Angel: Damage

"Danny, we're gonna need a whip..."

A Spike episode, then, sort of, after an unusual beginning with a super-strong disturbed woman escaping from a mental institution, but also one that packs a powerful punch in showing us just how Angel and his gang are now perceived with all the moral compromises they have to make. Plus we have the revelation that the still very fulfilled Gunn plays golf with lots of district attorneys these days.

Dana is not possessed as the gang first theorise but is, cleverly, a slayer, just one who experienced the murder of her family and horrible torture as a child so she’s both dangerously insane and super strong. In a clever piece of misdirection we are shown in flashback that the perpetrator was Spike but, although we know Spike will have committed atrocities in the past, it has to be shown here that these are just fake memories, mixed with memories of the two slayers he killed. We can’t actually look too closely at the reality of such atrocities once perpetrated by a character we've come to like. Yet it’s a nice touch that Spike should acknowledge, after his rescue, that he deserved what he got. He may not have committed this terrible crime but he committed plenty of others. It’s also interesting to see how he reflects on the morality of his actions- to him, killing and cruelty was just for thrills and he didn’t think much about the human cost, while for the chillingly sadistic Angelus the human cost was the very attraction. Brr.

All very good character stuff, then. But I do find it a little disturbing that Angel can raise themes of child abuse and murder and not really do much with them, using such themes as part of the character development of a reformed villain and not focusing much on the victim. I’m not sure I like that.

There’s a comedy contrast in the form of someone sent by Giles as soon as it’s realised they’re dealing with a Slayer... Andrew. In all his comedy glory, and he even gets one of his highly amusing mansplaining scenes. He’s amazed to see Spike alive, something which will certainly be related to Buffy, and spends most of the episode as comedy sidekick. Except, at the end, he and his Slayer army seize Dana by force, saying “Think we’re just gonna let you take her back to your evil stronghold?” and that “Nobody in our camp trusts you any more.” It’s a brutal blow. And yet another superb episode if not for the iffy treatment of the theme.