EPISODE 4.05

SUPERSYMMETRY

Written by:  Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain

Directed by: Bill Norton

Superpartners

Supersymmetry is a major theory that tries to explain fundamental behavior in nuclear and particle physics.  It states that every known elementary particle must have a "superpartner."  Scientists are apparently quite sure that no pair of known particles are supersymmetry partners of one another. So supersymmetry requires the existence of a new elementary particle for every known one. As often happens, the names given these new particles are somewhat whimsical: the partners of quarks are called "squarks", the partners of electrons are called "selectrons", the partners of gluons are called "gluinos" and so forth. But the real importance of these superpartners is that no-one has yet observed them.  And scientists believe that the reason for this fact is that supersymmetry is a broken symmetry and, as a result, the superpartners are heavier than the known elementary particles (hence the term “supersymmetry”). Experiments carried out so far have not had particle beams of sufficient energy and intensity to produce them in observable numbers.  So, while current theoretical ideas are insufficient to accurately predict the mass of any superpartner, the difference is generally believed to be considerable.

Now in this episode Fred’s Paper was entitled:

“Supersymmetry and P-Dimensional Subspace”

Of course I don’t pretend to understand much about theoretical physics  But, given that Fred's theory came to her as a direct result of being sucked into Pylea and the episode turned on the way in which her old Physics teacher used multi-dimensional portals to get rid of any competition, the title “Supersymmetry” does seem to be a very appropriate one at a purely physical level.  But then again physics have never been the driving force behind ME’s stories.  Its writers have all been much more interested in metaphysics.  And it is in the way in which we can see metaphysical issues reflected in the supersymmetry of the title that we find the true purpose of this story.  

It’s Always the Quiet Ones

The key moment comes when Fred has discovered Professor Seidel’s treachery and plans to take her revenge.  The reaction of Gunn and Angel is one of concern, not for the professor but for her:

Gunn: "We help people. Fred, if you do this, the demons you'll be living with won't be the horned, fangy kind, they'll be the kind you can't get rid of."

Fred: "You're wrong."

Angel: "He's right. Whatever you do now, is nothing compared to how it'll be afterward."

In effect what both of them are saying is that Fred’s proposed revenge would leave her with a legacy that would mark her forever, changing the person that she is.  This is, of course, not a new theme for ANGEL.  Indeed it is one of the central planks of the whole series.  Even though the human soul within Angel was not a controlling factor on the actions of Angelus, those actions as well as the presence of the demon within continue to influence him to this day. That is why Angel is a very different individual from Liam.  This was after all the whole basis for the “Angel goes beige” season 2 arc with its emphasis on his various obsessions, how they derived from his past and affected his present.   Angel and Gunn are in effect warning Fred about the creation of her very own “superpartner” – a mirror image of herself.  But far from being simply a reflection of the existing Fred, the symmetry between Fred pre-Seidel’s murder and post Seidel’s murder would be a broken one.  The weight she would carry would be that much greater, with all the consequences that might flow from that. 

The problem here is that we never see Fred face those consequences.  She doesn’t succeed in her quest to take revenge on her tormentor; Gunn intervenes to stop her.  The interesting thing is the way he does so.  Rather than trying to save Seidel’s life, Gunn takes responsibility for his death into his own hands, despite the fact that (as will be clear from the forgoing quote) he knows that killing the physicist is wrong.  So, instead of having to live with her own guilt, Fred must live with what she did to Gunn.  And this is where we find the most obvious point about the way “Supersymmetry” is structured.  As an episode it is all about relationships – in particular the triangular variant with different people getting to play the part of the hypotenuse.  So we have

Intellectually Fred and Wesley are a perfect fit.  At the beginning of this episode Gunn had trouble even reading Fred’s paper

Gunn: "In multi-dimensional superstring theory - uh - distance scales inverted by T-duality apply to heter...heterotic theories. The pictures are..."

