EPISODE 2.05
DEAR BOY
Written by:
David Greenwalt
Directed
by: David Greenwalt
Developing the Arc
The principal advantage that a
story arc has over a series of stand alone episodes is that it gives the writers
time. It allows them to create a clearer sense that things are building towards
a climax. This in turn makes for a greater sense of expectation and tension than can
normally be found in a single episode story and a correspondingly more powerful climax. But story
arcs, if they are to work,
impose their own disciplines as well. One of these is that the writers must know
when to turn build up into something more concrete. A second lies in the need
to ensure continuity.
In the "Darla" story arc we have had two episodes in which Angel
has been haunted by dreams. These were not repetitive because the nature of the dreams
changed. They moved from being comforting and, prima facie, innocent to
something much creepier. There was, therefore, a sense of a single story moving
somewhere. But if this sequence had been further drawn out it would simply have
become annoying as we wondered where the writers were going. So the timing of
the events in "Dear Boy" was perfect. But a sense of momentum is not
itself enough. The direction in which the story moves must make sense. Of course
we, the audience, do not have to see that direction at once. Keeping us guessing
about what is going on is an important part of the story teller's art. But the
resolution of the story must make sense not only in itself but as the conclusion
of the sequence of events that preceded it. We must be able to look back on
those events and see a sensible progression towards the climax. Otherwise it
will be robbed of its meaning and much of its impact. And this is the acid test for the writers here. How did they fare?
The Two Agendas
Well, the first thing to say is that they threw us a curve ball. All along we
had been proceeding on the assumption that Darla and Wolfram and Hart had been
acting in concert. Suddenly we find out that each have had their own agenda.
Angel: "What's the play Darla? What kind of game are you running?
Darla: "Just having a little fun. Been out of commission too long. You
know how that feels.
Angel: "Wolfram and Hart didn't bring you back for fun. The dreams, the frame
job, what's the big plan? Get me so screwed up I go bad again?"
Darla: "Kinda trite I know. What do you expect. They're only
human."
The storyline we had been watching develop in "First Impressions"
and "Untouched" concerned the working out of the Wolfram and Hart
agenda. This was all about control. In "First Impressions" Darla
sucked Angel into a dreamscape, away from the world of reality so that he had
trouble distinguishing it from fantasy. Then
in "Untouched" Angel just like Bethany was having things done to him.
Darla keeps him asleep and while she does so she controls his dreams. In
those dreams he
feels the passion, the excitement, the energy and the thrill of his former
existence as Angelus. At one level this repels him because he he recognizes
the significance of what he feels. He is
experiencing once more what it is like to be a soulless killer . But
at another perhaps deeper level he seems to be enjoying it.
And here "Untouched" raises a disturbing question. If,
Darla was able to use the hidden horrors within Angel to destroy his belief in
himself and his confidence that he can choose his own path regardless of his
Vampire past might he, just like Bethany in "Untouched", allow his
life to drift out of his own control and into the control of others _ Darla for
example? At the
beginning of "Dear Boy" we see clear evidence of the effect the dreams
are having. Angel seems to have no energy. He spends vast amounts of time sleeping:
Cordelia: "Ah, you must be all worn out from sleeping for the last three
days. It's like living with the world's oldest teenager. He can't be having a
growth spurt at two hundred and
forty-eight, can he?"
He is fatalistic about something turning up. His concentration has gone to
pot. He dozes off and resumes his dreams in the middle of the day and is
disorientated when he wakes up. He shows little or no sense of planning in how
to deal with the demon Turfog and its followers and even forgets all about Gunn
when he needs help. This is an individual whose higher reasoning functions are
seriously impaired. He is tired, making the wrong decisions and what is worse
doesn't even care he is doing so. After the fight with the demon Gunn pulled
Angel up about his lack of teamwork and all he could say in reply was:
"Job got done."
It did, but no thanks to Angel. This is the perfect backdrop for Darla's mind
games to be played out. But to what end? How is Wolfram and Hart's agenda to be
carried forward? Lindsey defines the plan in the following terms:
"There's no better way to a man's darkness than to awaken his nastier
urges. Is there?"
