Angel S03 E02 – A side of yuck.

Previously: Angel got a slightly contrivant blast from his past, and Darla is PREGNANT.
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That Vision Thing

Lorraine: Wesley and his weird hair (I can’t get over it) are eating take out with Gunn. We catch them mid-conversation and Wesley is saying they need to be more mindful of something. Just then, Cordelia strides in and they great her with just a touch too much enthusiasm. She doesn’t spare them a glance. Gunn asks Wesley how he preformed and Wes thinks they came off pretty genuine. From somewhere behind them, we hear Fred say, “B+, C-. A girl can tell.” She’s sitting under a desk eating her take-out, so, you know. Progress.

Sweeney: FRED IS PRECIOUS.

Kirsti: This scene merely made me think that the awesome hair going on over in Sunnydale is the product of some sort of witchcraft-y black magic, good-hair-taking-away spell, because THE WHOLE FANG GANG HAS SUCKY HAIR RIGHT NOW.

Lor: Except Gunn.

Wesley tells Fred that once you reach quipping level, you should probably join the meal properly. Fred accepts this invitation, but draws the line at Gunn’s suggestion that she use chopsticks, or a fork. Cordelia comes back and the guys are overly nice again. Cordelia says she knows what they are doing and Fred offers a cute little, “told ya.”

Cordelia says the boys are being fake nice and super sensitive because she hasn’t had a vision in a while. She claims to look forward to the visions, though, since The Powers That Be have chosen her as the bearer of those visions.

Fred gets excited and asks if Cordy can use her visions to see where Angel is at the moment. Cordy doesn’t care to, though Gunn explains that she doesn’t choose to have visions. Wesley calls them gifts, and Cordy is quick to remind them of the side of blinding pain that comes with these gifts.

Daniel Dae Kim interrupts their conversation. Cordelia hasn’t met him yet, so she greets him– or rather his expensive leather shoes– enthusiastically. Wesley recognizes him and snarls accordingly. DDK notices Fred and asks, “new player?” Wesley protectively blocks her from view and tells DDK to piss off. Angel strolls in and asks if there is a problem, and the soundtrack in the back is that Single Note of Tension. I don’t know what kind of instrument it is, but my Yamaha keyboard made similar sounds. DDK pulls out a list of 57 code violations he’s filed with the city planning office again the Brooding Hotel. Angel snarkily asks if 57 is a lot. DDK sizes him, says he’ll be in touch, and leaves.

K: I find it oddly fascinating how different the plans are that the various Wolfram & Hart lawyers cook up to destroy Angel. Lindsey was all “Let’s bring his ex-girlfriend back from the dead to screw with him,” Lilah’s all sneaky and “attack those close to him,” and DDK is clearly going to steal all his stuff.

Lor: Wouldn’t it just be the little things that set you off, though? Like a full day of battling demons, and then you come home to find you’ve been evicted. INSTANT CRANGEL.

Angel notices Fred and says it’s good to see her out and about. Fred: I’ve been forking with Gunn. LOL. Oh, Fred. I love you.

Fred Fun Times are interrupted by Cordelia having what really can no longer be described as a Migraine Vision. Seizure Vision might be more like it. She’s crying out in obvious pain. After it’s subsided, she tells the guys she saw a coin, two clawed demons and they were in Chinatown. Wesley and Gunn run off, but Angel stays to help Cordy up. She cries out again, this time when Angel touches her. She claims to be fine, and shoos Angel off to find the coin.

Cordelia goes to the bathroom and walks gingerly to the mirror. Wesley knocks on the door to find out if the beast has four or five claws. He asks if she’s certain and she lifts her shirt to reveal five claw marks. She’s pretty certain.

Cue electric cellos.

K: I’m forced to stop because this is pretty much the worst prosthetics work of EVER. Like, as the camera pans up Cordy’s stomach, you can clearly see the shiny glue marks at the edges of the “cuts” and how they’ve tried – and failed – to cover them with make up. Seriously, guys? You couldn’t get another take in slightly different light that would make it less insanely obvious?! 

Sweeney: I was too distracted by my overwhelming urge to give Cordelia a hug to notice.

