EPISODE 4.11

SOULLESS

Written by:  Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft

Directed by: Sean Astin

Lying With The Truth

Season 4 has so far been an extended reflection on the psychological and emotional frailties of our little band of “heroes”.  Naturally, Angel has been the subject of most attention.  But everyone has played their full part in the disintegration of Angel Investigations.  So there is a nice symmetry about the fact that whereas “Awakening” concentrated on Angel’s frustrations, “Soulless” exposes the insecurities, jealousies, distrusts and hatreds of Wesley, Gunn and Connor.

And it does so through the medium of Angelus’ searching interrogation of each of them.   Cordelia sums up the danger he poses in the following words:

“He distorts everything. He lies with the truth. It's part of what makes him so dangerous.”

Of course, Angelus himself puts things slight differently

“We all want something, Wes. It's the way of the world. Everybody's got an agenda.”

Both agree that Angelus does not deal in outright lies.  Rather he finds the “wants” that are already present in everyone in the team.   But what makes him so dangerous is the nature of these wants.  He, of course, uses a neutral word to describe them.  He calls them an agenda.  But the reality is that what he is referring to are very dangerous and volatile feelings – anger, distrust, insecurity.   They are the very weaknesses and frailties that have been dogging the team from the beginning of the season.  He now seeks to magnify these turmoils and to bring them to the surface in a way that is most likely to cause harm. 

Am I a  Failure?

And in looking at the extent to which he succeeds in this we should, I think, start with Wesley.  As he will do with each of his victims, Angelus taunts the former watcher by using a literary allusion, one that is very well chosen to put his victim’s own personal agenda under the spotlight.  With Wesley he refers to the:

"Foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart."

The line is from another Yeats’ poem “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” (although this time I won’t quote it in full). It’s a work of Yeats’ old age. In it he uses the “circus animals” as a metaphor for the imagery of his poetry.   Circus animals suggest the exotic and the entertaining. But now as the poet grows older the circus animals have deserted him. In the second stanza he says that all he can do is to "enumerate old themes” or write about things he's already written about.  He then lists some of the subjects he has written about: the Irish legends, the plays he wrote for the Irish National Theater and Maude Gonne. In the last two lines of this stanza he says that:

"Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of."

In other words, he loved the imagery of the poetry more than the things they stood for. Then in the third stanza he contemplates the origin of  "those masterful images".  This was the ordinary things of real life:

“A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till.”

And he finally admits:

“Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”

Now that he is old, his imagination (the "ladder" that has allowed him to climb from real life to poetry) has gone and all that is left him is the ordinary things of real life from which he constructed his masterful images.  And separated from the things he really loved, all he has left is a heart full of broken dreams and disappointed hopes.

Now the relevance of all of this to Wesley is pretty obvious.  At this point I refer back to my review of “Spin the Bottle” which increasingly seems to be central to our understanding of the demons driving each of our characters.  There we saw the surface differences between AdultWesley and TeenWesley.  The former was confident, capable and controlled.  The latter was insecure, incompetent and rash.  But by looking at TeenWesley and what drives him we became increasingly aware that AdultWesley’s behavior is simply his way of coping with exactly the same insecurities that plagued his younger self.  TeenWesley was someone who wanted to do the right thing but pretended to knowledge and skills he didn’t  have because he was afraid that people did not value him.  And it is this same insecurity in AdultWesley that Angelus homes in on:

Wesley: “You must hate it—that Angel fights evil.”

Angelus: “Eats you up inside, doesn't it. Seeing all those idiots flock around him, calling him a champion. Anyone ever call you a champion?”

Wesley: “I do my part.”

Angelus: “Right. Like letting Lilah suck Lorne's brain. Or, here's an oldie but a goodie: Faith. Good job being her watcher. She turned out to be a peach.”

Wesley: “And you managed to get your soul back, not once, but twice, saving the world several times in the process. Nobody's perfect.”

Angelus: “Then there's kidnapping the fruit of my loins. Smooth.”

Wesley: “He survived.”

Angelus: “I guess you just can't understand that special bond between dad and son, given that your own father's ashamed of you…”

For everyone, Angel is the Champion and Wesley the loyal sidekick.  In fact his father even seemed to have held him in something approaching contempt.  And indeed it was his desire to prove he was more than just a sidekick and to prove his father wrong that led Wesley to embrace so strongly the idea of bringing Angelus back.  After all, by doing so he ensured that he rather than Angel resumed leadership of the team.  In addition he would be the obvious candidate to wring the necessary information from Angelus.  By discharging these important functions well, he could at last receive the credit he felt was due to him.  But there must have been some voice within Wesley that continued to nag away at him about his failings.  As Angel pointed out, he did ultimately fail with Faith; far from saving Connor he was the cause of his banishment  and Lilah did trick him.  His own internal doubts even began to manifest themselves over his decision to bring back Angelus.  Under the surface confidence about his ability to control the vampire we see at the start of “Awakening”, Wesley seems full of uncertainties. 

