Angel Season 2: Making Adult Decisions
The moral case for understanding trade offs and that you can't live in a black and white moral system.
How do you make an adult decision?
More importantly, what makes something an adult decision? When you're a kid, things seem very simple and obvious. You either accept responsibility for something or you don't. You live with the consequences of something or you don't. There are good people and there are bad people. It's up to the good people to make sure the bad people don't do terrible things to innocent people. These ways of thinking are pretty straightforward. You don't have to think about them all that much. Especially because the people who are bad can be easily identified by their angry faces or their tendency to say and do the wrong thing. Why wouldn't you think that the world was that simple when you become an adult? Sadly, the world is a lot more complicated than that.
Previously in this space, we looked at what it means to leave high school behind. To build adult relationships with people around you. But that's not the end of the process by any means. Once you've left high school behind and decided to act more like an adult, you have to figure out what living as an adult looks like. How you lean to maintain these relationships by keeping yourself functioning. Sometimes that requires you to make an adult decision. One that might seem like it's good at the time but later on could end badly. That despite our best efforts, the world doesn't fit into neat little categories of good and bad. There are shades of grey.
“I thought I was out of the tunnel. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and the light was so bright... I thought I was already out.”
This is very much where we find Angel, Cordelia and Wesley in season 2. They've found a way to leave high school behind and become more adult in their way of thinking. Their relationship goes beyond just being forced together thanks to circumstances. They actually care about each other because what they do as a team allows them to find purpose in society. But in many ways they've taken the wrong lessons from what they've built so far. In large part thanks to how much they succeeded, they came to believe that they couldn't make mistakes. That their lives were on the right path and all they have to do is keep going.
Very quickly though, they realize that isn't the case. Many of the ideas they have about who the good guys are and who the bad guys are don't hold up. Some times, good guys do terrible things to each other and other times those we think of as bad will help people and make the world better. Being an adult means finding the ability to realize this fact. To understand that you can't just destroy all the bad people and fix the world. They have their place in the world just like the good people. Removing them might end up doing more harm than good.
So what do you do when you know that? When you know that people aren't all good or all bad?
“People are pathetic.”
“I don't know, I like 'em. Time I've lived, I've seen some horrors, scary behaviour, and a couple fashion trends I constantly pray to forget, but... I see people try. I see them try to be better.”
One way to deal with this uncertainty is to stop caring. To just decide that what is best is to divide the world into good and evil. Double down on a simple way of seeing the world. Bad people are bad, so if they do bad things then they deserve whatever happens to them as a result. Even if you're the one who has to do it to them. Your job is to stop evil, regardless of who or what is doing it. Good people don't allow for bad things. All that should happen to the innocent and the good is have happy things happen to them. There's no room in a view of the world like that for the moral grey area.
“Let them fight the good fight. Someone has to fight the war.”
Making the world simple in that way has its benefits. You don't have to think about the consequences of your actions. Because you're the good person, or at least you want to believe that you are. So long as you hold true to this fact, you're fine. Where you get into a problem though is how few people around you will want to think that way. Particularly because it means that one wrong step on their part and you could end up being a target by the person you're helping out. Forgiveness doesn't enter into this way of thinking. If you're thinking in these types of terms though, how do you know that you're the good people? After all, bad people think in terms of innocent and guilty. They just tend to focus on the innocent instead of the guilty. If you are focused on the guilty, are you any better than the people you're trying to fight? Focusing on the innocent and their ultimate corruption isn't much different from people who only care about punishing those who've done wrong.
“A vampire wanting to slay a demon in order to help some grummy humans? I don't get it.”
“To be honest? I'm not sure I do either.”
We see this in the contrast between how Angel comes to this way of thinking and how Kate does. Angel feels like helping the innocent isn't enough. He can't just try and give people hope, he has to force people to pay for their crimes. Particularly Darla and Drusilla but especially Lindsey and Lilah and everyone at Wolfram and Hart. They don't just corrupt the innocent, they have the money and power to use it against the innocent. To the point that they are actively making the world worse while enjoying every second of it. For that, they deserve to be punished. Not by simply killing them, which would be a kind of release, instead by making every waking moment of their lives a living hell. A lot like what they've done to him.
