Angel - "Lineage" Review
By: Michael Hickerson

Written by Drew Goddard
Directed by Jefferson Kibbee
Original Airdate: November 12, 2003

Plot: After Fred is injured in a battle with a robotic demon robot, Angel dresses down Wes for putting her in harms way. And just to make Wes’s day worse, his father shows up in L.A. with an offer that Wes to come back to the Watcher’s Council.

Warning: If SPOILERS for the latest episode of Angel “Lineage” will leave you feeling a bit out of sorts, then I strongly suggest you turn back now. There are major SPOILERS just ahead…

In short: At last, we get a Wes episode….and it’s by Drew Goddard. You really can’t go wrong there!

Poor Wesley Wyndham Price—the man just can’t win for losing.

Of all the Angel Investigations team, he is the one who has been the most true to the spirit of the mission that they originally had—to save souls and fight the good fight. Sure, along the way, he’s had to make some really horrible choices—betraying Angel, giving Connor to Holtz, chopping up Lillah’s body to ensure that she wouldn’t rise from the dead and be further used by the evil forces at Wolfram and Hart—but he’s always made them because it was the right thing to do. He’s also the one who stepped into the leadership role when Angel went off the deep end with his Darla obsession and kept Angel Investigations on the up and up. And yet, when Angel came back from his walk on the dark side, Wes yielded the day to day running of the gang back to Angel, even though he would have been perfectly justified in keeping his role as the boss. (And certainly that would play out in this reality we see now since he never took Connor and betrayed Angel).

And, of all the Angel Investigations team, Wes is the one who always has the hardest time—no matter what he does.

To start the episode, he takes Fred with him on a mission—a potentially dangerous one. Why does he take Fred? I’d argue that it’s because of the group that has gone over to Wolfram and Hart, Fred may be the only one left that Wes really trusts with his life. Gunn and Lorne have given into the temptations of Wolfram and Hart, Angel is always busy and short sighted and Cordy is in a coma. So that leaves Fred, who Wes also has some strong feelings for. And why not get her away from Knox for a few hours and show her that he is just as good, if not better than the boy from research and development. I’ve been in Wes’s situation and I can understand that desperation to show someone you care about that you’re just as good if not better for them than the loser they’ve chosen to date at the time.

But then, Fred gets hurt and Angel has to show up to bail them out of the trouble. As if Wes doesn’t feel bad enough for what he’s done to someone he loves, Angel has to dress him down and make him feel like a child in front of Eve. Then, just as things can’t seem to get any worse, Wes’s father shows up and immediately continues to nitpick at his son. We’ve seen Wes’s reaction to talking to his father before and certainly we saw that continue here. Suddenly, Wes is no longer the confident individual who has grown up over the past couple of years, but he’s back to his bumbling side that we saw in Buffy. Wes has retreated a bit because the two men who he looks up to in his life—Angel and his father, have both torn him down and shattered his self-confidence. And all because he keeps trying to do the right thing.

It’s interesting to see Wes attacked on all sides about the choices he makes—both from Angel and his father. Angel can’t believe he took Fred along on this mission and his father can’t believe he’s following Angel, a known killer. Sure, Angel has the knowledge that Wes betrayed him and that is leading to some tension there (which Wes has no clue about since no Connor, no betrayal), but both Angel and Roger refuse to believe that Wes can grow beyond the stumbling, bumbling character we saw back in season three.

But he can, and he has. In fact, we pretty much saw the entire character arc of Wes from the time he’s been on Angel compressed here. He was, at first, the comic relief, but slowly he’s become more. He’s essential to the team and he’s got a dark side. But that dark side is tempered by compassion and a big heart. The thing with Wes is that he cares—maybe even too much. He really cares about Fred, he really cares about helping Angel to become human again, he cares about the mission. Hell, he even cares about pleasing his father—just look at the scene where Wes and Roger are sharing a moment over the codexs. Seeing Wes’s joy at being able to share that with his father is superb as is the moment a few seconds later when Roger tears it all down by pointing out that Wes’s security might not be enough for so powerful an object.

