Angel S05 E11 – Worlds collide

Previously: Angel had some fucked up dreams.
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Damage

Lorraine: Our episode today starts at a psychiatric hospital. A nurse sitting at a station, with apparently nothing better to do besides a crossword puzzle, tells a passing doctor that they are running low on diazepam (Valium). He tells her to see if they can get some from a neighboring hospital and then wants in on her crossword action. “In a mellifluous manner,” is the clue. 7 letters, ends in y. (Harmony?) The doctor doesn’t get it, but fun with words is soon interrupted by an actual medical emergency.

Sweeney: Night shift life.

Kirsti:I kind of loved that he was all “Give me a word” with total confidence, and then “…yeah, I have no fucking clue” when she did so, because that’s totally how I roll with newspaper crosswords. Especially the cryptic ones.

Lor: A nurse comes running, yelling for the doctor, as a patient named Phillip is dead. Dr. Words With Friends asks how much Lithium was administered and the nurse is all, “WHOOPS,” because she actually gave him Thorazine. Dr. Words With Friends is now concerned about who didn’t get their Thorazine, a medicine often used to treat schizophrenia. We don’t get the answer, but the doctor gets, “oh shit,” face and we hear some loud banging coming from a room. The doctor and an orderly approach the room carefully, but the banging stops. Dr. Words With Friends is new to TV, so he breathes a sigh a relief.

K: You gonna die, bro.

Lor: Sure enough, there is one more loud bang and Theresa from The O.C. breaks out of her room, hair all, well, forgive the word choice, crazy. Her name is really Dana. (S: Ugh, whatever. She’s still Theresa to me. Neither seem to be particularly good associations for this human, though.) The doctor and the orderly back away from her slowly, until they are on the other side of a metal partition. She pulls the door right off the hinges and starts beating up all the orderlies. She even finds a bone saw in a storage closet (?) and uses that to hack at one of the orderlies. She dips three fingers in his blood and runs them across the face. Dr. Words With Friends runs the heck away.

Electric Cellos.

That was a pretty disturbing teaser. It isn’t very often we get them without a sign of someone from the main cast, so that was cool.

Sweeney: That’s a really good point! The presence of the main cast is almost soothing or, at least, tethering. It ‘s spookier for their absence.

K: I don’t know what it says about me/this show that this creeptastic teaser was the most excited I’ve been about an episode of Angel since Faith was in town. Probably something along the lines of “None of the main cast? GREAT!”

Lor: Wolfram & Hart. Gunn is walking along a corridor talking legal-nese on a phone call, perhaps in case we forgot he got that lawyer upgrade. Fred overhears this conversation, and when Gunn hangs up, asks if it’s smart to go up against the DA of a major metropolitan city. Gunn calls it professional rivalry. Things get really ugly on the golf course. Fred is shocked that Gunn plays golf and he attributes it to the “mojo” the Senior Partners installed in him since lawyers apparently need to know how to golf to be good at their jobs. OKAY. This has to be a joke now. They have to be fucking with us and that? Is brilliant.

Fred is not impressed by this method of settling cases (nine holes instead of a jury of your peers) but Gunn’s position is that you have to work the system before it works you. Fred asks if that’s their motto now and not for the first (or 10th) time, we get the whole, “Wolfram & Hart is bad but we can do some good here!” spiel. Gunn says he thinks they made the right choice.

Segue Magic to Angel saying that maybe they made the wrong choice. We pan out and see that he’s in his office with Lorne and Wesley! as Gunn and Fred walk in. Lorne informs us that we’re talking about the parasite/Eve situation. Gunn asks if they are firing her, and Wesley calls that a generous move, considering Eve tried to kill Angel. Gunn jumps up to clarify that the parasite Eve “allegedly” put on Angel wasn’t meant to kill him. Just coma him forever. (K: Because that’s totally better??) Angel asks what’s up with the “allegedly” and Gunn lawyers him about the lack of evidence. Wesley says the real world doesn’t work like a courtroom, but Gunn’s point is that Eve is the liaison to the Senior Partners and moving against her without evidence could end in a long, bloody fight. Angel concedes the point and Gunn suggests limiting her access and keeping a close eye on her.

