The trust is gone. Don’t be using my phrases when the trust is gone. Angel Season Three
by JimTheFish
Seasons three and four of Angel are so closely bound up with each other that I’m not sure it even makes that much sense to consider them as separate. But that’s what I’m going to do anyway.
They’re really both part of a meta-season that stretches across all 44 episodes, with the finale of s3 merely acting as a resting point, a huge cliffhanger on which to temporarily suspend the story. It’s actually even more complex than that, as this uber-arc also calls back to the events of s2 and, as we’ll find out in s4, from even before that.
This arc, of course, concerns the return of Darla, now expecting Angel’s child, and the subsequent birth of said kid and the chaos it brings to the Angelettes.
But before we get to the real meat and drink of the arc, there are some things that have to be gotten out of the way first. Namely, Buffy. The season opens with Angel working through his grief at Buffy’s death by beating on some demonic monks. A few more episodes in when he learns of her resurrection (this season runs concurrently with Buffy s6) and we get Wesley and Cordelia re-enacting their imagined reunion:
Cordelia: Lemme break it down for you, Fred.
Cordelia [as Buffy]: Oh, Angel, I know that I am a Slayer, and you’re a vampire and it would be impossible for us to be together, but—
Wesley [as Angel]: But… my gypsy curse sometimes prevents me from seeing the truth. Oh, Buffy…
Cordelia [as Buffy]: Yes, Angel?
Wesley [as Angel]: I love you so much, I almost forgot to brood.
Cordelia [as Buffy]: And just because I sent you to Hell that one time doesn’t mean that we can’t just be friends.
Wesley [as Angel]: Or possibly more?
Cordelia [as Buffy]: Gasp! No! We mustn’t!
Wesley [as Angel]: Kiss me!
Cordelia [as Buffy]: Bite me!
Angel: [entering] How ’bout you both bite me?
Fred: You’re back!
Gunn: How’d it go?
Angel: I think those two pretty much summed it up
Not only is this a very funny scene, it serves to illustrate a key problem Angel the show has. It has to move on, to new relationships, new conflicts, but Angel’s relationship with Buffy constantly hangs over the show. Thus it has to be put into the wider context of Angel’s life – both his past and his future – otherwise it’s going to overshadow and devalue the two key relationships for Angel in s3 – his love for Cordelia and his love for his son (and by extension his long-term and complex relationship with Darla).
As an aside, it probably worth noting that Buffy the series continues to need Angel to fulfil a certain role – one that he’s actually grown out of in his own show – the tortured but faithful lover. It’s interesting that in his brief return to Buffy s7, during all that guff about ‘cookie dough’ and his own hurt feelings about ‘getting the brush off for Captain Peroxide’, he never feels the need to mention that he’s in the meanwhile fallen – and fallen hard – for Cordelia, or that he’s had a child with another woman. I think this is part of the reason Angel didn’t stick around for the final showdown in the Hellmouth. He just doesn’t fit in there anymore. He’s grown beyond Buffy and Sunnydale.
Angel s3 also has another couple of issues it has to deal with before it can get onto the arc proper. One is Gunn’s commitment to the group. The Pylea episodes bring home the need for Gunn to make a decision between Team Angel and his old team back in the ‘hood. And this is brought to a head in That Old Gang of Mine. It’s also the most direct examination of one of Angel’s key themes – that demon doesn’t necessarily mean evil and that human doesn’t necessarily mean good. This has been simmering ever since the show’s beginning, and even spilling over into Buffy, but it had now become necessary to lay it on the line – primarily, because this was the season where the examination of these grey areas was going to really start impacting on the show’s core characters.
But it’s also been an issue that Gunn could walk away from Angel Inc at any time and return to his old life. After this episode, it’s no longer going to be that easy for him. And there there’s the other, more significant, thing holding him at the Hyperion — his relationship with Fred. Another bit of business that had to be taken care of was the establishment of Fred as an Angelette. I have got no end of praise for Amy Acker as Fred. She’s created a character who is clearly meant to fulfil the group’s need for a Willow character but Acker is to be commended for creating someone wholly distinct, as profoundly lovable as Willow is in her own way, and yet also deeply damaged (although how much is not something we’ll really see until s4).