But we got to see Dark Wesley here and I loved it. Seeing Wes torture the cyborg—the line of “Can you feel pain? Good!” was just chilling—and then gun down his own father. Without even thinking twice. Dad threatens Fred and Wes reacts. And it wasn’t just that he shot his father once, it’s that he emptied the gun into him. There was pretty much no chance that if that had really been Roger that he would survive and Wes knew that. I think part of that is some residual guilt over Lillah’s death and not wanting to lose someone else he cares deeply about. But I think that speaks to the depth of feelings Wes has for Fred and that she must now realize. After all, Roger sucked the free will out of Angel and Wes didn’t’ gun him down. It was only when Fred came under fire (so to speak) that he reacted. And then his reaction of being sickened by what he’d done was superb as well. We see that Wes still has his humanity. The horror of what he’s just done hits him and he loses his lunch. And yet, he still comes back to check on his friends. He doesn’t’ wallow in self pity. He vomits, composes himself and comes back to take care of business. This is the Wesley we have come to know and love in that scene—he does what needs to be done, no matter what the consequences. He deals with consequences as they come up. And he puts others happiness above his own—even to the point of when he’s ready to tell Fred how he feels and she seems ready to respond in a way the wants and Knox shows up. Wes once again steps aside for Fred’s happiness and it just puts a stamp on the tragic nature of Wes. He’s too nice a guy and once again he can’t win for losing. Even calling home to his father just to assure himself that he’s still alive and not dead at his hand, he can’t get a break. He has to explain why he’s calling so early and that he does know there are clocks in L.A.

All of this was just breathtakingly great. And it should be no shock really. Alexis Denisof is one of the most talented performers on TV today. Give him a good story and he runs with it. Give him something by Drew Goddard and he takes it to a whole new level.

Bless you Drew Goddard for moving over to Angel. I saw your work on Smallville and it was OK. But I am so glad you found time to offer us this wonderful script. I will say it again—outside of Joss, he currently has the best handle on really understanding these characters and making them sound real. He just seems to get what makes these characters tick. But he also creates some superb supporting casts. Look at Conversations With Dead People where he made the one-off vampire come to life. And now, he tackles Roger Wyndham Price—a character we’ve seen and heard about so often that to make him come alive would be almost impossible. It’s one of those things that could be a great success, like it was here, or a terminally bad idea like showing us Vera on Cheers or Maris on Fraiser .

Everything about Roger rang true. From the story to Roy Dotrice’s portrayal of him. He hit all the right notes and I hope we see more of Roger in the future. I would love to see the real Roger play off Wes. And there was a father-son type of bond there. Seeing Roger ask Wes about his feelings for Fred was a nice quiet scene. And even the quiet approval at Wes having access to the ancient texts that maybe even Roger couldn’t get to. I liked all of that. It felt like a father-son type of give and take and that really helped the episode.

And I never saw the fact that Roger was a robot coming. Connected to the robots, yes. That was fairly obvious from the beginning. Part of this is my Star Trek bias, where no family member ever shows up without somehow being connected to the other running plotline. So that Roger and the robots were connected was no huge shock. But then again, it didn’t’ have to be. There were enough other good things going on here that I can forgive that being a bit obvious to me.

Also, I have to admit that, at first, Eve’s appearance here seemed a bit forced. Honestly, I wondered why she was here since she didn’t seem to do much that affected the plot. Yes, I guess the elevator scene could have happened in any episode and didn’t’ necessarily need to be here, but then looking back, I see that it’s a logical progression of things. I am really enjoying the Spike arc as he figures things out and to see him figure out some things here and then confront Eve on them really worked. And I did notice that we got several lingering shots of her watching Spike. Again, I am not sure what her agenda is but I think we’re going to find out soon. And then—to find out that the amulet wasn’t for Angel but for Buffy. Wow! Huge plot point there. I think we learned a lot more in that elevator than we realize and it will take several episodes to shake it all out.

So, I guess that’s about it for now, except a few small things…

--When did Spike become comic relief boy? Sure, all the he did here was great—I loved him tipping the glass beaker off and his reaction that Wes was head boy, esp.—but he seemed a bit more comic relief than usual. I also loved his shouting that Pavayne wasn’t taking him to hell when the elevator got stuck as well as his saving of Gunn.
--Any more evidence needed that Knox is evil? Only someone evil could show up at that moment to distract Wes and Fred’s conversation!
--So, how did Angel know how to find Wes and Fred at the start?
--I liked the design of the robots. Reminded me of the robots from Disney’s The Black Hole. (Loved that one as a kid BTW!)
--The scenes where Angel and Spike tried to comfort Wes about killing family members were a riot. Wes’s look of horror at Spike’s story was a classic!
--Let me start the “Get Alexis an Emmy” campaign 2003-4 up right now! This man deserves it!
--I loved that little jab about sex with robots and Spike…ah, memories of the Buffy-bot.
--Seeing this makes me wonder if the robots are still out there and who controls them. I think we’ll see more here.
--Is the Council coming back? If so, is Wes’s dad involved?

So, that’s it for now. Overall, this one is right up there with Hellbound as the best of the season. In fact, this one may just edge it out…

My rating: 10.0 (out of 10.0) (First ten of the season! Hopefully not the last!)

Next up: The history of the Spike/Dru/Angel triangle…man, this one looks good.

“Sex with robots is more common than you think.” --Spike

Michael Hickerson
Hellmouth Central User ID: mhickers
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