The belated "Why We Fight" (AtS) review

[selenak]

Drew Goddard and Steve DeKnight, whom I hearby dub the Lennon and McCartney of the Jossverse, were at it again. Superb work, boys.



When I first heard, through people's reactions above spoiler cuts, that this episode was set in WWII and supposedly involved Nazis, I became somewhat uneasy, because you know, the Whedon scribes don't have the best track record in this regard, even when a good writer like, say, Tim Minear tries his hand on it. My single problem with Hero was never that Doyle died - that part was perfect - but the way the Scourge got presented. If you want to look at a good example of how genre TV can use the Third Reich for inspiration and can come up with something original which still makes points about that epoch, look at how DS9 handled the Cardassians (for the most part). See also: Duet.

But I digress. My uneasiness proved to be completely unjustified. We were in Das Boot territory, rather than stranded in operetta Nazi territory a la Indiana Jones, and besides, the costumes weren't really the point. (Though I'd love to know whether Drew Goddard, fanboy that he was before joining the ME writers, read eliade's Season Noir. Since Spike dressed in that uniform served no plot purpose whatsoever but ought to give Anna S screencaps for illustration.*g*) Our inventive scribes even got around the tricky point of letting Angel and Spike meet post-China and pre-Sunnydale without contradicting School Hard by giving Spike enough reasons not to suspect Angel's souled state.

Enough about Spike, though. Let's talk about the new and briefly (un-)lived addition to the clan of Aurelius. A hottie, naturally. (Everyone from Darla's line has good taste.) The actor playing Lawson looked eerily like Jack Davenport, especially Jack Davenport in Ultraviolet, and was good in the part. In a way, this episode was the counterpoint of season 2's Are you now or have you ever been…, and Lawson was the counterpoint to Julie. In both episodes, the meat is in the flashback story, with the present-day finale being the only really important present-day action. Julie befriends Angel, who briefly regains some purpose through helping her, and then, through her betrayal caused by panic and fear, condemns both of them for several decades. In the end, she is the first person Angel, who seeks forgiveness, has to forgive, and when he does, she is able to die in peace. It's a moment of grace.

Lawson, on the other hand, isn't one of the helpless when Angel meets him, except through exterior circumstances. He's a helper. A good man, concerned for his crew above all. Someone who is able to overcome fear and well-founded animosity in favour of helping others. Someone who knows the difference between order and purpose, who joined the army not because he's into the military but because he sees stopping Hitler & Co. as something which has to be done. And someone, very important for the present-day life of Angel and everyone at A.I., who rejects the "the end justifies the means" philosophy. (Julian Bashir in WWII?)

There are many good scenes in this episode, but my instant favourite is the one where they question the German officer. After the German (who btw speaks correct German, albeit with an obvious not-German accent, if you want to know) has told them about the planned experiments on vampires to turn them into fighting tools, Lawson says that only someone as sick as Hitler could come up with this. Upon which his German counterpart laughs and says, looking straight at Angel, who has been blackmailed into helping the American government with this: "Da sind wir aber nicht die einzigen." (We're hardly the only ones.) At which point it dawns to Lawson that his own government thinks the concept is a rather neat idea as well. And that the mission might just be not getting the German submarine back home, but the vampires in it, at the expense of the living crew.

(Alien, anyone?)

Of course, what happens to Lawson is precisely Angel following the "the end justifies the means" philosophy. And you can see why. Lawson is dying, and without Lawson, they're stuck at the bottom of the ocean, which might not mean death for Angel and Spike but would for the rest of the human crew. (And besides, as Connor later concludes, trapping a vampire in the sea is torture.) So he sires Lawson. Which changes this particular episode from a good stand-alone to a wonderful part of the arc, because this is where Lawson becomes yet another double for Connor.

(Oh, and we get the fanon bunny of what would happen if a souled vampire does the killing and siring thing explored. Remember when Angel was finally desperate enough to offer this to Darla in season 2 and wondered whether the soul might make a difference? Turns out it does, just enough to make the unlife of the sired vampire in question really miserable.)

So many echoes. And you realise Lawson tying up Fred and Wesley is Connor and the hostages all over again, and Lawson speaking of feeling nothing, nothing whatsoever is Connor as well. Again, Angel is in a position where the only thing he can offer to the tormented creature he sired is offering the oblivion of death. True death or death of memory, in Connor's case. Even the physical position is almost identical. The father will kill the son. Again and again and again. Not a moment of grace, as with Julie's death, but a moment of devouring tragedy. And you know that this is how it feels for Angel, who ends the episode staring through a window again, with the prodigal, never quite acknowledged son, Spike, standing behind him.


In other news: I'm going offline on Wednesday till March 8th, due to a journey to Brazil. In case I don't make it back I shall expect everyone on my friends' list to write my obituary from the fannish point of view. As a good start, here is a meme I got from viola_dreamwalk:

As a fanfiction writer, which characters from all the fandoms I write in do you associate with me most?

Comments

[geekturnedvamp.livejournal.com]

Let's see--Cassandra, because that was the first time I read any of your fan fiction, and then of course Darla and Londo (with a little bit of PsiCorps thrown in, because anyone who shares my fascination with Bester et al automatically gets associated with them in my mind). But if I just had to pick one... still Darla. *g*