Fredless

Fredless
Written by Mere Smith
Directed by Marita Grabiak

Original Airdate: October 22, 2001

Plot: Fred's parents pay a surprise visit to Angel Investigations, claiming to have recieved a letter from their daughter. Their appearance causes Fred to run away and the gang must locate her in the City of Angels. Meanwhile, a giant bug is after Angel...

Review

Warning: Before you hire a private investigator to track me down, consider this. There are major SPOILERS for the latest epiosde of Angel, "Fredless" just ahead. If you haven't seen it and would like to go in unaware of any of the plot developments in this story, then I strongly suggest you turn back now...

In short: Good, solid work.

In a lot of ways, "Fredless" reminded me of last year's Buffy episode, "Family."

Both stories dealt with fleshing out the background of relatively new female characters on the show. Both had a bit of misdirection as we learned a bit more about how the character in question--in "Family" it's Tara and here it's Fred--grew up and the type of background that brought them to this point. And in the end, we saw the strength of the family that is emerging on both shows.

Both shows gave us a bit of misdirection.

In "Family" there was the underlying possibility that Tara's family might be demons.

In "Fredless" there was the underlying possibility that Fred's family might not be all they claimed to be.

In each case, both shows did a great job playing with the misconceptions and putting out misdirections. I will say that I'm happy to report that unlike Tara's family in "Family," Fred's family turned out to be just exactly what they appearend to be--concerned, loving parents who care about their daughter and had been worried about her for five years. (Though obviously, there was some grieving process that went on there since they rented out her room in the fourth year of her disppearance.)

It's nice to know that on a show in which families being dysfunctional is the order of the day, that we can see one family dynamic that isn't totally dysfunctional. If anything, the worst you can accuse Fred's parents of, at least at this point, is loving her too much. And that is not necessarily a bad thing.

I admit that I was right there with Angel, Wesley and the rest of the gang in figuring something was up with Fred's parents from the moment they walked in. And certainly Mere Smith's script gave us a lot of reasons to possibly suspect there was more to them then there appeared to be. The possiblity that Fred hadn't written the letter (and all of the reasons why she couldn't have or wouldn't have mailed the letter made perfect sense), Fred's sudden dissapearance when she sees her family and the hints given by Lorne about her aura and what it might mean were all so well done that it honestly had me thinking something majorly evil was lurking in Fred's past. What a relief it was to find out that instead of a link to a demon or the giant bug creature that was the main source of evil in this episode, was the fact that it was all about Fred on a pyschological level.

Fred doesn't want to face her parents because by seeing them, she is forced to accept some things.

The biggest is that for five years of her life she was an outcast and a slave. She lived in a dirty, grubby cave and was forced to flee for her life. She was broken in spirit and was only rescued in a fairy-tale type fashion by a guy who turned out to have a truly dark side in the form of a demon that needs to feed on blood to survive. Indeed, ever since she got back to L.A., we've seen Fred pretty much stay with Angel and company where such events as fighting demons are an everyday run of the mill type of thing. We've also seen her write on the walls of her new cave and generally still be a bit spaced out by things. Yes, she's had some normal things--last week with the Charlton Heston movies and this week with ice cream--but overall, she's tried to remain in a cave where she won't have to admit what happened to her and how much she really lost.

Also, another part of this might be a bit of a need to not want to ask for help. In Pylea, Fred learned the only one she could depend on was herself. To see her parents again and to break down as she did was a huge step because it admitted that she needed help.

In a lot of ways, Fred's hysterical breakdown in the bus station to her mom and dad and then sobbing uncontrollably might have been the "click moment" she was looking for a few weeks back. Fred stated she wanted one moment when everything clicked and began to make sense again. And I think that might have happened here because Fred's now faced up to what happened to her and is beginning to work through it. I'm not saying the consequence of what happened to her in Pylea are magically gone or done away with. I think there's still a lot of work left to do there. But I think the click moment has happened and we are now going to move in a new direction with the character.

Indeed, the fact that she has moved on a bit was shown to us in a couple of ways. First of all, we saw Fred's weapon actully work, which was a nice touch.

