himself was whether he could find the moral courage to sacrifice all the advantages that the Ring of Amarra could bring him so as to better help the helpless.  And again and again throughout the series he, Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn and Fred to varying extents faced similar questions.

Of Human Frailty

Let us not forget that in this little band we had a collection of deeply flawed people.  Angel as a human named Liam had been a drunken, whoring layabout whose relationship with his father had already degenerated into a vicious circle where the low expectations of the parent and the low self-esteem of the child fed off each other.  As Angelus he was the scourge of Europe for 150 years and this marked him forever. Not only was he tormented by the memories of what he had done.  The demon within hadn’t gone away and indeed, even as an ensouled creature, aspects of the demon’s personality became fused with those of Liam.  In particular in Angel we see all too often the self-centered obsessiveness that so characterized Angelus. It is telling that, when Angel did regain his soul, he initially shunned human society mainly out of a fear that too close contact with people might reawaken the blood lust within him.  For most of the 20th century he has no direction in life.  He believed in nothing, he hoped for nothing.  All he wanted was to make his own way in the world as best he could.  And this together with the vampire legacy left him dangerously inward looking, understanding everything he sees about him through the prism of his own preoccupations.

Then there is Cordelia.  At the start of the series she too is the epitome of self-centeredness.  She had bought into a value system where coming from the right home and having the right clothes and other accessories were necessary.  If you had them you were someone.  If you hadn’t you were a nobody.  Hence for example her obsession with getting the right apartment in “Rm w/a Vu”.  Hence the fact that she thought of herself as “Queen C, having a special place in the universe and as such destined for higher things.

Wesley’s problem is quite the opposite.  From an early age he was faced with a powerful and intimidating father for whom nothing he ever did was quite right.  So, he overcompensated.  He became anxious to convince others of his knowledge or skills but often overreached himself and failed, thus re-enforcing his own insecurities.  We could see this in his behavior in Sunnydale and the disaster that he experienced there obviously left a mark on him.

Or take Gunn.  When we first meet him he seems to have the weight of the world on his shoulders.  He has feelings of responsibility for those he thinks of as his people – those who live in his neigborhood, the poor, and the vulnerable.   But in spite of all his efforts “his people” continue to die, including his own sister.  His sense of failure over that left him with a lack of belief in himself, a feeling that eventually led him ultimately to abandon his own friends.

Even Fred has her burdens to carry.  On the positive side she is both clear minded and empathetic.  But as with so many people her failings are the flip side of her strengths.  Her empathy means that she is unwilling to believe the worst of her friends.  But at the same time her clear-mindedness means that she tends to see everything in black and white terms.  So, once her trust is betrayed, there seems no room in her heart for sympathy or forgiveness.  Hence her reaction to Wesley when he kidnapped Connor or to Connor himself when she discovered what he did to Angel.  Hence in particular her decision to kill Professor Seidel when she realized he was responsible for her banishment to Pylea.

These are all decent and moral people.  Angel, when he regained his soul, realized he could not continue on Angelus’ carefree path of destruction.  Cordelia proved herself a loyal and caring friend.  Wesley was ready to sacrifice himself for what he believed in.  Gunn was a fierce advocate and protector of the downtrodden.   And Fred was generally kind and caring.  But they are all damaged if not actually broken characters and therefore the struggle to overcome these accumulated burdens from the past and fulfill the ideals they believed in is a difficult one.

The Real Meaning of Evil

And it is in this context that we find the real meaning and significance for us of “evil”, not as a desire to do others wrong but in the way in which human nature undermines and cancels out the desire to do good.  So, for us, the real exemplars of evil are not Drusilla, Darla or even Angelus.  Rather it is people like Lindsey and Lilah. 

We first meet Lindsey in the series premier.  There he seems to have no problem at all in providing a “full-service” to Russell, a service that includes not only covering up murder but even finding victims for him to eat.  Yet Lindsey is human and clearly has a soul. A soul means that the human being knows right from wrong.  According to Wesley it also means that he or she has, deep down, an impulse to do right.   But that is not the only difference between the human and the vampire; the real difference lies in the ability to make a choice.  Unlike Angelus who could only be true to what he was, Lindsey had genuine free will – the ability to choose between doing good and doing evil. 

The nature of the choice presented to Lindsey is very clear. In “Blind Date” Holland Manners describes the world in the following terms:

“It took me a while to realize how the world was put together and where I belonged in it.  And actually the world isn’t that complicated.  It’s designed for those who know how to use it….You’re not going to be happy until you find your place in the scheme of things.”

These words are echoed, from the other side of the fence, by Angel when he talks about the result of a trial fixed by Wolfram and Hart:

“It’s their courtroom, not mine….Their rules their game…It’s structured for power, not truth.  It’s their system and it’s one that works.  It works because there’s no guilt, no torment, no consequences.  Its pure.”

Lindsey was not asked to do evil because he wanted to do it.  Rather he was just being asked to take up a position in the world that would bring him power.  But that position came with a price and that price was helping others who do evil.  This is indeed a Faustian pact.  As Angel put it:

“You always have a choice.  You just sold your soul for a fifth floor office and a company car”.

As with Holland, Lindsey’s perspective is a little different from Angel’s. 

“You got a choice.  You got stepped on or you get to steppin’”.

And the very deliberate nature of that choice is demonstrated by his reaction when he is asked to overstep a personal boundary of his– killing children.  And it was because he was neither inherently evil nor too weak to make a stand that he was capable of doing something about the threat to these innocents.  This is yet another issue on which people on different sides of the fence agree.  Angel puts it to Lindsey in the following terms:

“You have to make a decision to change.  That’s something you do by yourself.  Most people they never do.”

Holland on the other hand says:

“You stood up to us and won.  Do you know how many people have that much nerve?  I can count them on one hand.” 

