EPISODE 3.13
WAITING IN THE WINGS
Written by: Joss
Whedon
Directed
by: Joss Whedon
Duality
and Destiny
In
my review of “Heartthrob” I referred to Buffy Summers as the love of
Angel’s life. I said that that
episode illustrated how the latter was moving on with his life but at the same
time paid due respect to his history with the slayer. I have also remained somewhat sceptical about whether Angel
was truly in love with Cordelia. And
certainly, whatever the nature of that relationship, I had a great deal of
difficulty envisaging the Buffy and Angel story finishing at this point.
The mythology was simply too well established.
I thought that, while circumstances might have forced them apart
temporarily, neither series could really end without some form of catharsis for
this pair.
Well,
I was wrong. This episode
establishes conclusively that Angel loves Cordelia more than he loves Buffy.
More than that, it even goes
so far as to imply that, whatever he did feel for Buffy, it was not true love.
And in trying to understand what “Waiting in the Wings” is trying to
say to us about the relationship between Angel and Buffy on the one hand and the
potential for a relationship between Angel and Cordelia on the other, we have
one invaluable guide: the story of the Ballet featured.
The parallels between the themes explored in “Giselle” and those we
find in this episode are striking, certainly too striking to be coincidental.
In
“Giselle” we see the duality of the principal characters.
Albrecht seems at first to be a peasant.
And it is as such that he meets, woos and wins Giselle, a chambermaid.
But in reality he is a Count and as a member of the aristocracy there is
a clear dividing line between himself and Giselle. Who he really is means that he cannot marry her.
Indeed he is betrothed to another. And
when the truth about him is finally revealed Giselle kills herself, only to be
reborn as a Wili. These are the
spirits of dead young women betrayed by faithless men who seek revenge on them
by forcing them to dance until they died. See,
ME didn’t invent the “all men are beasts” line after all.
So, Giselle starts out as a human and is transformed into a spirit. And
this is where the second great theme of the ballet comes in.
Giselle’s death is presented as her destiny.
The fragile state of her health, her passion for dancing and the fact
that she lost her heart to a man she could not marry all pointed clearly to her
future as a Wili – a creature who would take revenge upon the man who wronged
her This then is a story of a couple fated not only to be
torn apart by the differences between them but to destroy one another.
The culmination of this theme is reached when, one night,
a grieving Albrecht is caught by the Wilis (now numbering Giselle among
them). Interestingly, Giselle for her part harbors no hatred for Albrecht and begs the Queen of the Wilis spare him.
She though is unmoved and Giselle, as one of the spirits, seemingly has
no choice but to participate in their cruel vengeance.
We
can see precisely the same themes of duality and destiny in the lives of both
the prima ballerina and of Angel. Let
us look at the Ballerina fist. We
never learn the whole story of what happened between her and Stefan.
How the Count found out about them and what happened to Stefan remain a
mystery. But we do find out enough
to make sense of the parallels between the story of the Ballerina and Giselle.
Angel and Cordelia possessed by the “energies” left behind in the
dressing room re-enact what might have been her last meeting with her lover as
he begs her to leave the Company:
Angel/Stefan:
“Come away with me. Now. Tonight. We'll disappear. Even he won't find us.
Cordelia/Ballerina:
“I... Stefan, everything I've worked for is here...”.
Angel/Stefan:
“You can still dance.”
Cordelia/Ballerina:
“Can I? I don't... Not yet. Maybe when we're...”.
Angel/Stefan:
“Don't. Don't make promises....”
Angel/Stefan
left the ending to that last sentence unspoken: “Don’t make promises you
can’t or won’t keep.” The
ballerina was both a woman and a dancer. As
a woman she had a man who loved her and a whole life to lead outside the dance.
But clearly dancing was her life; the thing as she had said herself that
she worked for. And while we
don’t know what happened next we do know that she did not go with Stefan:
“I
waited too long. I should have gone when he asked me, should have disappeared.
But I wanted this, this dance, this... I hesitated and I lost everything that
mattered. Now all I do is wait."
She
felt that she had no choice but to stay with the Ballet company because the
dance was her destiny. And
ironically the dance became the only future she had.
She became trapped in the dance and could not escape from it:
“It isn't just the same ballet. It's the same performance. I don't dance.
I echo.”
Just
like Giselle before her, the ballerina’s whole life points in one direction.
To be a ballerina was all she wanted; it was something that she could not
give up and because of that it became the only thing she had.