Next up, in the final scene, we saw Fred use a sense of logic to work through a problem. At one point, her dad stated that he didn't understand why a physicist would choose to work for a detective agency. And later we see Fred use the scientific method to reason through why the bugs might be attacking...not because they're evil, but because of a series of cause and effect. That's one of the more reasoned out, logically done thought patterns we've seen out of Fred to date and it comes at exactly the right time--after her emotional breakdown to her family.

The other moment we saw was at the end with Fred painting over the writing on the walls of her room. That was really sybmolic of the fact that she'd moved on--especially in her painting over her drawing of herself and Angel. In a lot of ways, I think she's moved on past living in the fairy tale with Angel as her knight on a white horse and may be moving back into the real world. And I liked the fact that this step was accompanied by all the members of her family--both her parents and the crew of Angel Investigations. The final scene with the teasing and Fred's parents getting after everyone was a really great scene and one that really resonated on a lot of levels.

But all of this great character development could have been wasted if you didn't have an actress who could convincingly pull this off. And Amy Acker did. She really ran the gamut from the school-girl like crush and going for ice cream with Angel to visibly shake and disturbed by her parents to the breakdown and finally the sense of relief and contentment at finding her place--if only for now. I've been very pleased by what Acker has brought to the table this year and she showed again here just how good she can be. It was a great performance by an actress who appears to really be coming into her own in this role. I can't wait to see how both she and Fred continue to develop.

The other plotline of the giant bug attacking was interestingly done. I had fears that visually the bug wouldn't be up to par, but it did fairly well. I honestly feared it might be an unconvincing as the giant preying mantis was back in Buffy's season one "Teacher's Pet" but overall, I think it worked here. The only time it felt off was in the sewers when it seemed as if they were trying too hard to put in shadows to hide it. But the scenes at the bus station and at the hotel worked well enough that I was convinced of what the bug was.

And I liked the fact that just as we saw a couple of weeks ago with the demon with a Big Gulp, that sometimes monsters are misunderstood. They're not all evil and seeking to destroy everything they come across. In some cases, like here, they are only fighting to protect their young. Indeed, there was a strong parallel between the bug and Fred's parents--both were fighting to protect their young loved ones.

And along the way between the Fred plot and the bug plot, there were some nice stopping points.

--Fred's running to Lorne and practically beginning for a reading was nicely done. "Row, row, row your boat" was nicely done, even though it did bring up some lingering memories of Star Trek V.

--Seeing that Lorne's place isn't magically back to normal was nicely done, as were his comments to Gunn.

--I liked seeing Angel and Fred's dad bond a bit.

--Loved the references Wesley made to his parents and how different it was from Fred.

--I liked the scene after Fred left with the gang all disucssing her and wishing she'd come visit.

--Fred's going with Angel for ice cream was nicely done. It also brings up some issues of the fact that Angel seemed to be taking advantage of Fred's affections for him. Indeed, if the talk with Buffy didn't go well, as it was stated, it's interesting that Angel would only ask Fred to go for ice cream--knowing full well she'd say yes. A bit of emotional reboudning going on there, I think.

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

--The teaser with Cordy and Wesley acting out the Buffy/Angel soap opera was an absolute riot. Perfectly done.

--Does it seem as though Angel has been a bit less brooding and uptight than usual--especially since he slept with Darla. A couple of scenes showed this perfectly in Fredless. The first was Angel's joy at having Cordy patch him up after first fight with the bug. Also, his whole excitement at bonding with Fred's dad. It could be that it's partly joy of having a normal guy friend with normal guy interests like sports. It's been interesting to see Angel not in brooding mode as much of late, though I have a strong feeling that will all hit the fan when Darla comes back.

Well, that about wraps it up for now. Overall, Fredless is yet another strong episode of Angel in this young season. So far, I think Angel has taken flight in its third season. I'm hoping this trend continues...

My rating: 9.5 (out of 10.0)

Next up: Remember that guy Angel freed a few weeks ago to save Cordy? He's baaaaaaaaaaack!

"Kiss me!"

"Bite me!"
--Wes and Cordy, giving their very best soap opera performances.