Angel: The Trial

“You’ve been reading too much Anne Rice”

This episode is evil. I love it. The trials may be a bit of a cliché; in fact, they’re even an Angel cliché, given the number of times that this has popped up. But this is different. I love the butler with his unflappable attitude to the nastiness, and the twist is deliciously evil. Angel goes through hell and yet it’s all for nothing. Darla has already had a second chance, so she doesn’t get a third. I laughed out loud.

We have another interesting flashback showing Angelus and Darla once again afraid of the mysterious Holtz. Watch this space. But the episode primarily concerns the revelation that Darla is dying of the same syphilis as her previous life. This, in itself, is an evil twist. As if things couldn’t get any more evil, the episode ends with Darla accepting her fate and realising that Angel loves her and is only refusing to sire her because he cares for her soul. Finally she has closure. Deliciously, it is at this point that Wolfram and Hart, those rascals, send in Drusilla to once again turn her into a soulless vampire. As I say EVIL!