Angel: I Fall to Pieces

"What is stalking now? Like, the third most popular sport among men?"

"Fourth, after luge."

Is it just me, or does this episode's title mean that the song by Velvet Revolver is going through your head too?

It's interesting how much more coherent Angel feels when not crossing over with the parent show. There's a different directorial style, of sunsets, cityscapes and jump cuts. And the format of the show is different, with a much smaller ensemble of regular characters and a greater focus on the client of the week. This show pushes the private investigator angle much further; when Melissa visits the office it begins to feel more like Sherlock than Buffy. Angel's attitude to charging clients seems rather similar to Sherlock Holmes', too. Sherlock could probably do with a Cordelia.

This episode is very evocative of the late '90s, not only in the horrible office fashions but in the focus on stalking, an issue which had only recently started attracting media attention at the time. Here in the UK, certainly, it was only defined as a a specific criminal offence shortly before the 1997 election; I assume the concept was also quite zeitgeisty in the US. And this is a proper exploration of the subject; both Kate and Angel are given powerful and effective dialogue explaining the psychology of the stalker and the effect on the victim.

The main supernatural concept is gloriously creepy; a "psychic surgeon" who can detach and reattach parts of his body including, most disgustingly, his eyeball, which for some reason is also able to levitate. And then there are the disembodied hands under Melissa's bedcovers!!!  Most of all, I'm sure the idea of being watched all the time by a disembodied eyeball must be exactly what stalking feels like, and that's the point. It's just a slight pity that the in-universe explanation for this relies on a load of new agey bollocks, including that tired old false belief that 80% of our brains go unused.

Angel's handling of the case is clever and impressive, and its interesting how much psychological insight he seems to have, not only in his understanding of the stalker's thinking but also in his rather clever little deception. I'm not sure how well this squares with him not being much of a "people person", but perhaps this is an example of how "helping the helpless" is affecting him for the better. Then again, it might be inconsistent characterisation.

It's a good episode, well paced, and it deals with the issue of the week rather well. But I'd like to see a larger cast and more of an arc; one-off episodes are fine in themselves but characters need development. I find myself in the paradoxical position of liking the episode itself but disliking the concept of a series made up of one-off episodes like this one. Yes, there's a slight mention of Wolfram and Hart. But I'd like a bit more story arc.