Previously: Illyria was here to stay, and Wesley agreed to help her since she looked like Fred and all.
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Underneath
Lorraine: Angel sits at a conference room table, anxiously tapping his fingers and rearranging his paperwork.
Kirsti: I’m already distracted because he’s wearing his leather coat for the first time in aaaaaaaaaaaaages. YAY.
Lor: He calls Harmony and she tells him she’s called everyone for the meeting already. Angel yells at his phone about how he’s still sitting there alone, and Harm comes to talk to him in person. She gives us the expository rundown of where everyone is: Wesley is baby-sitting Illyria, Gunn is still in the hospital (as if Angel wouldn’t know that) and Lorne is MIA because, and this is what it all comes down to, Fred is dead.
Harmony sees herself out as Spike arrives. He’s bummed no one is there since this is his first official meeting as part of the team. He asks what their name is, hoping it isn’t the Scoobies (you can’t have that name anyway, SPIKE) and jokes that Angel’d probably want to be “Angel’s Avengers” so we can have an Avengers shot way early in this episode.
Sweeney: Angel laughs at the name to say it’s stupid but his face does this, “WAIT, I LIKE IT,” thing. It made me giggle.
Lor: DB looked better than he has in a while in this episode. Just, by the by.
Angel doesn’t want to have this meeting for two. Spike grabs the meeting notes and laments his reconnaissance assignment. He wants a cool job like saving a girl or an emerald near or around a girl. Angel, meanwhile, remembers Fred and what she said to him the first time they met. Angel thinks he should’ve never “let” Fred come here. Spike for his part, tells Angel that it was Fred’s choice. Spike’s started this episode by giving us an excuse to drink, a shout out to the Scoobies and by saying a smart thing. I don’t even know how to compute this.
Sweeney: HE’S ON A ROLL! Keep it up notfriendsomuchaspersonI’mlearningtotolerate!
K: He also came to a meeting with a briefcase full of booze. I’ve been to many MANY meetings that would have been vastly improved with a briefcase full of booze, so yes. Spike is definitely on a roll.
Lor: Angel mopes a bit more about how he has to do better at saving the world. He also doesn’t want to sit around waiting for the Senior Partners to make their move. Spike says it’d be super helpful if they had some kind of connection to the Senior Partners and that gets Angel thinking.
Cut to Lindsey’s Lair, where Eve is refusing to help Angel again. Angel wasn’t really asking. Eve mopes about being trapped inside the Lair, but Angel knows she isn’t trapped as much a she’s hiding. The moment she leaves, the Senior Partners will be able to find her.
K: Which make me wonder how the hell she hasn’t starved to death yet. I mean, sure, home delivery. But surely her using her bank cards would be a big fat red flag, and she clearly can’t leave the house to get cash out…
Lor: I’m sure evil people trying to hide from the man stock up on non-perishables.
Angel threatens to give Eve up if she doesn’t tell him what he wants to know. Almost on cue, the walls start rattling and the invisibility symbols on the wall start to fade. Eve panics and promises to tell Angel anything if he helps her. Then, THE HERO OF CANTON, THE MAN THEY CALL JAYNE busts the door down, only to find that Angel, Spike and Eve are gone.
I had no idea Adam Baldwin would make an appearance on this show.
Sweeney: Commenters mentioned it forever ago, but I had actually forgotten. JOYOUS OCCASION REGARDLESS! In the suit, though, he’s more John Casey than Jayne. In the first Firefly episode I was distracted by how he was John Casey first for me and I had all but forgotten that until I saw him in the suit and my reaction was, “HI JOHN CASEY!” and then, “Wait, wait, no, it’s Jayne!”
K: My reaction was 100% “LOL JAYNE’S WEARING A SUIT”, which was only assisted by the slightly ridiculous long pause between him walking into the room and the credits starting. But whatever.
Lor: Electric Cellos.
Sweeney: I was worried, last time, about being subjected to endless Fred in the credits. I couldn’t not mention that they updated them this time, now with several Illyria shots for Acker. Not sure this helps my emotions any.
Lor: Lorne sits at a bar as a demon bartender sings for him, not realizing that Lorne looks like he doesn’t have a single fuck to give. Lorne grumbles about how tired he is of pretending that everything is going to be all right. He started drinking the moment he found out a girl he loved was dying, and has kept on drinking hoping each time that the last drop in the glass would take him the distance. He takes a final sip and says he’s going to go back to the belly of the beast, and with a quip and a smile, keep pretending that everything is okay, keep pretending like he can help, because that is what he does.
