4x04 – SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM

“Slouching Towards Bethlehem” is a good representative of the greatest strengths and weaknesses of S4. It gets the ball rolling on the season’s main themes, and starts some of the plot gears grinding as well. When analyzed in retrospect of the entire season, there’s a lot to consider in the way of foreshadowing. As is characteristic of S4, the episode has a lot of interesting ideas boiling in the mix, but also characteristic of S4 is its flawed and sometimes un-engaging plot. There’s also the problem of the serious fuck-up of Cordelia’s character in S4; this problem starts rears its ugly head for the first time here.

At the end of the last episode, the gang came back from their nearly pointless trip to Vegas to find Cordelia returned to them, standing in the lobby in flowing white robes, wondering who the hell they were. At the start of this episode, she’s also wondering who the hell she is herself. The story focuses on her attempts to re-connect with an unfamiliar world, and it is this specific point that makes the episode understandable as a blueprint for S4: the emergence of the Beast in 4x07: Apocalypse Nowish , a being whose purpose is to bring forth Jasmine, demarcates the destruction of all the old ways of life and the plunging of Los Angeles into a new and unfamiliar world.

The Beast blots out the sun and brings complete chaos upon Los Angeles, creating a world of fear and uncertainty. Jasmine follows this chaos, ushering in a new way of life which she can enforce through her divine power to make all living beings love her; in their uncertainty, the people of Los Angeles cling to her because she can take away that fear of the unknown, even though it’s revealed that she eats people to sustain herself. The parallel between Cordelia and the people of LA is not a direct one, particularly because as soon as Cordy’s memory is “restored” in 4x06: Spin The Bottle , Jasmine takes control of her body. But Cordy’s journey in this episode, as I will discuss, thematically foreshadows what’s to come.

Cordelia’s amnesia has left her with a blank slate, and with a desperate need to re-discover her identity. She doesn’t know who she can trust or what she can do. For the individual, this idea of being so virtually self-less is terrifying. Imagine the only sense of self you have coming from your immediate environment and the people in it: the objects and individuals that happen to be around you at this exact moment. It would be disorienting to have to figure out your entire life in this way. Angel wants to spare her as much hardship in re-discovering herself as he can, and his desire to do so creates the episode’s main conflict.

Angel tries to hide that he is a vampire, that he and his team hunt demons and many other extraordinary things about their lives, the rationale being that it would be too much for Cordy to handle. Angel tends to be a sucker for taking care of women in need, a trait which Cordelia described as sweet, but condescending in 3x06: Billy. In keeping with the season as a whole, the difficult truth is portrayed as something that is better known than not; being kept ignorant about what’s going on at Angel Investigations nearly gets Cordelia killed by a client of Lorne’s.

AtS has always portrayed truth, even unpleasant, inconvenient truth, as important to living a good life. The hard truth Angel learned about the world two seasons ago is that people have the capacity for evil in them, even if it seems convenient to point to organizations like Wolfram and Hart as the source of all evil. Learning the truth that human beings were the source of their own misery allowed Angel to re-focus his quest for redemption on helping those people, rather than focusing on destroying institutions like W&H. That particular truth had practical value that helped Angel with his life. In this episode, truth would’ve earned Cordelia’s trust and better re-connected her to her identity.

Angel’s desire to protect her only delays the inevitable shock that comes from learning the details about her life, and actually damages his ability to help her further. She clings to Connor because he’s honest about who he is. Like Angel, Connor has the capacity for terrible violence, but unlike Angel, lacks the stabilizing relationships and mature sensitivity that keeps his father grounded. Connor’s a teenager, and one who has a rigid and inflexible moral compass instilled in him by his upbringing in Quor’toth. It wasn’t long ago he locked Angel in a box. It’s apparent that staying with Connor is an unsafe bet at best, but his honesty is enough to draw Cordelia in as she pushes Angel away.

