EPISODE 3.19

THE PRICE

Written by:  David Fury

Directed by: Marita Grablak

A World of Tragedy

ANGEL as a series reminds us on a regular basis that actions bring with them consequences.  Indeed this idea can be said to be something of a leitmotif running through the series.  As, for example, “Prodigal” showed, Liam wanted nothing more than a life full of pleasure.  But it was his reckless pursuit of this pleasure and his disregard for the contrary values his father tried to instil into him that caused him to attract the attention of Darla in the first place.  Out of her desire to turn him came Angelus’ murderous career.  And, as we saw in “Five by Five”, his excesses (born out of Liam’s resentments against his father) led directly to the Gypsies revenge: the restoration of a human soul in a vampire body and the creation of Angel.  Angel’s deeply felt need to redeem Darla, which had its origins in the parallels he imagined between his own situation and hers, precipitated the “Angel goes Beige” arc in season 2.  Here we saw Angel, in reaction to her damnation, lose faith in his own redemption.  But he ultimately gained a new and better perspective on the issue of that redemption because of the moment of complete despair that he shared with her.  And that moment in turn led to the birth of his son.  Finally, it was Wesley, intending to save both the father and the son from Angel’s own vampiric nature (the seeds of which lay in the actions of both Liam and Angelus) who condemned Connor to Quortoth because he could not bring himself to trust his friends.  Again and again we see the seeming inevitability with which each action brings with it sorrowful consequences which in turn lead on to others.  For the most part these consequences were never intended by the protagonists.  Indeed usually their intentions were benign.  Even Liam acted out of nothing worse that a self-centered immaturity.  But this is the power of tragedy.  It implies a conflict between human intentions on the one hand and some superior force (call it God or destiny or chance) on the other.  The protagonist tries to act for the best but, because the world is a fundamentally rotten place, his intentions are perverted and disaster occurs.

But the real power of tragedy is seen when we are asked to look at the way in which the cause of the hero’s downfall lies not in some outside agency but from his own weaknesses.  “Othello” would not be half the play it is if the Moor’s end was simply the result of Iago’s malice and the prejudice of Venetian society.  What makes the play is the part in that downfall played by the fact that he himself is so self-conscious and defensive about the differences between himself and the society in which he is trying to live.  The essence of tragedy really lies in the clash between the best and the worst within us. From this clash we see the possibility of lives being destroyed not by people wilfully doing evil but by human frailty.  The protagonist tries to act for the best but precipitates the tragedy because of some weakness or other, a characteristic we all share.  And so the fate of the protagonist moves us, the audience, not just to sorrow for him but to sorrow and fear for ourselves.  In other words in our own lives too our virtues may ultimately mean nothing and our weaknesses will determine our fate.

It goes without saying that nothing in this prevents the author of terrible consequences from being essentially good.  Indeed the tragedy is all the more ironic and all the more poignant if we are dealing with a case in which the person is destroyed or destroys others precisely because he or she is attempting to be good and is much better than most people, but not perfect.  And it is precisely this internal conflict that is examined in “The Price”.  In this episode we see the intentions and motivations of a number of individuals, most importantly Angel.  We see the consequences of the decisions he took in “Forgiving” and we are left in no doubt that they were evil.  These were not consequences he desired but they were literally the price paid for the decisions he took.  Essentially we are asked to judge those decisions in the light of the consequences – to balance Angel’s intentions against his frailties.  And in a way that is typical of this series, to help us do so we are asked to compare and contrast his decisions and their consequences against those of his friends, former friends and enemies.

Wolfram and Hart

In carrying out this task  I am once again going to start with Linwood and Lilah.  One of the great merits of Wolfram and Hart is that in many ways they provide us with a moral “ground zero”.  The attitude fostered by the environment within this firm is inimical to the development of any sense of sympathy for fellow human beings or any respect for moral principle.  This fact is very neatly demonstrated by the following exchange when Gavin tries to congratulate Lilah for engineering Angel’s attack on Wesley:

Gavin: "Hey, you know, despite our differences, when a co-worker tries to pat you on the back…"

Lilah: "I check for the knife."

Gavin chuckles: "Well, in any case, Angel tried to kill a human, bringing him one step closer to his dark side, and one step closer to us."

