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• Angel: How much is he the boss of his team, and how much just an individual presence? While he talks to Wesley and tries to help him in this episode, he finishes by allowing him to continue to work with Illyria. He cannot control him as a member of a team, as was shown when Wesley's lack of trust spurred him to break the Window of Orlon.
  
• Hamilton: He reminds Angel of how he plays within the larger team of Wolfram and Hart. Angel isn't interested in kowtowing to the Senior Partners, but he is also aware of keeping the company afloat. He ends up in the episode caught bewtween two stools: Hamilton reminding him of the company's interests, and Gunn having a prolonged tussle with his conscience. And eventually, he rejects both sides of the scales, and goes with something Illyria has taught him. Mor eon that later
  
• Gunn: How does he fit in to this corporate team? By not telling Angel and Spike about the sacrifice he had to make in 'Underneath', he ended as rather a Lone Wolf. Now back, he doesn't understand quite how to fit in to Angel's premiership. His fear that what seems to be careful, solid administration is actually relentless Evil is crystallised in the brilliant parallel with his suburban hell. It was not the basement which was the worst part, it was the seeping terror of the iced-cake perfect family. Here at Wolfram and Hart it's the same. Gunn would be more grimly satisfied if he could see what harm others was inflicting, but here in the airy offices it's a nameless, intangible fear.
  
• Illyria: Eventually, she does act as a part of a team. She regains Gunn at no obvious gain to herself. And she allows herself, more or less, to be reduced in power by Wesley at the end, on the understanding that she will not be killed. Perhaps even someone who 'serves no master but their own ambition', Angel thinks, can be a team player. And he starts transfering that message to his own situation.
  

3 Betrayal

Wesley now knows that he has betrayed Angel in the past. But also, in breaking the window, he doubled his betrayal, directly disobeying Angel once again. In breaking the window, he also betrayed Illyria, who thinks of him as subject. 'You are my betrayer', she intones, before expanding, 'In my time betrayal was thought of as a neutral word, like 'water' or 'breeze'. There is a definite stigma attached to betrayal now- the betrayal of Judas, of Brutus, of Macbeth. Here Illyria uses it to mean something with a slightly different gradation of meaning. Since in her world, it was all self-serving nightmares, everyone looked to their own achievement. If in doing so, someone else was sleighted, that was a betrayal, neither morally good nor reprehensible. So here Illyria's message to Wesley is that if he does not treat Angel as his master, then betrayal as a negative becomes more of a moot point- and could be considered merely 'vaulting ambition' or Machiavellian power politics.

Meanwhile, Gunn is considering how he's betraying his own conscience, and the Fell Brethren are uncovered in their plan to betray the pregnant lady's son- there was to be a ritual sacrifice at age thirteen, just as he began to be his own person.

4. The cult of celebrity

This is elegantly done in what, notionally, is the A-plot of the episode. We see the lady, so delighted by the prospect of her son being famous, and achieving some kind of celebrated iconic status, merely by birth, that she concludes: 'They have a better life than I could ever give him.' Balderdash and chicanery, of course, for she overlooks the fact that the most important thing about being brought up is love and self-interest. In the obsessed, Reality TV age of the 21stcentury, a passing waft of fame, sweet exotic marijuana smoke from a different block, seems like the ultimate reward and is somehow the goal of every parent for their child. Eventually, as the Fell Brethren's metaphor has it in black and white, they will sacrifice you on an altar, using your eventual failure as inches in tittle-tattle press columns. This is something Angel needs to remember as well. He can prove himself to be a good man, even as a vampire. But his destiny is not written in the stars from Day One, and as long as he believes that Shanshu is his Destiny and his right, he is prone to being mown down by fate's bemused whims.

Just a few quite delicious lines here:

-I still like him better than Eve. A Lorne/writer-audience moment. Lorne is much better used in this episode, which really juggles the regular characters with excellent vim and vigour.

-'Curing cancer?' 'Probably wouldn't be cost-effective' 'Right. The patent-holder's a client'. Genius.

And the final lesson Angel learns, is to serve his own ambition. This is a more bitter epiphany than both, since its immediate consequence is to look as if he's going along with Hamilton over Gunn in the Conscience/Conquest dichotomy. Actually, it's somewhere a little more morally ambiguous than that. In signing the baby over, Angel is doing what serves his own path of least resistance to power, and his own belief in his own Destiny. Though this isn't healthy, it also isnt directly bowing to Hamilton's pressure. In a different situation, he'd bow to Gunn's conscience if it kept his own situation better for him.

Angel has decided that the best way to handle the world is the same way that Illyria attempts to handle it. By announcing himself King, and using other people (who are, after all, his employees), he turns Wolfram and Hart into an almost feudal state. And in doing so, he takes a tiny and dangerous step towards asking himself just exactly what he wants. For that reason, the grisly ending can be seen as a deadly dark grey cause for optimism coming towards the end of the Season.

Thanks for reading. Just three to go...


TCH