Hitome said:
Just to weigh in on the Lorne thing. I was actually expecting something similar out of Lorne this episode and I think that Lorne would have shot Linsey even if Angel didn't ask him to. Lorne might not like to fight but that doesn't necessarily mean that he is a good, wonderful person. I you think back to Caritas, Lorne allowed any type of demon to walk into his joint. He's an empath and could obviously tell what kind of evil most of his clients were up to. In my reading Lorne is basically a businessman. He's loyal to his friends, but in a pinch he cares more about keeping the peace and keeping his club running than stopping one of his clients from doing evil. Lorne joined Angel's team because he liked them and because his club kept getting recked. He seriously doesn't want the world to end, but was never one to die in the good fight. Lorne is probably more durable than most. He has multiple hearts and can loose his head and live. So, he's not leaving for lack of survival chances. Lorne was never completely good which I think is cool, so his behavior came as no surprise to me.
I don't want to try to invalidate your view of Lorne because I think it's an area that's broad enough and vague enough to allow for multiple correct (or at least not wrong) points of view.
I always saw Lorne a bit differently though. To put it in somewhat simplistic, role playing game terms, I see Lorne as true neutral. That is to say, he is one of those people that very much prefers not to take sides in the battle of good vs. evil. His joining up with the Angel crowd then is a pretty weird thing for him since, in theory, the Angel people are good battling evil. As you point out, there was a time when Lorne's club kept getting demolished. It makes sense that this might cause Lorne to take up the fight against evil at least a little bit because that's often what brings people into the fight--in other words, you stay on the sidelines all the time, but then one day the fight comes to your door. What do you do?
And if we recall correctly, for a time, even when he was at the Hyperion, Lorne still did readings for people and put them on their path. I think that's really where Lorne has always felt the most comfortable--helping individual people on their personal path through life.
At some point, possibly during the whole Jasmine thing, Lorne got forced by circumstance into more or less truly considering Angel to be his boss and considering himself to be a member of the team.
As I think about it now, the scene with Lindsey and Lorne just gets weirder. Lorne didnt flinch when he shot Lindsey. So he didn't have a problem with the act of killing itself, I suppose. But Lorne does look terrible (almost broken as one poster said). So what was it that he had a problem with? Perhaps the nature in which he was doing it?
Anyway, to summarize in case I made not much sense: to me, Lorne was always a guy that was far more comfortable remaining neutral in the great "battle o' good n' evil". I seriously doubt that he ever
condoned the (some would say "evil") actions of the demons that came to Caritas, he just didn't have any moral problems with "looking the other way". The work that he really liked doing was putting people(demons) on their path. And I imagine that he either consciously or unconsciously took some satisfaction in knowing that he didn't play favorites and didn't take sides. His joining up with the fang gang changed all that. And, at the end of this last season, Lorne's had a lot of problems coming to terms with the way things are. I suppose this is because it seemed to Lorne that, for being the "good guys", they were involved in an awful lot of "dirty tricks".
And I guess my question now might be, do you think Lorne is right?
