In the Dark (Angel)

"In the Dark"
Angel episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 3
Directed by	Bruce Seth Green
Written by	Doug Petrie
Production code	1ADH03
Original air date	October 19, 1999
Guest stars
Seth Green as Oz James Marsters as Spike Kevin West as Marcus Malia Mathis as Rachel Michael Yavnieli as Lenny Ric Sarabia as Vendor Tom Rosales as Manny the Pig Gil Combs as Bouncer Buck McDancer as Dealer Jenni Blong as Young Woman
Episode chronology
← Previous "Lonely Hearts" Next → "I Fall to Pieces"
List of Angel episodes

"In the Dark" is episode three of season one of the television show Angel. Written by Doug Petrie and directed by Bruce Seth Green, it was originally broadcast on October 19, 1999 on the WB network. In "In the Dark" James Marsters guest stars as Spike and Seth Green reprises his role as Oz, both arriving in L.A. immediately following events of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Harsh Light of Day". Oz brings Angel (David Boreanaz) a magical ring that renders a vampire invincible, which Angel hides. Spike hires vampire Marcus (Kevin West) to torture Angel into divulging the ring's location, but when Angel doesn't break, Spike negotiates a hostage exchange with Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) and Doyle (Glenn Quinn). During the exchange, Marcus nabs the ring and disappears. Angel tracks and dusts Marcus, then wears the Gem of Amarra himself for the remainder of the day. Finally - deciding the ring only simulates the redemption he seeks and that possessing it would inevitably distance him from the suffering of the innocent he has sworn to protect - Angel crushes the Gem of Amarra to powder.

Plot

Angel protects a young woman named Rachel from her abusive boyfriend in an alley while Spike watches from a nearby rooftop. At the office, Oz holds a ring out to Angel: the Gem of Amarra. Doyle explains that the ring is a priceless talisman which "renders the wearer one hundred percent unkillable, if he's a vampire." Oz tells Angel, "Buffy wanted you to have it." Later, alone, Angel hides the ring under a loose brick in one of the sewer tunnels. The next morning Angel receives a call for help from Rachel, but before he can go over, Spike shows up, seeking the Gem of Amarra. The two vampires fight, and Cordelia and Doyle rush in just as Angel defeats Spike. Spike runs away.

Later, Angel chases and corners Spike in a dead end blocked by a chainlink fence but is captured by another vampire hired by Spike, who swings a heavy chain around Angel's neck. At Doyle's apartment, Cordelia and Doyle worry that Angel hasn't checked in, the reason being that he is suspended by long, manacled chains from the ceiling of a large warehouse. Spike introduces him to his captor, Marcus, a master torturer with a taste for (eating and torturing) children. Accompanied by the strains of Mozart's Symphony #41, the eerily reserved vampire inspects Angel inside and out, asks, "What do you want, Angel?" and rams a red-hot poker through Angel's bared abdomen. Time passes as Marcus works into a rhythm of hurting Angel, then asking what he wants, then hurting him again. Angel refuses to tell them where the ring is, and Spike grows frustrated. Angel tells Spike he's an idiot for believing that Marcus, a vampire, has no interest in obtaining the Gem of Amarra for himself. Unperturbed, Spike dismisses Marcus as a threat, deeming him too single-mindedly obsessed with the art of torture to care about anything else. Spike taunts Angel about "Slutty" the Vampire Slayer, recounting news of her recent rebound disaster. Spike leaves and Marcus continues to shove hot pokers into his captive, then shoots holes in the building's ceiling so that Angel, agonized by any movement, must stretch and hold himself at the limit of his chains to avoid the pencil-thin beams of sunlight. Angel makes Marcus believe he's about to break. He lures his tormentor closer by whispering, truthfully, that what he most wants is forgiveness. Entranced, Marcus draws near enough for Angel to bring his legs up high enough to plunge a wooden stake into Marcus' heart, but before he is able to do so, Spike appears and disarms Angel's feet. Enraged, Marcus punches Angel, and he resumes torturing him with Spike now providing assistance.

