Angel 5x04 Review: I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost

“Hell Bound”
Written by Steven S. DeKnight
Directed by Steven S. Denight
 
The Story
We open on a handheld camera following a woman down the hall of W&H. Turns out the woman is Fred. The camera follows her into her lab by going through the wall. Then it creeps up behind her. She turns around, and when she turns around again, Spike is there. She pretends to drop her clipboard in fright. It isn’t very convincing. He doesn’t appreciate being patronized. He still can’t touch anything. She scans him with her equipment. His heat signature keeps dropping, which is probably a bad sign. She has an idea for how to make him corporeal again. Somehow they get on the subject of the Shanshu prophecy. Spike is definitely jealous of Angel’s destiny. Fred goes into technobabble about how the amulet worked, explaining how she’ll be able to make him corporeal. He leans casually on a table, but he can’t touch it, so he falls through it, then several floors until he ends up in the basement.
 
There’s already someone there. Someone who’s creating some very unpleasant chopping sounds. Spike walks over to him. It’s another ghost, and he’s chopping his fingers off. Also, his face is horribly decayed.
 
Lorne walks through W&H talking on the phone about some deal he negotiated and trying to talk a client out of OD-ing on pills. Also, Fred’s on her way to Wesley’s office to have him order a bunch of super rare mystical items. He goes over the list. He can get everything in twenty minutes, but he’ll only do it if she eats real food for dinner. Eve pops up, scaring Fred for real.
 
In Angel’s office, Angel is trying to give Fred a stern talk about taking care of herself. But he’s also concerned because her department went nearly a million dollars over budget. She explains that she’s trying to do something unprecedented: making Spike corporeal again. Angel thought she was just getting him untethered from W&H; is this necessary? She’s indignant that he doesn’t feel like it’s worth his resources to help Spike. (Yeah, except that Spike never asked for his help, he just expects Fred to do everything she can to fix him without explaining to Angel about it.) It seems that Spike is to Angel as Faith is to Buffy, only more so, because Spike is being actively obnoxious to him, so Angel isn’t keen to help him when he has strong reason to believe it’ll backfire in some way. Fred tells Angel very firmly that she’s not just a schoolgirl with a crush, here. She’s doing the right thing.
 
Spike makes it back to Fred’s office, where lights start blinking, then going out when he gets closer. More lights blink. He grudgingly follows the trail of lights, which leads to a freaky lady in 19th century clothing who has no arms. She asks for help and says something’s coming.
 
Spike heads to Angel’s office to annoy him some more. He claims he wants to hang out. Angel tells him he’s feeling how close he’s getting to hell. Spike scoffs that it’s no big deal; if Angel could break out, then so can he. Yeah, except Angel was chucked out by something else. Also, he wasn’t entirely dead, just non-fatally impaled with a sword. Also, he very much doubts he won’t be going back. Spike scoffs some more, this time about the Shanshu prophecy. It seems that everything that happened in S4 and S5 so far has convinced him that prophecies are garbage. He saved the world from Jasmine and was rewarded with the CEO position at the business he hates more than anything else. Nothing makes sense. Angel thinks all that will ever count on their balance sheets are their past evil deeds. Spike wants to know what the point of doing the right thing is, then. Angel simply doesn’t know what else to do.
 
Spike sits down. He’s moderately consoled about hell if they’re both going to end up there. He can handle being screwed over as long as he’s not the only one, because then at least it’s a bit more fair. Yeah, Angel’s less interested in celebrating their shared doom. Can Spike leave already? They do all this irritable banter about how much they dislike each other. Eventually Angel admits he liked Spike’s poems. Spike doesn’t appreciate that coming from him, the guy who likes Barry Manilow. Then a hanged woman appears in the room, but only Spike can see it. More dead people keep appearing.
 
