Angel S02 E01 – Television’s Big Life Lessons

Previously: Wesley re-read the prophecy and learned that the vampire with the soul will maybe get to be a person eventually. Angel was a fan of the maybe eventually. Cordelia had trauma-status visions that made her a better person. Also, Brooding HQ blew up and Wesley survived with a shield of magic.
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Judgement

Sweeney: Beginnings are almost as exciting as endings! I just need to insert the requisite number of YAY NEW SEASON exclamation points! There, that’s good. We start the first episode of the season with a demon who is green with red eyes and little red horns who is on the long list of faces I recognize from Tumblr. He looks very menacing, but then he starts belting out “I Will Survive” taking a break to tell the audience (at this show, but also us, the viewing audience) about all the nasty things in LA.

K: LOOOOOOOORNE!!!

Lor: I’m guessing that squeal means he’s important. I just loved that I thought, “that demon looks like a demon wearing make-up,” AND HE WAS.

Sweeney: That was an all-around fantastic character introduction. I loved everything about it.

Jump to Cordelia having a very dramatic parting ways with a guy we’ve never seen before, and it’s pretty clear that she’s acting. (K: A+. There’s a very soap opera quality to the cinematography.) (L: Also, general A+ to actors playing actors. Well done.) They take a break and the director tells her that she is the bestest ever and wants to go again, but her pager (LOL, pagers) goes off telling her it’s 911 and duty calls. Wesley is playing darts at the same bar he went to after Faith tortured him and getting the same page.

The Fang Gang arrives at a gym. As someone who goes to the gym quite regularly I can say that yes, they are centers of evil. Everything makes sense now.

Lor:

Sweeney: The owner tries to make them leave, as they clearly aren’t members. He gets distracted when he notices Angel’s lack of reflection. Angel stares at the mirror for a second before he kicks it in, revealing the ritual sacrifice they came to stop.

K: And also seven years bad luck for Angel. 

Sweeney: I can’t believe I missed that.

He vamps out and Cordelia and Wesley nonchalantly get ready to fight. Someone got the, “Yes, the Fang Gang as a cohesive team! More please!” memo. They quickly defeat the demon and Angel explains the demon’s horns away with PCP steroids.

Cue electric cellos! They seem a little cleaner than they did last season. Am I making that up? Just me? Regardless, still electric-cello-y, now with the addition of Gunn, though not yet in the final group shot, which I’m guessing is a thing that will happen eventually.

Cordelia is writing on a big whiteboard that appears to be a way to track their progress on various cases. It reminds me of the Spreadsheet O’ Dreams. The big wall-size version in fictional Snark HQ.

K: Incidentally, if y’all want to start donating money towards making Snark HQ an actual thing, we’re totally on board with that.

Sweeney: LOL. Kickstarter campaign for the hundreds of thousands of dollars we’d require to purchase this office. And the additional thousands for all of the airfare for everyone to commute to this office on the regular. We have about 750 likes on Facebook, so if each one of you donates a mere $1,000, that I’m sure you have lying around to give to bloggers who would like to professionally not wear pants, we can make this dream a reality!

Anyway, Wesley makes a wrong-guess about what Wolfram & Hart raised at the end of the last season just as Julie Benz’s name comes up on the title credits. Angel isn’t really paying attention because he’s thinking about how nice that gym was, because he’s had a whole summer to be introspective about his hypothetical future humanness.

Lor: Apparently his future humaness will not include of the gym because of group showers. Cute.

Sweeney: As someone who very briefly lived out of her car and relied on a gym shower, I’m glad they exist, but yeah, they’re generally pretty gross and a valid reason to be anti-gym.

Then this adorable thing happens:

Cordelia starts to grumble about the fact that they have to work out of her place until they get a new office and then she sneezes again, before getting an actual vision. Wesley writes on the board NDUO – Nasty Demon of Unknown Origin. He can be an honorary snark…person. Angel notes that there are a lot of those in this town as we segue magic over to Wolfram & Hart where Lilah’s ending a very menacing phone call with a client. She goes into Lindsey’s office to make fun of his handless struggles.

K: To be fair, Dr. No had more advanced prosthetic hands, and that was 1962.

