EPISODE 2.09

THE TRIAL

Story by: David Greenwalt

Written by: Doug Petrie and Tim Minear

Directed by: Bruce Seth Green

The Promise of Humanity

“To Shanshu in LA” ended with two major revelations.  The first was the prophecy that Angel would become human and achieve his redemption.  The second was that the creature that Wolfram and Hart had brought back to Earth was none other than his sire, Darla.  There seemed on the face of it no connection between the two beyond the fact that Darla was intended to prevent Angel from fulfilling his destiny by tearing him from TPTB.  But the connection was there. 

It was first hinted at very subtly in “Dear Boy” when we discovered that Darla was human after all.  There we saw the very different perceptions of each other that now lay between the former lovers.  To Angel, a person's humanity meant having a soul and, with it, a conscience which rejected the idea that you could kill and murder at will for your own selfish reasons.  To Darla being a vampire simply meant having power to do whatever you wanted.  This was a theme that was taken up and expanded upon in “Darla”.  In this episode we saw how both Angel and Darla regarded not each other but themselves.  We first saw the parallels between Angel in China 1900 and Darla in LA2000 as both struggled unwillingly  to cope with what they were. But the parallels between them simply (and very cleverly) serve to emphasise the real contrasts between the two.  Angel's struggles are about the moral implications of being a vampire – what it means to exist just to fulfill your own needs regardless of the cost to anyone else.  Darla's are all about the weakness of being human, the possibility of disease and the certainty of old age and death.  Through the contrasts between these two individuals and their very different preoccupations we begin to see the differences between two worlds – human and vampire.  In the latter we see not only strength and power but also the total lack of feeling to restrain it.  Take what you want without remorse.  Live now for the pleasure of the moment, that is all that matters.  In particular do not worry about other people.  On the other hand being human means not only physical weakness but also being subject to the constraints of the human soul.   You cannot simply indulge yourself.  You feel impelled to do what is right.   If you do wrong then you pay for it in feelings of guilt and self-hatred.  It also means caring about others.

Angel is both vampire and – because of his soul – human.  There is a tension within him between the vampire side of his nature and the human side.   The instinctive temptation that Angel feels towards satisfying his blood lust is commonplace for the series.  This is something that was shown not only by “Darla” but also “the Shroud of Rahmon”.  In those episodes we saw it in the gratuitous violence he used towards Lindsey and in the way he drank from Kate. But there is far more to the dichotomy in Angel than the extent to which his human soul remains in control of his actions.  Here the writers are interested in exploring a much more fundamental issue: to what extent are the values and  personality traits that inform and shapes the conscious decisions that Angel takes human ones and to what extent are they influenced by his vampire past?

In   both “Five by Five” and “Darla” we saw his initial attempts to cling onto his identity as a vampire even after his soul had been restored.  And we have long known that Angel didn’t always feel comfortable in human society.  In AYNOHYEB we have already seen evidence of his distance from humanity throughout most of the 20th century.  And way back in “City of..” Doyle warned him that he had to make a connection with humanity as a way of saving his soul.  Otherwise his craving for blood would grow until:

“One day soon one of those helpless victims that you don’t really care about is going to look way too appetizing to turn down. And you’ll figure hey! what’s one against all I’ve saved? Might as well eat them. I’m still ahead by the numbers!"

In both the BtVS episode “Angel” and  in “Blind Date” Angel spoke somewhat wistfully about the simplicity of life as a vampire.  And then in “Guise will be Guise” he admits for the first time his own ambivalence about being a vampire in the following conversation between himself and the Tish Megev:

            Magev:  "You blame her."

Angel:  "I suppose I do."

Magev:  "You want to punish her."

Angel:  "A bit..."

Magev:  "At the same time you want to thank her."

Angel:  "Thank her?"

Magev:  "For the gift she's given you."

Angel:  "Gift?"

Magev:  "You're deeply ambivalent."

Angel:  "Yeah, well, I am and I'm not."

Indeed in the course of this episode Darla’s situation focuses yet more sharply the ambivalence Angel feels towards being a vampire.  He cannot reconcile himself to the idea of her death as a human, despite the fact that disease and death is the common inheritance of all mortals.  On the other hand he is clear and explicit in his determination that she should not become a vampire again and at one point he expressly threatens to kill her if she were to revert to being a Vampire.  This is based on his clear understanding of what she would become as such.  What we see here is a clear intellectual and moral understanding of right and wrong and the difference between them but an emotional refusal to accept the consequences of that.