This is certainly consistent with the idea that unhinging Angel, destroying
his self control might change the way Angel thinks of himself. Just like Bethany
before him he might have come to believe from his experiences that he had no
power over his life and therefore no responsibility. His conscious mind might
let things happen without even trying to control them, even if he could.
He might eventually even allow others to control him.
The next step Darla takes does fit in with the logic of this approach as she
shows herself to him but only briefly and without giving him an opportunity to
get close. When he sees her it only adds to his confusion. He knows it is her
but logically it can't be. She is dead, dusted. This unsettles him even more.
After the first encounter Angel's behavior becomes even more strange as he
smells Cordelia's hair:
Angel: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I've been so out of it lately.
Because of her. I saw her, here in town. Last night."
This is quickly followed by the scene in which he confronts Darla at the
hotel. There he does get close and does speak to her in the presence of
witnesses. When she claimed she was Deetta Kramer and then ran out into direct
sunlight into the arms of her husband this convinced both Wesley and Cordelia
that Angel was imagining things. But it only made Angel more desperate to find
out the truth and less amenable to others' objections. He was warned in clear
and unambiguous terms about his actions:
MC: "You're at a crucial juncture big guy."
Angel: "So, talk."
MC: "So, no."
Angel: "What do you mean "no"? You won't tell me
anything?"
MC: "I'll tell you you're headed into trouble with a capital
"trub". Let her go bro. That way lies badness.
Angel: "What do you care? You've got murderous demons
in here and you
give them free advice. But you won't help me."
MC: "Hey. I set people on their paths okay? And this is
way off you path
sweetie. Go home.
Angel: "Tell me where Darla is."
MC: "I know you're not gonna start anything in here. You're a good
boy."
This was good advice but, being Angel, he ignored it. As he was intended to Angel stalked Deetta, tracked her to
the house and then he was framed for murder. And it is here that we see a
significant problem with the plot.
At this point any hope of undermining
Angel's belief in himself has already stalled. Notwithstanding
the clear effects that Darla's campaign has produced on Angel's reasoning
abilities we have seen no sign of it undermining his self-control. Indeed
Darla's appearance to him only serves to clarify his thoughts and sharpen his
concentration. In the face of all the evidence to the contrary and Wesley and
Cordelia's doubts his certainty never wavers:
Angel: "I thought I was losing my mind but you know she's here she's
alive."
Wesley: "What you're saying is impossible. You staked
her to dust three
and a half years ago."
Angel: "I know that. I also know it was her"
Wesley: "Vampires don't come back from the dead.
Angel: "I did and I saw her. I'm not crazy."
This Angel knows the difference between fantasy and reality and has no doubts
about Darla belonging to the real world. This puts his dreams into a completely
different context. He does not yet guess exactly what has been going on there
but he is close enough when he says:
"Maybe I'm dreaming about her 'cause she's here."
From then on the dreams effectively loose their power over him. This is not
in itself a problem. In fact it is readily believable that Holland and Lindsey
misunderstand Angel and underestimate his ability to cope with their tactics.
The real problem is that the next stage in their plan - framing him for murder -
seems out of place. I think you can see a vague outline of where they might be
leading. A confused, perhaps slightly deranged Angel finds his friends, already
half-convinced he is crazy, turning on him because they think he is bad. The
police will now be after him as well. He will have nowhere to go to and no-one
to turn to except Darla and Wolfram and Hart. As events demonstrated this idea not
only showed no understanding of Angel's likely reaction to the trap he fell
into. It also underestimated the loyalty of both Cordelia and Wesley (and even
Gunn). But that is not the real problem. The problem is not so much that the
plan was a bad one but that it didn't really make an awful lot of sense in the
context of what had gone before. To date Wolfram and Hart had been trying to make him go
bad by undermining his sense of self control and self belief. This isn't going
to further that enterprise. In fact it appears to have nothing to do with
furthering the purpose of Darla's earlier efforts at all.
