EPISODE 5.13

Why We Fight

Written by: Drew Goddard & Steven S. DeKnight

Directed by: Terrence O'Hara

It's A Wonderful War

“Why We Fight" was an outstanding series of movie documentaries made during World War II by Hollywood producer Frank Capra at the instigation of Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.  It is conventional wisdom that the country rapidly united after Pearl Harbor and brushed away the isolationism, the anti-war and anti-foreign entanglement feelings that prevailed between the wars.  But, in reality there was a lively concern in the highest levels of Government that ordinary Americans didn’t care very much about Hitler or the Nazis.  Indeed, in spite of the fact that the U.S. Navy was already engaged in undeclared anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic Franklin Roosevelt felt able to declare war only on Japan and not on all the Axis powers after the “day of Infamy”.  There was both gratitude and surprise in the White House when Hitler, in yet another of his characteristically bombastic blunders, solved the Administration’s dilemma for it by declaring war on the U.S.  But this still left Roosevelt with a problem because American public opinion was firmly focused on Japan while he and Churchill had agreed on a Germany first policy.  This was an entirely sensible strategy because, of the two, Germany was the more powerful and more dangerous opponent.  But it would be likely to be a difficult sell to an American public still outraged over Pearl Harbor.  That is why, early in the war, this was a matter in the forefront of the mind of Marshall.  Part of the solution was “Why We Fight”, a series which, in Marshall’s own words had the following purposes:

1. To foster a firm belief in the right for which we fight.

2. To foster a realization that we are up against a tough job.

3. To initiate a determined confidence in our own ability and the ability of our comrades and leaders to do the job that has to be done

4. To instill a feeling of confidence, insofar as is possible under the circumstances, in the integrity and fighting ability of our allies

5. To create resentment, based on knowledge of the facts, against our enemies who have made it necessary for us to fight

6. To foster a belief that through military victory, the political achievement of a better world order is possible.

In short the series of movies was to show the existence of an overriding moral purpose in the war, a purpose which encompassed the defeat of both Japan and Germany.  And by universal acclaim it succeeded brilliantly in achieving all of these objectives.  Indeed so successful was it that, while it was originally intended for the indoctrination of U.S. soldiers preparing for deployment, it was widely shown to U.S. civilians and allies. 

Given these purposes it will come as no surprise when I say that “Why We Fight” was not exactly a dispassionate historical document.  It was avowedly a polemic, a piece of propaganda intended to foster belief in a cause.  Of course, given the nature of the Axis powers, it was easy to show why their defeat was necessary to save civilization.  Indeed, much of the historical interest of "Why We Fight" lies in the fact that it made extensive use of Axis footage to tell its story. Capra effectively turned enemy propaganda on its head, using it to depict the evils of the enemy. But the most interesting thing about it is that the filmmakers went well beyond a factual account of the evils of Nazism and Japanese Militarism.  For example Capra covered the Tanaka Memorial at length.   This document purported to be a report prepared in the 1920’s by a Japanese Prime Minister to the Emperor and was widely believed by Americans of the time to be an authentic description of Japanese plans for world conquest. It is pretty clear now that the Tanaka Memorial was a forgery. And even in 1942 it would have seemed suspect to anyone who looked at it objectively.  It made a number of basic errors about the history of the period and the movements of the supposed author and first appeared in a Nationalist Chinese Publication.  Likewise, Capra selectively quotes a letter from Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, planner of the Pearl Harbor operation, to reinforce the Admiral's image as a villain when the letter as a whole showed that Yamamoto was an officer doing his duty in spite of a belief that a war with America was foolish and unwinnable.  Perhaps more serious, the depictions of Russia and China are today frankly embarrassing, but were spun to meet the need for allied unity at the time. There is no mention of Stalin's brutality, his early collaboration with the Axis, or of the Winter War against Finland; or of China's appalling corruption and military incapacity. And, especially in their treatment of the Japanese the movies indulged in racial stereotyping that would today be frankly unacceptable.  But the fact that these were distortions of the truth didn’t really matter; what was important was the weight they lent to the central themes of the movies. 

Above all, therefore, the movies were a shining example of how to bring moral clarity to a  purpose, a clarity that was summed up in one of the slogans used to devastating effect in the movies themselves:

No compromise is possible and victory of the democracies can only be  complete with the utter defeat of the war machines of Germany and Japan.

