EPISODE 1.04
I FALL TO PIECES
Written by:
David Greenwalt
Directed
by: Vern Gillum
Meltzer and Angelus
In many ways the subject of a stalker and his victim was a natural for
ANGEL. Stalking first of all involves some form of covert action and
for that reason usually takes place at night. But it is intrusive and it does
put the victim into a state of distress or fear of violence. It is also quite
likely to end in some form of violence directed at the victim. The potential for
incorporating the supernatural into this type of behavior in the Angelverse is
all too obvious. I am afraid, however, that in this respect "I Fall to
Pieces" promised more than it delivered.
Part of the difficulty was the way in which the basic idea for this episode
was presented. Meltzer and his detachable body parts and especially what
happened to him was intended to be used as a metaphor for the way stalkers and
their victims related to one another. In presenting this metaphor the writers
relied upon a parallel between Meltzer’s stalker activities on the one hand
and Angel’s first hand knowledge and experience of stalking on the other. This
parallel was intended to explore and explain Meltzer’s motivations and actions
and his ultimate fate. Thus we were to be helped to understand the metaphor. The
problem lay in the fact that, for me at least, the parallel between Angel and
Meltzer just did not work.
Let us start with the following conversation between Cordelia and Angel.
Cordelia: "I don’t get it. This guy has a lot to
lose. What is it about Melissa that got him to go all O.J. on
her?"
Angel: "Nothing. It’s not about Melissa; it’s about
rage. This guy is too messed up to deal with a real woman and he can’t
stand that. So he creates a fantasy about a girl he barely
knows. But eventually even she fails him. So he has to hurt her,
because when he looks at her all he sees is how useless he is, how
damaged."
Cordelia: "Uh, what a fun date you must have been in back in your
bad vamp days. On the other hand, it should give you some insight into the
jerks of the world."
Angel: "I know how this guy thinks, I just don’t know how he’s
doing it."
I think we have to conclude from this that the writers were referring
specifically to the parallels between Meltzer and Angelus rather than Angel.
Textually the reference to Angel’s "bad vamp days" makes this fairly
clear. There are, of course, some similarities between these two. They both
share a desire to control their victims. But their motivations are fundamentally
different. The quote above reveals what I think is intended to be the true
nature of Meltzer’s interest in Melissa. It is born out of inadequacy and
frustration. He wants all the normal things out of life like a family. But
because of his own shortcomings he cannot have them. So he substitutes a fantasy
relationship. This can be seen from the way in which he unhesitatingly accepts
"Brian Jensen’s" description of his love for his "wife" as
a picture of his own relationship with Melissa.
"Do you know what it’s like to be so much a part of someone that
you don’t know where they end and you begin? Would you die for
her?"
But there was never a relationship there. There was instead a control system
which Meltzer fooled himself into believing was a relationship. The true nature
of Meltzer’s relationship with Melissa is evidenced by the realities of his
actions: the covert surveillance to ensure she follows his instructions,
changing her pin number etc. It may well be that Meltzer’s difficulties with
women stemmed from his feelings of inadequacy that are reflected in his need to
control them. That is, of course, speculation. Nevertheless it seems quite clear
that Meltzer’s behavior is the direct result of his failure in being able to
have an ordinary relationship.
And here is where we come to the metaphor. Here I will quote from something
Angel said to Melissa:
"You’ve survived a living hell these last few months and you’re
still standing, while he’s coming unhinged at not being able to control
you. He’s the weak one. You’re the strong one."
These were words that she herself took up and turned on Meltzer:
"You turned yourself into a freak, Ronald, a vile, repulsive
freak. And I’m done being afraid of you. You can cut me and
you can kill me, but it still won’t change what you are. Angel was
right. You’re weak!"
The message we are being given is that inadequacy can turn to violence but
when confronted by strength, both moral and physical, it just "falls to
pieces" both literally and metaphorically. As Meltzer’s weapons in
stalking Melissa literally fell apart so his true weakness was metaphorically
revealed. The application of this metaphor for stalkers generally is too obvious
to need laboring here. And it is a very clever one. It encapsulates a fairly
sophisticated idea about the lack of moral strength in someone who is
essentially a bully into a nice, easily understood thought.
But this very metaphor reveals pretty clearly the fallacy of the method
chosen to reveal it. There is no real parallel between Angelus and Meltzer.
Neither Angel nor the viewer can claim to understand the latter through the
actions or motivations of the former. Angelus did not want to be loved. He didn’t
want a relationship. He just enjoyed inflicting pain. Even by vampire standards,
Angelus was a "particularly brutal bastard". We have not yet got an
especially clear idea of his activities in the 18th and 19th
centuries. But there are enough hints that he set out to torture and kill simply
for pleasure. As the First Evil in the guise of Margaret said in
"Amends" -
"But you see, that's what makes you different than other beasts.
They kill to feed, but you took more kinds of pleasure in it than any
creature that walks or crawls."
