“Damage” Written by Steven S. DeKnight and Drew Goddard Directed by Jefferson Kibbe The Story We open on some kind of hospital. A doctor makes his way back to the secure unit. He talks to the nurse for a minute. They both seem nice, if worn out. Then another nurse comes running up, frantic. One patient is curled on the floor, a pool of vomit next to him. His meds were switched with another patient’s. Which is extremely bad. Cue loud pounding. The doctor and a buff assistant head towards the noise, where a door gets ripped off its hinges by the female patient inside. Her name is Dana. She doesn’t respond to the doctor’s imploring. Particularly when she sees him holding a needle. She rips the fence door off too and starts fighting all the doctors and orderlies. Then she finds a bone saw. She uses it. The doctor flees, but she crouches down over the dude she slashed with the saw, then drags bloody fingerprints down her face. Yuck. Cut to W&H, where...hello, Gunn in a waistcoat. What? Waistcoats are equivalent to shirtlessness, okay? Gunn is having a very lawyer-y phone conversation when Fred joins him in the hall. Yet another skill Gunn got in his upgrade is golfing. Because apparently a lot of their cases work themselves out on the golf course instead of going to trial. That’s...horrifying. Fred thinks so too. She’s not thrilled about how assimilated he is. He is, though!
Angel definitely isn’t. He, Wes, and Lorne are discussing the parasite Eve stuck on him. Gunn keeps saying she only allegedly did it, which irks Angel, but Gunn’s just kind of can’t turn off lawyer mode. Angel and Wes both don’t appreciate that, but Gunn makes a good point: Eve is the Senior Partners’ liaison; they need actual evidence to take her down. Harmony comes in to tell the team about Dana’s escape from her insane asylum. The theory is that she’s possessed, so this is definitely their area. Angel wants to go in very carefully, not with a big assault team or something. Over at the asylum, it seems Spike had the same idea! They both arrive at the same time, and Spike pokes at Angel about how he’s the hero of the people now, not Angel. Angel finds him as annoying as ever and wants him to go hero somewhere else. They find the doctor and nurse. Angel asks for info, and Spike decides to play bad cop, because...apparently they need one of those right now? Stop helping, Spike. The doctor shows them Dana’s room (which is covered in drawings of monsters) and tells them her backstory. Her parents were killed when she was ten, and then their killer kidnapped and tortured her for months. She got away somehow, but she’s been insane ever since. A few months before the episode, she switched from being catatonic to being extremely agitated and ridiculously strong. Spike grabs a drawing off the wall and saunters out. The doctor advises Angel to stop Spike from going after Dana, because she’ll probably kill him. Angel looks at the other drawings, then asks the nurse if she knows anything else. She shows him the tapes the doctor made of Dana’s sessions. Dana is now at a grocery store, where she’s standing in an aisle eating stuff. An employee tries to stop her, and she breaks his arm. Fortunately, she doesn’t do worse. Then she heads over to a very small section with clothes and trades up from her hospital gown into an outfit like the one she remembers her torturer wearing. A guard tries to stop her, but apparently he fails (and probably dies), because the next we see of Dana, she’s strolling out of the store with much thicker blood lines on her face, now fully clothed, still clutching the dripping bone saw. Angel watches the tapes. Dana thrashes around and yells a lot of what seems to be gibberish—but only if you don’t know around a dozen languages. Angel recognizes some of it as Romanian. Whatever she says clearly means something to him, but we don’t get to find out what yet. Spike finds the blood trail Dana left at the grocery store and follows it. Meanwhile, Angel is on the phone with Wes as he drives. Wes needs to send an assault team with nonlethal weapons, because Dana isn’t possessed. All those drawings of demons on her walls? Yeah, that’s because she’s a Slayer. Spike catches up with Dana in some kind of abandoned factory. He still thinks she’s possessed, so he wants to beat up her demon. When he vamps out, she just grins. She attacks him. They fight. She doesn’t respond to all his trash talk, but she does try to stake him while speaking Chinese. He responds the same way he did to the Chinese Slayer, clearly enjoying the parallel. She throws him out the window. Also, they’re on the fourth floor. Ouch. Angel pulls up to the building shortly after Spike hits the pavement. Angel tells Spike to stay clear while