  And Justice For All

This moral clarity is also strongly reflected in “Why We Fight”, not least because it too uses, as its symbol of evil, the very monsters so powerfully pilloried by Capra – Nazism.  The Nazis are the classic, ultimate force for evil. So, if you want to depict something really nasty, Nazi imagery is exactly what you're going to go for  because it's immediate, visceral and powerful. You don’t need much by way of introduction and it hits home very hard.  Accordingly, in the U-boat we see no trace of the ordinary German crew.   What we see instead is the Swastika and the Josef Goebels look-alike.   So, we  instantly have an idea in ours heads of what this episode is all about – the struggle against a self-styled master race, its medical horrors and other instruments of torture and an implacable war machine.

But, as if this were not enough, the writers take the opportunity to reinforce the impression of just how evil the Nazis were by revealing their plan for the vampires on the submarine:

Lawson: “They're trying to create an army... out of things like you.”

Spike: “That explains why they nicked us. Cream of the crop. Wanna build an army of vampire slaves, you start at the top—with the generals.”

Lawson: “It's not enough what you're already doing in the world, is it? Only you and your fuehrer could come up with something this sick.”

While this helps plot development by going part of the way to explaining the presence of the vampires on the boat, I don’t actually think it was necessary to go that far thematically.  As I have already said Nazi symbolism pretty much speaks for itself and the additional charge is pretty heavy handed.  But, as a commentary on the enemy, this particular exchange speaks for itself.  And it is important that the one leading the attack here is Lawson.  As a human at least, he is the also very embodiment of a sense of moral clarity, this time in opposition to the Nazis.  He says of himself:

“Mom, apple pie, the stars and stripes— That was good enough for me”.

But we do not need to take his word for it.  Everything he does and says aboard the captured German submarine demonstrates what an estimable young man he was. The fact that he was on the mission to recover the U-boat itself tells us a lot.  He knew how important the technology to be obtained from it was but he also knew that it was likely to be a suicide mission.  Still, he was willing to risk his life because he knew what sort of evil he was fighting against.

Then, trapped in a compartment with who knew what monsters lurking outside he hears the screams of a tortured crewmate.  His reaction was to go and help.

Spinelli: “Hey, you, what do you think you're doin'?"

Lawson: “Get out of my way, Spinelli.”

Spinelli: “They're dead! Nothin' we can do to help them now.”

Lawson: “Stay here. I'll go alone.”

Clearly the smart move would be to stay put.  Lawson and the others had barely escaped the creatures earlier.  Again trying to rescue their victims would have been suicide.  But just as Lawson readily accepted the risk when he volunteered to take part in the mission in the first place, so too was he willing to accept the risk here – because it was the right thing to do.  Men that he knew were suffering; he could not stand idly by and listen to that without at least trying to help.  He may not succeed; indeed we know that he would not and we know that he would die if he tried.  But for him the moral imperative of doing the right thing counted for more than issues of practicality.

His basic philosophy is summed up by his reaction to Spike’s suggestion that the American Government would experiment on the Vampires to help them win the war, just like the Nazis.

“We wouldn't do that. You don't win a war by doing whatever it takes. You win by doing what's right.”

Only Obeying Orders

Angel, on the other hand, was simply concerned with obeying orders and here we have the constant point and counterpoint throughout the episode. Against the moral clarity embodied by Lawson we see his  pragmatism.  We see him in his hotel room in 1943 entirely disengaged from the great struggle going on all around him.  When the agent from the Demon Research Initiative asks him:

“You ever considered joinin' the war effort?”

He coldly replies “no”. He is, therefore, essentially coerced into agreeing to the mission.  This is yet another example of him following someone else’s agenda.  But once he agrees to go through with it, he judges everything by reference to the mission.  So, he sees his principal job as brokering a peace settlement  between the humans and the vampires.  He prevents the latter from eating the crew by explaining to them that they need them alive:

Angel: “We're not killing any more humans. Well, not right now.”

Spike: “Why the hell not?”

Angel: “Because in case you haven't noticed, Spike, we're trapped at the bottom of the ocean.”

And then he goes on to make the fairly obvious point:

“So, unless you know how to operate one of these things, we're gonna need their help.”