Lilah: "Dark side shmark side. Remember a year ago? Wine cellar - slaughter?"

Gavin: "They were lawyers."

Lilah: "And you are?"

Gavin: "A realist. Angel tried to smother one of his closest friends with a pillow. We're making progress."

And when Lilah hears that there is some sort of emergency at Angel’s hotel and that that emergency was caused by the spell that Angel had performed to bring Sahjhan to him, her reaction reveals a lot:

Lilah: "Everything has repercussions, Gavin. Angel knew that going in."

Gavin: "I'm glad you see it that way. Repercussions, poetic justice."

Lilah: "Do you have a point - or are you just waxing my desk with your ass for fun?"

Gavin: "Well, I was just thinking, whatever these things are, they can't be too cuddly, considering Angel barricaded himself inside to prevent unleashing them on an innocent populous."

Lilah: "So yay! Let him reap what he's sown. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll rip him to..."

Gavin grins at her: "Think the Senior Partners might be upset if Angel dies as a result of a spell you helped him cast?"

Lilah has her own reasons to hate Angel.  She certainly isn’t going to waste any sympathy on him.  But even when she is confronted by the fact that  the things menacing him are also a danger to others, it doesn’t even occur to her to care.  And yet she was heavily implicated in the spell that was responsible for that danger.  She had contributed her own blood to it.  She may not have willed the consequences; but even if she had known of those consequences in advance  she would have done nothing differently.  The fact that she was so comfortable with the potential consequences of her actions says a great deal about her.  But even more instructive is the reason why she is finally driven to act.  She pulls out all the stops to create a

"Massive ops to clean out Angel's hotel.”

And the reason for this ops?

“I want to nip this in the bud before Linwood finds out."

It is her own career that she is protecting, not Angel and certainly not all the innocent victims that might be affected by the sluks.  She first changed her mind and instituted the ops because of the threat that the Senior Partners might take Angel’s death amiss.  But all it required to make her abandon the ops was a different perspective on what was in the best interests of her career:

Gavin: "Not that I'm questioning your loyalty, Lilah, but are you sure that's what Linwood really wants?  I'm just saying. Angel kidnapped and tortured him. It's only natural that Linwood would have some unresolved feelings towards the guy who nearly stuck a spike through his eye."

Lilah: "What did he say, Gavin?"

Gavin: "Let 'em die. Let 'em *all* die."

Lilah: "Hmm. Maybe the old man has guts after all."

Angel

Of course, as Gavin pointed out, Linwood’s attitude to Angel is itself a consequence of the latter’s actions.  So perhaps we should next turn to out eponymous hero.  He kidnapped and tortured Linwood to persuade Wolfram and Hart to help him get Connor back.  When offered the spell, he used it in spite of dire warnings about the consequences.  Those consequences have now manifested themselves.  One man is dead, Fred is infected and the sluks might yet escape to threaten others.  Wolfram and Hart won’t help because of Linwood’s personal vendetta and  Angel won’t turn to the one man whom he knows might be able to help.  At one point Fred confesses that she is really incapable of finding the answers that Angel needs and that Wesley knows far more about magic than she ever would.  But she also knows that it is useless to argue with someone whose feelings against Wesley run so deep. It’s no wonder that Gunn points out to him that all of these unfortuneate events are the consequences of his actions:

Gunn: "All this is happening because of you, what you did. This is your fault. Messing with scary-ass mojo no sane person should be messing with."

Angel: "I did what I had to do."

Gunn: "You do what you want to get what you want. The hell with the consequences."

Angel: "My son..."

Gunn: "Is dead! Fred is not!"

But even accepting all of this Angel is unrepentant:

Angel: "There's a price to pay. I know there's always a price. - The question is, is it one worth paying."

Lorne: "So, was this?"

Angel: "No. That spell I did was for nothing. I didn't find my son, so now he's gone forever. So, you ask me, was it worth it? Would I do it again? In a heartbeat, because he was my son."