Lor: Ditto, but the gif was pretty handy for gif-staring.

Fred was supposed to be looking up herbalist shops in the yellow pages (LOL. Yellow pages.) but she was distracted by the fascinating letter H. Wesley gives her a look, and she gives him the information he needs: five herbalist shops in Chinatown. Angel enter-asks if they have a name for the demons. Wesley has narrowed it down to two possible kinds. Gunn suggests that they find the coin before they worry about what the demons are.

Before they leave, Angel tells Fred he needs her to do something, and she beams like Angel just picked her for the line leader. When Amy Acker smiles, she’s got a very Alyssa Milano quality about her face.

Still in the bathroom, Cordelia is popping aspirin. She’s only in her under shirt and we see that there are deep gashes on her shoulder and back. Angel knocks on the door, and she tries to get him to go away, but he won’t until she opens the door. She opens the door, but she has her shirt back on. She insists that she’s fine and that she’s feeling better. Angel is not buying it and has instructed Fred to take Cordelia home. Cordy begrudgingly agrees to leave.

K: Could Angel not SMELL the blood from her newfound gashes?! I mean, he can smell one tiny drop down in the sewers or at a crime scene. But all of a sudden, his super smelling powers are on strike? Okay, show. Whatever.

Sweeney: RIGHT? As soon as he was knocking on the door, that was my first thought. I was waiting for him to make some comment about being able to smell it. I strongly dislike this bit of inconsistency.

Lor: Gunn is driving Angel’s car and wondering why when you have a list of places to look, the place you need is always last. Wesley says it’s one of the rules of being a dick. A dick, like a detective, though Gunn warns that if Wesley says dick again, there will be problems.

Sweeney: Wesley also asks how Cordelia is doing and when Angel says that she insists that she’s fine, he notes that Angel doesn’t seem to believe her. Angel just responds with this look that’s like, “Are you serious right now?” but it’s just a look. We complained at great length when BtVS S4 Scoobies were super oblivious of one another. I just want to note that I am equally as happy as I was frustrated to see the opposite in action. (Even if I am annoyed that he couldn’t smell it…)

Lor: I feel like Wesley asking about it was more for expositions sake, but I wish he were a little more sensitive to Cordy’s hurts as well. Though, they can’t all be as sensitive as Broody McBroodster.

The boys arrive at the final herbalist shop. A older Chinese woman immediately says, “your kind not welcome here.” Gunn responds first and says, “since when can’t a brother buy some ginseng tea?” I giggled. The Chinese woman meant Angel, though.

Wesley says they are looking for an ancient coin. Grandma and Grandpa jump over the counter with some martial arts-y yells. Gunn tries to play like he’s not impressed, but is rather freaked out when Grandma and Grandpa grow some pretty impressive claws. Fighting ensues, and while Grandma and Grandpa get some quality hits in, the gang manages to overpower them. Once they are out, Angel easily finds the coin, as it’s tied around Grandpa’s neck.

Wolfram & Hart. Lilah grabs a paper from the printer about asbestos. Daniel Dae Kim claims it as his own, because contrivance broke his printer, so he had to print over here, giving him an opportunity to tell Lilah that he’s been moved from real estate to special projects. He offers Lilah a chance to join his team, but Lilah shuts that down. She references Lindsey losing his hand as an example of earning your place at Wolfram & Hart. I gotta say, I’m all for epic hand losing scenes before any and all evil lawyer promotions.

K: Agreed. I’m still about 80% sure that the epic hand losing scene was the best thing we’ve seen from this show so far. 

Lor: I’ll see your 80 and raise you to 85.

At her apartment, Cordelia is announcing loudly that she’s ready for bed, and tells Fred that she can go now. Fred’s on the kitchen floor, eating peanut butter straight from the jar. Cordelia tries to shoo her towards the door, but Fred was instructed to stay put until she got a call from Angel. Fred tries to ask about what the visions are like, and compares Cordelia to Lassie, since she gets the visions that tell Angel Timmy is trapped in the well. Cordy’s had enough and asks Dennis for some back-up. He opens the door and Cordy pushes her out.

