(no subject)
Part 2 (of 3)
Uh….
But isn’t this the guy that doesn’t need a destiny? Specifically said Angel was welcome to it? Isn’t he the one who makes his own destiny? Sure, normally, but here he is, lost and lonely and suddenly, out of nowhere he has the offer of Angel’s job, Angel’s reputation and he can’t help but try it on. He’s like the geek who despises the popular kids and everything they stand for, wouldn’t be one for quids. But then one day for some reason they ask him to join their group, he gets the chance to be one of them. They’re everything he hates, it’s not what he wants or who he is but curiosity gets the better of him and he just can’t help but surrender and take the chance to see how the other half live. So Spike goes to the alley with his new best friend and finds a girl in peril and at the mercy of an evil vampire. Ever so politely Spike interrupts, draws the vampire away from the damsel and dusts him, no big deal. The girl is grateful, appreciative, full of fear and awe. If Spike is following Angel’s instruction manual then he will gather the young woman in his arms and offer her words of comfort and concern, see her to safety. Yeah, but Spike’s not following those rules:
Girl: Thank you! Thank you! That thing was gonna kill me!
Spike: Well, what do you expect? Out alone in this neighbourhood? I got half a mind to kill you myself, you half-wit.
Girl: What?!
Spike: I mean, honestly, what kind of retard wears heels like that in a dark alley? Take two steps, break your bloody ankle.
Girl: I was just trying to get home.
Spike: Well, get a cab, you moron….And on the way, if a stranger offers you candy, don't get in the van! Stupid cow.
It is here that we are shown that the mission doesn’t quite fit right. Sure Spike disposed of the vampire no problem but he had no patience for the stupidity and ignorance of the gal, he couldn’t ‘help the helpless’ with any degree of subtlety. And this is why it’s wrong; because Spike’s mission would never be the same as Angel’s was. In ‘City of Angels’ (A1.01) the real Doyle told Angel to ‘help the helpless’ because it would help him reconnect to humanity. Before there was any suggestion of the Shanshu this was Angel’s mission. But this has never been Spike’s problem - he’s maintained ties to humanity since he was turned, he’s kept the feelings and emotions, he’s associated with humans, sought their company, eats the food, drinks the grog, chose the soul. So while trying on Angel’s life might be interesting for a while, it will ultimately, not help Spike, whose immediate mission is to find out what he’s capable of without Buffy’s assistance. Spike is still not quite convinced. Women in danger are a dime a dozen in this town. Doyle advises him to be a little kinder next time:
Spike: Next time?
Lindsey/Doyle: Well, that's up to you. A lot more people need saving.
Spike: News flash Sparky: Don't need your help, been saving people long before you showed up.
Lindsey/Doyle: Not like this. You just helped a person when there wasn't anything in it for you. That's not like the Spike I know.
Spike: Oh, is that right? And what Spike is that?
Lindsey/Doyle: The Spike that's only out for himself. The one who does good deeds to impress...women.
Lindsey didn’t make it to the top at Wolfram and Hart for nothing. He’s smart. He knows what buttons to push. Spike has always been accused of being good, doing good for the ulterior motive of impressing Buffy. A reprisal of the accusation has Spike keen to prove otherwise. Lindsey’s almost got Spike where he wants him. One more move to make, chances are a mention of Angel will have the vampire jumping through hoops:
Lindsey/Doyle: I'm just sayin'. You did good. From what I hear Angel didn't save the girl on his first mission.
Spike: What's Angel got to do with this?
Lindsey/Doyle: Well... nothin'. Not anymore.
And . . . checkmate.
At Wolfram and Hart Fred has arrived on the scene to see what all the noise is about. Wes questions her as to the firm’s capacity to eliminate the target via satellite to which she replies:
Fred: Well, we do have an orbital-range microwave cannon up there, focuses the satellite's communications signals into a pinpoint beam. It can raise the temperature of the targeted area 1,000 degrees in less than five seconds. So, yeah, in theory, we could. That is, if we did that sort of thing…Do we do that sort of thing?