The episode Fredless is just terrific, subverting the narrative of the ‘what if the parents are evil’ trope (cf Family in s5 of Buffy) but also helping to consolidate Fred’s place within the group. I find Roger and Trish and their sincere and deep love for their daughter genuinely moving. It also makes us understand Fred that much more and why both Gunn and Wesley should be so attracted to her.
As well as obviously being about family (from Fred choosing between her blood relations to her adopted family to Angel and Darla having Connor and Cordelia taking the role of the surrogate mother), the key theme of s3 is trust.
Many of the characters have their trust tested or broken. Cordelia’s trust in Angel when the lied about not having slept with Darla. Most obviously, Wesley breaking the trust of all of his friends. But there is also Fred learning to trust people in general, learning to live in the world again. And there’s Darla learning to trust the Angelettes in her time of need. This is mirrored in Justine, and later Connor, and their horribly misplaced trust in Holtz. And then there’s Wesley and Lilah. What kind of trust is their relationship ever going to be built upon?
Despite its open-ended, game of two halves aspect, we do kind of have a Big Bad in this season, more than we did in s2 at least, in the form of Holtz. A time-shifted avenger, Holtz is a great nemesis for Angel. Implacable, single-minded, ruthless. I feel that physically Keith Szarabajka was not quite imposing enough but, jeez, what a voice the guy had on him. And with his pseudo-Slayer Justine in tow, there was perhaps something of the Watcher gone rogue about him. It’s perhaps no surprise that most of the verbal confrontations took place between Holtz and Wesley. Of all the people on Angel’s team, he is in fact the one that has the most common ground with Holtz.
Holtz understands and exploits Wesley’s weaknesses. One is that Wesley has major issues with his own father. His desire for respect, for authority, for leadership, is clearly there so he can prove his worth to his own father. It also means he has empathy for Holtz, but also a strong desire to make sure that Angel does not fail as a father. Wesley understands the damage perhaps more than any other of the Angelettes.
He also has a Watcher’s training and sense of duty and Holtz knows to exploit that as well. We’ve seen as far back as s3 of Buffy that Wesley is a more focused Watcher than Giles ever was, and is more willing to do the hard, painful things that need to be done, whether that is sacrificing Willow to the Mayor and Faith, or kidnapping Angel’s son. But we’ve never seen him take it this far before.
Wesley is a character who undergoes a major transformation throughout his time on the show and s3 is where a lot of the key stuff happens. He begins the season in the most comfortable state we’ve ever seen him. Hair growing out, suits replaced with plaid shirts, this is almost Wesley as slacker. Well, not slacker exactly but the tension is gone, the lack of ease with himself. He’s comfortable with his role, he has both the respect and the sense of belonging he’s craved all his life, he’s falling in love and he’s approaching contentment and happiness. And we all know that on a Joss show that’s never a good sign.
The first sign of the trouble to come is in Billy when both we and Wes become aware of his darker side. To Wes it clearly comes as a shock that it even exists and for a while it forces him to withdraw into himself. But even when he returns to work, that sense of unease is back. That darkness isn’t going anywhere now and indeed Wes ends the season in a not terrific place – recovering from having his throat cut, abandoned by all his friends and cosying up to Lilah. As Fred confesses to her parents in Fredless, ‘I didn’t mean to get so lost’. And now Wesley is lost too and it’s going to take some time for him to be found again.