And, of course, he advances precisely the same reason to Lawson for not killing the vampires.  And it was because Lawson believed that there was a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do and that you do not compromise between them that he was shocked when he learned that Angel wanted to keep alive the same vampires who had just killed his crewmates.  The fact that these vampires included a Spike who was dressed in an SS uniform made things even worse:

Lawson: “They're monsters. And I don't know why we…”

Angel: “You don't need to know why. We gotta bring this sub in. Those are our orders. Isn't that the point? Following orders?”

Lawson: “There's a difference between orders... and purpose, sir. I didn't sign on 'cause I needed directions. Hell, growin' up, I used to make fun of the military boys. Always figured they wouldn't know how to tie their shoes if someone didn't give 'em the go-ahead. Then I saw pictures of what the Krauts were doing. Evil's spreading, sir... and it's not just over there. It was on my ship, it killed my crew, and we gotta stop it! And I've been scared out of my mind since I signed on for this duty, but I can keep it together, I can even handle dying, if I know it's for a greater purpose.

Angel: “We got a job to do. That job is gonna help us win the war. I don't need you to understand every detail, but just know we're fightin' on the same side. I need you to trust that I'm gonna get us all through this... safe and sound.

I reproduce this exchange in full because it is important.  In their different assessments of whether the submarine needs the vampires as additional hands, I do not think that it matters much who is right and who is wrong.  What is important was that Lawson thought that the boat would just have to get along without the vampires because they were monsters and therefore should be killed.  Angel on the other hand is only concerned with bringing the boat back and as the vampires might be useful in this there was no need to kill them.  This is what Lawson means when he refers to “purpose” and the difference between that concept and “orders”.  Lawson’s purpose was to fight evil.  That is why once he understood the nature of the evil that was out there he was willing to fight it, at whatever cost to himself.  As he said himself when Angel asked him what he wanted in the Wolfram and Hart Offices in LA 2004:

“Same thing I've always wanted: to understand.”

And when Angel asked him to clarify what he wanted to understand, he replied:

“Why we do what we do”

What Lawson needed was to have knowledge of what it was he was fighting and to comprehend what it meant.  This was not only to know that the cost of the fight (including the sacrifice of his own life in trying to seize the U-boat) was justified but also to know that there was a clear difference between him and those he was fighting.  Once he starts to judge his actions by the moral standards of those he was fighting then he looses the very reason for the fight.  What made the Nazis evil?  It was what they were willing to do in the name of their cause.  That is not an argument for avoiding violence “turning the other cheek” in all circumstance.  There is a legitimate right of self-defense and Lawson was perfectly willing to kill in exercise of it.  But the acts of self-defense must be justifiable in their own terms and by reference to Lawson’s own moral norms and not simply because they were effective in defeating the enemy.

Angel on the other hand was only interested in “orders”.  That was why when Lawson wanted to know “why” Angel said he didn’t need to know “why”.  That was why he told Lawson that:

“We got a job to do. That job is gonna help us win the war. I don't need you to understand every detail, but just know we're fightin' on the same side.”

So, while for Lawson orders were not enough, for Angel they were all that mattered.  The way Lawson understood the difference between good and evil guided his actions in trying to save the crewman tortured by Spike and the others or in killing the vampires.  But the need to fulfill his orders guided Angel’s actions.  As we have seen he tried to keep the vampires alive, perhaps because they were additional hands to run the boat but more likely because killing them would be difficult and may well claim the lives of crewmen who actually were able to do so.  But when Nostroyev threatens to upset the balance that he is trying to achieve he does kill him, ruthlessly and efficiently.  Similarly it is only when the Prince of Lies becomes uncontrollable and attacks both Lawson and the German that Angel kills him too.  But Spike co-operates, albeit reluctantly and as long as he does so Angel has no problem with letting him live, no matter what he has just done:

Spike: “I want to be called captain. I mean, hell, I did eat him.”

Angel: “Check the torpedoes before I stuff you in a tube and send you for a swim, Captain.”

Lawson: “We gonna have a situation, sir?”

Angel:” He'll do what I tell him.”

One pragmatic compromise with principle followed the other.  And then we have, perhaps, the most tragic compromise of all.  As Lawson tries to repair the engines he is fatally stabbed.  The submarine is dead without propulsion and he is the only one who can fix it.  So Angel turns him, thus saving the submarine and the mission.  As Vampire Lawson says afterwards:

“I know how important the technology they pulled from the sub was to helping us stop the Germans. Sounded like a fair shake. One person damned to make the world safe for future generations.”