Now all she wants is to change things but she cannot.
It is her destiny.
The
ballerina’s experiences parallel those of Angel.
He too has a dual nature – as a human and
as a vampire. As a human he
has the capacity to love and be loved. As
a vampire he has a capacity to destroy.
I have already written about the seemingly inexorable working of fate in
bringing together such an ill-matched pair as Angel and Buffy.
It seemed from the very start that they were doomed to be brought
together against their will and forced apart against their will.
Indeed their mutual attraction not only almost destroyed each other.
It almost ended the world. Having
distanced himself from Buffy, Angel is now afraid of history repeating itself
only this time with Cordelia. His
attraction to her is made plain throughout the episode.
We see his nervousness when getting dressed for the ballet for a start
but above all there is the the halting way he comes close to actually confessing
his feelings for her when confronted by the prospect of kissing her:
“It
is us, Cordelia. You and me. And kissing you, it's...It's not something I can
just…”
What
he is trying to say is that, for him, kissing Cordelia would mean something very
important. But that is exactly what
he is afraid of because of the memories of what happened between himself and
Buffy. Time and time again he is
forced to confront the parallels between his attraction to Buffy and his
attraction to Cordelia. First the
Host brings up the subject of Kyrumption:
Host:
“There's a little term we had on Pylea, "Kyrumption"”
Angel:
“I know it.”
Host:
“Okay! When two great heroes come together…”
Angel
is distinctly unimpressed by this:
“There's
no coming together. Okay? Everything we've been through, and
all anyone wants to talk about…”
The
reason for the hostility is obvious. The
two heroes the host has in mind were himself and Cordelia.
But the last time Angel came together with a hero it was Buffy.
And as if to reinforce his concerns here the Host goes on:
“Can't
fight Kyrumption, cinnamon buns. It's fate, it's the stars, kyrumption…”
That
for Angel is precisely the problem. But
it’s not only this. The Host
reminds him of the “thing” he has for cheerleaders and Angel’s reply
echoes the reasons he gave for breaking up with Buffy in the BtVS episode “the Prom.”
Even the subject of the curse is brought up.
When Cordelia suggests that she and Angel revisit the dressing room where
they had been formerly possessed by the energies of Stefan and the ballerina,
the implications of such a move are to the forefront of both their minds:
Cordelia:
“All we have to do is play the scene out. Say what they have to say, and get
out before... before I give you a happy.”
Angel:
“What if there is no more talking in that scene? Look, I've been
possessed by the spirits of old lovers before, it never goes well.”
Cordelia:
“I've got my little cross, if things get out of hand... Hey, it's awkward,
but it's not us, so as long as nothing is removed or inserted, it's all
forgotten.”
The
ballerina is fated to perform the same dance over and over again and in doing so
she always makes the same mistake:
“There's
a section in the first act, during the courtship dance, where my foot slips.
My ankle is turned, and I don't quite hold... every time."
So
too Angel fears that in his own courtship dance with Cordelia he is fated to
slip in an echo of the way his romance with Buffy was fated to end.
And in slipping he will plunge himself, Cordelia and others to disaster.
Controlling
Your Own Fate
But
ultimately “Giselle” is about the evitability of fate.
It is about the power of people to control their own destiny and above
all it is about the power of love to find a way. Albrecht deceived and
ultimately betrayed Giselle. But, instead of taking part in the Dance of Death to punish
and destroy him, Giselle helps and sustains him through the trials of the night
and, because of her, he survives
until morning. Giselle’s love for
Albrecht, unlike his for her, was so strong
that she defied her fate which was to have a hand in his destruction.
She not only saved him but in
doing so closed the circle of tragedy.
We
see the parallels first of all to the existence of the ballerina.
In the way that Angel and Cordelia couldn’t keep their hands off of
each other in the dressing room we see the passion she shared with Stefan.
But she could not leave the ballet company to be with him. That was not a matter of her fate. She had a choice, a genuine choice and she could have
abandoned being a dancer. She chose
not to because being a dance meant more to her.
That was because her passion for Stefan was not true love.
But now, the dance has been emptied of all its meaning.
She does it not for a career, not for the pleasure of the dance itself
but to serve the egotism of a master:
“He
made me. He owns me. When I dance, it's only for him.”
And
he has no appreciation of what she is doing.
When she refers to her slip during the courtship dance, she adds:
“He
doesn't notice. He doesn't even know ballet that well."
