When we were in English, Year Ten, we were specifically told not to finish stories with “… and it was all a dream.” And yet here are the Angel crew, flagrantly disregarding that. It is a bit of a risk to take. While it makes complete sense, in context, that the majority of the episode is cliched, cornball and soppy-sweet, your casual viewer may have turned off in disgust, or hurled their season one dvd boxed set through the television before they reach the clever conclusion.

What ‘Awakening’ really needs is to be watched again after you know what’s going on. What can we tell about Angel’s subconscious? He liked Raiders of the Lost Ark. He wants reconciliation with Wesley. He wants hot sweaty sex with Cordy (and Buffy it seems, if you listen to what he says at the end of the dream). He wonders what the Powers that Be are up to these days. He wants reconciliation with Connor. He wants Gunn and Wes to get along. He enjoys stripping asian men naked and examining their bodies. He likes solving problems with magical swords.

Amusingly, there are one or two times during the episode when Angel almost catches on. A magic sword to kill the beast hidden right under LA? That’s a bit implausible! Ah, it’s a mystical realm with many doorways, including one under LA. Fair enough, that’s sensible. Still, he’s a bit dense that he didn’t spot anything funny when the Beast just happened to walk in immediately after he found the sword, or when the moment they hit a tricky patch Cordy had a vision.

The trouble with a dream episode is that you feel on shaky ground criticising things, because it can just be claimed that that’s the way Angel’s mind works. Why did they all go through the insanely dangerous stake trap? Because Angel likes being with his friends. So I don’t have much to criticise. It still didn’t fit completely right with me that Angel would be dumb enough to sleep with Cordy. But I’ll make allowances and say that by that point, Wo-Pang’s spell was powerful enough to dull most of his instincts. Or possibly heighten other instincts.

All in all, an amusing way to have Angel lose his soul — but not terribly satisfying, simply because dreams never are. Hopefully we’ll all remember when we watch next week that everyone’s still paranoid and hates each other…

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Saturday, May 3rd, 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.