Sweeney: He looks across the room because he’s putting music on for Darla. She’s all cleaned up now. I’m a little unclear on the timeline at this point, because Wesley’s wrong-guess was a demon they fought a month ago, so I assumed that summer happened between S1 and S2, but Darla is just now realizing that Angel is there in LA. I’m guessing she spent the summer gradually rehabilitating like Angel did when he came back?

Anyway, she knows he’s nearby because sire magic allows her to feel it.

K: Also, when she says that he’s nearby, Lilah thinks Darla’s talking about Chopin because of the music Lindsey put on, and LOL WHUT.

Lor: Lilah is pretty useless in this entire scene. Stick to menacing phone calls, girlfriend.

Sweeney: She is super good at those menacing phone calls!

Darla also remembers that Angel killed her in part because of that pesky soul. Lindsey says they’ll get some revenge ASAP because he’s taken from both of them. Pretty sure Darla wins that round, though, Lindsey.

Back at Cordelia’s, we get more of Angel’s excellent artistic skills as he attempts to draw the demon from Cordelia’s vision. Wesley goes off in search of a book which Phantom Dennis throws at him, and Cordelia says that Wesley needs to avoid shouting, lest he startle poor Phantom Dennis. As he flips through the book, Cordelia freaks out when she spots the demon and scares Wesley.

K: AMAZINGNESS. Season 2 is already fabulous.

Sweeney: Angel reads the entry and the demon in question is big on the maiming and massacring. Wesley says he’s got a demon friend who might be helpful in their research, and they can all go to this demon safe haven. He’s wary, though, because it’s “a little outside the box.”

With that, we jump to the Green Demon from The Ring singing karaoke on the same stage that the aforementioned other red-eyed variety show host demon was on earlier. He is also green, so I’m going to need to work on my names. Tumblr tells me that the variety show host is named Lorne, so fine. Lorne.

Lorne and Green Demon have a little chat just off stage. Over at the bar, Wesley spots Merle, the “snitch.” I’m not really sure how being a snitch in the world of general demon knowledge works, but whatever. Merle the snitch isn’t a fan of Angel, but Wesley’s got cash and he is a fan of that.

K: Merle and Spike would get along GREAT.

Sweeney: The demon they’re after doesn’t like it above ground and will be traveling in tunnels and also will probably kill Angel. Merle, it’s the first episode of the season! You’re clearly new.

Lor: He calls Angel a giant mosquito. EEWWW.

Sweeney: Angel’s exit is cut off by Lorne who wants him to sing a song. He also comments on Angel’s hotness, so yay shots! Wesley informs Cordelia that Lorne is psychic, but his psychic powers require people to do some soul-baring singing. Cordelia and Wesley push him to do it, but Angel says, “There are three things I don’t do: tan, date, and sing,” before running off. As he leaves, Lorne says he’d look fabulous in that coat and I understand why this man is so incredibly gif-worthy. I get it, Tumblr.

K: Lorne is the best. You have no idea how thrilled I am that he’s finally here.

Sweeney: Anyway, I’m going to go ahead and wager that passing up on a free psychic reading isn’t going to work out well for Angel. He’s down in the tunnels to fight our demon a mere 15 minutes into the episode. A woman is running and he tells her to get back. Then the demon charges at Angel and they fight. She calls out one, “No!” at the beginning, but that’s about it. Angel eventually kills the demon and she collapses and sobs over it saying, “What have you done?”

After a Not Commercial Break we learn that this woman, who I had not previously noticed is pregnant, was being protected by the now dead demon. He was protecting her from something called The Tribunal and Angel probably can’t handle that and more importantly, she wants the dude who just killed her only friend to GTFO. Fair.

K: Womp womp. Nice try, Angel.

Lor: Guys, I don’t know there was a marked lack of reaction for the pregnant woman so that this whole thing leans more toward contrivance than anything else. Or mabye our lesson of the episode is that if someone is trying to kill your protector and one friend in the world, you should go batshit. You never know if the guy trying to kill him is a good guy.

Something like that.

Sweeney: I agree entirely. Her general lack of reaction was annoying and made this feel contrived. I mean, to an extent, I get that she didn’t know that Angel was a good guy, but she didn’t try to run or hide or react in any way whatsoever.

Back at Cordelia’s apartment, Angel’s telling the other two that he just killed a demon who was good. Wesley says it was a logical expectation, what with this being a demon that’s really just all about the killing. He starts asking how they were supposed to guess that it could just change it’s M.O. overnight and become a noble defender and OH YEAH. Right. You know, it’s kind of Angel’s thing.

