Angel: Expecting

"I learned men are evil… no, wait, I knew that."

Boo! Weren't expecting this, were you? Neither was I, to be honest. This blog is still more or less on semi-hiatus until after the first week of August but I find myself with an unexpected free evening. What could be more appropriate than to watch and review an episode of Angel called Expecting?

About ten minutes in, I was all ready to hate this episode. Cordelia has sex with someone she hasn't known for long, and whoosh! She's pregnant the next morning. At first glance, this appears tiresomely puritanical in its message, especially with Cordelia's pre-existing issues (emphasised here) with thinking that she's being punished. But that's not what this is about. For one thing, Cordelia makes it clear that "everything was safe", a line which could only be there to signal that none of this is her fault; she took precautions. What it is about, I think, is arrogant, entitled men who think it's fine to get someone up the duff and then bugger off, leaving her with all the consequences. It's fitting that it should be Cordelia who knocks the errant father, personified as a demon, into a million pieces.

Oh, and if that wasn't enough to prevent this from being the Pope's favourite episode of Angel, the whole plot is essentially about procuring an abortion.

It's well executed, too, much as there were a couple of clichés that made me smile. Wilson is sweet, considerate, self-aware- he must be evil, right? And the sex montage, showing us lots of short scenes of kissing, bedclothes, the Sun rising and essentially chaste stuff fading into one another, is really a bit too much of a cliché to be done without irony.

Great episode, though. I loved the fight early on, seen only through shadows on the wall, and Dennis looking after Cordelia- aaaah! Oh, and the bartender in the club- isn't he the janitor from Scrubs?

I love the continuing subtle developments in Wesley's character. (He's still not an "official" member of the team, although he seems to do an awful lot of unpaid work!) He's still as much of a klutz as ever (love the axe scene- Alexis Denisof is great at physical comedy), but also extremely brave, much braver than he was in Buffy. His rapport with Angel is developing nicely, too; the two of them are beginning to make a highly amusing double act.

But most interesting is how this episode highlights the way Cordelia's character has developed- beneath the surface she's both much, much tougher and much, much wiser. Fittingly, the final scene consists of her running rings around the two boys. But that last line shows how much she appreciates them. Again, aaaah!

There. Don't expect updates all that regularly until a week into August, although I'll make sure I keep up with the BBC's "Hollow Crown" Shakespeare adaptations, at least. There may be a blog entry on Friday, too. Fingers crossed…

Angel: Hero

"Is this a private catharsis or can anyone watch?"

Before I say anything else, we all know what happens in this episode, right? I can't imagine there'll be anybody reading this who doesn't know about the massive elephant in the middle of this particular room, but if you don't… well, stop reading now.

We don't need to look far for the metaphor here; in fact, both the Scourge and the half-demon refugees have a very 1940s look, which is a nice touch. From the very moment we first meet the demon refugees, hiding as the basement as they often have before, the Anne Frank echoes are obvious; we're looking at Jewish people in Nazi-occupied countries, living in perpetual fear of discovery. We don't get to actually see the Scourge until quite late only, only being told about how terrible they are, which really works to build them up. The moment when they finally appear- and yes, they look like the Nazi demons they are- is all the more effective for that.

It's impressive that such a potent metaphor can be used so well and so effectively, mainly by the focus on the lives of the persecuted, especially as the episode is just forty-two minutes long and the character stuff takes precedence. But the other reason for the Scourge is to give Doyle something to atone for. Many years ago, he refused to give refuge to another of his people who needed shelter from the Scourge. There may be extenuating circumstances, but Doyle has essentially failed to shelter a fellow Jew from the Nazis, and this lead to his death. There have to be consequences.

Watching the episode in hindsight, the build-up to the inexorable moment is handled perfectly. The humour is front-loaded into the first ten minutes, as we begin with Cordelia directing a fantasy television advert for Angel Investigations, in which she critiques a good few tropes from this show's visual style. I love metatextual fun, as you know, and I also love Cordelia. This is a match made in heaven. And the use of the video recorded with Doyle is, of course, a piece of structural beauty.

Angel's feelings over Buffy are properly dealt with, as he tells Doyle everything. But there is deep dramatic irony here, too, as an admiring Doyle admits that he just isn't cut out to be as heroic as Angel. There's so much foreshadowing throughout the episode that it almost hurts to watch.

There's some more arc-related foreshadowing too, of course; it seems that the Soldiers of Darkness and the End of Days, mentioned last episode, are still on the horizon. But most of the foreshadowing is blatantly pointed at Doyle. And it becomes most painful when Cordelia is involved. Doyle's feelings for Cordelia, and his agonising over how she'll react to the fact that he's half-demon, have simmered throughout the whole series. But Cordelia obviously has affection for him. If she insults you, that means she likes you, and she's insulted Doyle an awful lot. It's all been rather sweet.

That last scene between the two of them is so heartbreaking, from the slap right through to the kiss. Cordelia's "Would you ask me out for dinner already?" tortures us with what could have been, and then Doyle goes to his nervous and heroic sacrifice. In the end, he's a better man than anybody thought he was, especially himself.

Beautifully, the rest is silence. A heartbroken Cordelia and a stunned Angel can't find the words, so it's left to Doyle himself. Where now?