Extrait du SFX hors-série spécial "US TV" paru en décembre 2002.
Everything changes, but few things change quite so much or so often as they do on Angel. Executive producer Tim Minear takes us through the show's turbulent, but always exciting, third year.
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ACCORDING TO EXECUTIVE producer Tim Minear, "The secret with Angel is that it's constantly changing; it's always discovering whatever it is now. It's not like Buffy with a hard and fast metaphor. It works best as a giant melodrama."
And as giant melodramas go, season three of Angel pretty much joined the Titans. "We came up with the arc at the beginning of the year and we knew roughly how the pieces would fit together," says Minear, taking a break from his dual duties on Firefly and Angel's fourth season. "We had to reveal Darla's pregnancy, get Angel involved in that pregnancy, kill off Darla, introduce Connor - and have him come back as an adolescent - and thread the whole Holtz thing throughout. We hit all our points, but things changed enough during the course of events that it stayed interesting, even for us."
STILL RECOVERING FROM THE DEATH OF BUFFY, Angel "interferes" with another eternal love by staking a female vampire, whose lover, James, wants revenge on Angel, even at the cost of his own undead existence. At the episode's end, we discover that Darla is pregnant...
Tim Minear: "This episode represents a trick we've played before. Angel finally comes to some peace about an issue - in this case, you can't live in the past - and then we discover that sometimes the past comes back. And here comes Darla, pregnant. Just because you decide that it's okay now, it doesn't mean that the people you affected will agree. Basically what had happened in year two was that we ended the season by going to Pylea, instead of wrapping up the Darla plotline. Darla was important in the middle of the year but instead of having a giant resolution with Darla, we just wanted her to sort of fade away. Some fans felt cheated because it seemed we were building toward something. In fact we were: season three."
CORDELIA'S VISIONS - WHICH WERE A GREAT SOURCE for migraines - now start to take on physical manifestations. At first it's believed that the Powers That Be Are responsible, until Angel discovers that Wolfram & Hart has been using a psychic to "hack" into Cordy's brain, slowly killing her. Lilah tells Angel the only way to stop it is for Angel to go into a hell dimension and rescue Billy Blim, who has been imprisoned there. Angel does so, making sure he kills the mind hacker, and warns Lilah that if they go through his friends to get to him again, he'll kill her.
Tim Minear: "When we were breaking that episode, we felt that there were two issues that we needed to hit, or at least two parts of the series we needed to service. One of them was Wolfram & Hart and what they're up to; and the other thing is Cordelia's visions, which we wanted to show becoming increasingly painful. We felt that this was a good way to hit those visions again and then reveal, in fact, that they're not natural visions, which is why she's having these physical manifestations. Jeff Bell's invention of the demon Skip was great, and Skip (who would turn up this season in "Birthday" and "Tomorrow") was the first creation of our new make-up guy, Rob Hall."
WHEN GUNN DISCOVERS THAT HIS OLD GANG IS out killing demons - some of whom are quite innocent - he finds himself torn between his old friends and those he works side by side with at Angel Investigations. He also has to cope with the fact that Angel is a member of the race that killed his sister.
Tim Minear: "It was kind of repetitious of things we had already done. I felt it was time to do a Gunn story, but I don't think it was successful for a number of reasons. There was a point I was trying to make, which is the fact that it's kind of weird Gunn is even working for Angel Investigations. And why is he doing it? What does it mean that Angel is the same kind of creature that killed his sister? Unfortunately it was a little limp and sort of just lied there."
INVESTIGATING A SERIES OF MURDERS, ANGEL ENDS up confronting an elderly man at a retirement home, who, it turns out, is able to swap bodies with other people. When he does so with Angel, he decides he likes the powers that being a vampire bring him, and has no intention of giving the body back.
Tim Minear: "The fun in that episode was watching David Boreanaz get to play somebody else. It was a lighter episode and there was a large subplot that we ended up cutting out. There was this whole story about his daughter and Angel in the old man's body sort of empowers her. That somehow got lost. It was interesting, but the execution didn't quite work. When it was time to cut, we decided to leave the jokes and lose that."
WHEN FRED'S PARENTS DISCOVER THAT SHE'S ALIVE, they come to Los Angeles with the intention of bringing her back home with them. What they, and Fred, ultimately discover is that she now considers LA her home - because that's where her new life is.
