EPISODE 5.20

The Girl In Question

Written by:  Steven S. De Knight and Drew Goddard

Directed by: David Greenwalt

Moving On

Towards the end of this episode Andrew explains to Angel and Spike the difference between them and Buffy:

“The point is she's moving on. You guys do the same, and you might catch her one day. One of you, anyway. But you keep running in place, you're gonna find she's long gone.”

And that in a nutshell is the theme of “the Girl in Question”.  Buffy is getting on with her life and neither Angel nor Spike can.  And indeed if we were to accept this story at its face value who could argue with that?  Buffy is hardly seen in the epsiode at all.  She is making a life for herself in Rome, has found another beau – “the Immortal” - and seems to give her former lovers hardly even a passing thought.  Certainly she makes no attempt at all to contact them.  Contrast this to the behavior of the two ensouled vampires.

We start back in LA where an important mission in Rome is identified.  The Capo of a demon clan has died there and he must be returned to his family in LA because of the odd way that demons of his type can be brought back to life:

“They die, they pupate, they live again, but only if the proper rituals are performed by the immediate family. If the Capo's body isn't returned in time, the rituals won't take. So long, Capo. Hello, power vacuum.”

As Gunn confirms, the consequence of this power vacuum might be large scale mayhem on the streets.  But in spite of this, neither Angel nor Spike seem especially keen on making the trip.  That is until Angel learns that “The Immortal” has been seen in Rome.  Then neither he nor Spike can wait to go.  Only this has nothing to do with the Capo or the problems that his death would bring to the streets of LA.  It has everything to do with Buffy.  Of course Angel contrives a good reason for his visit – combating the evil of “the Immortal”.

“He whacks the Capo, lures me to Rome, takes out a slayer and a vampire with a soul.”

But this isn’t very convincing.  After all, the death of the Capo wasn’t going to lure him to Rome in any event.  The truth is rather less flattering and rather more venial.  When Spike insists on accompanying him, the real motivation for the journey emerges:

Angel: “Just admit it: You think you're gonna ride in, save the day, and sweep Buffy off of her…”

Spike: “Like you're not thinking the same thing.”

And if there was any doubt about the truth of this, we find confirmation in Angel’s admission that he had been doing some second hand stalking:

Spike: “You've been spying on her?”

Angel: “I just wanted to make sure she was all right.”

Spike: “Sending your lackeys to do your stalking for you. That is really pathetic.”

We can therefore be left in little doubt that foremost in Angel’s mind – and indeed Spike’s - was his interest in Buffy.  So, the very first place to which they head in Rome is Buffy’s apartment where they meet Andrew and discover the truth about Buffy and the Immortal:

Andrew: “Just missed her.”

Spike: “Then we're not too late.”

Angel: “Of course, it could be worse.”

Andrew: “You're telling me. Most nights they never leave the house, just curl up on the couch and snuggle.”

Angel: “There's snuggling?”

Andrew: “For starters. Wait. Uh, you didn't know they were...together?”

Spike: “It's worse.”

And here all pretence is dropped.  Neither Angel nor Spike have any real concern over Buffy’s safety.  After all at the end of the episode they admit how strong and smart she is.  This is personal – they’re jealous.  And this is an idea that is immediately reinforced by the next cut which is a flashback to the way that the Immortal humiliated them before – in 19^th century Rome when both of the vampires were still souless.  First Angelus is horrified to learn that he has slept with Darla.  But there is an even greater shock in store:

Spike: “Best fit you for a pair of antlers. Been made the right cuckold, you have.”

Drusilla: “Time for another pony ride?”

Spike: “Son of a bitch!”

Angelus: “The both of ye?”

So, even when Spike and Angel belatedly go to retrieve the Capo, all the two of them can think and talk about is Buffy and the Immortal:

Spike: “The Immortal?”

Angel: “I mean, come on!”

Spike: “She's smarter than that.”

Angel: “She'd never fall for a centuries-old guy with a dark past who may or may not be evil.”

Spike: “She's under some kind of spell.”

Angel: “I was thinking that.”

