Angel 5x04 - Hellbound
Randomness: someone just compared Lilah and Eve to Catwoman (Batman Returns) and Batgirl (Batman and Robin), and I was immediately all, "I liked both of them, too." I mean, it's not that I didn't like Lilah, but I don't dislike Eve. To me, the liking of one has nothing to do with the liking of the other. Though this wasn't always the case. I hated Angel partly because I loved Xander so much. And Angel was the guy that Buffy chose, so I hated him for Xander.
And I stopped watching Angel when they killed Doyle and brought in Wes. Though I did get over that fairly quickly, as Wesley totally won my heart in S2.
It makes sense to me that Wesley doesn't seem to have a lot to do. He's out of place. He has no reason to be there. He can't remember his reason (Lilah), so he's foundering. Wes is seriously lacking in direction this year.
And Angel's lacking in any kind of hope, which is a sad thing. He's been utterly disillusioned by the last two years. Killed his son... and yeah, he thinks he did the right thing, but he's never going to forget slashing his son with a knife. Just like Buffy never forgot sticking a sword into Angel.
But Wesley isn't allowed to remember chopping Lilah's head off. Seems unfair. Horrible things need to be remembered, sometimes. If we forget the past, we'll only repeat it.
You can't be saved by a lie. You can't wash away blood - it doesn't come out, not all the way. You can cover it over, but it'll always be there.
Like I said in my other post, it makes sense for Angel to hang out with Eve, even though he was resisting that a month ago. She's the only one who knows about Connor. Even though he's forbidden her to speak of it, it must eat him up just a little bit more when someone who knows is with him. And Angel knows that he deserves hell and torment and every ounce of pain that comes his way. He's killed and he's destroyed lives and no matter what he does, he can't undo all the pain he caused. Holtz and Connor brought that home to him, I think. He destroyed Holtz's life and it kicked him in the face (much like Anya's vengeance demon past is what prompted her life to unravel in Hell's Bells). Actions have consequences, even if they take centuries to take effect. The wheel always comes 'round. So the pain that he visited on others came back to haunt him and now he's using the pain visited on him to haunt others.
Angel doesn't have faith anymore. The Higher Powers were screwing with him the whole time. They were using him, using Cordy, using his son.
So the ends justify the means, because no matter what means he uses, they won't make a difference - he already believes himself to be damned. So why not kill the evil? Why not trap a man for all eternity? It takes evil out of the world and it doesn't matter if it stains a soul already too tarnished to meet the Shining Gates. Once you've mixed in the black, you can never get back to white - you only have shades of grey. Of course, Angel should remember this in regards to Connor - just because he used white-out over Connor's life doesn't mean that the blood-red ink of the evil that Connor did is gone. It's just covered over. I doubt that W&H could bring the virgin back to life. She's still dead, and he still killed her, and his soul still carries that burden - in Angel's own belief system, he damned his own son and doesn't even know it.
Spike may be the one threatened with Hell in this episode, but Angel's the one certain that he'll go there. And it's not just for the evil that Angelus did, now. Angel's done plenty of evil as Angel to qualify in his own mind.