Five by Five

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

Synopsis

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH — Angel's life is on the line when the attorneys at Wolfram & Hart hire Los Angeles visitor Faith to put him out of business — permanently. In the meantime, Wesley, who still feels responsibility to Faith from being her former Watcher, declares he will stop her from bringing harm until he, and Angel, determine she needs more than a just swift kick to snap out of her evil ways.

Summary

Angel and Wesley rescue a gang member Danny Marquez from three demons. Elsewhere, Faith arrives in Los Angeles on a bus and mugs the first man she meets.

In Romania in 1898, Darla leads a blindfolded Angelus to his birthday present: a young Romani 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 the Angel Investigations offices, Angel tries to convince Marquez to testify in court, despite the gang member's resistance. In the other room, Cordelia complains to Wesley, who is trying to sleep. She says that Marquez's chance of testifying is low, and therefore she "wasted a good vision". Wesley, however, believes that Marquez will do the right thing.

Faith, dancing at a local nightclub, is confronted by a girl who objects to Faith dancing with her boyfriend. In response, Faith 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, kicking and punching 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.

As Wesley and Angel return from court, Cordelia is on the phone, making plans to meet a potential client for lunch the next day. She asks how the case went, and Wesley announces that the prosecution won, thanks to Marquez's testimony. However, Wesley also predicts that Wolfram & Hart will enact revenge upon Angel Investigations as a result.

Outside of a nightclub, Faith and Lilah meet. Suspicious of how Lilah knows so much about her, Faith threatens her, just as a limousine pulls up behind the two. Lee invites Faith in, and, throwing Lilah a glare, she accepts the offer and gets in.

In 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 Clan Kalderash "did something" to him. Darla realizes that he now has a soul, which she finds filthy and disgusting. She threatens Angelus with a stake 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 charges dismissed if she kills Angel. She accepts and asks what they will pay. Lee skirts around the issue, telling Faith that his ass is on the line. Dissatisfied with his answer, she grabs him by the scruff of the neck and beats his face against the table. Lindsey and Lilah watch their colleague being assaulted, 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 suddenly appears and attempts to shoot Angel in the back with a crossbow, but her turns around in time to catches the bolt in mid-air. 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 the two will end up dead, Wesley states: "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 Watchers Council to abduct her, ensuring that she would never trust anyone again.

Later, with Wesley and Cordelia absent, Angel finds Faith in his office, where she stands protected by sunlight streaming through open blinds. Faith promises to kill Angel 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, but it turns out to be a blank, so he tosses the gun back to Faith. Faith mocks him for not shooting to kill. 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 his 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 tells him that 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. 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. Wesley attempts to offer her help, but when Faith floors Cordelia with an elbow to the face, Wes punches her. Faith is impressed, but responds with a hard kick.

Back in 1898 Romania, 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 lying the alley. Angel staggers out, drags the woman into the alley and bites her neck.

Angel arrives at Cordelia's apartment, and she tearfully explains what happened. When Cordelia asks about Wesley, Angel tells her that he's gone, and unbeknownst to them, he is an apartment with Faith. There, he is gagged and tied to a chair, battered. Finding Wesley still unwilling to give up information, Faith recites the list of the "five basic torture groups": blunt, sharp, hot, cold and loud, and gives Wesley a choice. He starts to give an emotional speech, but ends up calling her a "piece of shit". Before he can finish, Faith, outraged, decides on her own 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 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 lighter and a can of cooking spray in the kitchen. While taunting Wesley, she shows him how she can make a burst of flame. She removes Wesley's gag saying 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.

Continuing in 1898 Romania, Angel mutters: "I can't, oh God, I can't." As he stumbles away down the street, the girl he attacked appears in the entrance to the alley, disheveled and bitten, but alive.

Wesley sits under Faith's knife as she and Angel face each other. In a brief exchange of verbal thrusts, one of Angel's jabs makes Faith drop her guard, so Wesley flings himself and his chair backward out of her grasp. Angel knocks Faith down with a kick and a fight begins. Faith has the upper hand as Angel misses many opportunities to attack.

Eventually, 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." 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 her blows decrease in strength. As Wesley appears, armed with a knife, Faith begs Angel to kill her. Angel holds Faith in his arms as she sobs. Standing behind them, Wesley drops his knife.

Continuity

• The Romanian flashbacks take place in October 1898.
• During a phone call with Angel, Giles refers to what Faith did to Buffy in Sunnydale as "rough". This was a vague reference of Faith's attempt to kill Buffy's mother in "This Year's Girl" and Faith's body swap with Buffy, wherein she sleeps with Riley, in "Who Are You?".
• This episode begins Faith's rehabilitation in preparation of her return to Buffy in its final season ("Dirty Girls").
• Cordelia and Angel reference Wesley's attempt to put Faith in the Watchers Council's care in "Consequences".
• This episode marks the first occasion when a member of Angel Investigations penetrates the security at Wolfram & Hart. It will become a running joke in the series how easily various individuals are able to infiltrate the supposedly impregnable building.^{[citation needed]}

Appearances

Locations

• Borşa, Romania (Only in flashbacks)
• Los Angeles, USA

Death count

• Marquez's friend, killed by the three demons.
• The three demons, killed by Angel.

Behind the scenes

Production

• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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."^{[citation needed]}

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. Faith's expression means everything is going well.
• Club Hell is also featured in the movie Bad Boys starring Will Smith & Martin Lawrence.

Music

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

International titles

• German: "Alte Freunde" (Old Friends)
• French: "Cinq sur cinq" (Five by Five)

Gallery

Quotes

Cordelia: "You can always tell when he's happy. His scowl is slightly less scowly."

Wesley: "If there's even a chance she could be reasoned with..."

Angel: "There was. Last year, I had a shot at saving her. I was pulling her back from the brink when some British guy kidnapped her and made damn sure that she'd never trust another living soul."

Cordelia: "Angel, it's not Wesley's fault that some British guy ruined your- Oh, wait." [to Wesley] "That was you." [to Angel] "Go on."

Wesley: "I realize there have been failures, on both sides. But I also believe in my heart that you are not a bad person."

Faith: [elbows Cordelia in the face] "What do you believe in your heart now?"

Lindsey: "While we're on the subject, I remember you throwing one of my clients through a window. Killed him, if I'm not mistaken."

Angel: "Yes. I seem to remember. The window was just about that size. Too bad the body burned up before it hit the ground. I might have needed a good lawyer."

Lindsey: "I'm sorry, we only handle a certain class of clientele."

Angel: "I'm sure I killed enough people to qualify."

Angel: "Nice try, Faith. I know what you want. I'm not gonna make it easy for you."

Faith: "I'm evil! I'm bad! I'm evil! Do you hear me? I'm bad! Angel, I'm bad! I'm bad. Do you hear me? I'm bad! I'm bad! I'm bad. Please. Angel, please, just do it. Angel please, just do it. Just do it. Just kill me. Just kill me!"