Angel: Eternity

"It was a seminal show, cancelled by the idiot network."

Yes, I know, this is the first time Angelus comes back in Angel's own show, it's terrifying, it's our first variation on the Angel / Angelus theme as a happy pill brings a "synthetic" Angelus into being until the drug wears off, Wesley makes an interesting comment about not all sex necessarily bringing true happiness (very true), and it's really very exciting. But this episode is really about the depressing price of fame and a fairly savage indictment of the entire Hollywood value system.

After a bit of fun in the opening titles as Cordelia, in a performance of The Doll's House, puts in the most hilariously awful acting performance ever- paradoxically an acting tour de force from Charisma Carpenter- we launch into a savage indictment of the brutally shallow and utterly fake (like the assassin) nature of the "industry", as it probably isn't called by those in the know. The rather disgusting character of Oliver- mendacious, manipulative, cynical, self-serving- pretty much personifies the whole thing.

This episode does a rather good job in making us feel genuinely sorry for Rebecca Lowell, the "poor little rich girl" who lives in a bubble and has nothing real in her life whatsoever; no true friends, no true freedom, and the ever-present fear of losing the trappings of fame in this dog-eat-dog world. The point is made effectively by the sudden cut between Cordelia (delightfully shallow, as ever) saying that she would give anything for Rebecca's lifestyle and Rebecca being pressured into having plastic surgery. Apparently another minor celebrity had her first plastic surgery at twenty-four, which is obscene. Rebecca's still only in her 20s, yet she's already feeling that her youth is behind her. It's not hard to see why she craves the eternal youth of the vampire.

That doesn't excuse what she does, of course, which seems awfully close to using rohypnol to rape Angel. But it's car crash fascinating to see Angelus again, and especially to hear the crushing things he says to both Cordelia and Wesley, although both of them have both grown enormously as people in recent episodes. The ending is pretty much perfect.

So, good episode, then, for its oh-so-LA themes and also with a bit of mythology in the side. Plus we learn that Angel rates Frank Langella's Dracula. I really must see that film…