Lullaby

Lullaby
Written and directed by Tim Minear

Original Airdate: November 19, 2001

Plot: As Darla goes into labor, Angel is confronted and captured by the newly returned Holtz. Meanwhile, Wolfram and Hart decipher another piece of the prophecy concerning Angel and Darla's son. And Darla fears giving birth because the feelings of love she has for the baby will leave her and she is afraid she'll inflict harm on her newborn son...

Review

Warning: No translators needed to figure out what's ahead. There are major SPOILERS just ahead for the latest episode of Angel, "Lullaby." If you've not seen it yet and would like to go into the storyline unaware of some of the twists and turns the story takes, I suggest you turn back now...

In short: Some good, some not so good.

One of the problems with having a recurring villain on a TV series, is that any time the villain gets our hero into a desperate situation from which there is no escape except for the villain to back down or for the hero to be killed, we obviously know the villain will have to back down. Buffy has made good use of this in the past, especially during season two when Angel reverted back to his old-self in the form of Angelus. On a lot of levels, the audience knew that the only way to stop Angel was for Buffy to slay him. However, she couldn't do this because the main antagonist of the season would be lost--and let's face it, most of us hoped for some redemption for Angel. And honestly, Buffy did a nice job of playing with this convention. The couple of times that Buffy faced Angel directly, there were good reasons for her not to kill him. In Innocence, she wasn't ready, in Passions, she had to save Giles, in Becoming, Part 2--well, OK so that didn't quite work out the way we'd all hoped.

But my point is that Buffy was creatively able to step around this issue and do so in a convincing way.

And it's really this point that leads me to a lot of my frustration with the ending of Angel's latest trilogy.

At the conclusion of the story, you have Holtz, who has stated previously that his one goal is to hunt down and destroy Angel, with the vampire at a vulnerable spot in his sights. And, yet, Holtz doesn't pull the trigger.

And, yes, I can understand that there's motivation for it.

Certainly we saw that throughout the trilogy and in this episode. We saw Holtz's return home after Angel and Darla had killed his family, only to see Angel and Darla's final "gift" to Holtz--turning his daughter into a vampire, who Holtz must then destroy. We saw that Holtz realized Angel had a soul and realized that would make his quest for vengeance that much more satisfying because he now felt as though he was freeing a trapped soul from the demon body. (The entire sequence with Holtz debating the demon and finding a new reason to torment Angel was probably one of the better done of the entire episode). We also saw Holtz questioning his place in the apparent prophecy and wondering if there might not be an ulterior motive to the demon's generosity at allowing his blood crusade to continue.

And all of these work as motivation. I can see them as being the reason that Holtz didn't pull the trigger. And I'll give Keith Szarabajka a lot of credit. In that short scene with him facing Angel, he conveyed a lot of these emotions. And I can definitely see what Tim Minear was trying to set-up with the flashback sequences and the parallels between what Angelus did to Holtz and what Holtz desires to do to Angel. However, I still just don't buy that Holtz backed down. It felt a bit forced and almost as if that if you had Angel confront and kill Holtz at that point, or try and take him out of the equation, that you were somehow losing the main antagonist for the rest of the season.

At this point, I'm having to temper my initial disappointment about how it ended, with the hope that we'll see something interesting and different come out of it. And maybe there will be a scene in the start of the next new episode that addresses all of this. (Yes, I know we had the final kicker at the end with Holtz's comment that it wasn't over yet but I honestly want more). If so, I will be OK with it.

But I'm going to have to wait and see...

Which is a shame really because most of the rest of the episode, I liked what I saw.

Certainly the idea that Darla would love the baby inside her--and that it was the baby's soul affecting her, was a nicely done twist.

I also liked the fact that we finally have some resolution to the Darla plotline. Certainly it was interesting to see Darla sacrifice herself for the one thing that had eluded her all her life--to feel unconditional love for something or someone. I think we have seen this in all of her flashbacks and we certainly know that based on her pre-vampire life style that she mistook certain things for love. Indeed, we saw her try to make this connection last year with Angel when they slept together and it obviously seemed to mean more to her than it did to Angel--after all, this is the second time Angel had tried to lose his soul to her and not been able to do so. We saw that in all the stages of her life, Darla wanted and needed to be loved, but she never found that. And so, to see her as conflicted as she was about having the baby and giving up on loving it was nicely done and it brought a lot of emotional resonance to the final few minutes of the story.

And again, I'm extremely glad that Darla has been dusted. I liked Julie Benz and what she brought to the mix, but I think she has left Angel at the right moment. I think the character arc for Darla has run its course. The ending here made last year's sudden drop of the Darla plotline a lot more forgivable. While I was disappointed last year, I am a bit more encouraged this year by how it was all wrapped up--and wrapped up in an intelligent way.

So, I will give David Greenwell and Tim Minear a lot of credit for coming up with a credible, nicely done way of resolving a dangling plot thread.

In addition, it was interesting to see Angel as conflicted as he was. Angel's confrontation with Holtz was nicely done and one of the better scenes in the episode. Watching David Boreanaz and Keith Szarabajka chew scenery was nicely done--as was having Angel in the irons that Holtz used. (I've got to wonder how he got out of that).

However, while I was intrigued by the plot focus on Darla, Angel and Holtz, I found myself missing something here.

Namely, the supporting cast.

Last week, I the gang of Cordy, Gunn, Wes and Fred took a back-seat to the plotlines being developed. And I didn't honestly mind it very much. But here, with so much on the line and so much potential for them to have a vital role in the plot, they seemed a bit wasted. It felt as though a lot of the story was spent with the gang standing around discussing the plight of Angel and Darla or wondering how things would turn out. I will admit of the regular cast, it was only Lorne who got anything really interesting to do--and that's because it was a continuation of the plotline started earlier this year with the destruction of the bar. (And you've got to honestly feel for the guy. He can't catch a break when it comes to trying to get the business back up and running).

But it seemed as though the regular cast became shadows of themselves. Wesley was a bit whiny about the scrolls, Cordy was Cordelia, Fred was barely there and Gunn, while he got a moment to shine when he confronted Angel with his brutal honesty, seemed to disappear as well. Indeed, I found that a bit disturbing--especially since this season has shown so much how this group is growing into a family type of unit. Yes, they were there and supportive of Angel, but it didn't feel exactly right. I felt as though much of the development of the previous seven weeks had been wasted because it wasn't addressed here. Again, I may be overreacting at this point--certainly Angel has shown all year that it's got a new priority in storytelling and the characters. But it felt a bit like Angel was slipping back into the sins of last season with the Pylea storyline. Yes, the characters were there, but there wasn't enough done with them to justify their being there. I don't mind a story that focuses on Fred or Wes or Gunn, but make sure that if you include the other members, that you give them something to do. It seems that at the time Angel needed them most and could have made a great use of them, they virtually disappeared.

Maybe we'll see the fall-out begin in the episodes after this. I certainly hope we do.

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

--I don't know the exact history of the song Holtz sang to his young daughter, but would it have been around at the time he originally sang it to her?

--I loved Lorne's "reading" Holtz by his humming.

--The demon union worker was pretty amusing.

--Does Lillah ever sleep?!? It certainly doesn't seem as if she does. :-)

Well, I guess that's about it for now. Overall, there was a lot of recommend about Lullaby, but a lot of things that struck me the wrong way. For some of it, I'm taking the wait and see attitude on how it all comes out...