His stalking of victims represented a collection of refined techniques for
inflicting the pain – killing loved ones, nailing puppies for Valentine’s
Day etc. Just compare the roses he sent Buffy in BBB (complete with the message
"soon") to Meltzer’s gift of flowers to Melissa. The former was a
threat; the latter really was a misconceived gesture intended to show affection.
In fact love repelled and sickened Angelus. The only occasion when his stalking
of someone could be said to be as a result of more personal motives was when he
went after Buffy. Even there it was not because he wanted love. Rather he wanted
revenge. In "Innocence", Drusilla guessed fairly easily what Angelus
had in mind for Buffy -
"You don't want to kill her, do you? You want to hurt her. Just like
you hurt me."
So on this most basic level the similarities between Angel(us) and Meltzer
just did not work for me. Remember Meltzer only became violent when his efforts
at showing affection were frustrated. Violence was Angelus’ whole life. I
could not believe in Angel looking into the dark, soulless evil of the demon and
finding these human inadequacies there that allowed him to diagnose both the
problem and the solution. It is one thing to take back control of your life in
the face of an inadequate who "falls to pieces" at the first sign of
serious opposition. I wouldn’t give very much for your chances of pulling of
the same trick if the stalker was Angelus (unless of course your name happened
to be Buffy Summers).
Having said all that, the depiction of the actual stalking itself was well
done, both from a dramatic point of view and in terms of its compatibility with
the metaphor. It started off with the flowers – innocuous enough. We then saw
the bathroom scene and we only learned the significance of that later. Meltzer
changing Melissa’s pin number was the first sign that something wasn’t quite
right and from there on the obsessiveness gradually became clearer until it
culminated in very intrusive behavior and eventually violence. So, Meltzer’s
actions (including the way he became unhinged by his failure) matched closely
the predicted pattern of behavior and thus added weight to the analysis. In
addition, however, the level of threat escalated bit by bit, which from the
dramatic point of view is usually a good thing.
Development of the Plot
In the same way I liked the way the writers held back for a while before
revealing Meltzer’s "special abilities". That added to the suspense.
I can’t help feeling, though, that they could have waited even longer. The
ideal would have been to structure the episode so that the revelation came
immediately after Angel’s visit to Vinpur Natpudan. The conversation between
them could have been left open ended with a cut away scene in which Meltzer
revealed his stalking techniques by demonstration. That would have maximized the
surprise and the final revelation would have had a more coherent feel to it. The
explanation as to how Meltzer got his special gifts would have been linked
directly to the disclosure of what they were. The way it was structured we knew
what Meltzer’s secret was long before Angel went to see Vinpur Natpudan.
Because of this the only purpose served by that visit for us the viewer was to
reveal the method used and by this time I certainly had little interest in that
sort of exposition. Worse than that, the explanation that was given made so
little sense that we would actually have been better off without one. As best I
can make out the suggestion was that Meltzer had managed to tap into the unused
potential of the brain (one of the great cliché’s of SF) in some unspecified
way. Yogis may be able to shut down their "somatic system" (no, I don’t
know what that is) by doing so but how the brain allows the physical separation
of a hand from an arm is beyond me. The writers might just as well have shown
Angel putting down the telephone and telling Cordelia he had just found out from
Vinpur Natpudan what Meltzer’s special abilities were.
This, however, leads me to another part of the episode that was handled well
- the detective work that went into identifying the nature of the threat.
Admittedly this was one of the simpler problems for Angel to solve in that
Melissa had given him the name of the perpetrator and described what he was
doing to her. All he had to do is figure out how he was doing it. Nevertheless,
he went about it in a logical manner. He went and talked to Kate, got police
protection for Melissa, searched Meltzer’s office, made covert contact with
him and interviewed colleagues. All were logical moves and each contributed
towards solving the final puzzle. What I liked most, however, was the way in
which the results of these moves were brought together to set up the final
confrontation. Meltzer had already met "Brian Jensen". Angel getting
police protection for Melissa led to Meltzer’s first kill and to him seeing
Angel and Melissa together. This not only confirmed he was out of control but
helped him identify who his enemy was, thus leading to the attempt to kill
"Brian Jensen" and so to the final confrontation in Angel’s
apartment. All very neat and tidy.
The same cannot, however, be said for the final confrontation itself. Here
there were several fairly basic problems. Not the least of them was trying to
decide how the conflict was to be resolved. This may sound a strange thing to
say but in many ways the real point of the story was to implement the advice
Kate gave to Angel when she said:
"I’ve put a few of these creeps away and the hardest thing is to
know that he is still winning. She’s still afraid. He took her
power away and no one can get it back for her but her."
So, after some prompting from Angel, Melissa did stand up to Meltzer and
dared him to kill her. That, I assume, was intended to be the moment when she
got back power over her own life. But Meltzer still had physical power over her.