“Watch the monitor when I go down. Pay attention to everything he does, everything he says. He'll try to confuse you, to play on your emotions so you drop your guard. If he succeeds—even for an instant—we're all dead. I spent my life training for this, and I'm still not ready. He's smarter than I am, and a great deal more focused. He'll exploit everything Angel knows about me and go for the jugular.”

But in spite of these doubts Wesley chooses to go ahead with his interrogation of Angelus and significantly he does so alone.  The truth is that this is typical of the way that Wesley deals with his insecurities: his willingness to make rash judgments such as kidnapping Connor and his refusal to accept that he could be wrong about that.

Hence the reference to the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.  Wesley’s agenda is that he aspires to climb Yeats’ ladder – although not towards the mastery of image that the poet talked about.  The ladder that Wesley wants to climb is towards respect as a champion.  But, like Yeats, he is afraid that he cannot and that all that is left him is t a heart full of broken dreams and disappointed hopes.  And it is in this context that we must see his designs on Fred:

“You want to impress the girl. Move in, get her to love you, and after a couple days of flowers and chocolate covered cherries, you'll bend her over the kitchen counter…”

This puts his attraction to her in a fairly disturbing light.  It suggests that for Wesley she is a prized object and that he is engaged in a competition for possession of it.  It suggests that Wesley isn’t really in love with her.  Rather, Angelus is saying, this is all about making Wesley feel better about himself.  We find some support for this view in the different ways in which he and Gunn react to Angelus' threat to Fred.  Gunn’s reaction is highly emotional.  Wesley’s is cool, calm and collected; almost looking with detachment at the danger Fred was in.  And then there is the scene when he forcibly kisses her.  She is trying to tell him that there is nothing wrong with the way he feels about her but he says:

“Yes there is.”

as he moves in almost to take control of the situation and certainly showing scant respect for her wishes.  There may indeed have been some exaggeration to Angelus' words.  But undoubtedly there is a dark side to Wesley's feelings for Fred.

Love and Hatred

So, this is perhaps a good point at which to turn our attention to Gunn.  And for him too Angelus has a literary parallel: Othello.

Angelus:  "Othello and Desdemona. My favorite couple. Oh, wait, Desdemona wasn't in love with the other guy. So much for stand by your man."

The parallel between Angelus and Iago here is pretty good too.  The latter’s plot to bring down the Moor is the product of a calculating and evil – some might say diabolical – mind. And in furtherance of his plot Iago is, throughout the play, thoroughly deceitful.  He suggests that Desdemona is unfaithful to Othello, when he knows that not to be the case.  Here too, Angelus suggests to Gunn that Fred loves Wesley when in fact all the evidence is to the contrary.  Take what happened when Angelus grabbed her.  Gunn lost his head.  As Wesley later tells him:

“It's understandable, but you played right into his hands. Never drop your weapon.”

And it was Wesley who quite coolly averted the danger by accurately shooting the vampire with a tranquilizer gun.  Yet, in spite of the fact that Fred had Wesley to thank for her safety, it is to Gunn that she clings and to Gunn that she says:

“I'm just glad you're here.”

But Gunn still doesn’t feel secure in Fred’s love.  He does fear Wesley.  Here we see his agenda.  And here we see the parallel between him and Othello.  A superficial view might be that, as Othello kills his beloved wife because of the devious machinations of Iago, he was simply a victim of the latter.  He committed murder because he had become a pawn in his so-called friend’s game.  But this is to ignore the part that Othello’s own weaknesses played in Desdemona’s death. Othello is a strong leader who is self-assured in his ability to handle military matters.  But he is insecure when it comes to more personal issues. He is in a new city with different customs. He feels an outsider.  He has a new bride - a young and beautiful woman - whom he loves but does not know well. And he seems prey to doubts about his own qualities outside the military sphere.  He is clearly eloquent but says of himself:

Rude am I in my speech,
And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace.

He is unsure why Desdemona would choose him for her husband, and can only fathom one explanation:

She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd.

Othello surely is aware of the widespread prejudice in Venice and certainly must question why Desdemona would defy her culture and fellow Venetians by marrying a Moor.  So it is his own insecurities -stemming from his race, his position as an outsider and as a soldier - that allows Iago to manipulate him:

 Ay, there's the point! as to be bold with you
Not to affect many proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
Whereto we see in all things nature tends
Her will, recoiling to her better judgement,
May fall to match you with her country forms
And happily repent.

Iago simply validates his master’s suspicions and from that point onwards Othello’s pride and his martial nature take over.  It is this fierce warrior conceit that determines that death is the only fitting price for Desdemona’s betrayal:

Ay, let her rot, and perish, and be calm to-night; for
she shall not live. No, my heart is turn'd to stone ...

