"I'm from Sunnydale. You're not scaring me, you know!"
This episode is funny, smart, and generally bloody brilliant. It's also written by Jane Espenson. These two facts may be connected.
It's good to have a more light-hearted episode, not just for its own sake but for the way it really highlights the strengths of the three main characters and their inter-relationships. Also, it's nice to have a proper poltergeist episode, with lots of juicy tropes to explore- and also a nice evocation of Edgar Allan Poe with a flashback scene of a bloke being walled up by his mother. Er, lovely. She's not a very nice lady, and certainly not the best of mothers, but let's look on the bright side: she seems to be a fairly decent brickie.
The plotty stuff's all very nice and creepy and all, but what makes this episode such fun is the characters. The scenes of Cordelia inviting herself over to Angel's pad, and becoming increasingly annoying, are top entertainment. And I love her refusal to give up the perfect apartment even after the word "die" appears on the wall. In blood. It takes a lot to faze this Sunnydale girl. There are hints of character development, too. Although not until a conversation between Angel and Doyle provides the exposition on her riches-to-rags backstory. It seems Cordelia feels that, ever since her dad got done for diddling his taxes, she's been punished for her past bitchiness. She, like Angel, seeks redemption. On the other hand, the very suggestion of this is then immediately undercut and left nicely ambiguous.
Doyle's past is obviously not detailed at all beyond establishing that he owes a lot of money to a lot of people. His backstory remains mysterious, but gets pointed at a lot, and he even gets a speech towards the end saying "Oh yes, one day I shall reveal all." The tease.
The conclusion is highly satisfying, both because of Cordelia's inner bitchiness being what ultimately kills the poltergeist and also because of the twist with Dennis, who ends the episode as Cordelia's friendly live-in ghost. Who, er, regularly gets to see her naked, a fact which the episode shies away from, probably quite wisely. No wonder he seems quite happy. He probably expected a much worse afterlife than this.
I enjoyed that: a bloody good story, oodles of funny and some nice character stuff. It's just a little unfortunate, watching this in 2012, that we get the line "How come Patrick Swayze's never dead when you need him?"
No comments:
Post a Comment