Angel: I've Got You Under My Skin

"Pretend to read any good books lately?"

Another standalone episode, this. I suppose it was inevitable that Angel would eventually do The Exorcist. (Which, er, I haven't actually seen at this point. I must blog it sometime). This is a fairly standard runaround with the tropes, really, with a couple of nice bits of misdirection: the sinister-looking father is nothing of the sort, and the boy is more evil than the demon. It's a nice and well-crafted self-contained forty-two minute story. Unlike the previous episode, it has a fair few interesting character moments. And it's anything but skippable.

For one thing, Wesley gets a bit more hinterland as we learn that he was afraid of his father, who he believes to be disappointed in him. We're obviously going to return to this. On the other hand, this episode continues the trend whereby he's becoming incrementally more brave and heroic. If Wesley's going to become established as a regular then his character is going to have to move beyond the role of comic relief. Angel is still profoundly affected by Doyle's death. And Cordelia, of course, makes some valid points about nursery rhymes, although she seems to be something of a gullible shopper. The end of the episode, and the awkwardness between Angel and Kate, hints that some kind of reckoning between the two of them is coming soon.

I can't help but admire the nuts and bolts of the plotting here. Angel, of course, has to be invited into the Andersons' house, but the plot rather cleverly arranges for this to happen in as subtle a way as possible. The misdirection with the father is done so very cleverly- he even smokes, so he must be villain, right? Even cleverer is the fact that the father's matches have an important role to play at the end. But the episode turns on a sixpence at the moment Ryan is revealed as the demon, and his parents both immediately switch roles in their attitude to Angel. That's a very neat and clever bit of plotting.

If I could be allowed a digression, though… what is it with suburban America and picket fences? You can just step over the silly things. They look absurd. Why on Earth do people have them?