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rock-and-compass · 14 days ago

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Angel 5.14 - Smile Time

(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.)

Puppet (n) doll An artificial figure of various kinds, moved by wires, hands etc.; marionette. a person or group whose actions are controlled by another or others (adj) controlled by external forces

How many times during season five (or previous seasons for that matter) have we heard others observe that Angel is a ‘puppet’, that he is being controlled by outside forces or has been manipulated into operating under the agenda of others? Not sure of the precise figure, but it’s quite a few to say the least. And we get it. We know that Wolfram and Hart co-opted him and his team specifically to control them and nullify their influence in the world. The move forces Angel and co. to dance to a new tune, they are allowed to think they are choosing the moves but, in reality, the piper is doing all the choreography. Yes, Angel is a puppet, metaphorically speaking; it’s been that way for a while, and it’s been demonstrated with stunning regularity throughout the season. Smile Time goes a step further. It uses the metaphor in a way that is about as subtle as being hit over the head with an ACME brand sledgehammer when metaphorical puppet Angel turns into literal puppet Angel. Ironically, in doing so Angel finally gets to see himself for what he is and is granted the opportunity to break free of some of the many, many strings that manipulate his every move.

The Set Up

Smile Time is a television program for children. It features cute puppets and catchy little ditties that are designed to teach its audience about self-development, number facts and the like; yet all is not as sweet and innocent as it seems. As a little boy watches Smile Time one of the puppets orders him to come and touch the television screen. When he does the puppet begins to experience orgasmic-like pleasure as the child’s life force is sucked out of him. Eventually the little boy collapses, drained and paralysed with a grotesque grin etched across his face. And it would seem that Smile Time has been making a habit of this kind of thing, eleven children in three weeks have been similarly afflicted. The case is brought to Fred’s notice when mystical involvement is suspected. She zeros in on the medical science side of the problem while Angel notices that all the children all collapsed while watching television so goes to investigate that aspect of the case. So, here’s where the fun starts…

At the Smile Time studio Angel does a little snooping around and eventually finds himself standing before a door marked “DON’T”. But Angel does. He enters the room to find the perplexing sight of a man sitting in front of a giant egg with a towel draped over his head. “You shouldn't ... be here,” the man struggles to warn but it is too late. The egg is rumbling to life, it’s starting to ‘smile’ wider and wider. As the smile reaches its apex it shoots out a bright bolt of energy that sends Angel flying across the room into a pile of empty boxes. From beneath the rubble a hand pokes up. But it’s not a human-like hand, it's a little four fingered fabric puppet hand and it’s swiftly followed by a little felt head and body. Angel is now a puppet in the truest sense of the word.

But we’ll get back to Angel in a little while…

First, it is interesting to note that Smile Time, like the sub last week, is a blurred reflection of Angel’s situation at Wolfram and Hart. Smile Time is something good infected by something evil while Wolfram and Hart is something evil infiltrated by something essentially good (Angel and his people). Smile Time has an impeccable reputation that makes it possible for the demons to have their way with the children in the audience without arousing too much suspicion from anyone unschooled in manifestations of evil. Wolfram and Hart has a dreadful reputation, are renowned for aiding and abetting the worst of the worst, so makes Team Angel’s job at Wolfram and Hart fundamentally impossible – remember that ‘catch’ Eve told them about, to make the business work for them they have to make the business work. That has meant compromise on a daily basis. That means being mired in the perpetual grey, trying to navigate routes between various degrees of evil. Angel can’t be the “I’m Angel, I kill the bad guys'' kind of Angel while seconded to Wolfram and Hart because, well, he’s not killing them, he’s playing racquetball with them, and having meetings with them and signing off on deals with them… thus the Senior Partners have their way with Angel with hardly any suspicion being aroused as to what’s actually going on.

Angel, CEO of Wolfram and Hart (Los Angeles branch) and Mr. Framkin, creator of Smile Time now operate in figurehead positions. To the outside world they look like they are in control but in reality they are merely the ‘puppets’ of others. The demon puppets literally put their hands into a hole in Framkin’s back to make him bend to their will and exert their authority over him while the Senior Partners are more subtle. They use Angel’s position to create the illusion of power and authority while actually manipulating him (and his team) into confusion and, I was about to say ineffectuality, but that’s not really the right word; as Gunn regularly points out, they have achieved some excellent outcomes since coming to Wolfram and Hart, so maybe ambiguity or compromise are better descriptives. Huh; there’s that word again, compromise.

