EPISODE 3.16

SLEEP TIGHT

Written by: David Greenwalt

Directed by: Terrence O'Hara

A Price Worth Paying

The end of “Loyalty” answered at least one important question for us.  It didn’t take a psychic to realize that the combination of earthquake, fire and the cut on Angel’s head had  convinced Wesley that as long as Connor stayed with his father he was in danger .  The obvious answer was to take Angel’s son from him. We need not think, however, that Wesley regarded this task with any satisfaction.  Quite the opposite.  The way he strove in “Loyalty” to find an alternative itself speaks a great deal about the reluctance with which he viewed what he had to do.   He doesn’t seem to have had much of a family back in England.  And given the way he acted in “Sanctuary” he has certainly no future with the Council of Watchers.  Indeed, as we saw in “Redefinition”, his whole life is tied up with Angel Investigations.  The connection between him and the others – even Gunn and Fred – remains strong: 

“Angel and the people I work with are *my* family and when I say I don't want to see anyone to get hurt...I mostly mean them."

Kidnapping Connor means turning his back on that family forever.  Not only that.  The task would undoubtedly be very dangerous, even with surprise on his side.  And even if he did achieve it, where would he run with a very angry and determined vampire on his trail.  Let us remember, as Wesley himself surely would, that Angel had centuries of hunting instincts and experience to help him track the fugitives down and “obsession” was his middle name.  Wesley would be condemning himself to a life on the run, always waiting for the moment when Angel caught up with him.

But there is more to his concerns than just that.  He may have become convinced that Angel would kill his son, but he certainly did not lose his sense of loyalty to him, as demonstrated by the way he stood up for Angel to both Holtz and Justine.  He also realized that within the vampire there is a very human soul.  He understood the capacity of that soul to be hurt by the loss of his child.  As he was walking from Holtz’s lair he saw a young boy greet his father on his return presumably from work.  His thoughts at that point are obvious: this is what it means for a man to have a family and this is what he is breaking up.  Wesley may have had a dark and troubled soul, but he was anything but a callous man and the pain he was about to cause Angel would have weighed very heavily on him:

Justine: “You're the one who's blind."

Wesley: "How so?"

Justine: "What you're about to do to your friend? I imagine it's easier to hate Holtz than yourself."

Indeed, it is not hard to see in his tentative approaches to Holtz a way of testing whether this cup could pass from him, whether Holtz would solve the problem by taking the child himself.   In a series with quite a lot of religious imagery, perhaps this was Wesley’s Garden of Gethsemane.

But if this was Wesley’s hope then surely it was stillborn.  Even the two brief meetings he had with Holtz served to convince him that he was not the man to entrust with Angel’s son:

Wesley: "I don't stab people in the back."

Holtz: "You're an honest man. I trust you. And you can trust me."

Wesley: "It's funny. I don't."

Of course, as subsequent events were to demonstrate he was quite right not to do so.  But as Holtz pointed out this decision left the problem even more firmly with Wesley than ever:

"Well, your problem isn't me right now. Your problem is, your friend is going to kill his own child. You know you have to do something about it.  You know if you don't, I will. Don't misunderstand me. I won't stand by while an innocent child is murdered.  But I won't attack and endanger other innocent lives unless I'm forced to."

So, convinced in his own mind that Angel was a danger to Connor and that there was no alternative, Wesley kidnapped the boy.    He did so in spite of the fact that he was destroying his own future and risking his own life.  He did so in spite of the fact that he was also separating a father from a son.  And, as it turned out, he almost killed Lorne as well.  He did so in the name of safeguarding Connor’s life.  But as we saw in "Loyalty" it was clear that in coming to this view Wesley was acting on incomplete and perhaps misleading information.  Couldn't he see that too?  Why was he so ready to jump to conclusions that forced him into taking actions that he himself was deeply uncomfortable with?  In trying to understand this, there are interesting parallels between Wesley and various other actors in the drama: Angel himself, Sahjhan, Lilah  and above all Holtz and Justine.  Each faced a situation in which they were under pressure of one sort or another.  The comparisons and  contrasts between the way in which each reacted tells us a great deal about each of them and about Wesley and in particular why he reacted as he did.

