Angel: She

"I was so glad you came. You know how parties are? You're always worried that no one's gonna suck the energy out of the room like a giant black hole of boring despair. But, there you were in the clinch!"

Well, that was mostly rubbish. A rather pointless riff on the whole Stepford Wives trope. The whole concept feels out of place in this show, grounded as it is in vampires, demons and other such elements of the horror genre. This episode felt like science fiction, and that jarred.

Worse, it didn't seem to have anything to say. The concept- a race where men enslave their women by, in effect, lobotomising them, symbolically amputating the seat of their sexuality. At first I thought there might be something of a subtext about female genital mutilation, but on balance I'm not sure there's a subtext at all. And that's a problem. Without some kind of authorial message about gender roles, feminism or the like, a concept like this is pretty much pointless.

On the other hand, though, everything about the episode that wasn't the actual plot was pretty darned good. I loved Cordelia's party, although there's nothing like a party scene to graphically show how awful the fashions were back then. Was it really only twelve years ago?

I'm with Angel, I have to say. Parties are generally not fun. They're full of endless small talk , and endless small talk is not my idea of a good time. I think that's what we were supposed to conclude, interestingly; Angel's conversation with the woman who has a Masters in Fine Arts but is running a sandwich shop pretty much highlights the desperation and loneliness of life in the big city, a running theme of Angel. I think we're supposed to see the party as essentially this in microcosm. Alas, only Angel and Dennis seem to understand this basic truth.

Also, Wesley is now officially an employee of Angel Investigations, after a surprisingly long time. All three of our leads continue to be great, with the three characters having a fantastic dynamic together. Angel gets the best moments, though. I love his hatred of mobile phones, although the phone he's using looks absolutely prehistoric in 2012. And his brief stint as a guide in the art gallery is the coolest thing ever. I'm not sure it makes much sense that the cruel and evil Angelus would have been so pally with Baudelaire, but the whole thing is so cool that I'm going to overlook that.

Also, of course, I love what they do with the closing titles. Otherwise, though, this is a plodding, pointless and eminently skippable episode.