But even after doing that to Lawson, Angel was still making compromises.  The engines were fixed; the submarine evidently no longer needed either of the remaining Vampires.  But instead of killing them both, Angel let them go.  He knew that Lawson was a danger to anyone who crossed his path.  He was, as he said himself, hungry.  And Lawson in LA 2004 admitted to his life of destruction:

“Then I had this whole creature-of-the-night thing going for me—the joy of destruction and death…and I embraced it. I did all the terrible things a monster does—murdered women and children, tortured fathers and husbands just to hear 'em scream.”

But he was given his chance anyway, with Angel’s very hollow warning:

“I'm sorry for what happened. But if I ever see you again... I'm gonna have to kill ya.”

But by his own account Angel basically forgot about the “son” he had created.  On the other hand Lawson had saved the boat and the mission.  He had saved the lives of the crew.  So, Spike had a sort of a point when he said:

“Bloody brilliant. Turn the poor sod to save the ship. Then make him dash for dry land before Mr. Sunshine scorches him a new one.”

Once again  Angel’s actions are not dictated by principle.  He does not try to decide what was the right thing to do and act accordingly.  He  decided what was necessary to achieve his orders.  He turned Lawson because that was necessary to save the boat.  Lawson was then a threat to the mission (because he was hungry) so he had to leave it.  But the mission could be saved without killing him so Angel again took the line of least resistance and squared his conscience over having turned Lawson by letting him go, when clearly the right thing to have done was kill him – and Spike.

And here we find the irony.  Angel is, throughout the period he is on board the submarine, the one making the decisions.  When he first comes on board he gives Lawson his orders in the form of some secret code-words.  And from that point onwards Lawson recognizes his authority, calls him “sir” and obeys his orders.  Indeed one member of the crew mistakes him for a super-hero:

“I'm telling you, he's some sort of super soldier, l-like Steve Rogers or Captain America.”

Spike tells the other vampires:

“Uh, yeah, probably should warn you. He likes to pretend he's the boss.”

And even in LA 2004, Lawson calls Angel “chief”. 

But it is only towards the end of “Why We Fight” that it becomes evident that Lawson has not come to the Wolfram and Hart offices seeking revenge.  Rather he wants Angel to give him something – a reason.  Or as he put it himself:

“Come on, chief. Give me a mission.”

Vampire Lawson too had lost his sense of purpose, the purpose that he had so eloquently explained to Angel and that had sustained him on the boat up until the moment of his death.  And perhaps this was the loss that he was obliquely referring to when he told Fred:

“I was just trying to understand some of your equations here. I used to have a bit of a head for numbers. It's funny how you lose part of your mind when you stop using it.”

And when he lost that sense he came looking for his old “chief”, the one who had turned him but also the one who had preached blind trust and blind obedience to him, telling him he didn’t need to know why; all he needed to do was trust.  He wanted Angel to provide him with the reason for doing anything, the very reason for continuing in the first place.  Being a Vampire, he no longer had a human soul orientating him towards good.  But, as he said himself of his life as a Vampire:

“and through it all... I felt nothing. 60 years of blood drying in my throat like ashes.”

But in this he was mistaken; Angel couldn’t give him a reason.  He was no more in charge of the submarine than he was in charge of Wolfram and Hart, in spite of the CEO title he had there.  Both in 2004 and in 1943 he had himself been given a mission and he merely reacted as best he could to an agenda set by others.  He didn’t want any part of this war.  Not only was he forced into trying to rescue the submarine, but when he got the chance he made a run for it:

“Jumped ship... off the coast of Maine. Went underground till the war was over.”

And when charged by Vampire Lawson with cowardice, he simply answers:

            “Wars are won and lost by men.”

Thus he distances himself completely from having any interest at all in the war or – by extension – in the mission he was trying to execute.  All he was interested in was making the best he could of the situation he found himself in, keeping the mission on track in difficult circumstances.  But he was in the same position as those soldiers the young Lawson said he made fun of, the ones who

“wouldn't know how to tie their shoes if someone didn't give 'em the go-ahead.”

