Angel Season 5: Working Within the System
The moral case for trying to build a system that works for everyone, or at least as many people as possible without it breaking down.
We all live in some kind of system.
You're literally born into one, which is what you call a family. They existed before you and have ideas about you and themselves, not to mention the people around you. For a large part of your life, they control who you know, the people you meet and what you do with your time. You go where they want you to go, do what they want you to do. This is the system you live in and hopefully it functions well enough that you get along in it. If it doesn't work well, that can cause all kinds of problems. Not just for you but for the people in your family. Mainly because your family members have their own system in which they live. Not just the family you exist within, but as they grow up they learn to create systems of their own, through things like friendship and relationships. Beyond that though, is everyone else who exist within your town, your state, your country and ultimately the world. There's systems everywhere around you, some of which you're not even aware exist until you get old enough to learn about them. It's simply not possible to live outside the system. So you have to learn to live within it, but is that a good idea?
Previously in this space, we've looked at the idea of leaving childhood behind and becoming an adult, what it takes to learn to make adult decisions and how that type of thinking can create the opportunity for you to become a parent. More recently we've looked at the idea that you want to give that child a world which is better than the one you grew up in. To function in a world that isn't as harsh and cruel, maybe even one that you don't have to feel things like that anymore. In order to do that though, there has to be some kind of system in place. A system that allows you to get the basic things you need but also one that you can stand to live within. If you can't stand to live in it, how do you expect you or anyone else around you to live in it too? They could simply choose to go without it. So you have to believe in the system as it exists. Can you?
“You really think you can solve the problem? Come into Wolfram and Hart and make everything right? Turn night into glorious day you pathetic little fairy. You're minuscule, a dust moat on the shelf of that great institution. You think I'm just a trigger happy jerk who follows orders but I am something you will never be. I'm pure, I believe in evil. You, your friends, you're conflicted, you're confused, we're not. That's why you're going to lose, because we possess the most powerful thing in the world... conviction.”
This is very much where we find Angel in the final season of the show. He has come to accept that he lives within a system, even though he spent so much of his life living outside of it. He can't escape the system so the only thing he can do is try to work within it. Especially if he actually wants to affect how the world operates and whether or not it's a positive or negative experience for other people living there. In doing so, he meets people who need the system, or at the very least benefit from it. Both in a good way and a bad way. People like Corbin Fries and Hainsley benefit from the system by exploiting it for their own purposes. They use their power and influence to make money or get things they need from it. On the other hand you have people like Nina who need the system in order to function. Without the power of Wolfram and Hart and Angel's use of it, she would end up alone and desperate, leaving nothing but a trail of bodies in her wake.
So there are people who are good and people who are bad within the system itself. Which isn't surprising because there are good and bad people who live outside the system as well. You can't necessarily have one without the other. A system which is filled with nothing but bad people is corrupt and dangerous. It destroys lives and makes people miserable. Especially for people who live outside the system. Usually the reason why they live outside the system is because someone inside the system doesn't want them to be in it. Or is making it incredibly difficult for them to live within the existing system. Yet these bad people can also do positive things for the good people within the system. They can provide for those good people and the less fortunate. If they're given enough of a reason to do so.
Of course the problem with trying to give someone a reason to is that if they have enough power and influence, it's very hard to get people to go along with any plans to help others. The only way to get people who have this type of power to go along with making the system better and more willing to help others is to gain enough power and influence yourself that you can make them do something for you when and if you need them to. When you do that though, you run the risk of becoming the very thing you're trying to control. Someone willing to use your power and influence to make things the way you want them to be rather than actually improving it in some way. More than likely it requires something of a compromise.
“Okay, let me tell you how this works.”
“I thought I was in charge.”
“Of the Los Angeles branch of a multi-dimensional corporation. Now I'm stressing that last word because that's what we are, we're a business and we have a bottom line. Now you could take your new client list and start hacking away at them from the top down. A lot of our clients are demons and almost all of them are evil.”
“Almost?”
“Things are almost always more complicated than they seem champ. You could shut this place down, but then you wouldn't have it anymore. The place closes down the connections dry up, evil goes next door. This is the catch. I'm explaining the catch so you don't have to sit around wondering what it is. See in order to keep this business running... you have to keep this business running. And that means keeping your clients, most of them anyway, happy.”
“Means letting them get away with stuff.”