Lindsey did not allow either Angel or Wolfram and Hart to choose his path for him because he is afraid of them.   This emphasizes his ability to make a real choice for himself.  He exercised that power and in doing so proved what was important to him.  And ultimately that was what was good for Lindsey.  The mere fact that harm to the children remained a personal boundary he would not cross didn’t men that he had re-evaluated his priorities.  When in “To Shanshu in LA” Holland warned him

“I know you’ve covered all the bases here…the senior partners are watching us.  We don’t  want to let them down.”

and Lilah’s reminded him about the fate of another employee who let the firm down, Lindsey understood the implications.  When Angel interrupted the ritual Linsey’s duty to the firm seemed clear.  It was his show and his responsibility.  He had to do something or else.  So he did; from a sense of self-preservation he completed the ritual.  Of course, as a result he lost his hand and that brought a different dynamic to his relationship with Angel. Up until then, everything he had done had been undertaken simply to avoid the unpleasant consequences to his career of failure.    But in season 2 after the loss of his hand the antagonism between Lindsey and Angel took on a far more personal edge.  Because of his injury his desire to strike back at Angel was such that he was quite prepared to seek revenge even when this did jeapordize himself.  Hence his attempt to get Boone to kill Angel in “Blood Money”.  But there is a common thread linking the two seasons - Lindsey’s self-centeredness.   Revenge is, after all, a quintessentially self-centered desire.  And this is further demonstrated in “Dead End” when he discovers he has an “evil hand” that belonged to a former colleague now just used for spare parts.  It wasn’t the fact that the hand might want to kill that disturbed him about it.  It was the fact that it wasn’t under his control.  It wasn’t the fate of the former colleague either that made him reevaluate his position in Wolfram and Hart.  It was the prospect that he might also be declared surplus to requirements.  It was these equally selfish consideration that therefore led Lindsey to quit Wolfram and Hart.

It was similarly selfish considerations that motivated Lilah.  In “Calvary” when things seemed to have fallen completely apart for her she came out with a very telling phrase:

            “I just…I just want my life back. All my pretty things. I'm selfish that way.”

In “Sleep Tight” she admits that has now left behind any pretence of interest in ordinary human values:

Lilah: “I live somewhat dangerously, and *quite* comfortably. My mother, who no longer recognizes me, has the best room at the clinic. I get up every morning, put on my game face and do what I have to."

Angel: "Thing about a game face, Lilah, you wear it long enough, it stops being something you can put on and take off."

Lilah: "Wow. We've spent so much time and money on you. You're so pivotal to the coming cataclysm, that I sometimes forget how dense you can be. The game face - the one I worked so hard to get - I became that *years* ago. Just like you've become simpering and good from yours. You're the new poster boy for humanity. Thank you very much. I don't want it."

In “Untouched” she was prepared to use Bethany as an assassin.  In “That Vision Thing” she was equally happy to destroy Cordelia’s mind just to help Billy Blim escape.  And in “Quickening” she was perfectly prepared to see an innocent baby kidnapped and made the subject of experiments just to protect her place in the law firm. She was a self-cetered materialist who, like Lindsey, didn’t want to do evil for the sake of it but simply because she liked her job and the power, wealth and status that brought and that was more important to her than anything else.

And it is for equally self-centered reasons of revenge that, in “Sleep Tight”, she agrees to arrange for Angel’s blood supply to be contaminated with Connor’s blood.  The fact that, by doing so, she was conniving at the death of an innocent child troubled her conscience not at all.  As she later boasts to Angel:

“I'm *not* helpless. I'm glad you came along, because I was sitting here asking 'what's it all about' and now I know. It is all about making the rest of your eternal life miserable. Shall we drink to that?"

So, here we see the two defining characteristics of the sort of evil that the series is really interested in: evil as the elevation of self over others and as a choice.  And the significance of these characteristics for ANGEL becomes I think more and more clear as the series progressed.

The Struggle Within

As I have already said, from quite early on the series focused on the internal struggle of its protagonists.  But the way that the series approached this issue changed significantly after season 1.  There the emphasis was on the success Angel in particular had in fighting his demons.  So, apart from “In the Dark”, we see in “Five by Five” the parallel ways in which Angel in 1898 Borsa and Faith in modern LA faced questions about their sense of identity.  And in “Sanctuary” we see how, through the understanding of redemption that he has reached, Angel helps Faith. And in this we can also see how he himself approaches the subject of his own salvation.   It is hardly surprising therefore that season 1 ends on a very optimistic note in.  In “To Shanshu in LA” we see the possibility of Angel actually achieving redemption and becoming human.  Indeed, in his confrontation with Kate we even see a hint that he was done apologizing for who he was and had now a firm belief in his mission.  Nor was he alone in this story of progress.  In the case of Wesley we saw in the first season his increasing success in overcoming his own insecurities.  The difference between the prat who fell over his own feet in “Parting Gifts” and the Wesley who dealt with the bookie so effectively in “The Ring” was telling.  Even Cordelia by the end of the season became more committed to helping people through her visions.  But there the accent on the success of our protagonists’ internal struggles ended and the series became that much darker; it began to concentrate on those aspects of the character and psychology of our heroes that sabotaged their efforts to help others.

So, in season 2 we see that the “Shanshu” prophecy was less a promise than a trap.  As Angel said of the prophecy in “Judgment”:

"I…I saw the light at the end of the tunnel - that some day I might become human. That light was so bright, I thought I was already out."

Because things were going so well and he felt so good about himself and because he had so much to hope for he had forgotten, or at least neglected, that the point of the exercise was to help was people.  It was not to show how much of a hero he was.  Because Angel was thinking about himself and how he could earn his own redemption by being heroic he wasn’t treating each individual situation on its merits by understanding what was happening and acting accordingly.  He wasn't thinking clearly about the needs of the person he was trying to help. 

But that only foreshadowed the real problem.   When Darla was vamped in front of Angel's eyes he lost hope and with it his belief in his own redemption.   But it is why he did so that is the important issue here.  It  was because he was an essentially very inward looking person, someone who saw and understood the world and those in it through the prism of his own preoccupations.   And this was a particularly dangerous trait because, in spite of a century of brooding, he was someone with a very imperfect understanding of himself and his own internal dynamics.  As “Guise Will Be Guise” showed he never really understood the way that the demon, far from being a separate and distinct force under his control, had actually shaped his own way of thinking – making him obsessive and self-centered about his redemption and at the same time creating in him a hankering after certainties and simplicities – of a life without consequences.  This led to the lack of perspective, the exaggerated significance of events and the way they were judged by reference to their impact on him and finally by his disregard for the consequences of his decisions on others which characterized his actions throughout most of season 2.  He had wanted to see Darla redeemed so badly not so much for her own sake but because of its symbolism for his own redemption.  This is why, when she was turned, it destroyed his own hopes.  And then those same characteristics dominated his response to the events at the end of "The Trial".  They meant that all he wanted to do was strike back at Wolfram and Hart, in the same sort of self centered spirit of revenge that characterized Lindsey and Lilah quite regardless of the consequences even for the innocent.