tactical handles it. Spike isn’t interested, but he does have some ideas about what kind of demon Dana’s possessed with! Wow. He’s just...terrible at detective work, isn’t he? Angel doesn’t even bother to correct him. Back at the office, Spike is now reeling from the revelation that their target is an insane Slayer. However, he still feels confident he can handle her, since he’s killed two Slayers. Yeah, great. Angel had Wes contact Giles, who sent someone to help. Aaaand...that someone is Andrew. Who is somewhat better at smoking a pipe than he was in “Storyteller.” Also, he’s overcome with emotion at the sight of Spike, alive. Spike stands there, annoyed, as Andrew hugs him and talks about how he’s like Gandalf. Then more hugs. Then he claims it was mostly him and Spike who saved the world in “Chosen.” Buffy merely helped. Angel breaks up this absurd reunion so they can do exposition. Andrew takes point on it because he considers himself a much greater expert than Wes on Slayers. Andrew begins his tale...at the beginning of time. He describes the beginning of the Slayer line. Yeah, everyone already knows this part. Or did the writers seriously think there would be enough people in the audience who already forgot how Slayers work, even though Faith was on the show for three episodes last season? Andrew gets to the new stuff: all the girls who used to be mere potential Slayers are now actual Slayers. And just kidding about Andrew being better at smoking that pipe. Oh, and we get a definite timeline on where this part of the story is relative to “Chosen.” It’s been six months. Wes wonders how all these new Slayers will get the training they need. Well, that’s what Giles and the other Scoobies have been working on. Finding the Slayers and training them. The theory is that Dana’s psychosis is making it difficult for her to distinguish between her dreams of demons and reality. Now Spike gets why she was speaking Chinese. He makes an offhand comment about the Slayer he killed, which annoys Angel, who in turn makes Spike want to leave the building and pursue Dana. Angel goes after him. He doesn’t think vampires like them should be the ones who approach Dana. Spike doesn’t care. Angel finds Spike insufferable for not owning his past, and Spike feels the same way about Angel for not letting his go. Spike leaves. Andrew regards him contemplatively, while drinking a juice box. *snort* Dana is by the docks. She keeps reliving being tortured as a kid. A nice dock worker comes up to her to help her. Yeah, he’s probably going to pay for his kindness with his life. Angel and the team are discussing what to do about Dana. They need to figure out where she might be likely to go, because the tactical guys sweeping for her has no way of narrowing it down. Apparently she’s looking for something specific. Lorne’s idea is to begin at the source: the house where her parents were killed. Also, Andrew left to go after Spike. Spike pulls him out of a gap in the buildings he’s passing. He’s not very good at tailing people, but he wants to be where the action is. Also, his coat is full of weapons. He trips over the dock worker’s bloody corpse and screams. Angel, Lorne, and some kind of psychic go visit Dana’s old house, the psychic immediately creeping the realtor out enough to send her scampering for the car. The psychic can sense the fear and pain of Dana’s parents, and the sadism of the killer. He walks them through kind of a flashback to the day the guy attacked. Next, he tries to sense where the guy took Dana. Some dusty basement full of the smell of molasses. And that’s where Dana is now. There are still chains around the pipes where the psycho kept her locked up, and the vent still has torture tools and a box of syringes in it. She goes back into her flashback, where Spike is the man torturing her as a little girl. Andrew is telling Spike about where all the Scoobies are. Xander is in Africa and Willow and Kennedy are in Brazil. (I don’t understand at all why they would split up.) Spike is tracking Dana by the scent of blood. Andrew asks what blood tastes like. Spike says it tastes like pennies. Andrew spots one on the ground and picks it up to taste. Gross! Spike asks about Buffy. She and Dawn are in Rome. Andrew tries the penny, but spits it out. Andrew realizes Buffy probably doesn’t know Spike’s alive. He wonders why Spike won’t tell her. Spike gives the same bogus explanation he gave Harmony and forbids Andrew from ratting him out. Dana is watching them walk from the neighboring rooftop. At W&H, Angel wants to do whatever it takes to find Dana’s tormentor. By the docks, Andrew is telling Spike a thrilling tale. Spike notices that the blood smell is stronger. He takes off running. To