Chief Seattle Review S3 E9
Linda
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Episode Title "Lullaby"
A Tale of Three Parents
It seems to me that both dramatically and thematically "Offspring",
"Quickening and Lullaby" make a true trilogy - a single story in three
parts. The first episode in this trilogy began with Holtz pondering
on the nature of a vampire:
"My only desire is to discover if a thing such as yourself can be made
to pay for it's sins. You're a demon. It is your nature to maim and
kill. But you were also once a man. If we beat and burn the demon
out of your living flesh will there be anything left? Anything at
all? I doubt it?"
For such a creature there could be no choice between doing good and
doing evil. The latter was in its nature. But Holtz here was talking
to and about Angelus. Angel on the other hand had a dual nature. He
was a vampire but he also had a soul. He was not predestined to do
evil; because he had a soul he also had a choice between the different
directions in which the good and the evil within him pulled him. Of
course Angel isn't the only one to have that choice. As I said in my
review of "Offspring" good and evil exist in us all and the dividing
line between them can be as thin for a human as it can be for Angel.
The way in which we too must chose between our different impulses and
what leads a human soul, with its instinct to do good, nevertheless to
chose evil is the theme running right through the three episodes. And
in "Lullaby" we see this theme examined through the actions and
attitudes of three individuals:
· Angel, the vampire with a soul who has a mission to do good;
· Darla the normally evil vampire with a borrowed soul which makes her
see things differently; and
· Holtz, the human whose behavior is disconcertingly reminiscent of
Angel's in "Reunion" and "Blood Money".
These are very different people in many ways but they have one thing
in common: they are parents. And that is a fact that in this case
tells us a lot about them and what drives them.
The Power of Choice
Ironically it is the through the two vampires in this piece that we
learn the difference between a soulless and an ensouled creature. The
first significant moment in this context comes after Angel has been
captured by Holtz:
Holtz: "You haven't changed."
Angel: "Actually, I have. While you were sleeping, a lot changed."
Holtz: "Really? Somehow things seem the same to me."
Angel: "You're wrong."
Holtz: "I will have justice."
Angel: "No. I don't think you will. There is no justice for the
things I did to you."
There are some very interesting contrasts between this exchange and
the one that took place in Rome over 200 years previously. There,
Angelus had simply been conscious of the pleasure he had derived from
the suffering of Holtz's wife. A chilling reminder of what this
pleasure actually meant to him came when Darla reflects on the reasons
why Holtz was now trying to kill them:
"That's why this is happening. His family, his children... what that
must have been like for him. Doesn't seem so funny now, does it?"
Killing his family and turning his daughter into a vampire was for
them a big joke. For creatures like this the idea sin and therefore
of punishment for sin was meaningless. Angel on the other hand does
understand sin and punishment - perhaps no-one understand it better.
When he says that there is no justice for what he did, he was showing
an acute appreciation of how terrible were the crimes that, as
Angelus, he had committed.
We know that Angel still feels the pull of the vampire, that when he
recalls incidents like the murder of the Holtz family he feels the
thrill of pleasure. That is the darkness that remains within him.
But his reaction to Holtz shows that has turned away from that. As
Lilah so mockingly put it, he was a:
"Vampire, cursed by gypsies who restored his soul. Destined to atone
for centuries of evil…"
Except he wasn't destined to do anything. It was his choice. It is
not a choice that a vampire has but it is a choice that comes with
having a soul. And this was a point reinforced for us in the course of
the conversation that Angel and Darla had about their son on the roof
of the hotel:
Darla: "Look at it. Listen to it. Can you smell it? This world. This
horrible world. Why would anyone want to bring a baby into it?"
Angel: "To make it better, maybe?"
Darla: "Or to destroy it finally."
Angel: "Why is it everyone insists on planning my son's future before
he's even born?"
The baby though human was a creature born of two vampires. The
question of its destiny has been a constant theme of this trilogy.
But here again the writers emphasize that, as a creature born with a
soul, it had no destiny in the sense that it was born to fulfill a
predetermined purpose. What he did in his life (assuming he gets to
enjoy one) would be his choice. And as a creature with a soul it
could chose to do good.