Sweeney: Gunn has a great line about rational thought being an acquired taste. Made me extra giggle coming from this show.

Lor: Harmony enters with the news that she was an answer to a crossword puzzle clue. Just kidding! The news is that someone broke out of the psychiatric hospital, except she says it in a weird, Harmony way, and Angel quickly dismisses her without really listening. We get to the point though: the girl is possessed. Wesley wants to put together a team, but Angel doesn’t want to storm in without more details. He calls this a “finesse job.”

Cut to Angel and Spike both getting out of elevators at the hospital. Spike makes a joke about Angel being there to check himself in and they pede-snip at each other about who is there to save the day. Dr. Words with Friends sees them and asks what they want. Spike starts to talk, but Angel steps up and hands over his Wolfram & Hart card. Remember when his cards had questionable looking angels on them?

Sweeney: I MISS THOSE DAYS. Memories.

K: Light the corners of my miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind. I particularly miss the “is that a lobster?” questions that the cards raised.

Lor: The doctor says he’s already given a statement, but Angel tells him to go over it again, and Spike adds a menacing line at the end. We cut to Dr. Words with Friends sharing pictures TheresaDana drew. Her family was murdered when she was 10 and whoever did it took her and tortured her. They found her months later, barely alive, and she’s been basically catatonic since then. (K: Legit, girl. Legit.) A few months ago she became more and more agitated and prone to outbursts of inhuman strength. Spike’s all, “YEP. Demon,” and the doctor is, of course, disbelieving. Angel tries to get him to shut up, but Spike says he’s going to go take care of the demon, instead of sitting around talking to the doctor. He takes off and Angel apologizes to the doctor.

It should be. There should be treatment.

Sweeney: Millions are affected, the world over. Together, we can find a cure.

Lor: Dr. Words With Friends suggests Angel stop Spike from going after TheresaDana, so he doesn’t end up dead. Angel sighs that he’ll just come back anyway. Funny. (K: I definitely giggled.) The doctor leaves but lucky for Angel, Crossword Nurse is there to tell him that the doctor videotaped all of his sessions with TheresaDana.

Grocery Store. TheresaDana is eating aisle five. An employee tries to stop her and she breaks his arm and moves on to the clothing aisle. Maybe this is a Walmart. Theresa Dana grabs a pair of jeans and a gray shirt that causes her to go into a flashback. Store security comes over with a gun and I don’t think it’s going to work.

Sweeney: Store security with a gun? Really?

K: Is that any harder to believe than a girl with blood on her face wearing a hospital gown and carrying a bone saw having sufficient time to eat several packets of cereal(??) before anyone spotted her?! Basically, this show is deliberately trying to confuse us. 

Lor:  Guys, crazy things happen at Walmart.

We cut to TheresaDana wearing all of her five-finger-discounted clothes out of the store, and apparently it was steal three, get one rock soundtrack for free!

Angel is watching the videos of TheresaDana with Crossword Nurse. Turns out she wasn’t as catatonic as Dr. Words with Friends wanted to let Angel believe. Angel figures out that Crossword Nurse was the one who called them, and she babbles about maybe landing a Wolfram & Hart job, but Angel is busy noticing something on the tape. TheresaDana is growling in another language Angel recognizes as Romanian. He knows what she’s saying, but he doesn’t tell us yet. Rude.

K: Remember the good old days when they’d randomly add Angel speaking various other languages to the plot and we were all “Does he sit at home with Rosetta Stone CDs at night?”. HELLO, RANDOM KNOWLEDGE OF ROMANIAN is what I’m saying.