And let’s not forget that both situations are the result of ‘deals with the devil’. Deals made to achieve an end – high television ratings for Framkin and for Angel, a new life for his son. By the end of the episode the Smile Time devils have suffered the consequences, paid the price, gotten their comeuppance but Angel’s deal is still intact…for the moment. His stipulation was that no one should remember Connor but himself and he’s been willing to pay the largely personal price of surrendering his son and losing his own sense of identity. But he didn’t just bring himself to Wolfram and Hart; he brought others with him, others who didn’t get to look at the fine print of their employment contracts. What price will they pay for this deal with the devil that they didn’t consent to?

And now the really bad news; to stop Smile Time, Angel’s team had to defeat the little devils masquerading as puppets, who were in fact, the puppeteers behind the whole thing. So, it would seem that in order to escape from Wolfram and Hart, should they ever want to, Team Angel will have to go after the ones pulling on their strings too.

The crew from Smile Time sing a sweet little song that goes something like this:

Self-esteem is for everybody Self-esteem is for everyone You can dream and be anybody But self-esteem is how you get it done

And this is essentially the theme or lesson to be learnt from this episode; the importance of self-belief and confidence in achieving outcomes. All season long we’ve seen Angel struggling with his identity; his concept of himself as a ‘champion’ has become increasingly shaky, he doesn’t feel particularly heroic, he’s progressively gotten more and more distanced from his ‘helpless’, the people he’s sworn to assist. The sacrifice of Connor, the whole deal and move to Wolfram and Hart and the arrival of Spike have seen to that. Angel has been lost and hopeless and the people who love him keep telling him not to lose hope and to keep on fighting but without intrinsic self-belief the words are just meaningless platitudes. And then Cordelia visited and reminded him who he was, and who he wants to be, and showed him that he can dream and be anybody, be exactly the Angel he wants to be, but he needs that self-belief to make it happen.

Brain Upgrades and Memory Wipes

And it’s not only Angel who has undergone personal re-evaluation, it’s his team too. This is particularly evident with Charles Gunn. With the move to Wolfram and Hart comes a brain implant that takes him from street-fighting muscle to being the legal backbone of the LA branch. A definite change in self-concept there; with it he’s able to forget about Charles Gunn, nobody and become someone whose opinions matter and who has power. It’s the best thing that ever happened to him and he’s happy to be official head cheerleader for the work that Team Angel undertakes at Wolfram and Hart. But the Senior Partners are tricky tricksters. They don’t want his enthusiasm or gratitude. They want to own him body and soul.

Over the past couple of episodes we’ve seen Gunn struggle with the legal lingo a tad and now, in Smile Time he’s lodged the wrong form with the county clerk's office and it's not some crafty lawyer-move and he can’t remember which section under what act they can prosecute Framkin. Gunn is worried. He’s scared and he doesn’t want to go back to the way he was.

He goes to see the doctor who did the original procedure for answers. After a quick examination the doctor determines that yes, the imprint is fading, almost completely reversed in fact. Now Gunn is beyond worried, he’s panicked. What he suspected has been confirmed. He doesn’t want to lose the law, the languages or the strategy. They are what define him now. The doctor is sarcastically sympathetic. He diagnoses acute “Flowers for Algernon Syndrome'' which essentially means that Gunn having experienced, courtesy of the brain implant, an almost instantaneous increase in intellectual functionality that has turned out to actually be only temporary is now incredibly loath to give it up and return to the way he was. Gunn wants it fixed but the doc ain’t coming to the party:

Doctor: Well, no offence, counsellor, but your insurance plan wouldn’t cover what I charge to wash my hands. You were given that upgrade because the Senior Partners wanted you to have it, and if you’re losing it, well, they wanted that too.