But this episode is not only about choices. It is about why we make
those choices. When Angel and Gunn discuss whether Holtz wanted to
kill the child, Fred points out that he need not even know about it:
Fred: "That's the tragic beauty of a cosmic convergence. I…I
mean, he just plays his own small part. He…he comes here looking
for Angel and Darla, and in the process ends up finding Angel's unborn
child, who, as it turns out, wasn't evil at all as we feared, but was
actually meant to be some sort of Messianic figure. But Holtz kills it
before it's even born and his vengeance somehow triggers the end of
the world."
We can none of us know the consequences of our actions. And what we
intend to achieve by them is no guide to those consequences. As I
pointed out in my review of "Offspring" the idea that the road to Hell
is paved with good intentions illustrates an inherent contradiction
not only for Angel but for us all. Good and evil exist in all of us
and the dividing line for us can often be as thin as it is for him.
So, how do we decide which choices to take and which to reject - where
does the good lie? That is the question we must now look at.
Only Connect
It is not only in their contrasting moral sense that we see the
difference between Angel and Angelus. It is in the former's concern
for others. When he was facing death at Holtz's hands he could have
tried to convince him that he had changed, that he was now making a
difference in the fight against evil and that it was therefore wrong
to try to kill him. He didn't. Instead he tried to point out the
Holtz the peril he was placing himself in. Hence Holtz's mocking
question:
"Are you still concerned about my soul, Angelus? My vampire priest?"
But clearly his main concern throughout this episode is for his child.
It is why he risked his life to go back to the Hyperion in the first
place. It is why he would not accept that the baby will be a danger
to humanity. When Darla's contractions stop and the child starts to
die within the womb he and Gunn draw very different conclusions:
Angel: "This doesn't make any sense. I mean, this whole thing has been
a miracle, right? You don't just get half a miracle, do you? I mean,
the Powers - they brought her this far, they protected the baby all
this time..."
Gunn: "We don't know that. We don't know that it's the Powers that's
been protecting it. Angel, I'm sorry, but what if what Darla's
carrying is the thing in the prophecies? That scourge of mankind
that's supposed to plunge the world into ultimate darkness? What if
what if what's happening to Darla now what if that's the Powers?
Finally stepping up to the plate and doing something for once!"
Angel: "How? By killing my kid?"
Gunn's attitude is perfectly rational. The difficulties the child got
into are more easily explained by his analysis than Angel's. Angel
has no rational answer to his argument - only an emotional one. And
Gunn's views are at least implicitly endorsed by Cordelia when she
accuses him not of being wrong but simply of being too honest (if you
can get your mind round the concept of Cordelia accusing someone else
of being tactless). Indeed throughout this episode Angel leaves
reason to one side and follows his emotions. That is why in spite of
all evidence to the contrary he believes in Darla's maternal
instincts:
"What I do know is that you love this baby, our baby. You've bonded
with it. You've spent nine months carrying it, nourishing it..."
He even believes in the possibility of the two of them raising the
child together. Hopelessly naļve this attitude may be but it also
expresses Angel's state of mind. He knows vampire nature as well as
anyone. He warned Cordelia that in spite of their friendship Harmony
would turn on her. But such is the paternal love he feels for the
child that her thinks that Darla has to feel the same way, even though
she never loved anything else in her life. And ultimately that is why
he refused to leave Darla in the alley. As far as he knew the child
was dying and Darla should die at Holtz's hands. He was doing neither
of them any favors by staying. But he could not leave them because he
cared so much.
And this time he wasn't the only one, as we see by the change that we
see come over Darla in this episode. Here we see her for the first
time display true maternal love:
"I love it completely. I…I…I don't think I've ever loved
anything as much as this life that's inside of me."
And eventually of course she gives her own life for the love of her
son. This isn't simply a matter of sentimentality. The important
point is not that she loved the baby but rather why she loved it. The
writers do not toy with the idea of a soulless killer suddenly forming
maternal feelings. If anything they emphasized just how evil Darla
really was. They as good as said that, as a vampire, she would kill
the child without hesitation or remorse:
Darla: "What do I have to offer a child, a human child, besides ugly
death?"