So Angel now has the added brood of killing another innocent. I guess the show decided that all that talk of gym memberships meant he was short on brood. They were wrong. It’s time to do his thing and channel his brood and martyrdom into taking on this guy’s raison d’être of protecting Pregnant Lady and going after The Tribunal.

Angel goes after Merle to figure out why he lied about the demon. There’s a high price on Pregnant Lady’s head — specifically her baby’s, who is supposed to become some sort of “powerful benevolent“ — but nobody could get close with that demon around. That demon that Angel just offed, alone, in 60 seconds? OK, show.

K: As we established in Sunnydale earlier, Whedon’s a genius, but he’s not exactly great with the consistency.

Sweeney: In a parking lot, some guy freaks out when he sees a group of guys in hoodies approaching. He runs and screams at them to just take his car. We learn that Gunn is among those guys as the panicky white guy runs into a vampire. Gunn stakes the vampire and the guy can’t even muster up a thank you before running off. Rudeness.

K: Rudeness AND racial profiling in the space of thirty seconds. Wheeee.

Lor: Those are the kinds of people you let the vampires nibble on. No? Sorry. That’s why I’m not helping the helpless for a living, I guess.

Sweeney: Vampires would be much better fed if we were on that job.

Angel then appears from his shadows to make the same point his rudeness. Gunn sends his friends on their way so that Angel can get to the point. He describes roughly where the Now Dead Demon was living, adding that he’d have been living underground, and asks for Gunn to play Shady Potential Demon Hideout tour guide.

They go to a place that Gunn & Co. have been monitoring since they cleared out a vampire nest from there. It takes all of two seconds for Gunn to noticed that maybe they’ve been slacking in the monitoring, because the Now Dead Demon and/or Pregnant Lady was hiding out there.

Lor: Specifically he notices a vent and says that it wasn’t there before. Because the demon and the pregnant girl installed a fake-out vent? Skillz.

Sweeney: It’s a fucking big ass vent too. I’m sure Pregnant Lady was really handy for all the intensive manual labor that must have been involved.

Angel finds an ancient-looking disc shaped thing. He gives Gunn Cordelia’s address and asks him to take it to her and Wesley. Gunn asks if Angel’s just going to stay and “soak up the guilt,” which, yeah, sounds like our guy.

K: 1430 for Gunn. 

Sweeney: Angel picks up random objects and has traumatic flashes of murdering the Now Dead Demon. He also lights one of his candles. Handling tiny matches seems dangerous for a vampire. Angel hears a noise, and greets the “intruder” with a sword, so it is of course Pregnant Lady. She’s not interested in all the savior bullshit because this is her baby and not someone’s holy mission. Angel wins her over by saying that it’s really just his job, for which he has business cards. Business cards make everyone seem legit. We’ve gotta get business cards. “No, really, I’m a professional blogger. I mean, I don’t get paid and I actually lose money keeping up the site and also do all of my ‘work’ in my underwear with a bottle of wine, BUT I HAVE A BUSINESS CARD, so I must be legit.”

K: I have bloggy business cards. They have yet to do anything for me but take up space in my wallet…

Lor: …and make you legit. If we’re gonna have an HQ, we need business cards.

Sweeney: Obviously proceeds from our Kickstarter campaign will go to the making of business cards.

Pregnant Lady starts digging around for the coat of arms so that she could present it to The Tribunal and get them to maybe call of the whole murdering her face off. I’m not ready to watch another pregnant lady murder, you guys. I can’t do it. (L: SOBS.) Angel realizes that he already found the coat of arms, but it is no longer with him. Pregnant Lady tries to storm out and tell him to not help her, but the fact of being very pregnant kind of hinders the storming out. As soon as she opens the door to leave, a random demon appears and attacks. Sort of. It looks more like a bad teen movie caricature of girls fighting — just a lot of directionless air-swatting.

After the Not Commercial Break, Angel gets to the killing while monologuing about the possibility that it might be good. He kills it and they run away.

