Previously: CORDELIA. And feelings.
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Why We Fight
Sweeney: We start underwater. Remember when Connor sunk Angel and the entire show basically went down with him but didn’t get pulled back out again? I’m keeping that in mind because I’ve been warned that after the last two gems, this is, you know, not so much. Anyway, this underwater scene is a WWII submarine that is being evacuated. What are the evacuation procedures for a submarine? I’ve never given this much thought. I don’t actually find out (yet) because we just see that whatever has them all distressed is probably demonic. We don’t see what, but there’s a lot of blood.
Kirsti: And to think, the last time we started an episode without the Fang Gang, I was instantly hooked. This time? Bored within the first ten seconds.
Lorraine: That’s probably your bias against this episode. I was perfectly intrigued by that. I do like to think of you sitting at home all, “YAWN. DEATH. BORED NOW” though.
Sweeney: Same on both counts, Lor.
Wolfram & Hart. The gang is discussing the Eve and Lindsey situation, and what kind of retribution they’re likely to face from the Senior Partners. The White Room is still empty and they’re down a liaison so Gunn’s not entirely sure how to go about getting information. He stammers a bit as he tries to explain how they might be able to get a new liaison. Angel dismisses the meeting and Lorne wants to celebrate the fact that maybe they’ll all get to have social lives, but actually everyone has a lot of work to do. Fred mentions needing to redo something Whedon Hat Trick fucked up and Wesley says that WHT is, indeed, unreliable. It’s cute. They all decide that they’re going to have to reconvene in a few hours to keep doing more work.
K: They also mention that it’s a Friday and “before midnight”. There isn’t enough money in the world to get me to stay at work late enough that “before midnight” is considered early. Work/life balance, yo.
Lor: I’m commenting on this post after an 11 hour work day. BRB. CRYING.
Sweeney: In the lobby, the zoomy cameraman is hanging out up high and at some weird angles, to inform us that something’s about to go down. (I guess it’s the opposite of the zoomy cameraman, in fact, but we’ve only given him the one name.) Once the gang disperses, the elevator opens and it’s one of the WWII soldiers from the teaser, looking like he hasn’t aged a day in the last half a century. (K: My notes say “This dude looks like a Baldwin”.) (L: He looks super familiar. I’d say he’s more like the love child of Chris Evans and John Barrowman. Captain America and Captain Jack!) (S: I totally looked him up when I first watched to figure it out and nothing. Just “that kind of face,” I guess.) So vampire, yeah? Electric cellos.
Evil Radio Shack. WWII Demon (because only the supernatural can explain that fountain of youth) is rudely poking through Fred’s shit when she comes downstairs. He says he was looking at her equations because he used to have a head for numbers. He asks if she likes her job, already knowing her name, like a creep. Fred instantly starts plotting escape routes, but he shuts that down, saying that he’d have to stop her. He’s there to see Angel because he knew him “in his Patriotic days.”
FLASHBACK MAGIC! New York City, 1943. A post-wig, post-accent Angel is sitting alone in his brooding apartment, listening to music because even when Angel was at maximum brood, he still loved art. (ANGEL/ART 4EVA.) (All these 20th century flashbacks reeeally don’t jive with his original BtVS backstory. Woooo retcon.) (But, like, productive retcon, I suppose.) (K: I love your multiple parentheses thought process. Mine was mostly “Oh, so this is what Angel was doing before he was brooding in the Big Bag of Racist Money Hotel? Cool.”) He’s interrupted by some men in suits, carrying stakes. A guy asks him to join the war effort. Angel notes that he’s not a man, but they clearly already knew that. Uncle Sam’s Chief Deputy explains that something bad with submarine, as per the teaser. This submarine was seized by the US from the Germans. It’s too deep down to send divers – the pressure and cold would kill a man. Angel, however, could survive that.
K: Which, WHY?!?!?! I mean, I get that he can survive the cold and the depth and the lack of oxygen. But how does being a vampire help him survive the change in PRESSURE???? Sure, he won’t get the bends because his heart doesn’t pump. But does he have magical ear drums? Can he magically not be squished? Is his body immune to physics?? GAH.