Angel: "Darla."
Darla: "You know it's true."
Indeed she later has to ask Angel:
"You won't let me hurt it, will you? You'll protect it, right? From
me, I mean."
Darla's feelings of love for the child are not really her own. When
Angel says she has been nourishing the child she denies it:
"No. No, I haven't been nourishing it. I haven't given this baby a
thing. I'm dead. It's been nourishing me. These feelings that I'm
having, they're not mine. They're coming from it."
And as if to reinforce the point she tells the child's father:
"Angel, I don't have a soul. It does. And right now that soul is
inside of me, but soon, it won't be and then..."
Here we see a very powerful counterpoint between the reality of a
soulless vampire and a human with a soul. The message of the writers
is conveyed in the very starkness of the contrast. It is that the
concept of a choice between good and evil for a demon is meaningless
because they do not and cannot love. They do not and cannot care
about human beings. That is why, when Darla ceases to be influenced
by the human soul within her, she would revert to the merciless killer
she always was. She would simply have no choice because that was her
nature. But having a soul gives you the ability to love and to care
and with that comes the ability to chose to help others. It was in
particular because of the influence of a human soul that Darla saw the
death of Holtz family from Holtz's point of view. She was no longer
conscious just of her own pleasure at the killing but at the pain that
it caused him. And this awareness of others is what makes humans
different. So, Darla chose to sacrifice her life not because she was
a mother but because she was a mother with a human soul for whom the
life of her child was more important than her own. And in making this
choice she expressly contrasted the new born human life with what she
had spent her entire vampire existence doing:
Darla: "We did so many terrible things together. So much destruction,
so much pain. We can't make up for any of it. You know that, don't
you."
Angel: "Yeah."
Darla: "This child - Angel, it's the one good thing we ever did
together. The only good thing."
The writers therefore seem to me to be saying that the human soul's
capacity to chose to do good is derived from its ability to empathize
with others and to develop bonds of affection with some others that
are stronger than life itself.
Losing A Family
We need not doubt but that Holtz truly loved his own family. We can
see this by the way he dashed back to his house in a futile attempt to
save them, in his anguished reaction to the sight of his wife's body
and his initial tenderness with the daughter he thought for one
fleeting moment had been spared the carnage. But the moment that
broke him was the sight of those two puncture marks on Sarah's neck,
showing that she was a human child no more. That was when al hope for
his family died and with it all interest in life. And here in a piece
of very powerful symbolism we see him leave the child and slowly back
towards the wall - as far away from his own daughter as he could get.
This not only symbolized the breaking of his ties with his family, but
also the breaking of his connection with the rest of the world. For,
when two of his men appear at the door he forbids them to enter the
house. And so he is left alone with his grief until the morning light
cuts across the floor of the room separating him from Sarah. The one
of his men asks:
"What are we going to do?"
Holtz reply shows the change that has come over him in the course of a
few hours:
"Whatever we have to."
And with that he picks up the child, coldly ignores her piteous cries
and throws her from the cottage and into the morning sunlight. Again
this is a moment of great symbolic importance. There are many ways he
could have killed the vampire but choosing to exclude her from his
family home and his brutally cold manner with her indicates to me not
that there was anything wrong in the relations between Holtz the
family man and those he loved but that he now saw his family as dead.
This creature was simply a demon and had to be dealt with as such.
The cruelty of his actions were therefore a simple fulfillment of his
words to his men - that he would now do whatever it took to destroy
the demons responsible for his loss. And if that included callous
brutality of the sort he displayed to Sarah, then so be it.
And this single minded revenge at all costs attitude is what
characterized Holtz ever since his appearance in the 21st century. I
have already commented in my review of "Quickening" on his willingness
to make a pact with Sahjhan, to use dark magic, to associate himself
with the Grapplar demons and to utterly disregard the lives of the
Wolfram and Hart SWAT team. In this episode Angel commented on the
former. But more interestingly Holtz himself revealed his attitude
in relation to the latter:
Holtz: "Those men you sent to kill Angelus, they were each of them
brave."