Spike is freaked out enough by all the ghosts that he no longer seems to care who knows what’s going on with him, because Fred, Wes, and Angel are all in the room while he gets angry at them for not seeing any of the ghosts, and for the ghosts for not leaving him alone. Gunn and Eve arrive; the security checks have turned up no ghosts except Spike. He tells them to check again. The thing that’s coming is apparently here. He starts going transparent until he vanishes. But this time is different. They can’t hear or see him, but he doesn’t think he’s gone anywhere, and he’s even more frustrated.
 
A spooky voice starts talking to Spike about how no one can help him. *cue evil laughter* Spike continues to respond to the spookiness with snark and annoyance, but there’s definitely some fear in there now. He heads down dark corridors until he reaches an elevator going down. He gets in slowly.
 
Wes, Gunn, and Fred all walk into Angel’s office, the guys musing on Spike disappearing. Fred wants them to be more worried than flippant, especially because of how agitated Spike is. They still don’t care (and Gunn even whips out a case for Spike being insane), so Fred tells them how he keeps slipping into hell. To that, they kind of shrug, because they sort of figured. *snort*
 
Spike finds himself in the basement again after that elevator ride. The finger chopping dude seems to still be there, judging by the noises—wait, nope, just his fingers. A lady with a huge shard of glass through her eye taunts Spike about how the Reaper is going to take him in a sing-song voice. She pulls the glass out and slashes his face with it before vanishing.
 
Fred is working on some equations for Operation Save Spike when Spike pops up again. His theory about the ghosts he’s been seeing is that they’re his hell welcoming committee. He thanks her for trying to help him, but then he realizes that she still can’t see or hear him.  She gets frustrated with her lack of progress, and he gets frustrated with his inability to encourage her. Unthinkingly, he tries to grab her arm and zaps her! She looks around, but still can’t see him. The lights go out for Spike. He yells. Then Angel finds Fred in the lab. W&H’s sensors still can’t pick anything up.
 
A sexy blonde lady has arrived to see what she can discover about the ghosts Spike saw, which makes Wes and Gunn feel better about doing a séance. Her personality is an interesting combination of preppy and new age-y. It’s fun. She leads the team in the séance. Spike is standing right behind her when she finishes the incantation thing. She’s talking about a dark soul full of pain and suffering. Spike is very impatient. It starts to become apparent that she isn’t talking about Spike. She tries to say “the Reaper’s coming” but then she gets strangled to death by a ghost not even Spike can see. Wes and Gunn are finally starting to come around to the idea that Spike isn’t the only ghost in W&H.
 
Fred is taking a shower...in the building I guess. Do they all live there? Because that would be really weird. Spike is creeping right outside her shower stall. Uh, maybe stalk her at any other point in her day? He keeps trying to talk to Fred and actually touches the glass. The first time. The second time, he goes through it. He focuses, and he manages to write on the glass in the condensation. When she gets out of the shower, she sees “REAPER” before the glass shatters and Spike gets thrown to the lobby. He’s ready for a fight, but the ghost coming towards him is just another dead lawyer. He sees the same ones from before and is officially tired of the Reaper’s flunkies.
 
Something starts causing Spike pain, and then that creepy voice from before yammers at him about suffering for his sins. The voice is attached to a shaggy-haired dude in late 18th century clothing. He has a scalpel.
 
The team has been looking up entries on “the dark soul” in Wesley’s omnibooks. There are even a few references to Angel under that heading. Fred runs in and has them cross-reference with “Reaper” That turns up a reference to one Matthais Pavayne. He was a doctor who hacked up a bunch of his patients. He fled to California while it was under Spanish rule, where he proceeded to do a load of dark rituals using pieces of his victims. Wesley discovers that W&H deconsecrated the grounds of an old Spanish mission for the spot to build their Los Angeles branch, and for that, they killed Pavayne there. Ew. Angel suggests that the reason Pavayne has gone unnoticed by all W&H’s mystics and has avoided hell is his knowledge of the dark arts. That would also explain why there aren’t tons of ghosts there. Pavayne’s been using them.
 
