Angel: The House Always Wins

"This place was so much friendlier when the mob ran it."

This episode is, I suppose, narratively necessary. It's three episodes in, we need to properly set up the season, so we need an episode whose function is to bring Lorne back from Las Vegas to rejoin the gang. And then we go a step further- it's a Las Vegas episode, so lets make the threat a rather blatant metaphor for gambling addiction.

Well, that's what we get. It isn't, on the face of it, a promising shopping list on which to hang an episode. It could he been terrible. It isn't. Oh, I'm sure there will be better episodes, but this is entertaining and above all fun, getting us out of all the ongoing angst in LA and varying the tone a bit. Las Vegas may not be one of my top fifty places to visit in America- it's not my idea of culture, But this episode I enjoyed.

The premise may be obvious, but the directorial style is impressive, and there are clever narrative touches which succeed in returning Cordelia from Powers-That-Be land by making her do something a bit naughty; Angel is a bit of an old bore, spending much of the episode name dropping; and Fred and Gunn are getting along much better. Oh, and Wesley has an obligatory scene of, er, phone sex with Lilah. Lovely.

Still, a solid episode and a nice change. Not a lot wrong with the season at this point.