Tim Minear: "We felt like we had to explore the notion of why is Fred still hanging around and what she brings to the mix. Also, we're always doing these evil parent stories, and the joke was that everyone assumes her parents will be evil, but they're perfectly normal people who really love their daughter. They also realise that she's always been a little weird, but so is everybody else at Angel Investigations, so perhaps she belongs here."
BILLY BLIM, RESCUED FROM A HELL DIMENSION by Angel in "That Vision Thing", begins a new wave of terror by utilising his unique abilities: by touching a man, he is able to transfer onto them his own violent (often homicidal) rage towards women. When Wesley becomes infected he pursues Fred through the hotel with murder in his eyes, in scenes reminiscent of The Shining.
Tim Minear: "The most controversial episode of the year. Fans either love it or hate it. I think it worked out. Jeff Bell and I were sitting around saying, 'It's time to do something scary.' We realised that we had the character of Billy that we set up in 'That Vision Thing' and Jeff had always had a notion of who that kid was; that he was a member of some powerful political family who could get away with mistreating women because of who he was. That was the metaphor something not unknown in American life.
"There are so many things about that episode that I love. I thought that Billy was a great character. I remember when we were breaking that story, we were saying, 'If it's about an inner beast, when Angel gets infected, then that would be ugly and scary.' But since it wasn't going to be about the inner beast coming out and Angel wasn't even going to be infected by this character's contagion, we thought it would be more interesting if, in fact, Wesley ended up getting infected. I think that Alexis was brilliant and scary."
A HEAVILY PREGNANT DARLA SHOWS UP AT ANGEL Investigations, shocking everyone - particularly Angel, who apparently is the dad (vampires aren't supposed to be able to have children, you see). Meanwhile, a guy called Holtz, whose family was murdered by Angelus back in the 18th century, arrives in the present thanks to the help of a time-travelling demon called Sahjhan. Holtz has pledged to destroy Angel, which is something Sahjhan - who cannot manifest in a corporeal form in our world - is keen to encourage. For the moment, though, he's not letting on exactly what his grudge against Angel is.
Tim Minear: "Here we were starting the Darla arc again in full force. Actually it is there to set up Holtz again. We get to see - in flashback - Holtz torturing Angel and Darla coming in and rescuing him. She shows up at the hotel looking for daddy, and we laid down the first inkling that the kid inside her is starting to affect Darla emotionally."
ALL OF ANGEL'S ENEMIES BELIEVE THAT HIS UNBORN son will play a pivotal role in the forthcoming apocalypse, and everyone - from vampire cultists to Wolfram & Hart to Holtz to Oprah Winfrey (er, maybe not) - is desperate to get their hands on the fated child for one reason or another. Holtz appears to be the victor when he lays waste to a whole troop of armed heavies sent in by Wolfram & Hart.
Tim Minear: "A tricky episode to write, because it's difficult keeping all the balls in the air without the big, giant pay-off. It brings Wolfram & Hart into the plot, and has Holtz wipe out Wolfram & Hart's team. Jeff had a moment in his outline script in which Holtz learns that Angel has a soul now. I very graciously went to Jeff and said, 'You can't use that. I need that for 'Lullaby.'"
ALTHOUGH ANGEL IS CAPTURED BY HOLTZ, HE escapes just in time to meet up with Darla, who seems ready to give birth in the alley behind the hotel. Unfortunately, her body is incapable of actually delivering the child. Filled with love for her offspring - it seems that the soul of the child is somehow affecting the mother - she makes the ultimate sacrifice, staking herself and, as she disintegrates, leaving the crying child in her wake. A shocked Angel scoops the infant up just as Holtz aims a crossbow at them - and miraculously lets them go.
Tim Minear: "Angel's face-to-face confrontation with Holtz. Since everything has been playing in real time for the last episode or two, when we come into 'Lullaby' act one plays like an act four. It's not so much a set-up as it is a resolution of the previous episode. We don't really get into a clearcut set-up until Lilah has stolen the prophecies from the hotel and Darla has disappeared. Also, this was the revelation that Angel and Darla didn't just kill Holtz' family, but they turned his little girl and Holtz had to come back, find her and had to throw her out into the sun. Once we got that, I kind of knew what to write. Angel starting to allow himself to believe that he was going to have a child juxtaposed with this other man's family being destroyed. It all built to what I thought was a very cool moment, with Darla staking herself and Angel left holding the baby in the pouring rain. Then Holtz steps aside and lets him walk by! The impression is that he's feeling compassion for Angel, but in reality he's not ready to kill Angel because he sees a way to make Angel suffer in the same way that he has suffered. That moment, of letting Angel pass, has a profound effect on the way the rest of the season plays out.