Lilah: "Oh, good."
Holtz: "They fought to the last."
Lilah: "Yeah, I get that."
Holtz: "But send more, and I'll do the same. No one will have him but
me."
Holtz had no reason to believe that the men he killed were agents of
evil. As far as he knew they were on the same side. And yet he still
showed no remorse for killing them and even threatened to do the same.
And the only reason was that he himself wanted the personal
satisfaction of extracting revenge for his family.
But the nature of Holtz's thirst for vengeance can only be seen from
the way he regards Angel who is after all his prime target. On three
separate occasions he is given the opportunity to re-evaluate his
attitude to revenge. The first comes in the Hotel when Lilah tells
him of the curse and what it means. That he blieves implicitly what
Lilah tells him is shown by the way he protests to Sahjhan about being
kept in ignorance:
Holtz: "He's changed. He's - different."
Sahjhan: "Look. I don't know what kind of moral mind games you've been
torturing yourself with, but can't let this soul thing get in the way
of what you swore to do."
Holtz: "Get in the way?"
Sahjhan: "That's what this is about, right? You find out Angel has a
soul, now you're wondering if things are a little murkier ethically
speaking."
Holtz: "Things have never been clearer. Releasing his soul to suffer
for all eternity only makes his destruction more just, more fitting."
Sahjhan: "Oh. Well, then what's the problem?"
Holtz: "You've had me hunting the wrong prey."
Sahjhan: "Ah! Right. Because an Angel with a soul is going to be a
slightly different challenge from an Angel without a soul."
This is the second occasion when the significance of Angel's soul is
put before Holtz as an issue. We have already seen the difference
between a soulless vampire and a being with a human soul. This is a
difference encapsulated in the two contrasting interviews between
Holtz and Angelus in Rome in the 18th century and Angel in LA in the
21st century. The one was a demon whose nature is to maim and kill.
The other is a human soul with the power of choice to do good or bad.
Intellectually Holtz clearly understand this. And yet on both
occasions he is confronted by the fact he dismisses the implications
almost without thought. For him the moral complexities posed by
issues of responsibility justice when dealing with a being who is
different from the one who killed his family are not important.
Everything is reduced to a simple proposition - revenge. In other
words he had no concern for others, what their rights were or what
they really deserved. All he was concerned about was himself. He
might dress this up in language of seeking justice or doing God's
will. People like this normally do and heaven knows we see echoes of
this now. But it comes down to the same thing - people like Angel or
like the SWAT team don't count for anything when compared to what
Holtz himself wants. And it is in this truth that we see the whole
thrust of this episode. In choosing his path, Holtz considers himself
as acting for the best. But because he lost his family and is
therefore cut off from ordinary human feeling and because he simply
does not care about anyone else, his path is one that is destructive
both of human life and human values. His is a path to evil. That he
treads that path with a (presumably soulless) demon tells us
something. That his intend is even more demonic than Sahjhan tells us
more.
The third moment of choice that Holtz faces is when he spares Angel in
the alley. There we saw him cradle his son to his chest just as Holtz
had cradled his own daughter. Family man looked at family man and
just as Darla had understood the pain that loss had caused Holtz so
too must Holtz have understood the love of a father for a child. When
he lowered the crossbow to Sahjhan's disgust it looked as though
finally Holtz had made that human connection once again. It seemed
that he understood the point of view of another father and in
compassion or in empathy had put aside his hatred. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The only difference between Sahjhan and Holtz
was that the former was so limited in his ambition. He just wanted
Angel dead. It is implied that he knew about the child but he didn't
tell Holtz. This suggests first of all that he thought it would make
a difference to Holtz desire for revenge and that secondly it didn't
even occur to Sahjhan to use the child to strike at Angel. In both
respects Holtz proved himself a more terrible enemy than the soulless
demon. As he watched Angel and his son get into the car and drive
away, Holtz put his desire for revenge in the following terms:
"I swore that I would show no mercy. And I won't."