Apart from the fact that they are devoting their entire attention to personal issues when there are obviously more important matters at hand, these comments show how warped their judgment is.  As I have already pointed out, they later accept that Buffy is too smart to remain under a spell and Angel’s statement about her never falling for a centuries old guy with a dark past is simply too ironic to need any comment from me.

Then in spite of a very clear warning about the time factor in their mission:

“If the rituals are performed by the family in time. You must-a get the head of the Capo to Los Angeles subito.”,

this benighted pair head off once again to search for Buffy, ending up in a nightclub where first they argue with one another about who had a real relationship with Buffy before they needlessly getting into a brawl with other customers and end up fighting each other.  And while doing all that they carelessly loose the head and get into a silly  argument about who was to blame:

Angel: “One job, you know. Hang onto the head. That's it.”

Spike: “You were right there, too.”

Angel: “I wasn't in charge of the head.”

But still the lesson isn’t learned.  They seem to understand the importance of their mission.  At one point Angel says:

“Ah, all right. You know, you're right. No more screwing around. We find that guy, we get the head back, and then we get the hell outta here. That's it.”

But in spite of this they go searching for Buffy again.  And even when belatedly they look for help from the Rome Offices of “Wolfram e Hart” (in the shape of the local CEO, Ilona) all they want to talk about is the Immortal and Buffy:

Ilona: “Please, make yourselves as though you were at home. Your problems, they are no more. You have no more problems. What are your problems?”

Angel: “Our friend, she's under some sort of spell...”

Spike: “Cast by the vilest wretch this side of Mount Everest. Which... I'm told he has climbed... several times.”

It is Ilona who brings them back to the real mission at hand:

Angel: “Look, we need to know everything there is to know about him. We need…”

Ilona: “To keep your head. Ha ha! Yes. We know all about your mission to retrieve the Capo di Famiglia. And I have to say, right now it seems a bit more important than trying to pry your friend off of The Immortal. Your head is in great danger.”

And even when forced to concentrate on their mission, Angel and Spike want to adopt the crudest and most immediate methods available:

Angel: “All right. We're gonna need a chase helicopter, assault team..."

Spike: “And guns. Lots and lots of guns.”

They blame the Immortal for stealing the head and want to even the score with him.  Ilona persuades them that there are better ways of doing business:

“But no! This is a civilized country. We do these things all the time. Somebody gets kidnapped, somebody pays the money. Everybody goes home happy. Grazie. Prego. Kiss-kiss. We already have the money ready to go.”

But even then the two get involved in a contest of giant egos (again centered around Buffy) which gradually gets more and more ridiculous:

Angel: “I closed the Hellmouth.”

Spike: “I've done that.”

Angel: “Yeah, you wore a necklace. You know, I helped kill the mayor and, uh, and Jasmine and…”

Spike: “Do those really count as savin' the world?”

Angel: “I stopped Acathla. That saved the world.”

Spike: “Buffy ran you through with a sword.”

Angel: “Yeah, but I made her do it. I signaled her with my eyes.”

Spike: “She killed you. I helped her! That one counts as mine.”

So, at the end of this they are both brought back to the single thing that dominates their thoughts:

“My point is I'm better than this. OK? We're better than this. What the hell could Buffy see in him?”

And this is the point of the episode.  They have a mission, an important mission.  But because Buffy is all either of them can think about that mission keeps on being ignored.  Instead they go in circles both physically and in terms of their thinking.  The way that the conversation between Spike and Angel keeps on coming back to the subject of Buffy, no matter where they are or what they are supposed to be doing is mirrored in the way that that literally keep on going in circles:  they visit Buffy’s apartment three times, the night club and the Wolfram and Hart offices twice.  But for all their movement they get nowhere and achieve nothing.  Indeed as a result of their infatuation with Buffy not only do they end up literally losing their head but their mission equally literally blows up in their faces. They are then reduced to complete impotence as they are once more quite literally shut out of the mission by Illona closing the door on their faces:

Angel: “We make our own fate.  We don't need anybody cleaning up our mess. You know, we're champions! Got this under control. You know, we're just gonna…We're…Should we just go home?”

