Five by Five

"Five by Five" is the eighteenth episode of the first season of Angel and the eighteenth episode overall. Written by Jim Kouf and directed by James A. Contner, it was originally broadcast on April 25, 2000 on the WB network.

After her latest rampage through Sunnydale, Faith arrives in Los Angeles, where Wolfram & Hart strikes up a deal with her: if she assassinates Angel for them, they will get her off the hook of all criminal charges against her in Sunnydale. Though Faith agrees, it becomes clear to Angel that she has plans of her own...

Synopsis
Angel and Wesley rescue a gang member named Marquez from three demons. Elsewhere, Faith, last seen in "Who Are You," arrives in Los Angeles on a bus. She mugs the first man she meets.

In a flashback to Romania in 1898, Darla leads a blindfolded Angelus to his birthday present: a young Gypsy woman lying bound and gagged on the parlor floor. As Darla watches, Angelus vamps and bites the terrified girl high on the inner thigh.

At Angel Investigations, Angel tries to convince Marquez to testify in court.

Faith dances at a nightclub. When a girl objects to Faith dancing with her boyfriend, Faith nonchalantly elbows her in the face. The boyfriend takes a swing at Faith, who slams him into a group of people across the room, sparking an instant melee. Faith continues to dance while chaos rages around her, choreographing kicks and punches without missing a beat.

In court the next day, Lindsey McDonald on behalf of Wolfram & Hart moves for dismissal of a murder charge, but Angel shows up in the nick of time with Marquez, who is a key witness for the prosecution and is now willing to testify. As Lindsey takes heat for his failure in court, Lee Mercer suggests hiring Faith to kill Angel. Together with Lilah Morgan, who knows how to find Faith, he makes the contact.

In another flashback to 1898 Romania, Darla finds that Angelus is acting strangely. He is reflecting on his 140 years of killing, which he remembers in detail. He says that the Gypsies "did something" to him. Darla realizes that he now has a soul, which she finds filthy and disgusting. She breaks a chair, threatens Angelus (now Angel) with a broken chair leg, and drives him out into the night.

At Wolfram & Hart, Faith negotiates with Lilah, Lindsey and Lee. They remind Faith that she is charged with murder, and promise to get her off if she will kill Angel. She asks what they will pay. When Lee fails to answer right away, she grabs him by the scruff of the neck and beats his face against the table. Lilah is impressed with her initiative.

The next day, Cordelia, Wesley and Angel are in the lobby of an office building on their way to a lunchtime meeting. Faith attempts to shoot Angel in the back with a crossbow, but Angel turns around in time to catches the bolt in mid-air a few inches from his heart. Faith issues her challenge and runs for the door.

Back at his office, Angel phones Giles in Sunnydale to learn that Faith has been out of her coma for a week. He instructs Wesley and Cordelia to help him track the rogue Slayer down and then make themselves scarce. Cordelia agrees, but Wesley wants to be involved. Wesley asks if Faith did something to Buffy, thinking this might explain Angel's feelings, however Giles wouldn't go into specific details... only telling Angel it was 'rough'. Fearing that Angel will let emotion control him and "one of you will wind up dead," Wesley shouts, "She's not a demon, Angel. She's a sick, sick girl," expressing concern that it's possible Faith can be rehabilitated. Angel angrily replies that he had been helping her the previous year, and was about to reach her, when Wesley burst in with commandos from The Watcher's Council to abduct her, ensuring that she would never trust anyone again. Wesley looks abashed.

Later, with Wesley and Cordelia absent, Angel finds Faith in his outer office, where she stands protected from immediate attack by sunlight streaming through raised blinds. Faith promises to kill Angel "slowly and inventively" when the time comes, then tosses him a gun, to give him a chance to kill her first. He fires at her leg without hesitation. The round he fires turns out to be a blank, so he tosses the gun back to Faith. Faith mocks him for not shooting to kill. She wants to "up the stakes" by playing for Angel's soul as well as his life. She then shoots him in the shoulder with a real bullet and escapes by crashing through the sunny window.

Angel, wearing a suit and spouting convincing corporate-speak, sneaks into Lindsey's plush Wolfram & Hart office. While he is searching in Lindsey's desk drawers, Lindsey enters. He denies knowing anything about Faith. He also informs Angel that Wolfram & Hart has advanced security systems both electronic and mystical, so that no vampire can enter the building undetected. A security guard appears from the wings, but Angel disables him. Lindsey says more are on the way, and the entire encounter is being recorded on hi-def video. Angel leaves, promising to see Lindsey again "real soon."

Wesley and Cordelia, planning to go away as Angel instructed them, go to her apartment to pack. Phantom Dennis tries to prevent Cordelia from opening the door. She thinks Dennis is jealous of Wesley until they discover that Faith has broken in. Faith has correctly calculated that Angel, indifferent to being targeted himself, will be unable to ignore threats to his friends. Faith attacks and subdues both of them.

In another flashback to 1898 Romania, a newly-ensouled and distressed Angel begs for help on the streets of Borşa. He encounters a group of well-dressed people but rejects the coin they toss into the mud, telling the men that he wants the one woman in their company. Outraged, the men rush Angel and force him into a dark alley as he shouts, "I'm a monster!" Angel tosses one of the men back out to the street and leaves the other, either unconscious or dead, lying the alley. Angel staggers out, drags the woman into the alley and bites her neck.