Lor: Murder Walmart. Spike is on the scene sniffing the evidence.

Angel is TV driving (you know. Moving the steering wheel way too much) as he calls Wesley and orders an assault team. Wesley asks if that’s wise, considering the whole demonic possession thing, but Angel tells him that isn’t what’s happening.  (S: Though he STILL doesn’t tell us. I mean, the episode description gave it away, but don’t think I don’t notice you trying to keep secrets from us, pal.) We see TheresaDana walking through some sort of abandoned warehouse and we cut back to Angel explaining to Wesley that there were hundreds of pictures of demons in Dana’s room, some with a little girl in them, but they were all different.

In the warehouse, Spike comes out of the shadows and confronts TheresaDana. He swaggers out and says he wants to have a chat about mistreating little girls, demon to demon. Finally, Angel tells us the real deal: TheresaDana was yelling about being chosen. She isn’t a demon; she’s a vampire slayer.

 

SHE’S A VAMPIRE SLAYER. Considering everything we learned about their origin back in S7 of Buffy, it’s not insignificant that Spike looks at her, and says they are going to have a demon to demon showdown. It isn’t what he thinks it means, but perhaps it isn’t entirely incorrect.

Sweeney: SO GOOD. A+ point.

K: But seriously. Can we talk about how much I love the fact that they included a Slayer in season 5? There’s not a whole lot I love about this show. But this little piece of continuity is fabulous. Especially given that Buffy’s “every Potential is now a Slayer” spell had worldwide ramifications. It would have been weird to just NOT have them come across a Slayer in such a huge and demon-ridden city.

Lor:  I’m only surprised they haven’t come across more.

After a Not Break, TheresaDana and Spike start fighting. He has the upper hand first, tossing her across the room into a bunch of boxes. Her fall fashions a nice stake out of one of those boxes though, and she gets close to staking Spike before he’s able to get her away. Finally, TheresaDana throws him out of the window. It’s a long drop. Angel pulls up a few seconds after Spike hits the ground, and they bicker a bit more about how Spike should’ve stayed out of it, or at least waited. Spike thinks he has it figured out, though, since TheresaDana growled at him in Chinese: it’s a Chinese demon. Angel just sighs really close to his face (seriously, why are they standing so close?) (K: Because shippers) and walks away.

K: There’s also a nice throwback in here – when TheresaDana growls at Spike in Chinese, his response is “Sorry love, I don’t speak Chinese” which we learned in Fool for Love is exactly what he said to the Boxer Rebellion era Slayer before he killed her.

Lor: Wolfram & Hart. Spike is trying to wrap his head around a psychotic vampire slayer, though Angel wants to yap at him some more about how he should’ve waited. Angel wants him off the case. They called Rupert Giles (!!!) (S: !!!) (K: !!!!!!! I totally Kermit flailed) and he’s sending his best man out to retrieve the crazy slayer because probably Anthony Stewart Head said no? Sad faces.

But soon, happy faces! Because it turns out his “best man” is ANDREW.

LOOK AT THIS SHOW TRYING TO WIN MY FAVOR WITH CROSSOVER MAGIC.

Sweeney: Precious, Andrew. Simply precious.

K: And yes, Traumateers, it totally counts as crossover magic even though the other show in question finished like nine months earlier. DON’T CARE LALALALALALA CROSSOVER MAGIC!!!!!! (Andrew’s hair, however, is NOT precious.)

Lor: Andrew gathers himself and explains that he helped Spike save the world. (S: Bit of a pre-Storyteller regression, though, when he says it was mostly him and Spike and Buffy just helped. Also, I can’t hear a line like that without thinking of Kristy it-was-my-idea-but-we-all-helped Thomas.) Angel wants to get back down to business and Andrew volunteers to share with everyone in the room the Slayer mythology. In a callback to that most wonderful episode, Storyteller, Andrew starts to tell the story of the slayer of the vampyrs, the one we all know about a girl being raped by the essence of a demon, about the short-lived lives of Slayers, about the constant calling in each generation.