So, he refuses her a chance to defend herself.  And from this we see he is not interested in justice.  Rather he is only interested in satisfying his own destructive passions.  Hence the impassivity with which he deals with his wife’s pleas before he kills her:

Desdemona: Kill me to-morrow; let me live to-night!

Othello: Nay, an you strive…

Desdemona: But half an hour!

Othello: Being done, there is no pause.

Desdemona: But while I say one prayer!

Othello: It is too late.

Gunn too suffers from exactly the same insecurities.  It is obvious that he does have a great love for Fred.  His panicked reaction when Angelus grabbed her proves that.  His problem is that he cannot believe that she loves him.  Of course in the aftermath of Professor Seidel’s murder she did push him away.  But he sees far more than just that between them.  It is hinted in “Spin the Bottle” that Gunn saw himself as just the muscle, and as such didn’t play that important a role in Angel Investigations.  And more and more since then, he has come to resent the way in which Fred and Wesley were so intellectually compatible and the closeness with which they worked together.  He saw this as evidence that Fred didn’t really value him and that she did feel a closer bond with Wesley.

But it isn’t just his insecurities that make Gunn so dangerous here. It is interesting that Angelus chooses to taunt him about two things in particular

          Gunn: “Keep talking. I'll sweep out the cage when I'm done.”

          Angelus: “Oh. Provocative. Get me all riled up. You think that's what your boss would want?”

          Gunn: “Don't have a boss.”

Angelus: “You might want to tell Wesley that. Ah, Fred. You look all fresh and sweet, but I hear you at night in your room with Gunn. The things you say. I'm lying there, listening, hands under the covers... I can't help myself. It's so... gripping.”

Gunn hates to think of himself as having a boss – especially Wesley.  And we also see hints here about his possessiveness towards Fred too. Like Wesley, Gunn too sees Fred almost as something to be owned.  At a later point he chides Wesley:

            “You just take what you want no matter who it belongs to.”

The reference to Fred as “it” and the way that he treats her at times almost like an inanimate object who has no view of her own are pretty disturbing.  We are being reminded that he is a proud man who sees Wesley working behind his back to take something valuable from him.  And Fred won’t admit the truth about this or about her own lack of respect for him.  Hence his distrust, not only of Fred and Wesley but of almost everyone he comes into contact with at the moment, in particular Connor.  And this sense of distrust fuels the more destructive side of his nature – the angry, passionate young man we first met in “War Zone”, the one who looks to lay blame when things go wrong and the one who thinks that retribution is called for when they do.  In short, in Gunn the same insecurities awaken the same sense of hurt pride and the same passionate anger that they do in Othello.

And the consequences of this are made plain in the confrontation between himself and Wesley over Fred.  This has been simmering for some time.  But now Angelus has managed to get both of them to react to his taunts in exactly the way he had intended.  Wesley makes up his mind that he is not going to be left with broken dreams and hopes.  He is going to seize his moment.  So he kisses Fred.  She pushes him away but not before Gunn sees what had happened.  And all his anger comes out.  Despite the fact that Fred had tried to resist Wesley, Gunn’s expresses his distrust in her very forcefully:

“And you, running off to him every time you need help, like I'm not good enough.”

This is a direct reference to the way in which Fred enlisted Wesley’s help in “Supersymmetry”.  Not only that but he ironically refers to their kiss as “researching” thus crystallizing his suspicions about the time they had been spending together doing just that.  And from this point onwards things between the three of them spin out of control with the allegations being flung left, right and center.  To Gunn’s charge that Wesley was just out for himself, Wesley responds by bitterly referring to his sense of betrayal at having been abandoned by his friends.  Gunn far from denying that tells him that they feel betrayed by him reminding him of Connor’s kidnap and stating that nobody wanted Wesley there in the first place.  And then finally Wesley comes out and says it: Gunn isn’t good enough for Fred.  All of these charges unerringly focus on the same sensitive points left raw by Angelus.  And with this last  reminder of Gunn’s deepest fear, the confrontation between him and Wesley explodes into violence.

Destroying Angel Investigations from Within

There is nothing new here.  But this is actually the strength of the writing.  We have been building to this moment ever since “Supersymmetry”.  And that is what gives a depth and a conviction to the characterization as these old friends are now transformed into enemies.  And there is a wonderful irony about this moment.  Angelus was, after all, supposed to be the answer to their problems.  What had Wesley said in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”?

“There's only one way we're gonna defeat this Beast. We need Angelus.”