What the Senior Partners giveth, they can also taketh away and in doing so they tweak firmly on Gunn’s puppet strings. They (and the Doctor) know Charles has gotten attached to the power, got to the point where he can’t let his new abilities go and doesn’t want to live without them, can’t bear to go back to being that ignorant street thug that he was, he’s come to despise that guy. And so the Doctor has him exactly where he wants him, it’s all part of the plan. The doctor proposes a deal. He’ll scratch Gunn’s back if Charles will scratch his. The doctor has a particular artefact, a curio, tied up in customs. A permanent brain upgrade would give Gunn more than sufficient legal know-how to cut through inconvenient bureaucratic red tape. Charles resists:

Gunn: I don’t make deals with people like you

Oh, but you do Mr. Gunn, you do; everyday of your working life at Wolfram and Hart that’s exactly what you do. “Tax exemptions to nasty corporations, acquittals for the guilty” that’s the bread and butter of the firm and Charles and his upgrade actively facilitate the practice.

So, he makes the deal. We know he’s done it because when he walks into Angel’s office, he’s back to being confident and eloquent in his legal proficiency. He’s fully knowledgeable of the contract regarding Smile Time’s ‘deal with the devil’, the hard to locate fine print that put the demons in control. Mr. Legal know-it-all is back, bigger and better than ever and more a puppet to the Senior Partners than ever before. He’s made his own deal with the devil and now he’ll have to wear the consequences just like Framkin.

Fred and Wesley also make some huge character strides during this episode too, but it is not so much work or epiphany related so much as interpersonal. Wesley has harboured affections for Fred ever since they bought her back from Pylea. But, somewhat surprisingly, for a short while Fred and Gunn formed an unlikely couple; the epitome of brains meets brawn. Wesley has made it abundantly clear that he loves Fred, but since “You’re Welcome” it’s become increasingly apparent that Fred’s feelings for Wesley have intensified too. On several occasions she tries to let Wesley know of her feelings. She’s kicked Knox to the curb, she’s not so much looking for someone as at, her car is in the shop and she’d really like Wes to take her home. Anvil sized hints if ever there was. Ironically, Wesley castigates Angel for missing the signals being flashed in his direction by another young lady all the while missing the messages meant for him.

Fred and Wes work closely on the Smile Time problem, watching tape after tape of episodes looking for clues. Fred goes to make another move on Wesley when they notice an anomaly with the transmission. When the sound is muted they are able to see the little boy puppet, Polo, pressed up against the television screen talking directly to the audience. When they turn the sound back on the picture returns to normal with the puppets all singing one of their songs.

Wesley: When the song is playing it acts as a sort of cloaking spell allowing Framkin to address his target without being seen by the rest of his viewers

Here we are gently reminded of another nuanced piece of magic, a spell that cloaks memories, tricks the ‘audience’ into believing things are other than they are. And just as the Smile Time spell has been discovered we are left wondering how long the secrecy surrounding the memory wipe can be maintained.

When the team heads to Smile Time to take on the demon puppets, Wes and Fred head to the nest egg to do a reversal spell. The life-size puppet Ratio Hornblower follows, then attacks, determined to protect their cache of life force they have already collected as Wes begins the spell. As Wesley fights it Fred attempts to assist but Wes tells her to keep on reading the incantation. She does but is distracted by Wes’s predicament. She picks up a gun and shoots the puppet allowing Wes to gain the upper hand in the fight. She places Wesley’s safety ahead of the task at hand neatly parallelling the events of “Lineage” and giving Wesley a practical demonstration of her feelings. She finishes off the spell and succeeds in destroying the egg.

Afterwards, back at the office, Fred reports to Wesley that all the affected children are on the road to recovery. Wes goes to leave saying that they’ve all earned a break but Fred forestalls him, asking if he’s noticed anything different about how she’s been acting towards him. The words don’t come easily so she chooses a physical approach and kisses him. Actions speak louder than words and finally Wes gets the message. They kiss again with increasing passion and ardour. A romance a long time in the propagation finally comes into bloom (but this is the Buffyverse, so…you know…).