Lor: Have you seen those Mario Jumps? Of course he’s immune to physics!
Sweeney: Chief Deputy has a friend who says that Angelus has been on their radar for a while – “they” being the relatively new “Demon Research Initiative.” LOL. Three straight nostalgia episodes. Lor gets Girl Power Sword continuity. Kirsti gets Righting The Massive Cordelia Wrong. Aaaand I get The Initiative? L. O. L. (L: At least you’re laughing about it, friend!)
Bitterness over these nostalgia anti-feels aside, I’m actually amused. We mentioned with Andrew’s arrival that the crossover magic (even though BtVS no longer exists…) factor made him infinitely more lovable. Same goes for The Initiative. It’s been over a year since we wrapped up S4, so I think I actually do fall more on the side of being amused by this. Especially because of course WWII is The Initiative’s origin story. Of course. All right, show, I’ll bite. Go on.
Angel tells The Initiative that he’s not interested, but The Initiative boss says they’ll just sink him. I don’t understand that plan. If they’re going to forcibly sink him, how does he get back up? Whatever. The Initiative isn’t don’t explaining. Apparently the submarine was carrying something that attacked the men and the answer to that burning question is in a folder whose contents Angel gives an interested-eyebrow-raise to.
On the submarine, WWII (pre) Demon is pep talking the remaining men, while they’re holed up in a room. They can’t control the ship from where they are and have maybe two days of air left – assuming “those things” can’t figure out how to get to them first. One of the surviving men is a Nazi soldier, so they ask him to explain what those things were. They hear men screaming and our hero wants to go save them, but the other guys say that those men are already dead and opening the hatch will get the rest of them killed. True. They hear noises above them and go to investigate. Ominous music plays and then they hear tapping, which they identify as S. O. S. so they open a tube which turns out to be carrying Angel.
Wolfram & Hart. Wesley goes into Angel’s office to find Fred tied to a chair with her mouth taped shut. She tries to make, “BEHIND YOU,” eyes, which Wesley reads, but it’s too late. WWII Demon knocks him out.
Flashback Submarine. WWII (pre) Demon wants to know how the fuck Angel got down there alive. He spouts of some military code crap, which makes the men go, “Oh, OK. You’re good, then.” Angel asks them to help get the weights off his feet. I get it now. I mean, they couldn’t have verified that Angel would actually help them once he got on board, but I get it now. Later, one of the lesser sailors says Angel “must be some kind of super soldier like Steve Rogers or Captain America,” so Kirsti gets her Avengers shots in, even though this guy is too basic to know that sentence didn’t really call for an “or.”
K: It’s been a good long while since we’ve had Avengers shots, so THANKS WHEDON. Also, I headdesked over that “or.”
Lor: Kirsti can have an extra shot since I mentioned Captain America earlier. Our drinking rules are all willy nilly.
Sweeney: Angel tells our main man (named Sam Lawson) to let him out and not open the door for anything other than him and refuses the offer of a gun.
He goes off and finds, none other than…Spike. I mean, obviously. His hair is black and he’s got a Nazi arm band. The black hair is not a good look for him. (K: It’s SO FUCKING BAD OMG I CAN’T EVEN.) Neither is the Nazi arm band, though he says he’s only wearing it because he ate one and he’s big on that trinket collecting. He shoots the shit with Angel for a bit, unaware that he’s dropped the -us. Spike was captured by Nazis at a “free virgin blood” party. He feels better knowing that they got Angel too, and he decides that his company suggests that they’re rounding up the baddest of the bad.