As
Stefan acutely noted, this is about power and control.
But the power to control your own life is something that cannot be denied
to anyone and Angel sees this. The
ballerina deprived of all meaning for her dance now really does want it to stop
and he sees the way. With Wesley,
Cordelia, Gunn and Fred fighting the Tragedies and the Comedies, the Count’s
control is already breaking down. Freedom
for the ballerina is in reach. All
she has to do is take it and while she is waiting in the wings to go on to
perform the same dance that she “echoed” for more than a century, Angel
tries to persuade her that she doesn’t have to:
Angel:
“I can help you. But you have to do something.”
Ballerina:
“What?”
Angel:
“You have to change the ending. Dance something new.”
Ballerina:
“I can't...
Angel:
“He doesn't control all this. He's losing it. But you have to take the
stage. It's
not too late. You can change things.”
And
so she does. Like Giselle she took
control of her own destiny and freed herself form the destructive circle that
fate had apparently decreed for her.
And
this is a lesson that is not lost on Angel.
He too is waiting in the wings. He
is afraid that if he were to begin a romance with Cordelia he too would be
doomed to repeat the same steps that he took with Buffy, including that near
fatal slip. Now he realizes that he too can change things like the
ballerina. And more particularly
just as in the case of Giselle, the lesson is that love will find a way of
defying a seemingly cruel and inexorable fate.
And so, having understood his own attraction to Cordelia from the
beginning of the episode, he now realizes that he can and should do something
about it. So, after the return fro
the ballet he approaches Cordelia about the little adventure they had in the
dressing room:
Angel:
“I just want to pretend it never happened.”
Cordelia:
“Exactly.”
Angel:
“Wipe it from my memory.”
Cordelia:
“Well, what, was it like disgusting?”
Angel:
“No, I... I would just want, if we were to... I'd want it to be, um,
new. Start at the beginning.”
Cordelia:
“Lost me in the middle."
Angel:
“Cordy, we've been working together a long time, and... I mean you've
become... a truly extraordinary woman. I know we haven't always gotten along,
but I really think we... you know we..."
Angel
wanting to wipe away from the memory a moment of passion with Cordelia doesn’t
make a whole lot of sense unless you see this as a symbolic wiping away of the
memories of his past romance with Buffy. What
he in effect seems to me to be saying here is that he is no longer going to let
memories of what went wrong in the past dominate his future.
He is going to live life from here on free of the past.
He too will take control of his own destiny and not let the fear of being
forced to play a part in a Greek tragedy make his choices for him.
What
this means both explicitly and implicitly for Angel’s former relationship with
Buffy will I know be troubling for many. If
he really is now free of the fear of the past, if he has now decided that love
will find a way then there is only one reason why he does not go back to
Sunnydale. That reason is that he
now loves Cordelia and not Buffy. Moreover
if he is symbolically wiping away the memory of the passion he shared with
Cordelia in the dressing room as a way of consigning to history the passion he
shared with Buffy, the implication is hard to escape.
It was because the ballerina did not really love Stefan that she became
caught by the dead hand of fate in the first place.
If we see in Angel and Cordelia’s “coming together” the ghost not
only of the ballerina and Stefan but the ghost of Angel and Buffy then perhaps
what they felt for one another too was only passion.
If love can always find a way then why are they not still together.
As
those of you with the patience to read these reviews will know for inscrutable
reasons of my own I always refer generically to “the writers” of an episode.
But in this case I cannot but note that this episode was written and
directed by Joss Whedon. He is ME.
He was the man who created Buffy and Angel; who, in BtVS, brought them together as
a couple (”Prophecy Girl” and WSWB), who tore them apart (“Innocence”
and “Becoming”) and who finally sent Angel to LA (“Graduation Day”).
This is the first ANGEL episode that he both wrote and directed.
David Greenwalt I think co-wrote “City of…”.
This fact alone gives great weight to the idea that we have here a
defining moment in the Angelverse. The
developments of this episode did not happen casually.
They were planned and they came from the top.
If I can be forgiven for mixing up my performing arts, in the context of
the Buffy and Angel relationship, it looks to me as if the fat lady has now
sung.
One
valid criticism that can be made of the developments we see here lies in the
scant respect that the episode pays to the past history of Angel, Buffy and
Cordelia. The latter first tried
to attract Angel’s attention in season 1 of BtVS.