So, up to a point "Dear Boy" does follow the continuity of
"First Impressions" and "Untouched". We have been able to
trace the developing execution of Wolfram and Hart's plan through two successive
episodes to the stage where they make the critical move which is intended to
deliver Angel into the darkness. The fact that the plan doesn't work is neither
here nor there. The problem rather is that with this final move the continuity
seems to fall apart.
Who is Angel?
The odd thing, however, is that none of this matters because the Wolfram and
Hart plan has simply been a vehicle to bring us to the real focal point of this
episode and, indeed, of Darla's resurrection. As the passage I have already
quoted indicates Darla seems to have had very little faith in the likely success
of the Wolfram and Hart plan. Instead she has always had her own agenda for
dealing with Angel. And this agenda goes to the very heart of his character and
indeed the series. It asks who is he really? More particularly it looks at the
source of the darkness within him and where control of that darkness really
lies. This is the question at the heart of the confrontation between
them in the former convent near the end of the episode. But that confrontation
is only the culmination of a whole series of scenes in the episode addressing
the same question in a subtle, layered fashion.
A key early scene is where the followers of the demon Turfog are fighting
each other:
Cordelia: "Its disciples are human, they're killing each other. I think
the fight is over how to fittingly worship it."
This fighting take place somewhere that Cordelia described as "sacred,
in a twisted demonic kind of way". It turns out to be the site of a former
convent, a place that Angel immediately shows an interest in:
"Saint Bridget's, in Fremont. A convent, built on native burial grounds.
The land's cursed; they had eight murders in two years before the whole place
burned to the ground. Which is nothing compared to what happened at Our Lady of
Lochenbee... I have a thing about convents."
The idea of worship (albeit of a demon) leading to violence evokes two
separate comparisons with religious wars (the clearest being from Gunn recalling
his Uncle Theo's advice). And the history of the convent deliberately mixes the
sacred and the cursed. And this idea seems to me to set the scene for the
central theme of "Dear Boy". I think that in it the writers are
blurring the distinction between good and evil, not as concepts in themselves
but in the way they find expression in the world.
In particular the writers seem to be
asking whether there is not also a blurring
of the distinction between evil and good within Angel. We have Liam and we have
Angelus and we have Angel. Three persons in one. Each is different. But none can
be separated from the other. They are, if you like, an unholy trinity.
Everything that Liam was went into shaping Angelus. And everything that Angelus
was is present now in Angel. The inter-reaction between these three characters
produces many interesting questions. For example how was the way Angelus related
to his father shaped by the way Liam saw him? Where did Angel's interest in art
come from? But in the final analysis there is only one question that is
important - what was the source of the darkness; where did Angelus' particular
cruelty come from? Did it only come from the demon?
I have already quoted the passage near the beginning of the episode in which
Angel betrays his detailed knowledge of convents in Los Angeles, their history and
especially the evil events that occur in them. Indeed he readily admits his
fascination for the subject. This fascination obviously has its source in Angelus' preoccupations. Just
before he turns Drusilla he muses:
"Convents they're just a big old cookie jar."
(BTW did they have cookies in mid-18th century England?). Later he brings
Darla to St Bridget's and tells her
"You remember how much I like Convents."
The truth is that Angelus' fascination has less to do with a convenient
source of food and more to do with his need to corrupt good. When he sees
Drusilla for the first time his reaction is interesting:
Angelus: "The one in the middle has something delicate and unique. Did
you find me a Saint?"
Darla: "Better than that. She has the sight."
Angelus: "Visions? She sees the future. She is pure innocence, yet she
sees what's coming. She knows what I'm going to do to her."
In the same way as he mocked God by carving the cross on the cheeks of his
victims in the late 18th century, for Angelus here too goodness was a motivating
force for him to do evil. And the greater the good the greater the evil he felt
impelled to inflict.
Angelus: "This one's special. I have big plans for her."
Darla: "So do we kill her during or after?"
Angelus: "Neither. We turn her into one of us. Killing is so merciful in
the end isn't it? The pain is ended."
Darla: "But to make her one of us...? She's a lunatic."
Angelus: "Eternal torment. Am I learning?"