Just then, she’s hit with another vision that knocks her out. Fred flips her over, and before our eyes, Cordelia’s face gets covered in pus filled boils. EW. WHY. GAG.

K: My mum walked in at this point, and deemed whatever I was watching to be inappropriate viewing on account of grossness. So yeah. It was pretty gag-worthy.

Lor: After a Not Commercial Break, the Orchestra of Feels for Cordy’s Face is all, “sorry girl…” in the background. She’s trying to tell the Gan about the Yuck Demon she saw in her vision, but Angel’s a bit more concerned with the yuck all over her face. He asks if this has ever happened before. Cordy lifts her shirt and shows them the gashes on her arm. Wesley spells out that she’s having physical manifestations of her visions.

Sweeney: Thanks for that pointless clarification, Wes!

Lor: The crazy hair is taking him off his game.

Cordelia’s voice is hoarse, and breaking when she stands and looks at herself in the mirror and asks why, if she’s part of their team, The Powers That Be would do this on purpose.

We cut to Angel exiting Cordelia’s room where the rest of the gang is waiting for him. He wants to figure this thing out, and it’s Fred who pipes up with a useful solution: if TPTB are communicating with Cordelia, maybe they can trace the signal and call back. Wesley sends Gunn and Fred back to the Brooding Hotel for a few books, and wants Angel to go after the key and the Yuck Demon from Cordy’s second vision. He doesn’t want to leave her side, but Wesley thinks that if this is important to TPTB, they need to pursue it. When Angel still pushes back, Wesley says to trust him. He’s got a plan. You go ahead, Wesley, with your Fang Gang leading self. I’m sorry about that comment about your hair.

Angel finds the place in Cordy’s vision, sword in hand, clearly on a no nonsense mission. He tells the man he finds that he wants the key and he wants it now. The man’s all, “dude. This is a locksmith.” There are keys all over the place.

K: I enjoyed this scene more than I should have, probably because it reminded me of that time with the room full of goats.

Lor: Fair.

Thankfully, Angel’s got a little doodle I’m pretending he did because Angel/Art OTP. When the man sees the key, he presses some sort of panic button and the Yuck Demon jumps down into the frame, ready with a sword of his own.

We cut from that action to Gunn and Fred strolling along like their friend isn’t covered in boils and stuff. My episodes today both had some unfortunately timed strolls. Fred apologizes about taking him from the action, but Gunn is okay with getting the walking with a pretty girl end of the stick. When they get to Brooding Hotel, they find a couple of men claiming to be fumigating. Gunn sends Fred to retrieve the books, and demands to see a work order.

Angel’s back at Cordy’s apartment, with the key in hand. He hands that off to Wesley and goes straight to check on Cordelia. Lorne is in there with her. There is some convoluted theory about how Lorne has a connection to The Powers That Be so he’ll be able to trace the signal? From Cordelia’s head? Cordelia is not a fan of this plan. Angel sits down next to her and asks what her hang-up is, and she admits that she doesn’t want to lose the visions.

 

After this touching moment, Cordelia agrees to let Lorne try. He tries to get her to relax by telling her to picture herself as Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, when she’s spinning on a mountain. They quickly abandon that tactic, and Lorne goes looking again. No singing is involved. Because of reasons.

We cut to Lilah’s office, and Kal Penn in a really large fez is in there. They are going over some particulars about payment and taxes, but finally Kal Penn is ready to do some mysteriously alluded to thing. He sits up on a table, Native American style (TM Sara) and starts levitating. He takes off the fez and reveals a Jello mold of a brain.

K: I’m going to go ahead and file this gig under “Things Kal Penn regrets now that he works at the White House.”

Lor: Lorne is still doing his thing and this inter-cuts with Kal Penn and his Jello brain levitation and flashes of a vision where someone is on fire. Lorne gets thrown back from the force of Cordy’s brain, and Cordy thrashes around. When it’s over, we see her arm is looking kind of The Thing-y, but more black and charred. Kal Penn replaces his crazy fez and tells Lilah that “she” (Cordelia) got the message.