Sahjhan

Sahjhan is perhaps the most monstrous single example of a creature who was prepared to go to any lengths to attain his ends.  Sahjhan is desperate to see Connor dead and he is prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure  that happens.  We will leave aside the fact that his would be victim is an innocent child.  Instead let us simply remember that, when Holtz wasn’t moving quickly enough for him, Sahjhan went behind the back of his own ally and conspired with Lilah to doctor Angel’s blood supply so that he would kill his own son.  And when that failed he was quite willing to doom anyone within range of the portal he opened:

“What you are looking into is the Quortoth, the darkest of the dark worlds. So, I can widen the portal and you can all be swallowed up by a world you can not begin to imagine or you can keep your word and kill that child. Now!"

For Sahjhan the only thing that counted was killing Connor.  And in pursuit of this there is no price too high, so long as other people pay it of course.  This is not someone who makes sacrifices for others.  Rather he is quite willing to see others sacrificed  for him.

Lilah

Lilah, although human, is cut from the same cloth as Sahjhan.  She agrees to arrange for Angel’s blood supply to be contaminated with Connor’s blood simply out of a desire for revenge.  The fact that, by doing so, she too 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?"

She then betrays her supposed ally and tries to kidnap the baby alive just so that she can curry favor with her bosses at Wolfram and Hart.  As always for her the bottom line dictated her actions.  So, when presented with a choice between killing Connor and being banished to the Quortoth, she chooses the former.  And when Angel is left bereft of his son there is not a glimmer of compassion or sympathy:

Commando (indicating Angel): "Should we do something about..."

Lilah: "Yes, we should.  We should let him suffer."

As  she openly admits herself, Lilah 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."

Her own comfort and survival are the only things that count for her.  She derives a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that she can afford the best medical treatment for her mother but it seems no cause of regret to her that she can no longer relate to her as a daughter should.

Angel

As we have seen, at one point Lilah self-consciously contrasts herself to Angel.  She calls him the “poster boy” for humanity.  The truth is however that Angel embodies both the best and the worst in people.  As Fred shrewdly observes his behavior in the early parts of this episode resembles someone with a drink problem.  The taste of human blood – his own son’s no less – re-awakened  the dormant blood lust in him.  We see this in many ways.  For example at the beginning of the episode he talks about chains and nuns, clear examples of the preoccupations of his vampire past.  Equally significantly, his attack on the Wraithers was vicious but to him was “fun”.  His throwing of the glass of blood was yet more evidence of the pent-up instinct for violence in him.  More to the point, however, his care for Connor seemed to be lost in his own boiling anger:

Angel: "Connor needs a bath, Connor needs a bottle, what Connor needs is to grow up!"

Lorne: "Is something wrong?"

Angel: "Gosh, no, Lorne, everything's just great! I got a kid that cries, pees and moans, and never gives me a moment to myself."

For this side of Angel, love for his son and the idea of making sacrifices in the name of that love counts for nothing.  This is the ego-maniac within and it’s not too different from Lilah.  All that matters is what he wants.

In contrast, once Angel recovers his equilibrium, his attitude couldn’t be more different.  He even declines to hold his own child for fear of hurting him.  And it seems pretty clear that his willingness to let Wesley have Connor for the night was related to his need to recover from the shock of what he had done and think about its implications.  That Angel was prepared to be separated from Connor in those circumstances was I think a good indication that the child’s welfare was his primary consideration rather than his own emotional needs.  But of course the most powerful proof of this lies in his willingness to see Holtz escape with Connor rather than risk harm to the child:

Holtz: "So. I'm going to leave now, right? With me, he gets to live, anyone tries to take him, he dies."

Angel: "Take him."

Again the religious imagery here is hard to avoid.  In the biblical tale Solomon is called upon to judge which woman is the mother of a child.  He decides in favor of the woman who would give her child up rather than see it killed.  That is the sacrifice that Angel makes here and we are invited to draw the same conclusion from it that Solomon drew when he famously chose the mother who was prepared to lose a child rather than see it die.  Angel’s is the true love because it put the child first and his own needs and wants last.

Justine and Holtz

Then we have Captain Holtz and his merry band.  As always Holtz asserts the justice of his cause, especially in comparison with Angel and his ways.  To Wesley he says:

"I share your hatred of violence, Mr. Wyndham-Pryce and I've meted out a good deal less of it in my lifetime than Angelus has in his."

The truth, however, is rather different.  Wesley has a rather shrewder idea of what motivates him and the others.  At one point he asks Justine:

Wes: "Who did you lose?"

Justine: "What?"

Wes: "You're here in Holtz' army - ready to kill others, die for the cause. You must have lost someone very important to you."

Justine: "That's none of your business."

Holtz: "Her twin sister Julia was murdered by vampires."