As I observed in my review of that episode the team’s sense of powerlessness, their lack of trust and the divisions that these engendered led to a sense of despair in which they were preparing to make a catastrophic misjudgment.    Because of their negative state of mind they had convinced themselves that they could not deal with the Beast any other way.  This led them to assume that they could somehow force Angelus to help them defeat the Beast and to ignore the danger that they could not deal with his malice.  He was to be the agency by which they prevailed and the divisions between them all were to be healed.  But the wishfulness of that thinking is exposed almost before Wesley begins the interrogation of the prisoner:

Angelus: “You've got no leverage. What are you going to do? Kill me?”

Wesley: “If I have to.”

Angelus: “Wait 'til they drop, Wes, then try that line again.”

Wesley: “I'll put your soul back. You won't talk, no problem…we'll bring Angel back and be no worse off than we were.”

Angelus: “Making you a failure again.”

And the worst thing about this was that everyone knew the risk they were running by returning Angelus.  Wesley admits as much in his warning to the others to be on their guard that I quoted earlier.  Why invite this sort of disaster when there is such a slim hope of success?  The answer must be because no-one is thinking clearly or logically; they are responding out of their despair and their emotion. And, far from advantaging Angel Investigations, bringing Angelus back simply serves to reinforce and deepen the divisions that were already there in the team.  Instead of making things better, they have made them even more dangerous.  Their own despair has therefore trapped them all in a vicious cycle.   And the result is plain for all to see - the disintegration of the team with Angel now banished and the remaining members throwing allegations around at one another and fighting as of they didn’t have anything else to worry about.  Truly, by deciding to bring Angelus back, Angel Investigations has brought a house down upon itself.

All In the Family

But Wesley, Gunn and Fred are not the only ones affected by this decision.  Connor isn’t really caught up in the disintegration of Angel Investigations but that is because he isn’t really a part of it.  Significantly at the start of the episode we see him on his own, fighting the newly arrived vampires.  And the only member of the team that he has a substantive conversation with in this whole episode is Cordelia.  But Connor too has his agenda and that too is exposed by Angelus.  This time the literary parallel he used for the purpose is “Oedipus Tyrranos” or “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles

Angelus: “And now my boy's in love. All hearts and flowers. But, doesn't it freak you out that she used to change your diapers? I mean, when you think about it, the first woman you boned is the closest thing you've ever had to a mother. Doing your mom and trying to kill your dad. Hmmm...there should be a play."

The story of Oedipus is of a man plunged suddenly from prosperity and power to ruin and disrepute. When we first meet him he is at the height of his powers and a Priest calls him  “the first of men”.  But at the end of the play he has lost most of his family and fears for his remaining children.  He is also  blind, banished from the land he ruled and loved and from the people who so respected him. Oedipus had faults of temper and pride and he made mistakes in judgment. But Sophocles does not present him as deserving his fate. Oedipus shows himself to be just, merciful, successful, religious and a father to his country, Thebes. The slaying of his father, Laius, was done in ambiguous circumstances and in ignorance of his identity; nor did he know that Jocasta was his mother when he married her. The central problem raised by this play therefore is: is there justice in a world, where, for no reason clear to ethical understanding, the worst happens to the best? The answer lies in Oedipus’ search for his own identity. 

When Queen Jocasta of Thebes was with child, her husband King Laius was warned by the Oracle at Delphi that he would be killed by the son that she was about to bear. Fearful, the king told a servant to expose the infant on Mount Cithaeron.  But the servant gave it to a shepherd who took him to King Polybius and Queen Merope of Corinth to raise as their own. But they kept his adoption secret from him.  Then, one day, a drunken man at a banquet taunted him with the truth. When Oedipus confronted his parents, they lied, still assuring him that he was their own flesh and blood. Even the Delphic Oracle would not reveal to Oedipus that he was adopted, although it did confirm the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother.  In his ignorance he thought the Oracle meant  Polybius and Merope.  Thus, in an apparent attempt to avoid committing patricide and incest, Oedipus flees to another kingdom. Of course, along the way, he meets an imperious and violent stranger, Laius, at the crossroads near Thebes and slays him and, after saving the city from the Sphynx by solving its riddle, he then marries Jocasta and becomes king. Thus he slays his father and marries his mother.

The interesting thing about this story is that it takes place over a lengthy period of time outside the confines of the play.  What we focus on as the audience is not therefore this story but what the play will make of it - how it will regather and shape its elements into a new, terrible significance, within the tightly confined time and space of the stage performance.