Then again in season 3, when he lost Connor, Angel’s hopes of becoming a father and of having a future through his son were destroyed; as was the relationship between Angel and Wesley.  In other words, just when it seems that Angel’s connections with his son and with his friends would allow him to leave behind him forever the obsessional, self-indulgent and self-destructive part of his nature that was a legacy of his dark past, that past reaches out and sends the process into reverse. In “Forgiving” he kidnapped and tortured Linwood to persuade Wolfram and Hart to help him get Connor back.  All he succeeded in doing was to hand Wolfram and Hart control of his agenda.  When they offered the spell to make Shajhan material, he used it in spite of dire warnings about the consequences.  In “The Price” these consequences manifested themselves: one man was killed, Fred was infected and the sluks threatened to escape to menace others.   These were not the consequences that Angel intended.  He was genuinely sorry that Phil was killed.  He tried his best to help Fred and he was perfectly prepared to sacrifice himself to prevent the sluks from escaping and killing anyone else.  But he placed the safety of his son above any other consideration.  Ultimately he might have accepted that carrying out the spell was the wrong choice because it didn’t work.  But he as good as admitted that if something was available to help Connor then he would have taken advantage of it no matter what the consequences.  And perhaps even more tellingly he willfully turned his back on the possibility of enlisting Wesley to help Fred because of his antipathy to the man who stole Connor from him.  It is here that we see the return of Angel, the obsessive, the self-indulgent and the self-destructive. 

Worse was to follow.  At the beginning of season 4 Angel had lost his sense of identity because he has lost Cordelia.  He had his friends, he had his son and he had his mission.  But the mission in particular meant nothing to him without Cordelia to provide meaning to it all for him.  And this provides the context in which we see how he reacts to her when she does return.  Almost immediately he finds himself in the middle of a fraught triangle with her and his own son.  And again it is his old feelings of insecurity and irresolution that return to haunt him.  He cuts himself off from everyone else emotionally and casts himself once again in the role of the victim.  Thus, devoid of a higher purpose and obsessed with what has gone wrong in his life he finds himself manipulated into co-operating with the Beastmaster’s plans. The key moment comes when Angel sees the two people he loves most in the world betray him.  After each has rejected him they then sleep with one another.  This is followed by Cordelia identifying Angelus as the one who had the connection with the Beast and seeming to suggest that he was himself a puppet of the creature.  Apart from Connor, she was the most important person in the world to him.  But she was the one who rejected him because of his past.  She was the one who chose his own son over him.  And now she was demonstrating that she clearly didn’t trust him.  In the face of the power of the Beast and these uncertainties he agreed to become Angelus.  In other words once more Angel's actions are driven by his own internal frailties rather than the objective needs of his mission.

And of course at the end of that same season, Angel made an even more catastrophic mistake.  There, to save Connor, he agreed to become the CEO of Wolfram and Hart.  As a result he gave up control of his life, or more especially of his mission.  Instead of fighting evil he became involved in a series of increasingly weak compromises with it, compromises which only confirmed it in business and left himself and his friends with precious little to show for their surrender of control.

And Angel isn’t the only one who shows such failings either.  At times in seasons 2 and 3 Cordelia did come too close for comfort to the “Saint Cordelia” nickname she has been dubbed with.  But in “Home” we do get a more balanced view of her motivations.   As I have already said, deep down inside Cordelia has always believed that she was someone special, destined for higher things.  So, when Skip comes along and confirms every suspicion she has ever had about herself, it is easy for her to believe him, even though what he actually said made no objective sense at all.  As a result she put herself n the position where Jasmine could take over her body and put her plan into action.

Also by season 3 Wesley had come a long way from the bumbling fool of “Parting Gifts”.  But his bravery, knowledge and skill had another side to it.  The self-possessed rationality was accompanied by an inability to relate well to people and became in some cases a cold-blooded ruthlessness.  The self-confidence was an overcompensation for deeply felt insecurities.  And these characteristics played their full part in his decision not to trust Connor’s own father or any other member of Angel Investigations and kidnap the child.  And again in season 4 we see the worst in Wesley - someone who had an agenda of his own, a need to bolster his own self-confidence and self-esteem by winning Fred away from Gunn.  This led him to help in a planned murder.  The same need to prove himself led him to be such a forceful advocate of bringing Angelus back because, in Angel’s absence, he fully expected the responsibility for gaining an advantage from the demon’s return would fall to him and he would no longer be merely a sidekick.

And Gunn also responds to situations and events not as they really are but as he perceives them through the prism of his insecurities. In “Players” for example he reflects on the success he and Gwen had in stealing “Lisa”:

Gunn: “Hey, I'm just the muscle.”

Gwen: “Don't knock the muscle, buddy. Makes the girls go all knocky in the knees. But if that's all you were, we never could've gotten into that party tonight.”

Gunn: “Oh, you would've gotten in. Of course, the damage would have been significantly higher.”

Gwen: “Thanks to your brains-over-brawn approach.”

 Gunn: “Well, not so much brains as too many movies.”

Gwen: “Man, they have done a number on you. You really believe this "I'm the muscle" crap.”

Here we get a hint of what motivated him, in “Home”, to declare his intention to join up with Wolfram and Hart.  He did so on the strength of a meeting with the Conduit which manifested itself as a big black cat.   And from this vision Gunn recognized what he wanted for himself – to be someone who was cool, powerful and above all someone to be respected.   And in seeming fulfilment of this promise the start of season 5 saw Gunn being given a Brain Boost in which he not only gained the knowledge and skill of an attorney but all sorts of other valuable information as well.  In short he became what he always wanted to be – a key part of the team.  And in return he swallowed the Wolfram and Hart message whole.  It was he more often than not who preached co-operation and compromise and he was the one who negotiated all the deals.  But when he was threatened with loss of these skills he makes another deal – a seemingly insignificant one but one which dooms Fred.