He gives up the unequal task when Fred climbs onto him.  And although he puts a brave face on this, deep down it must hurt to know there is a part of Fred’s life he cannot share.  He admits as much to Angel just before the start of Fred’s lecture:

Gunn: "Listen, man, I'm gonna need simultaneous translating on this thing. You know, like the president with the Russians, but just give me the highlights."

Angel: "No problem. Of course, I have no idea what she's talking about."

Gunn: "Will you tell Fred that? If she thinks we're both stupid, I won't stand out as much."

The same cannot be said for Wesley who clearly had not only read her paper but also understood it sufficiently to challenge her about her theories –

Wesley: "I read your article, saw you'd be speaking. Was an excellent piece. Although I'm not sure I understand how Pauli repulsion is so readily reversed - layman's opinion."

But that was never really a sufficient basis for a relationship.  And this is where we come to the significance of the events in this episode.  When they try to dissuade her from her planned revenge, Angel and Gunn were merely living out the creed that Angel had explained to Connor at the end of “Deep Down”.  Regardless of what terrible thing happen to you, you have to live by a code of doing what is right.  Fred here is openly contemptuous of this code. 

Fred: "Angel and Gunn want me to be all sweetness and light. Cute little Fred, she'll turn the other cheek like a good girl.  I mean, they saw what professor Seidel is capable of.  He opened that portal right in front of them."

Associating the concept of turning the other cheek with adjectives like “cute” and “little” expresses her view of mercy as weakness. She recognizes that what she is doing is wrong:

Fred: "It's not about what's right.”

But what drives her on is her own hurt and anger:

Seidel: "Winifred. Fred. Please. Let's talk about this."

Fred: "Talk? Sure, let's talk. Because you gave *me* the chance to...oh, wait, no you didn't. Oh, well. No talking."

Seidel: "Fred, I know you. You're not capable of hurting anyone.”

Fred: "You don't know me. Not anymore. Five years of pain and suffering in a hell dimension will make a girl capable of a lot of things."

And in pursuit of her vengeance she deliberately lies to Gunn and Angel, pretending to be reconciled to their point of view while at the same time quite cold bloodedly planning to execute her own revenge.  And for this she turns to Wesley for help.  In doing so her actions mirror those of Wesley in “Loyalty” and “Sleep Tight” when he too (in pursuit of his own agenda) deceived his colleagues.  Wesley is for his own part far more receptive to her ideas than anyone else:

Wesley: "Vengeance - sounds good."

And together they arrive at a very similar understanding about what is and is not appropriate punishment for the erring professor as well as Fred’s need to inflict that punishment on him herself.  Wesley evidently retained strong feelings for Fred.  As he admitted himself he had been following her career and while it might be an exaggeration to describe his actions as “stalking”, his interest in her remains strong.  Even so he made no serious effort to dissuade Fred from what she was doing and even when he said:

Wesley: "You can still back out… if you think Gunn's right."

he was testing to ensure that she really intended to go through with their plan rather than trying to undermine her resolve.  In this his motives seem completely transparent:

Wesley: "I was just thinking, not that I don't get his point, but I'm surprised Gunn's not here. No matter what the consequences."

Gunn really did try to stop Fred from doing what he knew was wrong.  Even when he finally understood the depth of her anger – as perhaps initially he did not – he remained completely honest with her.  But Wesley’s attitude is driven more by a desire to convince Fred that he is her superpartner, the person she was meant to be paired with. The point here is that, of course,  Wesley has himself been through his own life changing experience:

“Once you've acted you can't go back. You'll have to live with your actions forever."

Having been driven by his own internal demons to an extreme act, a betrayal that ended horribly for everyone, and having been blamed (in his own opinion quite unfairly) by everyone for that act, he is demonstrably a different person, a person who does carry around a far greater weight than say Gunn or indeed the Fred we see at the beginning of this episode.  In encouraging her along the path of vengeance Wesley was also encouraging her to become more like him and less like Gunn or indeed the person that she was. 