Because of the conflicting stories of his birth that he has heard and because of the Delphic Oracle’s pronouncements, the question Oedipus asks is “Who am I?” And as the play opens his people are under a curse and information is brought from Delphi that, to lift the curse, it will be necessary to punish the murder of the former king of Thebes.  This is what Oedipus vows to do.  But we the audience know that this former king is in fact the man whom Oedipus slew.  Thus the two quests are conflated into the same journey back into Oedipus’ past.  Through the agency of this journey, the story becomes, not a record of arbitrary and disconnected actions performed over an extended period in the past but an ordered sequence of connected events condensed into a terrifying truth about who Oedipus really is. And Oedipus himself is the driving force behind this redefinition of himself.  It is his own obsession with his identity that leads Oedipus to discover his true identity while simultaneously learning he is the criminal he set out to unmask and punish. And it is this obsession that destroys Oedipus.  He is the same man after he makes the discovery as he was before.  His past actions are not tragic until he is brought face to face with this truth about his identity.   And to illustrate this the plot re-enacts the story's core past events in the present context.  A blind advisor called Tiresias' seemingly wild and senseless charge that Oedipus does not know his own identity repeats the drunkard's taunt in Corinth; the Delphic Oracle answers Oedipus once more, with a new riddle; Oedipus wrathfully confronts his uncle, Creon, seeking his death, as he had confronted his father. Oedipus the Theban servant and the Corinthian shepherd once more gather, at the conclusion of Oedipus's search for identity, as they did long ago on Mount Cithaeron when Oedipus was an infant and his identity was about to be created. The way that the later actions mirror the earlier ones show that here is the same man.  So, the play is a tragedy not because of the actions Oedipus performed, but because, through mental re-enactment reflected in this physical re-enactment, he comes to see their dreadful significance in terms of who he is: a son who murdered his father and married his mother and had therefore fathered his own grandchildren.  And it is a significance that he cannot live with so he blinds himself.

For Connor too his actions are less important than his own issues of identity.  We can see his attitude to the things that people do through the way he uses the metaphor of clothing.  Cordelia gives him one of Angel’s shirts.  Angelus notices:

Angelus: “Is that my shirt?”

Connor: “Not anymore.”

Angelus: “Looks good on you, son.”

Connor: “So did Cordy.”

Later, Connor expresses his view of his father:

Connor:  "You think I care what you say? Angel told me how you'd try to hurt me, how you aren't my real dad, just some animal in a cage. Angel's my dad."

Angelus: “I'm gonna cry.”

Connor: “That's what he told me. And he thought I believed him. The truth is, Angel's just something that you're forced to wear. You're my real father.

The metaphor is very revealing.  Clothes are a traditional representation of a person’s actions.  We need only think of the symbolism of white and black clothing in Western culture today.  To Connor Angel was a surface appearance forced upon Angelus and therefore his actions as an ensouled being, while benign, meant nothing about the real him.  Angelus was the reality behind Angel and he was evil, regardless of the disguise he wore.  So, when Cordelia tells him that Angelus has revealed to the others the fact that they slept together he says:

“Angel doesn't care if everyone knows. Why should I?”

Cordelia has to correct him by saying that it’s not Angel who revealed their secret. It was Angelus. Connor didn’t take the point because for him nothing that Angel said and did affected his core demonic identity.

In contrast his own wearing of Angel’s shirt and sleeping with Cordelia were voluntary acts. As such they symbolized what he was trying to do. To him both represented taking something away from his father; taking control of things into his own hands.  But again these actions were less important that his core identity.  We can see this from the Teaser where he fights vampires against hopeless odds to keep LA safe and from his attitude near the end of his interview with Angelus, where he becomes very threatening indeed:

Angelus: “You couldn't take me anyway.”

Connor: “We'll see.”

Angelus: “Promises, promises. Don't make 'em, if you can't keep 'em.”

Connor: “I wouldn't think of it.”

The frustration, amounting to almost desperation, of Connor’s actions here show his need to prove he is different from Angelus.  But they also show that he cannot really persuade himself that he is.  When he walks into the hotel after it has been revealed to Gunn and Fred that Cordelia slept with him, he assumes their reaction is caused by their fear of him:

“Everybody still looks at me like I'm the one who's connected to the Beast.”

The fact that he thinks that even after everyone else has been convinced that Angelus is the one with the connection to the Beast shows the extent to which he is still haunted by doubts about his own identity.  And for Connor, just as for Oedipus, his identity is defined by his parentage. It is in this context that Connor’s reaction to the slaughtered family of the Svear Priestess is instructive.  At the sight of the calendar with “Daddy’s birthday” circled, he breaks down and flees the house.  Outside almost the only coherent word he can utter is “family”.  That is the effect that the destruction of another family unit and all that it stands for has on him.  He understands the importance of a family because he wants to be part of one himself.  But the only parent that Connor has is Angelus, a father that he rejects and despises.  Everyone else has rejected him.  First there is Darla:

“It made her sick, you squirming inside her. So, she jammed a stake in her own heart, just so she wouldn't have to hear your first whiny breath.”

Then there is Holtz:

“It disappointed him so much that he stabbed himself in the neck.”

And finally, as we have already seen, there is Cordelia and she too had abandoned him.  As he says to her:

“You don't want to be with me—fine, you're not.”

Therefore the only family Connor has (at least to his own eyes) is a soulless demon.  It’s no wonder we see only frustrated and desperate attempt to react again this identity.