In all of these cases, our so-called heroes, those who claim to be helping the helpless, those who maintain that their purpose is to oppose people like Lindsey and Lilah reveal themselves also to be acting in furtherance of a selfish agenda.  And it is in the effect of the choices that Angel and the others made that this series reminds us that choices bring with them consequences: murder in a cellar, kidnapping and banishment, the reawakening of a killing machine.  In other words as a result of these choices others, in particular the helpless, suffer.  Is there a difference between the Angel who opened a portal through which sluks entered and killed Phil in order to save his son and Lilah who would kill that child to further her career? This is the question we must now turn to.

Free Will

ANGEL as a series has been quite clear from the beginning that human beings have free will.  Even in its first season ANGEL laid out the basic questions underlying the series - questions about what was right and what is wrong; about how we all have the power to choose our own paths but how any choice we make will have consequences for ourselves and others. Episodes such as “Prodigal” were about taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions, no matter how hard that is; but above all they are about how it is never too late to change.  The ability of a human soul to choose good over evil means that everyone has the right to seek their own redemption, regardless of what they have done in the past. So, for example “Five by Five” deals with the choices we make in response to our past.  In that episode, the important parallel lay between Faith in LA2000 and Angel in Borsa 1898.  Both had travelled down the path of evil.   Because for both that was all they knew they tried to hold onto that past.  In the end Angel could not and in the face of the temptation to the contrary he chose to do what was right.  The human soul became responsible for its own actions in a way Liam had never been.  Because of this he could leave behind his past as a monster.   In contrast Faith blamed Wesley for the fact that she took the wrong path and because of this she clings on to her past as a killer ever more tightly.      In “Sanctuary”, on the other hand we see Faith being forced to confront and accept responsibility for her past and the crucial moment in the episode comes when quite voluntarily she gives herself up to the police and confesses her crimes as a way of facing up to what she has done and accepting punishment for it. 

In season 2 Angel allowed his thwarted obsessions to drive him into darkness; it was only when he understood the potential consequences of that – the rebirth of Angelus – that he reasserted control over his own life.

In season 3 "Waiting in the Wings" debated extensively the question of whether we genuinely have free will or is our destiny determined by the dead hand of the universe or a human nature over which we have no control.   This was the question posed most acutely by the Buffy/Angel relationship and at times in BtVS the writers seemed almost to suggest that the relationship between Buffy and Angel was doomed by outside forces whatever they did.  But here the writers take a much more optimistic view; arguing that we do indeed have control over our own lives if only we have the courage and strength of will to grasp it.

Seasons 4 and 5 were all about choice and destiny.  I do not propose here to repeat the detailed analysis I set out in the overview of those seasons.  Suffice to say that the first episode “Deep Down” sets out the theme very clearly when Angel tells Connor:

“Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be.  It's harsh, and cruel.  But that's why there's us - champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.”

And Gunn in “Inside Out” contradicts Skip’s suggestion that they were all pawns in Jasmine’s game:

“Look, monochrome can yap all he wants about no-name's cosmic plan, but here's a little something I picked up rubbing mojos these past couple of years. The final score can't be rigged. I don't care how many players you grease, that last shot always comes up a question mark. But here's the thing—you never know when you're taking it. It could be when you're duking it out with the Legion of Doom, or just crossing the street deciding where to have brunch. So you just treat it all like it was up to you—the world in the balance—'cause you never know when it is.”

Indeed the whole season climaxes when Angel and the others destroy Jasmine on the ground that having a power to choose and being able to choose evil as well as good is an essential part of being human.  But the events of that season had left their mark.  Angel came to see how he had been manipulated and how the struggle against evil had cost him both Cordelia and his son.  And because of this he lost faith that he had any real hop of redemption, any destiny other than to suffer and fight.  And so he made a bargain with Wolfram and Hart.  In that bargain he handed them control over his actions and the rest of the season was about his discovery that it was not only possible but important for him to recover that control.

It follows from all of this that the decisions and actions that each of our protagonists took  were, like Lindsey and Lilah, a matter of choice.   Of course, the choices that each one of us makes are the product of who and what we are and many different influences are brought to bear in shaping each of us.  And sometimes these influences are negative ones.  We are all prey to anger, jealousy, sorrow and fear.  And emotions like these may be triggered or exacerbated by the foibles or our own individual psychologies or by malign past experiences or a combination of both.  And while we have no direct control over these influences; they may nevertheless have a profound effect on us.  Human nature can be a selfish, irrational and undisciplined mess and when it is it can have evil effects.  But this is why free will is so important.  The fact that we each have free will means that we are not bound to react to our emotions, our appetites, our fears and our insecurities.  It means that, no matter what the temptation to react to a given set of circumstances by giving in to these negative influences, we always have the power to choose otherwise, even when we fail to do so. 

So, even when the consequences of our actions are unintended we cannot escape responsibility for them.  Responsibility means to be capable of rational conduct, in particular in the way we make choices.  Secondly it means being morally accountable for the choices made and the consequences they bring.   In this context there can be no difference between responsibility for the consequences that the choices made by Lindsey and Lilah bring and responsibility for the choices made by Angel or any of the others. 

Of course I do not want to overstate the case.  I am not arguing here for a moral equivalence between our “heroes” and these villains. Not all evil choices are the  same. Logic and commonsense as well as basic notions of justice dictate that a premeditated act is worse than an act done on the spur of the moment.  An act with a particular intended consequence is worse than an act which leads to the same consequence inadvertently.  Person A murders B to get a lot of money from him.  Person C gets drunk and kills a family of six in an accident.  Person C is morally responsible for the deaths and killed far more people.  But I would argue that A is evil in a way that C is not.  C acted stupidly and selfishly and thoughtlessly.  But C did not intend harm.  A did.  A made a conscious calculation in which a human life was worthless in comparison to his material benefit.

In “Reunion” Angel did not just leave Holland and the others to the tender mercies of Darla and Drusilla.  By locking the door he made sure no-one could escape.  He, therefore, actively participated in the massacre.   Secondly this was not a decision that could be in any sense described as irrational or the product of blind rage.  He had a lot of time to think about what he would do when he found the two vampires with the lawyers.  And watching the scene I was struck by the complete lack of emotion, the flat calm so eerily reminiscent of Holland’s own demeanor.  It was precipitated by anger certainly but this was indeed a decision taken in as cold and calculated a fashion as any made by Wolfram and Hart.  And finally it must be stressed that locking that door on Holland and the others was not a justifiable decision.   But then again the victims in the cellar were all intimately involved in Wolfram and Hart’s evil doing.  It was reasonable to consider them as deserving of punishment and there was a certain poetry about allowing Darla (whom they had manipulated so cruelly) to extract revenge o them.