But let’s hear it for Lilah. In s1&2, she was rather overshadowed by Lindsay and Holland Manners but now she gets to shine. The other two Wolfram and Hart regulars of this season Linwood and Gavin pale next to Lilah. Gavin is a rather one-dimensional arrogant toady and Linwood comes across just a bit too much like Holland-lite. But she’s wonderfully pitiless in forcing Angel to rescue Billy from the hell dimension, and equally formidable when she guns down the same. And she’s consistently great throughout the season, ending with her coldly pragmatic seduction of Wesley. And like Holtz, Lilah knows how to play Wesley:
Lilah: You know, I always forget. At the very bottom of hell, in the ninth circle, the devil’s frozen in ice, right? He’s got three heads, three mouths, and these mouths are reserved for the worst sinners. I can’t remember, who is in the center mouth? What was his name? The one person in all of human history who was deemed the greatest sinner. Who is it?
Wesley: Judas Iscariot.
Lilah: Right. The worst spot in hell is reserved for those who betray… So don’t pretend you’re too good to work for us.
It’s not by flattery, or even purely by sex appeal, that Lilah lures in Wesley. It’s by his loneliness and his own self-reproach and self-doubt. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have any genuine affection for each other. But that’s something for next season.
And kudos to Julie Benz too. It’s sad to see the end of Darla – let’s not forget, the first recurring character we ever see in the Buffiverse – and she gets a great send-off. Darla – soulless, then ensouled, then vamped again and then resouled courtesy of the baby inside her – finally achieves a kind of redemption in her self-sacrifice for her child. It takes her a while but she eventually renounces evil, she wants her soul. In the end, she learns how wrong she was to reject Angel when he became ensouled. It’s a great character arc and to my mind Darla gets one of the great death scenes in either Buffy or Angel – up there with Buffy’s death in s5 and Spike’s in s7.
In fact, there was a rather cool Spike-like vibe to Darla in this season. I did enjoy Darla’s amorality sparking off the other Angelettes, much in the same way that Spike did off the Scoobies. It’s just a shame it didn’t go on for longer.
And a quick word about Connor. Like Dawn in Buffy, it’s kind of hard to like Connor, what with him being portrayed as the rather one-notey stroppy teenager. Although he is clearly a lot more badass than Dawn. But I think the problem is the same as Dawn’s and that Vincent Kartheiser – so great as Pete Campbell in Mad Men – doesn’t have that much to play with here.
But we’re actually kind of limited in what we can say about Connor at the moment as we end the season really only halfway through his arc and with so much more of it to come. Has there ever been a season of Buffy/Angel that left so much unresolved, so much on a cliffhanger. Wesley turning to the dark side, Cordelia ascending to the higher plane, Angel dumped to the bottom of the ocean. As the popular phrase goes, is this the end for our heroes? Stay tuned.
Any thoughts on s3? Or did vampires and nappies and wailing not do it for you? Leave your thoughts below, but keep s4&5 of Angel off limits for now.
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@JimTheFish believe it or not -I saw your blog and I didn’t read! -only the first paragraph. Woefully behind, I’m into only the 4th episode and I see Wes’ ‘new’ side already -less ‘tweedy’ and buttoned up, more relaxed.
It’s the hair I tell you, and poor Cordelia attempting to entice the institutionalised Fred from her ensconced place in Angel’s ‘lair’.
She’s swapped one cave for another and I like that idea being tweaked and discussed -the consequences of her trip to Pylea have made her mad and terrified -always looking for answers and I imagine falling easily for Angel? But I don’t think she’d have the strength to be Angel’s love interest for the series. She seems terribly damaged though highly intelligent and very resourceful – a great benefit to the team.
Already I’m glad that Lorne has had a larger story and that he’ll continue (I expect?) to be a home-base for the Angelettes. The distinction between good and evil is nicely blurry and more complicated -a more adult and prosaic place than Sunnydale has been (until S6 where the consequences of actions and long arcs are finally witnessed).
Darla. I hope she’s dead (or left town)because if she’s there to make more mischief for Angel and his goodly gang I shall be out for some blood of my own!
@purofilion — I think it’s safe to say that Darla is about to bring Angel Inv. a family-sized pack of trouble very, very soon., if you haven’t got to that already.
