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rock-and-compass · 28 days ago

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Angel Season 5 - Episode 16 - Shells

(I wrote this series of essays many years ago, probably around the time that the season 8 comics were being published. The were originally published on my LiveJournal and I'm reposting them here, mostly for personal archival purposes.)

When examining episodes with the Buffyverse you can do worse than start with the title; ‘A Hole in the World’ worked as a title for the previous episode not only because it was poetic but also because it was poignant. On one level there was the Deeper Well, a literal hole in the world that nobody even knew existed. Then there was the hole that Fred’s loss punctures into the world of Angel and co. And finally, there are other unspoken holes in the world, gaps in information, missing explanations, Connor, Cordelia and memories wiped. ‘Shells’ is the same. ‘Shells’ is not so much about the creature that has arrived to fill the Fred-shaped shell; it’s about the other shells that are left behind, the ones on whom Fred’s demise has such a devastating impact.

Shells are, in nature, protective armours that house particular organisms; snails, turtles, oysters, the list could go on… But once the creature inside dies the shell becomes almost pointless beyond ornamental purposes. They are empty, hollow, without substance. They are much weaker than they were while life was inside. Thus, when we talk of somebody being a ‘shell’ it is usually describing someone who is struggling with pervasive emptiness. This is certainly an apt description of the remaining members of Team Angel. They have paid the price for going to Wolfram and Hart – nothing comes for free, and the debt has been paid in blood, with Fred’s life and it has left them all with a painful void inside, a little less than they were before. Oh, but it’s not just Team Angel - no one avoids a lesson in this episode…

ILLYRIA

Let’s begin with the new arrival, the interloper. Illyria hatches and instantly assumes that it is still all that it was – a great and fearful demon king and that its plans have finally come to fruition after millennia upon millennia of planning and waiting and biding its time. It looks at humans as insignificant, beneath it, disgusting. Illyria is surprised and dismayed to discover that they haven’t yet died out, that they number as cockroaches and dominate the earth. But it’s not all bad news; the humans are also “stupid and weak” and it knows what it has to do – win back control of this world through force. It is Illyria; nothing will stand in the way of its desires. It learns quickly, it understands that the world is not as it left it but it can fix that…

Illyria’s first act is to reclaim Knox, it's Qwa ‘ha xahn (a high priest of sorts) and its second is to get some spiffy new threads. It is unimpressed by the pathetic stand made by Angel and company in order to try and control it:

Illyria: Two half-breeds and a band of primitives. This is all that challenges me now?

It is not intimidated in the slightest; it has tricks up its sleeve. Illyria is strong – it throws Angel out the window with consummate ease. It can also manipulate time and is able to make its escape with Knox while Angel is still falling to the ground and Wes, Spike and Gunn are virtually frozen in action. Angel’s campaign is unimpressive; Illyria is right to feel confident. These people cannot halt its plans for supremacy. Nothing stands in its way.

Illyria and Knox go to open the Demon King’s temple, the seat of its power, to recall the Illyrian army that will enable it to reclaim the world as its own dominion. It seems all too easy. Illyria remarks that the humans are fragile (after it’s just killed one) and wonders how they came to rule:

Knox: Opposable thumbs. Um, fire, television. What they lack in strength they make up for with extraordinary sneakiness.

Sneakiness. What he really means is that the ability to think, plot, plan and dream has raised the humble human from being a cavern dwelling caveman to a heaven-soaring astronaut. The ability to think makes the humans powerful.

The gateway is blocked.

Knox: Wolfram and Hart probably threw a lock on it. They’re big on things happening on their timetable.

So, the senior partners are happy enough to have Illyria pop by and mess with the management of the Los Angeles branch, but are not so willing to let it meddle in their own apocalypse-related plans? Illyria observes that the Wolf, Ram and Hart were weak, barely above the vampire, back in the days when demons ruled the earth. They beefed up and they didn’t do it by being Mr. Nice Guy and giving away branches of the law firm for nothing. They are ancient and they’ve worked their way up the hierarchy from pond scum to master puppeteers. It’s a timely reminder of exactly how powerful and insinuating Angel’s benefactors really are and it highlights the futility of trying to fight them from within.

Knox performs a ritual to open Illyria’s portal. He’s been worshiping the demon since he was eleven, it stands to reason he knows a thing or two about its whys and wherefores. Before they can enter the temple, Angel, Spike and Wes arrive. A short confrontation ensues. Knox is killed; Illyria is offended that they think it would care about his death. It uses its tricks and enters the portal to its temple.

Illyria: My army will rise. The world will be mine once again!

But…

The temple is in ruins. The great effigy to itself is broken and crumbling. Its vast army is naught but dust. It’s world is gone.

The great and mighty Illyria is crushed, bereft. It has become a shell within a shell. Everything it depended on is gone, lost to the sands of time and it becomes irrelevant, stranded in a time and place in which it means nothing. Like a fish out of water. Illyria flees the temple but later returns to Wolfram and Hart, to Wesley. It is trying to make sense of its new situation; trying to understand the human world, the impact of grief, the importance of names and the fragments of memories that have fused in its brain while Fred was dying. Wesley is irritated, why has it come to him?

Illyria: I have nowhere to go. My kingdom is long dead…long dead. There is so much I don’t understand. I’ve become overwhelmed. I am unsure of my place. Wesley: Your place is with the rest of your people; dead and turned to ash Illyria: Perhaps… But I exist here. I must learn to walk in this world.

Illyria asks Wesley for help to find its place again, to find some substance that will give the shell meaning again…

LORNE

Lorne is completely bereft at the loss of Fred. The sunshine has left his life. He blames himself:

Lorne: I should’ve seen it. Knox, he sang for me and I should’ve seen this… If I had concentrated harder, read him better, maybe Fred…

He’s so sad and lost and guilty that he can’t even stay with the others and listen or contribute to contingency plans. He has nothing to give, nothing to offer, and can be of no assistance to the team. He is the one team player who never catches the infectious ‘let’s get her back’ hope that Angel is peddling. He saw what would happen the moment she sang. He knows there’s no hope to get her back. So he goes to his office to be alone and drink copious sea breezes and grieve. He is a shell. He’s empty and doubting himself. The skill he brings to Angel investigations is his intuitive gift of reading people and if he can’t do that right then . . . he’s left wondering, what the hell is he good for?

WESLEY

Having laboured through Fred’s painful, tragic death Wes is also present when Illyria rises using Fred’s body as its vehicle. Even in the face of death, the slow, lingering death of which he witnessed the culmination just moments before, Wesley’s first question on seeing the newly reanimated body is “Fred?”

Hope is hard to repress. Hopeless hope is no exception. But the newly reborn creature doesn’t even register the name, it completely ignores Wesley to go and examine its new form in the mirror. Wesley tries the other name. “Illyria?”

Now he gets a response, confirmation that the transaction has taken place. But a glimmer of hope, an echo, still persists:

Wesley: Who is Winifred Burkle?