When Wesley kidnapped Connor he thought he was saving the child, even though in reality he was acting out of distrust and insecurity.  When Fred planned to kill Professor Seidel she was driven on by a sense of grievance and memories of terrible suffering.

Any you can look at all the mistakes that Angel and the others make in the same light, including the in-fighting of season 4, the sale of their services to Wolfram and Hart in season 5.  Here we see a distortion of priorities, a short-sightedness and an almost willful disregard for consequences caused by a need to respond to the demands of some immediate personal agenda.  But there isn't quite the same deliberate sacrifice of others.  And indeed, the same people are simultaneously capable of self-sacrifice to help others, as when they fought and lost to the Beast.  This is not something you would see Lindsey or Lilah do.

This is not to excuse anything.  The choices they made which resulted in harm to others were evil.  And they do taint the person who makes them.  But I don't think it makes them evil.  Circumstances arose which tested them and in the end their  characters were found wanting.  In the cold light of day each of them realized they made the wrong choices.  And they do try to do better.   This is a another major difference between them and Lindsey or Lilah. But insofar as Angel, Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn and Fred acted out of selfishness and caused harm because of it they were denying the very purpose they sought to achieve: helping others. 

The Struggle for Redemption

In my overview of season 3 I described ANGEL as having a humanist heart.  In the Middle Ages it was believed only the Divine order was truly worthy of study.  But the Renaissance rediscovered the humanism of Classical philosophy with its assertion of the primacy of the individual.  This led to the belief that humans are in-and-of-themselves worthy of serious contemplation.  Once again people asked: what was necessary for a happy, adequate, and sufficient life here on earth.  Humanism, therefore, means the constant striving (by reference to moral, social and ethical values derived from human experience and human reason) to get the best out of a person’s abilities, to develop his or her potential as well as possible and use it to serve others.  But the emphasis on human individualism also recognized the fallibility of human beings. Indeed, the need for a moral, ethical and social framework by which to conduct our lives at all constitutes an acceptance of this very fallibility. Humanism recognized the leaden weights of our appetites and what we nowadays call our psychology with its accumulated baggage of inherited characteristics and experiences which together so strongly affect our behavior.   And it also recognized the existence of the blind forces of fate over which we have no control.  But in humanism, our supreme achievement lies in defying these various obstacles to extend our powers of mind and spirit to the utmost.  That great political genius of the early Renaissance, Alberti wrote in his autobiography:

            “A man can do all things if he will.”

This is a seminal statement of human dignity and could be almost the motto of Renaissance humanism.  Again and again this series focused on the quest of our eponymous hero and his friends to put behind them the psychological baggage of past failures and to achieve what they are capable of.  And it is episodes such as “Reunion”, “Sleep Tight”, “Long Day’s Journey” and “Tomorrow" that defines this struggle by showing us exactly what forces our so-called heroes must overcome.

In “Epiphany” Angel described his new mission in the following terms in a conversation with Kate:

Angel: "Well, I guess I kinda worked it out.  If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is - what we do, now, today.  I fought for so long.  For redemption, for a reward  finally just to beat the other guy; but... I never got it."

Kate:  "And now you do?"

 Angel:  "Not all of it.  All I wanna do is help.  I wanna help because  I don't think people should suffer, as they do.  Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness  is the greatest thing in the world."

This statement sets the standard by which Angel and the other members of his team must be judged.  It defines - or should define - the consequences towards which Angel and the others should be working.  It was this value that Wesley demonstrated in “Deep Down” when he forgot his own personal bitterness at Angel and rescued him.  It was this value that, in the same episode, Angel upheld in his message to Connor at the end of “Deep Down”.  But these were standards and values that ultimately Angel and Wesley and all of the other members of Angel Investigations would not live up to in the rest of season 4 and in most of season 5.  And I say “would not” rather than “could not”.  No matter how understandable their insecurities and the temptations they faced because of them, they could all have chosen differently.  That they did not could only be because they were prepared to hand control of their lives over to their own wants and needs. 

And it is in the struggle to become people who could live up to this ideal that we find the reality and meaning of redemption.  Classically the word mean a repayment, as in the repayment of a debt.  So, the theory went, Angel as Angelus had killed and tortured a lot of people.  It is generally believed that there is a universal moral order and that such behavior is at odds with that order.  To put himself right with that moral order, therefore, Angel needed to repay the debt he owed to it.  This was certainly the interpretation of redemption that Angel himself adopted in “Sanctuary”:

“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 and may be for the rest of your life."

“To Shanshu in LA” seemed to endorse this idea.  It suggested that if Angel played an appropriate part in a coming apocalypse, then he would have balanced out the cosmic scale and earned his redemption in the form of his own humanity.

But season 2 turned that idea on its head.  Out of the forgoing we (and Angel eventually) realize that it is not an exercise in building up enough credit to offset what he owes.  Rather it becomes a struggle to change himself.  He is no longer making up for Angelus and what he did (something that Angel had no real responsibility for).  Rather he is trying to deal with the damage caused to his own soul by the baggage he has accumulated and avoid becoming a danger to the world himself. Following on from this Angel’s quest for humanity becomes not the reward for redemption but the means to achieve it. 

Of course simply watching a struggle in and of itself is not enough.  It is the way that struggle is resolved that ultimately shapes the meaning of the piece.  It is in this context that what happened to Faith after “Sanctuary” is important.  In “Release” When Angelus was holding Wesley helpless in his grasp, he tells Faith:

“Take your shot, and save the world. Come on. What're you waiting for? It's all about choices, Faith. The ones we make, and the ones we don't. Oh, and the consequences. Those are always fun.”

Faith at that moment is struggling with her instinct to lash out in rage.  Both Wesley and Angelus for entirely different reasons want Faith to resolve the confusion within her by releasing her anger and channeling it into violence.  But she chose against violence.  She chose the road of self-sacrifice.  Those choices were made because, in order to save someone else, she was prepared to give up her own life because it was the right thing to do.   She was not prepared to sacrifice the drug addict or Angel on the altar of her own rage.  This was the example against which Angel and the others were too often weighed in the balance and found wanting.