Lorne is very much a part of the furniture for at least the immediate future, don’t worry about that. It’s interesting to note though that from here on in, we start to see glimpses of the tragic figure that Lorne is. Behind the jokes and the songs, he’s clearly a lonely figure, with something of a drink issue. He’s always there to help other people/demons, but no one’s ever really that interested in helping him.
It occurred to me that if you’re jonesing for a Buffy fix, you could actually skip forward to s5, which I think is as much a sequel to Buffy s7 as it is to Angel s4 and tonally very different and a lot more Buffy-esque imho and you could fill in the obvious gaps of s3&4 retrospectively (I can just hear @pedant squirming with tetchiness at mere suggestion of that.) But if you’ve got the time and perseverance it’s probably much more satisfying to go the slow road.
Have drafted and abandoned a number of comments on this – finding it impossible to respond to anything about this season without straying into the next… However, splendid analysis and makes me want to rewatch – looking forward to the next blog!
@cathannabel — thanks for the comment anyway. Yeah, it’s really tough to write about this season without drifting into the next. They’re both so tightly bound up with each other. Whenever I hear people bitching about the complexity of Moffat’s story arcs I always think ‘you’ve clearly not watched Angel’…
@Jimthefish
ooh tempting tempting.
But no. I shall stick to the slow road as I am enjoying this -Boreanaz is a surprise bonanza with comedy – and the new Cordy -sympathetic and grown up around Fred is wonderful.
Indeed, the shaman has seen Darla -pregnant! Oh no! bahahahaha.
@purofilion — yes, guess who’s about to become a daddy…
Good idea to go the slow road, but just saying that you’re not quite done with the whole Buffiness of it. s5 is the season where the two shows find their most satisfying overlap. I can put the s4 Angel blog on hold for a week if you’d like a bit more viewing time and not feel like your racing behind all the time btw….
@purofilion and @cathannabel @everyone — happy St Paddy’s Day – in honour of the undead’s most unconvincing Irishman…
@JimTheFish @CathAnnabel @Pedant at all
Yes, indeed. Up those ancestors. I thought in the ep “billy” that Denisof’s English accent started to melt a bit -as the more shady side of the character develops? I’m assuming that the Angel/Cordelia weapon sessions coupled with Fred and Wes’ weirdness suggests romance is around the corner?
Ah, but don’t tell -I suppose it’s up in the Blog and I won’t be treating myself to that for awhile!
@JimTheFish I missed your other tag -no, you go right ahead by all means – I will attempt to get thru S3 this week but I am taking it quite slowly and am enjoying the ride. I’m strong enough (she says!) to avoid the wonderful blogs and any spoilers (as it were) until I’ve finished each series.
quite impressed with Wes’ subtle change and even Cordy’s maturity -so much here that is delightfully grey rather than the black and white world of Buffy -a vampire slayer who can’t be a vampire lover. Here those gloomy predictions can be placed aside to look at what makes a person – so many metaphors which expose the human and erroneous nature of that stereotype: human and soul = good; soulless demon =bad. Soul + demon = good. Or is it?
I’m reminded of Gunn as he’s forced to see the awful side of his companions as they seek to kill the demons at caritas. In the end only Angel is strong enough to fight them off. The soulful demon attacking soulful humans. The mind gets lost in the combinations! The metaphors with racist abuse that can be explored here are endless and act as a starting point for discussions with young adults about how to avoid such misplaced judgements in the first place.
@purofilion — well, I’ll get to s4 just as soon as I can then. The weekend maybe, so that gives you a bit of catch-up time.
RE. the shades of grey thing. Yes, that’s very much Angel’s thing. But let’s not forget it’s not all bleak. The argument might be that a soul doesn’t equal good and that good people sometimes do bad things. The obverse is also true. Bad people sometimes do good things. The obvious example, this season at least, is Lilah. Like Wesley, and like Lindsay before her, Lilah is deeply conflicted, no matter how much she claims she isn’t. Darla, too, this season is another good example.