The others continue to debate. Angel interrupts, saying passionately:
Angel: Let's kill them all.
These words hark back to the very first episode of Buffy, (Welcome to the Hellmouth B1.01), to his very first conversation with the Slayer, when he was just new to the good-guy business:
Buffy: What do you want?
Angel: The same thing you do.
Buffy: Okay. What do I want?
Angel: To kill them. To kill them all.
It was simpler then, easier. He gave the girl the information, she did the leg work…but it wasn’t enough. He’s come so far, lost so much. He’s stuck in the perpetual grey area. No such thing as simple now, but oh how he wishes there was, wishes he could get back to basics; good versus evil, offing the monsters when they find them. Simple. Easy. But one word of caution from Wesley brings him back to reality. They must tread lightly, be careful, there’s too much at stake. Angel green lights Gunn’s plan with Wes’s as a backup option. The other three notice that Angel’s not looking so well and advise him to go and rest, sleep in late in the morning. They’ll handle everything.
In his apartment Angel shuffles towards his bed. He looks awful. Wes arrives and helps him to the couch. When Angel suggests that he might be sick Wes contradicts him saying that vampires don’t get sick and that his condition must be a consequence of having a lot on his mind and a reaction to having to adjust to the new situation. Situation, Angel asks in confusion. To which Wesley replies with frank honesty:
Wesley: Finally coming to grips with the truth... that you're irrelevant…. It's difficult to face, I know. But things could've been much worse. Spike's arrival's actually quite fortuitous. It'll make this a lot easier.
Wesley then stakes Angel in the chest putting him out of his misery. Again Angel wakens with a start to find he is sitting on the edge of his bed, alone. His conversation with Wes is his second anxiety dream, one in which he confronts his fear of being irrelevant to those who see him as their leader and friend. Wesley, not surprisingly, who has always been willing to make the tough decisions for the common good is the one who stakes him. Just doing what has to be done. But it is the use of the word ‘fortuitous’ that is really telling. According to Wesley, Spike’s arrival is fortuitous; a lucky accident that saves them from having no champion or hero of the hour because Angel had already lost his mission and lost his purpose long before Spike arrived on the scene. Spike’s arrival didn’t cause Angel’s loss of identity but it did save things from being much worse. Angel’s purpose left his world with Connor and Cordelia and in his dream he recognises this but sees death as the only solution.
When we next join Spike we discover that he has thrown himself into his new job. He fights vampires, rescues the helpless, embraces the gadgetry in a scene deliberately reminiscent of the early episodes of Angel season one. He’s almost ready to believe he can take the part, fill the role, do the job. “Who are you?” a freshly rescued woman asks. “The hero” Spike acknowledges, albeit softly. Damn, a fella could get used to this!
Wes intercepts Eve on her way to disturb Angel. She has a particular rune-covered relic that apparently has the senior partners in a spin and they’re giving her grief about. Wes promises to take care of it pronto. Harmony overhears and being the efficient personal assistant that she is, is quick to point out that ANYTHING to do with the senior partners or runes is supposed to be reported directly to Angel immediately. Wes overrides her saying that they don’t need to bother him until they have some definite answers. Angel deserves some peace and quiet.
If only! Angel is not restful at all. He’s sleeping but it seems feverish and he’s groaning in pain and discomfort. Fred arrives and assesses him as looking terrible. Angel mumbles that he thinks something is wrong to which Fred offers her scientific services, or in layman’s terms, she decides to ‘take a look under the hood’ as she snaps on surgical gloves in a slightly maniacal fashion. The setting instantly changes from Angel’s apartment to Fred’s lab. Fred takes a surgical scalpel and slices a still conscious Angel open in a long vertical cut causing him to gasp in pain, fear and confusion. Fred pulls out various bodily organs saying:
Fred: Oh, don't worry. You're a vampire. You don't need this stuff anyway. Probably should've had it removed a long time ago
He’s a vampire, so easy to forget sometimes. Livers, kidneys, and the like are all pretty much useless for a vampire; unnecessary, pointless. He’ll never have the need for them again, it’s not like he’ll ever be human. She pulls out his heart:
Fred: Ah! There's your heart. Hey! What do you know? It is a dried-up little walnut.