He could have killed her and her demonstration of independence wouldn’t have
been very much help to her then. It needed Angel to come and kill Meltzer for
her to be truly free. But once Angel had killed Meltzer her willingness to
strand up to him became largely superfluous. There does seem to be some conflict
here between the old fashioned "hero to the rescue" approach and the
"saving souls" agenda. The two involved quite different solutions to
the problem and do not easily co-exist.
In the physical sense at least the central confrontation was between Meltzer
and Angel. In order for this to have any dramatic impact Meltzer, therefore, had
to be a credible opponent. I really didn’t think he was. I accept that
shooting Angel full of drugs almost allowed him to make an end run around him
and kill Melissa. And I have to say that sequence of Meltzer paralyzing Angel
and then trying to break into the apartment were well done. But once in the
apartment Meltzer showed no real interest in either Doyle or Cordelia and quite
frankly I could not get particularly worked up about Melissa or her fate. I
think this is one of the fundamental problems of having a "victim of the
week". So, in the end, there was no real suspense attached to the sequence.
And once Angel appeared on the scene the danger was, in any event, as good as
over. Meltzer had apparently no more physical strength than an ordinary human. I
think that this was demonstrated when the most dangerous way he could take on
Angel was to shoot out his teeth at him. So, what was supposed to be the climax
of the whole episode ends very quickly and very tamely in anticlimax.
Other Aspects
Another problem lay in the special effects. The idea of detachable body parts
was very creepy and, for obvious reasons, fitted metaphor perfectly. To see
Melissa in very private moments (such as getting undressed for bed) being
stalked by eye and hands was very disturbing indeed. I thought the special
effects here worked very well; especially the scenes where the hands reattached
themselves to Meltzer’s arms. But the weaknesses in the special effects were
shown up very clearly by the action sequences at the end. They simply could not
convey the necessary fluidity and ease of movement that were necessary to hold
their own in inter-reaction with the live action participants. In the end they
seemed slightly…. ridiculous.
It would, however, be very unfair to conclude without drawing attention to
some of the undoubted strengths of the episode. It contained two very good ideas
about the way Angel related to his clients. The first was the way he scared
Melissa. This emphasized his separation from people as well as his usual modus
operandi. It therefore made a very serious point. But, in conversation with
Cordelia, it was viewed in essentially a humorous way which actually made it
more effective. The only pity is that more hasn’t been made of it
subsequently. Secondly the way Doyle related collecting a bill from clients to
the need to help them retain their independence could only be described as
ingenious. I love it when writers take a mundane point like Angel’s reluctance
to ask people for money (which I have to say was very endearing) and find a new
and interesting angle in it. Presenting the business side of "Angel
Investigations" in this new light made of look like one more step in
overall design to save souls. And most important of all both ideas were very
well integrated into the plot.
It was also very good that both Doyle and Cordelia got a lot more to do then
in, for example, "Lonely Hearts". This episode had far more the ring
of a team exercise to it. Both played their parts in the detective work and in
baby-sitting Melissa. And they took part in some very nice individual scenes,
both between them and separately. Cordelia’s interviewing technique hasn’t
really improved much since "Earshot" ("So he is good at the
cutting and the sewing. Did he ever strike you as a big dangerous
creep?") and Doyle’s idea of reassuring clients leaves something to be
desired ("But protecting young women such as yourself? Yeah, there’ve
been – ah – 4. And 3 of them are very much alive."). In fact the
dialogue in this episode was sparkling and pretty much all in character. I was
very entertained by the fact that Cordelia especially just could not get over
the fact that Meltzer was a doctor:
"It’s just so unfair. I mean, here is this poor girl.
She hooks up with a doctor. That’s supposed to be a good
thing. I mean you should be able to call home and say: ‘Hey, mom,
guess what, I’ve met a doctor!’ Not, guess what, I met a psycho and he’s
stalking me and oh, by the way, his hands and feet come off and he’s not
even in the circus!"
Overview
5.5/10 This was the first ANGEL episode to really disappoint. It
wasn’t actually that bad but it did seem to me to fail in a number of crucial
respects. The metaphor of a stalker falling to pieces was a good one. But the
parallel between Angelus and Meltzer, which was intended to illustrate it, was
basically misconceived and I usually regard that as a more serious matter than a
well conceived parallel which fails in its execution. I think that there was a
degree of confusion over how the doctor was to be defeated - by Melissa standing
up to him or by Angel physically. There was no real explanation as to how his
limbs became detached. Finally, as an opponent, Meltzer just didn’t carry a
sufficient threat. The detachable body parts was a suitably creepy idea which
unfortunately worked badly in the final fight scene. Having said that the actual
depiction of Meltzer was (regardless of the failure of the parallel) a
convincing one and was entirely consistent with the metaphor for the stalker.
The execution of the plot (the stalking, detective work and engineering of final
confrontation) was thoroughly professional. Finally the dialogue was well up to
David Greenwalt’s very high standards and provided a lot of amusing and
entertaining moments. In the end, however, while these mitigate the failure they
cannot quite rescue the episode.