Angel’s Apartment. Sam Lawson shows up and wants to give a big re-introduction speech, but Angel remembers him. They do the whole how-can-you-save-people-and-run-Wolfram-&-Hart song and dance, and Sam even references Angel’s rat-eating days! Sam talks nostalgically about life on the sub, “Keep your head down…”
This segues us back to Flashback Submarine. Angel leads the men out of their hideout without those words. They’re terrified to operate the ship with Spike and The Prince of Lies sitting right there, but they dig deep and rally. The Prince of Lies pokes around at some shit he can’t understand. Sam Lawson sees the bodies of his fallen comrades and he and Angel move the bodies out of the way. When they’re alone, Sam says that while there’s clearly a lot going on that he doesn’t understand, the fact that they’re working with, rather than butchering, the monsters that killed half their crew. I mean, were you guys able to kill them before? No? OK then.
K: Yeah, but Angel not killing Spike and Not!Nosferatu makes literally no sense. He killed the whiny Russian vampire with literally no effort. So why would he suddenly be all “Oh, FINE. You guys can live” over Spike and Not!Nosferatu?? I mean, obviously Spike has to live (womp womp), but STILL. It’s not like they need extra people to actually get to shore or anything. Sense: this makes none.
Sweeney: A fair and accurate point. When I went back to snag a clip of Sam and Angel for the post thumbnail I realized there’s also something kind of awesome and wonderful here in that Sam shows us that people were asking the, “If Spike is evil then why are we working with him / keeping him alive” question for over half a century:
Sam, yours is a question that will be repeated through the ages.
Angel says they just need to bring the sub in because those are their orders. “Isn’t that the point? Following orders.” Sam Lawson steers this conversation back into a season-arc-relevant place, saying that there is a difference between orders and purpose. “I didn’t sign on because I needed direction.” Sam’s there because he cares about fighting evil and that he’s even willing to die if it’s for a greater purpose. Angel says he just needs him to trust that he’ll get them through it safe and sound.
Back in the present, Sam echoes that – “safe and sound.” Sam wants to know if Angel ever cared about any of it and just wants to understand. He walks closer as he says this, and Angel takes one swift kick to his coffee table, also knocking Sam over and pulls a BUFFY BREAK on the table leg. Sam tells Angel to slow down, asking if he’d really show his face – after Angel promised to kill him if ever saw him again – unarmed, “without an Ace in the hole?” Angel asks what he did.
Down in Angel’s office, Gunn, Fred, and Wesley are all waiting in Angel’s office, standing on chairs, mouths tied shut, with wire around their necks. It’ll apparently sliced their heads clean off if anyone moves. Sam doesn’t say what he’s really there for, though, because he’s got to monologue us into another flashback – promising that, “there’s going to be some blood spilled tonight, for old time’s sake.”
Lor: I like that Sam’s all, “I’ve got an Ace in the hole! It’s right over here. Down the hall. Follow me.” and Angel’s all, “OKAY!” instead of, you know, killing him.
Sweeney: Indeed. There are a lot of times in this episode where Angel should have just staked the other vampires and been done with it. But plot!, Lor. Plot!
Flashback Submarine. Sam is overseeing the crew when Angel comes in, with Spike following. Spike whines about wanting to do stuff, saying that he’s “playing nice with the anchovies.”
K: He also says “Well ahoy, matey. You can just swab my deck” when Angel tells him to STFU, which is quite possibly the most shipper-baity line of ever.
Sweeney: The crew is uncomfortable with his presence and one of them nearly loses it when Spike demands to be called captain because he ate the captain. Angel gets Spike out of there and assures Sam that Spike will do what he tells him. Sam deduces from that banter, though, that Spike and Angel knew each other before this. Their conversation is interrupted by noise from behind them.
They go to investigate and The Prince of Lies is terrorizing the Nazi on board, saying he knows what they’ve been up to. Angel tells him to chillax and gets knocked into the wall. He gets back up and stakes Prince of Lies. Sam and two other men see this and the other men freak out about the exploding-into-dust thing. Sam sends them away but says an explanation might be helpful. Angel answers that they’re vampires and Sam decides that wasn’t actually helpful. They’re not sure what set Prince of Lies off and Spike chimes in, holding up some papers, and saying they probably had something to do with it. They’re all in German though. I guess Angel never got around to the German Rosetta Stone.