That’s exactly what Number Five said. Warned him his heart was nothing special. Next, Fred pulls out a sting of pearls and puts them round her neck. Pearls; precious gems born out of irritation - so much irritation inside of Angel that he could produce a whole string. .And raisins, Fred takes out some raisins, dried up little fruits and eats them just as Connor, the fruit of his loins, has been taken and eaten, first as a little baby into a hell dimension, then as a consequence of all those surrendered memories. No more chances to produce another, dried up, miracles exhausted. And a licence plate that came up the Gulf Stream and somehow ended up inside him. It’s a deliberate ‘Jaws’ analogy, one cold, soulless killer to another, a reminder that Angelus is him no matter how much he tries to pretend otherwise. Fred reaches deep inside him, struggles momentarily but eventually pulls out his soul; it’s a cloudy-looking fishbowl with a long-dead goldfish floating on the surface. His much prized, legendary soul, the thing that makes him unique (well, almost) is in dire need of flushing (washing out or disposal - either connotation could be correct). She hands the bowl over to ‘bear’, not a real bear but a football mascot type of man-in-a-suit kind of bear. This, for me at least, causes the recall of the BtVS episode ‘Pangs’ (B4.08) in which Buffy fights a Native American spirit who takes the form of a bear. It’s not really the bear that’s so important but the fact that this episode firmly established Angel as an outsider to Buffy and her Scoobies. It is also the episode that marks Spike’s tentative transferral to the inside, into her ‘family’. The group that sits down to Thanksgiving dinner in that episode are her core team until the end. They form a unit, a fist. A family. Angel’s tried, he’s tried to make that family, he even had it for a while, but now…it’s like a man-in-a-suit type family, an imitation, not the real thing and it pales in comparison. Fred finishes her examination and is perplexed. She can’t find anything wrong except that he’s empty, a shell. So empty she can hear the ocean in that hollow cavity.
Dreams in the Buffyverse have, on many occasions been written to have prophetic qualities. Buffy, coming from a long line of worthies, connected to the visions and all often finds important clues in her dreams as to what’s going to happen or what she should do. The masterpiece dream episode, Restless (B4.22) provides a blueprint for the remainder of the series as well as bridging to what has gone before. The dreams in Soul Purpose certainly take on some prophetic attributes, particularly this one featuring Fred. It neatly foreshadows Fred’s demise via infection by the demon king Illyria, who uses her hollowed out shell as his Earthly vessel. Pip at Tea at the Ford in her excellent post The old king dreaming, the young prince doing not only discusses similarities between Soul Purpose and Shakespeare’s Henry IV part one, but also discusses the possibility, through analogy with particular Greek myths, that the pearls and raisins extracted from Angel might possibly symbolise and foreshadow some hope for Fred that she might have, in future unmade episodes, somehow fought back from the dominance of the beast that usurped her body. In an upcoming dream Gunn features with animalistic eyes, heckling Angel from the audience. This may have also been some intentional foreshadowing as there is some suggestion that in the hypothetical season six, Charles was to have been the ‘big bad’ for the season after being turned into a vampire (and this certainly seems to have been the case as Charles was turned into a vampire is the comic continuation of Angel, Angel: After the Fall written by Brian Lynch and based on the story ideas of Joss Whedon).
…But back to Angel. The dream is disturbing, makes him face his worst fears, biggest regrets, yet he doesn’t find it so easy to wake from this one. He remains in bed, slightly delirious from pain and fever.
Downstairs its business as usual; Eve’s relic is the hot topic of conversation until Gunn walks in with a report. A vigilante, a vampire, working the streets, took out two vamps at a gas station then invited the ladies he saved out for a drink. They knew Angel was unwell but has he gone crazy too? Charles directs them to the description of the crusader; medium build, black leather coat, platinum blonde hair. No more information required.