"I had pitched the idea that perhaps Darla is captured and staked. Of course Joss Whedon took it to the cool Whedon place in which she stakes herself."
WHILE ANGEL TRIES TO COPE WITH HIS NEW ROLE in life as a father, he and the gang must hold off a new wave of attackers hell bent on obtaining the child {which he has named Connor). At the same time, Holtz begins putting together a team of his own consisting of those who feel that life has screwed them and who'd like to return the favour.
Tim Minear: "To me, this was somewhat of a place-holder episode. Everyone's coming after this kid, but instead of some kind of giant emotional pain episode, we thought it was time to do a cool switcheroo thing where Angel and the baby get chased into a mine, but then the baby turns out to be a bomb."
WHILE CELEBRATING HER BIRTHDAY, CORDELIA who has been taking painkillers to help with the headaches that accompany her visions - suddenly falls into a coma. Her soul, however, goes on an astrally-projected walkabout; she can watch what's going on but cannot interact with the real world. She meets a demon, Skip, who tells her that she should never have had the visions in the first place; that Doyle was wrong for passing them on to a human, as only demons can handle them. If she has another vision, it could kill her. However, Skip has given permission to offer an alternate life in which she is a sitcom star. She gives it a shot, but finds that she can't change the person she's become and agrees to become part demon so that she can continue being "vision girl", but without the life-threatening headaches.
Tim Minear: "In some ways this is It's A Wonderful Life. You know, what would the world be like if I hadn't been born... or if I had a sitcom. I thought it was a terrific episode. What I loved about it is that you can't go wrong when one of your main characters seems to die in the teaser. I think we really got a sense of what a damaged Wesley would be like in that altered reality, which was a foreshadowing of the Wesley from season four."
DETERMINED TO PROVIDE FOR CONNOR'S FUTURE, Angel goes a bit overboard in putting commerce over rhe true goals of Angel Investigations. Needless to say, things don't exactly work out right until he puts his priorities straight. In other words, he needs to save a guy from a horde of vampires and not worry about whether or not the cheque will clear the bank. Greed also results in Fred quite literally losing her head when some demons take an interest in her mind.
Tim Minear: " Another placeholder episode. I remember that it was an attempt to have a bunch of different stories going on at once, because we do tend to get almost masturbatory in our giant arciness on Angel. It's become so arcy, it's such a novel, that we're afraid sometimes people might tune in and find they can't watch the show because they've missed something. However, if 'Provider' taught us anything, it's that the novel approach is cooler. It was lightweight, and there are darker, more interesting places for Angel to go."
WHEN THE GANG GOES TO THE BALLET (COURTESY of Angel) Gunn is initially resistant to the idea, but then discovers that he actually likes watching people ponce about in tights. Angel, however, is drawn into a mystery when he recognises a ballerina from a performance 100 years earlier. When he and Cordy go backstage to investigate, their bodies are taken over by the spirits of unrequited lovers. At episode's end, Angel starts to come to grips with feelings he has for Cordelia, but just when it seems that he's going to tell her he loves her, Groosalugg arrives from the Host's home dimension to renew his relationship with Cordy.
Tim Minear: "What can I say? Joss's beautiful tribute to ballet. I love that episode. I feel it's imbued with a magical quality that I really enjoyed. Hilariously enough, that whole idea that Joss had initially was that since Amy Acker is a trained ballet dancer, he wanted to do something where Amy could dance.
"There was an entire fantasy scene that Joss had in mind, which they actually shot. The sequence starts with Wesley watching the ballet, then the ballerina turns into Fred and he joins her on stage. He, of course, is a bumbling fool. That whole thing was shot, but it didn't fit anywhere into the story at all, so Joss cut it out. It will be included on the DVD."
WHEN GROOSALUGG MAKES IT KNOWN THAT HE has come to be with Cordelia (and she's thrilled that's the case), Angel must cope with his feelings - jealousy among them. At the same time, Gunn and Fred connect on an emotional level, leaving Wesley also feeling jealous. On a far more serious note, Wesley finishes translating a certain prophecy pertaining to Angel which says, "The Father Will Kill The Son".
Tim Minear: "The follow-up to 'Waiting In The Wings' after Cordelia and Angel have their 'near' sex. The story was about the different possible couplings of characters on our show. Then there's the fun of Cordelia giving Groo a make-over and having him look exactly like Angel.