And so to Angel…

Nina, (the werewolf girl from ‘Unleashed’) arrives at Wolfram and Hart for her monthly stay during the wolf-moon. She is obviously very interested in Angel. Angel is deliberately obtuse and fails dismally to recognise the signs, mainly because he doesn’t want to see them; girls, relationships, romance, dates – they are all big ‘Don’ts’ in Angel’s life. She puts the suggestion out there that they should have “breakfast” in the morning. The implication is all sexy and intimate but Angel ain’t taking the bait. He goes to see Wesley and voices his concerns that Nina may see him as other than just the provider of a safe and secure cell for three nights of each month. Wes confirms this theory. Angel is aghast.

Angel: Nina’s down there right now, turning into a werewolf and liking me. I don’t – I can’t – I have no time for that kind of… I have no right. I mean, look, we know what happens if- Wesley: If what? If you achieve a moment of perfect happiness? Angel: I turn back into Angelus and we don’t want that! Wesley is scornful, telling him that it’s an excuse. Most people have to, and do, get by with acceptable happiness and that he is: Wesley: Hiding behind your gypsy curse when there is a beautiful, engaging, all right, occasionally hirsute, young woman who actually wants you.

But Angel is adamant that nothing can happen between him and Nina, or any other woman for that matter, but it’s not so much the curse that’s the problem:

Angel: Because I’m not that guy. That guy is charming and funny and…emotionally useful. I’m the guy in a dark corner with the blood habit and the two hundred years of psychic baggage

No, in Angel’s mind that guy, the one that women like, is too closely associated with Liam, the human wastrel from which Angelus was born. Liam’s impulses were part of the reason that Angelus was what he was and therefore, should be kept firmly under control at all times. So it is easier to use the curse as a shield, an excuse for staying distant and not risking the possibility of intimate human interaction. So essentially, Angel is a puppet to the curse, he lets the curse control him and his actions. Sure he has the fairly damning evidence of his night with Buffy and the subsequent loss of his soul as proof that he and sweaty relations are unmixy things, but Wesley seems to believe that this was perhaps a unique situation brought on by the combination of a hundred years of pent up isolation, loneliness and uselessness released as he made love to the woman who inspired him to try and become a better person. Would it have happened again? We don’t know, Angel and Buffy never risked it again, (aside from ‘I Will Remember You’ when they again became lovers because Angel was temporarily human, and I won’t delve into the events of BtVS S8 #34 at this point in time) instead sub-consciously they categorise their love as dangerous because it was too perfect. Would the curse take effect if Angel was intimate with another woman? Well, it didn’t when he slept with Darla, or Eve, but those encounters were never about love or perfect happiness. Angel was preparing to risk it for Cordelia, he was in love with Cordelia, but they never quite got the timing right to put it to the ultimate test. Wesley is right; perfect happiness is not the automatic outcome of sexual relations. The curse has simply become the crutch on which Angel relies to keep him from getting emotionally involved. Theoretically, as a father, Angel’s perfect happiness is much more likely to be invested in his son now rather than a woman and, if the curse is particularly linked to the sexual then surely knowledge of the catch (i.e. the loss of the soul) would preclude it from ever being activated again, as long as he didn’t get complacent. Sorry, just a little vague conjecture.

Besides, the whole don’t risk intimacy thing is just one of Angel’s many ‘don’ts’. When Angel goes to the Smile Time studio to investigate he comes across and enters the “Don’t Room”. It is a great analogy; Angel is ruled by ‘DON’T’. Don’t be too happy, don’t forget what you were, don’t forget what you still are, don’t forget what you did, don’t follow your impulses, don’t do anything remotely Angelus-like, don’t show emotion, don’t form connections, don’t let anyone see the real you, don’t think of Connor, don’t think of Cordelia…. just don’t! But becoming a puppet allows him to transcend his self-imposed rules. When he becomes a literal puppet, he places himself in an emotionally vulnerable position with his team. He has no choice – he has to let them see him as a ‘wee little puppet man’ so they can help him. Even though he is embarrassed by his state of being, Puppet Angel trusts those closest to him with the truth. That’s not to say he wants everyone to see him like that. Initially he doesn’t let Nina see him in his puppet state, the shame and embarrassment too acute to conquer the barrier of intimacy. It’s too huge to breech but then Spike arrives and states the bleeding obvious:

Spike: You’re a bloody puppet!