 

Angel thanks him for the exposition, even though they knew all of this already. (Sweeney: Aaah, but the Angel-only audience didn’t. Fun.) Andrew adds the final piece of the story, though: there are hundreds of Potentials in every generation as well, and in the final battle in Sunnydale, they were all made Slayers. It’s also a piece of information I expected Angel and crew to have, but exposition doesn’t care; it will be heard. Since then, Giles and a chosen few have been finding New Slayers and training them. Andrew takes out his lunch bag, which has “Andrew WC” under the Union Jack.

So, we come full circle to TheresaDana, the mentally unstable, once Potential, now Slayer, head full of Slayer dreams of demons and battles she’s never fought. Spike guesses that when Dana was talking to him in Chinese, it was because she thought she was the Slayer he “took out” in the Boxer Rebellion. Angel is all, “you mean murdered?” Spike didn’t have a soul back then, and Angel neener neeners that a soul isn’t making much of a difference for him anyway. Spike once again says he’s tired of the corporate talkey talk, so he’s going out to go handle the problem.

Sweeney: Thanks for that senseless bratting, Angel! Because your stupid, unproductive bickering really helps the plot along so much!

K: The continued bickering between these two is hands down my least favourite part of the show. 

Lor: Angel follows after Spike and tries to get him to realize the danger of TheresaDana, who is mentally unstable and built to kill creatures like them. Spike has no fucks to give and tells Angel to quit trying to pay for the shit he did in the past.

Andrew watches all of this while sucking on a juice box.

TheresaDana has more flashbacks and a Good Samaritan tries to help her but she just looks at him with murder eyes.

Wolfram & Hart. Angel is getting frustrated and thinks maybe they should just follow Spike’s example and get out there and find the girl. Fred asks what then, because they can’t kill her. They have a lot of area to cover to look for her, but Lorne suggests going back to the place where it all started for her: her childhood home. Angel tells them to involve Andrew, but as it turns out, he’s gone.

Because of course, he followed after Spike. He wanted to be out in the action, claiming that he’s being trained and is now faster and 82% more manly than before. So, of course, he trips and falls over the dead body of the Good Samaritan and screams a high pitched scream.

Sweeney: Sort of inevitable that he’d mostly be comic fodder in this little appearance. It’s glorious all the same.

Lor: Angel, Lorne, and one of his friends are being shown around the luckily empty childhood home of TheresaDana by a realtor, who quickly picks up on the weirdness happening, and sees herself out. Lorne’s psychic friend walks around the house, sensing the pain of the past, and we get flashback cuts of a man in boots walking around. Dana hides under a bed, but he finds her, and she screams. Angel asks the psychic where the man took Dana. A basement, of course, because those things are evil.

K: I continue to be glad that I live in a country that doesn’t do the whole basement thing. 

Lor: TheresaDana has returned to said basement. She recognizes the chains. She sees a familiar vent, and removes the grill. Inside are the tools once used to torture her and a box full of needles and syringes. Dana flashes back. She’s tied up and this time, we hear Spike’s voice. He is her torturer.

Andrew and Spike walk together as he fills him in on where some of the gang are. Xander is in Africa and Kennedy and Willow are in Brazil.

Sweeney: Boo. Can’t you just let me pretend they’re all just hanging out watching movies and braiding Willow’s hair for the rest of forever? (I kid. It’s actually really cool that they all went out and actually got to see the world and stuff after spending their coming-of-age-years defending it with their lives.)

K: I’m thrilled about the Scooby Gang update. If we can’t get them in person, Andrew and a “where are they now?” update is the next best thing. (But seriously, why the hell did Willow and Kennedy still have to be together? UGH.)

Lor: Spike isn’t listening because he’s sniffing for clues. Andrew asks what blood smells like and Spike says it’s metallic. It smells like a penny tastes, so Andrew finds a penny and tastes it.

