Angel: Blind Date

"You always have a choice. You sold your soul for a fifth floor office and a company car."

Let's see, then. We have a female assassin who uses sharp pointy things to dispatch her victims. We have a blind person with compensatory superpowers. We have a milieu of poverty juxtaposed with lawyers and criminal corruption. Someone's been reading Daredevil, methinks. Of the Frank Miller vintage, to be precise.

Nevertheless, this is a gripping episode, and a pivotal one too. For one thing, Wolfram and Hart is now emerging from the mysterious shadows to take centre stage. We're introduced to the avuncular Holland Manners, whose creepy, mentor-y relationship with Lindsey is fascinatingly complex. The silver-haired and silver-tongued Manners is so seductive and eloquently evil that he's surely supposed to echo Lucifer. The scene between him and Lindsey, after Lindsay has been caught, has Lindsey at a crossroads- does he follow his conscience or remain loyal to Wolfram and Hart? The situation reminds me of that mythical tale about Robert Johnson. Lindsey gains a lot of depth here, and even a backstory of sorts, one of real poverty which drives him never to be the victim. He even gets to win, and defy Manners, only to fall for one last piece of temptation at the end. He's lost his soul- just- but he'll go far. This is deep stuff.

Sam Anderson, incidentally, is superbly charismatic as the deliciously evil Manners. I bet he had a lot of fun playing the character; it certainly looks it. And the whole environment of the firm is so delightfully, corporately evil, with the ever-present threat of real blood on the carpet. This is my kind of metaphor. The silent twin mind readers, with their bizarre hairstyles, are so damned creepy, and it's a shock to realise that Lindsey isn't the intended target; the offence is a different one, and it's Lee, a semi-regular, who unexpectedly dies. I love this sort of misdirection.

It's a pivotal episode for Angel, too of course. We don't know why he feels the impulse to steal the Prophecies of Aberjian, but he does. Wesley doesn't quite reveal the whole section that concerns Angel, not yet, but this is clearly going to be important. Also important is that we see Gunn again, in the episode straight after he's introduced- and it's him helping Angel, not the other way round. His distractionary tactic at Wolfram and Hart is both very clever and very cool. I like him a lot.

One episode to go. What about this prophecy, then…?