K: Far too mainstream for Hipster Angel. Eeeeeeeverybody knows German.
Sweeney: Spike tries to make the Nazi talk, but he just calls him an idiot in German, which Sam understands because he speaks a little German. Sam plays translator while vamped!Spike makes menacing faces at him. The papers contain technical research about vampires – experimenting on them to control them (K: The actual line translated from German is “intra-brain stimulation,” which basically says to me that the Nazis were like 50 years ahead of the Initiative in that whole chip thing…). Sam realizes that they were trying to create a super army. Spike says that this explains their selection – trying to recruit with top notch vampires. (L: He keeps insisting on that point. I don’t think he’s right.) Sam is furious because of how sick the plan is and it’s totally only a Nazi thing, to which the Nazi laughs and laughs and says something to/at Angel. Angel confesses that their research was also part of the mission. Spike decides that means it’s time to eat because he’s not about to get experimented on. (Oooooh, honey. If only you knew.) Sam insists that his government wouldn’t do that because you win wars by doing what’s right. (Oooooh, honey.) Angel tells everyone to shut the fuck up and compromises by letting Spike torch the research.
Spike’s rendition of God Save The King is interrupted by something crashing into the ship. They discover that they’re being attacked. Things seem to calm for a minute, but then the attacks resume. Electrical stuff starts shorting – someone on the crew says that they’re dead in the water. Another explosion and they start taking on water. Sam goes to fix the loss of power while others deal with the water situation. Spike notices that the Nazi has gone missing.
Alone, Sam goes to reach for his screwdriver and gets stabbed in the gut by the Nazi. In the present, he says it’s funny what goes through a man’s mind when his life’s hanging in the balance. He says it wasn’t really any of the life-flashing shit. “The truth is, the only thing goes through your head is, ‘Wow, this really sucks,’ and then you’re dead.”
On the boat, Angel comes upon Sam as he’s dying. He asks what he needs to do and Sam says he’s the only one who can fix it, but he will because he won’t let any more die. Angel says he can’t and vamps out and takes a bite. He cuts his wrist and forces Sam to drink.
Spike is with the others when Angel finds him. Angel insists that Sam will get the job done. Spike is eyeing the passed out crew members, trying to decide who might be just about to kick the bucket anyway (K: Kind of like when he told them to leave Syphilitic Xander behind in Pangs because he looked like he might die). “The one on the end” is saved by the return of the power.
Angel goes back to Sam, who says he told him he could do it. Sam says he notices that they’re rising, which doesn’t seem wise while they’re still potentially under attack. Angel says that they’re out of air and the other men won’t make it if they don’t go up. Sam says they swore to give their lives for their country, adding, “They’re not the mission, are they?” Sam’s hungry. He tries to attack Angel, but unsuccessfully. “You’re new at this. I’m not.” Angel says, before saying they’re going to take a walk.
We see that the sub is just now hitting the surface. Angel and the others head for that surface and he’s showing Sam off the boat. Angel figures he’ll have just about enough time to swim to land before sunrise. He says he’s sorry for what happened, but he’ll kill him if he ever sees him again. I don’t entirely see why he didn’t do it then, short of trying to excuse himself for what he did. Spike says this plan was brilliant and means Angel(us) is still a dick. Angel steps aside and agrees. Spike realizes what this means and grumbles as he follows Sam up the ladder and off the boat.
In the present, Sam wants to know if he at least got tortured. Angel never gave them the chance – he got off the boat off the coast of Maine and hid out until the war was over. Hiding out in the US seems like an ill-advised choice. No time to worry about that, though, because Sam’s got more villain monologuing to do. It’s interesting because it’s not the usual gloating, so much as general ranting – the opportunity to do that seems to be a big part of the point here. He’s fine with having been sacrificed to the cause, but now that he’s dead (K: Dead plus 50-odd years…) he needs a new reason to live. The apple pie shit doesn’t cut it now, but torturing Angel just might and that’s reason enough to kill the Fang Gang.
