Belonging

Belonging
Written by Shawn Ryan
Directed by Terri Meyer

Original Airdate: May 1, 2001

Plot: Cordelia lands a speaking role in a national commercial. However, the celebration has to be cut short when a monster from another dimension breaks into Los Angeles and the Host contacts Angel Investigations to help hunt it down. Meanwhile, Gunn is conflicted between helping his friends stop a set of vampires and his duties at Angel Investigations.

Review

Warning: If you've not yet seen the latest episode of Angel, you might feel that you don't belong here. I will tell you there are major SPOILERS just ahead for the latest episode, "Belonging" and if you don't want to know what happens, I'd suggest a hasty retreat...

In short: I can see what they're trying to do, but I'm not sure I bought it.

One of the biggest struggles that we all face at various points in our lives is figuring out just exactly where we "belong." This sense of belonging can be in such places as how do we fit in at work or a peer group or just where do be belong in this funny little thing called life. And it's certainly one of those issues that I'd guess most of us have struggled at one time or another in our lives.

And it's certainly the issue that the crew of Angel Investigations are struggling with in this episode. Each of the characters are having moments of discomfort and are shown being conflicted. Indeed, none of them are really sure where they belong.

First of all, we have Angel. From the beginning of the show, one of the major themes of Angel has been finding out how Angel, who is an introverted character, overcomes that and reaches out to those in need. Certainly it helps that he's got Cordelia as "vision-girl" to help give him a clue as it were. But as we saw way back in season one with Doyle, just because Angel knows there's a soul that needs saving doesn't mean he's great at making contact with them. Indeed, we saw a lot of that need to find his role here. At dinner, Angel comments that he doesn't usually like to be out in crowded places. Part of it may be his introverted nature. I think another part of it is that Angel is seeing danger around every corner these days--from the woman's expensive shawl in the restaurant to the commercial director at Cordelia's shoot. Angel seems to feel his role these days is to be the protector, the heavy of Angel Investigations. And he's certainly living out that role, though not always with the result he wants. A lot of this comes from the fact that Angel is the one who used to initiate the action at Angel Investigations. And he's not in the role of leader anymore--at least not by title. And we can see that struggle. That especially came out when he started giving orders to everyone and then stood back and said, "If that's what Wesley wants to do."

Cordelia, on the other hand, is searching for where she belongs. She stated a few weeks ago that she was happy with her life, but events of the past two episodes have shown that to be a bit of an overstatement. Cordelia is obviously tired of the visions--and the aftermath of them--as well as not being able to break into her dream as an actress. Indeed, seeing Cordelia struggle on the set with what was obviously not what she'd imagined her first speaking part in national commercial to be was nicely done. I loved the look of just resignation Charisma Carpenter gave when she was force to parade for the director in her bikini. That scene alone said a lot. It also leads me to wonder just how far Cordelia will go live her dream of being an actress. Certainly it might be interesting (from a character standpoint) to see Cordelia get noticed by aspects of the Hollywood and film community that she might not want to be involved with but would consider the offer out of desperation or because she felt she was living her dream. There is some potential there as well.

Then, we've got Wesley, who really blossomed without Angel around, but now seems to be retreating back into his shell. When Angel went to the dark side, we saw the new, mature, assertive, leader Wesley emerge. And I liked that .But it's nice to see that while he's grown a bit, he can still have the air let out of his balloon a bit. First it's his father, who instead of congratulating him for his rise in the world goes on to point out Wesley's shortcomings--heaven knows how many he did. I liked the fact that Wes seems like he wants to hide that inner doubt from his friends--even his new close friend, Gunn. Welsey's lying about his conversation with his father spoke volumes. Add to it that while he's the head of Angel Investigations--again, I say at least by title--everyone who is coming in these days is turning to Angel as the leader of the group again.

Meanwhile, we've got Gunn, who has been struggling with where he belongs all year. His struggle is one of the more apparent in the episode. We see Gunn struggling between his role being part of the street crew that fights vampires and his work in fighting the other forces of evil with Angel and company. Indeed, for Gunn, the consequences of this being decision being forced upon him is losing a friend to the vampires. This plotline was one of my bigger beefs with the entire story. Namely, it seems as though any time Gunn steps out on his own, the plotlines become very one-dimensional. Gunn is caught between two worlds and there is so much room for a rich, intelligent plot. Instead, what we get is a stereotypical plot of a young, African American is forced to choose And with that we get a stereotypical type of resolution--Gunn chooses one world and loses a friend from the other. The one thing I've loved so much about Angel and Buffy is that they can take plots that are a bit run of the mill and offer their own view on them. That is not the case here and it weakens the plot. Add to it that as a viewer, I felt virtually no tie to the character killed--at least last time Gunn lost someone close to him to a vampire it was his sister so there was some small bit of emotional impact there. Indeed, the comparison between Gunn's friend being lost and what happened to Tara on Buffy was a stark contrast. On Buffy, Tara's mind being stolen by Glory had an emotional resonance to it. Here, there was little or no resonance.

Finally, we had the Host, who we see has chosen where he wants to belong. He apparently did not feel like he wanted to follow the typical life path of those from his world and so he fled through a portal to Los Angeles. And he's found where he belong here--even if it's just as the owner of a club and reading people's souls to give them an idea of their direction in life. Again, it's an interesting idea--if not an original one. If you watched any of Star Trek: The Next Generation, this was done far better with Worf's character. We constantly saw Worf torn between his Klingon heritage and his Starfleet upbringing. Indeed, any time we wanted to see how different Worf was, all you had to do was bring in a "typical" Klingon and the comparisons could be made. And we had that here--with the warrior from the Host's world coming through to show us how they usually act and react. I guess it may be my Trek bias, but I found this plotline to be a bit stale.

Of course, there may be a lot being set-up here for next week's episode--and all of my concerns about this episode might be answered and addressed. If they are, I would be ecstatic. But I am not certain they will be.

I liked what they were trying to do, but the execution failed.

I like character development. But when the plot is just a bunch of tired, recycled other plots, it loses a lot of the value. And that's what happened here. Part of it may be the emotional punch that Buffy packed. And certainly, the idea that Joss and company plan ahead to have episodes of the respective shows sometimes offset each other for the audience is a good one. But I think this episode didn't work on a lot of different levels. In the end, it was just not compelling enough to hold my interest for an entire hour--despite the character stuff going on here. And that's a shame because with these different conflicts, you had the makings of an episode that could have been a home run and one of the better episodes Angel has produced all year.

So, I guess that's about it for now. Except a few small things.

--The Host's first name being Lorne was funny.

--Angel's overreaction to the expensive dinner was amusing.

--I'm assuming that we didn't bring up the woman who went to the Host's dimension for no reason. Anyone want to take odds we see her next week?

--The idea of a cliffhanger without TO BE CONTINUED was interesting.

--The one scene I loved--Angel's enjoying the warmth of the "sunlight" on set.

Well, that's about it for now. All in all, there was some interesting character stuff, surrounded by a not so great plot. This episode may go up or down depending on how next week plays out as well as the rest of the season...

My rating: 5.5 (out of 10.0)

Next up: Going to the Host's world...and Angel enjoys the sun.