And yet ultimately ANGEL is a series about redemption rather than the failure of our characters to redeem themselves.  It shows the way in which Angel in particular  finally takes control of his own life thereby giving meaning to the concept of free will.  Here then we have the real counterpoint to Lindsey and Lilah who failed to see things from any perspective but their own and who handed control of their lives over to Wolfram and Hart in return for a “mess of pottage.”

From “Epiphany” onwards, Angel’s key task was to connect with others.  The legacy of the past, the  damage done to him by the memory of all the harm that he has done, the separation from the world that forced on him and the twist to his psychology caused by the influence of the vampire within could only be overcome by becoming more fully human.  Simply doing good deeds wasn’t enough, if he didn’t feel a connection with those he was helping.  It was by feeling a bond of common humanity for those he was helping that he gave meaning to his mission and thereby his existence, because that is the way his own damaged and battered soul is to become more fully human.   This was Angel’s destiny because this was his path to salvation. This was what the Shanshu prophecy really symbolized.     And to do that he needed to connect with others, to become more fully human.  And Cordelia, his friends and in particular his son were the means by which he could do that. 

In the end, of course, Angel lost Cordelia.  But late in season 5 he was able to re-establish a connection with his son.  And we can see the importance of that connection from their scenes in “Not Fade Away”.  Here Angel spends his free time before the final battle sharing in his son’s future by helping him write a resume for an internship.   And after they fight Hamilton together we see this exchange:

Connor: “What do we do?”

Angel: “You go home.”

Connor: “Huh?”

Angel: “This is my fight.”

Connor: “That's some serious macho…”

Angel: “Go home...now.”

Connor: “They'll destroy you.”

Angel: “As long as you're OK, they can't.”

As I said in my review of this episode, it is to help ensure that Connor continues to have a future that Angel is fighting.  It is not for pride, not out of revenge but because he cared about his son and had therefore his own connection with humanity.  And because of this he cared about more than just his son.  In fighting for Connor’s future he was fighting for the future of everyone.  Hamilton could not understand what Angel had left to fight for once he had given up his Shanshu.  Angel’s response was telling:

 “People who don't care about anything will never understand the people who do.”

Here was the antidote to a preoccupation with self.  It was the antithesis of not only what Hamilton or Lindsey or Lilah believed in.  It was the antithesis of the Black Thorn itself.  At the start of “Not Fade Away”, Angel was asked to sign away his Shanshu specifically on the basis that, without that hope for self advantage he would have no reason to betray the Black Thorn.  What his actions in the rest of he episode proved was that he was not going to allow self-interest to dictate his actions.  At the end of season 4 Angel lost control of his life because he lost heart in what he was doing.  And he lost heart because he lost the meaning of the fight against evil.  He lost that meaning because he lost his connection with his son and therefore with humanity.  Once he refound that connection, then what happened to Connor and everyone else really began to have a meaning for him again.  That is why he decided to strike  at the Black Thorn.

Ad there is a remarkable correlation between this rediscovery by Angel of his connection to others and his ability to exercise free will.  Roger Wyndham Price had referred to him as a puppet.  And throughout his life Angel has always been reactive:

All along he has been playing someone else’s game.   And as we have seen it was because he had always been thinking mainly of himself and what he wanted.  For part of season 1  when he did seem to be concentrating on his mission to help others, at the end of season 2 when he redefined his mission and in the early part of season 3 when he seemed to have forged strong connections with others these were by contrast the times when he seemed to have his life under his own control. Hamilton, in the middle of his climactic battle with Angel asks him uncomprehendingly:

"Why do you keep fighting? You signed away your Shanshu. There's nothing in it for you anymore."

But that was the point.  He wasn’t fighting for himself.  He was fighting for others and because of that he was free of everything that had led him to surrender control of his life to outside forces.  The abandonment of an exaggerated sense of self and the genuine exercise of free will go hand in hand.  In "Deep Down" Wesley equated Justine's search for revenge as a form of slavery.  So it was.  It was giving control of your life to a force beyond your control.  In contrast here we see the link between doing the right thing and taking control over your own destiny.   This completes the contrast between the new Angel and people like Lindsey and Lilah.  It completes the sense of a journey towards redemption for Angel, not because of what he has accomplished but because of the way he has changed.

Nor should I forget the others here either.  Cordelia too followed the wrong path.  Her approach to fighting evil was dictated by her need to be important, especially to Angel.  And it was this that led her into the trap laid by Jasmine.  But in “You’re Welcome” she is clearly more concerned about Angel and the importance of his mission than she is about herself:

Angel: “I know it's not even close to over, but I do feel like I can do this. Wolfram & Hart, whatever's coming, I feel like we can beat it.”

Cordelia: “I know.”

Angel: “You do?”

Cordelia: “I always did. I... I just needed you to know it, too.”

Angel: “So all that stuff about the deals with the devil...”

Cordelia: “Was God's honest truth. But you're bigger than that. You'll win this in the end. I, uh... just wish I could be there to see it.”

Angel: “What do you mean? You're not...”

Cordelia: “I can't stay. This isn't me anymore. You can say good-bye to the gang for me, explain everything once you understand.”

Angel: “That's gonna be never. I need you here."

Cordelia: “Don't make it hard, Angel. I'm just on a different road... and this is my off-ramp. The Powers That Be owed me one, and I didn't waste it. I got my guy back on track.”

Gunn too, after being seduced by the superficial attraction of the knowledge and skills that the Brain Boost gave him, now realizes their true cost.  And he begins to see the truth of so much else too.  He understands the nature of the Holding Dimension in which Lindsey is imprisoned.  He understands what is required to get Lindsey out and because the knowledge that the latter has is important to help Angel and the others fight the coming apocalypse, Gunn volunteers to make a sacrifice by staying behind and suffering in Lindsey’s place:

Angel: “Gunn, no! What the hell are you doing?”

Gunn: “What needs to be done.”

Angel: “I'm not leaving you here.”

Gunn: “You don't make the rules here. Wolfram and Hart does. If one leaves, one has to stay. A void is impossible.”

And even when he got out he continued to find the true meaning in his life lay in helping people like the woman whose child the Fell demon wanted to steal in “Time Bomb”.  So, when in “Not Fade Away” he was asked to choose his perfect day he went back to the beginning – to the street.  He went to see someone who was trying to help the very people he had come from and on whom he had once turned his back.  For Gunn, no less than for Angel, the attack on the Black Thorn was his way of ensuring as best he could that these people too had a future.  And for Gunn, just as for Angel, there was meaning in his life to be found in this, a meaning that he never found as a Wolfram and Hart lawyer.