And in the end they still seem unable still to learn their lesson.  In the final scene after having been humiliated by the Immortal and ignored by Buffy they signal their intellectual acceptance if the need to move on:

Spike: “So, what? We just have to live with it? Get on with our lives?”

Angel: “'Fraid so.”

Spike: “Fine. No problem. I was plannin' on doin' that anyway.”

Angel: “Yeah, me, too.”

Spike: “Actually, I'm doin' it right now. As we speak, I'm movin' on.”

But as the camera pans out to a wider shot we see the pair of they fixed and immobile, suggesting that whatever they say they are quite incapable of actually doing so.

The Immortal: Man and Myth

Now I will admit that this was structurally very clever and worked – from a technical point of view – quite beautifully.  The connection between their obsession with Buffy, their aimless and irrational behavior and their complete failure is clearly, coherently and entertainingly laid out for us.

There is only one problem with it.  It is so divorced from the context of this season or indeed the whole series and so untrue to character as to be completely meaningless.  We are therefore left to decide whether “The Girl in Question” was simply a piece of inconsequential fun – not to be taken seriously – or that there was another message behind it.  Allow me to explain.

The first question that puzzled me here was – why was there a need for this episode at all?  The relationship between Angel and Buffy (or Spike and Buffy for that matter) cannot be compared to Connor’s case.  As I already explained in my review of "Origin", Connor was a hanging thread.  The season, let alone the series could not have been concluded without finally resolving the outstanding issues relating to him.  The same cannot be said for Buffy.  “The Girl in Question” stressed the need for Angel and Spike to “move on”.  Yet this was the fifth episode of the series which addressed this self-same point:

were the others.  In “Waiting in the Wings”, for example,  Angel had a clear choice – to go back to Sunnydale and try to re-forge a relationship with Buffy or stay in LA and see whether things would work out with Cordelia.  Indeed even when it looked as though things would not work out with Cordelia at all (thanks to Groo) he still didn’t go back to Buffy but stayed and sulked about Cordelia.  And now that Cordelia has gone, he has moved on to another girlfriend – Nina, who was at least mentioned in the episode. 

Heaven knows, Angel has had problems with finding a direction to his life.  But it was never suggested that his inability to be with Buffy was a part of those problems.  And, as we have seen from “Timebomb” he now believes that he has finally got an answer to all his problems over self belief.  What possible advantage do the writers see in unnecessarily confusing matters by suggesting that Buffy would so seriously distract him from doing the right thing?  Are we to believe for example that if she had been in LA he might forget all about his showdown with the Senior Partners to moon over her?

Even Spike, when he was given an opportunity to leave on a Wolfram and Hart funded world tour stopping in Rome, turns it down with these words:

“It's what I want. I don't really like you. Suppose I never will. But this is important, what's happening here. Fred gave her life for it. The least I can do is give what's left of mine. The fight's comin', Angel. We both feel it... and it's gonna be a hell of a lot bigger than Illyria. Things are gonna get ugly. That's where I live.”

So I am bound to infer from this that the writers had an ulterior motive in “The Girl in Question”, something that had little to do with the season 5 arc or with the development of the characters of Angel or Spike as we have seen them in this season.  And perhaps their agenda had something to do with the fact that we were now approaching the end not only of ANGEL but the entire Whedonverse as we have known it.

Perhaps we may get closer to understanding this agenda if we remember that, although Buffy flits in and out of this episode like a chimera, the real point and counterpoint is between Angel and Spike on the one hand and the Immortal on the other.  And in this context it is important to understand that the Immortal isn’t a character as such – we don’t meet him and we certainly get no sense of a personality that would make him an individual.  Instead he is some sort of archetype (the name alone indicates this) and his characteristics make for some very interesting comparisons with Spike and Angel.

Like them he is very much the loner:

“He is a wild card, a wolf removed from the pack, a stallion without, uh, the bridle.”

But that is only the start of the comparison and at every step in the process, the two vampires not only come out worse but much worse.  In the first flashback scene Spike and Angelus have been knocked unconscious and chained by the Immortal.  When they regain consciousness they try to escape uttering dark threats against their captor:

Angelus: “The Immortal thinks he can do this to us?”