And this indeed is the cord that binds Holtz and his team together.  As we saw with Aubrey and her lost son, it’s grief and rage and hatred.  As Wesley observes:

“Holtz talks about 'justice' and it's stirring, but what he wants is revenge. He's driven by it, blinded by it, and if you, me, or anyone else gets in his way, he'll kill for it."

And in the name of Holtz’s revenge, anything can be justified.  When one of the men she is training makes a mistake, Justine coldly says of him and others  like him:

"They'll learn or they'll die."

But not even this level of commitment is enough for Holtz.  At one point Justine wonders out loud about the fate of Wesley and the other humans in Angel Investigations:

Justine: "No! It's... these people that work for Angel - we may end up killing a lot of them."

Holtz: "We may end up killing all of them."

Justine: "I'd follow you through the gates of hell to kill vampires, Daniel. You know that."

Holtz: "But people…even evil people who help vampires are another kettle of fish.”

Holtz’s words here are a challenge to his protégé.  We have already seen how brutally he trained her to obey him.  Now we see him take out a concealed knife.  The knife remains hidden in his hand, waiting for Justine’s answer.  If that answer were the wrong one, the implication is clear enough.  But after a moment’s thought Justine banishes her scruples:

"They chose Angel. That makes them enemy soldiers."

And Holtz relaxes.  The fact that Holtz was quite willing to kill someone as close and as important to him as Justine if she began to doubt the justice of their actions says a lot about him and the way that his idea of justice has come to dominate him. 

So, it is hardly any surprise that in the name of his justice he is prepared to kidnap a child from its father and even to kill that child just to ensure that his father does not get him back.  In the fateful confrontation between himself, Angel, Lilah and Sahjhan at the end of “Sleep Tight”,  we see the real interest each has in the child:

Holtz: "So. I'm going to leave now, right? With me, he gets to live, anyone tries to take him, he dies."

Angel: "Take him."

Sahjhan: "Woah! No! What is wrong of you people?"

Holtz: "I will take good care of him, as though he were my own son. He'll never even know you existed. Don't come after me. You will though, won't you? Maybe I should just...(moves to smother the child)"

Angel: "No. Please."

Holtz’s willingness to kill Connor gives the lie to his words of concern for the boy.  With him revenge came first and everything else a very poor second.

But it’s not only Holtz who is prepared to go to extreme lengths in the name of revenge.  Justine too is willing to sacrifice anyone and anything in the same cause.  She may have entertained an occasional doubt about killing “enemy soldiers” but she overcame those scruples, as we see by her attack on Wesley. And to help her get under Wesley’s guard, she was prepared to let Holtz beat her severely enough to warrant hospital treatment.

Understanding Wesley

Wesley is of course the focus of "Sleep Tight".  But by understanding Sahjhan, Lilah, Angel, Justine and Holtz we can see his behavior in the context of their motivations and actions.  Examining the contrasts and the comparisons allows us to better understand and perhaps better judge what he did here.  To say that Wesley is a hero because he meant to save Connor at risk to himself or that he was a villain because of the consequences his actions had is, I think, to do scant justice to the characterization or to the issues examined through the medium of the characterization.  On one end of the spectrum we see out and out villains like Sahjhan and Lilah.  These individuals are pre-occupied by self-interest.  They are quite prepared to sacrifice anyone and anything in pursuit of that self-interest.  There is a very powerful contrast here between them on the one hand and Angel’s willingness to put Connor’s welfare before his own feelings as a father, to give him up rather than to save him. 

Wesley, as we have seen, was certainly not motivated by overt considerations of self-interest.  Indeed he too was on one level prepared to sacrifice himself for Connor’s safety.  But that sacrifice cannot really be compared to Angel’s either.  As we have seen, when Wesley took Connor he did so because of the existence of a prophecy that “the father will kill the son” and the confluence of certain signs which he read as meaning that danger to the child was imminent.  But this was pretty vague and uncertain stuff.  Wesley could not be certain of the nature of any danger yet he acted without taking the more obvious steps to avoid it – like discussing the matter with the others, especially Angel himself.  And if this episode shows anything it is the willingness of Angel to put aside his own feelings for Connor if that was what was necessary to protect the child.  That Wesley clearly did not understand this may be a reflection of his own very negative view of fatherhood (although I wish this had been something brought out more clearly in the episode).  But it is certainly a product of the suspicions and lack of trust which have characterized his behavior since “Waiting in the Wings”.  It was this that caused  Wesley to read far more into the earthquake and the accompanying fire and cut to Angel’s head than was justified.  Indeed the Loa’s description of the portent corresponded far more closely into the opening of the portal to the Quortoth, than the earthquake and the fire and spilling of blood it caused.