K: I have a lot of Lorne feels. Gunn’s dealing with a lot of guilt over the getting-the-sarcophagus-through-customs thing, Lorne’s probably dealing with a similar amount of guilt for not picking up evil vibes when Knox (fucking douchebag) sang for him way back when they tested all the W&H employees for evil.
Lor: I wonder if any of that is because Knox hadn’t fully finalized his plan before he fell in love with Fred.
Wolfram & Hart. Angel, Spike and Eve power walk off the elevator. Angel sends Harmony to put the building on lock down and asks Spike to protect the girl. He’s off to speak to his lawyer. His lawyer is currently in a hospital gown, and also got his lawyering skills by making a deal with the devil, so this could be an awkward meeting.
Angel comes into the hospital room with no introduction and little ceremony, asking Gunn what to do since the Senior Partners have found Eve. Gunn broodily replies that he doesn’t know. Angel reminds him that he paid a high price for all that knowledge in his head, so he should use it. As it turns out, there is a clause in Angel’s contract that let’s him take custody over a wayward employee. Strangely convenient. Gunn promises to make a call. Before he leaves, Angel says he knows Gunn feels bad about what happened to Fred. He should feel bad, and he will feel bad for the rest of his life, because he’s a good man. He can’t hide in the hospital room and pretend like it didn’t happen. He’s got to take his chance for atonement.
Sweeney: This is one recurring thing in the show that I really do appreciate every time – Angel as, “Nah, but for real, I know about figuring out a way to keep personing through all-consuming guilt,” liaison.
K: When he got as far as “you should feel bad”, I was all “NO ANGEL STOP WHAT ARE YOU DOING OMG THIS IS TOO MUCH LIKE WHAT HAPPENED RIGHT BEFORE YOU SMOTHERED WES WITH A PILLOW”, but then he added the “you’re a good guy” at the end and I heaved a sigh of relief.
Lor: Cut to Wesley, also brooding, face half in shadow. Fred!? comes up behind him, and he says he thought he was in isolation. Fred first asks whose fault that is, and then gently asks him to tell her a joke. “Two men walk into a bar. The first man orders a scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he’d forgotten, and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor shaking and then through the floor and into the Earth. He looks back up at the first man, but he doesn’t call out to him. They’re not that close.” This is like when Melisandre tried to tell a joke on the Mockingbird episode of Game of Thrones. (S: JOKES ARE LIES!) Fred climbs in his lap and says this is only the first layer. “Want to see how deep I go?”
K: The lighting change between the two was so painful. It wasn’t just that one was brightly lit and one was dark. Wes’ dream is full of colour, where reality is almost in greyscale, like all the colour drained out of his life when Fred died. Thanks for that stab to the feels, Whedon.
Lor: Illyria is behind him. He’s been sitting for a long time. He has to explain to her that he was sleeping and having a nightmare. Illyria reminisces about back in her day when nightmares used to walk among them, fifteen miles in the snow, uphill both ways. Now, nightmares are stuck inside the minds of humans. Wesley drily notes that this world must be such a disappointment to her. It is to him as well. “Why don’t you leave,” she asks. Wesley doesn’t answer.
Angel’s office. Eve is unimpressed with their great plan of bringing her to Wolfram & Hart, where surely the Senior Partners will never find her. Angel says he’s got her under his protection now, but he can take that away with a single phone call, so she better start talking. First they want to know who she is and what she does. She’s not very forthcoming, saying only that she’s a child of the Senior Partners. Angel clarifies that she’s an Immortal. Her job is simply to watch, report what she sees, and give Angel messages if there are any. Angel wants more information, but if Eve has it, it’s locked away in her head and she doesn’t have access to it.
The funny part is that there is one person who knows a lot more: Lindsey. Eve boo-hoos about how Angel “let” the Senior Partners snatch him up (no word about how Lindsey was trying to kill the crap out of Angel, though). The Senior Partners probably took Lindsey so quickly, because they didn’t want him and Angel to share intel. And now, Eve says, he’s probably suffering greatly in some hell.
Cut to Lindsey in bed, kissing a blonde woman. They are interrupted by a happy kid. Lindsey asks his happy family what they are going to do today. Maybe his wife has really mean morning breath, she hogs all the sheets, and that kid just busted into the room at like 5am. HELL, I TELL YOU.