Also, PLOT TWIST: his 60 years of murder and torture, it seems, have made him feel nothing. He wants to know if this is just a result of Angel siring people. Sam’s the only person he sired post-soul. Sam wants to know if that means he’s got a soul too, which would be a batshit crazy turn of events, but Angel says he doesn’t think it works that way. Sam seems a little stung, but says he didn’t think this was so. They fight, ever so carefully around the gang. Sam says that Angel sired him in such a way that he had just enough of a soul to be trapped between the two existences. Again, not sure it would work like that…
K: Because, you know, what this show needed was MORE confusing stuff about souls.
Sweeney: You know what tag we haven’t used in a while? “The Ever Growing List of Words We Never Want to Discuss Ever Again.” Soul bullshit was a nice reminder.
Angel throws Sam through that window-to-the-lobby and there’s more slow walking and stuff. Sam lucked out because there was a nice clean Buffy Break in there, except Angel manages to turn that stake against him but very slowly and dramatically. The tinkly orchestra of feels kicks in.
The next day, Spike shows up to have the end of episode chat. He says Fred filled him in on what happened, adding that it took Sailor Boy long enough to show up, this revenge being well past “served cold.” Angel doesn’t think that’s what he was after. Spike asks what Sam was looking for and Angel answers, “a reason.” LIKE ANGEL, YOU SEE. A REASON “WHY WE FIGHT.” End credits.
This was actually not the terrible thing everyone led me to believe it was. It’s kind of awesome and perfect that of course The Initiative is basically rooted in Nazis. Of course. Also, that end-of-episode scene? Thaaat’s an Angel/Spike dynamic I can get behind. Spike being chatty while Angel is stoic. Witty banter to tease out the big broody line the plot calls for. Whatever. It works.
K: I didn’t find it terrible so much as really boring… You know, just for a change.
Lor: Even though I gave you a bit of shit in the beginning, I’ll admit that a large chunk of the middle of the episode was incredibly slow. I don’t think it was terrible either. Incredibly, we’ve seen worse things than a Nazi submarine full of vampires.
Sweeney: It’s a really sad state of fairs when I’m all, “Guys, this show has done so much worse to us that Nazi submarines full of vampires.” That’s how cracked out bullshit this show is.
But while I’m trying to find stuff to appreciate, I also like this current little arc because it reminds me of the show’s squandered potential. There’s really no use trying to get shit on this show to properly make sense, and today I wasn’t feeling as much of my usual urge to poke the plot holes. Having gotten the “squandered” part out of the way, I like that these last couple episodes have been focusing on something more introspective. Even the Lindsey plot was really just in service to this larger Angel’s-lost-the-mission plot. That’s something the show has done before and done decently. (Admittedly, I’d say they’ve done it better in the past, but that’s not my point now. Focusing on the potential, not the squandering!) I don’t even mind that it’s rehashing, either. It makes sense here. Angel basically lives forever. Making the same mistakes and relearning the same lessons is inevitable. His whole jam is that even when he’s got this neat-o team, he’s quite possibly going to live enough years to watch them all die and then some. It’s the core reason this show is so much darker than Buffy – a vampire slayer who manages to avert an apocalypse or four is full-fledged success. Angel, between his lifetime-of-regret and eternal life, doesn’t ever get any sort of MISSION COMPLETE! which, in turn, means that this struggle in which he loses the mission actually makes a lot of sense.
I’ve also sort of addressed my own earlier issue – the rats make a good deal more sense when you can treat it as a crazy low point in an on-going cycle. Crazy low because it also hadn’t hit any of the higher highs he’s hit in the years since.
In short: this episode was ridiculous in a lot of ways and was certainly not as good as the last two, but also not horrendous. NOT HORRENDOUS! That’s the best you’re going to get from me re: Nazi submarine full of vampires.
Next time: It’s puppet time, you guys! Come watch the puppets in Angel S05 E14 – Smile Time.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