Sadly in the end Wesley is the only real exception.  His main fault was that his insecurities led him to develop a state of mind in which he refused to see inconvenient reality.  Whether he was kidnapping Connor or pressurizing Angel into helping to return Angelus, he honestly believes that he is doing the right thing.  Bringing back Angelus for example was, he would have said, a necessary evil to fight the Beast.  But subconsciously he would have taken that view because it also placed him in a position of leadership and responsibility where he could have shone.  The venial reasons would have been part of his motivation but he would have only admitted to himself the higher motivation.  Again, he felt attracted to Lilah.  He slept with her and convinced himself that he was justified in doing so because he was trying to save her.  In the end he tries to validate this approach by getting her out of her contract.  After all if he was really acting to help her isn't that what he would do whereas if he was just sleeping with the enemy for selfish reasons he wouldn't care what happened to her after her death.  But it is just as likely that the true explanation was that he wanted her in spite of the fact that she was the enemy and he was trying to convince himself he had a higher motive.  When he fell in love with and lost Fred this tendency came back to haunt him.  He could not deal with the reality of her death, especially not with her mirror image there in the form of Illyria. She was a constant reminder to Wesley of what he has lost.  In fact she was such a strong reminder that he could not dissociate Illyria from Fred.  He knew that was wrong.  But he could not help himself.  That is why Illyria as Fred sickens him and that is why in “The Girl in Question” he tells her so sharply never to appear as Fred again.   That form taunted him with his own inability to move on.  We see the sorrow, anger and bitterness that is within him and the only thing he can do in the face of this is to close himself off from the reminder of what he once loved.  This is indeed a man for whom the words “move on” have no meaning and it is destroys him. That is why, when in “Not Fade Away” he must decide how to spend his last day on earth, he does so with the creature who looks like Fred.  Nothing else means anything to him and it is a lie.  And this is perhaps why Wesley had to fail in his mission and die before the final confrontation.  For him personally the attack on the Black Thorn meant nothing.  Perhaps he went through with it out of a sense of duty.  Perhaps he felt in his heart that it was a suicide mission and that this was, for him, the best way out.  In any even all that remained to him was the lie with which he finally allowed Illyria to comfort him with as he lay dying.   But that lie, as he himself understood only too well, could not give a meaning to his life or serve as his redemption.

Conclusion

ANGEL at its best is at one and the same time an in depth psychological study and a meditation in morality.  It is the way in which the writers use the series' focus on the internal world of Angel, and the others, not only to make statements about the moral ambiguity of their own actions but to explore general issues about the human condition which, for me, makes ANGEL as a series so satisfying. 

Sometimes literature depicts the struggle between good and evil in straightforward terms.  There is evil and there is some form of idealized good beyond the reach of evil.  On this basis some can, therefore, be characterized as a villain, deserving of some terrible fate and separated out from the rest of us.  But in truth life is more complex.  Realistically, of course, one cannot be wholly good or wholly evil, for humans are gifted with a conscience but subject to temptation. The celebrated Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote:

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart."

In keeping with this great insight, in ANGEL there is no clear line dividing our characters – the good on the one side the bad on the other.   Rather again and again we see the duality of human nature.  We have free will but are acted upon by powerful forces beyond conscious control.  And our perceptions of those needs and weaknesses and the way in which they relate to and inter-react with the needs of others can be highly subjective and therefore uncertain. Too often, therefore, we allow our baser instincts to dictate the way we act but persuade ourselves that we are acting for the best, even when we are not.  This does not make us evil so much as prey to evil.  And it is the way in which we find mirrored in ANGEL this truth about human nature and the way in which our psychology and moral standards so often collide  that offers us the most vivid, realistic and interesting insight into the human condition.

Of course the series could not perform this function unless its characterization and the accompanying psychological insights were coherent and believable.  And in general the writers success in this task was admirable.  I suppose their greatest achievement in this context was to be found in the first half of season 2 where they were able to carry out an in-depth psychological examination of Angel which showed the true nature of the vampiric influence on him – the craving for the simplicities of a conscience and consequence free world and the self centered obsessiveness it engendered.  Not only was this interesting in its own right; it fully explained Angel's descent into darkness.  Equally striking was the picture that the writers gave us of Wesley in seasons 3 and 4.  The lack of empathy with people, the insecurities and the need to prove he knew best all helped explain his kidnapping of Connor and the divisive role he played during Jasmine’s apocalypse.  The pictures the writers paint  of these characters and others have a ring of truth about them and they show an internal conflict which is serious and is real and meaningful in the sense of being about deeply felt issues which go to the core of a person's understanding of themselves and their place in the scheme of things, as opposed to being essentially a teenage snit.    It must be admitted that sometimes the writers weren't always quite so successful.  The worst examples of flawed characterization were in season 4.   In spite of all his good intentions and the promises he made at the end of "Epiphany" here we see the return of the Angel who saw things from a first person singular point of view.  In his lack of perspective and the way events were judged primarily by reference to their impact on him, Angel’s basic attitude here was not dissimilar to his early season 2 persona.  LA was burning around him but what really bothered him was that Cordelia slept with Connor.    In Wesley’s case we were again reminded of his ruthlessness and his lack of empathy.  He is quite deliberately getting between Gunn and Fred.  In this he is thinking of what he wants, not what Fred does.  And he shows no sign of worrying about the effect that this will have on his former best friend.  And in Gunn we see the return of all the old insecurities.  He feels vulnerable because Fred and Wesley were so intellectually compatible.  And he saw things like their plan to create a portal as being a rebuke aimed at him.  But surely Angel's greatest cause for complaint against  Cordelia lay in the fact that she slept with his unstable teenage son.  Yet he exhibits almost as much resentment against Connor as he does against Cordelia. Angel is supposed to love his son.  Where is the concern for him and the way that his encounter with Cordelia might affect him?  More importantly how can he justify nursing his bruised feelings with an Apocalypse happening all around him?  Notwithstanding Angel's capacity to be self-centred and his penchant for brooding, I have some difficulty in believing he would react quite like this.  Wesley's pursuit of Fred regardless of consequences is too calculatedly venial to be true to his history.  Equally, when Gunn becomes petulant because the only way that Fred and Wesley devise to prevent the Beast from plunging LA into darkness has personally painful associations is nothing like the practical, problem-solving Gunn of old.   Much of what we see here lacks a ring of truth and suggests a shallowness to our characters which is the very antithesis of the weighty internal conflicts we see elsewhere in ANGEL at its best .  But problems like this are very much the exception rather than the rule.  And that is important because it is in the interplay between characterization, action and consequences that we understand the morality of the situations our protagonists create.