The writers have, therefore, it seems to me tried to make a connection
between the ensouled Angel and his fascination with Convents and the excesses of
cruelty committed by the vampire. It's almost as if they were asking: is he
really any different?
But, as I have already said, in doing so they were simply laying the
groundwork for the real exploration of the issue which comes during the battle
of wills between Darla and Angel in the underground water tank. During this
confrontation each have very different objectives and those objectives are
informed by what they think of themselves. Darla's is revealed in her talk with
Lindsey:
Darla: "Everyone betrays you. That's not what eats at you in the long
winter's nights."
Lindsey: "What does?"
Darla: "Missed opportunities. He got a soul and it sickened me. All that
power wasted on a whiny, mopey do gooder."
She still wants him. She still hankers after the time when they were together
and shared everything. There is only one thing standing in the way of that - his
soul. That she still hates. But she is now sorry that she rejected him along
with his soul. For her the soul is not the essence of Angel. It changed nothing fundamentally. Deep down she believes he is the same Angelus
that she knew and loved (at least loved insofar as a vampire is capable of
love).
"This is no life Angel. Before you got neutered you weren't just any
vampire. You were a legend. Nobody could keep up with you, not even me. You
don't learn that kind of darkness. It's innate. It was in you before we ever
met. You said you can smell me. Well I can smell you too. And my boy is still in
there and he wants out."
On this reasoning Liam and Angel and Angelus were all fundamentally the same person. The only
difference between them was that the human soul "neutered" that person by
preventing him from fulfilling his dark potential. In this she is informed by
her own experience. Reincarnated as human she is nevertheless as cold blooded a
killer as she ever was, as witnessed by the calm way she passes off her
"husband's" death with a joke. He wasn't a person he was only an
actor. As she says herself:
"I'm still me"
Angel's attitude on the other hand is equally informed by his own
experiences. In response to Darla saying she hasn't changed he responds:
"But the bitch is, you have a soul now. Pretty soon those memories are
gonna start eatin' away at you. No matter how hard you try you won't be able to
escape the truth of what you were. Believe me, I know."
Here he is, of course, talking about himself.
It is because of his own experience that he makes the assumption that possession
of a soul bring about a
fundamental change in Darla. For him the soul is the essence of the person. He
still feels the destructive impulses from the demon within. You can see this by
the way he treats Darla when he first drags her to the water tank. He feels a
passion for her, he vamps out and feeds of her and kisses her violently, just
like in the dreams. The difference is that he is appalled by what he did. He
calls enough, stops himself and reverts to his normal face. This difference is made by the soul. It doesn't just impose shackles on him
that, in Darla's words, he can escape. It changes him fundamentally. And for
Angel the proof of that fundamental difference lies in the comparison between
his relationship with Darla and his relationship with Buffy.
Angel: "You took me places, showed me things. You blew the top off my
head. But you never made me happy."
Darla: But that...that cheerleader did? We were together 150 years. We shared
everything. You're saying... never?"
Angel: "You couldn't understand.
Darla: "I understand all right. A guy gets the taste of something fresh
and he thinks he touching God....There was a time in the early years when you
would have said I was the definition of bliss. Buffy wasn't happiness. She was
just new."
Angel:" You're getting awfully bent over this Darla. I couldn't feel that
with you because I didn't have a soul. But then I got a second chance."
The phrase I find most interesting here is Darla's reference to Angel
thinking he is touching God. It is echoed cruelly when, to prove her own
contention about him being the same, she later produces a cross and burns him
saying "God doesn't want you". Again we see the use religious
metaphors to express the duality in Angel's nature. Angel aspires to
goodness, to humanity and this is identified as touching God. But at the
same time religious symbols are harmful to Vampires and this symbolizes God's
rejection of him.
I do not think that this episode resolves the debate between the two of them.
