A few weeks ago, in his Buffy review, Andy reminded us that everything man touches is a mixture of good and evil. Of course, he was talking about Buffy, so really the mixture was of ‘not bad’ and ‘lame’. This week’s episode of Angel, however, truly is such a mixture. A lot of the episode is as good as any episode of Angel ever gets — incessant foreboding, pus jokes, tensions between the gang — but some of it is so incredibly bad… I’ll come to that bit.

Gunn and Fred’s uncertain relationship was handled nicely, with good acting on both sides that almost made me more tolerant of how damn happy and painfully cute they’ve been recently. It’s always nice to see Gunn angry. Wesley’s smug entrance and the resulting conflict with Gunn was good stuff too. It was also excellent to see Angel torture Gavin. I hope it hurt. And nice to see Angel using logic and not force to get Lilah to help him. She’s very giving, as he reminded Wes. Speaking of which, Lilah’s spot of dressing up was one of the funniest moments this season. "Keep them on!"

Angel Investigations’ deduction of where the risen beast was slaughtering was fairly convincing too. Vaguely believable and a nice image at the end. Although the whole ‘putting all the points on the map’ thing always reminds me of an Inspector Gadget episode. Even Connor was vaguely watchable this episode — his concern about his link to the danger was well handled. Perhaps he’s going to get interesting soon. And the final fight scene! Go Wes! Go Angel! Yeah, too bad Gunn and Lorne. The stake through the neck looked painful.

But now the bad. Cordelia. While her anxiety about the beast was nicely done, other bits … weren’t. You know what I’m talking about. Ick. How did the writers ever think that was a good idea? I don’t care what they’re setting up, it’s just wrong. Still, I’m trying not to let it colour my opinion of the whole episode. In general, it was great. Just with one awful bit.

Some unanswered questions… Why did the Beast simply grin at Cordelia? And why did he ask Angel if he thought she was safe with Connor? There’s something peculiar going on here…

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Saturday, March 29th, 2003. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.