Indeed, Pavayne is still playing with Spike. He’s slashed him up a lot, and he tells him he’ll be the one going to hell, not him. Fred comes by and starts creeping on Fred, which makes Spike angry. He tries to punch him, but can’t. Pavayne sneers at him for his feeble attempts. He’s still behaving like a corporeal being, but Pavayne has learned how to control reality in the spirit world. They end up back in the basement. Spike realizes he’s the one who hid him from the A.I. team. Spike’s wounds disappear. Pavayne is just demonstrating his power. Next, he makes Spike’s clothes vanish while the other ghosts taunt him. Pavayne specifically taunts him for his backstory, how he thought he was better than hell but knows he really deserves it. Spike realizes that Pavayne has been shoving the W&H ghosts into hell so that he wouldn’t have to go. But that means the ghosts aren’t actually there.
 
Fred is doing lots of calculations, and she moved on from the white board to her windows, which is somewhat worrying. She thinks she’s solved the problem. She needs nuclear-level evil to power the spell to recorporealize Spike. Wait, what? How is this okay? Wesley starts to describe an African legend, but Gunn cuts across him, suggesting they just pop up to the White Room instead. The big cat shows up. This is the first time Angel will be meeting it, and it doesn’t seem to like him. Gunn, on the other hand, is his buddy. Gunn politely asks him for a favor, and he reappears. Gunn even pets him. Aww.
 
Spike is really not having fun. A tendril-y portal to hell opens in front of him and Pavayne. Pavayne’s all set to toss Spike in to keep himself out longer. Spike admits that hell is what he deserves, but he won’t be going today. He’s fed up enough with Pavayne that he’s able to pull a lot of Pavayne’s tricks. He makes the hell portal vanish and his clothes reappear, then punches Pavayne through the next wall. They fight through rooms and furniture for a bit. Pavayne eventually get the upper hand.
 
Fred is all set up, and then Gunn brings the juice provided from the big kitty. She plugs it in and fires up the machine, which will send out a homing beacon to any ghost in the city. Pavayne kicks Spike across the lobby. He’s had hundreds of years to practice his ghost skills. Spike can’t compete with that. Then a shockwave goes over them. Spike punches Pavayne and runs towards Fred’s machine. Pavayne starts strangling Fred like he did that lady, and he makes all the guys fly back. Spike can either save her or become corporeal. Spike takes a third option. He punches Pavayne into the circle. Pavayne becomes corporeal. Fred is safe and Pavayne is powerless. He rants furiously, only to get punched into the wall by Angel. Spike reappears and warns him not to kill Pavayne. Angel’s fine with that. Maiming only, then.
 
Fred is still rather shaken from the near-strangling and from failing to make Spike real again. She heads to her office alone. Spike pays her a visit, making her feel a bit better by demonstrating his new tricks and telling her he’s glad he chose to save her instead of become corporeal. Fred feels this proves that Spike is one of the good guys. Worth saving. So Spike has officially made a friend, for the first time...ever?
 
Eve shows Angel Pavayne’s new digs. He’s basically stuck in eternal stasis down in W&H’s dungeon. Aware, but unable to so much as blink. Ever. So much for escaping hell!
 
Still no Harmony! But it was a Spike-centric episode. But those are weirdly still way better than on Buffy. The Angel Spike-centric episodes (excluding “In the Dark”) focus way more on forcing Spike to deal with his issues, rather than on furthering Buffy/Spike storylines, so they’re a lot more engaging. Also, Pavayne is just an excellent villain. A half-mad serial-killing dark sorcerer ghost doctor from the 1700s? Fantastic. Less fantastic: even though this one and “Just Rewards” were both quite good episodes for Spike-centric ones, the fact remains that this season has so far had two Spike-centric episodes and two ensemble episodes. Writers, stop playing with your shiny new toy and give some more attention to your established characters. Particularly Wesley and Lorne. Gunn definitely has stuff going on this season, and Angel and Fred have had plenty to do (in part because of their scenes with Spike), but Wes and Lorne have been shoved almost entirely to the sidelines so far.
 