Spike fishes lightly for some information on Buffy and learns that she’s in Rome. Dawn is in school there. Andrew realizes that Buffy doesn’t know Spike’s alive. He asks why Spike hasn’t told her yet, and Spike role plays a, “hey Buffy, this is Spike, I’m not dead, how are things,” phone call. Andrew offers to fill B in himself, but doesn’t take him up on the offer. He’ll handle it himself.

Dana watches them from a rooftop.

Wolfram & Hart. Angel puts Gunn on the task of finding out who killed Dana’s family and Lorne on the task of finding out what basement that smells like molasses he took Dana to.

Andrew is still talking but Spike stops him, as he’s picked up the smell of blood. Different smelling blood. Stronger smelling blood. “Like nickels?” Andrew asks.

Spike follows his nose into a dead end, where TheresaDana has spread her blood around the walls. (K: Y’all should be glad I’m not the recapper for this episode because there would have been a multitude of Admiral Akbar gifs in here.) She appears and punches Andrew in the face and starts fighting with Spike. Andrew gets up and tries to shoot her with a tranq gun but he misses, and she knocks him out. She takes off running, and Spike follows her straight to the Childhood Trauma Basement.

Sweeney: Note: this one will not be included in any of the Snark HQ or Traumaland plans.

K: Thank God for that.

Lor: Amen.

TheresaDana is waiting for Spike. He tells her there is no getting out. Dana starts to tell him bits and pieces of things. “Doesn’t hurt if you hold still,” and then, “heart and head.” Spike calls her a sack of hammers, because that’s the best way to deal with someone clearly having some kind of break. They circle each other and she says, “Heart…and head. Stab the heart, cut off the head. Only way to be sure.” That Spike recognizes as Slayer talk, and he tries to explain about the Slayer visions, and ends up calling her crazy again. (Sweeney: Also the moment at which I realized why she sawed off the head of that orderly in the teaser.) (K: Meanwhile, I’m having a moment of “Because slut shaming in the last episode wasn’t bad enough, let’s have Spike making jokes about mental health problems!” I hate the writers of this show so much.) Dana steps back a bit away from him as she says, “Please don’t. I have to get home to my son… to my Robin.” That Spike recognizes as Nikki talk, and starts to say that he killed her, which earns him a hard look from Dana. She calls him William the Bloody.

Spike gets closer and closer, allowing her to finally kick him and plunge a needle into his neck. He punches her off of him, but when he stands, it’s clear the drugs are already affecting him. (K: Which raises messy questions about vampire blood flow again. YAY.) Dana hits him until he falls to the ground again. She pulls off his stolen duster and drags him across the room. She flashes to the past, Spike carrying her in his arms into the basement. Dana drops Spike near some pipes and flashes back to Spike tying her to those same pipes. In the present, Dana chains Spike up and fetches the box full of syringes. She injects him again and we watch as he passes out.

Wolfram & Hart. They are still trying to figure out where molasses and basement leads them. Fred figures out whiskey one second before Andrew runs in to tell them about the attack.

Sweeney: Good for you, though, Fred!

Lor: Spike wakes to Dana’s voice saying, “piece by piece.” Spike asks what she’s done and Dana, still holding her bone saw, tells him he’s losing his pieces. Spike lifts his arms to reveal that they’ve been sawed off at mid forearm. The effect is a bit cartoonish which takes away from the moment, but still: blergh.

K: I’m a bad person because I laughed and laughed and laughed. Welcome back, Terrible Special Effects Team. I also had a random “Man, chopping off his hands would have fixed so many problems for Buffy” thought process.

Lor: That thought makes me super uncomfortable.