a dead end where Dana smeared a ton of blood. She comes out of nowhere and knocks Andrew out, then attacks Spike. They fight. Andrew tries to tranq Dana but misses, and she kicks him in the face and runs off. Spike chases her into the building. He follows her all the way to the creepy molasses-smelling basement. She’s waiting for him. She mumbles disconnected things, from Slayer training to stuff her tormentor told her to things other Slayers have said. Particularly Nikki Wood. Spike tries to explain what’s happening to her. Obviously that doesn’t work. She calls him William the Bloody, then stabs him with a syringe. It’s a paralytic or an anesthetic. She drags him over to where she was always chained up and puts the chains on him. Next, she gets the box of syringes and pulls out the next round. Which will knock him out. He can’t fight it. He passes out while trying to tell her he never hurt her. At the office, the team is still trying to pin down the location of where Dana was tortured. Fred makes the connection between a molasses smell and whiskey production. (In a way that’s a little unnerving if you’ve seen Dollhouse.) They start looking for distilleries when Andrew runs in to announce that Dana captured Spike. Spike comes to gradually. Dana’s creeping around in the shadows, talking about Spike losing his pieces so he can’t touch her anymore. Yeah, that’s because she chopped off his hands. Holy crap. He’s so intensely freaked out. She punches him, still ranting incoherently. He begs her to realize he’s not the one who hurt her. Her flashbacks start to replace Spike with the man who really hurt her. She’s gradually becoming a bit lucid. Lucid enough to force him to confront the fact that he has murdered two Slayers—a heinous crime, not an accomplishment. Spike actually looks remorseful (about something unrelated to Buffy) for the first time. Dana starts punching him in the face repeatedly. She’s all riled up again with the Slayer training lines. Angel jumps in before she can attack Spike more. He tells her about the man who hurt her. He was killed in an altercation with the police five years ago. He can’t hurt her now. She talks about how she’s strong now because she’s a Slayer, and then she attacks him. Well, so much for getting through to her. They fight. He does better than Spike, but not much better. He manages to get her in a headlock so that Wes can tranq her. The special ops guys flood the place. They find Spike’s hands and get into a flurry rushing him out so they can reattach them. Fred makes sure the shamans are very clear about not using cadaver parts. Angel walks out of the distillery with the special ops guys carrying Dana on another stretcher. Andrew strolls up and announces he’ll be taking her. Angel doesn’t want to let him, but he insists, and he’s got about a dozen Slayers behind him to enforce it. The real dagger in the gut is when Andrew implies that his orders not to let Angel keep Dana came from Buffy, and that none of the Scoobies trust him. GO AWAY, ANDREW. They take Dana and leave. Wes doesn’t feel good about letting them take Dana. Angel gruffly lets it go. Spike is in a hospital room somewhere. Angel comes to visit him. Spike thinks he’s there to mock him. Of course he’s not. Spike feels like he has no right to complain about the pain he’s in, because even though he didn’t kill Dana’s parents and torture her, he did kill and torture hundreds of other people. (More like tens of thousands, but these writers have never been good at math.) He understands Angel’s attitude now. Angel’s watching him monologue about this with an almost affectionate expression. Aww. Spike says he just dove headfirst into evil and enjoyed the thrill, never looking back at the victims. Angel was the opposite. He made art out of evil. Dana would’ve been a masterpiece. He tells Spike about Andrew taking Dana away. Spike is impressed. He’s pretty sure Dana’s beyond saving, though. A monster. Angel says she’s an innocent victim. Spike points out that they were too. I love “Damage.” Such a fantastic episode. Such a fascinating route to take with the Slayer lore. Now that there are hundreds (or more) Slayers, the odds that one of them might be completely mentally broken when she gets her powers skyrocket. Dana’s story is both heartbreaking and frightening. She’s very reminiscent of the guy in the Firefly episode “Bushwhacked,” who technically survived a Reaver attack, only to turn into one because his mind was so shattered. She even dresses herself like her tormentor, which is what that man does. Fortunately, Dana is a tiny bit better off; she is at least capable of semi-lucid conversations by the end. Also, I think she’ll probably benefit greatly from being surrounded by