Like the people of Los Angeles are drawn to Jasmine, Cordelia is drawn to Connor, in spite of the fact that both present dangers when one moves past the clarity and truth they represent. There may be a point here the show is implying: dishonesty, for its destructive potential, most often follows from love and concern. Cordelia might feel safer with the truthful Connor, but there’s clearly a serious downside to her staying with him, which we also see with Jasmine: she eats people to sustain herself, and caused religious wars of blind devotion over how to best worship her in previous dimensions she held sway over.

Lorne’s reading of Cordelia must also be considered. He informs Angel that Something Dark is Coming, and that that’s all he knows. Knowing in hindsight as we do that Connor was created precisely for the purpose of being pushed into the arms of Cordelia (so that her possessed body could be used to give birth to Jasmine), the danger Connor and his truth represents is that much more apparent. All of these portents and connections to the central themes of S4 make “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” an interesting episode to consider. It can best be labeled as S4’s blueprint. Now that the pieces have been picked up from S3’s cliffhanger, the main story is getting underway.

That said, the episode has several significant flaws. Considering it as a blueprint reveals some depth, but in and of itself it is a slow and uneventful piece of work. First, I strongly dislike the use of amnesia as a plot device. It is a move that ends up wasting Cordy as a character. While its purpose as a device is explained late in the season (it would’ve been necessary for Cordy to be in that state to be drawn to Connor), the justification isn’t adequate. This is a problem with many of S4’s plotlines: they crop up with the potential to be interesting, but turn out to be poorly contrived and take too long to be explained.

In hindsight of the season, we see the writers’ reasons for making Cordy an amnesiac, but it doesn’t seem that it necessarily had to happen that way. The writers could’ve easily reached the dramatic and thematic conclusions they needed the amnesia plot device for without taking her memory. Because of their decision to do so, Cordelia is deprived of genuine character development throughout the season; for a few episodes she has no memory, and even after she gets it back, she turns out to have been under Jasmine’s possession all along. They effectively turn her into one big plot device. In essence, the writers almost make her into a non-character.

Cordelia has never been the most interesting person on the show, but she has been essential to Angel’s journey and to the tapestry of the series; would Angel’s constant brooding and dramatic baggage ever have been bearable without her false enthusiasm and amusing materialism? Watching her mature has been a pleasure, so knowing that we don’t technically see the real her again until 5x12: Youre Welcome , the episode in which she dies, rather hurts me. This is a problem I have with both the season and the show as a whole, but it started with this episode. In exchange for a plot device, the writers have traded an entire character. Rest assured I will have more to say about this trade.

Another flaw the episode has is that it doesn’t create a sense of danger or mystery in any convincing way. Lorne’s warning about Cordy’s return doesn’t come until later in the episode, much the same with Wolfram and Hart’s play to capture her. The threat posed by the demon client of Lorne’s early in the episode isn’t really all that scary and is dealt with quickly anyway. Most of the episode is really just Angel trying to hide the truth from Cordy and doing a bad job of it. None of it is very gripping, and the episode feels as dry and “all-setup” as it is.

In addition to this problem, none of the characters really develop. Cordelia ultimately latches onto Connor, and Angel, feeling guilty about his mistake, lets her go without a fight. His final scene standing alone and worried struck an emotional note, but aside from that scene the episode lacked any powerful emotion or internal resolution. Once again Fred and Gunn were mainly used as scenery, while Connor’s role in the story was to stand against Angel as usual, though this time by taking on the role of Cordy’s guardian. It’s an interesting idea, but it isn’t paid off in this episode. It is of note however that after saving the family in the teaser, Connor returned to the hotel where his father lives. He’s searching for a semblance of belonging he saw in the family he saved, and that search of his will be important to the season later on.

The only part of the episode that completely worked was Wesley’s. Lilah not only enjoyed manipulating him, she enjoyed his reaction, demonstrating the growth of an emotional attraction. I’ll talk more about what underlies their relationship in my next review, since that episode (Supersymmetry) starts prying at what really connects them. I’ll finish with the question Lilah more or less poses to us, a question at the very heart of S4: if you set up all the possible outcomes for a choice, can that choice still be considered free?

• See review