There is evidence and argument on both sides. The answer will only be given over
the course of time. But that doesn't mean that the issues have been left
hanging. Just before Darla made her escape into the light Angel threatened her:
"Darla, if you hurt anyone else and I'll kill you"
This could simply have been Angel fulfilling his role as protector of the
innocent, in the same way as he killed the blind assassin from "Blind
Date." But it soon became obvious that there was more to his threat than
this. When Darla taunted him about the nasty things he said in his dreams he
lost it and grabbed her again. This time the only thing that made him let her go
was the cross. The anger was building up inside him. Who knows how long he was
sitting brooding over these events in his room when Cordelia and Wesley came to
the door. But certainly his anger had not cooled off, as is shown by the ominous
words he utters to them:
"There's going to be a lot of trouble and I say bring it on."
Perhaps this will be the acid test for Angel - the anger and violence within
him. Is he really as he thinks a fundamentally different person now to the
demon? And if he isn't what does that mean? His path has been upwards towards
redemption. By playing the forces of evil at their own game, by unleashing the
anger and violence within is he heading off that path? Is that what the anagogic
MC meant? We will see.
I have already tried to define in detail the relationship between Angel and
Angelus. This is no place to repeat those views. Suffice to say they accord more
with Angel's views of the importance of the human soul than Darla's. But it
doesn't bother me in the least that in the interplay between Darla's views and
those of Angel the writers have expressly left open the possibility that Darla
is right. Or indeed that the very effective use of the flashbacks and the way
they illuminated certain aspects of Angel's present behavior tended to lend
credibility to what Darla is saying. Far from being Darla's lapdog, someone who
simply followed in her evil, we are at last being shown why the Master described
him as the most vicious creature he had ever met. The refinement of his cruelty
to poor Drusilla was beyond Darla's imagination and seemed almost to frighten
her. And Angel's preoccupation with Convents and the evil they can attract is a
very uncomfortable echo of Angelus. In fact I welcome this as a development.
What started out as a story about Wolfram and Hart's attempts to undermine
Angel's self confidence and self control now reaches more fundamental territory.
Here the writers are grappling with one of the central issues of the whole
series, indeed perhaps the central issue. ANGEL as a series is about a struggle
first of all to cope with a burden of darkness and then to achieve forgiveness
for the way that darkness destroyed the lives of so many. Whether that Darkness
belongs to the demon or the man must necessarily affect our understanding not
only of Angel as a character but also of the burden he carries and the
possibility of forgiveness. If Darla is right he is no longer the victim of a blind fate imposing
an undeserved punishment. What happened to him in Borsa in 1898 and everything
that followed it then becomes a manifestation of justice in the same way as
Faith's punishment. There is, therefore, really no denying the importance, the
interest or indeed the sheer power of the subject in the context of the
development of the series. It is in fact precisely the sort of issue that the
writers must explore.
And the mechanism they use to explore it could not have been bettered. There
is a very personal connection between Darla and Angel. They know one another so
intimately that no two people could be closer. At the same time they are on the
opposite sides of the argument. And this is not an intellectual argument; it is
deeply personal. For Darla this is her chance to get back what she once had but
lost. For Angel this is about defending the new life and the new purpose that he
has created for himself - the thing that has pulled him out of the darkness and
despair that he knew. In this argument both have the knowledge to use against
the other and the motive to do so. This helped make the most of the inherent
power of the subject because it imbued the scenes between the pair with a
real passion.
Kate
In this context the character of Kate is, I think, being
put to very good
use. Since we last saw her in "To Shanshu in LA" her career has gone
further downhill and she has been assigned to a post she refers to as
"Siberia". Her friends and colleagues ignore her. She seems to be
something of a laughing stock. Of course how she got a high profile murder case
to run and a large SWAT team under her command is, by this token, something of a
mystery but we will let that pass. Apart from this, however, her character
hasn't changed much. Indeed in this episode we have confirmation of the real
nature of her suspicion of Angel. She is neither mad nor bad. There was very
good circumstantial and direct evidence that Angel had committed a horrible
murder. She knew as a vampire what he was capable of so she had no reason to
give him the benefit of the doubt. But when confronted by solid evidence in the
form of the picture of Darla and Gunn's persuasive argument about Angel's
inability to enter the Kramer's house if they were still alive, she listened and
acted reasonably. It is clear that by the end of the episode she no longer
believes Angel to be guilty of the crime. But the basic objection she enunciated
in "To Shanshu in LA" has not changed.