Wesley wants to know if Fred is still trapped in there too, if any remnants of Fred are still tangible. The question, the name, means nothing to Illyria and hope is dashed. Fred is dead and all that is left is her shell, taken over by an opportunistic entity. Once he confirms that Fred is truly and completely gone, Wesley tries to kill Illyria. Is he driven by a rational understanding that this unwelcome being is dangerous to the world and therefore should be eliminated, or is it an irrational drive for vengeance that only the death of the thing that murdered Fred can satisfy? Perhaps a little from column A and a little from column B…

The attack comes to nothing. The axe shatters as it hits the back of Illyria’s head, who doesn’t even flinch at the contact. And then Illyria does recall what Winifred Burkle is - it is the name the shell went by. Illyria’s unwitting attack is more successful, it pierces Wesley through the heart causing him to cry grief-stricken tears that disgust the new arrival. Wes wants it gone. This is not Fred, and it is cruel that it should walk around in her beautiful skin. So, he thinks. Physically, he can’t hurt it, but maybe words can. He uses the obvious displeasure and revulsion Illyria has for humans and their unpalatable emotions against it and tries to cajole it into going away. Humans are everywhere, as bugs across the surface of the earth; this is not the place for it. Go, leave this shell. Come back when the humans are gone. Illyria sees what is at the heart of his words; he seeks to save what is rotted through and there is no getting Fred back…ever.

Wesley heads to work. He is distracted and withdrawn. Reality has hit home. Even the knowledge that Knox is somehow involved only momentarily distracts him from his grief.

Wesley: Doesn’t matter anymore. Fred’s gone.

It is only when Knox starts expounding the ‘beauty’ of Illyria’s birth and the reason behind his choosing Fred for the great honour that Wesley’s fury is ignited. He goes in for the kill but is forestalled by Gunn:

Gunn: Wes, don’t. We need him. I know how you feel… Wesley: Do you know? You didn’t feel her die. She was shaking with pain and terrified and so brave and she was better than anyone I’ve known and better than… and she’s gone.

All hope is lost… Until Angel returns in all his heroic magnificence, refusing to accept the finality of death:

Angel: Now let’s get her back!

Wesley doesn’t take the bait without some resistance. He’s sarcastic about Gunn’s belated efforts to discover how the sarcophagus got into the building in the first place, and as for Angel’s plan to ‘get her back’ he can only reply that there is no Fred anymore

Wesley: I watched it gut her from the inside out. Everything she was is gone. There is nothing but a shell.

Wesley could be talking about himself here too. Fred’s death has gutted him from the inside and everything he was is gone. He is nothing but a shell. But then Angel and Spike talk of souls and filling her back up – and they would know, they’re both experts on the importance of souls and know a thing or two about cheating death, this immortal escapee from a hell dimension and his pillar of fire surviving sidekick. They know what they are talking about. They could do it and Wesley is seduced by the prospect:

Wesley: You really believe there’s a chance of bringing her back?

He’s converted. He believes even in the face of everything he’s seen, everything he’s been told. He believes because this is the deepest desire of his heart, it’s what he wants more than anything and, hey, it doesn’t hurt that it’s Angel making the promise – if anyone can make it happen then Angel can.

Once Illyria has come and gone and demonstrated a sample of its special skills, Wesley is sent to the lab to search for clues in Knox’s files. Wes confronts the sarcophagus. He tells Harmony that Fred was curious, that she was merely interested in what it was, and wanted to know how it worked. The trait made her special, made him love her – yet it also caused her death. He hates her a little for that. Harmony tries to make him feel better, feel grateful for what he had with Fred:

Harmony: The girl of your dreams loved you. That’s more than most people ever get Wesley: I know. But it isn’t enough

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly long enough. There were no dates or romance or lovemaking or a draw at his place, a draw at hers. There was no moving in together, no engagement, no marriage, no children, no old age…no future. And that’s what it means to Wesley, that’s why it wasn’t enough – because there should have been so much more.

A phone leads Wesley to Gunn’s doctor. Wes arrives at his surgery just in time to overhear the extent of Gunn’s involvement in the plot and that Fred’s soul is lost forever, burned up in the fires of Illyria’s resurrection. Hope evaporates into nothingness again; it was only ever a mirage anyway. Wesley is without reason. Charles bears the brunt of his wrath because his part in the scheme, although unwitting, is a betrayal to the team, to the family, to the trust that supposedly exists between them, and he can’t forgive that it was Fred who paid the ultimate price for Gunn’s brain upgrade. Wesley stabs Gunn in the gut, doing literally to Charles what has been figuratively done to him.

Angel is not happy with the ‘stab Gunn’ addition to the agenda but Wesley is beyond caring. Nothing is right! Nothing will ever be right because they can’t get Fred back and even the great Angel is incapable of making the impossible happen. So now the focus shifts from retrieving Fred to stopping Illyria. Wes is told to suck it up, be bookman and focus on the job at hand. They find Illyria and Knox and as Angel gives a testimonial about his commitment to protecting the human race – each and every one of them regardless of worth, Wesley shoots Knox dead. His mission is not the same as Angel’s. Wesley’s mission is vengeance. Wesley kills Knox because he caused Fred’s death, simple as that. He wants to kill Illyria too, but it is a harder fish to fry, so he follows Illyria into the temple, revolver ready and though the opportunity for revenge eludes him, he is able to take malicious pleasure in the fact that Illyria’s million-year plan for world domination has come to nothing, that its world is gone. Now it knows how he feels.

Wesley is empty. He is a shell on autopilot as he packs up Fred’s things. Illyria arrives, drawn to the place of its shell, to Wolfram and Hart, to the lab, to Wesley. There is no chance that Fred can ever return, yet… fragments, electrical pulses, her memories have fused and are accessible by Illyria. It turns to Wesley – they have things in common; no place to belong, isolation, desolation, loss. Wesley agrees to help Illyria navigate this strange new world because, God help him, of its physical form. Together they cling to what is gone.

Illyria: Is there anything in this life but grief? Wesley: There’s love. There’s hope…for some. There’s hope that you’ll find something worthy…that your life will lead you to some joy… that after everything, you can still be surprised. Illyria: Is that enough? Is that ever enough to live on?

There’s hope, for some, but not for Wesley. It doesn’t bode well for him; you can’t live life without sustenance. As he told Angel some time ago, nothing matters more than hope; it's the only thing that will sustain you, that will keep you from ending up like Number Five…or, for that matter, an empty shell.

GUNN

Gunn, it turns out, has not killed Knox. He’s beaten him to a bloody pulp, tied him up but not killed him. Gunn is walking a fine line; he wants to know what Knox knows yet, he doesn’t want the scientist to spill the beans on his own involvement either. Wesley informs him that Fred is ‘gone’ and that they can’t get her back. Gunn goes into instant denial:

Gunn: You don’t know that!

Fred’s death, her irretrievable state is not what Gunn wants to hear. The guilt is unbearable, that shame crippling, the despair absolute. He wants to take it all back and Wes isn’t playing the game properly. Then Angel arrives and he knows the rules, he’s the bearer of hope! “Let’s get her back” he says and it’s music to Gunn’s ears. The game is on again and he’s ready to play. He’s all too willing to believe, he needs to make it so, if only to alleviate his own conscience, get rid of that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and undo what he allowed to happen. Then it won’t matter, and just maybe, no one will ever have to know…

He tries to reassure Wesley that they’ll get it sorted, “It’ll work out. It has to” and while his words are to Wes, the reassurance is also for his own benefit. He’s almost brought to tears when Wesley asks for forgiveness for being so harsh with him earlier:

Wesley: I’ve been unreasonable…because I’ve lost all reason. But I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. I know you’ve done everything you can. I’m sorry. Gunn: So am I

Its forgiveness and kindness he doesn't deserve…if they only knew the horrible truth. It makes him feel even more sorry; sorry that he’s created this mess, sorry that they have to even be trying to get Fred ‘back’, sorry about the whole damn thing!

Gunn goes back to see the doctor who gave him the brain upgrade, the one who had him sign that damning piece of paper to free the ‘curio’ from customs in the first place and demands to know everything and, more importantly, how to get Fred back. The doctor confirms that they can’t, but Gunn is getting desperate:

Gunn: I don’t believe that! You know a way. You have to.