What is it to be Human?

Of course Angel's very commitment to saving Darla is an indication of how human he was. A vampire wouldn't care about her.  Why should he?  Vampires don't really care about anyone else.  This was hinted at in the confrontation between Angel and Lindsey in the latter’s apartment:

Angel:  "Do you love her, Lindsey?  Is that what this is?   Heh,  look at you.  A few short months with her and you go all schoolboy.  I was with her for 150 years."

Lindsey:  "But you never loved her."

Angel:  "I wasn't capable of it and neither are you."

And later Angel warns the lawyer:

“If I were to do it - if I turned her, how long do think it would be before she hunted you down and had you for breakfast?”

But this idea was even more powerfully developed by the flashback to the French barn in 1765.  During this season of ANGEL the writers have been at pains to show us just how close Angelus and Darla were.  Yet here she cold bloodedly sacrifices him for herself.   In doing so she wished him well :

"I hope you survive this, Angelus.  If you do, maybe we meet again in Vienna."

But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

The counterpoint between the self-centeredness of the vampire and Angel’s attitude to Darla in this episode is quite marked.  Formerly she had obsessed him because she enflamed internal conflicts he had thought long settled.   Darla challenged Angel's concept of himself and the direction in which he was travelling.  She tried very hard to make him believe that he was truly  still Angelus.  That was why in “Dear Boy” and “Guise will be Guise” his need to find her was almost reckless, an expression of his inner turmoil over her.  He needed to show her that she was wrong.  He needed to prove that he really was defined by his soul and his his own quest for redemption.  Now that need has undergone a significant shift.  In “The Trial”, almost the whole of the teaser, while it did have its humorous angle, was intended to show Angel was relaxed and controlled (or in Cordelia's words “calm and homey”) about his search for Darla.  Even the lie he told his friends was quite calculated.  Finally he seemed to have resolved his own inner turmoil.  He now knows who he is and what he wants.  And with that settled determination comes the equally strong conviction that he has to help Darla.   But this was not pure and simple altruism.  And this fact is , I think, the key to understanding the whole scenario of this episode.  Angel may not have loved her but they had been together for almost 150 years and he really did think that he knew her.

Darla:  "What do you care?"

Angel:  "This isn't you, Darla."

Darla:  "You know, just because we had a thing for 150 years, don't presume you know me!"

This was because Angel continued (despite all evidence to the contrary) to identify with her, as suggested in the following conversation between himself and the Caritas Host:

 Host: Look, you're a big hunk of hero sandwich.    You wanna save the girl.  I can see why.  But you're missing the crucial point here.  Things fall        apart.  Not everything can be put back together, no matter how much you want it."

Angel:  "She's not gonna die."

Host: "Why do you care *so* much?  She had more than most of us, already  400 plus years."

Angel:  "As a vampire.  Before that she was... she... she never had a chance."

The words used here echo very strongly the words Angel used about his own human past in “Amends”:

Angel:  “A demon isn't a man. I was a man once.”

Jenny:  “Oh, yes, and what a man you were.  A drunken, whoring layabout, and a terrible disappointment to your parents.”

Angel: “ I was young. I never had a chance to...”

He can see in her both the same wasted opportunities for self-fulfillment as he sees in himself and the same potential for her as a human being.  All she needed was time:

"The point is, you were undead for 400 years, you've only been human again for a few months.  Why not give it some time."

And of course the discovery that she did not have that time sharpened immensely his concern, not so much because she would die but because she would do so without an opportunity to come to terms with her humanity and more importantly to seek and achieve the redemption that Angel so desperately wanted for her.   And he wanted it because he saw in her a reflection of his own situation and her redemption became important as a symbol of his own.  Interestingly, even here we see the self-centeredness  of the vampire and its very characteristic intensity shaping Angel's otherwise very human response to Darla.

The Trials

Just how desperately Angel wanted to help her we see in the tests which form the focal point of this episode and from which it takes its name.   In order to cure Darla without turning her into a vampire Angel was forced to face a series of challenges.   From the very start he is warned about what these will cost him but he doesn’t hesitate:

Host: There is one way.  It…it's a bit of a quest  and it will probably kill you."

