Damage
A young, abnormally strong young woman named Dana escapes from a mental
institution, going on a killing spree that involves beheading middle-aged
men with one of those surgical saw things. She seems to be entirely
off her rocker - the early assumption is demon possession - but it turns
out that she's a Slayer, activated by the spell Buffy had Willow perform
at the end of Season 7, which gave all potential Slayers the power of the
real thing(s).
And she is, in fact, entirely off her rocker. When she was a child, her parents were brutally murdered, and she was kidnapped and tortured for days by the killer. She snapped then, and never snapped back. Now, she's got that psychic link to her Slayer heritage, but it's not staying in the realm of dreams. For her, it's completely real, and she can't tell the difference between her visions and the actual world.
Interestingly, the person who ends up knowing the most about this is a visitor
from Buffyland. Andrew, cute little dork extraordinaire, is now training
to be a Watcher, under Giles' tutelage. In fact, all the old
Buffy gang is involved in finding and teaching new Slayers, and they're
basically re-organizing the whole system. Buffy is in Rome with Dawn;
Willow and Kennedy are in Brazil; Xander is in Africa; Giles is (presumably)
in England. Now that they know about Dana, Andrew has come to help
Angel and his crew track her down.
And track her down they do, but not before Spike gets to her. He's
determined to play action hero, but he doesn't count on the fact that she's
connected to the memories of past Slayers - including the two he killed.
She initially believes that he was the man who tortured her (and the
audience is briefly led to believe this as well), but it turns out that her
real attacker was killed in a robbery a few years ago. Her fractured
psyche has everything jumbled, and she's out for revenge.
Angel arrives in time to keep Dana from killing Spike, but she does manage to drug him and cut his hands off. As a tranquilized Dana is carried away on a stretcher, Andrew shows up at the scene. He intends to take custody of Dana and put her under the care of the new Watcher/Slayer regime, and he's got a small army of Slayers to back him up. Angel lets them take her, but threatens to call Buffy in protest. "Where do you think my orders came from?" Andrew replies. It seems that word of Angel's involvement with Wolfram & Hart has reached the ears of the Scoobies, and none of them trusts him anymore. Not even Buffy.
Later, Spike is recuperating after having his hands sewn back on. Angel
comes to talk to him, and they have an actual, honest heart-to-unbeating-heart.
Spike is really thinking about the things he did before he got his
soul back, noting that even though he didn't kill Dana's family, he offed
plenty of others. He'd never really stopped to consider his victims,
unlike Angel, who relished every moment, and would have considered Dana a
"masterpiece" (akin to Drusilla, I imagine). Spike wonders if Dana
is beyond help, and Angel points out that she's just an innocent victim.
"So were we, once upon a time" Spike says sadly.
"Once upon a time," Angel replies.
I was fully prepared to be pissed off at this episode. Here it looked
for all the world like Spike was going to have to face the consequences of
some horrible thing he'd done, then the plot twist gets pulled right out
from under us. Another copout.
But as I watched the episode (and then watched it again), I realized where the writers were going with this. It doesn't matter that Spike didn't kill this girl's family. As he points out, he can't feel badly about the mistaken identity, considering how many families he did kill. This is the first time he's really acknowledged, in stark, uncompromising terms, what a monster he was in his "glory" days.
The last scene between him and Angel is particularly telling, because it reveals so much about both the similarities and the differences between them. They were both "innocent victims," dumb kids who hooked up with pretty girls, not having the slightest idea what they were getting themselves into. Then, they became ruthless killers, who went out and had fun slaughtering anyone who struck their fancy. Now that they've gotten their souls back, they're both trying to right some of the wrongs they did and save the world from the kind of creatures they used to be.
On the other side of the ledger are the more obvious distinctions. As a human, Angel was a hedonist, someone who enjoyed the finer pleasures in life. When he became a vampire, his gourmet tastes turned to sadism, and he reveled in the art of evil. Now, he broods on his past and tries to make up for it in a huge, cosmic sense. This is partly due to his curse, but also to his natural tendency to savor everything completely, including his guilt.