In the play "the Duchess of Malfi" the Jacobean dramatist John Webster wrote:

            “Whether we fall by ambition, blood or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”

The point he was making here was that it is our own failings rather than the machinations of others which ultimately bring us low. The choices made by our protagonists from season 2 onwards have, of course, consequences  both in terms of their own personal suffering and in terms of the responsibility they bear for the suffering of others.      Time and time again we see them facing terrible dilemmas and in dealing with them making mistakes.   So you have Angel in season 4 playing the Beastmaster's game in a way which not only exacerbates the harm caused to the people of LA but ultimately propels his own son on a path to self-destruction.  And he then tries to fix his mistakes as a father by sacrificing his own principles only to find that  others too have to pay the price for his compromises with evil; something he himself then cannot live with.  It is only when faced with the moral unacceptability of their own past conduct that Angel and the others ultimately learn that they do have the power of free will and can use it to stand against the evil that sought to dominate them.  Thus it is through this process of suffering that they learn important things about themselves, about why they acted as they did and how they should have acted.  This is the moral dimension of characters' own stories.

And there is certainly interest enough there.  But, in a way that is true to the classic tradition of tragedy, that is only the beginning for the writers.  It is through the example of our protagonists that we - the viewers - are encouraged to meditate on how the same issues they faced might be relevant to us and how we would and do conduct ourselves in that light.  And we can do this because from the story of Angel and his struggles (and those of his friends) are built upon a few basic propositions:

Simple as they may be these are important universal themes.  And the fact that, as I have tried to show, ANGEL as a series managed by and large to sustain a coherent and consistent treatment of them is a considerable achievement.  True, as with its psychological studies, there were occasional lapses.  I am thinking here in particular of parts of season 3 where the idea of responsibility for consequences suffered a bit.  In “That Vision Thing” Angel rushes to release someone who may be a major threat to others simply in order to save Cordelia and his responsibility for that choice is essentially ignored both in that episode and “Billy”.  But  again these were the exception rather than the rule. 

But it is in the truth and insight of the themes themselves that we see the real contribution of the series to any moral debate.  The ideas that I have just mentioned are applicable in our own personal lives but also upon the wider stage.   And I would like to illustrate the way in which they are applicable by taking,  as an example, the modern phenomenon of Islamic terrorism.

Almost all forms of terrorism are founded on the belief that there exist interests that are absolute; that the normal mechanism for dispute resolution and settlement (Western-style democratic institutions) can only be followed to the extent that they defend or pursue those interests (indeed they must be judged solely by reference to their success in doing so).  Equally the interests concerned become the standard for morality.  A terrorist would probably accept that it was wrong to kill for financial gain.  But killing for “the cause” while regrettable was necessary because otherwise the cause would be lost.  But that in itself is not enough.  What makes someone abandon all hope of a normal life without hope of personal gain for an idea?  Moreover what is it that makes individuals reject fundamental human values such as the right to life for this idea?  Why is it some and not others.  Logically the answer to this lies not in the cause itself but within the terrorist.  The strongest psychological motivation for terrorism derives from the terrorist's personal dissatisfaction with his life. This may come from the way he sees his group treated generally.  Or it may come from a personal crisis of some sort.  Bin Laden and many of his followers are from comparatively well-off backgrounds in Islamic countries.  But they seem to find their raison d'etre in “the cause”. It is this personal stake that makes them "true believers" in the sense that they subordinate all other interests to it. Terrorists do not even consider that they may be wrong and that others' views may have some merit. This not only creates a polarized "we versus they" outlook. It leads terrorists to project their own antisocial motivations onto others. They attribute only evil motives to anyone outside their own group. This enables the terrorists to dehumanize their victims and removes any sense of ambiguity from their minds. The resulting clarity of purpose appeals to those who crave a means to relieve their own fear or anger.    So here we see a highly subjective view of the world in which narrow selfish interests are, in the name of a higher ideal, elevated above objective ideas of good and evil.  We see the same narrow self-centered view of the world reflected in the terrorist's a pronounced need to belong to a group. With some terrorists, group acceptance is a stronger motivator than the stated political objectives of the organization, which are often vague to the point of being unobtainable. Such individuals define their social status by group acceptance.  This contributes to the intensity of the group dynamics.  With the enemy clearly identified and unequivocally evil, pressure to escalate the frequency and intensity of operations is ever present.  This leads to a well known phenomenon among terrorist groups – the tendency to split with each successive group being more rigid and violence-prone than its parent. Here we see the disconnection between the terrorist and those he threatens.  There is no empathy; no feeling of a common humanity.

Thus what we see in the is an almost manichaean world view of a battleground between absolutes of good and evil.  In this sort of struggle the most usual maxim is: if you're not with us you're against us.  There are no innocents because someone going about his or her daily life in the WTC is part of the threat to Islam simply because that threat is defined so widely and absolutely.   But even if someone was prepared to concede that the victims were innocents, well the need to protect Islam is such an absolute that it justifies all.  In other words we have an almost explicit denial of free will.  The actions of the terrorist are forced on them by the wrong doing of others.  And as a result the terrorist has no responsibility for his actions - they are always someone else's fault.  This is both to deny free will and the importance of taking responsibility for our choices.  It is also a denial of the terrorists' connection with others because they are denied a common humanity.  And ultimately therefore the terrorist denies himself control over his own life and willingly hands that control over to the politics of the Middle East, to the invasion of Iraq or to a view that Moslems are oppressed.  These are the matters that preoccupy him and drive his actions.

I don't for a moment think that the writers had the issue of Islamic terrorism in mind as they developed their ideas for ANGEL.  But the fact that those ideas can be sensibly applied to that issue in a way which helps us to understand it even so, is perhaps the best tribute to their development of the themes they set before us in ANGEL.

The Individual Seasons

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5