 

Angel:  "I'll take it."

 

Host:  "Alright, big fella, you asked for it.  You're about to face the hell and the high water.”

This shows the strength of his commitment to Darla and to the idea of her redemption.  Simply prolonging her life would have been easy but unacceptable.  What warrented the risk of his own life and her's was saving her life as a human, thus giving her the chance to change.

But it's noy just the severity of the tests that tell us about Angel.  It's what they require of him to pass them.  There are in effect four stages to the Trials.  The first requires proof of his faith – his ability to trust others.  This is obviously not something that vampires are very big on.  Angel has to jump headfirst into an empty swimming pool because, as he says himself:

            "if you had water, you'd get all wet and miss out on all that skull crushing."

Darla is the one who asks the obvious question:

“Angel, some green horned lounge singer asks you to do something and you just do it?   Why?"

But the unquestioning way that Angel accepts the challenge proves that he does have faith that he is going to achieve something worthwhile by doing so. 

The second and third elements of the Trials show us other qualities.  In the fight with the ugly yellow demon Angel’s strength and speed are not enough.    He needs courage to cope with the fear of a seemingly unkillable creature and tenacity in his willingness to stick with the fight until he does defeat it.  The third element of the Trials tests his willingness to face pain and his ability to endure it by running through a corridor covered in crosses and to put his hand into a holy water font.  Interestingly, while faith is a very human quality, we can easily glimpse the obsessiveness of the vampire in the courage and tenacity with which Angel pursued the second and third stages to a successful conclusion.  This itself reinforces the idea that, for all Angel's commitment to the redemption of Darla and for all his detestation of the idea of her becoming  vampire, there is still a mixture of the human and the vampire within him.

Of course, the culmination of the Trials represents the ultimate test of his commitment to Darla:  the willingness to sacrifice himself for others.  Again, this is not something we would expect of a vampire.  And the important point here is that Angel was explicitly given the choice:

            Angel:  "What are you waiting for?"

Dungeon Master:  "For you, sir.  I can't proceed without your permission.  You've earned a choice.  Accept your death so she may live or..."

            Angel:  "Or what?"

Dungeon Master:  "Leave.  Refuse the challenge and walk away.  No one will stop you.  Our doors are all open to you.  You've done that yourself."

Yet in spite of this he chose the challenge and it was a wholly irrational decision.  One could go further and say that it was unjustifiable.  But the interesting thing here is that (unlike in the case of the risk Buffy took to save Angel in GD2) the writers did not try to skate over this problem.  They confronted it head on and indeed made a virtue out of it:

Dungeon Master: “Do you mind if I ask you a question?  Isn't the world a better place with you in it? You can save so many people.  It seems she can barely save herself.  You know better than anyone the world can be a very bad place.  Take yourself out, put her in - how long will it be before she stumbles, before she falls?"

Angel:  "I don't know."

Dungeon Master:  "No, you don't.  Are you still ready to give her life when she can promise you nothing?"

Angel: "Yes."

There is no arguing with the logic of the Dungeon Master here and significantly Angel doesn’t try to do so.  Here Angel is reacting beyond logic and beyond reason.  By agreeing to the sacrifice in this way Angel was asserting that saving Darla was for him more important than his own life.  It is perhaps the ultimate statement of the importance he attaches to her (and perhaps his own) redemption.

Darla’s Redemption

Of course all Angel could himself do in the trials was save Darla's life.  Anything beyond that was ultimately a matter for Darla herself.  But as Angel showed how much he was prepared to give in order to help her, his example started to have an effect on her.  At the beginning of the episode Darla had nothing to loose.  She was going to die anyway.  From that point of view Angel’s failure would hardly have mattered.  On the other hand few would know better than she just what he was capable of.  She could therefore have been expected to regard his progress with hope and expectation.  Instead as she saw the sort of things he was going through her principal thought seems to have been for him and not for her own prospects.  When the Dungeon Master asks her:

“Oh, I have no feelings about this contest one way or another, Miss. Do you?"

the answer to this question was all too obvious.  Almost in spite of herself she was finally beginning to care about what Angel was doing for her and why.  There were several references in this episode to Darla being a prisoner.   She was brought back as a helpless human without her say:

"It wasn't my will to be here in the first place.  I never asked for this life."