Lindsey/Doyle takes Spike to a sparse but serviceable basement apartment. No direct sunlight, sewer entrance for daytime travel and there’s a Korean market on the corner and its Spike’s, if he wants it. Spike’s not keen. Not keen on the place, not keen on being provided for - might mean obligation. Seeing his hesitation Lindsey/Doyle says:
Lindsey/Doyle: You want creature comforts? You can go to Wolfram & Hart. This place has everything you need to be a hero. The job requires somewhat of a... Spartan existence.
Having nowhere else to go, Spike agrees, grudgingly, with one final complaint:
Spike: You call that a bed?
Lindsey/Doyle: Well, it's not like you're gonna be sharing it with anyone any time soon.
But then we cut back to Angel, he’s still feverish, still in bed but he’s not alone. He turns over and sees Spike beside him, in the bed. But Spike’s not alone either. Beneath him is a blonde woman and they are engaged in sexual intercourse. Angel is shocked. The girl has hair all over her face but we hear Buffy’s voice, stolen from an earlier episode, say “every time I say the word prom, you get grouchy!” Angel starts putting two and two together but jumps to a strange conclusion:
Angel: You're taking Buffy to the prom?
On the surface this dream is about Angel’s belief that Spike has ‘stolen’ Buffy from him, just as he’s ‘stolen’ Angel’s destiny. But like his destiny, Spike had nothing to do with it. The alterations in Buffy’s love and affection for Angel are a result of his own actions. In ‘The Prom’ (B3.20) (the episode from which Buffy’s featured sound bites are taken) Angel actually breaks up with Buffy prior to taking her to the end of school dance. It’s in this episode that he tells her he’s leaving Sunnydale as soon as the Mayor has been defeated. This is his solution to the deficiencies in their relationship and his own need for purpose in his life. The decision is admirable and valid, no argument there, but it is his departure that signals the end of his romantic relationship with Buffy, not Spike’s arrival and not the subsequent development of a different and unique relationship between Buffy and Spike over the following four years. Again, Angel’s choices are what have bought him to his present predicament, not the actions of others. This dream might also be interpreted as sub-conscious recognition of the intimacy of Buffy and Spike’s relationship that Angel has always made a determined point of denying.
Continuedhere
Uh….
But isn’t this the guy that doesn’t need a destiny? Specifically said Angel was welcome to it? Isn’t he the one who makes his own destiny? Sure, normally, but here he is, lost and lonely and suddenly, out of nowhere he has the offer of Angel’s job, Angel’s reputation and he can’t help but try it on. He’s like the geek who despises the popular kids and everything they stand for, wouldn’t be one for quids. But then one day for some reason they ask him to join their group, he gets the chance to be one of them. They’re everything he hates, it’s not what he wants or who he is but curiosity gets the better of him and he just can’t help but surrender and take the chance to see how the other half live. So Spike goes to the alley with his new best friend and finds a girl in peril and at the mercy of an evil vampire. Ever so politely Spike interrupts, draws the vampire away from the damsel and dusts him, no big deal. The girl is grateful, appreciative, full of fear and awe. If Spike is following Angel’s instruction manual then he will gather the young woman in his arms and offer her words of comfort and concern, see her to safety. Yeah, but Spike’s not following those rules:
Girl: Thank you! Thank you! That thing was gonna kill me!
Spike: Well, what do you expect? Out alone in this neighbourhood? I got half a mind to kill you myself, you half-wit.
Girl: What?!
Spike: I mean, honestly, what kind of retard wears heels like that in a dark alley? Take two steps, break your bloody ankle.
Girl: I was just trying to get home.
Spike: Well, get a cab, you moron….And on the way, if a stranger offers you candy, don't get in the van! Stupid cow.
It is here that we are shown that the mission doesn’t quite fit right. Sure Spike disposed of the vampire no problem but he had no patience for the stupidity and ignorance of the gal, he couldn’t ‘help the helpless’ with any degree of subtlety. And this is why it’s wrong; because Spike’s mission would never be the same as Angel’s was. In ‘City of Angels’ (A1.01) the real Doyle told Angel to ‘help the helpless’ because it would help him reconnect to humanity. Before there was any suggestion of the Shanshu this was Angel’s mission. But this has never been Spike’s problem - he’s maintained ties to humanity since he was turned, he’s kept the feelings and emotions, he’s associated with humans, sought their company, eats the food, drinks the grog, chose the soul. So while trying on Angel’s life might be interesting for a while, it will ultimately, not help Spike, whose immediate mission is to find out what he’s capable of without Buffy’s assistance. Spike is still not quite convinced. Women in danger are a dime a dozen in this town. Doyle advises him to be a little kinder next time:
Spike: Next time?