The Man with A Hard Head

As for Wesley himself, it would of course be unfair to describe him as the mirror image of Lilah.  In this episode we were reminded twice of her treatment of Lorne.  The second occasion – her confrontation with Angel – showed how little conscience she had about what she had done to him:

Lilah: "Hey, if this is about the jolly green demon, I could have had him killed, but do I hear a thank you?"

And of course it is this very issue that divided Wesley and Lilah in the first place.  Wesley might have struck Lorne in panic and fear but he wouldn’t have countenanced the sort of cold blooded attack on him that Lilah planned and she knew that – hence the way she decided to play him.  But in “Supersymmetry” the similarity in their behavior is too striking to be ignored.

It really seems that Lilah does care about her relationship with Wesley.  For the reasons discussed in my review of  “Slouching through Bethlehem”, that did not stop her from playing him in the interests of her “job”.   She must have realized, however, that by doing so she was putting at risk her hopes for the relationship.  Some sort of corrective action was necessary.  What was this: an apology, a promise to mend her ways?  No, she bought him a helmet from a medieval suit of armor, saying:

            "We seem to be butting heads lately. Now you'll have the advantage."

As Wesley observed it was a very expensive present.  What he didn’t say – and what was all too obvious – was that it missed the point entirely.   She and Wesley were butting heads because there were still major differences between their outlooks on life and these differences went to the very core of the people they saw themselves as.  Lilah was the self-possessed, ambitious and self-centered materialist.  Wesley was the insecure idealist who wanted recognition of his contribution towards helping others but who saw himself continually faced with misunderstanding and ingratitude.  An expensive present didn’t even begin to address the problems between them.  In fact it symbolized those problems.  Lilah was treating Wesley in the same way she had treated her mother – paying for the best medical help but refusing to make a real mother/daughter connection.  In the end Lilah couldn’t even tell  Wesley that he did matter to her and she didn’t want to lose him and the helmet was her way of saying so. She had to make it the subject of a joke.  But in one respect at least Wesley is hardly any different.  We know that it was the fact that he did care about the relationship that caused him the hurt when Lilah played him.  When he first saw her standing outside his apartment with a box tied with a bow his reaction was:

Wesley: "A bribe. How thoughtful."

At the time I assumed he would be thinking – “is this really what she thinks of me, someone so venial that he can be bought off with an expensive present?”  There was, of course, never any chance of that but what was missing was the anger, the bitterness, the recriminations.  Alternatively where was any attempt on Wesley’s part to lay down certain ground rules, telling Lilah that if she wanted the relationship to survive she had to change.  Instead he clearly sees Lilah’s attempted “bribe” as a sign of weakness.  There had always been a strong element of competition and game playing in the relationship between these two.  And on the one occasion it seemed as though they might be able to break through that, ambition and distrust foiled them and they reverted to the status quo ante.  Now, in the aftermath of Lilah’s success, their little game of butting heads resumes and all Wesley can see is an opportunity to restore the balance because Lilah comes to him  trying to make amends.   So he takes his chance to play a few games of his own:

Lilah: "It'll take you hours to thank me properly. Fortunately I've taken the afternoon off.”

Wesley: "I have to leave actually. But thank you, Lilah, for the gift."

On one level an armored helmet seems a very appropriate gift for Wesley.  But on another it seems quite superfluous.  He is quite hard headed enough to more than hold his own with Lilah.  It is clear that for both of them the relationship is important but they seem incapable of facing head on the emotional consequences of their situation.  Each is seemingly isolated and incapable of doing what is necessary to establish a meaningful connection with another person.  And if there were any doubts about this they would be quickly resolved by their presence at Fred’s lecture.  When Wesley leaves Lilah alone in his apartment she sees the magazine open on an article entitled 'Super Symmetry and P-Dimensional Subspace' by Winifred Burkle.  As we have seen, Wesley himself later admits to Fred that he has been following her career (ie everything she has been doing).  So, for example, when he went to see her give her lecture he did so intending to remain unobserved.  And, when Lilah too turns up at the lecture “stalking” Wesley (to use Angel’s word), her actions are simply a mirror of his.  And just as Wesley and Lilah can’t seem to get past their game of one-upmanship, so when Wesley does finally get close enough to Fred to hold a proper conversation, their discussions are remarkable for the lack of any personal dimension.  There is nothing about how she is coping with her situation.  Instead all Wesley can find to talk about is business. So, while there are very obvious and very important differences between himself and Lilah, there is also a symmetry between them in terms of their difficulties in actually relating to other people.