At Cordy’s apartment, she’s asking Angel if maybe she’s a bad person. Angel tries to comfort her by saying this isn’t happening because she’s bad, but because she’s strong. She’s not feeling so strong right now.

She takes that whole thing about wanting to keep he visions back. She doesn’t know what could be so important that TPTB would do this to her. Angel doesn’t either.

Wesley pokes his head in and tells Angel he’s probably going to want to hear this.

Angel steps out into the living room where Fred beats Lorne to the punch: these seizure visions are not from The Powers That Be. Someone is hacking into Cordy’s brain. Lorne asks Angel to think of who could possibly be evil and well connected enough to hack in people’s heads.

Sweeney: The one thing about a long-standing Big Bad is that it sure makes this, “Hey, who really seriously hates me to the point of crazy obsession?” game a lot easier. Buffy’s always like, “Well, the list starts with every demon ever, so…”

Lor: We Segue Magic to Lilah. Season 3 looks good on Lilah, by the by. Oh, and she’s playing a computer game, because sometimes the face of evil needs a little entertainment. Angel apparates behind her and puns a little before tossing her the coin and key he retrieved. He figures that’s what she wanted, and now she has them, and it’s over.

He starts to walk away, but Lilah tells him it isn’t over yet. She pushes the coin and key back toward him, saying he’ll need them to complete his mission. There is a man who has been unfairly imprisoned, and Angel is going to save him.

K: In contrast, I feel like Lindsey just would have marched into Angel Investigations and been like “Yo, dude. I need your help.” There’s a reason Lilah survives at Wolfram & Hart as long as she does – she’s pretty fucking ruthless, and not afraid of collateral damage.

Lor: Angel asks if the trade off is one jail break mission for one cease and desist on the killer visions. Lilah says that isn’t really the way it’s going to work. Angel is going to do this for Lilah because she said so. Homegirl has got some balls considering she saw Angel go CrAngel and leave a bunch of people to die. Her insurance is that if she dies, “what’s her name’s” killer visions will never end.

 

Lilah looks momentarily shaken, but I get the feeling from this lady that it’s all an act. She had to know a little choking was at stake here. Anyway, she’s soon smiling as Angel is on board with the jail break mission, which involves traveling in and out of a fortressed demon dimension.

Wesley is examining the coin and key, and says he’s figured out that these are objects of good, meaning that Grandma, Grandpa and the Yuck Demon were on their side. Whoops. Angel wants to know what the dimension will be like, besides fortress-y and demon-y, and all Wesley can offer is fiery. As Angel grabs weapons, Wesley makes sure that Angel realizes that since Wolfram & Hart is involved, this man trapped in this prison is probably bad news. Angel knows this, but is determined to do what it takes to help Cordelia. Wesley wants to come with, but Angel says no. He wants Wesley to stay with Cordy.

That settled, Wesley puts the key inside of the coin and it goes spinning like a mystical dreidel. Angel steps into the portal, but all his weapons get left behind.

Angel materializes in the Fortress-y Demon-y Dimension, and he snarks about his lack of weapons, though thankfully he still has the key. Angel quickly finds the fire-jail, and there is a man inside of a cube, being burned alive. It’s not a particularly well done effect, but still disturbing to think about. I have issues with burned alive stuff. I’m getting Season 1 of Game of Thrones flash backs.

A weird looking demon with a big ring in its chin walks up behind Angel. (K: SKIP!!!) It kind of looks like the weird love child of a cockroach and a bull?

Angel turns around and calmly says hi, to which the demon replies, “You know you’re not supposed to be here, right?” Angel knows. He asks about the guy in the perpetual fire, and the demon says that guy is definitely supposed to be there, as he’s bad news. The demon introduces himself as Skip and I really like the silliness of this whole scene, mostly because it’s a distraction from the whole guy burning forever thing.

Sweeney: Me too! The distraction is great, but it’s also sort of unexpected. I like that they had such a gnarly-looking demon for this little device.