Spike: “He doesn't know who he's dealing with.”

Angelus: “Well, he's about to find out.”

 Spike: “He's gonna curse the day he ever crossed purpose with Angelus.”

But they fail.  Indeed, they are only released when the Immortal orders it.  And he is quite gentlemanly about it:

 “His benevolence The Immortal wishes to convey his regrets at having detained you, but your recent actions against his concerns merited stiff reprimand.”

He is clearly not only older (having been in Rome 300 years previously) but also more powerful then both Angelus and Spike and the understatement of that power combined with his politeness only serves to emphasize how strong he is.  On the other hand the arrogance of Angelus and Spike only serves to underline their ineffectiveness.  So, when the former breaks the neck of the Immortal’s underling, it seems like an act of petty vindictiveness in comparison.

Then the Immortal not only cuckolds Angelus and Spike but leaves them in the shade when it comes to being attractive to women:

Darla: “I mean, he's not some common vampire. He's—I don't know what he is. A giant. A titan straddling good and evil, serving no master but his own considerable desires.”

And when Angelus and Spike try to get even they are brushed aside without effort.  Indeed there is, it seems, nothing the Immortal cannot do from climbing Everest to writing a life changing spiritual guide.  Oh, and where Spike and Angel failed so miserably he succeeds almost as an afterthought, sending the Capo back to LA with a polite little note.

So, in terms of being a mysterious, older, attractive, powerful and honorable man with a hint of danger about him, the Immortal is the real deal.  And Spike and Angel fall far short of him – and have done for over a hundred years. At one level we have to ask why is it surprising (given what everyone says about him) that Buffy has fallen for him and forgotten about her erstwhile lovers? But the fact that she does so actually poses an interesting question.  Andrew certainly talks a very good game on behalf of Buffy’s maturity in moving on.  There are, of course, people who would have a little difficulty in identifying this Buffy as the one we saw well at any stage of BTVS.  But even leaving this aside doesn’t her dalliance with the Immortal directly contradict what Andrew has been saying on her behalf?  She has already fallen for

“a centuries-old guy with a dark past who may or may not be evil.”

not once but twice.  Doing so a third time makes her a serial offender.  Now why does the phrase “stuck in a pattern” come to mind here?  Whatever it is, this doesn’t meet my definition of moving on.  So why introduce a character that would so directly contradict what is supposed to be the main theme of the episode.  Wouldn’t it be more consistent to show Buffy falling for a nice normal guy her own age.  Wouldn’t that be a far better example of her “moving on”?  The answer is “of course”. 

But that is not the only question raised by the Immortal.  He has apparently been the arch-nemesis of both Spike and Angel for a very long time, so why is this the first we have heard of him?  The writers must know that this lacks any credibility but the necessity for them to have been long-term rivals was obviously powerful enough for them to take the risk. 

If introducing the character of the Immortal causes these problems then we can only conclude the writers did so because the comparison between Angel and Spike on the one hand and the Immortal on the other is central to the writers purpose and for that purpose to be fully achieved it had to be a long standing rivalry.  An essential part of the whole Buffy/Angel mythology (and to a lesser extent the Buffy/Spike mythology as well) is the fact that he was mysterious, older, attractive, powerful and honorable man with a hint of danger about him.  And what we see in “The Girl in Question” is an undermining of this aspect of Angel’s (and Spike’s) identity.  Not only are they not now in the same league as the Immortal – they have never been.  Any impression to the contrary has just been an illusion.

Then there is another part of this.  The attraction between Spike and Buffy certainly had a dark side to it but we were encouraged to see it as something strong and deeply felt.   And the love between Buffy and Angel has always been portrayed as a true romantic feeling.  Here we can only judge what Angel and Spike feel for the slayer through the prism of their actions.  And what do we see in their actions in pursuit of her:

These characteristics are a textbook definition of immaturity.  And indeed at one point Spike refers to them as

            “chasin' around like a couple of henpecked teenagers.”

And if that is all we see of them are we not being asked to judge their love for Buffy in the same terms – an outpouring of the emotional maturity of teenagers?