Back at Cordelia’s place, Gunn knocks and when he says who he is, she immediately jumps to, “A DEMON WITH A GUN.” Cordelia, girl, you’re better than that. They let him in and the awkward exchange continues to be awkward. They say it’s nice to finally meet him and he says he’s seen Cordelia before in bed. Wesley’s all, “Woah, personal…” until Gunn adds that he’s see him there too. Awkward scene is still awkward, but also funny. Gunn clarifies that this was at the hospital, when Angel sent him there to watch over them.

K: This is why I love Gunn. He takes their racial stereotyping and fucks with their heads for shits and giggles. 

Sweeney: Gunn says that although he had hoped for demon fighting, he’s just on delivery duty. Wesley’s eyes light up with excitement when Gunn hands over the coat of arms. Gunn and Cordelia chat about the Whiteboard O’ Redemption. Cordelia says that they had been doing great until Angel went and fucked it all up with his killing the wrong guy thing. She quickly adds that she’s sure he’s on top of it now, though.

With that, he is, of course, looking very not on top of it. Guys, don’t ever tell anyone, out of my earshot, how great I’m doing. On television this always means that I am doing decidedly not great. I wonder if the opposite is true? Like, if you say, “Man, Sweeney is failing at all the things and broke and miserable,” the other side of that segue magic is me winning the lottery I didn’t enter?

Lor: Shit, you have to enter? BRB.

Sweeney: Angel and Pregnant Lady emerge from the tunnels in what appears to be a semi-abandoned building. There are sheets over all the furniture. I have seen this place on the internets too. Did we just find Angel’s new office? It’s way swankier than Brooding HQ if we did.

K: It’s an abandoned hotel. So yeah, sliiiiightly swankier than Brooding HQ.

Sweeney: Pregnant Lady squabbles with Angel some more over whether he can protect her and I’m already over this. Demons appear and he tells her to go to the address on the back of his legit-person business card. Later, Angel arrives at Cordelia’s, but Pregnant Lady is not there. He broods about her not trusting him and takes out his frustration on the Whiteboard O’ Redemption.

Cordelia tries to comfort him. “You can’t see everything. You’re just a vampire like everyone else. That didn’t come out right.” Angel then broods about how seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, his hope that he might be come human, and he felt like he was already out. Cordelia says that they all got a little cocky, and it’ll be a long road, but she’ll stand by him through it. Aw.

Wesley comes in, having figured out that The Tribunal is a centuries-old way of settling disputes. With a fight to the death. And she needed a champion to do that. Didn’t we already watch this episode?

K: Isn’t that every episode of Angel ever??

Sweeney: I mean, yeah, sure, but specifically the demons-fighting-to-the-death aspect, as in The Ring.

Angel says that they need to find her and the only way they can do that is with a trip to my new favorite karaoke-bar-host-owner-whatever. Musical ability is apparently the weak link in Angel’s artistic chain. It’s a good thing he was already in LA by the time of Buffy’s musical episode.

K: Oh God. The thought of David Boreanaz being in Once More, With Feeling just made me VERY uncomfortable… Because a) he’s singing Barry freaking Manilow, and b) it’s aaaaall kinds of awful.

Sweeney: He’s clearly miserably uncomfortable with this awful singing and Cordelia tells Wesley that he’ll clearly do anything to save a life. Except, you know, this exact same thing at the beginning of the episode, sparing him the demon-murder and the entire plot for the episode.

Lorne escorts Angel off stage after he’s done and banters a lot more than Angel knows how to handle. Lorne says that The Tribunal will be wherever she is. Before he’ll tell Angel where she is, he makes Angel explain why he chose to sing, “Mandy.”

Lorne gives Angel the cross streets for where Pregnant Lady and The Tribunal will take place. Lorne can’t tell him how it will take place, though. Cut to her, hobbling down the middle of the road somewhere. Why isn’t she on a sidewalk? I don’t understand.

K: Because shit ain’t serious unless you’re running down the middle of the street in a bad part of town. Jeez, Sweeney. Haven’t you been paying attention?

Lor: Conversely, if you always stick to the sidewalks, does this mean that shit will never be that serious? This episode is bringing up the big TV questions.

Sweeney: Indeed! I have so many new questions about how I should live my life.

Magically, some chairs spring up from the street, with some old guys. A knight appears and throws down a coat of arms. They ask her where her coat of arms and hero are. When she says he’s dead, they’re all, “Well, sucks to be you, because now your life is forfeit with out a champion.” This is Angel’s TV-perfect-timing cue to throw down the other coat of arms and say that she does, in fact, have a champion.