The doctor explains that his part was simply to broker the deal – cognitive upgrade in exchange for the customs release. He can’t help. It can’t be done. Gunn is crushed and like millions of humans before who’ve made an error of judgement that has led to unwanted consequences, he wishes to turn back time:

Gunn: Then take it back! Everything you put in my head, the law, all the knowledge, take it back! Everything, take more, leave me a vegetable. I don’t care! Just bring her back. Please…bring her back.

The doctor can’t be moved. There is nothing to bring back. Miss Burkle’s soul was destroyed during the resurrection. Every remnant of Fred is gone. Forever. For better or worse, a deal was made and now, Charles has to learn to live with it. Wesley, of course, overhears the last part – the irrevocable loss and Gunn’s involvement, and he is not happy. He demands a confession:

Gunn: It was just a piece of paper. I was losing it. Everything they put in my head. Everything that made me different. Special. And he could fix it, make it permanent. So I signed the piece of paper. It was a customs release form. I didn’t think anyone would get hurt.

Wesley is dubious – this is Wolfram and Hart we’re dealing with here, nothing comes for free. Gunn should have known that. He did know that:

Gunn: I couldn’t go back…to being just the muscle. I-I didn’t think it would be one of us. I didn’t think it would be Fred.

So, his explanations, his plea of naivety have been amended. In the second version he did admit to knowing there would be a consequence, but he was prepared to roll the dice because he wanted the permanent upgrade. So he told himself that no one he knew would get hurt, that it wouldn’t be one of them, but could he really be that naive? Who else would the senior partners go for? Who else were they trying to control? Who else were they trying to break? No, it was always going to be one of Angel’s team and Gunn is simply trying to justify his decision not to go back to what he was. Wes can understand the need to change but he can’t forgive the part where he didn’t come clean with what he knew. He stabs Gunn in the gut. Charles could expect no less; he himself threatened to kill Wes ‘like a chicken’ should he ever hurt Fred, so it is hardly surprising that Wesley exercises his right of reply.

Gunn is in hospital recovering from his injuries. He’s been temporarily relieved of his duties. Yeah, that brain upgrade, it’s really useful now. He’s sad and sorry for himself and even the technically evil (or at the very least, amoral) Harmony is kind of appalled by his behaviour and questions how he could have done it:

Gunn: Because I was weak. Because I wanted to be somebody I wasn’t. Because I don’t know where I fit. Because I never did. Because of a thousand other reasons that don’t mean a damn ‘cause she’s gone. She’s gone and she’s not coming back because of me. I did this and I’m sorry…I’m sorry.

He’s a shell. On the outside he’s all pretty and shiny; the impressive Charles Gunn, attorney at law -, but it’s just an illusion. On the inside he’s empty and hollow and now every time he uses that brain, hatches a legal strategy, answers a question, every time he thinks he’ll be reminded of the price of those thoughts, and he hates and despises himself all the more. He’s a shell – empty and useless.

ANGEL

The inability to save Fred has cut Angel deeply. He’s retreated into broody silence trying to make sense of it all. Trouble is Spike’s here now, yabbering on about little bottles of Jack, his inability to get drunk and the very sensible logic behind their decision not to save Fred. And Wes isn’t answering the phone, and they guess that means she’s ‘gone’. Angel wants to know what that means – that she’s ‘gone’. What does that mean in this world, his world of beatable death, this world of vampires, world-saving, soul-having vampires and resurrected vampire slayers? In this world rules can be broken, and the end doesn’t have to be the end.

So, Angel is determined to ‘get her back’. He doesn’t tell the rest of the team about the choice he had to make. He merely tells them that there was nothing they could do to save her. He doesn’t have time for blame, there’s a lot they might have done, like not going to Wolfram and Hart in the first place, and recriminations can wait. They have a job to do. They have to get Fred back, fill the shell up, pull her soul from wherever it’s residing and breathe Fred back into existence. It’s the soul that matters. After they get her back then they can entertain vengeance.

He attempts to get hold of Willow, who knows how to re-soul, who knows how to raise the dead, but they can’t contact her. She’s off who-knows-where and Giles is acting as goal stop; so long as Angel is with Wolfram and Hart then they get no access to Slayer resources. Yup, trust is still a bit of an issue. Angel is not deterred – sure they can’t access the one person who might help them but he’s adamant that nothing has changed – the plan is still workable. They’ll find Illyria and … and then what? He’s running on blind determination at the moment that doesn’t allow reality to speak. He doesn’t want to hear what it has to say.

Illyria makes its presence felt at the office and Angel goes to confront it. They ask it to stand down so they can… what? Contain it till they figure out how to get Fred back? Not surprisingly Illyria declines the offer and throws Angel out the window to boot. After Illyria has made its getaway and the team has regrouped it is Angel and Spike’s job to track Illyria. Spike wonders how they are supposed to accomplish this feat:

Angel: We just do it. That’s all!

Ok. No plan. Just determination and anger, which is all well and good but as Spike feels compelled to point out:

Spike: Back in the lab, she was standing right there in front of me, but there was no scent. Nothing. It was like she wasn’t even there.

Angel knows it’s true. He smelt it too. Spike broaches the uncomfortable truth. He wants Fred back as much as any of them but “seeing her there, like that…maybe she really is-”

Angel won’t hear the next word. He cuts Spike off angrily:

Angel: No! I lost Cordelia because some “thing” violated her. It crawled inside and used her up. No way in hell am I letting that happen again!

So yes, he’s angry and upset about Fred and he genuinely wants to believe they can save her… but he’s thinking of his beloved Cordy, he’s motivated by the unjust theft of Cordelia and he’s desperately trying not to let the past repeat itself. It's another, more concrete example of exactly how difficult and important the absence and loss of Cordelia has been for him. Angel only gives up hope of getting Fred back when Wesley tells him that every essence of Fred was destroyed during Illyria’s re-birth. He hears of Gunn’s part in the plot and then confesses the choice he had to make at the Deeper Well that condemned Fred to die. He tells Wes:

Angel: Look, I need you to bury it, Wes. Everything you’re feeling, everyone you want to hurt. I need you to put it aside and focus on what has to be done.

Angel is a bit of an expert at this. He’s taking from experience; he’s sharing his personal survival strategy. The job to be done is not Fred now - that hope is gone but Illyria is still in need of restraining. It’s a job that needs to be done.

Angel, Wes and Spike confront Illyria. Angel is pretty much in mechanical ‘champion’ mode now that rescuing Fred is hopeless.

Angel: What you’re trying to do, raise your army, reclaim your world, innocent people would die. Like Fred. I can’t let that happen.

Illyria is intrigued that he would care and that this is his role in the world. She challenges him – would he defend Knox, the betrayer’s life? Angel’s response is sanctimonious, perfunctory, he knows it by rote:

Angel: You’re about as low as it gets Knox, but you’re part of humanity. That isn’t always pretty but it’s a hell of a lot better than what came before. And if it comes down to a choice between you and him, then yes, I would fight for his life, just like any human’s. Because that’s what people do. That’s what makes us-

Heroes? Champions? Angel never got to finish his stirring speech because Wes kills Knox. He extracts revenge. He is incapable of ‘sucking it up’ or pushing his feelings aside the way Angel advised him to. His passion for Fred, his devastation at her loss, his anger at her murderer all demand an equally passionate, devastating, angry response. It is the difference between Angel and the humans he lives with. So now Angel is becoming quite cavernous; he has so many holes in his world and Fred is yet another that he has to suck it up and live with.