Lor: Skip can tell that Angel is a vampire and that he works on the side of The Powers That Be. Angel has to explain that he’s freeing the bad guy for a girl, and there is nothing that can be said to change his mind. So starts the fighting. In the shuffle, Angel kicks Skip back toward the fire prison, and the Burning Man inside of the cell grabs onto Skip’s shoulder and holds him there. Angel frees Skip from the Burning Man’s grip, but then knocks him out.

The fire prison immediately disappears and what’s left is a soot covered Burning Man and he’s got one hell of a murder-y look about him.

Back in LA, Lilah is standing by two limos, checking her watch. Angel’s convertible pulls up and parks. Wes and Gunn stay in the car with Burning Man, and Angel goes out to meet Lilah.

Lilah: To be honest, nobody at the firm thought that you could do it – except me. You’re a remarkable man, Angel.
Angel: Yeah, and you’re an evil bitch. Let’s finish this. Take care of Cordelia, you get your guy.

I mostly just quoted that because Angel called Lilah an evil bitch.

Lilah heads back to one of the limos and Kal Penn is in the back seat. Lilah talks to him briefly and the window slides up. Lilah goes back to Angel and tells him it’ll only take a moment. Angel turns toward his car, and Wesley takes out his cell phone and calls Cordelia’s apartment. Fred answers.

In the limo, Kal Penn is fez-less, and his Jello brain is jiggling around.

Sweeney: It looks even worse in the closeup because you can see his skull bulge just before where it’s supposedly cut open.

Lor: Fred looks at Cordelia and her yuck symptoms quickly disappear. Fred tells Wesley that it worked.

Gunn lets the Burning Man out of the car, and we see his hands are bound together. Burning Man walks past Angel to one of the evil limos, and smirks at Angel as his bounds are cut. Lilah tells Angel that it’s just business. He echoes that sentiment, but when her back is turn, he picks up a piece of rebar lying near by and sends it flying toward the limo. The rebar smashes one of the evil limo windows and pierces Kal Penn right through his Jello brain.

Lilah is looking at dead Kal Penn when Angel vamp-runs up behind her. She jumps to find him suddenly so near. Angel: Don’t you come at me through Cordelia ever again. You play that card a second time and I’ll kill you.

I like when Angel gets angry! Not CrAngel, but feels-y angry, see? Maybe I just like that he’s standing up for his Cordelia.

Sweeney: Agreed on both counts! Occasional bursts of anger are a nice way to shake up the brood, and I love any scenes in which members of the Fang Gang defend  their little family.

Lor: We cut to the next day, with Cordelia serving Angel coffee and toaster waffles.

K: I thoroughly enjoyed this moment for the look of panic on Angel’s face when Cordy mentions that the hotel has an enormous industrial kitchen that never gets used, and then the look of relief when the toaster pops. 

Lor: Cordelia thanks him for the selfless thing he did, but says that if Burning Man turns out to be a Big Bad, it will be all her fault. Angel says that he can’t worry about those consequences until they come, but that saving her was worth the price. They smile at each other, but those smiles quickly fall.

A title tells us we’re at the Yoro Mountains of Honduras. Darla walks into a tent where the hard-to-find Shaman she’s been searching for is crouched over a table. Darla asks him what’s growing inside of her and how it’s even possible. The Shaman needs some blood for a little herb and spices concoction. He spreads this mixture on his hands and puts it on Darla’s very pregnant belly. (K: Don’t wear white to see a shaman, y’all!) After a moment, he’s pushed backwards by an invisible force or perhaps by a very angry fetus. He tells Darla that no man can help her.

Darla says she’s heard that one before, and clearly it’s time to go visit Daddy.

I liked this episode a lot more that the season opener, though I understand why they felt the need to address the Buffy thing in the first episode before diving into the season. For both episodes, though, I love the direction they are taking the Angel/Cordy dynamic. I was going to make a comment about how it’s still seemingly a slow start, with not a ton of action, but since I’m told things only get crazier from here, I’ll bite my tongue and wait patiently. There is a vampire pregnancy involved after all.

That reminds me that demon spawn seems to be a reoccurring theme on Snark Squad at the moment. Weird.

 

Next time: Gunn’s old buddies are killing demons for funsies in Angel  S03 E03 – That Old Gang of Mine.