Kate: "You don't get it do you"
Gunn: "What, the fact that he is innocent?"
Kate: "The fact that while you are fighting your big battles of good and
evil, the innocent are the ones that get caught in the crossfire. Those are the
ones that I care about. Like that man tonight. Or like the real owners of that
house if what you say is true. And those are the ones that I chalk up to your
boss."
Wesley: "You can't blame Angel for...He's trying to do what's
right."
Kate: "That's right. He's good. I keep forgetting. I'm sorry and why did
he kidnap that woman again?"
Angel is not a part of society. He acts outside the law. Because he does so,
to Kate he is just as much a danger to ordinary members of society as the things
he is fighting. This is a credible point of view, especially coming from someone
like her with her history. And what makes it interesting is that Kate is
unambiguously a white hat who is thereby placed in conflict with Angel. And this
conflict is not so easy for him to deal with as the conflict between him and a
black hat. But in this particular instance the real importance of Kate as a
character is that it reinforces the essential ambiguity of Angel's situation. It
highlights the link between his actions and evil consequences, albeit ones
unintended by him.
In this context the counterpoint between her reaction of finding out Angel's
evil side and Gunn's is very instructive.
"I'm just adjusting to the idea that this good guy vampire that I work
for can go bad."
His willingness to kill an evil vampire can be taken for granted. But he
remains completely open minded about Angel's guilt and immediately sees the
reason why he is innocent. The explanation for the difference between him and Kate
is obvious. It is revealed in the following exchange over his record:
Kate: "Disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, interfering with police
officers in the performance of their duty. You've lead a rich full life, haven't
you Charles?"
Gunn: "I do what I have to do."
Cordelia: "Hey, I know this guy. He
helps people. I bet this stuff you're dredging up all happened
a long time ago, didn't it."
Kate: "Some of it when he was a minor."
Cordelia: "Uh huh."
Kate: "And some of it in the last two weeks."
You see Gunn, just like Angel, operates outside the law as well. He fights the
same fight as Angel and he does so on his own terms. It seems to me that what we
have here is in fact acknowledgement of the fact that he is Angel junior and it
is that fact that informs his attitude towards Angel and indeed Kate's attitude
towards him.
Plot
The plot of "Dear Boy" was stronger than most Angel episodes this
season. Its great strength was the way in which it kept on taking different
twists. Of these the key was the revelation that Darla was human. The writers
had been very clever. Every time we had seen her beforehand it had been dark.
We, therefore, had no reason to suspect she was not still a vampire. Indeed it
was so unexpected that, when she ran into the light, I started looking for other
explanations including a magical immunity to direct sunlight or even the
possibility that she was a double. The effective part about this twist was that
it sharpened the doubts that Cordelia and Wesley were having over Angel's belief
that Darla was back while at the same time helping to create the frame of
reference for the later confrontation between herself an Angel.
At this stage it seemed that the principal focus of "Dear
Boy" would be on Darla's mind games with Angel. At the beginning of the
episode we were shown how much Angel was "out of it". This was quickly
followed by the first sighting of Darla at the promenade and the confrontation
Angel had with her at the hotel. Here the emphasis was on Cordelia's and
Wesley's increasing awareness of their boss' weird behavior. This led them
openly to doubt what Angel was seeing. Wesley was especially important here. he
was the voice of calm and reason, the perfect counterpoint to Angel's
disorientation and lack of concentration. This looked as though it was going to be
the focal point of the conflict. And at first the scene at the Kramer's house
seemed to promise a continuation of the same pattern of trying to persuade
Angel that he is loosing it.
But things changed with frightening speed. As soon as Darla started talking
to Lindsey through the microphone it becomes obvious that something serious was going to happen. So it
did and we saw the murder, the frame and the escape in
rapid succession. I have already mentioned my basic problem here. I was trying
and failing to work out how the frame fitted in with Wolfram and Hart's plan and
I found that distracted from concentration on the events which unfolded
afterwards. To that extent the scenario was a little jarring. But in the end it
proved surprisingly effective.