SPIKE

With Fred’s loss, Spike’s initial inclination is to get drunk. It is an old habit, his safety net in times of crisis. He seems more accepting of the death than Angel who broods and decides to try and bend the rules to get her back. Spike is supportive. He goes along with the idea, he knows better than most that it can be done, and, conversely, is uniquely aware that perhaps it shouldn’t, but he’s certainly doing nothing to rock the boat of this fledgling partnership he has with Angel. He remains supportive until the futility of the plan becomes undeniably obvious. Illyria might look like a blue version of Fred, but it doesn't talk like Fred, act like Fred, and it certainly doesn't smell like Fred! A vampire’s nose doesn’t lie. He tries to tell Angel but it’s no good. For Angel the past and present are mixed and repeating in some distorted, re-cast episode of deja vu and he doesn’t want to listen to what Spike, or his own nose are telling him.

After Gunn and the doctor’s role in the scheme have been revealed Spike is charged with getting information out of the doc. He may not be the obvious choice for such a duty, but he is the only choice. Wesley, although practiced in the art of interrogation, couldn’t have done it because then the doctor would have ended up dead, more than likely before any information had been elicited from the reluctant source. He’s too close. Passion and vengeance inform his every move. Angel couldn’t have done it either because, well, the CEO of Wolfram and Hart interrogating a pigeon? It just wouldn’t be right, and, let’s face it, it’s never safe to let Angelus, who so loved to tease, maim and torture, tug at his leash of restraint either. So, it falls to Spike, who never was one for the pre-show, but who is a willing team player, to do the deed. He succeeds in getting screams, various bodily fluids and a name.

The duo becomes a trio as they take on Illyria. Spike understands Wesley’s need to kill Knox, he had it coming after all. One can’t help but observe that Spike and Wesley could bond on so many levels – they could commiserate with one another over ‘bots and demon lords who are unwelcome reminders of the dead women they love, of darkly seductive sexual relationships that exist for a cacophony of conflicting reasons and that don’t turn out at all the way you’d planned, and walking the fine line between good and evil, of trying not to be what you were, of redefinition, of unrequited love… Yeah, they have more in common than most would ever guess.

After the fighting is over and Illyria has voluntarily subsided, Spike tells Angel that he is not going away. Fred would have wanted him to stay, more importantly, he wants to stay:

Spike: It’s what I want. I don’t really like you. Suppose I never will, but this is important, what’s happening here. Fred gave her life for it. The least I can do is give what’s left of mine

He knows a big fight is coming – he can feel it in his bones, and he believes it is a fight worth fighting. So, for Spike the loss of the first person who believed in him since involuntarily relocation to Los Angeles, the first person to believe in him since his beloved Buffy did, results in an epiphany. He chooses to stay, not because he has nowhere else to go, not because he wants a relationship with Angel, but because he wants to fight the good fight, and LA is where the action is baby. He says he doesn’t like Angel, but his actions belie the words. He plainly does like Angel very much and Angel is surprised, though clearly relieved when Spike says he’ll stay. Their relationship is not the issue here. Spike, unlike everyone else, does not finish up as a hollow shell. On the contrary, Fred’s death has filled him with conviction and purpose and the belief that the fight they wage is one worth digging in and getting dirty for.

Next up: Angel season 5 - episode 17 - Underneath

#Angel season 5 #angel #spike #charles gunn #Illyria #wesley wyndam pryce #shells

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rock-and-compass · 1 month ago

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Angel Season 5 - Episode 15 - A Hole in the World

Consequences are outcomes, both foreseen and unforeseen, that result from a particular decision or action. So far the consequences of the shift to Wolfram and Hart have been largely introspective including adjustments to a new way of doing business, and changes in the dynamics of the team. Angel has probably felt this most acutely; he’s been suffering a severe identity crisis as he tried to come to grips with his new role as CEO of a branch of a huge legal institution and live daily with the secret that he made a very specific deal with the senior partners that included, at his instigation, the suppression of all memories pertaining to Connor, in everyone but himself. Of course, this means that every day he lives without his son. He has a hole in his world only nobody else realises it. Gunn too has felt the consequences. He agreed to an implant of legal knowledge to be uploaded into his brain. He made the choice and, at first, the consequences seemed all rosy. He became a valuable member of the revamped, corporate-oriented Team Angel and he was able to use his new knowledge to engineer large-scale initiatives against evil. All good until the imprint began to fade. Then he opted to make a deal for a permanent upgrade. What could possibly be wrong with that?

So now, in A Hole in the World the consequences of their tenancy at Wolfram and Hart take a more malevolent turn. It’s a frontal assault, it cuts them to the core – right to the very heart, reminds them who’s house they are in, who’s game they are actually playing. And none of it would have happened if they hadn’t come to Wolfram and Hart in the first place.

A Hole in the World opens with a flashback to Winifred Burkle before she moved to Los Angeles. Here we find a young woman, the product of an idyllic upbringing, who is quietly ambitious and very determined. Not for her are an early marriage and a tribe of sweet little babies. No, she’s off to L.A. into the graduate physics program. “Hell-A” says her father, not overly keen on the relocation of his little girl. No, it’s the “City of Angels” Fred counters, the juxtaposition of the city as both evil and good there for her from the very beginning of the relationship. She’s about to leave when she remembers to grab her well-loved stuffed rabbit. “I can’t make the trip without Feigenbaum,” Fred says as she clutches the limp bunny close. Feigenbaum, the master of chaos; named for the mathematician and pioneer of chaos theory Mitchell Feigenbaum. So chaos is her constant companion even though she heads to the big smoke with good intentions:

Fred: I’m gonna study Mom. I’m gonna learn every damn thing they know up there and then figure out some stuff they don’t. And I’ll be careful. I’ll even be dull, boring. Cross my heart.

And she is. Kinda. She studies hard. She works in the public library and life is not very eventful at all except she’s brilliant. So brilliant that her university professor, her mentor, is threatened by her. He can’t stand the competition. As an unfair consequence of her unadulterated genius he sends her into another dimension, to where she will never be a threat to his academic superiority. So her metaphoric companion chaos becomes literal. She spends five long years in Pylea where she is enslaved, hunted and herded, considered a lowly cow. But all the while she tries to engineer her escape. She scratches strings of equations across her cave wall not willing to take this lying down, determined to get back to the life she was torn out of. But it’s not her sums and letters that save her. Angel arrives; handsome man to the rescue and takes her back to Los Angeles, to his world of demons. So L.A. really is Hell-A, or so it must seem; portals and punishment, monsters and magicks. Yet in amongst the weirdness and horror Fred finds a place to call home with Angel and his team, with this dysfunctional demon-fighting family. With them she finds love and acceptance and romance and rescue and a place to use that brain. She finds the ‘City of Angels’ she always dreamt of finding.

Now she’s fighting demons taking out a nest of crystal vomiting creepy-crawlies like its second nature, the most normal, natural thing in the world. It’s strangely romantic – Fred and Wes fighting demons side by side, kissing tenderly in the ambient glow of the burning nest. The harmony of the lovebirds is not matched by our other ‘couple’...