The translation is that killing is too good for Angel. Holtz wants
something more and it isn't hard to guess what that might be. Would
there be anything more appropriate than killing Angel's family and
leaving him with an eternity of torment over that fact? And what does
that now say about Holtz? That even a new born child counts for
nothing except a pawn in his game and that he has now become exactly
like the thing he hated, right down to his willingness to destroy an
innocent family to send someone a message. Here Angel's warning
earlier seems almost prophetic:
Holtz: "What do you know of a soul."
Angel: "I know yours will be destroyed if you allow yourself to be
used in the service of evil. You're a good man, Holtz. A righteous man
and you're being used for some purpose other than justice."
The meaning of the counterpoint between Angel and Darla on the one
hand and Holtz on the other is so clear that I hardly need mention
Lilah here. But in her complete lack of concern over the fate of the
SWAT team and her willingness to blackmail the translator over the
fate of his family she is a worthy counterpart to Holtz. For her what
counts is her own job and her own safety. She doesn't care about
anyone else. Her inclusion therefore in the episode helps reinforce
the basic threads we see running through the treatment of Holtz as a
character. And it is in this treatment that we find the promise of
this season's arc.
Fighting A War
As I said in my overview of season 2, I think that the writers sold
themselves short in the way they handled the difference between
"fighting the good fight" and "fighting a war" in the episodes from
"Reunion" to "Epiphany". Angel's single minded determination to
pursue his revenge upon Wolfram and Hart without regard to
consequences is clearly a legacy of the vampire mindset which craves
the certainties and simplicities of an "anything goes" attitude that
is very different from the experience of humanity with its messy
connections between individuals and the consequences they involve.
And we are, I think, supposed to understand that Angel had fallen prey
to the instincts of the vampire and abandoned his connection with
humanity because he stopped helping people and instead sought to
destroy the enemy no matter who got hurt in the process. And I am
reinforced in that view by the obvious parallels between the
Angelbeast of the "Pylea arc" and beige Angel. The former was, I
think, clearly intended to symbolize the darkness that came over Angel
after "the Trial". But if that is the case then Angel himself would
necessarily become a major problem for Wesley, Cordelia and Gunn. If
we are to take seriously the idea that Angel's actions were the result
of "real darkness" then wouldn't he be a danger to the world? Wasn't
that the lesson of the vigilante cops scenario in "Thin Dead Line".
There we had the guardians of the civil populace go from fighting the
good fight to punishing evil out of a sense of anger and frustration
at their failure to control evil within the established rules. And in
their attempts to punish evil they became more and more indiscriminate
until they ended up harming those they were sworn to protect. But
there was no attempt to relate that scenario to Angel's situation.
And there was no attempt to relate the mission of the new Angel
Investigations to the actions of its former boss. But here we have
every promise that the writers will redeem the failure of season 2 to
address the full implications of the mindset we are now talking about.
Just like Angel in season 2 Holtz has now
(a) abandoned his mission to help people and instead is preoccupied
with revenge;
(b) shown his willingness to embrace any methods, no matter how
questionable, in the pursuit of his goal;
(c) severed the connection he once had with the world, not only in the
form of his friends and followers but in his deliberate suppression of
his own humanity, his capacity for empathy with others.
Moreover, although Angel could and should have gone a lot darker in
his beige period there were always going to be limits beyond which he
would not go. We might have seen him realistically kill Lilah or
Lindsey but not innocent bystanders. With Holtz there are no such
limitations, as his attitude to Angel's son shows only too clearly.
The idea of a good man who betrays his own ideals and through the evil
he does ends up as the very thing he fought is itself the highest form
of tragedy. But there is more to it than that here. After all it was
Angelus who helped create the circumstances in which Holtz began his
descent into darkness. Holtz must take responsibility for the choices
he makes but nevertheless Angel must feel he too owns some of that
responsibility and with it an obligation to try to save Holtz from
himself. And as he and now his son are Holtz's main targets, that
should create some powerful dilemmas for Angel.