Spike was always a more impulsive sort of person. Romantics are like that, always going after the unattainable, never quite thinking their actions through logically. Pre-vampire, he was madly in love with a woman he could never have and prone to sharing his wit and poetic "skills" with people who laughed at him. It never seemed to occur to him that these were not good ideas. He later turned into a violent punk, someone for whom killing was a game. He would never have had the patience to torture someone for days, even if they had insulted him or something. Hours, maybe, but he'd get bored pretty fast. I doubt if he would have understood the desire to torment a young girl like that, not because he had any moral qualms about it, but because it simply wouldn't have been fun for him.
His reaction to ensoulment has been to pretty much ignore his past. He dwelt on it for a while, but that was mostly The First messing with his head. It comes more naturally to him to just not give a flying hockey puck, or at least pretend he doesn't. Why linger over what you can't change? It wasn't his fault, anyway.
The best thing for both Angel and Spike to do is meet in the middle on this.
Angel needs to stop obsessing 24/7 over every rotten thing he ever
did. Spike needs to acknowledge that, even if he wasn't quite the same
person when he did those things, he still bears some responsibility for trying
to atone for them. Of course, this brings up the issue of just
how much responsibility either of them should accept for what they
did sans souls. I think it's been made pretty clear that some of the
human personality is still in there when the demon takes over, and all those
people are just as dead, whether the guy who killed them had a soul or not.
So Angel is right that they should feel something about their past
deeds, but Spike is right that there's no point in spending too much time
on it.
Angel's other problem is the continuing feeling that being part of the Wolfram
& Hart "family" is not really making things much better. Angel
has had doubts about this all along, and most of his friends are uncomfortable
with it, too. In fact, Gunn seems to be the only person who's totally
happy there (maybe the Senior Partners gave him a job satisfaction upgrade
when they boosted his noggin - he seems to have gotten every other conceivable
ability). Now, Angel finds out that his former allies don't trust him
anymore, that even Buffy thinks he's a potentially dangerous sell-out.
I mean, when Spike says it, Angel can just blow him off. But
when the love of his immortal life says it....that's a whole new kind of
putdown.
In fact, I wonder if this was the episode that was originally built around
a Sarah Michelle Gellar appearance. It certainly would have fit, although
the focus would have been on the Buffy/Angel/Spike triangle, rather than
on the interplay between Angel and Spike. Having Andrew around for
this was clever - he's a familiar character with a history with at least
one character, but he's not so emotionally involved that it would get in
the way. He's also damn funny, and growing a pair of brass cojones.
I notice he's still a follower, though. First, it was Warren, then Buffy. Now he's taking Giles as his mentor, right down to the outfits (although I'm surprised he didn't have a little pair of glasses to take on and off, instead of the pipe). I suppose he's as qualified be be a Watcher-in-Training as anyone, especially given the rather thin field these days. Maybe his report will get Wesley invited back into the fold someday, too (I almost forgot how long it's been since Wes and Giles have seen each other - Giles still thinks he's the same old goofball).
Of course, it was great to get an update on the activities of the Scooby Gang, vague though it may have been. They're scattered all over the world, tracking down and training Slayers. They seem to be pretty well organized, and I wonder how much help they're getting and how it's all going. I hope we get more information on that. It would also be nice to see Dana again. I love that we're seeing a direct consequence of the Super Slayer Spell, and more proof that whatever cosmic intelligence is guiding the selection of Slayers isn't actually very intelligent. Way to go, picking a girl who's even farther down the crazy road than Faith.
Or maybe it's completely random. That would explain a lot.
Anyway, kick-ass episode, and further proof that Drew Goddard should marry
me. (Nothing against Mr. DeKnight, but His Royal Drewness also wrote
some of the best Season 7 Buffy episodes, as well as
"Lineage,"
which was 3/4 of a great episode.) The final conversation between Spike
and Angel ranks among the best scenes in the entire history of either
series. Very, very well done.
10 out of 10.