The Characters
Okay, last time, it seemed a bit inexplicable that Lorne thought Angel needed to connect to his team better, but this time we have the makings of a genuine emotional arc for Angel, as the result of the move to W&H and the other events of S4. Angel has lost Cordelia (who was his connection to the Powers and, thus, to destiny), he’s given up his son, and he had to end a super creepy version of world peace to protect everyone’s free will. It definitely makes sense that he would be in a bit of an existential funk. He tries to do the right thing, but he gets rewarded for it by the villains. He tries to protect the people he loves, only to lose one of them and have another one put beyond his reach for his own good. He’s adrift and has no way to get back on course. He’s convinced he’s going to hell (and, having been there, he knows exactly what that would mean). It doesn’t help that the person who needs saving right now is one of his least favorite people. It feels like he’s actually in a depression.
 
Even though I liked the episode on the whole, and Spike making the selfless choice in kind of an unprecedented fashion was definitely a great moment of character growth for him, I’m worried that the overall effect will be a bit of a backslide. He’s been trying to brush aside major issues like accountability and ever since he got his soul, even though accountability is one of the most important aspects to having a soul. The imminent threat of hell was actually starting to force Spike to be a bit more mature about this and put some real thought into what he deserves, where he’s going, and whether that should stop him from trying to do good. Now, however, he’s learned that hell was only an imminent threat because some jerk ghost was trying to toss him through the spiritual wood chipper. He was just starting to look inward when someone handed him a perfect excuse to forget all that and go about business as usual.
 
The tension built up from Gunn’s upgrade is kind of deflated in this one. Nobody seems uncomfortable about it anymore except when he lets it interfere with a conversation that has nothing to do with law. If anything, he and Wes seem to be friendlier now than they have been since before Fred and Gunn first kissed. Also, it just occurred to me that if Gunn hadn’t gotten the law upgrade, then the show probably would have need to incorporate a lawyer character anyway. I vaguely recall some plan to have dead Lilah be a major character in S5, but they couldn’t get Stephanie Romanov on board. Instead of Eve and Ace Attorney Charles Gunn, would we have had Lilah serving as Senior Partners liaison and dispenser of legal exposition? I think this way was better, honestly. Gunn is just so slick as a lawyer. As great as Lilah was, she already got closure, and the writers made it pretty clear in S4 that they had a specific direction they wanted to take Gunn’s character.
 
Fred’s interactions with Spike continue to fascinate me. She’s not the first female character who has felt no attraction to him whatsoever, but she is the first one of those who has still gone to great lengths to help him. He kind of disqualified himself from that kind of selfless treatment before by being a soulless monster. Fred’s interactions with him are pure: she never met him without a soul, so it’s much easier for her to be open-minded than it was for anyone on Buffy. Including Angel. I think Spike’s latching onto that kind of completely baggage-free friendship much more than he would ever be prepared to admit. It’s actually kind of similar to his rapport with Joyce, except that Joyce never knew him with a soul. Also, I love that Fred chews Angel out for assuming she’s only helping Spike because his charm got to her. Angel is one of her closest friends, but she won’t let him treat her like a less rational person than she is, or one who is less devoted to doing the right thing.
 
Lorne still barely has anything to do! Gah! At least the next one will be Lorne-centric.
 
Wesley seems to be the “inside the box” thinker of this episode. Fred’s the one who figures out how to use science to help Spike and Gunn’s the one who figures out a quick, easy way to get the energy to power it. Wes doesn’t do much besides remain very skeptical of Spike’s ghost situation until there’s more proof than just Fred’s insistence (which should be proof enough for Wesley).
 
Favorite Quotes
“Right, vampire ghost here, you sod. Bloody well invented ‘afraid of the dark.’”
 
“And your hair. What color do they call that? Radioactive?”
 
“Is this the part where I say ‘who’s there?’ and something creepy happens?” ... “Thought so.”