After a Not Break, Lindsey is leaving his house as the Jaunty Soundtrack of Suburbia plays. He picks up his newspaper exactly in time with all of his other neighbors. Maybe Lindsey has to listen to that soundtrack all day long. TOTALLY HELLISH, SAY I.
Sweeney: A+ for all of the above. Also:
Hellburbs. Lindsey is helping his Hell-Child study the layers of the Earth, up until his Hell-Wife says she needs a new bulb from the oven light out of the cellar. Lindsey is not at all happy about going in there, and flashes the camera about 37 tentative looks before he makes it through the cellar door.
K: Of course he’s not happy about going in there. It’s a Basement of Don’t Go In There. And we all know how things end in such places…
Lor: Gunn figured out where Lindsey is because of an old case the Senior Partners dealt with. Apparently, Lindsey modeled his revenge plan after this dude. Who was caught. Just go with it. The Senior Partners aren’t holding Lindsey in hell, as much as a penalty box. It’s a holding space until they figure out what to do with him. And to get there, they are going to take a self-driving car that’s conveniently in the garage, should they ever need to get to the Hellburbs to find a man the Senior Partners were probably trying to hide from them in the first place.
Sweeney: Sometimes this show really outdoes itself with its contrivance factor.
Lor: But anyway, the self-driving car gets them to the Hellburbs and Angel’s kind of pissed that the punishment for trying to kill him is a split level home with a garage.
Back at Fred’s apartment, Wes asks if the great Illyria is stuck on just this one dimension. She’s said she’s traveled all over, including a dimension that just has shrimp. ANYA FEELINGS. REPEAT, ANYA FEELINGS. ABORT, ABORT.
K: I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR ALL THE ANYA FEELS THAT REFERENCING THE SHRIMP WORLD GAVE ME. WHYYYYYYYYY.
Lor: Wesley pushes Illyria, asking why she’s even staying in their world and she snaps. She feels claustrophobic in a place and in a skin that is not her own. Wesley asks her to come with him.
Hellburbs. Spike, Angel and Gunn knock on Lindsey’s door and his Hell-Wife answers and lets them in, no problem. Lindsey finds them in the living room, and they try explaining that he once worked for an evil law firm and that also he’s in a kind of hell and they are there to help him. He think it’s all a joke. Angel grabs him by the collar, and it is then that he notices Lindsey is wearing an ugly necklace, which means it must be mystical. He rips it off of Lindsey and that breaks the spell on him. He sees Angel and assumes he’s about to get killed. Well, maybe he is, but not by Angel; it’s his Hell-Wife who reappears and starts firing an automatic weapon.
K: LOL, OKAY SHOW.
Lor: At Wolfram & Hart, Eve is still freaking out because she doesn’t think that the Senior Partners will give up looking for her. Lorne and Harmony make way too many confident statements about how safe they are and how protected Angel has her. So, of course, Jayne comes strolling in and murder-punches the security guard who tries to stop him.
K: That gif makes me bizarrely happy. Perhaps because it’s a threefold correct response to seeing someone get murder-punched.
Lor: After a Not Break, we’re back on the eerily quiet, suburban street. We cut abruptly inside where Hell-Wife is still shooting. Angel tells Spike to get Lindsey out to the car. Meanwhile, he charges at Hell-Wife, taking a number of bullets on the way. Outside, their car is missing, and the ice cream man shows up to shoot at them too. They run back inside where Angel has just taken out Hell-Wife. Hell-Child comes downstairs with a gun and resumes the shooting. They all dive behind the couch and explain to Lindsey that they need to find something call the Wrath. Lindsey is all, “NO NOT THE CELLAR!” so they figure they have to go to the cellar. Angel kicks the couch at Hell-Child, knocking him out and they all shuffle downstairs.
Wolfram & Hart. Harmony tries to take out Jayne, but she can’t even budge his head while trying to snap his neck. Lorne and Eve run to Angel’s private elevator and escape just in time. Thankfully, Jayne is a bit of a mosey-er.
Cellar of Wrath. There’s lots of torture paraphernalia as well as bloody organs on the floor. Spike picks up a heart and asks whose it is. “Mine,” Lindsey says and Spike drops it, disgusted. As if the fact that it’s Lindsey’s is what makes picking up a heart gross. Angel finds a door to a big furnace he assumes is the way out. They don’t know how to open it, plus, a huge demon with chains all over his face comes out of the shadows. Angel and Spike fight it but are no match for the Chain Face Demon.