In this Wesley has much more in common with Holtz and Justine as well as the Angel who slaughtered the Wraithers than he did with the Angel who was willing to give his son to Holtz.  The Wraithers for example may have needed to be killed but the impulse that Angel was acting under was not the desire to protect the innocent but the desire to spill blood.  Equally, Holtz and Justine claim to act in the name of justice but as we have again seen with them the real motive is revenge.  On the surface the motivation of all four seems benign but this is a mask to deeper and much more dangerous passions, passions that lead to evil.  Angel’s happy slaughter of the Wraithers was the precursor to a violent outburst against his own son.  The evil that Holtz and Justine’s passions led to require little further from me by way of elucidation.  And in the case of Wesley himself, the way he lied to everyone else in Angel Investigations was not only wrong in itself but echoes the deception that seemed to be common currency among Holtz, Justine, Sahjhan and Lilah.  But for Wesley the defining moment came with his attack on Lorne.  This could only be described as murderous.  Wesley hit his colleague as hard as he could with the heaviest object that came to hand.  He may not have had the specific intent to kill, but at the very least he was reckless about whether he did or not.  Here too the cavalier attitude he takes to the life of another reflects the willingness of Holtz and Justine to kill where it suits their purpose.  Are Wesley’s actions characteristic of a purely altruistic desire to save a helpless child?  Is the lack of trust, the lying and the violence not indicative of deeper and far darker passions?  This is certainly what the comparisons suggest.

Exploring the differences and similarities between Wesley and the others is, I think, a very effective way of showing us that he has done something seriously wrong while at the same time ensuring that he remains an essentially sympathetic figure. I have said it before but I will say it again.  For me the major interest in this series lies in the way it sets up an ideal – the desire of the human soul to do the right thing – and then explores the limitations within human beings that ensures they fall short of that ideal, often with catastrophic consequences.  This seems to me to catch the reality of the human condition.  There is a temptation to divide people into saints and sinners.  Inherent in that notion is the thought that people are really no better than what they do.  I do not accept that.  Evil in the world is a reality.  ANGEL as a series shows us that evil in the form of inhuman demons and lawyers.  But the writers’ real focus is on the members of Angel Investigations.  It can be claimed with considerable justice that they seem to do very little to fight evil at the moment.  But that is to miss the point.  Instead of physical battles against an external evil, what we have seen is the internal battle against evil.  This is to combat the more insidious corruption of the evil in the world and the way that it plays on people’s weaknesses.  By comparing Wesley with PsychoAngel, with Holtz and Justine and with Lilah and Sahjhan we see how in varying ways and to varying degrees humans are corrupted by this combination of their own failings and the hurt the world wreaks on them.   We therefore get a more balanced and nuanced view of how and why Wesley did the wrong thing but without ever dodging the fact that what he did was wrong.  We abhor the sin but do not disown the sinner.  This is a message I instinctively like.  Of course, we are used to seeing something similar in the case of Angel.  So the fact that it is now Wesley’s turn works especially well.  Apart from the fact that it avoids the risks of seeming to be repetitive, the fact that it isn’t Angel emphasizes the universality of the issues.  We are not dealing with one character’s problems but rather problems which to a greater or lesser extent lie in us all. 

Plot

 Naturally, the principal interest in “Sleep Tight” seemed to lie in asking whether or not Wesley will succeed in his bid to kidnap the child.  But this is more than simply concern for Connor.  In an episode like “Dad” the issues were straightforward.  Those who wanted to kidnap the child were unequivocal villains acting for their own selfish ends.  There was, therefore, a clearly defined win and loss for the audience.  If Angel and the others succeeded in keeping Connor safe that was good; if they failed that was bad.  Here we are vouchsafed no such certainty.  If anything, whatever the outcome there could only be losers.  If Wesley succeeded, Angel would lose his son.  If he failed, then Wesley’s future in Angel Investigations, indeed perhaps his life would be lost.  The advantage of this scenario is that it leaves the audience wanting the state of uncertainly to remain for as long as possible. Just so long as it puts off the moment of truth.  And the potential for dramatic tension that this situation creates was, I think, very well exploited here by the continuous twists and turns of the plot. 