Angel appears at Cordelia's apartment. She explains what happens. Wesley is not there.

At Faith's apartment, Wesley is gagged and tied to a chair. Finding Wesley still defiant, Faith recites the list of the "five basic torture groups," blunt, sharp, hot, cold and loud, and decides to move from blunt to sharp. She breaks the glass in a picture frame and picks up a large shard.

Meanwhile, Angel and Cordelia map recent assaults, hoping to learn where Faith might be. Angel wants to know the address of Faith's first victim. He suspects that Faith might be staying in that apartment.

Faith sits disconsolately in an open window, waiting for Angel. Sighing, she drops the now-bloody glass shard to smash on the pavement below. Turning back into the room, she finds a flame wand and a can of non-stick spray in her kitchen. While taunting Wesley, she shows him how she can make a burst of flame. She removes Wesley's gag because she wants to hear him scream. Angel smashes down the door and charges into the apartment. Faith drops her impromptu torch and holds a knife at Wesley's throat

The earlier flashback continues. Angel mutters, "I can't, oh God, I can't." As he stumbles away down the muddy street, the girl he attacked appears in the entrance to the alley, disheveled and bitten, but alive.

Almost forgotten, Wesley sits perfectly still under Faith's knife as vampire and Slayer face each other. In a brief exchange of verbal thrusts, one of Angel's barbs makes Faith drop her guard for a split second, and Wesley flings himself and his chair backward out of her grasp. Angel knocks Faith down with a tremendous kick and a long fight begins. Faith seems to have the upper hand as Angel misses many opportunities to attack. Faith taunts Angel ("Come on, Angel. I thought you were bad!") but Angel remains silent.

They crash out a window together, land on a dumpster, and continue their fight in the alley three stories below. As Wesley frees himself, rain falls. Faith swings at Angel repeatedly, but lands few blows. She repeatedly says, "I'm bad, I'm evil." Finally breaking his long silence, Angel tells her, "Nice try, Faith. I know what you want, and I won't do it. I won't make it easy for you." Faith continues to hit Angel, but more weakly. As Wesley appears, armed with a knife, Faith asks Angel to kill her. Faith kneels on the alley floor, while Angel goes to one knee, and holds her in his arms. Standing unheeded behind them, Wesley, surprised at the sight of Faith's humanity, drops his knife and silently looks on.

Continuity

 * The actors in the 1898 scenes are the same actors who played the roles in Becoming, Part One providing excellent continuity to the expanded story of how Angel regained his soul. In this episode it provides a counter-point for Faith regaining her humanity.


 * The Romanian flashbacks take place October 1898.


 * Crossover with Buffy: Faith was last seen fleeing Sunnydale in "Who Are You". This episode will begin her rehabilitation in preparation of her return to Buffy in its final season.This episode is the first to outwardly show that Faith actually HAS gone insane. Angel says he "likes 'em sane" when asking what he sees in Buffy by the Mayor in Choices, but it was unclear until now whether or not he meant it literally or simply as an adjective.

Body Count

 * Marquez's friend, killed by the three demons
 * 3 unidentified demons, killed by Angel

Total: 1 Human 3 Demons

Locations

 * Los Angeles, CA
 * Borşa, Romania (only in flashbacks)

Production

 * Christian Kane returns as Lindsey in his first appearance since the pilot episode. "There's a lot of sexual tension between Lindsey and Lilah, and Stephanie being one of my really good friends in life, it really did kind of feel like it was us against the world," Kane says. "Everyone else was a series regular and we were fighting for a pole position and although we were against each other we were on the same team... I think that came off on screen."


 * Producer Tim Minear says because writer Jim Kouf was used to writing scripts for "big feature films", he occasionally "writes scenes that are not producible for a TV show because he is used to working with much more money." Kouf indicated that it should be raining during the final fight scene between Angel and Faith, but Minear decided the rain was too expensive, the "one extra technical complication that’s going to make shooting impossible." However, the night filming began for that scene was "the first night of a big torrential rain storm that we had for several days," Minear says.


 * Mike Massa, David Boreanaz's stunt double, explains that ratchets - wires that retract at high speeds - were used during Angel and Faith's fight scene to hurl the characters across the room. Massa choreographed the fight so that when Karen Sheperd (Eliza Dushku's stunt double) kicked him over the couch, he was right where he needed to be to use the ratchet, which flung him into the ceiling. "We go through the fight and when it gets close to the gag, one of us will slip away and put a harness on. Takes about 5 minutes to... hook yourself up," Massa says. "We’ll have our special effects guy there, our stunt rigger, he’ll have his finger on the button... We’ll rehearse it to a timer and then boom, we’ll shoot it. Hopefully as fast as we can and then we move right back on with the rest of the fight so that nothing gets slowed down."

Broadcast

 * This is the only episode of Angel rated an 18 certificate (for frequent, strong violence) in the UK.

Pop Culture References

 * The phrase "Five by Five" is from radio communications, although not as much in use now as it was in the early days of two-way radio. Radio operators give a subjective scale from one to five for the strength of a signal and its clarity. "I read you five by five" means the speaker is hearing a voice at full strength and clarity. ("I read you loud and clear") Faith's expression just means everything is going well.

Music

 * APM - "Pressure Cooker"
 * Rob Zombie - "Living Dead Girl" (Subliminal Seduction Mix)
 * Christophe Beck and Robert J. Kral- original score