Then she discovers she has a matter of months to live.  It is a prison from which she feels she has to escape, at any cost.  If she wants back to the only existence she has ever been happy with, indeed if she wants to continue to exist at all, she must become a vampire again.  To this end she is even prepared to risk an assignation in a dingy alley with a looser vampire who doesn’t know what he is doing and can’t in any event be trusted.  She is that desperate.  But she is looking at this only from her own selfish narrow point of view, without considering the meaning of that choice for everyone around her.  Angel’s example changes all that.  The physical trials that he was prepared to go through for her were material manifestations of his commitment to her, something that she could see and feel.   And because of this she realizes that there were more important things than just being alive.  These were the things that gave your life meaning.  And caring about others is just one such thing.  Indeed her recognition of this manifests itself in the fact that, having insisted on referring to our hero as “Angelus” at every turn she now calls him “Angel”, thus recognizing the essential difference between the two.  Angelus would never have cared enough about her to sacrifice himself in this way - Angel did.  And it was this that broke through her feelings of being imprisoned.  Such was the effect on her that, even when she discovered that all of Angel's efforts could not help save her life, that fact became less important than the sacrifices her was prepared to make for her.  When the MC broke the news that, because she had already been returned to life once, nothing else could be done to help her, he said:

            "She's living her second chance.   But you played the game magnificently. "

And these words are echoed by Darla herself in that final scene between them in the Royal Viking Motel.   Angel half-heartedly considers making her as the only option now left to them.  I don’t think he was serious about this.  Certainly if he were it would have been contrary to the entire theme of the piece.  But that is not the important point.  The point is that it is Darla who firmly turns her back on the possibility:

            Angel:  "Maybe it would be different.  We don't know.    Maybe, uh... because, you know, I have a soul - if...if I  did bite you..."

Darla:  "No."

Angel:  "We don't know what it would do to you."

Darla: "Angel, I've seen it now.  Everything you're going through, everything you've gone through. I felt it. I felt how you care.  The way no one's ever cared before not for me. That's all I need from you."

Angel:  "That's not enough."

 Darla:  "It is."

Angel:  "How could the powers allow you to be brought back and dangle a second chance and take it away like this?"

Darla:  "Maybe this is my second chance."

Angel:  "To die?"

Darla:  "Yes.  To die the way I was supposed to die in the first place."

This was Darla’s acceptance of her own humanity, just as Angel wanted for her.  The real point about that humanity was not how long she lived but what she did with her life.  Hence her reference to her second chance and to living out her life as it was meant to be and not as a murderous vampire.  By his commitment to her Angel showed Darla the strength of his own faith in others, his courage and his willingness to give up his life for something important.  In doing so he succeeds in restoring Darla’s own faith in others, her courage in the face of death and her willingness to accept that death for something important - namely as the price of her own humanity.  Interestingly these are the same combination of qualities that Angel himself showed in the Trials, thus showing that Darla too was now on the same path to redemption he was.  On the face of it this is a triumphant vindication of the early premise of the show:

“It’s about reaching out to people, showing them that there’s love and hope still left in the world. …It’s about letting them into your heart. It’s not about saving lives; it’s about saving souls. Hey, possibly your own in the process."

But, as we have seen, Angel's commitment to Darla wasn't quite that simple or straightforward.  The way Angel cared about Darla, the faith that he had that he could achieve something and his willingness to sacrifice himself for her were all very human.  But the very intensity and single-mindedness with which he pursued his goal - against logic and reason these were perhaps reflections of the darker vampire side of his personality.

And this brings me to the end of the episode, when all of Angel's hopes for Darla were dashed.  We saw his reaction when he found out that he couldn't save her life.  Suddenly Angel over turns a table full of refreshments. A demon guard tries to stop him and Angel hits him hard enough to send him flying into a wall.  Another guard comes up and Angel hits him, making him fall back onto the steps, then picks him up and throws him across the room.  He picks up an urn and smashes it, then sweeps all the candles and stuff off a side table, then starts hitting his fist over and over against a stone pillar.   These actions were violent and senseless.  How will he now react to this even greater shock?