At this stage it looked as though the rest of the episode would follow a
fairly standard storyline with Angel trying to convince first the rest of the
Fang Gang and ultimately the police of his innocence. Nothing especially
interesting in that. As it turned out, however, the murder and subsequent frame
attempt were no more than a plot device to launch two very different and much
more interesting confrontations. The key one, between Angel and Darla, I have
already dealt with at some length. Its interest lay in the balance of argument
and in the interaction of the two principals. Angel, as he proved several times,
was the one who was physically in control of the situation. But he was also the
one under pressure. He knew what Darla was doing and, because he was physically
in control, he could confront her on his terms. But he was also tired, angry,
perhaps a little shocked at the turn of events and what they revealed to him had
been going on. And Darla was pushing him very hard. Angel's actions were
therefore ultimately unpredictable. This is what really added spark to their
scenes together.
The second confrontation, between Kate and
the Fang Gang, was in part something of a tidying up exercise. Its
principal purpose was to allow for the resolution of the "frame". That
avoided the same sort of highly unsatisfactory situation that arose at the
beginning of season 3 of BUFFY. There, after having been wanted by the police
for the murder of Kendra, Buffy returns to Sunnydale only to be told that for
some undefined reason all charges have been dropped. And the neat thing about
the resolution here is that while it involved one small "deus ex
machina" in the form of the picture of Darla, the real breakthrough was a
piece of solid gold reasoning. How Angel had got into the Kramer house had been
bothering me but the explanation was elegantly simple.
Aside from this there were some very interesting character related
developments. I have already dealt with Kate and Gunn. The rest concerns the
reaction of Wesley and Cordelia to the potential of Angel going bad. First of
all there was nice continuity between " Eternity" and this episode in the explicit
recognition that Angel might go bad "as he has done before". I am also
interested to see that they resort to non-lethal means of protecting themselves.
Indeed the lack of overreaction altogether is both credible and really quite
endearing. They have obviously considered the possibility (and let's face it why
wouldn't they) and prepared against it. But they are not holding it personally
against Angel. As Cordelia puts it
"99% of the time he's good. And he's done a lot for us."
I have to say though the uncritical way they both maintain that Angel is
innocent in front of Kate does stretch credibility.
Cordelia: "He wouldn't. Angel could never do a thing like that."
Wesley:" He's not that type of person."
As Angel sure. But Angelus? And weren't they both afraid only a few moments
ago that he had gone bad? Putting up a common front is one thing but asking for
the evidence rather than giving a flat denial would have been much more
reasonable.
Overview
9/10: In following on from the previous two episodes, "Dear Boy"
looked as though it would concentrate on an interesting but limited question;
namely the ability of Angel to control his darker impulses. Instead as the
episode progressed it became apparent that it was dealing with altogether more
fundamental questions. These questions concern the true source of the darkness
within. They are not new in the sense that they have been debated by fans many
times. But this is the first time that the series has addressed them in such a
direct manner. And the way in which it did so was quite compelling. This was not
a dry academic type debate. There was something important at stake for both
Angel and Darla in the argument between them and that is what created the sense
of importance and the tension that was so necessary when dealing with the
subject matter. Certainly this episode hasn't resolved anything. But, while the
series
may yet do so it doesn't actually have to. In real life questions of equal
difficulty are often left open. Why not here? In terms of plot there were
certainly some rough edges. The part of the plot where Angel was framed felt more than a little
shoehorned into it. Otherwise the twists and turn of the plot were what served
to sustain interest. We were never quite sure where the episode was going. And I
thought that, once again excellent use was made of the flashbacks. I have already dealt with their purpose in setting out the
background for the confrontation between Angel and Darla. What is commendable
here is the way the writers resisted the temptation to overuse them. They
illustrated the points they were intended to and that was the end of them.
Finally,
for such a dark and serious episode there was a very nice leavening of fairly
light hearted humor. This was mainly in the form of bickering between Wesley and Cordelia
but the writers were also very adept at exploiting for humor the absurdity of
this dark and powerful figure being so "out of it".