Angel: They Who Fight With Monsters.
by Mala
February 26, 2004.

I haven't watched quite a few of the episodes during this fifth and final season of Angel. I always manage to find something else to do or fall asleep before turning to the WB as an option of entertainment. After being chided by my brother, who claims that this is the Best Season Ever, I finally made myself stay awake and watch last night's show.

I have to tell you, I wasn't enthused by the summary.

Fred gets an illness and the boys rally around her.

Yawn.

Like many Angel watchers, Fred didn't *move* me much. Her post-Pylea arc, with her stepping back into the world, and then the emergence of Freddie Sue... it didn't leave me cold, but it didn't warm me up either. Not until the *real* Fred began to emerge, that vicious, tenacious, more-than-slightly insane genius who thought nothing of killing the professor who had sent her to Hell...did I begin to understand and appreciate the character.

Not until last night did I fully understand her position at AI, her role in the arc, and why these guys seem to worship her so much.

I forgot that old fandom saying..."In Joss we trust."

I also forgot the old Nietsche quote... "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

At first glance, the running joke about the cavemen versus the astronauts seems silly and trite...but there is a *very* real theme there. When Fred, weakly, says, "The cavemen...the cavemen win...", she is acknowledging the victory of older powers over modern technology. Not only is this a lesson about AI's general fight in the episode and this entire season since they've joined up with Wolfram & Hart, but it's also indicative of the *very* different directions of Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Reiterating that gorgeous image from the end of "Damage", with all those unarmed Slayers taking one of their own back from a group of guys with heavy artillery.

No one can deny that Buffy ended on a high note despite the losses incurred. We learned that no matter *what* happens, your core of strength, the strength that has always existed, will save you. You have your friends, you have each other, and you will survive.

On Angel, I think we're learning a far darker lesson. One where no matter how hard you fight, it's a losing battle. One where no matter what you do, you can never quite erase your past sins. Every single person has a monster inside them that they must contend with.

Angel came to Los Angeles five years ago to try and change things, to "fight the good fight", and no matter how the cast of characters changes, someone is always at risk, the need to save your friends doesn't always win, and people die or are lost. Doyle, Darla, Connor, Cordelia, and now Fred.

Yes, bringing it back to Fred. Why is saving Fred so important? Well, first and foremost, they just lost Cordelia and they cannot lose another person. Tracing it back, I always got the sense that Amy Acker was brought in to fill the void that Charisma was going to leave. That sense probably made a lot of people resistent to Fred and perpetuated the Freddie Sue syndrome. However, to me, Fred is the glue that keeps AI together. Yes, Cordelia had that role before, but I don't see Fred as a replacement or a rerun of Cordelia's storylines. Somebody has to be the glue. Somebody has to be the person constantly in that situation.

Nowhere was that more obvious than in Fred's simple statement of "You're my boys," to Wesley. Yes, they have a deeply psychotic/pedophiliac romantic love...yadda yadda yadda... that's not the point. Fred is like a den mother to a Angel, to Spike, to Wesley, to Gunn, to Lorne. She is a combination of science geek, dear friend, warrior woman (hence Joss's in-joke nod to Ripley in the Alien franchise at the beginning of the episode), and lover. She is both their goddess and their contemporary, their center and their child.

It's *supposed* to be more than a little wrong, more than a little skeevy...because every time they lose someone, it gets a little more desperate, and far worse for their cause.

If I haven't made you vomit yet, Xander was a carpenter, remember? The Christ figure who tamed the witch? Joss positions Xander and Fred in much the same way. Buffy, Willow, Anya...they had the powers. They were the Big Damn Heroes. But they were Xander's girls. He kept them together. He was their rock. No matter what romantic entanglements got involved. Xander and Fred have no powers...and, yet, to their group, they are the most valuable. To their group, THEY are the heroes. For their courage, for hanging in there, for simply existing as a counterbalance.

Joss, for whatever reason, has always had a love affair with these two characters and I may not always get it, but I do understand the fundamental *why*.

Fred being overtaken by Illyria is like Caleb gouging out Xander's eye...except worse. Xander was still there. Xander could still see. We *watched* Fred's eyes ice over. Fred is lost...and, once again, the demons win. That is a message that has been brewing for quite a while. This idea of the old "cavemen", the ancients, being stronger than Angel. I kept thinking, last night, that Buffy beat Glory. Buffy's sacrifice for Dawn *worked*. Why? Because she *could* sacrifice just herself, easily. For Angel...he has to weigh the lives of thousands. Spike, too. Both of them were weighed down heavily by this dilemma. It mirrors what happened with Jasmine, too...with that idea of the lives of thousands versus the lives of one. Far be it from me to go all Captain Kirk.

Angel and the rest of Fred's boys, the rest of the heroes she walked with, they're in a terrible place...and THEY got themselves there. The choices they made to save the people they loved...Darla, Connor, Cordelia, etc... didn't *work*.

In the end, for all the talk of Angel and Spike being champions, they stood on a bridge, helpless, staring through the hole at New Zealand, with their hands tied. In the end, all the music in the world couldn't soothe Lorne's inner savage beast. In the end, all of Gunn's special brainiac knowledge was useless...and he had to revert to his muscle, his brute strength, to come to terms with his failure. It was startlingly easy, wasn't it? In the end, even "Book Man", with his learning and his deep devotion, couldn't save the woman he loved...and he read to her from A Little Princess, a story about a girl who thought she didn't belong but eventually found her true place.

Fred found her true place...but she didn't get to stay. "Why...why can't I stay?"

Because, sometimes, you just can't. No matter how many resources you have at your disposal, no matter how many evil flunkies you shoot in the kneecap and how many fights you have with yourself and the forces of good and evil, no matter how noble your cause...you can't stay.

God, that's depressing.

But that's Angel. Shades of grey. Choices made. The struggle with the evil within.

Sometimes, the good fight isn't so good...and sometimes, there's no fight.
 
Angel can't jump off the platform and close the vortex.

He can't call upon the spirit of Slayers everywhere to rise up.

I'm reminded of "Primeval", of Buffy's friends all offering something from within themselves to destroy Adam and the Initiative. Cavemen versus Astronauts. What do you do when the combined talents of your group does...nothing?

So, where do they go from here?

Into the abyss?

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