Slayers. Her own mind is broken, but pieces of other Slayers seem to be filling in the gaps. If she’s constantly around her sister Slayers, she might be more peaceful. But I’m getting off on a tangent. One of the main reasons this episode is so good is that it’s the first one in which Spike is forced to deal with what he’s done. He’s been practically insufferable all season, but now that’s changing, and it’s so deeply satisfying to watch. Although, one thing that’s always bugged me: wouldn’t his hands have turned to dust? Don’t bits of a vampire need to be connected to the head and heart to remain intact? That’s the only way stakes through the heart and beheading make sense as methods for killing them. Not that I don’t think W&H couldn’t have still gotten him new hands, because that’s already been established. It’s just weird. Anyway, Andrew is pretty entertaining, even though I don’t believe a word of his “even Buffy doesn’t trust you anymore” speech. The Characters Spike often brings out a lot of immaturity in Angel, and he even does it a few times in this episode, but I just absolutely adore that final scene. It was almost reminiscent of Angel’s interactions with Darla. Two people much older than they look, feeling the weight of all their years. The way he watches Spike realize how heavy those years are...gah, just amazing. As much as they fight, they are still the only ones in their position (at least currently—Darla more or less counts in this category, but she’s dead). The other thing I love about Angel in this one is that he does some fantastic detective work. One downside to S5 is that the show has become less of an urban fantasy detective series and more of an urban fantasy office drama, and I’m a much bigger fan of the detective genre. But so is Angel! It’s fascinating to watch him work through this case, taking the time to explore leads and find all the information instead of charging off the way Spike does. Which is one reason it’s such a gut-punch when Andrew and all the Slayers turn on him. Even when he does indisputably good work, he’s only rewarded with mistrust. It just keeps getting harder. Perhaps it makes sense that it took Spike so long to confront his evil actions. Like he says, he never really thought about the nature of evil. He just kind of did whatever was the most thrilling. Since he wasn’t focused on how evil any of it was when he was doing it, it’s harder for him to come to terms with it now. Whereas because Angelus reveled in the evil, Angel is acutely aware of how heinous his actions were, and he can’t ignore them. I like that. It makes me less annoyed at Spike for his attitude. (But only a little.) What I really like about it is that it’s the best character development Spike has had possibly ever. He just had a major epiphany. We’ll see how that affects his behavior moving forward. Hopefully he’ll be a bit less blasé about his past victims and a little more considerate of the people he’s helping, and personally invested in helping them. So far, we’ve only seen good things come of Gunn’s W&H upgrade (I mean, in terms of practical consequences, not the way Gunn is so gung-ho about W&H’s approach to problem-solving thanks to all his personal perks). Practically every episode, we learn about additional skillsets that were included in it. It was already too good to be true in the beginning; the other shoe simply has to drop soon. Of all the knowledge Fred somehow has from completely different scientific fields, knowledge of how whiskey is distilled has got to be one of the ones farthest removed from physics. But maybe her dad is a big fan of the stuff and she learned about it from him, or something. Lorne finally contributes something significant! Even if it’s only for a small portion of screentime. He spent six years helping people work through their issues; he knows how to deal with trauma, and he knows that victims tend to have trouble escaping their worst memories. I’m not sure any of the others would’ve thought to look into Dana’s past in order to decipher her present. Maybe Wesley is holding out against W&H indoctrination than it appeared last time. I suppose these things can fluctuate. And he continues to be Angel’s right-hand man, which I love. Favorite Quotes “What happened?” “Oh, just thought I’d see what it’s like to bounce off the pavement. Pretty much what I expected.” “Yes, attractive slender woman.” “What is it?” “Blood. Smells different. Stronger.” [excitedly] “Like nickels?”
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The Watcher's Diary
In this blog, I'll be reviewing, analyzing, and generally fangirling over excellent television. Exhibit A: the Whedonverse. Archives
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