One thing I have always liked about ANGEL is the series willingness to poke gentle fun at its own mythology.  But the emphasis here is on “gentle”.  And the point of that was to leave the mythology intact.  This was anything but gentle.  Rather it was unsubtle, crude and forced.   It came not from the characters but from the writers need to mould those characters to fit their purpose.  This is bad writing in any event.  But even more strange is the apparent purpose for which this happened.  For the forgoing reasons I can only conclude that “The Girl in Question” was designed to give the Buffy/Angel relationship in particular and the whole mythology surrounding it a good kicking.  Why, for the moment, escapes me.  The whole Buffy/Angel universe was about to come to a close.  I could understand it if  the writers felt that they could not allow it to do so leaving the potential for a relationship between Buffy and either Angel or Spike where it stood – an open question.  But “the Girl in Question” clearly wasn’t designed to bring about the sort of closure that this implied.   It deliberately left the question open.  So I have to say that I simply find the writers’ choice of subject for the third last ANGEL episode of all and their approach to that subject bizarre.

Wesley and Fred

The pity is that there was in this episode a very real and very powerful example of someone who knows intellectually that he must move on from the woman he loves, cannot bring himself to do so and is slowly destroying himself with the pain and the guilt caused by that realization.  I am of course speaking of Wesley. And part of the real pathos here is that he is not the only one who finds himself in mourning for what was lost and faced with a realization of the need to move on. 

We see Illyria wandering the Wolfram and Hart lobby caressing some bamboo plants and saying wistfully:

“I can no longer hear the song of the green.”

Soon she reminds us all of the reason for her pain:

Wesley: “Is that how you view it—you've been defeated?”

Illyria: “My world gone. My power stripped. How would you define it?”

Lorne: “Uh, I don't know, how about... lucky we didn't kill you when you went nuclear?”

Illyria: “This fate is worse than death. Condemned to live out existence in a vessel incapable of sustaining my true glory. How am I to function with such limitation?”

But when the Burkles turn up expecting to see their daughter, she impersonates Fred.  At first she pretends that this is to avoid them being told the truth about Fred’s death:

“Your grief hangs off of you like rotted flesh. I couldn't tolerate it from them as well. I thought this would be more convenient.”

But that makes no sense.  The Burkles are going to be in LA for a very short time anyway and Illyria didn’t need to see them.  Indeed Wesley would undoubtedly have kept them well apart.  No, the real truth is that this is for Wesley’s benefit.  In Fred’s form she comes to Wesley when the Burkles have gone and there is no longer any benefit to them in the pretence:

Fred/Illyria: “Isn't it what you desire? I mean... you love me, I love you. What's the big deal?”

Wesley: “I loved her.”

Fred/Illyria: “You loved this. And part of you still does. I can feel it in you. I... wish to explore it further.”

Wesley: “Never. You... like this. It sickens me.”

Fred/Illyria: “Oh, lord. We both know that ain't true.”

Illyria has accepted the reality of her situation.  She knows that she must move on.   And no doubt from within Fred’s memories she has discovered the connection between her and Wesley.  In her quest to function in this new form and in this new environment she is going to explore that connection, to understand it and to see what it might mean for her.  The terrible irony (and the thing that brings the added pathos) is that in doing this she is stopping Wesley from moving on.  I do not think she is torturing him deliberately.  I don’t think she understands what she is doing.  Indeed from the words quoted above she may even think she is helping him.  But she isn’t.  She is a constant reminder to Wesley of what he has lost.  In fact she is such a strong reminder that he cannot dissociate Illyria from Fred.  He knows that is wrong.  But he cannot help himself.  That is why Illyria as Fred sickens him and that is why he tells her so sharply never to appear as Fred again.   That form taunts him with his own inability to move on.  We see the sorrow, anger and bitterness that is within him and the only thing he can do in the face of this is to close himself off from the reminder of what he once loved.  This is indeed a man for whom the words “move on” have no meaning and it is destroying him.  The contrast between the very real darkness of Wesley’s soul here and the cartoonish antics of Spike and Angel is positively painful.