As Angel walks over to his horse for this A Knight’s Tale trial, Pregnant Lady’s all, “Thanks for your help, but you suck at everything.” Where are you going with this, lady? Angel says he’ll be fine because he grew up around horses and terrible wigs. Angel asks the horse to not make him look stupid out there before he hops on and the joust starts, causing the most magically gifable thing in the episode to happen:

K: LOL WHUT. I also love how the cars in the background just keep going about their business, as if avoiding horses in the middle of LA for a joust to take place is common place.

Lor: They actually gave us Angel as a Billow-y Coat Knight. THEY ACTUALLY DID IT IN SO MANY WORDS. Also, some people make riding horses look graceful and easy. DB does not.

Sweeney: Not at all. I also can’t help but notice that Angel’s opponent has a helmet and he does not. This is not wise, Angel, as my film-and-television-based knowledge of this subject has informed me. It’s drawn out and dramatic, but the other guy knocks Angel off his horse. Angel manages to get his hands on some weapons and pull said opponent off of his horse before he can kill him. They fight and it looks like Angel lost, so the Tribunal tells the opponent he can kill her. He has his knife to her throat and I have instant traumatic Game of Thrones flashbacks.

K: I don’t watch Game of Thrones, but my little brother told me today that he hasn’t seen the most recent episode yet, and there’s a possibility that I jumped up and down going “I KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T KNOW!!” in an overzealously smug fashion. Because I’m the best sister ever.

Sweeney: Because I do watch Game of Thrones and I still have traumatic feels from what you were being smug about, I’m going to say that was a total dick move, Kirsti. WORST.

This perfect-for-TV timing is pretty not-perfect. Angel gets up and chops the guys head off just in time to keep her from being murdered. Then the Tribunal, who so hastily ruled on Angel’s not-death death, are just as quick to say, “Oh, fine you win, then.” They clearly have some good shit waiting for them on their DVR. They say that Pregnant Lady and her child — until she comes of age — are now under their protection. Then they vanish.

Angel is pretty weak due to having been stabbed, but he goes back to Cordelia’s place and gets rid of the Whiteboard O’ Redemption. Wesley starts to suggest it’s to replace it with a new one, but Angel’s not having that. Wesley realizes that it’s because they aren’t supposed to be keeping score and, instead, should focus on saving one soul at a time.

With that, Angel has somewhere he needs to be. Cue strange confessions, but I actually flailed a little and clapped when we jump to the visiting room of a prison. I don’t know what to say about that. It’s a thing that happened. I didn’t think we’d see her again so soon!

K: Right there with you. And I’ve seen this before. 

Lor: 3/3 recappers agree, then. When I saw Eliza Dushku’s face reflected in the glass separation, I flailed.

Sweeney: Any-flailing-way, Angel decided it was time to chat with Faith, who now has healthy good girl makeup on, in spite of being in prison. Prison life is definitely rough, but Faith says that guys like them have it coming. He confesses singing Barry Manilow, and this whole conversation is precious. Faith says that the road to redemption is hard, but she’s pretty confident they’ll make it. Aw, that’s precious.

K: SO MUCH. I love that he’s keeping his promise to help her, even though she’s in a place that basically encourages her to fight all the time, and that she could probably break out of in about two minutes flat if she wanted to. Also Homegirl has GREAT hair, considering she’s in prison. In short, season 2 is off to a great start.

Lor: Agreed. The Tribunal/pregnant lady stuff was pretty vague and stupid, but they set up the characters and what I assume will be the major ongoing themes very well. I had fun watching this episode, and seriously, the conversation with Faith was fantastic. Better than discovering Harriet the Spy in your room, for sure. 

Sweeney: This show is, if nothing else, very consistent with that — the character stuff ranges from good to perfect (with the occasional dud) and that tends to determine our love/hate for episodes more than the #meh plots (with the occasional strokes of genius). Though, even this stupid plot had it’s high moments. I can’t help but love an episode that began with an utterly fantastic character introduction and ended with a brilliant scene revisiting a familiar face. I’m already feeling good about you, season 2.

Next time on Angel: Angel wants to upgrade to the abandoned hotel, but first, he’s got to evict a demon in S02 E02 – Are You Now or Have You Ever Been.