Enter Angel and Spike. They are bickering. Angel is not happy with how Spike chose to kill a particular creature. Well, his complaints are quite justified; Spike just happened to skewer a little beastie while Angel was between it and the tip of his sword. Angel says, very cuttingly, that Spike was only asked along because they felt sorry for him. Spike dismisses the comment (and the sympathy) suggesting that Angel should stop whingeing, after all Angel would be dead if it wasn’t for his intervention. Interesting to note that, for whatever reason, Spike is being asked along on team missions. To think, some would suggest that they are making no progress in their relationship! Poor Angel can’t get any sympathy, even Fred is less concerned with the stabbing than she is with collecting the bug for her specimen collection. She always likes a new specimen.

Back at the Wolfram and Hart laboratory Knox is working late. A delivery arrives; it’s a heavy stone sarcophagus, fairly plain but for a configuration of five rough-cut crystals, a nautilus-like moulding and various runic engravings. The delivery invoice is slapped on top of the tomb, no signature required, it’s already been signed for.

The next day Gunn is in his office singing “Three Little Maids from School” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. Wesley arrives, Gunn quickly adapts the tune to a more hip rap stanza that is not very good but certainly cooler than the operetta. He’s singing because he’s happy. He’s happy that he’s secured his legal knowledge, permanently. He’s happy that he’s ensured the future of Charles Gunn esquire and resigned Charles Gunn, street vigilante to history. Like everyone in the building Charles has heard about the Wesley/Fred thang, there is, in his words “no secrets in the house of pain”. If only he knew the truth. He gives the union his approval, it’s the civilised thing to do since he and Fred were in love a while back. He also promises to kill Wes ‘like a chicken’ should he ever hurt her. But there is business to discuss. Gunn has finally managed to track down Lindsey’s former abode, important because of the possibility that he may have left clues as to what other plans he might have been concocting. The Senior Partners didn’t risk leaving him in an accessible place, so it would seem they considered him a threat big enough to deal with personally. Wes suggests that Gunn should be the one to tell Angel of the breakthrough but he blanches at the suggestion:

Gunn: You can tell him. I ain’t going in there

So why would Charles be so reluctant to go and share such promising news? Spike and Angel are fighting, that’s why; arguing with passion and volume and fervour. Angel is talking bollocks; Spike can’t see the big picture. For Angel it’s all about evolution and intelligence and teamwork while Spike champions the power of instinct and primal savagery.

Wesley: Is this something we should all be discussing? Angel: No Wesley: It just… sounds a little serious. Angel: It was mostly…theoretical. We… Spike: We were just working out a b… Look, if cavemen and astronauts got into a fight, who would win? Wesley: You’ve been yelling at each other for forty minutes about this? ….. Do the astronauts have weapons? Angel and Spike: No!

So this is what it’s all about - cavemen versus astronauts; or in other words, instinct versus intellect, antiquity versus modernity, savagery versus reason, body versus spirit, self-reliance versus teamwork, and superstition versus science. The list could go on. Angel clearly identifies with the astronaut and Spike with the caveman. It goes back to their core vampire personalities. For Angelus, killing was an art form; it required thought and planning and reason. It raised him above the primitive; but Spike liked it against the odds, back against the wall, nothing but fists and fangs so relied on brute force and primal instinct.

But take a closer look, take off the costumes and the coats and what have we got? Back at the very beginning Liam was a creature who lived for visceral pleasure and was driven by the need to satisfy his basic urges. It was a way of life that precluded him from forming meaningful connections and to misunderstand the intentions of his father. William on the other hand, was highly reasoned. Thought and words were his daily currency. When he professed his love to Cecily he did so with carefully considered, reasoned arguments. He walked in worlds the others couldn’t begin to imagine, the embodiment of a nineteenth century ‘astronaut’. And if we look again it is fairly plain that neither Angel nor Spike can claim membership to their chosen sect exclusively. Angel, who claims solidarity with the team-working ideals of the astronauts, in reality struggles with the concept and continuously fights his own desire to be a solitary creature. Yes he surrounds himself with a team, he’s got a loyal following but he’s also notorious for acting alone, for side-stepping team involvement and for making high-handed decisions for the ‘good’ of others. Ironically, it is Spike, our devout ‘caveman’ who is really good at teamwork, despite frequent assertions that he ‘doesn’t play well with others’. Time and time again we have seen him seek out a ‘team’ whether he be evil, chipped or souled. Spike can’t live without connections. Despite the carefully constructed facades, it is Angel who fights to control his monstrous instincts, the ones that cry out for blood and death and mischief while Spike and his considered, chosen soul has his instincts completely under reign. Now he makes intellectual use of his instincts. That’s progress, that evolution.

So who is the caveman and who is the astronaut?

That’s the point really; Angel and Spike may be arguing furiously for one side or the other but the truth is they, like everyone, are both caveman and astronaut. During the course of this episode we’ll see it. We’ll see each and every modern, rational, intelligent member of the team release their inner caveman and some point in proceedings.

Back in the lab Fred has arrived and is inspecting her mystery gift. There are no clues as to where it came from and the invoice has mysteriously disappeared courtesy of Knox. But he distracts us from his sinister double-dealing by being so nice to Fred about her new romance which is on every Blackberry in the building. Getting back to business, Knox asks if she wants a Hazmat team called in to give the box the once over. Fred the sensible scientist agrees all caution should be taken with it. But once alone, Fred’s Achilles heel, her primal instinct to know, kicks in. Curiosity gets the better of her. It calls to her, beckons her to touch and explore. It is her doom. She touches one of the crystals and instantaneously the shell-like device reacts sending a plume of ancient, foul air and dust and particles into Fred’s face, down her nasal passage, into her lungs, into her body.

Angel has sent for Spike, pulled him out of a promising poker game in accounts receivable specifically. Spike is obviously hanging out at Wolfram and Hart with some regularity. And why wouldn’t he? It’s a good place to be, what with the necro-tempered glass, friendly faces who accept his kind, there’s the odd job that allows him to dip his foot in the game now and again and there’s Angel, his brother/father with whom he longs for a connection beyond their shared history. But the summons isn’t exactly what he bargained on:

Angel: Look, I can’t do this anymore Spike: Admitting defeat are you? Angel: You and me. This isn’t working out. Spike: Are you saying we should start annoying other people? Angel: I’m saying you should go.

Spike accuses him of not being able to stomach the competition but Angel refutes this and says that’s not the reason and then says a lot of stuff about Spike being attached to the place but never really explains exactly why he’s decided that it’s time for Spike to go. So what is the reason? Why send Spike away now? Is it the competition? Is it that Spike has just gotten too irritating to cope with? Or is it that Spike is too close, so close that he threatens the isolated caveman that resides at the core of Angel?

…Or…

or …

Is it the danger? Is it that Angel knows that this branch of Wolfram and Hart is an inherently dangerous place to be, more dangerous than a crippled submarine on the bottom of the ocean? And Angel knows, or must at least be beginning to suspect, that the worst is yet to come thanks to Cordelia’s kiss. Could this attempt to get rid of Spike be the equivalent of an eight mile swim before sunrise specifically designed to get his ‘offspring’ out of harm’s way? Because it’s not a dismissal, it’s not Angel saying ‘fuck off, I’ve had enough of you’, no; it’s done with an admission and care:

Angel: …I’ll give you the resources you need to go anywhere; cars, gadgets, expense accounts. You fight the good fight, but…in style. And, if possible in outer Mongolia. Spike: Roving agent. Sort of a 007 without the poncy tux. Go anywhere I want? Angel: Anywhere, everywhere Spike: Anywhere but here.

This time Angel doesn’t send him off with nothing but his ‘life’, this time he offers him the world.

