Loyalty

Tom: An unsettling episode that contains some amusement, but in general seems to be setting things up for the next episode… What will Wesley do? Alexis Denisof is given some more things to work with and once more rises to the challenge. The Gunn and Fred plotline… some bits were fine, but you’d think Gunn would have more sense than to take the girl he loves into a nest of vampires. Especially after what Wes said to him the other day. But then he seems to have taken Wes’ talk a bit oddly.

Of course this episode was also home to one of the greatest moments in Angel ever — the talking hamburger! The blending of the mundane and the fantastic is perhaps one of my favourite things about this show.

Mattt: When the bad guy starts wearing cardigans he stops being threatning. He stops looking like a Vamp hunter and starts looking like a pedophile. shudder.

All the heroes are safe save little Connor.

Sleep Tight

“You work for a man who you think is noble and good, I respect that. Trouble is, he’s not.”
“You work with a vampire!”
“Who in fact is noble and good. Quirky, but there it is.”

Tom: Wow. Angel is developing quite a run suddenly. Admittedly Gunn and Fred are still vaguely irritating, but they’re not in this one as much so it doesn’t matter. I loved Wes trying to sing the baby to sleep — and was shocked by what ensued. They’d better watch that they don’t use the ‘host-hears-man-with-poor-intentions-singing’ thing too much, but for me it’s still working. The look on Wesley’s face! Wes is, to be sure, going through a dark place. That said I’ve really enjoyed his dealings with Holtz in this episode and the last — he’s really stood up to him. It’d be worth having another look at the Buffy episode ‘Bad Girls’ to understand the full extent of his development!

I was pleased that the crew at Angel Investigations finally managed to work out something odd was going on. However I think the general denseness of everyone worked well. Gunn and Fred were too wrapped up in themselves, and thought that Wes was still jealous; the Host is probably sulking because he hasn’t had much to do in recent episodes; and Angel has been too worried about his own ‘Connor-food’ issues to really take an interest in what Wes is up to. What I think is interesting is how none of this would have gotten so bad if Cordelia had been here to spot things like Wes’ depression and Angel acting oddly.

436

This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Thursday, July 18th, 2002. 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.