But there is a difference between Connor and Oedipus.  The latter had to deal with a very rigid and conventional definition of family and an absolute standard by which to judge the appropriateness of family relationships.   He was a son who betrayed his duties as such and by that and that alone was he judged.  There was no other way of looking at things.  But for Connor the fact that there were so many parental figures in his life and the fact that the role each played was capable of interpretation and reinterpretation meant that he wasn’t caught in the same inflexible trap of identity as Oedipus.

And this is where we come to his agenda.  He told Cordelia that he accepted she didn’t want to be with him and he warned her not to tell him what to do.  But when she was coming to confront Angelus she practically orders him to go upstairs and he does what she tells him.  This prompts Angelus to say to him:

“Yeah. Go to your room, mama's boy.”

The fact that Connor does do what Cordelia tells him is important. It means that he does see in her someone who is very important to him.  It may very well be that his feelings for her are decidedly mixed up.  Does he see her as a mother figure, as a lover or as both?   I don’t think it matters.  His own view of what a family should be is obviously far more flexible than Oedipus’ and the important point is that she does represent ho him someone with whom he can form a “family” connection, someone who can help him to establish an identity that is separate from his despised father.

What Does Cordelia Want?

I have left Cordelia to last, not only because she was the final person to have an interview with the demon but because the course of that interview was strikingly different to anything that had gone before.  As we have seen, the theme for these interviews is “everyone has got an agenda” and Angelus has used the agenda of each of his interviewers against them.  He doesn’t even get the chance with Cordelia.  She seizes the initiative with a simple statement:

“You and I are gonna make a deal.”

And from that point onwards she is in control of the conversation.  She knows what Angelus’ agenda is and she uses it against him.  She offers herself to him, knowing full well that while Angelus is without Angel’s soul he is still left with all his other emotional baggage, including his desire for her and his frustration at not being able to have her.  But it’s more than that; it’s the authority with which she does so:

“Look in my eyes. Angel knows me. You know me. Better than anyone. So, when you look at me, you know I'm not lying.”

And he accepts.  In doing so he refers to Cordelia as the sacrificial lamb; but the truth is that she is anything but.  She used him.  She exploited his psychological weakness.  She had no intention of giving herself to him and she demonstrates that fact when she breaks her bargain with him:

“The deal was: you give us information, we save the world. You get me. Well, world not saved.”

That was not the deal.  The deal was Cordelia would give herself to Angelus if he gave her information.  He kept his side of the bargain.  She didn’t keep her’s.    And, as she pointed out, there was no way of forcing her to do so what with the cage and the fact that she made sure there were no witnesses (not that anyone would have called her for breaking her promise).  The interesting thing about this is that the only reason Angelus had to trust her was her promise to him quoted above.  In making this promise Cordelia was playing upon the fact that Angelus would trust her because of who she was and that she could fool him.  And Angelus is no fool.  Angelus plays Wesley, Gunn and Connor.  Cordelia plays him.  This may be a tribute to Cordelia’s strength of mind and intelligence.  But I think there is more to it than that.  Anyone who has read these reviews knows how much I like playing with counterpoint.  The one here is too obvious to be ignored.  The Svear Priestesses are introduced and disposed of so quickly and with such little direct consequence for the storyline that they are an obvious McGuffin; an excuse to bring back Angelus and nothing more. This is an impression reinforced by the disappearance of Angel’s soul, meaning that the team cannot now get rid of Angelus even though the ostensible purpose of his return has been rendered nugatory.  And we get an idea of Angelus’ more important role in the arc from the way in which he accelerated the disintegration of Angel Investigations and emphasized Connor’s sense of alienation from his father.  So, it seems to me that there must be far more to Cordelia’s manipulation of Angelus than  simply serving as a plot device to reveal the existence of the Svear.

And that manipulation becomes even more interesting when you put it in context.  Cordelia has been central to Angel’s own crisis of confidence in himself.  She confessed that she loved him but told him she could not be with him because of his evil past.  She then chose to be with his own son rather than him and eventually slept with Connor.  She was the one whose vision established the connection between Angelus and the Beast. These were all crucial factors in establishing the basis for Angelus’ return and in Awakening she was the one who finally broke his resistance to that return. 

Moreover, she not only seduced Connor but was also the one who suggested to him that he was connected with the Beast, thus simultaneously helping to create a divide between him and everyone else in Angel Investigations while at the same time creating a bond between them.  Her central role in manipulating all of these key figures in the developing drama is simply too consistent to be overlooked.