The astronaut versus caveman debate has gripped the office. Fred and Lorne discuss the inequity in weapon allocation, what with the caveman having fire and all, when they run into Wesley who was looking for an excuse to come and see Fred. She has just been to medical to have a cautionary examination after breathing in the mummy dust but she’s been sent back to work, everything seems fine. Lorne begins to sing “You are my Sunshine” as he leaves the new couple to their sweet-talk. Fred finishes the line singing to Wesley ‘You make me happy…’

The instant she sings the words Lorne stops and swings around to look at Fred, horror etched across his green face. A mere second later Fred coughs, blood bubbles from her mouth and splatters across Wesley’s face. Fred falls backwards into Lorne’s ready arms and begins convulsing as Wesley calls frantically for medical assistance.

Fred wakes in the medical room at Wolfram and Hart. She’s surrounded by ‘her boys’, Wesley, Charles, Angel, Lorne, Spike and Knox. They are reassuring and down-playing the severity of her situation. She’s not deceived; she’s smarter than the lot of them put together. She knows it’s bad. Still, her knights in shining armour all promise to work it, shouldn’t take long:

Fred: Handsome man saves me. Angel: That’s how it works. Let’s get cracking

Wesley stays behind, reassures her that even though he must go and be ‘book man’ he’ll be with her in a heartbeat should she need him for anything. He kisses her tenderly on the forehead. The exchange is witnessed by Angel and Spike:

Angel: Wes and Fred? Spike: You didn’t know? Angel: I didn’t know

Connections, disconnectedness… Angel, for all the love and loyalty of his team, fails to observe their lives and the events that shape them. He’s simply not attuned to human emotions.

Once out of Fred’s hearing the kid gloves come off:

Angel: some parasitic agent is working its way through. I mean, as near as they can tell… Wesley: Get to the point Angel: Her organs are cooking. In a day’s time, they’ll liquefy

It’s as bad as it could be. They need answers where there are few to be found. They start with the sarcophagus.

Wesley: Where did it come from? Knox: It just showed up. No return address. Didn’t recognise the guy who bought it in – come to think of it, in the middle of the night. Angel: This was deliberate Lorne: Senior partners? Gunn: Doesn’t add up, but I’ll hit the white room. Talk to the conduit Angel: Now look, if the Senior partners didn’t do this, you gotta get them to help us.

Gunn doesn’t want to think that his benefactors could be behind this, Angel doesn’t want them to be the culprits either – he wants their help and the strings they can pull. So they all play to their strengths; Gunn goes to the white room, Wes hits the books, Knox takes care of the science and Angel is looking to work the streets. Spike adds the suggestion of looking up Lindsey – after all, the man knew a bit about them all and liked to play games. Angel concurs and as there’s muscle work to do, why not make it twice as fast. Spontaneously Spike and Angel form a team, a partnership. They unite with a common purpose, fights, irritations and dismissals forgotten.

Wesley is busy with research, looking up anything and everything in his magical source books that may lead him to answers. He looks fairly calm, considering. Another employee comes to his office door to ask about another matter unrelated to Fred:

Wesley: It can wait W&H employee: These guys are really important. I just need…I mean, the whole company can’t be working Miss Burkle’s case. Wesley: Of course.

Wesley then calmly reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a gun and shoots the man in the knee. Huh, so much for the calm. It’s an irrational, passion fuelled, instinctual act. Wesley’s inner caveman makes an appearance. The shooting achieves nothing of course, except that it makes Wes feel momentarily in control of a situation that he knows is beyond his control and it serves as a warning to other employees who would not give Fred’s situation due diligence.

In the white room it seems deserted, like nothing has changed. But it has. There is a new conduit in residence and it’s exactly like looking in a mirror. When Angel and the gang were first given the tour of Wolfram and Hart (in A4.22, Home) Charles was surprised to learn that the firm had plans for him, big plans. He got taken to the white room, he was bemused. He said they had the wrong guy; that this place was for the big cats. Before the words were out of his mouth a big black panther arrived ready to communicate. The form of the conduit is determined by the viewer. The belief that the white room was the domain of the ‘big cats’ resulted in a big cat as conduit. Now Gunn is a big cat, now he has power and influence and he doesn’t need to conjure images of giant felines. Now he sees himself. He’s part of Wolfram and Hart, body and soul and he wants that power working for him to get Fred out of trouble. But the conduit version of Gunn is not warm or fuzzy or cooperative:

Conduit: This is the part where I need to be clear. I am not your friend. I am not your flunky. I am your conduit to the senior partners, and they are tired of your insolence. Oh yeah. They are not here for your convenience.

Gunn doesn’t want to ask a favour, he’s prepared to make a deal; the conduit is not interested. Deals are for the devil it tells Charles cuttingly.

Gunn: You want someone else? A life for hers, you’ll get it. You can have mine! Conduit: I already do.

So the Senior Partners are not coming to the party. Not so surprising when you remember that Gunn’s initial upgrade was designed specifically to be temporary. It was expected that he would have to make some kind of deal to get the permanent fix. This suggests that either, A) the senior partners have engineered the intricate series of events that have led to Fred’s infection or B) the manoeuvring of the sarcophagus into Wolfram and Hart was coincidental and they are actively choosing not to assist Fred. In both cases the Senior Partners are willing to see Winifred Burkle sacrificed to achieve their own objective which would be to remove the Fred-shaped Jenga piece from the Team Angel tower. It’s a load bearing piece, a unifying force that, once removed, will make the tower very precarious indeed. Spike, they would assist (in Hell Bound) because his very presence assisted them in their aim. He was an unforeseen bonus who chipped away at Angel’s already fractured foundations, his self-belief and certainty of purpose. Unlucky for her, Fred’s value lies in her removal. By taking her away they make an assault on hope, they demoralise and destabilise the team by destroying unity and functionality making it more likely that they will work within the system rather than against it and thus nullifying their influence in the world completely. Objective achieved.

Of course, an alternative reading is that the Doctor who performed Charles’ brain upgrade was playing his own deep game all along and that the senior partners were ignorant of his movements. Perhaps the Doctor used the Senior Partner sanctioned brain upgrade for his own purposes, deliberately making it temporary, deliberately manoeuvring Charles Gunn into having to make a deal to get permanence. Perhaps the Senior Partner’s conduit is just mightily pissed off that they got played by one of their own. But still, it doesn’t negate the notion that Fred’s demise works in the firm’s favour.

Angel, Spike and Lorne search Lindsey’s apartment for any indication that he is behind the delivery of the tomb. Instead they find Eve. She is a wreck, hiding behind the protective symbols that still decorate the walls, wearing nothing but her lover’s shirt. Angel’s not that interested in her and cuts right to the chase:

Angel: Fred’s dying; some mystical parasite. Ring a bell?

She denies all knowledge saying the scheme has nothing to do with either her or Lindsey. The very mention of his name has her salivating. Have they heard from him, know anything about him? The all-knowing, smugly powerful liaison to the senior partners has been reduced to a pathetic, abandoned girlfriend. The boys start to lose patience with her lack of cooperation but Eve argues:

Eve: Why would we do anything to Fred? Why would we even care about her?

And it is too much. Peace-loving, caritas-driven Lorne punches her with instinctual savagery. The caveman within, brought out by anger at the suggestion that their beloved Fred is too insignificant to be of any concern or importance. He requests a song, so he can read her emotions but threatens:

Lorne: …if I hear one note, one quarter note, that tells me you had any involvement, these two won’t even have time to kill you.