But then her interest in him was pretty superficial and he had no
interest in her at all. It was
really only from “Parting Gifts” onwards that they began to know each other
as individuals and a friendship did develop.
But there is little to explain why, after such a long history, Angel and
Cordelia suddenly become romantically involved.
As we have seen it’s not physical attraction.
Of course, especially since “To Shanshu in LA” Cordelia has grown as
an individual and the implication in the references to “kyrumption” is that
it is this which accounts for brining them together.
I would be very surprised indeed if, on Pylea, kyrumption had any sexual
connotations at all – or we going to see Angel and Groo making eyes at one
another? And we can hardly maintain
that the difference between Buffy and Cordelia was that the latter was heroic
and the former wasn’t. What
happened in “Waiting in the Wings” has all the hallmarks of writers’ fiat:
developments that, rather than growing naturally from the characters and the
circumstances that they find themselves in, occur simply because the writers
want to change things. Angel cannot
be with Buffy because they are on different shows on different networks so this
pair must now be split up and the most obvious way of doing so is have him fall
in love with Cordelia, the female lead of the series.
Like that’s never happened before.
For
once, however, I am less concerned with the overt soap opera feel to this episode
– a feel intensified by the fact that the other main character-related
development was the triangle between Wesley, Gunn and Fred.
It is one of the defining characteristic of soap opera that they place a
heavy emphasis on depicting relationships.
These relationships form a continuing story on their own, quite
independent of the main plot of an individual episode or even of a season-long
arc. They are also often
sentimentalized and perhaps even melodramatic in nature.
This is not really to my taste but in the “A” plot of “Waiting in
the Wings” at least these elements were subordinated to a clearly articulated
theme and a sophisticated structure which explores these themes through a series
of neat parallels.
Comparisons
between this episode and IOHEFY are perhaps inevitable but hardly fair.
The purpose of that episode was to allow Buffy to express her guilt for
the moment of madness which banished Angel’s soul and to receive his vicarious
forgiveness. Because the bodies of
Buffy and the now soulless Angelus were be possessed by dead lovers who were
destroyed by a corresponding “moment of passion” she was given the
opportunity. So,
this was unashamedly a piece of melodrama intended to be an emotional
catharsis. Moreover IOHEFY had a comparatively simple structure which
depended for its effect on the situation between Buffy and Angel being
clear reflection of the one between James and the teacher.
And it wasn’t. Buffy made
her choice out of ignorance of the consequences; James didn’t.
Morally there were major differences between the two cases. So, the whole structure of that episode just falls apart.
It fails because the writers were not comparing like with like.
The parallels in “Waiting in the Wings” are however rather more
sophisticated. We are not invited
to see the situation of Angel and Cordelia as being a reflection of that of the
ballerina and Stefan or of Giselle and Albrecht.
Rather we are invited to see in their different situations certain
parallel issues and from the way they responded to those issues in different
contexts we are invited to draw general lessons.
These lessons hold good because they point in the same direction in spite
of the different circumstances.
Comedy
and Tragedy
And
this is where we come to the real strength of this episode.
It is not simply a piece about emotion and how we feel.
If this is the final nail in the coffin – err… “resting vessel” -
of Buffy and Angel as a couple then how appropriate that the writers
revisit the central issues posed by that relationship. First, we have the
perversity of fate in bringing together such a very different pair.
Then we have inexorable workings of the same fate that seeks to drive
them apart. Hanging over their
relationship was the great question of what constitutes an exercise in free will
as against the workings of a determinist universe.
In the classic tradition there was usually a turning point in a plot
where the hero or heroine's fortune turns from good to bad.
After this point, the plot moves steadily but inexorably to its
denouement. The turning point in
BtVS may be seen as the revelation of Angel’s true nature in “Angel”. From that point onwards (from a determinist perspective)
events moved through the logic of the situation the characters find themselves
in to the events of the second half of Season 2, climaxing in Becoming II.
On this view Buffy and Angel were doomed from the very beginning and
there was no escape. But here we have a different view, especially of Angel’s
future. And while there can be no
denying the power of tragedy to illustrate the great themes of life this is an
altogether more hopeful view. And
in this context I am struck by the symbolism of the Comedies and the Tragedies
who fought for the Count. As I have
already said duality is, I think, a key theme in this episode as it is in so
much literature. It represents the
human contradiction: the dual nature we all have.
We are social beings taught to observe certain standards, yet we also
have instincts which are very anti-social.