Puppet Angel feels emotions intensely. He can’t push the anger and annoyance he feels for his ‘grandchild’ aside with a glib, cutting dismissal as real Angel would. Puppet Angel attacks and in doing so reveals his puppet state to all his employees. Spike forces Angel to confront realities about himself, just as he’s been doing since he emerged from the amulet.

Once the truth is out Puppet Angel doesn’t scamper off and hide, no he assumes command. He is in control, he’s confident and authoritative. He’s everything that the real Angel wants to be. Puppet Angel displays a whole range of emotions – anger, excitement, frustration, love, affection, gratitude, humour, all of which are present in real Angel only in a firmly controlled, reigned in kind of way. Puppet Angel has the guts to go and see Nina to apologise for hiding and being rather rude to her earlier.

Angel: I didn’t mean to upset you this morning. I just didn’t want anyone- well, I didn’t want you to see me this way. It’s a little embarrassing, I guess. Nina: I’d call it insane. But…what do you care what people think anyway? Angel, you’re you, you know? You’re this, I mean, god, you’re an actual hero, and, I don’t know, this may sound cliché coming from an art school chick, but, the vampire thing is kinda sexy.

Puppet Angel vocalises feelings and emotions where real Angel would have shut up tight as a clam. He recognises psychological motivations; that is, he understands his personal deficiencies and why he acts the way he does:

Angel: I’m not very good at any of this. I’ve spent so much time worrying about the past and the future and my very complicated life…it’s been a while since I looked up and really saw what was going on around me. It’s not my strong suit, you know? But I’m working on it. I’m paying better attention to-

But he’s not quite there yet, werewolf Nina is able to grab him from behind as he’s having his mini-epiphany moment. Still, puppet Angel takes steps forward in self-awareness while real Angel has for so long chosen not to.

Nina, in this story, has two functions. Firstly she’s an attractive female who is genuinely interested in Angel (an entity more than dangerous than all the demons and monsters in the world, at least in Angel’s opinion) whose very presence challenges all his personal boundaries and secondly, she’s an example of a ‘helpless’ that he’s helped since he came to Wolfram and Hart. She’s proof that the essential Angel still exists. She doesn’t care where he works or comprehend his identity crisis. She just sees him as a ‘hero’ as someone valuable, as a saviour. She’s proof that he can be the Angel Cordelia reminded him of.

Angel, bitten and ripped, makes it back upstairs and collapses into Lorne’s arms. Again we hear the mantra

Lorne: You’re going to make it Angel! Just don’t stop fighting

Once stitched back together and the truth of Smile Time’s deal with the devil has been uncovered the team heads to the studio to fight. Puppet Angel is a leader, he relishes the leadership role that real Angel seems to have forsaken. And his team follows willingly. They don’t care if he’s technically a puppet, it’s not about the physicality, it's about the aura. Puppet Angel is heroic and action-oriented. He’s a doer who embraces the demon inside rather than perpetually fighting it. Puppet Angel knows that it’s part of what makes him what he is in a good way, rather than a purely negative one.

Once the fight is over and won Angel, still a puppet, goes to see Nina and asks her out to breakfast signalling his willingness to entertain the possibility of stepping out from behind the curse and taking a chance on getting to know an interested (and interesting) female. Nobody’s saying that it’s love or some big thing; it’s just breakfast but it’s still a step in a brave new direction.

So, at the end of all this fun and frivolity what have we got?

We’ve got Gunn more a puppet than ever; we’ve got Angel finally acknowledging that he’s got ‘strings’ that need addressing and he makes the constructive step of challenging one of them, the curse, and how it has imprisoned various aspects of his life and offering hope that other, more restrictive strings may eventually be severed too, spurred on by his own (secret) personal beacon of hope, Spike, who’s comes and goes as he pleases, says exactly what’s on his mind and who is nobody’s puppet.

Next up: Angel 5.15 - A hole in the world

#Angel #angel season 5 #angel the series #smile time #spike #rock and compass watches #i miss cordelia

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