Eve sings. It’s the first line of Lindsey’s ‘L.A. Song’ which he performed to great effect at Caritas when his disillusionment with Wolfram and Hart was really beginning to set in (see A2.18, Dead End). She reads clean. She’s got nothing to do with the sarcophagus. Spike intimates that they should trade her for some practical assistance from the senior partners; she’d be a hell of a bargaining chip. The threat brings forth some information:

Eve: No. They can’t help you. I mean it. If you’re talking about a sarcophagus that doesn’t match anything in our records, there’s nothing that’s not in our records except what came before. The Old Ones. Angel: the original demons, before humankind. They were all driven out of this dimension. Eve: The ones that were still alive. But long before that they were killing each other all the time and they don’t die the way we do. Wesley may not know it but his source books can conjure up anything, not just our own stock. Tell him to look for the texts that are forgotten, the oldest scrolls. You need to find the Deeper Well.

Eve’s tip pays off. Wesley is able to discover that the thing that has infected Fred is called ‘Illyria’. It was a great monarch and warrior of the demon age, murdered by rivals and left adrift in the Deeper Well, a burial ground for the remnants of the old ones and now it is engineering its rebirth using Fred as its cocoon. But luckily, it is written that if something gets out of the Well then it can be drawn back there from the source. The Well is in England and the Wolfram and Hart jet can get Angel there in just four hours (they have really good jets). Wesley remains working, close to Fred while Lorne decides to pray, thus adopting the ‘superstitious’ behaviour of the primitives so abhorred and denigrated by sophisticated scientists. Time is not on their side. Nobody is on their side. They have the forces of evil working against them. They seem so tiny and insignificant but there’s work to be done and the obstacles don’t deter. They’re champions; that’s what they do.

Angel: Come on. Let’s save the day.

Angel and Spike exit together. Words are unnecessary to organise roles or delegate duties, to ask for or offer assistance. It’s instinctual.

Wesley goes to check on Fred but her bed is empty. She is in her lab trying to work the damn problem

Fred: I have to work. Angel: You have to lie down. Fred: I am not…I am not the damsel in distress. I am not some case! I have to work this. I lived in a cave for five years in a world where they killed my kind like cattle. I am not going to be cut down by some monster flu. I am better than that! – But I wonder…how very scared I am

That was always her job, to be the ‘science girl’. She doesn’t want to let the team down, they need her brains. She needs her brains! She wants to be proactive about saving herself – who better to find a solution than her? But Wesley suggests there are other ways of fighting, like lying down, resting, conserving her strength. She collapses, her energy sapped by her scientific exertions. She senses the inevitability of her situation:

Fred: This is a house of death. That can be any book you need? Wesley: Every one. Fred: Then bring it. Take me home.

In the jet, Spike fidgets with his seatbelt. While Angel looks out the window with hesitation. Neither looks particularly happy or comfortable with the situation. Spike admits that he has never flown in a plane before. The expected derogatory comment after such a frank admission of fear never eventuates. Instead, Angel answers with empathy by conceding that he’s been in a helicopter only once but it didn’t go this high. It’s encouraging, so much so that Spike suggests a date, a visit to the West End to take in a show once Fred is ‘rescued’. The conversation is at odds with the seriousness of their journey but it is an expression of support and innate belief, at least on Spike’s part, that they’ll get it done. Angel accepts the offer, suggests a particular show then confides his deepest fear in his newly discovered pillar of strength:

Angel: Can’t lose her Spike. Spike: We won’t. Angel: I lost Cordy.

Spike’s recent experience has been with a team that wins whatever the odds. He brings that expectation with him. Angel knows otherwise. He knows you don’t always win and that there are losses; he’s had some big ones. It’s all too eerily familiar. It's also worth noting that only to Spike does Angel mention Cordelia and allow a glimpse of what her loss means to him.

Back at the office Gunn is trying to get some powerful mystical healers on board to help Fred. They are reluctant, they fear the Old Ones. By threatening a ‘world of hurt’ Gunn is utilising his inner caveman to try and force cooperation. It’s not too successful. Caveman Gunn and his tactics are closely related to ‘old’ Gunn and ‘old’ Gunn simply doesn’t belong in the corporate world of astronaut Gunn. Ironically, it was once he confirms that he’s not talking about slamming them with legal action that his contact hangs up the phone in his ear. Once they know it is just an empty threat of physical violence they metaphorically laugh in his face. Knox arrives with the suggestion that they should freeze Fred at their cryogenics department. He theorises that this would stop the infection in its tracks and this will buy them time to figure out how to save her. It sounds absurd of course, but at this point Gunn is getting desperate, he’s willing to try anything and Knox, well he’s a true astronaut isn’t he? Scientific, knowledgeable; what’s not to trust?

Fred wakes in her own bed. It was a short nap but she’s mildly indignant at the precious hour of life that she has lost. She wants noise to keep her anchored to life but Wes is confident that Angel and Spike will prevail; he shouldn’t like to be the thing that stands in their way. Spike and Angel, in that moment, seem larger than life, like legendary heroes of myth and antiquity but it was Wesley, it was ‘book man’ who provided the map for their quest. Suddenly Fred gets anxious:

Fred: I – I have to find him. He’s the master of—I have to have Feigenbaum here!

But when Wes asks who Feigenbaum is, she can’t answer because she doesn’t remember. She’s starting to lose connections to herself. And she is worried about how she looks and Wesley assures her she’s beautiful, the most beautiful thing in the world. So she calms down and Wes reads to her, not from Dread host’s Compendium of Immortal Leeches but from The Little Princess by Frances Hodgeson-Burnett. Research and higher thinking and looking for a solution to an unsolvable problem are abandoned in favour of instinctual comfort and respect for the sanctity of coming death. That’s not to say that there is no hope, that Wes has given up, no far from it, he’s placed his faith in the ‘champions’, in Angel and Spike but he recognises that his job in this is not to look for intellectual reasoning but to offer instinctual emotional support to the woman he loves.

Angel and Spike walk through a foggy parkland in the Cotswolds looking for the entrance to the Deeper Well. They come across a large tree with a twisted, misshapen trunk and Angel is sure that it’s the doorway they are looking for (well, either that or Christmas Land says Spike and Angel is completely clueless as to the reference being made. Which one of them is championing modernity again?) As they approach the door they are attacked by ogres, the guards of the Well:

Spike: And they even bought us weapons. Strategy? Angel: just hold my hand (Spike does as requested without hesitation) Spike: Saint Petersburg. Angel: I thought you’d forgotten.

Old habits die hard and see, they can be transferred to the new regime. Angel and Spike work together very effectively and very efficiently. Angel hasn’t forgotten how they used to combine forces back in the day, only now he’s prepared to accept that their vampire tactics, their shared history can be put to good use once more now that they are on the same side again. In his pocket he had a length of wire, all he had to do was ask Spike to hold his hand to unleash a tried and true stratagem that has worked for them in the past (though one can only wonder with horror exactly what they were doing in St. Petersburg that necessitated the use of the wire). It works wonderfully this time too; when they pull the wire tight it allows them to decapitate the first rush of guards and to appropriate their weapons.

Knox’s idea is a bust. Even freezing won’t stop this virus. And even though we know the scientist is somehow involved in the whole plot (because of that ‘missing’ invoice thing) he does seem genuinely conflicted, like he would like to be the ‘white knight’ in the scenario, reverse everything that is happening to Fred if it were to mean that she would return his affections. But he can’t and she doesn’t. So he settles for allowing his ‘God’ to re-birth itself through Fred so he can love it in her image. Gunn catches the word ‘it’, Knox said “I practically worship it” and it makes all the difference. Knox tries to explain, he chose Fred because he loved her, because she was worthy. Would he want his God to hatch out of some schmuck? Gunn wants him to stop it, taunts him that Angel will stop it but Knox is dubious:

Knox: This was all set in motion millions of years ago Charles, and there’s just no way to stop it. Gunn: Angel and Spike? Knox: Oh, they’re really on the right track, but it doesn’t matter. Angel’s not gonna save her Gunn: You don’t know Angel Knox: I’m not being clear. I don’t mean that Angel is gonna fail to save her, I mean he’s gonna let her die.