Lindsey/Doyle: Well, that's up to you. A lot more people need saving.
Spike: News flash Sparky: Don't need your help, been saving people long before you showed up.
Lindsey/Doyle: Not like this. You just helped a person when there wasn't anything in it for you. That's not like the Spike I know.
Spike: Oh, is that right? And what Spike is that?
Lindsey/Doyle: The Spike that's only out for himself. The one who does good deeds to impress...women.
Lindsey didn’t make it to the top at Wolfram and Hart for nothing. He’s smart. He knows what buttons to push. Spike has always been accused of being good, doing good for the ulterior motive of impressing Buffy. A reprisal of the accusation has Spike keen to prove otherwise. Lindsey’s almost got Spike where he wants him. One more move to make, chances are a mention of Angel will have the vampire jumping through hoops:
Lindsey/Doyle: I'm just sayin'. You did good. From what I hear Angel didn't save the girl on his first mission.
Spike: What's Angel got to do with this?
Lindsey/Doyle: Well... nothin'. Not anymore.
And . . . checkmate.
At Wolfram and Hart Fred has arrived on the scene to see what all the noise is about. Wes questions her as to the firm’s capacity to eliminate the target via satellite to which she replies:
Fred: Well, we do have an orbital-range microwave cannon up there, focuses the satellite's communications signals into a pinpoint beam. It can raise the temperature of the targeted area 1,000 degrees in less than five seconds. So, yeah, in theory, we could. That is, if we did that sort of thing…Do we do that sort of thing?
The others continue to debate. Angel interrupts, saying passionately:
Angel: Let's kill them all.
These words hark back to the very first episode of Buffy, (Welcome to the Hellmouth B1.01), to his very first conversation with the Slayer, when he was just new to the good-guy business:
Buffy: What do you want?
Angel: The same thing you do.
Buffy: Okay. What do I want?
Angel: To kill them. To kill them all.
It was simpler then, easier. He gave the girl the information, she did the leg work…but it wasn’t enough. He’s come so far, lost so much. He’s stuck in the perpetual grey area. No such thing as simple now, but oh how he wishes there was, wishes he could get back to basics; good versus evil, offing the monsters when they find them. Simple. Easy. But one word of caution from Wesley brings him back to reality. They must tread lightly, be careful, there’s too much at stake. Angel green lights Gunn’s plan with Wes’s as a backup option. The other three notice that Angel’s not looking so well and advise him to go and rest, sleep in late in the morning. They’ll handle everything.
In his apartment Angel shuffles towards his bed. He looks awful. Wes arrives and helps him to the couch. When Angel suggests that he might be sick Wes contradicts him saying that vampires don’t get sick and that his condition must be a consequence of having a lot on his mind and a reaction to having to adjust to the new situation. Situation, Angel asks in confusion. To which Wesley replies with frank honesty:
Wesley: Finally coming to grips with the truth... that you're irrelevant…. It's difficult to face, I know. But things could've been much worse. Spike's arrival's actually quite fortuitous. It'll make this a lot easier.
Wesley then stakes Angel in the chest putting him out of his misery. Again Angel wakens with a start to find he is sitting on the edge of his bed, alone. His conversation with Wes is his second anxiety dream, one in which he confronts his fear of being irrelevant to those who see him as their leader and friend. Wesley, not surprisingly, who has always been willing to make the tough decisions for the common good is the one who stakes him. Just doing what has to be done. But it is the use of the word ‘fortuitous’ that is really telling. According to Wesley, Spike’s arrival is fortuitous; a lucky accident that saves them from having no champion or hero of the hour because Angel had already lost his mission and lost his purpose long before Spike arrived on the scene. Spike’s arrival didn’t cause Angel’s loss of identity but it did save things from being much worse. Angel’s purpose left his world with Connor and Cordelia and in his dream he recognises this but sees death as the only solution.
