Saturday, 27 April 2013

Angel: Happy Anniversary



“What’s today, Thursday? Tomorrow night the world’s going to end. Thought you might like to know”.

This is a story of the week and a very unusual episode, being essentially a piece of sci-fi in a supernatural series. It somehow works, partly because there are some demon cultists to tie the episode to the show’s natural genre and partly because the theme is so affecting: Gene is so distraught at overhearing that his girlfriend is going to dump him on their one year anniversary that he freezes time around them while they fornicate rather boringly. I mean, Gene doesn’t even let her have her orgasm before freezing them!!!

The plot is rather neat, perhaps, but it’s rather nifty in a Twilight Zone sort of way, and a two hander between Angel and the Host allows us to develop the relationship between them. The Host, being a natural judge of character, is the perfect person to diagnose Angel. His point is that Angel has stopped caring, stopped helping the helpless and started to punish the guilty instead. He no longer cares about the consequences, including those for his friends.

Meanwhile, Angel’s former friends get themselves a case, courtesy of Wesley’s rich girlfriend Virginia, which nabs them a lot of money and allows Wesley to look cool by doing that Hercule Poirot thing where he gets all the suspects together and reveals who did it. I wanna do that one day!

Angel’s case concludes with a philosophical conversation with the Host and a contrite Gene, a positive move as Angel seems to be connecting to someone. His former friends’ case concludes with loads of cash and a massive party. Interestingly, though, they are still using the name Angel Investigations.

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