S5.E13: Why we Fight

[Joe Hellandback]

The Good; Another wonderful Spike and Angel scene at the end, once again past deeds come back to haunt us but this time it's what Angel did rather than Angelus. Love Spike's 'Heil Hitler' salute to Angel. Eyal Podell does a great job as Lawson, he really looks like the naive all American poster boy who is graphically confronted with the harsh realities of life.

The Bad; Considering what badasses they're supposed to be Lawson overcomes AI very easily. Why can't Spike and Lawson just hide underwater until night?

Best line; Angel; "Spike's not in the SS, he just likes the coat" plus Spike; (of his fellow vamp prisoners) "Got to warn you, they're a bit stiff" also like; Nostroyev; (of Angelus) "You had quite the reputation back in the day but I haven't heard much of you lately" Angel; "I haven't heard much of you EVER!"

Jeez, Lindsey is 'boiling in his own filth'? YUCK!

Fang Gang in bondage: Wes, Fred and Gunn all trussed up. Not Lorne though, because losing his head wouldn't kill him? Angel chained to a mess of weights

Kills; 3 vamps for Angel several decades apart. Will he make the magic 150 total of kills by the end of the series?

Characters killed: poor subs crew 2265

Total number of Angel Investigations; 6, Spike now an inseparable part of the gang Angel, Gunn, Fred, Lorne, Wes, Spike

Kinky dinky: Spike had been invited to a 'virgin bloodbath'...

Captain Subtext; ...but when he got there the virgins all looked like Gobbels? Nostroyev was the lover of Rasputin. Hello sailor! Topical political comment on the War on Terror? This ep really deals with the moral compromises inherent in warfare, Lawson seems unable to accept that the US would do things like torture, use the supernatural for it's own ends and make alliances with evil people (like Stalin?) for the greater good. And yet here we do, Angel siring him to save the crew and help the war effort and then letting him and Spike go, responsible for the deaths of all they killed in the meantime. An obvious but powerful allegory to AI joining WR&H. It's a tribute to the power of the writing that there is no easy answer to all this, we don't know who's right or wrong, sometimes there are no easy options. When Fred complains that Knox messed up an experiment Wes emphatically agrees that Knox is unreliable.

Know the face, different character; 6 Camden Toy who plays the Prince of Lies was also Gnarl and the Turok-Han on Buffy.

Guantanamo Bay; Need info? Torture a Nazi! See Captain subtext. Lawson comments that you win wars by not doing whatever it takes but by doing what's right. Tell that to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or all those folks in Eastern Europe we sold down the river to Stalin.

What the fanficcers thought; . Plenty of stuff regarding Angel's missing years as indeed we also see in the comics with Angel during the Great War also travelling on a German U-boat and bumping into a Watcher called Colonel Wyndham-Pryce on the Western front.

Questions and observations; Maybe Buffy's theory about Rasputin wasn't so far off the mark after all? So if you get sired by a vampire with a soul you're still evil but you feel guilty about it? Does sound like a rough deal. Gunn begins to demonstrate his loss of his newly acquired abilities. Spike sings the contemporary British National Anthem 'God save the king' (which would be George the 6th). Good to see he and Angel are still patriots even if they are undead. It seems the Initiative have been around in one form or another for a long time (like Torchwood?). What a shame they couldn't have named some of the government men Mulder or called an agent who chainsmokes Morely cigarettes Spender, that would have been so cool. Like The Master and Khakistos the Prince of Lies seems to be gradually devolving into a Turok-Han, the older a vamp get's the more that seems to happen to them. Note when Spike is first captured by the Intiative in season 4 of Buffy he speculates that it's the Nazis who are behind it, stemming from his experience here. Note we have Angel still in his recluse phase (as we'll see in Have you now or ever have been?) and not yet a crusader against evil, he just wants to brood and only does the mission as he feels responsible for Spike. Spike's small boys delight in seeing a submarine once against casts him in the little brother role to Angel(us). No Harmony, who get's to clock off on time on a Friday night unlike the executives.

What is it about the Nazi era that still fascinates us half a century later? History TV channels screen so many documentaries on the Nazis they may as well be called the Nazi channel. Practically every popular TV/film series will do some form of Nazi themed ep in it's time

So what's the fascination? Is it that they are just so out and out the epitome of comic book bad guys? Is it their larger than life villainy with hints of sci-fi and fantasy, inventing ahead of their time wonder weapons with extreme (mad?) science and fascinated with the occult? Or is it similar to our fascination with vampires? Power, seduction and the purity of evil? Do we find them sexy?

Marks out of 10; 8/10, a good ep, pretty much 'In the bottle' or should that be 'In the sub'. With Angel's reduced budget this year they tend to go for a lot eps just confined to the WR&H set (Harm's Way, Life of the Party) or other stuff that's lying around the studio.