The Father or the Son

The third triangle in “Supersymmetry” is one that seems increasingly to be taking center stage.  In “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” we saw how Cordelia chose to remain with Connor rather than Angel.  That choice in and of itself resolved nothing.  But it seemed to pave the way for the creation of some sort of relationship between Cordelia and Connor and this episode if anything reinforces the trend.  Cordelia is not only left without a memory, she is left without an identity as well.  We first see her creating a little montage of pictures of herself and various members of Angel Investigations as well as of her own family, all carefully labeled.  She had sent Connor back to the Hyperion for “her stuff”.  It was almost as if in creating the montage and surrounding herself with the trappings of her old life she was trying to create a mirror in which she could see herself, but all to no avail:

“Well, I thought I'd feel different. I mean, I have my pictures and slippers and super luscious Peau and Soie blouse, but... why does it still feel like something is missing?"

Significantly, it is at this point that Connor steps in.  He has already tried to position himself between Cordelia and Angel.    When Cordelia wanted her stuff from the hotel, Connor went for it.  He may of course just be trying to help but it is a very convenient way of ensuring Cordelia doesn’t run into Angel again.  And even Connor himself sneaks into the hotel, no doubt hoping to sneak out again without being observed.  And when he and his father do meet, he is extremely defensive:

 Angel: "How is she doing? Cordy. Anything coming back to her?"

Connor: "Nothing about you."

Angel: "Is she alone right now? Because..."

Connor: "She's safe! I can take care of Cordelia. Can I go?"

Could Connor get any more territorial?  At this stage we have no idea of the nature of his interest in Cordelia.  Is it just a teenage boy’s crush on an older woman who was nice to him?  Is he trying to show that he is better than his father by both protecting Cordelia and winning her from Angel.  Is there an element of revenge – taking from his father someone he valued, thus showing him what it was like for him to lose Holtz?  In any event he is manipulating the situation by preventing Cordelia from having a picture of Angel and taking credit for bringing her “fuzzy slippers” (a fact that has forever destroyed my view of Cordelia as a fashion icon).  He is clearly trying to mould the situation to his advantage so when Cordelia confesses she still has no idea who she is, he seizes the opportunity:

"Maybe you miss the action, the thrill of the kill. You know you used to be a demon hunter. It's true. You're just out of practice. It'll come back fast, though. I can train you."

Cordelia was never a demon hunter in the sense Connor meant, but he was.  He was clearly trying to shape Cordelia into his mirror image (another superpartner of himself if you lie) someone that a teenage demon hunter with all the social skills of a pre-Sunnydale Angel can actually relate to simply because of their shared interest.  And the irony of this is that, to an extent at least he actually succeeds.  She stakes a vampire and in her excitement shouts:

"I did that. I did that. Oh! I did that!"

Then she plants a kiss on Connor.  It was almost as if the shared danger and triumph had indeed created the bond between them that Connor sought – two demons hunters together.  But irony there was because Cordelia realized there was no symmetry here at all:

"Connor. I don't know who I am, much less where I belong or who with. And there is a picture over there when you were a baby and it's only eight months old. There is a lot I need to figure out.  I'm sorry."

And it is in this realization that we can tie together the three seemingly disparate threads of this episode. 

Broken Symmetries

Both Angel and Gunn had tried to convince Fred not to follow the path of vengeance out of genuine concern for her.  Wesley knew that following that path would have consequences but he encouraged her actions essentially to make himself look good in her eyes, hoping to use this as a basis for establishing a relationship with her.  But it was the very fact that Wesley was who he was that made him both the superpartner that Fred sought and at the same time incapable of being a real partner.  The comparisons between himself and Lilah and how they behaved towards each other as well as the way he acted towards Fred (not only his encouragement of her desire for revenge for his own ends but also the stalking) revealed this quite clearly.   Fred realized that and said as much:

"Charles doesn't have it in him. It's part of what I love about him."