He was indeed in the same position as Vampire Lawson who was coming to him looking for orders.  And this is what, for me, really works about Lawson.  It is difficult to get to know a character in the space of an hour.  But we knew from very early on that he was going to be made into a vampire – though I certainly didn’t guess how.  And he was such a brave, well-intentioned and eager young man that it was impossible not to feel sympathy for the character in his inevitable journey to his doom.  And as if to reinforce this feeling, Angel himself behaves in a very paternal way towards Lawson, especially after turning him.  It is quite noticeable the way he calls him “son” and puts his arm around him almost protectively.  But not only do we feel this sympathy.  In his moment of transformation we see the parallels between the Vampire Lawson and Angel himself.  Both are desperately looking for a direction to give their lives or unlives meaning; but neither can find it.  And if there was any doubt about that, the writers pretty much anvilled the point:

Lawson: “Does everyone you sired feel this way?”

Angel: “You're the only one I ever did this to...after I got a soul.”

Lawson: “Do I have one, too?”

Angel: “I don't think it works that way, son.”

Lawson: “Didn't think so. You gave me just enough, didn't you? Enough of your soul to keep me trapped between who I was and who I should be. I'm nothin'... because of you.”

Metaphysically the writers are in a good deal of trouble on this point because it makes no sense at all.  Hence the blatant contradiction between Angel’s denial that he gave Lawson a soul and Lawson’s claim to having some part of one.  It is the equivalent of a woman claiming to be a “little bit pregnant”.  But thematically it does work.  Lawson is neither in the vampire world nor is he human.  And he falls between  those two states because he has some part a soul (inherited from Angel) which prevents him from being fully vampire but is not enough to make him human.  His dilemma is the same as Angel who is also both human and vampire but at the same time neither.  He possesses a soul but because of the demon within that soul is not enough to make him fully human.

Fighting Fire With Fire

But the writers not only explore again Angel’s state of mind and motivation.  They also help us look again at our assumptions about the actions he took because of these.  And here I turn back to the Capra movies.  There was, as I have already hinted, a contradiction at the heart of “Why We Fight”. The movies used Nazi methods of propaganda – subtle distortion, outright lying and racial stereotyping – to fight fascism.  And we see the same willingness to compromise principle in favor of a greater good not only in Angel’s actions but in those he was supposed to be serving.  As we have seen, for Lawson proof of just how evil the Nazis were could be found in their willingness to create an army of vampire slaves – creatures who would do heir Nazi masters’ bidding.  But the United States had its own Demon Research Initiative and what was Angel but the vampire tool to serve their objectives?  And what did Angel in his turn do but use Spike and the other vampires on board the submarine to serve his purposes?  Indeed, it can be agued that at one level what Angel did was even worse than the Nazis.  They do not appear to have contemplated actually turning humans into vampires to serve their objectives.  And they at least actually had a strong desire to try to control them.  As Lawson discovered from the captured German documentation:

“Something about stimulation and... control. They've been experimenting on them... and cutting into their brains.”

Angel, on the other hand, was happy to use vampires and then just let them return to the wild, so to speak.  In their natural state they could be relied upon to murder and torture – because that’s what vampires do.  Of course the Nazis would have used them for that purpose too.  But I see no great moral difference between that and Angel’s tactics.

But there is a great gulf between the end that Angel pursued and those of the Nazis.  Their's was a quest for world conquest.  He, albeit reluctantly, was trying to stop them.  And the writers stress how useful the technological secrets on board the U-boat were.

Let me pause here to say that this is, from an historical point of view, complete garbage and the whole set-up on the U-boat annoyed me no end.  And for anyone wanting to know more about my views on this point you can go here.  But I’m looking at this set-up thematically here so in this review I’m just going with the flow.

Anyway, the question posed by this scenario in “Why We Fight” is: how do we compare Lawson’s moral clarity with Angel’s lack of it.  Do Angel’s ends justify the means?  Does disposing an evil dictator justify stretching the truth? I think so.  So, I do not question the ethics of the Capra movies.    But Angel’s actions resulted in real harm to people – deaths, torture and mutilation.  Can you save some lives by sacrificing others, even if there were many more lives saved than lost?  Lawson knows the answer to that.  He would say that the good society involves justice for all, so a government which employs unjust means defeats the end it pretends to serve.  That’s what makes him for me such an appealing character; but perhaps one who was a little naïve too.  It is interesting that as a vampire he fondly recalls the events that led up to his death:

“We used to live in simpler times, didn't we? Never thought I'd miss being on that sub.”