And there are other clues as well.  Wesley assumes that the Beast killed the Svear.  But the Beast needed Angelus to kill them because it could not itself do so.  So, if it wasn’t the Beast who killed the Priestesses’ family and it wasn’t Angelus, who was it?  Then there was the theft of Angel’s soul.  There are striking similarities to Manny’s murder.  Both were inside jobs and neither matched the Beast’s modus operandi.  Above all it is clear that the Beast has an agenda that has not yet been made clear and it is a fair assumption from what I have already said and from the theft of Angel’s soul that this agenda does involve Angelus but has nothing to do with the Svear.  All in all the evidence is now pretty clear.  There is an unknown factor here and that factor links Cordelia, Connor and Angelus.

Spinning a Web

You cannot help but admire the skillful way that the writers have woven together so many different strands into this episode.  In “Spin the Bottle” we were shown the way the different insecurities that afflicted Gunn and Wesley rubbed up against one another.  And clearly their competing affection for Fred provided a fulcrum for this mutual animosity.  The disintegration of the relationship between Gunn and Fred has been gathering pace since “Supersymmetry”.  We see for example the extent to which there was a strain between them in “Apocalypse Nowish”.  And in episodes like “Long Day’s Journey into Night” we see the close working relationship between Fred and Wesley.  We have long seen Wesley’s attraction to Fred.  In “Supersymmetry” we see the lengths he is prepared to go to make some sort of connection with her and in “Habeas Corpses” he has clearly made his mind up that he is going to make a move on her.  Hence his decision to break with Lilah.  We have seen the distrust shown both by Wesley (for example of Lilah in “Slouching Through Bethlehem”) and Gunn (of everyone since “Apocalypse Nowish”).  So far, these antagonisms have been kept under control but equally there has never been an attempt to resolve them.  And you will recall that the lack of communication between the principals in Angel Investigations was a major theme of “Long Day’s Journey”. All these elements have been laid out over the course of the first half of the season and now they are brought to a head with the simmering distrust and animosity between our “heroes” exploding into violence.  And because, for example, you can trace back the fight between Wesley and Gunn in this episode to the way that Wesley interfered between Gunn and Fred in “Supersymmetry” this storyline has the classic strengths of a well constructed arc – events are connected; they have real consequences.  And because of this we get a sense of development and change which has considerable coherence, depth and credibility. 

That is not to say that the arc has been without problem.  I have commented before for example on the immaturity and pettiness that each of our characters exhibit even when faced with life and death situations.  This calls into question whether they really are victims of forces beyond their control and as such worth our sympathy or whether they are vain, self absorbed individuals not really committed to fighting evil at all.  But here the intensity of the confrontations between Gunn and Wesley on the one hand and Angelus on the other lay to rest those doubts.  We are clearly dealing with weighty psychological baggage (as shown by the literary parallels used to illustrate them).  The demons driving each of our protagonists are real and serious consequences flow from their failure to deal with them.  They are trying to save the word yet have needlessly deprived themselves of their most valuable asset for the purpose and equally needlessly fallen out among themselves, thus doing the enemy’s work for him.  But crucially we can believe without reservation that these are people trying to do their best to fight evil but whose insecurities are too powerful and too deeply ingrained to be helped.  They are therefore worthy of sympathy even as we watch them fail.

And in Cordelia’s actions we see another strength of the episode.  Having just broken her word to Angelus, she turns to leave.  The demon then reaches out and tries to grab her, just missing.  But she is unperturbed and says:

            “Not even close.”

The symbolism is too clear to be a coincidence.  Cordelia really is out of his reach.  And she was the one who stepped in and prevented what might have been a very ugly physical confrontation between Connor and Angelus.  The truth about Cordelia has yet to emerge. But we are getting nearer to learning that truth and to seeing how Connor fits in with her agenda (whatever that might be).  In the past one of the difficulties I had with the arc was the inconsistent and largely inexplicable behavior of Cordelia.  Now, that behavior no longer seems inconsistent.  Instead we are being invited now to look back at Cordelia’s past actions and see them in a new light.   I still cannot make sense of them but in retrospect there is a pattern to them which can only be deliberate.  I am glad about that because it suggests careful planning and promises that the final reveal will be worth waiting for.

The Plot

The ostensible reason for bringing Angelus back is the connection between him and the Beast – a connection which the team hope will help them defeat it.  This connection is, of course, the Svear priestesses and their power over the Beast.  As we have already seen Angelus does indeed reveal this secret to Wesley and the others.  But the striking part about “Soulless” is that so little time is taken up with this aspect of the episode.  Until Cordelia goes to Angelus with her offer Wesley is the only one who made any attempt to persuade Angelus to reveal what he knows and that attempt was over almost before it began.  The attention of the episode was elsewhere: on the way on which Angelus exploited the psychological weaknesses of the various members of Angel Investigations.  The actual existence of the Svear Priestesses was revealed late on.  The solution they offered was neat but without any depth to is.  Their banishment of the Beast would have been profoundly unsatisfactory.  So, it wasn’t much of a surprise that, as rapidly as they were identified, they were (literally) disposed of.  Indeed the only consequences of their brief intrusion into our consciousness was the way the family’s deaths were used to highlight Connor’s own longing for a family and to set up the next stage of the arc.  Without the Svear the team no longer had any use for Angelus so the needed to bring back Angel.  This led directly to the discovery that his soul was missing.  That is why I referred to the Svear Priestesses as a McGuffin.  But even so the way in which they dies – especially the pittiless slaughter of the whole family – emphasizes just how dark the present arc is becoming.  And that for me is a good thing.  It emphasizes the importance of defeating the evil now confronting the team as well as the seriousness of the frailties stopping them from doing so.