Knox is excited now. His plans are coming to fruition. He’s all too willing to share details with the dumbfounded attorney. Illyria was a great power, so great that after millions of years it still has loyal acolytes in the world. Knox certainly qualifies as such. In a pre-ordained plot to return to power, the tomb teleported out of the Well back to the geographic location of the seat of its power. But continents shifted and where it ended up wasn’t where it needed to be to complete its plan. Knox, Illyria’s faithful servant, sought out and returned the sarcophagus to the kingdom only to get caught out by a twenty-first century hurdle; getting the ancient relic through customs.

Knox: But you took care of that. You signed the order to bring it into the lab so you could get another brain boost. Like I said, I’m just one small part of a great machine.

Gunn is thrown . . . he’s devastated and disgusted that he is up to his neck in this. Consequences; his actions, his decisions have dealt a death sentence. He is revolted but clings to the increasingly unlikely hope that Angel can save her, that Angel can save him from this burden. Yet, amidst all the guilt, the primal sense of self-preservation is strong; as Knox excitedly expounds the enormity of the event they are both part of Charles grabs a heavy metal canister and swings it into Knox’s head, knocking him out cold. He then hoists the cylinder high over his head, pauses, looks sideways, first one way then the other, then brings the improvised weapon crashing down in an attack that is both brutal and primitive. Nobody needs to know anything about his part in this now.

Spike and Angel finish off the last of the guards Angel: Is that all? We haven’t even started! And a man appears saying that it’s enough. Angel knows him; his name is Drogyn. He is the keeper of the Well, has been for decades. Spike: Well who in the bloody- Drogyn: Do not ask me a question! If you ever ask me a single question, I will kill you outright. Don’t think for a moment that I can’t

Spike’s question never gets answered. We don’t ever discover the history of Drogyn or how he and Angel knew each other, or how he came to be caretaker of the Well. The most we get is mutual surprise at the others circumstances:

Drogyn: I would never have thought you’d end up here Angel. Angel: I could say the same.

Perhaps Drogyn was evil once too, and knew Angelus back in the day. Perhaps he’s seeking redemption as well, serving his penance by guarding the long dead demon overlords. Who knows? But even though we know next to nothing about him we have to trust him; he cannot lie. Only truth passes his lips. Maybe he was cursed too? Drogyn leads the boys into the Well he knows they are there about Illyria so gives them some insight:

Drogyn: …The Old Ones were demons pure. They warred as we would breathe - endlessly. The greater ones were interred, for death was not always their end. Illyria was feared and beloved as few are. It was laid to death in the very depths of the well…until it disappeared a month ago. Spike: Someone took it from under your nose a month ago and you didn’t miss it till now? That makes you quite the crap jailer, doesn’t it… Also a statement! Drogyn: Your friend likes to talk. Angel: So much he’s even right sometimes. The man I remember couldn’t be stolen from so easily.

It’s quite a contrast from earlier in the season (think of when they were both talking to the doctor in Damage), where once Angel might have said something along the lines of “don’t mind the idiot” now he gives Spike unqualified support. But Drogyn says the tomb wasn’t stolen. It was a pre-destined escape plan (as Knox explained). Once the trio enter the well chamber, Drogyn can easily be forgiven for not noticing the absence immediately; his charges are not few. An endless pit is lined with thousands upon thousands of tombs, sarcophagi and coffins. It goes all the way through, all the way through to the other side of the world.

Angel and Spike discover that the power to draw Illyria back to its proper resting place is some kind of ancient magic that requires a champion who has travelled from where it resides to where it belongs.

Angel: You got two of those right here.

So Spike gets the recognition, the affirmation that he’s wanted for so long as Angel finally admits what he’s known since Spike emerged from the amulet and it didn’t hurt a bit. But it’s not enough to save Fred. The essence of the demon has already been released:

Drogyn: If we bring the sarcophagus back to the well it will draw Illyria out of your friend…and into every single person between here and there. It will become the mystical equivalent of airborne. It will claw into every soul in its path to keep from being trapped. Entire cities, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands will die in agony if you save her.

It’s madness and Spike and Angel are floored. It’s a horrible, impossible choice; their beloved Fred or thousands of nameless strangers. Drogyn says he’ll prepare the spell, pretends they’ve got a choice. Angel goes along with the charade, just for a moment, out of sheer anger:

Angel: To hell with the world!

Poor Angel, reason and rationality desert him temporarily because he’s sick to death of losing the people he loves and he’s tired of thinking about ‘everyone’ when all he wants to do is protect what’s left of his family. In the world of the caveman it’s each man for himself. It’s brutal and unforgiving. Rational thought has no place. Spike is looking down into the well trying to understand the incomprehensible. Angel turns to him, all he says is “Spike” but it overflows with vulnerability and resignation; he knows there is no way they can save her, that they have no right to sacrifice so many to salvage one. He turns to Spike to try and explain…but Spike already knows, never pretended it was otherwise. Yet he doesn’t let Angel say the actual words. He protects Angel with lyrical thought that he speaks with sad enlightenment and awe:

Spike: This goes all the way through to the other side. So, I figure, there’s a bloke somewhere around New Zealand standing on a bridge like this one, looking back down at us. All the way down. There’s a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known.

Things are getting worse for Fred. The light hurts her eyes but it's proof she’s alive. She struggles with delirium and it’s bright and hollow and the cavemen win, of course the cavemen win! Pain grips her; her skin is hardening, squeezing the life out of her. Wesley tries to administer relief but the needle won’t pierce, it bends and snaps. She recoils from Wesley’s comforting touch. He feels helpless. Once the spasm of pain passes she calms, is weak but lucid. She is able to identify the root of the problem:

Fred: Why did we go there? Why did we think we could beat it? It’s evil Wesley. It’s bigger than anything.

And suddenly she’s terrified and she’s crawling up the bed as if trying to escape, staving off capture. She begins talking, almost like she’s communicating with the thing that is slowly taking over her body:

Fred: I’m with him! He won’t leave me now. We’re so close

Wesley will not leave until it’s done. They were so close to love and a future. So close but yet so far. Illyria will not leave either. It is so close, oh so close to achieving its destiny.

Wesley holds Fred and they kiss and share words of love. Fred is scared, petrified, though determined to be thought of as otherwise. She wants her parents told that she wasn’t scared. She wants them to know she was brave. She repeats the words “I’m not scared”, trying desperately to will them to be true. As she slips away her fight and bravado flags; she goes limp in Wesley’s arms and asks piteously:

Fred: Please Wesley, why can’t I stay?

And stillness descends as death comes. Wesley cries and holds Fred’s body close, mourning her loss. While she’s cradled in his arms ice sets across Fred’s still open hazel eyes. They crack and crystallise and turn blue. The body shudders to life with violent spasms throwing Wesley off the bed and flinging itself backwards onto the floor where it continues to convulse. Wesley is horrified. ‘Fred’ stands up; but it is not Fred. Its hair is blue, its skin is tinged azure too, and its eyes are cold. It looks at its hand experimentally flexing the fingers and gives it verdict:

Illyria: This will do.

Next up: Angel 5.16 - Shells

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