Angel: Happy Anniversary

“What’s today, Thursday? Tomorrow night the world’s going to end. Thought you might like to know”.

This is a story of the week and a very unusual episode, being essentially a piece of sci-fi in a supernatural series. It somehow works, partly because there are some demon cultists to tie the episode to the show’s natural genre and partly because the theme is so affecting: Gene is so distraught at overhearing that his girlfriend is going to dump him on their one year anniversary that he freezes time around them while they fornicate rather boringly. I mean, Gene doesn’t even let her have her orgasm before freezing them!!!

The plot is rather neat, perhaps, but it’s rather nifty in a Twilight Zone sort of way, and a two hander between Angel and the Host allows us to develop the relationship between them. The Host, being a natural judge of character, is the perfect person to diagnose Angel. His point is that Angel has stopped caring, stopped helping the helpless and started to punish the guilty instead. He no longer cares about the consequences, including those for his friends.

Meanwhile, Angel’s former friends get themselves a case, courtesy of Wesley’s rich girlfriend Virginia, which nabs them a lot of money and allows Wesley to look cool by doing that Hercule Poirot thing where he gets all the suspects together and reveals who did it. I wanna do that one day!

Angel’s case concludes with a philosophical conversation with the Host and a contrite Gene, a positive move as Angel seems to be connecting to someone. His former friends’ case concludes with loads of cash and a massive party. Interestingly, though, they are still using the name Angel Investigations.

Angel: Redefinition

“He’s got cow eyes, big and black…Moo…”

As the title suggests, this episode concerns the fact that everything has now changed. Everyone is lost, and they need to feel and grope for a place in a world that has changed around them. For Angel this simply means training and obsessing over Darla some more, to the exclusion of all else, including what was once his mission. His task is the easiest. For Darla and Drusilla, it simply means that they get to have fun recruiting henchmen and concocting evil plans. We get an interesting comment from Drusilla, however, at the end. She doesn’t know whether she’s looking at Angel or Angelus. This has very interesting implications.

For Lilah and Lindsey, things are more awkward and difficult. They are the only survivors of the massacre, and Wolfram and Hart are obviously going to treat one of them as a scape goat. Cue lots of amusing scenes in which they try to double cross each other. Unexpectedly, however, they are both promoted to active co-vice presidents, on probation, until one of them slips up. They’re going to be watched by the Senior Partners, who are, as ever, unseen and mysterious.

The heart of the episode, concerns Cordy, Wes and Gunn as they search for a role without Angel, with the aid of karaoke. Ultimately, they all realise that they have it within themselves to continue without Angel. It’s interesting to see, in our first actual glimpse of Wesley’s home life, that he is still with Virginia, and they seem to be very much in love. I’m sure that won’t last. This is a Joss Whedon show after all.