As the principal focus was on the psychological battle between Angelus on the one hand and Wesley, Gunn and Connor on the other it is obviously important that this battle hold our interest.  And I think that it does.  I have already explained why the team’s decision to bring back Angelus works from a psychological point of view.   Equally I think that there is far more to Angelus' manipulation of the Wes, Gunn and Fred situation than that his victims are just so easily manipulated?  He is not working from a blank sheet.  He is dealing with insecurities that are already there.  He is simply bringing them to the surface.  He knew them all intimately, as brilliantly illustrated by his revelation that he can hear everything that goes on in the hotel.  This is someone from whom there can be no secrets and so he was able to strike where it hurt most.  That was why, as Fred observed, he was so calm.  His physical movements were restricted but his power reached well beyond the cage, with everyone except Cordelia.

Indeed I have to say that Using him to exploit the team’s weaknesses was a  brilliant move because Angelus is such a powerful and compelling character and is well suited to the purpose.   And here we see the aptness of the nursery rhyme that Angelus sings softly to himself:

 If you go into the woods tonight,
you won't believe your eyes.
If you go into the woods tonight,
you're in for a big surprise...

Here the innocent words are given a new meaning.  We understand “won’t believe your eyes” and “big surprise” in an entirely different way.  To twist a children’s nursery rhyme in this way is truly evil.  But more than that, it suggests a helplessness on the part of Angelus’ victims.  They are like children to be taken by surprise and manipulated by someone so much more clever and sophisticated than they were. 

One difficulty that I did have however was that Angelus apparently trusted Cordelia to keep her end of the bargain.  It is after all an extreme sacrifice that we are talking about here.  I cannot imaging the fact that the promise was given having any morally persuasive force given the circumstances in which it was made.  And even if Cordelia meant it, why did Angelus believe that Wesley and Gunn or especially Connor would let her make the sacrifice?  Perhaps he just didn’t care.

Another problem is that the way in which Angelus grabbed Fred was just too contrived for my liking.  Everyone understood that Angelus was dangerous – that is why Gunn tells him to stand back.  And Fred delivers his blood in a trolley presumably so that she can keep her distance.  But then she stands at arm’s length from the cage?

And finally I was disappointed that the big revelation about Connor and Cordelia didn't have that much of an impact. You can say that the people it mattered to already knew. But no-one else seemed.  You might think that given the fact that Cordelia was not only older than Connor but had been his surrogate mother and that this now explained the obvious strain between Cordelia and Angel that Fred, Wesley and especially Gunn (given his general distrustfulness lately) would have made more of this than they did.

Finally I have to mention the disappearance of Angel’s soul.  Now I have to admit that I wasn’t exactly shocked by this although I appreciate the writers’ game effort to turn it into a big surprise at the end of the episode.  Bringing Angelus back for one episode and leaving him locked in the cage all that time would have seemed a pretty empty thing to do.  It was pretty obvious that the writers were going to derail any plan to bring back Angel and this was the natural way to do it.    But it still deepens the mystery.  And it’s not just the disappearance of Angel’s soul.  Who slaughtered the Svear Priestesses?  Is Cordelia manipulating the situation?  If so why?  What is she trying to achieve with Connor?  How does this all link in the Beast’s agenda?  What is that agenda? Clearly there is much more to be revealed and the writers certainly have my interest.

Overview (B+)

As “Soulless” opens, the situation is already bad enough.  The Beast is on the rampage.  Angel Investigations haven’t been able to find out what its agenda is and can’t fight it.  Angel is gone and the rest of the team is falling part.  This episode though makes things a lot worse.  Almost all of the different problems that have divided the members of Angel Investigations since the start of the season have been drawn together, reflecting the same care and thought that went into the set up for “Awakening”.    And through some intense psychological warfare and some elegant literary parallels a harsh light is shone on the frailties of the team.  As the episode ends, Angelus is here to stay, the team is actually fighting one another and they are still no closer to finding out what the Beast wants or of fighting it.  And we are promised more revelations to come.  So while there is little by way of actual plot development the powerful dynamics of the situation Angel Investigations finds itself in coupled with strong characterization makes for a pretty powerful episode which, if it doesn’t quite hit the heights has few weaknesses.