In the end Wesley’s help for Fred was no more significant than Lilah’s gift of a helmet to him.  Both symbolized the gulf of understanding and failure to connect.  But Fred’s own pursuit of revenge led to the point where she refused to listen to Gunn even when he was standing in front of her and pleading for Seidel’s life – not for the physicist’s sake but theirs:

            "If you kill him, I'm gonna lose you."

And by forcing Gunn to sacrifice his own principles for her, Fred may well have proved him right.  It is of course not certain that this episode will be fatal to the relationship.  But it is clear that it was the change in Fred that struck that relationship a serious blow.  In this relationship she had become the superpartner and the broken symmetry between herself and Gunn that this change implies means that it cannot survive on those terms.

And here is where I think we are supposed to see the contrast with Cordelia.  Just like Fred she too reached a turning point, a decisive moment when her actions would reveal something important.  With Fred it was her choice to kill Seidel, regardless of what Gunn wanted.  With Cordelia it was her reaction to the kiss.    As we have seen, she was trying to figure out who she really was and making her a demon hunter was Connor’s way of re-creating her in his own image.  But as she later says to Angel:

Cordelia: "We were friends.  I know that. Not just from the pictures, but... And I know that's why you lied before - to protect me. Well, I staked a vamp today."

Angel: "Connor took you..."

Cordelia: "And what I realized is - whoever I was before - I'm still her. She didn't need protecting, and neither do I.  So no more lies?"

The fact that she proved to herself that she was physically capable of looking after herself meant that she could after all find her own way; she didn’t need to be recreated in anyone else’s image.  And it was on this basis that she decided to have another talk with Angel, not giving Connor any chance to interpose himself.  Nor was this the only contrast to Fred.  The result of her choice was to help re-establish a genuine connection with Angel.

The Road Ahead

Normally a heavy emphasis on relationships is not calculated to get and hold my attention.  Nevertheless there are undoubtedly interesting aspects of this episode.  Perhaps the most successful part about it was the insight we gained into Wesley’s present state of mind.  This is far more complex and subtle than I could have guessed when we saw “Loyalty” or “Sleep Tight”.  Wesley remains by intention on the side of the Angels (pun intended).  But here he was quite casually prepared to assist in murder for very venial reasons. Of course Wesley wasn’t always like this.  At the end of “Reunion” he was as horrified as all the others at what Angel had done in Holland’s wine cellar.  He was the one who, in “Redefinition”, had challenged him about fighting the good fight.  The contrast with his attitude to the death of Seidel is shocking.  But it makes sense, especially when you see his actions in context.  This is a man who has always had difficulty in making close connections and who has now been cut off from his friends, not only by their rejection of him but by his own bitterness.  The only close human contact he has is with a woman whose emotional constipation is in every way a match for his own and their one-upmanship feeds one another.  He may not have Fred’s feeling of rage but it is easy to see why he might simply not care about an evil-doer getting his just desserts. 

And in terms of characterization, the picture we saw of Fred here was also a convincing one.  Given her suffering, the bitterness she felt was easy to understand.  I do not find it remotely difficult to believe that someone who survived the harshness of Pylea could become as hard bitten and ruthless as she had.  Indeed, wasn’t that a dimension where good and evil manifested themselves in black and white terms?  In many ways there are similarities between Fred’s outlook here and that of Connor as he emerged from Quortoth – there is good and evil and evil deserved to be destroyed.  But I do not like the fact that in examining  the implications of her remorseless pursuit of revenge the writers concentrated on their consequences for the relationships between her and Gunn and not for their own moral outlook.   Ultimately, Gunn killed someone when he knew it was wrong to do so.  If he was right in what he said to Fred at the start what are the consequences personally for him?  The whole point of the warning that both he and Angel delivered to Fred was surely that killing Seidel would change her.  I find it disconcerting then that when Gunn did the deed, the focus is on what that means for the relationship between him and Fred.  Moreover, although Fred did not actually kill Seidel, she was as morally culpable as if she had.  Forcing Gunn to break his neck is no different to sending him to a place where a demon would have done it anyway.  So precisely how did Gunn’s actions ease her responsibility?  If they didn’t, what was the point of them and in any event what consequences does Fred as an individual have to face for her part in the murder.  The writers' concentration on the relationship angle means that, for me, much the more important implications of Seidel's murder has been ignored.