Plot
The episode begins with the resolution of the cliff-hanger we were
left with at the end of "Quickening" with Angel confronting Holtz
across the floor of the "Hyperion". This is in fact the least
satisfactory part of the entire episode. First of all Angel is
quickly overpowered and in contrast to the chase needed to capture him
in Rome this is accomplished with the minimum of effort. Then Holtz
essentially does nothing. At least in Rome there was a purpose to
keeping Angelus alive. Here we get no impression of any purpose at
work. For example, when he asks whether killing Angel would bring
Darla running, he is thinking out loud. He clearly hasn't thought
things through. And because of this far from sensing a serious danger
to Angel now we get the impression of drift, of waiting for something
to turn up. Like all to many villains Holtz talks a good game but
when the time comes to act he still just talks. When he said:
"When I'm finished, he'll be dead."
My thought was: he'll have to wait a long time for that. Even when
invited by Lilah to get on with killing Angel while she went outside,
Holtz was more concerned to stop her from leaving than he was to hurt
the person he was here to kill.
The other thing that didn't work here was the way Angel made his
escape. It was certainly ingenious but I have difficulty in believing
that a grenade (which was probably an anti-personnel weapon anyway)
had enough explosives to blow him free of the metal restraints holding
him and through some elevator doors.
Having said that, I think we have also to accept that this
confrontation between Angel and Holtz was absolutely necessary, both
dramatically and thematically. By this stage Wolfram and Hart and the
Vampire cult have effectively ceased to be a threat to the child. The
vampire cult doesn't even appear and the lawyers have gone into damage
limitation mode. For Angel, therefore, the visible enemy for this
episode was now Holtz. He was the one to fear. So, he had to find
out about him before the rest of the plot could develop properly. And
Holtz for his part had also to find about Angel having a soul and
being more than the demon he had chased so long ago. Clearly the most
economical and dramatically satisfactory way for both developments to
be handled was in a face to face confrontation in which we can see
most clearly the reaction of each of the parties to the other. So,
from that point of view this scene is really little more than set up.
The real heart of the story actually begins elsewhere as Darla and the
others wait for Angel's return. And here and for the rest of the
episode the focus is on the welfare of the child. Dramatically
speaking therefore the success or otherwise of the episode depends on
two considerations:
(a) do we care about the safety of the child; and
(b) in any event do we believe that it's safety is really under
threat.
Normally the writers inclination in a case like this is simply to play
the "aw poor little baby" card for all it was worth. But in "Lullaby"
I think they have been cleverer than that. For two episodes now
Angel's son has been a trophy or a threat. Some people have written
it off as an impossibility, an unnatural event that shouldn't be
allowed to come to term. Others have been planning to capture it,
dissect it or just hit it on the head with a large heavy object. It
is in effect the underdog with really only one person wholly on its
side - and that is Angel. And rather than looking for sympathy for
the child based on sentimental feelings about a helpless little child
he has been complaining about the unfairness of a fate that uses human
beings as pawns or of people (including his friends) who jump to
conclusions about the child without giving it a chance. And certainly
this was the angle that struck a chord with me. So, yes I did find
myself caring about the survival of the child.
The second consideration I mentioned though was more problematic. As
we have seen, Holtz was the nemesis stalking Angel in this episode and
he was blissfully ignorant of the child's existence. He was after
Angel and Darla so the child was only collaterally in harm's way. It
is therefore quite hard to make Holtz a credible threat to him. The
writers' solution to this problem was ingenious. Darla's pregnancy
which had been progressing so naturally started to go wrong. As a
development this had great advantages. First of all it happened out
of the blue. Just when the major hurdles had been overcome - Angel
had escaped from Holtz and Wesley and the others had found a credible
sanctuary. Even if Holtz found them so long as the double protection
sanctorium spells worked they could come to no harm in Caritas, right?
But the threat to Darla's pregnancy was an enemy Angel could not
fight - there seemed no way to save the child because every effort to
do so would be negated by the forces protecting it. What we were left
with was the feeling that the child's end was an inevitability.
Certainly there was no obvious way out of the situation created. And
this was a feeling reinforced by the mixture of bravery and
hopelessness we saw in the conversations between Angel and Darla:
Angel: "I guess he figured he finally got your attention. You called
him a 'he.' I think that's the first time you've ever done that."