When we next join Spike we discover that he has thrown himself into his new job. He fights vampires, rescues the helpless, embraces the gadgetry in a scene deliberately reminiscent of the early episodes of Angel season one. He’s almost ready to believe he can take the part, fill the role, do the job. “Who are you?” a freshly rescued woman asks. “The hero” Spike acknowledges, albeit softly. Damn, a fella could get used to this!
Wes intercepts Eve on her way to disturb Angel. She has a particular rune-covered relic that apparently has the senior partners in a spin and they’re giving her grief about. Wes promises to take care of it pronto. Harmony overhears and being the efficient personal assistant that she is, is quick to point out that ANYTHING to do with the senior partners or runes is supposed to be reported directly to Angel immediately. Wes overrides her saying that they don’t need to bother him until they have some definite answers. Angel deserves some peace and quiet.
If only! Angel is not restful at all. He’s sleeping but it seems feverish and he’s groaning in pain and discomfort. Fred arrives and assesses him as looking terrible. Angel mumbles that he thinks something is wrong to which Fred offers her scientific services, or in layman’s terms, she decides to ‘take a look under the hood’ as she snaps on surgical gloves in a slightly maniacal fashion. The setting instantly changes from Angel’s apartment to Fred’s lab. Fred takes a surgical scalpel and slices a still conscious Angel open in a long vertical cut causing him to gasp in pain, fear and confusion. Fred pulls out various bodily organs saying:
Fred: Oh, don't worry. You're a vampire. You don't need this stuff anyway. Probably should've had it removed a long time ago
He’s a vampire, so easy to forget sometimes. Livers, kidneys, and the like are all pretty much useless for a vampire; unnecessary, pointless. He’ll never have the need for them again, it’s not like he’ll ever be human. She pulls out his heart:
Fred: Ah! There's your heart. Hey! What do you know? It is a dried-up little walnut.
That’s exactly what Number Five said. Warned him his heart was nothing special. Next, Fred pulls out a sting of pearls and puts them round her neck. Pearls; precious gems born out of irritation - so much irritation inside of Angel that he could produce a whole string. .And raisins, Fred takes out some raisins, dried up little fruits and eats them just as Connor, the fruit of his loins, has been taken and eaten, first as a little baby into a hell dimension, then as a consequence of all those surrendered memories. No more chances to produce another, dried up, miracles exhausted. And a licence plate that came up the Gulf Stream and somehow ended up inside him. It’s a deliberate ‘Jaws’ analogy, one cold, soulless killer to another, a reminder that Angelus is him no matter how much he tries to pretend otherwise. Fred reaches deep inside him, struggles momentarily but eventually pulls out his soul; it’s a cloudy-looking fishbowl with a long-dead goldfish floating on the surface. His much prized, legendary soul, the thing that makes him unique (well, almost) is in dire need of flushing (washing out or disposal - either connotation could be correct). She hands the bowl over to ‘bear’, not a real bear but a football mascot type of man-in-a-suit kind of bear. This, for me at least, causes the recall of the BtVS episode ‘Pangs’ (B4.08) in which Buffy fights a Native American spirit who takes the form of a bear. It’s not really the bear that’s so important but the fact that this episode firmly established Angel as an outsider to Buffy and her Scoobies. It is also the episode that marks Spike’s tentative transferral to the inside, into her ‘family’. The group that sits down to Thanksgiving dinner in that episode are her core team until the end. They form a unit, a fist. A family. Angel’s tried, he’s tried to make that family, he even had it for a while, but now…it’s like a man-in-a-suit type family, an imitation, not the real thing and it pales in comparison. Fred finishes her examination and is perplexed. She can’t find anything wrong except that he’s empty, a shell. So empty she can hear the ocean in that hollow cavity.