Thematically therefore this episode takes a number of different ideas that have been either explicitly laid out for us before or implicit in the character of Angel and weaves them together so that each plays an important role in this crucial moment in the season.  First of all we have Angel's own desire for redemption, something highlighted in "To Shanshu in LA" and more importantly emphasized in "Judgment".  Then there is the deepening analysis of what makes Angel tick; the meditation on what exactly is the effect of Angel past on his psychology.  Thirdly we have the exploration of his relationship with Darla.  This involves the parallels between the two of them and the drawing out of the real reasons why Angel became so obsessed with her and her problems.  We see how Angel's own desire for his redemption and the comparison he drew between himself and Darla (sometimes quite erroneously) drove him to try to save her.  But we also see the way that his enthusiasm to do so wasn't simply a case of pure altruism or to him making a genuine human connection with a soul in need.  rather it owed much to his own obsessiveness and desire for simple and one dimensional certainties.  These are psychological insights which are not only fascinating but also ring very true.  It explains much about Angel's past behavior, such as his single-mindedness, his ability to cling onto certain fixed ideas regardless  of the evidence to the contrary and his sometimes explosive anger.  It adds much depth and subtlety to the character.  His basic moral values remain sound.  His motives are good.  But somehow there is an underlying darkness which can be threatening for all that he wants to achieve.  And this is surely the classic situation for any tragedy.  The most powerful and poignant drama is to be found not where an evil person destroys an innocent.  It is when a good and decent individual makes choices, not through wickedness but though their very human flaws and failings and sees those choices destroy that which they hold most dear.  We do not know how this arc will end.  But the writers' emphasis on Angel's obsession with saving Darla and the darker side to that obsession means that his failure to do so does not bode well.  And it is really only because this episode lays out so clearly and skillfully why Drusilla turning Darla is so portentous that we can appreciate the power of this moment.

The Plot

For most of its length, the plotting isn’t the real strength of this episode.  It suffers from two basic problems.  In terms of structure it is a classic “problem solving” story.  At the very beginning the writers throw to us an entirely new piece of information that has been withheld until now – the fact that Darla was dying.  There is no difficulty about this in itself.  It is, I think, precisely the sort of information you would expect Wolfram and Hart to withhold.  It strongly reinforces the arc elements of this episode.  In “Darla” the following exchange occurred between Holland and Lindsey:

Holland:  "Lindsey, you don't understand our friend at all.  We know there is no prospect for physical intimacy here.  So you needn't torture yourself."

Lindsey:  "Then what do you expect him to do?"

Holland:  "What he will do.  What he must do.  Save her soul."

From that point onwards it became clear that, notwithstanding Darla’s confidence to the contrary in “Dear Boy”,  Wolfram and Hart did indeed have some deep laid plan that even now was still hidden.  It would make perfect sense for Holland to precipitate some sort of crisis by doling out information to Darla or Lindsey as and when it suited him.  Indeed this was a feeling that was enhanced by the ending of the episode.  It was in fact one of the strengths of “The Trial” that it continued the slow striptease of Wolfram and Hart’s long term strategy, revealing little as yet but drawing us in with promise of further interesting developments to come.

But the immediate effect of the revelation that Darla was dying was that Angel became engaged in a search for a way to save her.  The good part about this was that, after we learned that the illness was real (and for the reasons I have already mentioned that was no real surprise) the writers seemed to have left Angel without an obvious means to save Darla.  It was very quickly made clear that the one obvious course of action open (to “make her”) would have been regarded by Angel as a greater defeat than her dying.  But at the end of the day a situation like this will only create dramatic tension to the extent that our sympathies are engaged.  And Darla is about as unsympathetic character as you could imagine.  She is clever, determined, selfish and  ruthless.  In short she is the sort of character  it becomes easy to want rid of and Angel’s preoccupation with saving her then becomes annoying.  I think we are supposed to feel the pathos of her situation when we see her singing karaoke in “Caritas” and the MC says:

“Someone get my heart.  That girl's ripped it right out.”

But I am afraid that this scene just left me cold. 

In this context the slow pacing of “The Trial” really didn’t help.  Well over half the episode was taken up with exposition.  This would not in itself be a problem but for the fact that  exposition itself was comparatively limited.  Darla was dying, she wanted to be a vampire again and Angel wanted  to find a way of saving her without going to that extreme.  There really isn't that much more to say.  Indeed one or two of the scenes (e.g. between Angel and Gunn in the hotel room) felt as though they were padding and others (the “Caritas” karaoke) felt drawn out.