Abandoning his fruitless search of Angel's apartment, Spike tells Cordelia and Doyle them that if they want Angel to live, they must find the ring and turn it over before sundown. Doyle is able to find the ring in the sewers by using his demon senses. They meet with Spike at the appointed spot and demand to see Angel before they reveal where they've stashed the ring. Spike takes them to where he and Marcus are holding the now barely conscious Angel. When Spike gloatingly admits he has no intention of going through with the trade, Doyle pulls the ring out of his pocket and throws it across the warehouse floor. Spike reaches for it but is forced to duck and roll when Oz smashes his van through the warehouse wall. Oz holds Spike at bay with crossbows until Cordy and Doyle get Angel into the back of the van and they drive away. To Spike's intense dismay, he finds that Angel was right—under cover of Angel's rescue, Marcus has pinched the Gem of Amarra for himself and run off. Knowing Marcus' predilection for children, Angel tells Oz to head to the boardwalk. They find Marcus focusing on the children there, and Oz uses the van to knock the invincible vampire flying. In spite of having spent most of the day being tortured nearly to death, Angel leaps out of the van, bursting into flame from the sunlight, and tackles Marcus off the pier, falling with him to the water below. In the shade under the boardwalk, the two vampires fight. Angel impales Marcus on a beam, but the Gem of Amarra protects him until Angel yanks the ring off his finger and Marcus crumbles to dust. Angel slides the ring onto his own hand, then steps out into the sunlight for the first time in more than two hundred years.

That evening, enraptured, Angel watches the sun set in an ordinary, smoggy, southern California sky. To Doyle's extreme dismay, Angel has decided not to keep the ring. Angel explains that the Gem of Amarra only appears to be the redemption he seeks, and that keeping it would make him forget about the many people who need a champion to help them at night. When the last sliver of sun disappears, Angel removes the Gem of Amarra and, deliberately, smashes it flat with a chunk of brick. After a moment of silence, Angel slowly begins to smile. "I don't know about you," he says to Doyle, "but I had a nice day...You know, except for the bulk of it, where I was nearly tortured to death." Angel continues to joke with his friend as they leave the rooftop and head down the stairs together.

Production

Responding to the statement that Angel's decision to destroy the ring is reminiscent of Gloria Stuart throwing the priceless diamond into the ocean at the end of Titanic, producer Tim Minear says the difference is that "she throws it in the water as if that means something about Jack [but] it was the other guy’s diamond, and I have no idea why she’s throwing it in the water." However, "it makes perfect sense for [Angel] to destroy the ring. Can he be trusted? That is the point of the series," Minear says. "If he has the power to be invincible, what would happen if he spent eternity as Angelus? Angel knows that he can't be trusted - think about Jenny Calendar. In that light, the ending makes perfect sense to me."

Arc significance

• This isn't the last time Angel turns down a shortcut to happiness in his quest for redemption.
• This is Spike's first appearance on Angel. Although he is portrayed as the Big Bad for this episode, he returns in season five as an ensouled Champion.
• This is the first time Angel and Spike fight each other hand to hand on screen.
• Oz, portrayed by Seth Green, makes his appearance to help Angel; as mentioned/depicted on several occasions, Sunnydale is only a two-hour drive from Los Angeles, so Oz's visit is easily accomplished.

Continuity

• Crossover with Buffy: This episode continues a story begun in "The Harsh Light of Day," aired immediately before.
• Spike referring to Angel as "a big fluffy puppy with bad teeth" is similar to Buffy's comment in The Harsh Light of Day, where she tells Parker that the bite Angel gave her was given to her by an "angry puppy".
• Cordelia tries to give Doyle some idea of what they're up against with Spike, and her catalog of evilness includes the "whole deal with this arm in a box." This is a reference to Spike and Drusilla releasing the demon Judge during events in "Surprise" and "Innocence", in season two of Buffy.
• This marks the first of only two episodes in which Spike and Cordelia exchange dialogue in Angel. The other is in Season Five's "You're Welcome"
• It has been at least a week since (some of) "Lonely Hearts", Doyle mentions being in Cordelia's apartment "last week".
• This is Oz's only appearance in Angel and his final on screen meeting with either Angel or Cordelia.

Cultural references

• Batmobile: Spike's line, "quickly! To the Angelmobile! Away!" is an homage to Batman, in style as well as content.
• Matthew McConaughey: Cordelia tells Doyle that the only way she'll go on a cruise with him is in an alternate universe where he turns into the handsome actor (of Irish descent).
• A Fistful of Dollars: Oz mentions that Spike fled Sunnydale after getting "a fistful of Buffy."
• Angela's Ashes: While drunk, Doyle apparently quoted Angela’s Ashes and began to weep. The book is a memoir by Irish author Frank McCourt, and tells the story of his childhood in Brooklyn and Ireland. It was published in 1996 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
• Bam-Bam, Betty and Barney Rubble: These three characters are from the Hanna-Barbara cartoon series The Flintstones, and not, as Cordelia points out, the central characters in Angela's Ashes.
• Johnny Depp: Confronting Spike as he tosses Angel's apartment in search of the Gem of Amarra, Cordelia refers to a 1994 incident in which the famous actor was arrested in (alleged) connection with some serious damage to an NYC hotel suite.

External links

• "In the Dark" at the Internet Movie Database
• "In the Dark" at TV.com