"Really, though, my idea going into the episode was that it was all about voyeurism in some way. Everybody is watching everybody else; they're seeing things from a distance. For me, the signature moment in the episode isn't even in the script. It comes when Wesley's on the phone, but watching Fred and Gunn and Cordelia and Groo in the middle of the lobby. He watches Fred laugh. Then he moves his head a little bit to the left until a pillar is blocking Gunn and all he can see is her... because that's all he wants to see."
FOLLOWING A CONVERSATION WITH A GIANT plastic cheeseburger (you have to see it to believe it), Wesley looks for signs of the prophecy coming true, and is horrified to find them. Meanwhile, Gunn and Fred are manipulated by Holtz' people to investigate a vampire nest which nearly costs them their lives.
Tim Minear: "Talking hamburgers, come on! That was probably Joss's idea. I really like that episode. It's interesting, too, because nothing really happens. The story doesn't move forward and it's sort of a miracle of running to stay in one place. It's just a huge game of set up, with Wesley going off, these prophecies - possibly - coming true, and so on. Nothing really happens, yet it's a compelling episode. I believe the pay-off for this episode is 'Sleep Tight.'"
THINGS GO HORRIBLY WRONG WHEN ANGEL'S personality begins to change, and he discovers that Wolfram and Hart has been spiking his supply of pig's blood with Connor's blood. Wesley goes to Holtz to devise a means of taking Connor away from Angel before the prophecy can come true. But when he carries out the kidnapping Justine cuts his throat and takes Connor to Holtz. At episode's end, the demon Sahjhan demands that Holtz kill the child or the Earth will be consumed by a hell dimension, a portal to which he opens up to show he means business. Connor in hand, Holtz leaps into the portal, which closes behind him, leaving a devastated Angel behind.
Tim Minear: "We couldn't just have Wesley go to Holtz and believe everything that he said, but he went there and believed it enough that he knew he had to get out of town with that kid himself. That's exactly what Holtz was hoping for and it puts Wesley in a very vulnerable position. By the end of the episode, there's pain for everyone. Wesley is doing what he does for all the right reasons, yet he's completely wrong."
DESPERATE TO RETRIEVE CONNOR, ANGEL UTILISES dark magic, despite the fact that it threatens our world. At the same time, a seriously wounded Wesley is brought to the hospital. Everyone tries to figure out why Wesley would take Connor away, and ultimately Angel ends up in the hospital, visiting him, explaining that he never would have hurt Connor. "You know this is Angel talking, not Angelus, right?" he asks the weakened Wesley. When the man nods, Angel goes crazy, putting a pillow over his face and threatening to kill him.
Tim Minear: "I remember Jeff Bell and I just trying to figure out this story, because basically what we had was Cordelia's out of town, Angel has just lost his son, Wesley is dying in a field someplace and we knew where we wanted to end it. How do we get there? We wanted it to seem like Angel has realised why Wesley did what he did and has gone to make some kind of bridge between them, but instead tries to smother him with a pillow. So we knew we had that, but what we didn't really have was an engine for the story to keep it going. Which is why we brought back Sahjhan, because we have a payoff for that character somehow. So we talked about the idea that Sahjhan had faked these prophecies, which in fact does not mean that the prophecies are fake. Just because a guy writes a fake prophecy, if it becomes a prophecy it could be that he was somehow used as an instrument by some greater power in order to write a true prophecy. Just try to get your mind around that! You'll just never know... or perhaps you will."
WHEN GUNN FELT THAT HE HAD NO FUTURE, HE offered his soul in trade to a demon for a wish to be brought true. Now the demon has come to collect and Angel must help Gunn out of his predicament. Cordelia and Groosalugg return after having been on holiday to discover everything that's happened in their absence, while Wesley is cast off on his own as the others turn their back on him because of what happened with Connor. And if you want to know what Gunn was prepared to sell his soul for, check out the answer at the end of this feature...
Tim Minear: "This is a standalone episode. It was time to bring Cordelia back into the mix. Charisma Carpenter shot a movie, but we also took her out of the mix for as long as we thought we needed to. If Cordelia's there, it creates a lot of problems in terms of why wouldn't she know about Wesley or what was going on? There are certain things that really couldn't have happened had she been there, so we did that for the story. Also, in 'Double Or Nothing' she comes back with things for Connor, just like Angel said she would in the previous episode. But in this episode we wanted to do something about Gunn and how he didn't expect to live this long. What do you do when you suddenly realise you've got a future and you never expected to have one? The counter of that is that Angel for a moment believed he would have a future with this kid, and now he no longer has it."