There is a difference between what we aspire to and what we are capable
of. Comedy and Tragedy both deal
with this contradiction but do so in very different ways. Tragedy views the contradiction as fatal.
Comedy views it as something that everyone must live with as best they
can. And now prepare yourself
because I am going to quote Kierkegaard. He
said:
“Wherever
there is life there is contradiction and wherever there is contradiction the
comical is present.”
He
went on to say that the comic and the tragic are both based on contradiction.
But “the tragic is the suffering contradiction, comical painless
contradiction.” Comedy gives us
the contradiction along with the way out. That
is why it is ultimately painless. Tragedy
on the other hand despairs of the way out of the contradiction.
I do not know whether Joss Whedon was aware of these words when he penned
this episode but they seem to me to be very appropriate.
In the comic and tragic masks we see the symbol of the different ways of
looking at the duality within Angel and how it governs his life.
ANGEL is not a comedy and certainly there will be suffering aplenty for
him; but the message here is that for him there may also be a way out.
Plot
In
discussing the plot here I can be mercifully brief. That is because there isn’t much of one.
Indeed I was very disappointed by the fact that "Waiting in the Wings" starts with a rather
dishonest piece of misdirection. When
the Count gleefully promises that the “one night only” performance of Giselle
will be “the performance of a lifetime” we were led to believe that some
evil plan was afoot. In the end,
however, he was completely passive. He
was simply trying to hold on to the control that he had always had.
This is too well written an episode to need cheap devices like that to
hold our attention. “Waiting in
the Wings” certainly did that for me. The
interesting thing is that it did so despite two fairly obvious flaws in the
structure of the storyline.
One
of these is that the in first half
of the episode nothing much seemed to be happening and a lot of time was taken
up with exposition about things I normally don’t care about, like what Angel
felt about Cordelia and what Wesley, Gunn and Fred felt about each other.
The other problem is that there was really very little in it that took me
by surprise, or even threatened to.
One
of the only two moments when I was
genuinely surprised came when Angel revealed that there was something wrong with
the production they were all watching:
Wesley:
“Has the choreography changed much since…”
Angel:
“No. Nothing's changed.”
Wesley:
“Well, it's wonderful that they're able to…”
Angel:
“No. I mean nothing's changed. These are the same dancers I saw before.”
This
introduces the mystery – why are the ballet dancers the same as in 1890.
Unfortunately from this point onwards the development of the storyline is pretty
predictable. As soon as we are
introduced to the “energies” of Stefan and the ballerina what happened
becomes fairly obvious. They keep
on referring to “He” and “Him” and I was hoping that there was some
twist and that the villain of the piece would turn out to be someone other than
the Count or at least his motive and the nature of his revenge would be
something other than the obvious. But
the jigsaw pieces (with one exception) fitted together too perfectly. Stefan and the ballerina had been lovers, they were caught
and she was trapped in a never ending dance.
Even the way that the spell would be broken was pretty obvious.
The
one point of inconsistency was the fate of the rest of the troop.
The fact that they too seemed trapped was the thing that gave me hope for
a different explanation, but in the end this was simply left hanging –
unexplained and unimportant.
Another
thing largely missing from the episode is a real sense of tension.
Of course where our protagonists are trying to solve any mystery they
need opposition – something to try to prevent them.
And where the nature of the mystery is so obvious there is a premium on
the effectiveness of the opposition. When
you know what the problem is and how it can be fixed the only drama left is in
asking can you actually fix it. And
this is another problem. Certainly
the fact that the Comedies and Tragedies divided each time they were killed did
seemingly provide an invincible enemy. But
individually they seemed weak and collectively they were incapable of mounting a
coordinated attack. There was
therefore little real sense of threat. The
real antagonist was of course the Count and I can’t help feeling that the fact
that he was such a passive target was another weakness.
The
final problem was that frankly I didn’t care much whether the ballerina was
released or not. I knew little
about her and what I did know was hardly to her credit. She seemed essentially self-centered. It is notable for example
that when Angel asked her about Stefan she could only talk about herself.
She chose the life of dance over Stefan. She did so knowing who and what the Count was and it was only
when she began to suffer from this that she regretted her choice.
But
in the end none of these problems affected my enjoyment of “Waiting in the
Wings”. Mainly this was because
of the way that the theme was so expertly handled.
But there was more to the writing than that. There were so many small but entertaining touches, far too
many to repeat here. But they
included
