I certainly have my biases and I try and acknowledge them to you each time I manage to force one
of them up from the waters of my subconscious.
I think it's an important part of our continuing conversation.
Episodes I do or do not like.
Tropes that grate on me or stock characters I find obnoxious.
But I noticed something interesting happen each and every time I sat down to write a
script for the Buffy guide for an episode I had previously written off.
Whenever I'd pick apart those episode with my flawed microscope I found almost invariably
that I discovered something I loved.
Lonely Hearts is one of those episodes.
Lonely Hearts opens on Angel sitting in his darkened office contemplating...well Buffy
most likely.
Doyle comes in and tries to bait Angel into a night on the town and Cordelia shows up
with the calling cards for the new agency.
Doyle has a vision of a club somewhere in town.
Somehow or another they narrow down the location...kind of unclear.
At the bar a young woman is being hit on by a dude with a pretty sweet sport coat t-shirt
combo.
The 90s yuppy at 11 makes a move to invite the woman back to his place and we can tell
by his abrupt change in expression that he's a predator of some kind.
The camera traverses the bar and gives us a cross section of lonely disconnected singles.
Team Angel show up at the bar and starts looking for a source of trouble.
Cordy proves surprisingly adept at analyzing the various personality types at the bar while
Angel handles all approaches hamfistedly before running into…
8:40 "Are you okay?"
10:00 "Are you maybe in need of some rescuing."
Kate.
Doyle starts a fight while trying to defend Cordelia's honor, which Cordy is having
absolutely none of.
"The lady's with me."
- "No I'm not."
101
And in their first group attempt to rescue someone Team Angel starts a bar fight and
loses a victim.
Back at the office they're researching the history of D'oblique with a curiously fast
netscape navigator dialup connection and realize there's something that's been stalking
that bar for awhile now.
While studying lore for hints as to what the demon might be Cordy accidentally cuts a smitten
Doyle.
22:30 "Demons.
Anything more disgusting?"
- "You think so?"
- "Oh come on.
Look at this one."
Angel manages some successful sleuthing and tracks the location of the next victim.
When he breaks in they're already dead.
Or occupied?
So the demon is one that passes from victim to victim as a way of living forever.
Angel confronts the demon who is a body swapper in search of a permanent pad.
25:00 "I can already tell this isn't the body I can live in."
"Then it'll have to be the one you die in."
God I love those kinds of cheesy action movie lines, and I'm NOT kidding.
Btw if you're watching the non-4:3 version of the show there's one of the worst instances
of 4th wall breaking I think I've noticed yet.
Demon gets away and Kate breaks in just in time to Scully the wrong idea.
Kate tries to arrest him and Angel escapes.
He calls Kate and asks her to meet at the bar.
The real demon baits Kate into the back room.
And tries to jump bodies into her.
Angel saves her.
A disgusting necrotic burrower demon tries everything he can to "make a connection"
with someone else.
Angel catches up to the demon in the alley and sets it ablaze and Kate shoots the thing
dead.
They exchange an amicable goodbye and Angel hands Kate his bat signal
41:50 "What is this a lobster?"
201
Analysis Though I didn't quite cover it, we've
already been introduced to the concept that Angel needs to connect himself back into humanity,
a key point for his character this season.
In the pilot Doyle brought up how it wasn't enough for Angel to be saving people.
Goodness and meaning aren't simply measured in numbers.
And the math might cause him to erroneously believe he could sample a victim.
There are obvious echoes here to Faith's dilemma in in Buffy season 3 when, after stabbing
a human being she said to Buffy:
"Anyway how many people do you think we've saved now, thousands."
I think the writers are beginning to frame a few ideas here.
The first is that our humanity, our identity as an individual is at least partially defined
by our relationships with the people around us.
And Angel has lost his primary defining relationship - Buffy.
After losing his soul hundreds of years ago, and wandering the world alone in a meaningless
walkabout, Whistler introduced him to Buffy and helped him find some purpose to connect
with the world again.
And his relationship with Buffy (his representation for all that is good in the world) made the
consequences of his actions as Angelus, vivid.
Especially when he again, turned and Angelus attempted to destroy the only thing in life
Angel cared about.
And it was those consequences that the First capitalized on Amends, when the First attempted
to manipulate Angel into performing evil.
Angel gives up and tries to kill himself but is once again brought back into the world
by the one who managed to do it in the first place, Buffy.
"Strong is fighting.
We can do it together."
When it's clear he can't stay with her Angel flees to LA.
And I think, we see him here acting as he thinks Buffy would want him to act.
He's doing good but he's doing so because he wants to be the half-man that Buffy fell
in love with.
That is STILL the ever present defining relationship of his character.
Something represented in his hangup call to Buffy in episode one.
That is Angel now.
With no defining connection to the world,
Kate: What's a matter.
Can't make a connection.
no desire to find one, and no reason to do what he is doing other than trying to live
up to an ex that is no longer in the picture.
Remember, he wasn't trying to save anyone before he met Buffy, guilt or no guilt.
What I think this means is that action without faith, action without purpose is empty.
And at the beginning of Lonely Hearts we see Doyle trying to move Angel out of this moment
he's frozen in.
301
Sitting in the dark here: You need to get out man.
I think by the end of the episode we see Angel, grasping for his human half, has found some
clarity.
31:00 "It'll be out there.
It's gotta keep trying to make a connection."
- "Why?"
- "Because thats what lonely people do."
Emphasis on people.
The burrower metaphor is an interesting one as it functions on a few different levels.
As a representation of loneliness and how it literally can eat you up inside.
There's an STD aspect to the monster.
And there's the idea of poisonous loneliness actually making you unattractive to the people
you are desperate to get close to.
Obviously this is a model for Angel letting his loneliness fester and, while his sexual
act can have potential dangerous consequences, sex isn't actually the only balm to loneliness.
In fact, without a connection it can be a piss poor one.
Late 90s LA continuous to be prominently featured.
I'm pretty sure I'd rather have a serious illness than have to go to a place the D'Oblique.
As Twitter user @valekennedy pointed out, it looks like the type of club that would
give you a serious illness anyway.
The title is probably a reference to the 1955 black and white French noir, Diabolique - about
two femme fatales, a murder, and a detective.
Though the show continues to subvert the traditional noir.
12:45 "In a place like this I guess everyone's just trying to make a connection" LA NOIRE
And Angel is the superhero detective yes, but he is far from the Phillip Marlowe, strolling
up to the bar and laying a sweet line on a beautiful blonde.
Casablanca: "Was that a cannon or is my heart on fire?"
"Are you in need of being rescued?"
As well as Angel trying to Batman he and Kate out of the basement and instead.
38:40 ceiling collapses.
401
Watching this episode I noticed both Buffy and Angel have dated bits but it's interesting
how dated on Buffy feels like nostalgia.
Dated on Angel feels like the reason we changed everything away from that in the first place.
A lot of late 90s corporate douche bag.
Still I think I learned to appreciate Lonely Hearts this time through.
The club is a little gross and our leads haven't yet developed anything near what I would describe
as chemistry yet.
But within the context of Angel's arc it makes sense, and I like what it is asking
Angel to reach out and grasp.
A reason.
Sources http://www.atpobtvs.com/a11.html#102
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