The value that Angel placed on Connor’s life, to his mind, justified any step that he took.  There are of course obvious differences between himself on the one hand and Lilah and Linwood on the other.  Angel is largely unconcerned for hsi own welfare and is far from being indifferent to the sufferings of others.  When Cordelia has a vision of him in danger he is dismissive:

Angel: "Oh, gee. I'm in danger. What else is new? Look, I wanna deal with somebody else's problem for a change. I wanna deal with Mr. Phillip Spivey of Inglewood who came to us this morning for help. He's the one we should be concerned with, not me! This has nothing to do with me!"

Cordelia later says that something was eating at him and when asked what, she replies:

“Knowing it was the spell he performed trying to find Connor that made this, whatever it is, that we're hunting. Knowing that it caused a man's death."

In that spirit Angel locks himself and his friends in the hotel, despite the risks to them because he doesn’t want the creature that killed Phil to escape and kill others.  But he places the safety of his son above even that consideration.  Ultimately he might accept that carrying out the spell was the wrong choice because it didn’t work.  But he as good as admitted that if something was available to help Connor then he would have taken advantage of it no matter what the consequences.  And this is where Angel went wrong.  At the start of the episode, he finds a Snow Globe that he had bought for Connor and as he bitterly contemplates his vanished hopes for his son he muses:

"I don't know why I bought this for him. A whim, I guess. Thought he'd like to look at it. - snow. It never snows in southern California."

Then Cordelia reminds him:

            “It did once.”

This recalls the BtVS episode Amends when Angel in despair attempted suicide by sunrise.  Then exceptionally and extraordinarily a snowstorm arrived out of nowhere blocking out the sun.  The suggestion here was that this was some sort of intervention by TPTB to show to Angel that he had a particular destiny, a suggestion confirmed when on his arrival in LA he was met by Doyle who had been given vision by TPTB to guide him.  And when Doyle was killed those visions were passed on to Cordelia.  And Cordelia in turn became part demon on the direct intervention of TPTB so that she could keep the visions and prevent them from passing to Angel and making him go mad.  It is no wonder that Cordelia challenges Angel about the way he left her in Mexico with Groo when Connor disappeared:

Cordelia: "Why didn't you call me?"

Angel: "I didn't want to mess up your vacation. I just thought - one of us should be happy."

Cordelia: "But I could have helped. I could have done - something…"

Angel: "There is nothing you could have…"

Cordelia: "How do you know? What makes you so sure? I've got a hotline to the freaking Powers, buster. I could've gotten a vision, or-or something to warn us. Oh, plus, I've got demon in me now. (Jumps up and faces Angel) So, maybe - maybe there is some untapped power that could have help find Connor before, you know, before…"

Cordelia was his point of contact with TPTB, who had shown themselves to be a benign and positive influence on him.  But when he was faced with the disappearance of Connor he cut himself off from that influence and any help that it might have been.  So, if he hadf contacted her when Connor first disappeared, events might have taken a different course. And of course weight is given to this consideration by the fact that the answer to the sluk infestation did indeed come from Cordelia and the demon powers that she inherited from TPTB.  Instead he resorted to kidnapping and torture.  He tried to kill Wesley.  And worst of all he exposed himself to the influence of Wolfram and Hart, an influence that was guaranteed to be malign and negative.  And so it proved when they supplied him with the means for the dark magic that is now the cause of so much grief.  The implication is pretty clear.  Angel resorted to unjustifiable means to save Connor.  At the very least he had other options open to him which he could and should have tried.  He cannot argue that he was forced into employing the methods he used – he wanted to use those methods because they enabled him to strike back at those he hated and blamed for Connor’s disappearance – Wolfram and Hart on the one hand and Sahjhan on the other.  And therein lies his responsibility for the consequences he is now faced with.

Gunn

And here there was very nice comparison to be made between Angel and Gunn.  As we have seen Gunn blamed Angel for brining the sluks to the Hyperion.  He was angry about that because they infected Fred, about whom he cares so much.  Gunn of course can be objective when it comes to Connor.  At the start of the episode he is helping Angel clear out his room and he is going to throw out an old charred piece of furniture.  It is clearly worthless but still Angel is unwilling to let it go.  Of course he maintains that it’s an antique but the real reason why he wont let it go is the same reason why he won’t change other aspects of the décor of the room: they are a reminder of the life he once had with his son:

"We're not throwing it out. And the wall color, it stays, too. Look guys, I appreciate everybody's help. I just want …everything back to…the way it was - or close to it."