ANGEL'S USE OF DARK MAGIC IN THE PREVIOUS episode comes back to haunt the Angel Investigations team when the hotel is invaded by slug-like creatures that take over the bodies of those they infect, including Fred. At episode's end, a being known as the Destroyer arrives, which turns out to be the returning Connor, now a teenager with a bloodlust to kill Angel.
Tim Minear: "Because Angel went to all of these extreme measures to try and get his kid back, we wanted to answer the question of did he do the right thing? Our answer is that he did. Even though he messed with things he probably shouldn't have been messing with, when it comes to certain things you have to try whatever you have to try.
"That whole story is about wrong-footing the audience so that they think the portal in the hotel is the one Angel opened in an attempt to get to the Hell dimension. It's not. The tear in the hotel is made by something breaking through from the other side. At first we think it's these little slug-monsters that are escaping, but in fact they're running away from something that's even scarier. And that turns out to be Connor."
FAILING TO KILL HIS FATHER, CONNOR FLEES THE hotel and eventually encounters a homeless girl who he befriends. Angel and the gang desperately tries to locate Connor, while simultaneously trying to figure out how he could have aged so much while in the hell dimension from which he escaped.
Tim Minear: "We wanted to do kick-ass action. The minute that kid comes back, we wanted kick-ass action. We wanted a complicated fight scene of the kind on which we don't usually spend a lot of time. A lot of our fight scenes, frankly, are two-shot, hand-held, 'get-it-done and move on to dialogue' affairs. I wanted to kick off with a fight scene that was so big that there wasn't an opening credit until well into the first act. The very opening of the episode is that fight with those CGI stakes and the CGI axe. Then Connor runs outside, jumps on the back of a bus and drives away. We'd done Pylea [with people from our world in a fantasy setting] and now we wanted to show what it was like for someone to come into this world from another dimension. So part of the story is told from Connor's point of view, following him into the dirty underbelly of Los Angeles. It all culminates with Angel and Connor confronting each other and Angel trying to be a dad."
SEEMING TO HAVE HAD A CHANGE OF HEART, Connor comes back to the hotel where there appears to be some father-son bonding going on. But Connor has secretly met up with Holtz who he considers his real father (Holtz has also aged a great deal, though from the make-up Keith Szarabajka's wearing you might be mistaken for thinking he's a burns victim). Suddenly, though. Holtz delivers a humdinger: he suggests that he's taught the boy all that he can, and he argues that Connor would be better off in Angel's hands now. But Holtz, the wily dog, is merely setting up his ultimate revenge. Holtz forces Justine to kill him, but in a way that makes it look as though he was attacked by Angel...
Tim Minear: "Holtz is back, and looking terrible in a latex face. Had we known it was going to look like that bad, we would not have done it. But Keith is so good that he acts through all that crappy make-up and I started to forget about it, so that's good. The story's about the resolution of Holtz and if you look at the episode, you'll see that he never lies in the whole episode. Even though he is completely tricking Connor into thinking Angel murdered him, everything he says is true. He realises that Angel and Connor are destined to somehow be together; that the kid found his way here and if that's the case, then they have some kind of destiny.
"He knows he has to let the kid go but the only thing he cares about is that Connor loves him. The only way to ensure this is to make sure he hates Angel. So he does what he does. He knows that Connor will end up embracing Angel, and he knows if he tries to stand in the way of that, he'll end up driving the kid there. Holtz is basically saying, 'Angel is your destiny and you will learn through Angel what it is you were truly meant to be.'
"Which is the thing that kills fucking Angel!"
BOTH ANGEL AND CORDELIA (WHO HAS SPLIT WITH Groosalugg) try to meet each other at the beach to confess their mutual feelings, but they're interrupted, Skip the demon shows up and tells Cordy that the time has come for her to assume her new, higher position, resulting in her transporting heavenward, Connor confronts Angel on the beach, incapacitates him with a stu gun and then, with Justine's help, seals him in a large steel crate and dumps his body in the ocean.
Tim Minear: "Our first cliffhanger ever. We generally go out on something that sets up the next year, but we decided, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we did the worst possible things we could do to everybody and just leave it like that?' That's what we did. We wanted some real questions and I think it works, I think the reason the fourth season is going to be so good is because we ended the last year that way, You just hit the ground running when you come back; there's no revving everything up. The thing is already revving and it's just about touching it to the ground and letting it go." SFX