It should be said before I begin this review that I’m a sucker for exposition and revelations. I love the Council of Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, I love the bits where the Master explains his evil plan in Doctor Who. So I probably enjoyed this episode substantially more than those of you who aren’t immediately excited by a bunch of folks sitting around and working out what the heck has been going on for the past season of Angel (or even further back).

While I did have some reservations about the evil plan — I was happy for it to extend back to when Cordy ascended in the first place, but not so much for it to go further — one has to consider that a being that has proven itself to be outside of time in some ways (i.e. the dimensional fiddling about the Beast’s origin) isn’t going to be limited by just manipulating the past few months.

But enough about the fun revelations, because the big strength of this episode was the direction. There was some clever stuff here. As well as some good scene transitions, we also had yet another cool fight scene, between Angel and Skip. This season of Angel, I think, wins ‘best fight scenes’ hands down. I challenge anyone not to cheer when Angel wraps up the chain in slow motion and smacks Skip in the head with it. Wesley’s sharpshooting was also pretty impressive (and, of course, in character — he’s been deadly accurate with ranged weapons right back to season 1).

Again, it was also fun to have Angel back. I hadn’t realised how much I missed him. His exausted request that everyone incapacitate Skip was very funny. “Before he wakes up would be nice.” And his sad but resolute willingness to kill Cordy — and not to let any of the others nearby when he did it — was perfect.

But enough of the fun. We have a dull, dingy Cordy-Connor plotline to wrap up. Never has it been more painful to watch them together — as evil-Cordy completely annihilates Connor as a character. This despite the last ditch efforts of the Powers that Be, via Darla. It’s been a while since we saw either of them — Darla is welcome, but if the best that the ‘PTB’ can come up is an ex-vampire spouting lines from Return of the Jedi then they should just go home.

I had quite a bit of sympathy for Connor by this point, but I have to admit now that he’s not the brightest spark — and probably pretty much gone as a character now. Say it with me, people:

“If someone is ritualistically killing virgins — especially virgin girls — they’re EVIL.”

Thank you.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Friday, July 4th, 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.