But Gunn too loses all objectivity when Fred is in danger.  He wants to take Fred to the hospital over the objections of both her and Angel and in spite of the fact that the creature inside Fred might escape and infect others.  He was also initially supportive of Angel’s decision to freeze Wesley out of the team.

Fred: “Look, he doesn't have to forgive Wesley."

Gunn: "I'm glad you think so, 'cause - not happening."

Fred: "No. Right. He…he shouldn't. But isn't there some way to - I don't know, come back from this?"

Gunn: "Not unless Wesley comes back with that baby under his arm. And even then, Angel 'd probably kill him on principle."

Fred: "You don't really think that."

Gunn: "He took that man's son. Probably best we never mention the guy's name again."

But when Fred was in danger Gunn forgot all about that and went straight to Wesley to ask for his help.  He later justified this to Angel:

“Look, someone I care about was dying. I couldn't just sit around and debate strategy. I saw an opportunity to… to get some kind of help. Look, I did what I had to do, and if you don't get that... Yeah, I guess you do."

The parallel being made here is therefore quite explicit.  Desperate people faced with desperate situations will be tempted to do desperate things regardless of the consequences. 

On the other hand Gunn actually did very little wrong.  He was tempted to break the quarantine and that would have been a selfish move.  But in the end he simply went to ask for help from the most logical source.  He caused harm to no-one; he didn’t even increase the danger.  In fact he was the one who saved Fred’s life.  There is therefore not so much a parallel as a contrast between him and Angel.  He did what Angel should have but didn’t.  He, therefore, helped Fred by acting constructively instead of Angel who tried to help Connor but simply ended up acting destructively. 

Wesley

All of which brings us quite neatly to our former watcher.  Here for the first time we discover the well of bitterness within Wesley towards his former friends.  When Gunn tries to explain the reason why they need help he is unsympathetic:

Wesley: "I was dying. Throat cut, life pouring out of me. - You know why I fought to live again?"

Gunn: "Wes, I don't have time."

Wesley: "I fought to live so I could see my friends again, to explain to the people I loved and trusted my side of what happened."

And because of this bitterness, he at first refuses to help at all.  He is in fact quite sarcastic:

"Why come to me? I'm sure Angel will figure out a way to kill them eventually."

Gunn has already explained to him that this is a matter of life and death but Wesley is more interested in scoring points off Angel than he is in helping.  He fully understands what he is doing.  He knows that refusing to help will have dire consequences for some people.  But, initially at least, he remains adamant.  However, that is before he learns that Fred’s life is at stake.  Then and only then does he help, although in doing so he makes it clear that this is for the first and only time.

Here, as in Gunn’s case and those of Linwood and Lilah,  we see people who take decisions in the full knowledge of their consequences.  They see, as clearly as we do, the arguments for and against their decisions.  Within Wolfram and Hart, humanitarian considerations don’t enter into it.  The only motivating factors that weigh are purely personal ones: will this help or hurt my career or will this give me personal satisfaction.  Wesley s not that bad.  Nevertheless he cannot but understand that his initial refusal to help would cost lives.  The fact that he was willing to overlook his anger and bitterness when it came to saving Fred not only shows that but actually compounds the wrong.  Clearly his motivation for doing so was his own affection for Fred.  But while that explains his change of mind it doesn’t excuse it.  Being willing to help someone because you care for them carries no great merit.  Being willing to help because it is the right thing to do, of course does.  But this is precisely where Wesley failed. 

