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It always points true north
By Mazal HaMidbar
Lindsey and his somewhat slippery views on right and wrong. To paraphrase him from Dead End -- He's bad, he's good, he's a barrel of undecided morality. Could be focused on actual arcs or possibilities, theories, etc. that were hinted at and never explored. Requested by Lar (obsessedmuch) for Legal Ease and claimed by Mazal
To the casual viewer of “Angel: The Series,” the recurring character Lindsey McDonald in Seasons One, Two and Five would appear to be a man without direction, who swings wildly and unpredictably across the spectrum of moral behavior as we generally understand it. After all, he capably defends murderers (human, vampiric and in between) and pulls from the ether ingenious scenarios to defend his corporate clients … and risks not just his all-consuming attorney post but his very life to rescue mutant children he’s never met. He sends an innocent actor to death by a vicious female former vampire … then sends that same, now-human-woman to 10 different doctors in a vain attempt to save her from her original syphilitic fate. He attempts to cut down his longtime nemesis in a sword fight … then provides him with crucial intelligence on the nature of the true enemy, reminding him that “Heroes don’t accept the world the way it is. They fight it.”
The casual viewer would likely say that Lindsey possesses a compromised moral compass, one that is not only useless but worse than useless in navigating the thorny path that the righteous must walk. He seems to be, to quote an Eighties pop song, a karma chameleon; a man without conviction, one who doesn’t know how to sell a contradiction..
But the casual viewer would be wrong. Lindsey’s decisions are internally consistent with who he is, or, more precisely, with who he has to be.
We understand this if we accept the notion -- demonstrated throughout the run of both shows -- that who a person is depends, to a great extent, on who a person was. For instance, Darla -- human, vampire, human and vampire again -- started out 400 years ago in Virginia Colony as a “whore.” That's the word she uses and the trait she never loses, remaining proud that she “used to do this professionally.”Or, starting as Liam, then spending a century and a half as Angelus the scourge of Europe and finally winding up as Angel, the vampire with a soul never stops being an Irish Catholic who desires that his infant son eventually attend Notre Dame. Then there is Spike/William, who, chip or no, soul or no, is ever and admittedly love’s bitch, the eponymous fool for love, a bloody awful poet with roots in the Victorian upper middle class.
So too is Lindsey a product of his origin despite the trappings of success he wears so well. When we first meet him, we take him at face value -- elevated vocabulary, sangfroid demeanor, designer suits, workaholic habits, graduate of a prestigious school on the fast track at a major law firm. All imply a life of privilege. But, just like the yarns he spins so skillfully at Wolfram and Hart, nothing could be further from the truth.
Lindsey’s legacy, as he tells an unsympathetic Angel toward the end of Season One, is one of “real poverty.” It’s a life -- make that an existence -- that is literally “dirt poor,” one in which young children die of influenza in the winter, one in which they have “no shoes, no toilet,” one in which even what little they have is taken away when Lindsey is only 7 years old.
Lindsey explains that from the above-mentioned incident he learned “either you got stepped on or you got to stepping,” and he vowed right then and there that he would not be the former -- and so that would seem to leave a choice for only the latter. It’s a world of harsh duality, one made up of victims and victimizers with nothing in between. That worldview is described by another pointed line from the Culture Club song mentioned earlier: “Every day is like survival.” That’s the reality for someone who starts out like Lindsey. Everything he does is exactly what he needs to do for his own survival at any given point in time, be it physical or psychic survival. He will never be “the guy standing there with the stupid grin on my face while my life got dribbled out,” but neither will he let someone else get stepped on if there is something he can do about it.
So he defends a creepy assassin, then puts it all on the line to protect foreign psychic children from her -- because he used to be the kid who was different, who “had to do better than anyone else.” He accepts a replacement hand from an unknown source and continues to climb the company ladder -- then gives it all up and flees so that Lilah can have the promotion instead of a swift execution. He gives Angel one of the closest calls the latter has ever had at human hands – then, for a second time, gifts him with blunt good advice, essentially an echo of his parting words to him earlier, at the end of Season Two – “The key to Wolfram and Hart: Don’t let them make you play their game. You gotta make them play yours.”
Heroes fight evil, Lindsey tells Angel, with complete sincerity. And, because Angel has always been his hero, there is genuine disappointment in Lindsey’s voice when he accuses Angel of having sold his vaunted soul – just as Angel had, years earlier, accused him of doing. Heroes don’t accept the world as it is, he tells Angel -- all the while knowing that he himself has never, literally, been able to afford to be a hero.
Could he ever have been -- or at the least, an unequivocal good guy? Maybe he could have been if Angel -- or someone of similar gravitas -- had believed in him. Even Angel obliquely admitted as much once, albeit briefly and with fists flying, saying, “I’m sorry I didn't try harder to help you when you came to me.” Had Angel stuck with Lindsey as he did with Faith, Lindsey might have been able to grow to become a member of the A Team. But, instead, for reasons the show never adequately explicates, Angel orders Lindsey -- who he had recently accepted into his service -- point-blank executed. And Lindsey, who has to some extent seemed ready to die ever since the end of Season One, seems neither shocked nor angry at this betrayal, only deeply disappointed that Angel apparently didn’t care enough to do the dirty deed himself.
In the bridge of the song quoted throughout this piece is the line, “You’re my lover, not my rival.” Had Lindsey been able to find love -- or even friendship -- with Angel or anyone else squarely in the White Hats camp, he might have overcome his “childhood trauma,” transcended his view that “you are either the one with the power or you’re powerless” and crossed over to the light -- like Faith, like Spike, like DarkWillow, like MammaDarla, like Angel himself.
Instead, Lindsey, though absent for more than half of the show’s run,
concludes the series as one of the most fascinating, one of the most tragic
and one of the most believable characters on the show.