But Angel didn’t find them simpler.  He found himself making hard, sometimes cruel choices for the sake of his mission and for the benefit of the rest of the crew.  We may imagine how much he hated the idea of what he did to Lawson. 

The point is that for Lawson things were simple and did not involve weighing the ends he was supposed to be achieving against the means to achieve those ends.  So, when he heard a fellow crewman being tortured he wanted to help – never mind that had he actually gone to his aid he would have met the same end and the whole mission would have been sacrificed.  And as we saw, he wanted to kill Spike and the others because they were evil murderers, regardless of whether their help was actually needed.  And he rejected out of hand the very notion that his Government could adopt the same tactics as the Nazis and use vampires to achieve their ends, not knowing of course that that was what they had already done and would continue to do for well over half a century.

If Lawson had been in charge rather than Angel, the mission would have ended in disaster and the help the submarine apparently was to ending the war would never have been given.

On the other hand though we see the injustice involved in Angel’s own approach.  He succeeded in his mission and anything which contributed to that success may be thought to be justified. Success may be the standard by which he measured the expediency of the means used; but expediency is one thing and moral justification is another.  And when your fight is supposed to be for a moral purpose, is expediency its own justification?  Furthermore, is not the argument that a moral purpose justifies any means used to achieve it even more problematic when you don’t even particularly believe in the moral purpose in the first place?  If the orders Angel was given are all that he can point to in order to justify turning Lawson into a vampire, if he was simply obeying those orders as a matter of expediency himself, does this not empty his actions of all purpose?  Does it not mean that he himself, no less than vampire Lawson, was purposeless?  And what can you do for a purposeless life?  You can either find one or you can end it.  With Lawson there was no alternative but to end it.  But what about Angel himself? 

Lessons From the Past

As I have already said there are clearly intended to be parallels between the existence of Angel as CEO of Wolfram and Hart and as the “chief” in the U-boat.  In both he is nominally in charge; in both he is however following the agenda of others and in both he does questionable things in pursuit of those agendas.  But what is the purpose of these parallels?  I think that the question I have just asked is the point.  Looking back on his days in the submarine, being confronted by the evil he did to a fine young man and realizing it was all for nothing he could believe in, I think we are supposed to see Angel reflecting on his present purposelessness, perhaps leading him to look for a new one.  But here we are confronted by the first and most basic problem that I have with “Why We Fight”.  It is just going over all the old ground again.  The first half of this season has been a meditation on Angel’s purposelessness, his attempt to justify compromises with evil in the name of greater good, the destructive influence that this has had on his self-confidence.  The turning point was reached in “You’re Welcome” and Angel’s ultimate realization of what his purpose was.  If

“I'm Angel. I beat the bad guys."

meant anything, then it meant that Angel had once more found his own sense of self and what his purpose was.  But if you have already reached the turning point, revisiting it simply means you are going round in circles.  That only leads to a sense of waste and frustration – a sense that emphasizes the fact that it’s now time to move on and show us where Angel is actually now going.

But it is not only the fact that there was no purpose to the comparison between LA 2004 and the Nazi U-boat in 1943 that irked me.  It is the fact that the comparison was so ill-conceived in the first place.  In 1943 Angel was genuinely without a purpose.  This was 10 years before AYNOHYEB.  There we saw an Angel who was totally alone and isolated from humanity.  And essentially we have the same Angel in 1943.  So, it’s entirely credible that he would behave as he did.  Why should he have such an overriding concern about Lawson or the fate of his or Spike’s future victims that it would prevent him following his orders?   But the Angel in LA 2004 had made the connection with humanity; he was concerned about their fate.  He had, however, completely lost confidence in his ability to understand how he should try to help.  There was a sense of purposeless in both cases but they had very different causes.  And that made any attempt to create parallels between 1943 and LA 2004 or draw meaningful lessons from past events very problematic.  On board the U-boat Angel was faced with hard choices but they didn’t worry him precisely because he knew what he wanted to do and why.  He wanted the American Government off his back and this is what he had to do to achieve that.  Even when it came to turning Lawson, he made a choice based on entirely pragmatic considerations.  But in LA 2004 he was worried about the ambiguities of the situation he found himself in precisely because he could not work out where the real good was.  So ultimately while there was some food for thought in this episode it must be considered a failure thematically.