Consequences

By comparing and contrasting Angel with Gunn and Wesley as well as with Lilah and Linwood we can sense a framework within which to judge .  First of all, Angel (unlike the others) did not actually know the consequences of his actions when he took them.  But, as he admitted himself, if he had know it would not have made any difference.  As we have seen, the loss of Phil’s life and certainly the threat to Fred did mean a great deal to Angel.  He is therefore certainly better than Lilah and Linwood and even Wesley.  But just like Wesley he put the safety of someone that he personally cared about – Connor – above his responsibilities to everyone else.  In this sense Angel’s actions and motivations parallel those of Wesley most closely.  But there was a major difference between Angel and even Wesley.  Above all else Angel was the one who caused all the problems.  Gunn, Wesley and even Lilah and Linwood responded to those problems.  But it was Angel who opened the portal through which the sluks came and the damage that was thereby caused is his fault and is irreversible.  When Cordelia and Groo try to remove the pentagram they fail and Cordelia suggests disguising it with a towel.  Similarly, she observes that the cracks in Angel’s bedroom wall will always be there.  In neither sense can the situation be restored to normal.  The symbolism is both clear and effective.  The harm that Angel has done cannot be reversed.  A man was killed simply because he came to Angel for help and that is Angel’s fault.

As I have already observed, this is hardly the first ANGEL episode about consequences.  And indeed this is a theme that featured very heavily in “Forgiving”.  But the handling of the issue of consequences in this episode is better than in “Forgiving” because we see more clearly the consequences of Angel’s reactionto Connor's kidnapping.  The principal victim had a name and a face and we got a sense of the tragedy of his death.  Fred too was a victim and she nearly died.  The evil effects of what Angel did were therefore more explicit.  And even though Fred ultimately recovered, the finality of Phil’s death and both his and Fred’s suffering still left with a sense that those evil effects could not be undone.   Equally (through the references to the influence of TPTB and the comparisons referred to above) we got a better sense of how reckless Angel’s actions were and that there may have been a more reasonable approach to saving Connor.  In short we see here all of the elements of a powerful sense of tragedy with such dire consequences proceeding from ultimately good intentions but perverted by bad judgment warped by anger and a thirst for revenge.  There is nothing here out of character.  Nor does it constitute character assassination.  Ultimately we accept the good intentions of Angel, Gunn and even Wesley.  But even the best of us can react badly when put under stress and I find each of their reactions not only meaningful for the reasons discussed above but also believable. 

 If there is a weakness it lies in the failure of the episode to bring home the point to Angel or indeed any of the other protagonists in the same way as it was brought home to the audience.  In his final exchange with Gunn, Angel shows no sign of remorse.  Indeed the main purpose of the exchange was to suggest that Gunn now understood and accepted Angel’s actions because he too was desperate to save someone he loved.  But, as I have already showed, such a comparison simply doesn’t work.  Gunn ultimately acted in a reasonable and responsible manner.  Angel didn’t.  No-one suffered as a result of Gunn’s actions.  The same cannot be said of Angel’s.  And Cordelia’s sense of identification with Angel is so strong that she says at one point:

"Angel's feelings are the only ones I care about. He's my priority. I got dosed with demon DNA for that man. I'm semi-demon and I still don't know what that means."

So in spite of what seems to be the clear message of the episode, the characters themselves seem unable or unwilling to understand that Angel seems still to be willing to sacrifice others for what is personally important to him and that is unjustified.  This leaves me uneasy because if this was intended to be irony, it seems to me to serve no real purpose.  And if it isn’t it simply confuses the message of the episode.

Plot

When I saw the scruffy leather clad teenager emerge from the portal at the end of the episode and say:

“Hi, dad.”

two thoughts passed through my head in quick succession.  First: “It’s Connor.”  Second: “Did I not see that coming.”  “Forgiving” had seemed to close off the possibility of any way into or out of Quortoth, the idea of Sahjhan and Holtz combining to get revenge on Angel had played out and instead the central dynamic of the season now seemed to be aimed at developing a conflict between Wesley and the other members of Angel Investigations.  

In retrospect, however, perhaps I should not have been surprised.  Angel’s son was a massive influence on this season.  He gave to Angel a connection with the world and a hope for the future that opened his horizons far beyond the idea of “a mission.”  Indeed his birth explicitly created the possibility that Angel’s personal life might find itself in conflict with his mission.  And that was perhaps to powerful an idea to be left unresolved.  At the same time we had already become familiar with the idea of time passing at different speeds in different dimensions.  And obviously bringing Connor back as a teenager opens up far wider possibilities for exploring the conflict between Angel's loyalty to his son and his wider sense of mission especially, as it seems, Connor is not too enamored with dear old Dad.  Al in all the ending of “The Price” seems to establish the premise for a very interesting last few episodes of the season.