After a break, Spike is falling back into unconsciousness but Dana slaps him awake, tearfully telling him that he’ll never be able to touch her again. Spike says he never touched her in the first place. The visions are getting mixed up in her head. Dana flashes back to Spike carrying her into the basement, but it changes. Spike fades out and another man is in his place. This happens again as we watch Spike chain her up, but suddenly, it’s her real captor. In the present, Spike tells her that the memories of the Slayers are mixing in her head. She speaks to him in Chinese and then says that Spike killed her, the Chinese Slayer. Yes, Spike admits. “That and worse.” Dana regards him for a moment, but then decides that it doesn’t matter. She hits him repeatedly across the face and then raises the bone saw dramatically, allowing Angel enough time to appear and throw her across the room.

Angel tries to explain to Dana that he’s there to help. Her real captor was killed five years ago and can’t hurt her anymore. Dana seems to understand this, but then also understands that she’s strong now. She’s a Slayer. With that, she attacks Angel and they hit and toss each other around for a while before Angel manages to grab Dana in a headlock. “Now!” he shouts and Wesley, at the front of a tactical team, shoots her full of tranquilizer darts. She goes down. That over, Angel looks around the room and spots Spike’s arms on a work bench. He yells for a medical team.

Docks. Fred is walking alongside Spike, calling instructions to Wolfram & Hart for the reattachment surgery. Angel and Wesley are escorting Dana’s gurney out when they are stopped by Andrew, saying he’ll take it from there, since Dana’s a Slayer and thus one of theirs. Angel’s all, “pfft,” about that so Andrew brings out his back-up in the form of a dozen Slayers. There’s a stand-off in which Andrew says Angel has no choice since he’s got 12 Slayers and none of them have dated him. Angel says he’ll talk to Buffy about it, but Buffy is the one who gave Andrew his orders. “News flash—nobody in our camp trusts you anymore. Nobody. You work for Wolfram & Hart. Don’t fool yourself. We’re not on the same side.” (S: Buuurn.) Angel watches as Andrew rolls Dana away and tells Wesley that they do indeed have their own problems to worry about.

K: I loved everything about this scene. Andrew proving that he really IS Giles’ best resource and taking charge was fabulous. The knowledge that there are a dozen Slayers secretly doing their thing in Los Angeles is magical (I’m just head-canoning that they’re all LA based seeing as how they all look to be in their mid-teens). The “and not one of them has ever dated you” was equal parts burn and hilarious. None of the Sunnydale alum trusting Angel was a REALLY interesting (although perhaps unsurprising) turn. And that little moment of “Oh, you want to go over my head to Buffy? GUESS WHERE MY ORDERS CAME FROM” was the twist of the metaphorical knife, because that “nobody” Andrew was talking about? Yeah, that includes the love of Angel’s life. Bless you, Crossover Magic. Once again, you delivered brilliantly.

Lor: Cut to a hospital room. Spike is sitting up in bed, arms reattached. Angel has come to visit him and asks if he’s in a lot of pain. Spike says it’s more than he’d like but just what he deserves. Angel didn’t say that, and Spike agrees that he’s saying it. I’m going to quote the next little bit because it’s good insight to these two characters:

Spike: The lass thought I killed her family. And I’m supposed to what, complain ’cause hers wasn’t one of the hundreds of families I did kill? I’m not sayin’ you’re right… ’cause, uh, I’m physically incapable of saying that. But, uh, for a demon… I never did think that much about the nature of evil. No. Just threw myself in. Thought it was a party. I liked the rush. I liked the crunch. Never did look back at the victims.
Angel: I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I was only in it for the evil. It was everything to me. It was art. The destruction of a human being. I would’ve considered Dana a masterpiece.

Part of the reason why I don’t have a definitive stance on how guilty these guys should feel about their past is because we don’t have a definitive answer about what a vampire is, as far as the demon/human combination. As we’ve pointed out, the soul has never been truly or clearly defined. To me, even if inserting a soul means getting rid of the demon that was never truly a part of them anyway (not really my interpretation) there is still a trail of victims. It isn’t as easy as saying, “I didn’t do that!” when you still have the memories of doing it and the body that did it.