But undoubtedly the most puzzling aspect of this episode concerns Cordelia.  It might help your appreciation on the focus on her relationship with Connor and Angel if you actually cared about whether she and Angel ever got together.  But even if that is a concern, the way in which the triangle involving these three fits into the overall theme of this episode is puzzling.  The writers seem to be trying to create a parallel between Wesley and Fred planning a joint murder on the one hand and Connor playing out a schoolboy crush on the other.  The moral implications of what the former were doing may not have been spelled out as clearly as I would have liked, but they were there.  By comparison there seems to be an absence of corresponding implications when we look at what happened between Connor and Cordelia.  Take for example the reason Cordelia gives for coming to see Angel.  She rejected Connor’s attempt to recreate her in his own image as demon hunter because she killed a vampire.  Frankly, I don’t understand that.  Let us leave aside the blatant dishonesty involved in Cordelia’s assertion that she didn't need protecting (the subtext of season 3 was after all that Cordelia was the most important person in the whole world for Angel and he was justified in sacrificing anyone and anything to protect her). If this episode was about anything it was about the nature of the principals from a metaphysical point of view, not about whether they were physically capable.  After all  the real problem with Fred was not that she was physically capable of doing a lot of damage.  It was the fact that she was bent on revenge.   The fact that Cordelia killed a vampire told her nothing about the sort of person she was and had nothing to say about the nature of the choice that Cordelia had to make between Connor and Angel.  of course there are plenty of implications in that choice.  First and foremost there is the disparity between Cordelia and Angel's son, not so much in terms of age (though there is that) but in experience  and perhaps above all in emotional stability.  A relationship between Connor and Cordelia would be very difficult for him to cope with.  Indeed simply the fact that the two of them are close to one another is difficult for him to cope with since it is clearly raising expectations that Cordelia has no intention of fulfilling.  But while Cordelia continues, as she seems intent on doing so, to ignore Connor's obvious attraction to her and so long as Connor himself doesn't overstep the mark or Angel develops some irrational jealousy there seems nothing in this particular triangle that has the same meaphysical implications as we saw clearly in the actions of Gunn, Fred and Wesley.

Plot

As we have seen, thematically, “Supersymmetry” wasn’t  especially compelling.   And I am afraid the plotting doesn’t do much to rescue it.  The first problem is with the pacing.  This is one of those episodes where trouble comes looking for Angel Investigations, not the other way around.  So more was needed by way of set-up than often is the case.  Even so, we were not even introduced to the main plot until “Supersymmetry” was half over and that is really too long to hold our attention. Indeed a lot of the first half of the episode was padding.  The major culprit was the wholly unnecessary scene between Angel and Lorne.  The coming Apocalypse was irrelevant to this episode so it had no place.  But apart from that there was simply too much time devoted to Fred, her physics paper, her ambitions as a physicist etc.  As I have already said a certain amount of background is necessary to make sense of what follows but there is no recognition of the merits of economy (said the kettle to the pot).  Nor was there much in any of these scenes that was entertaining.  Quite the opposite, the level of enthusiastic cuteness Fred hit at times was positively embarrassing.  The real problem here was the thinness of the storyline.  The two sub-plots (Connor and Cordelia and Wesley and Lilah) couldn’t even be dignified by the term.  That left an awful lot of time to be occupied by the “A” storyline.  And when you can condense it into:

it readily becomes apparent that there isn’t enough substance there to occupy the time available.  Of course it has it’s strengths.  There are two moments of genuine surprise and shock.  The first comes when Angel and Gunn are discussing Seidel’s treachery only to be interrupted by Fred:

Angel: "We're gonna get this guy."