Dreams in the Buffyverse have, on many occasions been written to have prophetic qualities. Buffy, coming from a long line of worthies, connected to the visions and all often finds important clues in her dreams as to what’s going to happen or what she should do. The masterpiece dream episode, Restless (B4.22) provides a blueprint for the remainder of the series as well as bridging to what has gone before. The dreams in Soul Purpose certainly take on some prophetic attributes, particularly this one featuring Fred. It neatly foreshadows Fred’s demise via infection by the demon king Illyria, who uses her hollowed out shell as his Earthly vessel. Pip at Tea at the Ford in her excellent post The old king dreaming, the young prince doing not only discusses similarities between Soul Purpose and Shakespeare’s Henry IV part one, but also discusses the possibility, through analogy with particular Greek myths, that the pearls and raisins extracted from Angel might possibly symbolise and foreshadow some hope for Fred that she might have, in future unmade episodes, somehow fought back from the dominance of the beast that usurped her body. In an upcoming dream Gunn features with animalistic eyes, heckling Angel from the audience. This may have also been some intentional foreshadowing as there is some suggestion that in the hypothetical season six, Charles was to have been the ‘big bad’ for the season after being turned into a vampire (and this certainly seems to have been the case as Charles was turned into a vampire is the comic continuation of Angel, Angel: After the Fall written by Brian Lynch and based on the story ideas of Joss Whedon).
…But back to Angel. The dream is disturbing, makes him face his worst fears, biggest regrets, yet he doesn’t find it so easy to wake from this one. He remains in bed, slightly delirious from pain and fever.
Downstairs its business as usual; Eve’s relic is the hot topic of conversation until Gunn walks in with a report. A vigilante, a vampire, working the streets, took out two vamps at a gas station then invited the ladies he saved out for a drink. They knew Angel was unwell but has he gone crazy too? Charles directs them to the description of the crusader; medium build, black leather coat, platinum blonde hair. No more information required.
Lindsey/Doyle takes Spike to a sparse but serviceable basement apartment. No direct sunlight, sewer entrance for daytime travel and there’s a Korean market on the corner and its Spike’s, if he wants it. Spike’s not keen. Not keen on the place, not keen on being provided for - might mean obligation. Seeing his hesitation Lindsey/Doyle says:
Lindsey/Doyle: You want creature comforts? You can go to Wolfram & Hart. This place has everything you need to be a hero. The job requires somewhat of a... Spartan existence.
Having nowhere else to go, Spike agrees, grudgingly, with one final complaint:
Spike: You call that a bed?
Lindsey/Doyle: Well, it's not like you're gonna be sharing it with anyone any time soon.
But then we cut back to Angel, he’s still feverish, still in bed but he’s not alone. He turns over and sees Spike beside him, in the bed. But Spike’s not alone either. Beneath him is a blonde woman and they are engaged in sexual intercourse. Angel is shocked. The girl has hair all over her face but we hear Buffy’s voice, stolen from an earlier episode, say “every time I say the word prom, you get grouchy!” Angel starts putting two and two together but jumps to a strange conclusion:
Angel: You're taking Buffy to the prom?
On the surface this dream is about Angel’s belief that Spike has ‘stolen’ Buffy from him, just as he’s ‘stolen’ Angel’s destiny. But like his destiny, Spike had nothing to do with it. The alterations in Buffy’s love and affection for Angel are a result of his own actions. In ‘The Prom’ (B3.20) (the episode from which Buffy’s featured sound bites are taken) Angel actually breaks up with Buffy prior to taking her to the end of school dance. It’s in this episode that he tells her he’s leaving Sunnydale as soon as the Mayor has been defeated. This is his solution to the deficiencies in their relationship and his own need for purpose in his life. The decision is admirable and valid, no argument there, but it is his departure that signals the end of his romantic relationship with Buffy, not Spike’s arrival and not the subsequent development of a different and unique relationship between Buffy and Spike over the following four years. Again, Angel’s choices are what have bought him to his present predicament, not the actions of others. This dream might also be interpreted as sub-conscious recognition of the intimacy of Buffy and Spike’s relationship that Angel has always made a determined point of denying.
Continuedhere