And, indeed, that’s the core point of Angel really, isn’t it? As illustrated in the elevator scene in s2, our true conflicts, our biggest fights, are not with anything outside of us, something that you can stick an axe in, or put a stake through and then go about your business. The battles that really matter are with ourselves.
@Jimthefish
thank you as always, for your eloquent blog and the interesting summation of Wes’ conflict with Lilah -something I didn’t see coming, at all!
I actually thought that young Con had the acting chops in this -unless it’s a matter of clever production values, lighting and other more experienced actors giving him the ‘assist’, I still felt that the “I love you and want to be here with you Dad”, shtick was convincing (from the characters’ POV, at least). His deep anger, betrayal and the lack of humanity within him reminds me very much of a vengeance demon of the Buffy S4 -7 variety. The statement “your humanity is really a work in progress and your stock’s plummeting” said (and I’ve parsed this poorly) by Xander to Anya is very appropriate here. There are some Buffy parallels everywhere: Wes has almost become like Spike, he loves Fred but his priority is to ‘do good’ and to seek contrition somehow -but he knows that’s impossible, or at least hardly likely. But as I said elsewhere, with the ‘god’ parallels and the Doctor, any allegory is easy to create but easier still to blast away.
Willow’s echo lies in Fred but I wonder as to her relationship with Gunn? Does it add to the story? I’m not sure. She lacks the impact of the early portion of the series -her ability to read people, complete epicurean -style mathematics (instead of eating the same!) is diminished a little. I would think she would have read Con’s fakery, knowing that her own return from the hell dimension caused a considerable loss in individual personality and discreet feeling.
Just on Wes again, the relationship with Lilah is destructive -both people are lost and you said, Lilah is more conflicted than she lets on: it’s like Buffy and Spike with the former needing to feel -that’s Wes’ need now, his constant loss and betrayal -father, the Watcher’s council, his family at AI, those he worked with and trusted; Angel and Fred, is torturing him. And as an actor, he’s developing in that role enormously (says the bombastic and pompous little film ‘reviewer’ that is puro!) as is Cordelia -gosh, I hope, even in some ‘dimensional shift’ application, she can reappear? Like the little girl who controlled the library with Doctor Moon?
But. Why exactly was she taken? Had all her earthly works been completed? Had she reached nirvana, completed the 8 fold path? Repented and been Saved? Hmmm
@JimTheFish @CathAnnabel seems like I’m conflicted; at one point I mention Wes is like Spike, then later, he’s like Buffy: needing to feel. I think he’s a combo of both.
There’s no particular issue with having to compare Wes to either one -as an exercise only I guess, or, perhaps, that ‘s what we do. To understand these beloved characters (whether they’re Buffy, Spike or Wes) we try to fit people into categories which makes us understand that which we do not yet know or what resists defining. So for some, the need to critically evaluate the Doctor as a God being- or a prophetic healer, or to do the same for Buffy (a goddess with a body to match who has a bottom line of killing demons to save the human race) gives those people comfort, a dot to dot puzzle ensuring the characters remain constrained within those lines. It doesn’t add depth to do this necessarily , but it explains away short-comings in the characters and as always, means we can understand what we don’t know, by placing it in a ‘box’ or carton of those things we do know=moving from the known to the unknown is always easier.
@purofilion — yeah I guess with both Dawn and Connor, the fault absolutely does not lie with the actors but with the parts they’re being asked to play, which are largely unsympathetic. More so with Connor who’s not only whiny but a feckin’ teenage psycho with it.
That’s a good call with Wes being on a Spike-like trajectory. I was thinking that initially in late s3 and early s4, Wes is playing the kind of role Angel playing in the early seasons of Buffy — the troubled outsider who the regular gang have to go to in times of need.
