Angel: Expecting

"I learned men are evil… no, wait, I knew that."

Boo! Weren't expecting this, were you? Neither was I, to be honest. This blog is still more or less on semi-hiatus until after the first week of August but I find myself with an unexpected free evening. What could be more appropriate than to watch and review an episode of Angel called Expecting?

About ten minutes in, I was all ready to hate this episode. Cordelia has sex with someone she hasn't known for long, and whoosh! She's pregnant the next morning. At first glance, this appears tiresomely puritanical in its message, especially with Cordelia's pre-existing issues (emphasised here) with thinking that she's being punished. But that's not what this is about. For one thing, Cordelia makes it clear that "everything was safe", a line which could only be there to signal that none of this is her fault; she took precautions. What it is about, I think, is arrogant, entitled men who think it's fine to get someone up the duff and then bugger off, leaving her with all the consequences. It's fitting that it should be Cordelia who knocks the errant father, personified as a demon, into a million pieces.

Oh, and if that wasn't enough to prevent this from being the Pope's favourite episode of Angel, the whole plot is essentially about procuring an abortion.

It's well executed, too, much as there were a couple of clichés that made me smile. Wilson is sweet, considerate, self-aware- he must be evil, right? And the sex montage, showing us lots of short scenes of kissing, bedclothes, the Sun rising and essentially chaste stuff fading into one another, is really a bit too much of a cliché to be done without irony.

Great episode, though. I loved the fight early on, seen only through shadows on the wall, and Dennis looking after Cordelia- aaaah! Oh, and the bartender in the club- isn't he the janitor from Scrubs?

I love the continuing subtle developments in Wesley's character. (He's still not an "official" member of the team, although he seems to do an awful lot of unpaid work!) He's still as much of a klutz as ever (love the axe scene- Alexis Denisof is great at physical comedy), but also extremely brave, much braver than he was in Buffy. His rapport with Angel is developing nicely, too; the two of them are beginning to make a highly amusing double act.

But most interesting is how this episode highlights the way Cordelia's character has developed- beneath the surface she's both much, much tougher and much, much wiser. Fittingly, the final scene consists of her running rings around the two boys. But that last line shows how much she appreciates them. Again, aaaah!

There. Don't expect updates all that regularly until a week into August, although I'll make sure I keep up with the BBC's "Hollow Crown" Shakespeare adaptations, at least. There may be a blog entry on Friday, too. Fingers crossed…