Angel: I Will Remember You

"They get groiny with one another- the world, as we know it, falls apart."

This is a brilliant episode. Brilliant. Intense, heartbreaking, and brilliantly acted. And yet… I'm not sure it should have been done. Yes, it was brilliant (there will be gushing shortly), but it ends with a great big reset button. It never happened, and is therefore robbed of its meaning. It would have been much better as a one-off piece of fanfic, and I don't mean to denigrate the episode in any way; the distinction between fanfic and "official" stuff, in these days of serialised television drama, has nothing to do with quality or anything like that, just the kind of stories that can be told. And this episode is exactly the sort of story that doesn't work as part of a bigger, serialised narrative. The reset button pretty much admits that.

Right. Now that's been said, let the gushing commence. Both Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz are amazing here, both of them really, really giving us the simmering sexual tension that threatens to boil over for so much of this episode. It's fantastic, if completely unreal, to see them both being so blissfully post-coital with each other, and these scenes are really, really well-shot, too, deliberately going for a dreamlike quality. There's delicious comedy, too; I love the gradual change from tea and awkwardness to shagging on the table. All this is good.

Also good is Angel's reaction to being alive (with reservations, which I'll come to), and the various sensual pleasures it brings, not just sex but food and, um, both sex and food together. This is also good. Cordelia's reaction to this joyous moment for Angel's life is good, too. Naturally, it's all about her and her rapidly diminished future prospects. Doyle is more optimistic; no doubt he has a bright future ahead of him.

Much as I dislike the use of the reset button, I have to admit that this is well-handled, too. It's a typically noble gesture of Angel (although also, and just as typically, a little narcissistic) to give up the prospect of happiness so that the End of Days is averted, mainly because this would also mean the End of Buffy. Aaaah. Even one of the Oracles is impressed.

The Oracles are cool, too- Greek, enigmatic, and a nice development of the infant show's mythology. We haven't heard much about the Powers That Be since City Of, but we're reminded of their importance to Angel's mission. They're also kept mysterious, though; the Oracles are a nice way of keeping the powers at arm's length so they can remain enigmatic. Of course, whether it's the Powers or their Oracle underlings, we're essentially looking at a great big metaphor for the godlike power of the Writer on this fictional world. Metatextuality can be such fun sometimes.

Reset button aside, there are a couple of little plot problems. Why does Angel being human mean the End of Days is coming? I don't think that's explained. And Angel seems rather more self-flagellating about being human than he did back in In the Dark. These things aside, though, I actually love this episode. It was brilliant. It was done well. But it's still an idea that probably shouldn't have been done at all.