Another weakness in the plot is the supernatural means needed to save her.  My first problem was more a presentational one than anything else.  Just as in “the Judgment” in many ways the medieval imagery and trappings jar with me when set against the background of contemporary LA.  And the dungeon-like settings have been overdone in all too many previous series.  I would, therefore, have preferred a more modern look and atmosphere for the trials.  But more significantly the trials have an unmistakable “deus ex machina” feel to them.  Angel goes to Caritas Host, he gives Angel the right address to go to and we have a potential solution to the problem which no-one had ever heard of before.  There is no thought involved.  In terms of plotting this just strikes me as a little banal.

So, up to this point there is comparatively little in the actual plotting to sustain interest apart from a wonderfully funny scene between Darla and the looser vampire she wanted to “make her”.  But once the trials themselves start, things improve dramatically. Events begin to move quickly and there doesn’t seem a moment wasted as we switch between what is happening to Angel and the effect that this is having on Darla.   And in fairness I should add that the trials themselves threw up one or two very interesting curves.  The ugly yellow demon who could put himself together after been cut in half, the hidden key to the door certainly provided interest for the viewer.  But there remained an inherent problem with the writers' scenario and it was a serious one.  No-one will believe that the hero will die.  And given that he will inevitably succeed in his trials, it seemed obvious that Darla too would be saved (for all that matters).  Then we came to the crux of the plot - the final test and the sudden appearance of the death trap at the end.  The choice given to Angel was a stark one – his life for Darla’s.  It was inconceivable that Angel would have come this far simply to walk away.  Equally it was inconceivable for him to die.  The resolution of the dilemma was, therefore, the one I expected.  The willingness to make the sacrifice was itself the test.  So, everyone was off the hook.  As an ending it seemed cheep and shallow. It was at this point that my expectations in plot terms fell to their lowest point.   In fact as it turned out this aspect of the plot was a triumph and in a way that was very typical of the Whedonverse.   The revelation that Darla could not be saved and that Angel had gone through the whole thing for nothing was shocking enough.  But what made it worse was Darla’s own last minute move towards redemption.  Finally just when you could begin to believe she deserved a second chance it was suddenly and unexpectedly snatched away from her.  And the furious violence of Angel’s reaction to the discovery was a very moving demonstration of his frustration, especially at the end where the pounding of the fists on the pillar became slower and slower as if despair were gradually taking over.

And then as if this were not shock enough we had the ultimate twist in the reappearance of Wolfram and Hart in the capture of Angel by Lindsey and Darla being made by Drusilla.  And it is in this scene that we can see the importance of Angel’s earlier insistence that this was not an acceptable option.  Here we can see the scale of the defeat he must feel.  In other words far from giving us a trite “feel good” conclusion the writers have worked out the worst possible way that it could end and given us that.  Good for them.  It seems now that the whole arc is ready for its climax.  Are Wolfram and Hart finally going to reveal their hand?  We will have to see.

Overview (A)

The real strength of this episode is the character study.  There could hardly be a more central issue for Angel than the desire for his own redemption and, in seeking to achieve this, the greatest problem that Angel must face is the conflict within him between vampire and human.  Here we are made conscious of the influence of his vampire past even in the context of his seemingly laudable efforts to save Darla.  And there can be no better illustration of the complexities and subtleties in his character than this blend between Angel's genuine desire to do good and the psychological frailties that means there is a darker side to even this.  And as if this were not interesting enough, from this fact we can deduce that the frustration of all Angel's efforts on behalf of Darla seems to promise a major turning point for the character, one that cannot be good.  I am anxious to find out more.  The weaknesses of "The Trial" were essentially plot related.  The set up for the next stage in the revelation of Wolfram and Hart’s master plan worked very well, with just enough being disclosed to interest us but not so much given away that it helps up see what will happen next.  It is the immediate task of finding a cure for Darla that is the problem, partly because Darla’s fate is something that it is difficult to care about and partly because just too little of real interest happens until late on.  But when something does happen then it gives this episode a very hard kick that will, I am sure, last in the memory.