“Sweetie, they were getting away with it while you were all sitting around your hotel waiting for the phone to jangle. But you're on the ins now, you can stop the worst of it. Maybe find some new solutions to some old problems. Come on, isn't anyone excited? This is a crazy time of fun. The most powerful evil around has given a pivotal position over to its sworn enemies, you're not scared are you?”
You can't just go around destroying the system and rebuilding it the way you want it to be. Lots of the power you have is dependent on other people who can do what you need. If you destroy the system of the people you rely on, you destroy your ability to affect the world around you. Naturally, this leads to a conflict between what you should do and what you can do. There are some people who are clearly bad and allowing them to continue to exploit the system for their own ends only leads to more suffering and death. Getting rid of them isn't always the best thing to do. In large part because doing so will leave a vacuum of the power and influence they had. Someone worse could end up taking their place.
As a result, you leave the innocent and generally good people to suffer. Yet without them, you wouldn't have anyone who you can help. They give your desire to drive the system towards a better outcome a purpose, not to mention your own sense of value as a person. Part of you depends on the idea of people in need to give yourself a reason to continue. So you compromise to make everything work. You allow people to suffer and die as a way to give yourself meaning. You feel like the only thing to do is keep the system running the way it is, even with the tragedy of it all. But then what? What do you do when you know this about yourself and the people around you?
“You know what I know. Look around, the world's a cesspool filled with selfish and greedy beasts. We live, we die.”
“Yeah, hell's on earth, Holland Manners tried to sell me that line 3 years ago.”
“Did you ever prove him wrong?”
“It's all how you look at the glass. You know we can philosophize all night, hell, we can do it forever. I don't need to eat, sleep, drink... how about you?”
“That's what I like to see, the Angel of yore, takes no prisoners, suffers no fools. How bout this? It's here. It's been here all along, underneath, you're just too damn stupid to see it.”
“See what?”
“The apocalypse man, you're soaking in it.”
“I seen an apocalypse or two in my time. I'd know if one was under my nose.”
“Not AN apocalypse... THE apocalypse. What'd you think a gong was going to sound? Time to jump on your white horses and fight the big fight? Starting pistol went off a long time ago boys, you're playing for the bad guys. Every day you sit behind your desk and you learn a little more about how to accept the world the way it is. Well here's the rub... heroes don't do that. Heroes don't accept the world the way it is. They fight it.”
“You're saying, everything we do... it's a distraction. Keep us busy from looking under the surface.”“Ding! We have a winner. World keeps sliding toward entropy and degradation and what do you do? You sit in your big chair and you sign your cheques... just like the Senior Partners planned.”
You have to find a place where you're not willing to compromise. A line that you're not willing to cross no matter how far you're pushed or whatever power and influence others might have over you. Up until and including the idea that you might lose everything and everyone in the process. Stand on principle more than anything else. More than security and even your own family. To sacrifice your life for if it comes right down to it, which it very well might. Because death is better than giving up everything else. Only by going through the whole process can you come to this final idea. It doesn't make you any friends and might leave you poor if not actually dead.
“She put me on the path, showed me where the real powers are. But I couldn't see who they were, and then Fred died and I wasn't going to let that be another random horrible event in a random horrible world. So I decided to use it, to make her death matter. And it worked, I'm in. I've seen the faces of evil, I know who the real powers in the apocalypse are.”
“So all that power tilts the scales crap.”
“Oh it's true, we're in a machine and that machine is going to be here long after our bodies are dust. The Senior Partners will always exist in some form or another because mankind is weak. We are weak. The powerful control everything... except our will to choose. Lindsey's a pathetic half wit but he was right about one thing. Heroes don't accept the world the way it is, Senior Partners may be immortal, but we can make their existence painful. We're in a machine, the Black Thorn runs it, we can bring their gears to a grinding halt even if it's just for a moment. This isn't a keep fighting the good fight kind of deal, let's be clear. I'm talking about killing every single member of the Black Thorn, we don't walk away from that. We do this, Senior Partners will rain down their full wrath, I'm talking full on hell not the basic fire and brimstone one we're used to. they'll make an example of us. Ten to one, we're gone when the smoke clears. They will do everything in their power to destroy us. So I need you to be sure. Power endures, we can't bring down the Senior Partners but for one bright shiny moment, we can show them that they don't own us. You need to decide for yourselves, if that's worth dying for.”
But it's better than living in a world of endless compromise and learning to live with the horror of the world.
You just have to be willing to put in the work.
Do yourself a favour and check out Angel as soon as you can on Disney Plus as well as Hulu and Amazon.