But that is not the only strength of the episode.  The plot itself was a fairly standard one for a horror story.  A small group of people are trapped after dark in a rambling old and unlit building.  They are menaced by an elusive but seemingly overwhelming enemy that they cannot kill.  And they are forced to resort to whatever weapons of opportunity lie at hand.  But there is a reason why this is such a well worn standby for the genre – it is very effective.  And here the story was (in general) very professionally executed.  The hotel is just the right setting for a creepy and claustrophobic game of hunter and prey (as the writers also proved in “Billy”).  But more than simply generating the right atmosphere, “The Price” also raises the levels of tension very skilfully.  When poor Phil was infected we see what is at first a not too threatening problem.  But gradually things get more and more serious as we find first of all that the sluks are lethal, that there is more than one and that they are still entering the hotel, that the team is effectively trapped, that Fred is infected and that finally all of the members of Angel Investigations are cornered.  At this point there really seem to be no way out.  But it is here that I started to have problems with the plot.

First of all the Wolfram and Hart rescue scenario never worked for me.  Given the nature of the menace it was by no means obvious that the Special Ops team would  have been very effective anyway.  But more particularly, such a resolution would have been pretty unsatisfying.  Even so, the real problem was with the actual resolution itself.  In effect my worst fears about Cordelia’s transformation into a demon were realized here.  As soon as she made an issue about her having become part demon earlier on in the episode, I suspected that this would play a part on the resolution of the story.  And so it proved.  As soon as the sluks started to become too menacing she emerged as a fully fledged Deus Ex Machina. Such a scenario is, from a dramatic point of view, profoundly unsatisfying.  No matter how hopeless the protagonist's situation becomes, no matter how outclassed the protagonists are, when the cavalry comes thundering over the hill they are saved. By this means any insoluble problem can be solved, any unstoppable threat stopped, any unchangeable situation changed. The writers can guarantee it will happen simply because they decided to make it happen.  In short, it's the easy way out.  But the viewer feels cheated. Our protagonists are expected to work for their success, not have it handed to them on a silver platter. In good plotting the resolution should grow out of everything that precedes it, not just appear when needed. With an arbitrary ending, it doesn’t matter what preceded it and that in turn raises another question: what was the point?  Angel was confronted with a situation in which his single minded pursuit of his son had dire consequences for others.  But because of Cordelia’s intervention the threat he had precipitated simply evaporated without him actually having to deal with those consequences himself because he is a bystander in that resolution.  It would have been much more satisfactory if that resolution had involved him having to close the portal at some cost to himself.

Overview (B)

In general “The Price” is an episode with some considerable strengths.  Thematically, “Forgiving” had already dealt with the issue of consequences.  But it is such an important issue in the Whedonverse that it does bear closer scrutiny here and certainly what we have in “The Price” is a far clearer and more direct treatment of the subject.  Here the consequences of Angel’s actions are brought very close to home.  In doing so the writers are reminding us once again that we all have a power of choice but when we make that choice we have no control over what happens as a result of it.  We may be confronted with consequences that we do not want but have to live with anyway.  As I have said I have reservations about whether the resolution of this storyline did enough to bring the issue home to Angel in particular.  It is true that just because a choice brings tragic consequences doesn't mean the choice is unjustified.  But in my view it would be very difficult indeed to justify Angel's recklessness.  And the fact that he doesn't seem to accept this (while it is admittedly in character) to me does diminish the effectiveness of  message.  But in general the strength of this episode is that, once more, we have a story in which our heroes are confronted with an outside enemy only on closer inspection, to find that the real danger that each must confront lies within.  This is where the heart of ANGEL as a series lies and I never tire of it.   When taken together with the way that the plot created an eerie and claustrophobic atmosphere and expertly built up the tension (admittedly marred by the resolution) this gives us a very solid episode indeed.  Aside from this it has a number of other strengths.  First there is a wonderful bit of continuity involving the snow glob and memories of Sunnydale.  The writers explicitly made Angel's decision not to call Cordelia back from her vacation an issue.  And I always like to see evidence of the internal politics within Wolfram and Hart.  Finally there was that surprise ending.  Yes there was a lot here to enjoy.