Gunn: "Count on it. He's gonna pay."

Fred: "No. He's gonna die.”

The calm and matter of fact brutality of Fred’s reaction was what made this moment.  The other of course was Gunn’s neck snap.  That was also brutal but more than that it was totally unexpected.  When the whole point of the plot had been Gunn’s opposition to what Fred was doing and when we then see the whole situation turned on its head like that, the effect is powerful.  But those moments aside, the weakness of “Supersymmetry” is that it is  too straightforward.  What it needed was something to make us think.  For example there might have been some element of genuine mystery involved, just to heighten the tension.  As it was we had in Professor Seidel a white middle aged authority figure who seemed quite charming and friendly making a one-off appearance.  As soon as I saw him I knew he had to be a villain.  It’s too much of a cliché.  Besides the only other possible candidates (Lilah and the nerdy student) were eliminated all too quickly.

Apart from this the other weakness in the episode lay in the plot holes.  Here I will mention the four main ones.  The worst was retconning Fred’s visit to Pylea.  This was the result of accidentally finding the wrong book and reading the wrong words.  Now it appears that it was somehow “caused” by Professor Seidel.  As if this were not bad enough, no-one says how.  Indeed in this episode he tries to send Fred to another dimension on two separate occasions.  On one occasion he uses a cell phone.  But when the portal appears in the lecture hall he is present on stage.  This is barely coherent.

The second occasion on which a portal appears to suck Fred into another dimension is also problematic from another point of view.  If Seidel’s attacks are continuing, then you can make out a perfectly plausible case for killing him in self-defense.  Then what happens to the whole theme of the episode?  That is why despite it staring everyone in the face, no-one bothers to discuss the point.

While we are at it why was Professor Seidel so stupid as to try to suck Fred into a portal in front of a lecture hall full of people, and not just anyone either.  A lot would have been physicists who were quite open to the idea of other dimensions.  Wasn’t he just asking for an investigation?   Also the second portal that threatened Fred and Wesley and the one that threatened Seidel as well as the one that opened the way to Pylea operated by sucking people into it.  Why then have a pack of tentacles reach out of the one in the lecture hall?  The only reason was plot contrivance.  It was necessary to give Gunn and Angel something to fight to save Fred from.

There are other smaller holes as well.  How did a physicist come to take magic seriously in the first place?  Why would he just leave important evidence against him in the open?  Why would the Voynok demon just be ready to step through the portal Seidel created and ambush Angel?  I could go on but all in all it is a very lazy or (a term I am very fond of) through-other piece of plotting.

Overview (C)

 On the whole this episode was a little too relationship centered for my liking.  It’s main strength lies in its characterization of Fred and especially Wesley.  I have to say that I have never found Fred as interesting as when she was calmly contemplating murder.  In part this is due to the fact that such a development is so rare, especially for a woman, in one of the protagonists of a series.  I contrast it very favorably to Cordelia in “Billy” who only wanted to bring the eponymous villain of the piece to justice, despite the fact that no ready made source of it was available.  But also in part this was due to the counterpoint between this hidden side to her character  and the more usual way we see her.  And yet, for the reasons I give, it all had the ring of truth to it. As for Wesley this episode casts further light on him as perhaps an even more compelling example of a man driven along the wrong path in spite of his good intentions than the season 2 arc was.  Unhappily the idea of exploring the moral implications of Fred's actions through the creation of a “supersymmetry” between these two characters is less than satisfying, thanks mainly to the concentration on the repercussions for her relationship with Gunn.  And the parallels between this and the relationship between Cordelia and Connor made no sense, largely due to the fact that I can see no striking moral implications in the triangle involving this pair and Angel.  Taken together with the obvious failings of the plot (it’s thinness, predictability and illogicality) and even the one or two really striking moments it does contain, notably Gunn’s murder of Seidel, can only serve to counterpoints its manifold problems.