Sweeney: Again: the soul stuff is super unclearly defined in universe so it’s hard to really “argue” when everyone has to do a fair bit of headcanon heavy lifting. That aside, I’m definitely with you on the basic point that if they have all these memories of the terrible things, I’m not sure how you can just brush it off as irrelevant.

K: The soul thing has actually become even murkier this season because we’ve seen Angel killing humans because he didn’t agree with their actions as employees/clients of Wolfram & Hart… Also, I feel the need to go ahead and call Angelus/art NOTP. Because of reasons. 

Lor: There are two different types of guilt coming from these two different man-pires, because they were two different kinds of evil. And we then see that reflected in the kind of heroes they are: Spike, jumping at the chance to act for the thrill and the rush and the crunch; Angel sitting back and approaching each act with his full attention.

Wait I’m not done with the episode: Angel tells Spike about Andrew double crossing them, and Spike’s a little impressed. He also thinks Dana is beyond help, but Angel says she’s just an innocent victim. “So were we… once upon a time,” Spike says. “Once upon a time,” Angel repeats and we cut to black.

 

HOW ABOUT THAT, FRIENDS? There was much to be appreciated here, even if on the whole, it wasn’t without problems here and there. In the beginning, Angel was about a darker side of the universe we were introduced to in Buffy. We started there with the high school as hell analogy and we started Angel with a look at growing up as hell. I was reminded of that here because of the way we examine a darker side of the Potentials turned Slayer plot line. I mean, it was such a powerful, positive thing in season 7, so here to be all, “BUT JOKES. Universal power isn’t perfect” is just like Angel. Or Angel that was. Or the potential that Angel had.

Sweeney: There are little glimmers of that potential scattered among the rubble. This episode was that. 1430 for that whole assessment of how fitting this was as a way for Angel to draw from Buffy.

Lor: Why thank you.

This is the kind of look at Spike that would’ve made more sense in his introduction on Angel. We regressed before getting to this point and in fact, it often reminded me of Spike’s encounter with Robin Wood, only with a very different outcome.

I love crossover magic episodes, but they bring with them their own kinds of problems. These are both the same and two different universes. When you bring them together, I can’t help but think about how much this should’ve already been discussed and how little sense it makes for the things that happened in Sunnydale, and the big, huge consequence of having so many more Slayers to only just be reaching LA. But that’s the fault of TV, I know.

It was nice to see Andrew, but it was a fluffy cameo. When I think of the last few moments with Andrew in Chosen, my heart clenches, but here, he was used as mostly comic relief with no room in the short episode to show or discuss how Andrew should’ve or could’ve changed.

Sweeney: Even taking him back a few steps! I get it, but it’s still a bummer and one that doesn’t feel necessary either. It was tricky when the two shows were both on, but at this point, there’s no reason not to take characters in as they ought to be at this point.

Lor: Finally, I don’t buy Buffy not trusting Angel at all forever and ever because he works for Wolfram & Hart. This is all based on my personal interpretation of of their relationship, but I figure she’d give him the benefit of the doubt. Or like maybe a phone call.

K: Part of me wonders if Buffy even knew that Andrew was going to LA or if it was a Giles-filtering-information-to-her-as-necessary situation. Regardless of whether or not she trusts him, Andrew saying what he said is still that little extra stab to the gut to make Angel really feel that they made the wrong decision in taking over W&H. I’m totally on Team Reading Too Much Into Things in this episode because it’s the first Sunnydale contact we’ve had (besides Spike who doesn’t really count) since BtVS ended. So I automatically went into fangirl flail mode. Basically? This was the first episode I’ve actually enjoyed since Orpheus, and it’s definitely the best episode of the season so far for me. 

 

Next time: COR-FREAKING-DELIA in Angel S05 E12 – You’re Welcome.