First of all we wondered if Wesley would be so foolish as to enter into a pact with the Devil.  When we discovered that he hadn’t been fooled at all we assumed that Holtz had, once more, been outmanoeuvred.  Then, we had Wesley treading a very thin line between success and failure as he tried to get custody of Connor without arousing suspicions.  Of course we were in on his secret and were just waiting for him to betray himself.  Time and time again we could see the hidden meaning behind what he was saying as we waited for the father to sense the betrayal:

Wes: "As a matter of fact I was thinking, perhaps I'd take him to the park or the beach, just the two of us. Maybe there'll be some time in the next day or two."

Angel: "Sounds great. Yeah. Count on it." 

But of course Angel never did.  And just when it seemed that Wesley might make a clean get away Lorne (in might I add quite a clever and unexpected way) discovered his plans.  But again, just as it seemed things were settled only this time with Wesley’s failure events took yet another dramatic turn with the latter’s violent attack on Lorne.  Then of course we had the excruciating wait as Wesley tried to spirit the child away under Angel’s nose, while we waited for the discovery of Lorne and the final destruction of Wesley’s scheme.  But while the tension was built up very nicely, this was only the set up to a quite stunning turn of events which I will happily admit I had never seen coming.  This turn of events not only overturned what seemed to be the basic dynamics of the episode (would Wesley succeed in kidnapping the child) but created a new dynamic of its own which was far worse.

One of the best things about the plotting here was the way that all the clues were in plain sight.  We had already seen Justine’s willingness to endure physical pain and we also knew about her loyalty (perhaps even her love) for Holtz.  And as she proved in “Loyalty” she was certainly ruthless when it came to what she saw as her duty.  On the other hand she was clearly capable of independent thought and there does seem an element of conflict within her about killing humans.  This was shown by the following exchange:

Justine: "I'd follow you through the gates of hell to kill vampires, Daniel. You know that."

Holtz: "But people, even evil people who help vampires...are another kettle of fish."

Holtz takes out a hidden knife and holds it concealed in his right hand ready to strike if the wrong answer is given.

Justine: "They chose Angel. That makes them enemy soldiers."

This demonstrates not only Justine’s doubts but Holtz’s own ruthlessness.  So when Justine appears in front of Wesley bearing all the marks of a vicious beating at Holtz’s hands and with the seeming frustration of his frontal attack on Angel we interpret the evidence as suggesting she had defied him.  Her attack on Wesley therefore was completely unexpected but was not unfairly hidden as there was more than enough evidence to put us on guard.

And so, the scene was set to bring together Holtz and Justine, Lilah and her Commando, Sahjhan and Angel in the final confrontation over Connor.  Here let me confess my one real disappointment over this episode.  In Holtz’s willingness to kill the child we did get an authentic glimpse of the ruthlessness of which he is capable. And, as we have already seen, clearly his own revenge was uppermost in his mind.  But I was more than a little disappointed that his long term plan for that revenge amounted to no more than kidnapping.  As a piece of revenge it seems very mundane; there is no imagination, no real cruelty to match that shown by Angelus and Darla to his own family.  Surely he could have done better.  That aside, however, the actual denouement was full of tension, with the balance of advantage swinging first one way and then the other until Sahjhan’s intervention finally brought about the grimmest ending imaginable.  It is indeed a testimony to the episode that whereas it started off promising there could only be losers, it actually ended with our protagonists in a far worse state than we could possibly have imagined – Wesley seemingly dead, Angel emotionally devastated and Connor kidnapped into “the darkest of dark dimensions.”  And the fact that this happened is once again proof of how right ME’s policy is of not giving the audience what it wants.  It would have been easy to create an ending where Angel rescued Connor.  But that ending would have been trite and entirely lacked the punch that this one does. 

Overview (A)

This is an episode which works on every level.  First of all it gets the timing right.  We have been given a chance to properly explore Wesley’s internal struggles and to allow the tension to build in a way which properly reflected the seriousness of the developments.  But to have spend more time on Wesley’s agonizing would have put a strain on the audience’s patience.  Secondly this episode is a nice companion piece to “Loyalty”.  There we saw that Wesley’s agenda was being driven principally by his own internal demons; here we get a chance to put his behavior in context, thus helping us to see that while he did wrong he meant well.  But above all this is an episode that is very well constructed in terms of its plotting.  It gives us a lot to worry about and a whole series of twists and turns that maximize our concern and engagement.   Finally the storyline hinges around a devastating surprise that flattens not only our main protagonists but also the audience.