Darla: "He's dying. Isn't he?"
Angel: "No."
Darla: "You lied much better when you didn't have a soul. I can feel
the life slipping away from me."
But if this created a very real sense of impending tragedy, the
solution was equally powerful because it was so unexpected and so
shocking. The first thing that works about it is the context in which
it took place. Holtz attack was itself an enormous surprise because
even when he appeared at Caritas there seemed nothing he could do.
And I especially liked the way we had just enough time to understand
what was going on before the barrel explodes. This provided yet a
further complication to an already bad situation. Not only was Darla
crippled and the baby dying but now Angel and the others were under
attack as well. This therefore raised the stakes so much that the
gesture which resolved the danger became that much more important and
that much more powerful. Darla's sacrifice not only saved the baby
but allowed Angel and Fred the chance to escape - something they would
not otherwise have done. But that is not the only reason why it was
so effective dramatically. It was the very unexpectedness of it. We
had Angel and Fred left behind with Darla and refusing to move without
her. The baby was dying in the womb and Holtz was advancing on them.
There seemed no escape and the solution Darla hit upon was far from
obvious. I certainly hadn't thought about it. So, when it happened I
was taken completely by surprise and I thought that was great.
And equally effective was the final scene. I have already mentioned
this but it is worth doing so again. This time I did not doubt Holtz
intention was to kill. The attack on Caritas with the bomb was itself
evidence of this. The question was whether the sight of a father
cradling his son would persuade him to stay his hand. There was then
a long and very effective pause where the audience was held in
suspense waiting for an answer to its question. Then it seemed to get
one with Holtz doing the right thing and staying his hand only for his
final words to give an entirely different meaning to his actions. I
thought that was a very nice touch.
Of course the plotting is not without its problems. For example the
sequence of events after the attack on the club seemed rather
contrived. Even if the sanctorium spell hadn't prevented the
explosion wouldn't it have prevented any fighting within the club.
The why did Holtz enter alone and why did the Grapplar demons suddenly
appear in the alley. How did they know it was an escape route? But
this sort of careful choreography is always necessary to make a scene
work to its full effect dramatically and we needn't worry too much
about this. More problematic is why should Darla's pregnancy hit
problems now when she is so close to term. If the problem was really
that she wasn't a "life-giving vessel" as Wesley put it wouldn't
problems have manifested themselves before now. And if there was some
mystical power protecting the child why would it not do something
itself or even allow Wesley and the others to help? These questions
may have answers. It may be that as we learn more about the nature of
the pregnancy we will learn those answers. Just for now, as with the
pregnancy itself, we can afford to wait for the answers. But the more
important the child is to the season arc, the more important credible
answers to these question will be.
Overview
A (9/10): This is a very satisfying mixture of thoughtful and
interesting thematic work with a compelling storyline. The idea of a
man who believes that he is acting in the name of justice while at the
same time doing unequivocally evil things is a powerful one. This is
partly because of what it says about human nature and why people are
so ready to elevate abstract ideals above their fellow human beings.
But dramatically it also poses for Angel problems of an entirely
different nature to those he has faced before. He cannot disassociate
himself from responsibility for what Holtz is doing. Indeed he would
appear to have an obligation to help him. But he is precisely the
person least able to help Holtz. And in the meantime how can he
protect himself and his son without physically hurting him? In
"Epiphany" it had appeared that Angel had made a sort of peace with
his past. He didn't forget about it but instead of concentrating on
his own sins he decided to concentrate on helping others. Now we find
Angel's past returning not only to haunt him but to jeopardize the
only future he seems guaranteed - his son. How does he deal with this?
And in all of this the nature and purpose of Angel's son remain a
mystery, a mystery if anything deepened by the events of "Lullaby".
As yet the possibilities of this scenario are still only being hinted
at. So, while this episode features a strong and self contained
storyline which culminated in the birth of Angel's son, not least
among its achievements is the fact that this storyline was a vehicle
for setting up what promises to be the real conflict in this season's
arc.