Kate on the other hand becomes obsessed with the idea of protecting the innocent. What bothers her isn't so much the powerful forces who are playing in the halls of power, using connections to extort charities and making business deals. She's focused on the ordinary people who get hurt along the way. The actor who Wolfram and Hart hire just so they can murder him in their desire to corrupt Angel. The woman who's drained of all her blood because Angel couldn't get to them in time. She can't look away from the absolute tragedy of it all. She wants to punish the guilty but she's not interested in either the maintaining or dismantling of the system which allows such destruction to happen. Until it all gets too much for both Angel and Kate.
Lindsey and Lilah are their opposites in many ways. They enjoy being a corrupting influence in the world. Whether it's Bethany who they're trying to make into an assassin for their cause or Anne who just wants to help people. All they're really interested in is making the world seem a little darker. Making sure there's a little less hope in the world and a little more cynicism. So when they find themselves in a situation where they could help someone, they choose not to. In working like that, the influence they can have is incredible. If all your after is making the world worse anyway.
But what's the alternative? Is it any better?
“The road to redemption is a rocky path.”
The best you can say about it is that it's easier to live with. While the moral certainty of living in the black and white concept of right and wrong sounds like a good idea, you can't be sure you're ever on the right side. You can always wake up one day and realize that what you have been doing has destroyed more lives than it has saved. Leading you to wonder if any of it was worth the sacrifices you made. More than that you could find you've become isolated. No one will like you and they may never forgive you for leaving them behind. Allowing yourself to see the grey area prevents you from ending up in such circumstances.
If you don't come to this realization and find a way to be a lot more forgiving of others, you're going to end up in a dead end. Which is exactly where Lindsey ultimately ends up. He can't come to terms with the morally grey aspects of life. He prefers a simple way of thinking about the world. Yet he's constantly confronted with the fact that contradictions exist. Where some good people do bad things and some bad people do good things. Sometimes he benefits from the bad things he and his company does. Despite himself, he can't feel only one way about this fact. He's confronted with the uncertainty of it all.
Living in the moral grey area means that sometimes you're going to be helping demons who might otherwise want to kill others. Maybe they are brutal demonic forces who like to eat babies, but they could also be innocent victims of whatever crime they're accused of. It means that not every human who dies thanks to this bigger fight is an innocent victim. Some innocent people deserve what's coming to them because they did the wrong thing in the moment. This isn't a fun reality to come to, but it also might be the only decent way to live a life without suffering. Or at the very least much less of it.
“My whole life has been about being a cop. If I'm not a part of the force then it's like nothing I do means anything.”
“It doesn't.”
“Doesn't what?”“Mean anything. In the greater scheme, the big picture... nothing we do matters. There's no grand plan, no big win.”
“You seem kinda chipper about that.”
“Well I guess I kinda... worked it out. If there's no great glorious end to all this, and nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do, because that's all there is. What we do now, today. I fought for so long for redemption, for a reward, and finally just to beat the other guy but, I never got it.”
“Now you do?”
“Now... all I wanna do is help. I wanna help because I don't think people should suffer as they do. Because... if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.”
Anne is probably the best example of what it means to live in the moral grey area. She will help anyone with anything, no matter who it is. The kids she helps in her youth centre are, in many cases, former criminals or even current criminals. A lot of them are just down on their luck and had a bad upbringing. Yet if they ask, she will help them. More than that she is willing to accept help from anyone. If an evil law firm who is only out for themselves is willing to do something to help keep her youth centre open, she will accept help from them. She can't worry about what Wolfram and Hart is up to while putting on a good face for the cameras. Her kids need help now, and nothing else matters.
Which just naturally begs the question, what is it all for? Why should do try and help people at all given how little you can be sure what you're doing is making a difference? It might seem like helping for the sake of helping is enough, but that might not always be the case. At a certain point you're going to need a lot more than that. A way to come to terms with the fact that help just isn't enough. You have to know that when you're gone, the help you're trying to create doesn't just stop with you. Someone to pass down the fight to when the time is right. Maybe even a greater legacy than just what you do in the moment.
But we'll get more into that when we examine season 3, which is available for paid subscribers now. Season 4 is also available to paid subscribers and season 5 is this month.
Do yourself a favour and check out Angel as soon as you can on Disney Plus as well as Hulu and Amazon.