Fred is clearly meant to be a Willow type definitely. But (I guess typically for Angel) she’s much more nuanced and shot through with ambiguities and shades of grey. Willow is very much a binary opposition — she’s the epitome of nerdy but well-meaning good, when she’s not transformed into Dark Willow, who is absolutely malicious and evil. This is emphasised when she becomes Willow the White in Buffy season finale. With Fred, it’s much more nuanced. Yes, she’s nerdy gal, but there’s also fractured, permanently damaged by her time in Pylea. She also has a strength of mind (the only thing that kept her alive there) and strength of purpose but she’s also operating on her own moral compass and can be quite ruthless and dispassionate when she has to be. (Again another parallel with Wesley with whom she so clearly has much in common.)
@JimTheFish @Purofilion @CathAnnabel
I just watched 3×16 of Angel.
I’m not sure if Marti is to blame, but who else could it be??
Marti Noxon mistress of pain!!!
Holy Crap!! Angel in the hospital “Code Brown” 😯 just scarred the arsefire out of me.
Up till now, Angel has been entertaining to watch.
I mainly compare Angel the show to Buffy. Buffy’s theme song beats Angel’s. I listen to Buffy’s theme song almost every time, but was skipping Angel’s by 3 episodes. But Angel’s theme song does fit the show – it’s brooding like Angel – so that’s more important.
I’ve liked the stories so far in Angel. The fight scenes are at least as good. Angel’s fights look more real. Buffy’s are still more fun because she always looks overmatched and she has a different personality that let’s her crack jokes at the same time.
For the first two seasons Cordelia steals the show. Although just like in Buffy, the character development in Angel is perfect. Wesley’s transformation in season 3 is unbelievable, Angel’s too. I didn’t feel that connected to those characters and that’s why it was such a huge shock when I got my heart ripped out again. 😡
How did Mistress of Pain get me again!! 🙂
In the post above I should have wrote UNBELEIVABLE (meaning incredible, terrific, fantastic) instead of unbelievable (not to be believed).
On second thought, I did mean ‘not to believed’ if said the right way like UNBELEIVABLE. 🙂
Wesley and Angel change for very believable reasons and it is surprising how much they change and the actors pull it off brilliantly.
I wasn’t too connected to the characters before they changed only because Wesley still seemed like the silly old Wesley from Buffy (even though he was gradually getting a bit more serious and confident). And Angel was still broody (even though he was trying his best to get a sense of humor). But like the dialog JimtheFish posted shows, he wasn’t very good at it yet. They were slowly getting better.
Then everything changes – except Lorne is still hilarious.
@barnable — yes, the characterisation work is great. I think some of the best writing done in the Buffiverse and possibly in genre TV in general is in the character arc of Wes.
Is this your first time watching these or is it a rewatch?
@Barnable @jimthefish
indeed Angel….ah, January and February this year: watching Whedon. I almost wish I could re-watch it totally fresh again. I still read things on the net about Whedon and I have a biography about him which I’m just getting to now.
Funny that you preferred Buffy’s theme song to Angel. I have to say that I adored Angel’s theme. I still sing it and whilst Buffy’s is ….memorable the melody….well, for me anyway, there’s not something I can really hang my hat on.
But Angel’s theme: sigh. <<*\*>>
I agree with you: Wes has an awesome capacity for acting and for change. S3 is where it really develops beautifully. Boreanaz was slow to develop as Angel in buffy but by S 3 and then S4-5 Angel he is at his best -his Angelus is most magnificent the older he is as an actor.
@Purofilion
Your superior musical knowledge is real evidence for which theme song is better. My opinion is only subjective. I don’t dislike Angel’s theme song at all. The part of Angel’s theme song when he kicks the door down is cool. Buffy’s theme has more parts like that which is probably why I like it more. The guitar screech/hair blast and the cloister bell/dramatic Buffy pose at the end are the ones that stand out the most. Plus Buffy’s is a lot faster tempo which makes it seem shorter. I definitely have a bias towards pop punk as opposed to classical sound too.
Off topic for Angel blog, but it’s related to Whedon and the discussions about reading books on other threads right now. So, I thought you might like to see this for your Fillion fetish.
https://youtu.be/y82j_X8JMFQ