“Now it’s time for you to return the favour.
“Favour? Is that what you think?”
It’s clever: this episode, like the corresponding episode of
Buffy, is extremely flashback-heavy,
so the flashbacks for both shows were obviously filmed back to back. There are
one or two scenes which are used in both shows, but the clever thing is how
both shows, with their very different perspectives, provide a very different
context to what we’re seeing. It’s a brilliant idea for a crossover.
Obviously, this episode gives us a thorough deconstruction
of the relationship between Angel and Darla. We open with Angel sleeping loads
while Darla is suddenly plagued by the massive dump of guilt that has caught up
with her, now that she has a soul and that.
The episode is framed by the apparent reveal of what Wolfram
and Hart have been up to all this time regarding Darla. It seems the idea was
to get Angel to sire her, thus becoming his own mother’s farther, sort of, and
giving Wolfram and Hart a shiny new evil vampire for their nefarious schemes.
At least, I think that’s what’s going on. It’s deliciously evil of Holland
Manners to manipulate Lindsay’s conscience so cynically, but that’s Wolfram and
Hart for you.
The climax of the episode, Angel being such a goody goody,
of course revolves around the fact that he refuses to sire Darla, cue much
emoting. But the meat of the episode is all those juicy flashbacks.
We see Darla, waaaaay back in Virginia, 1609, getting sired
by the Master, a real blast from the past, with your actual Mark Metcalfe. After this, though, we see flashbacks which
echo those we’ve just seen in the most recent episode of Buffy, although this time from the perspective of different
characters, and it’s fascinating how the same scenes can appear so different in
a different context. There are some interesting titbits, of course: we see yet
again that Drusilla is so very, very kinky. And we get a juicy few scenes of
the recently ensouled Angel facing an inevitable dumping by Darla, what with
her being evil and all.
We end, though, with Darla running away, we know not where.
What happens next?
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