K: And here I was assuming that the fact that there were TWO champions on hand to deal with it would prove useful. LOL NOPE.
Lor: It isn’t until Gunn puts on the Ugly Enchanted Necklace that Chain Face stops and retreats. Gunn knew all along that to break Lindsey out, someone would have to stay in his place. He’s going to do it, because atonement for helping kill Fred and all. The furnace door opens. Angel is reluctant at first, but agrees that they have to go. Angel, Spike and Lindsey jump through the furnace, which I’m assuming is like traveling by Floo powder. Soon after they are gone, Gunn forgets everything, happily calling back to Hell-Wife when she asks what he’s doing in the cellar.
Lorne and Eve are still running. They hop into one of Angel’s cars and are about to speed away when Angel, Spike and Lindsey drop out of the air, right onto the hood of the car. Eve and Lorne get out. She fawns all over Lindsey while Lorne tries to warn them about the well-dressed man on the premises, that is, until he realizes Gunn is missing. Angel and Spike shift uncomfortably. Gunn “stayed behind.” Lorne starts to say that they never leave a man behind, but he shoves his feelings down, and says he guesses that’s the way it is now.
Sweeney: The scene at the bar at the beginning was a bit overdone, but this was just right. Feels.
K: I’m on Team Lorne Needs A Hug in both of those scenes.
Lor: No time for any of that because Jayne comes crashing into the parking garage. “Damn,” Angel say. “He is well-dressed.” You haven’t even see the knitted hat his mom made him.
Angel says Eve is under his protection and Jayne reaches into his pocket menacingly, all to produce a pen. Turns out, he needs Eve to sign a contract that will transfer her liaison duties, powers and immortality to him. Angel points out that she said she’d die if the Senior Partners found her. Now, one day she will. I can’t even with this bitch. Jayne (officially named Marcus Hamilton) says he has lots of ideas. Angel gets in his face and says this is his house and only his ideas matter. Jayne, “sure, sure, sure”s him and takes off. With a nervous chuckle, Lorne declares him “not so bad.”
Wesley is apparently showing Illyria the open sky. She’s still complaining about how she was a god once and now she’s all trapped, stuck with Wesley who drinks too much whiskey and called her a Smurf. He laughs at that one again. (K: NGL, I sniggered too.) Illyria is not amused: “You don’t worship me at all, do you?” Wesley: And you really can’t leave. Illyria doesn’t know. She’s scared to leave, trapped in her current form.
Illyria complains some more about how small this world is, and how humans make it smaller by boxing themselves up. Wesley says there are other things more terrible and beautiful than walls. “If we look at them for too long they will burn right through us. Truths we couldn’t bear. Not every day.” Illyria sighs that they are so weak. Wesley agrees that they are.
Lorne is fishing bullets out of Spike’s back wounds. He says he doesn’t have Fred’s gentle touch. Sad. Angel wants to get down to business, hearing what it is that Lindsey knows about the Senior Partners and their big plan. Lindsey says that Angel already knows the world is a big cesspool. It’s the same “hell on Earth” stuff Holland Manners tried to sell him 3 years ago. Lindsey says Angel is too stupid to realize that the apocalypse, emphasis on the the, is already here. They’ve been playing for the bad guy this whole time, sitting behind their desks, learning to accept the way the world is, just like the Senior Partners wanted.
Angel looks like this is some kind of revelation to him. I… thought… we knew? I thought from the beginning it was established that the Senior Partners invited them here to keep them in the murky gray? But okay! REVELATION! The Senior Partners have been distracting Angel. Now, the final war is here, and Angel is down 2 soldiers.
Sweeney: RIGHT, THOUGH? This point was reiterated throughout the beginning of the season. Is it some sort of revelation because they stopped bringing it up ever 8 seconds?
K: Maybe it’s the THE part of apocalypse that’s a revelation?? IDEK. Because yeah, we totally established that from the start of the season.
Lor: Final cut to the Hellburbs. Gunn is repeating the same exact conversation with Hell-Child about the layers of the Earth. Hell-Wife sends him into the cellar, and we end on Gunn’s super freaked out face.
After the last two episodes, this one was a bit of a downgrade. There were plot holes, and as much as I like the dynamic set up between Wesley and Illyria, their scenes were a bit repetitive and boring to me. It was a little too much with the #deep. The whole episode built to this information that Lindsey had, and it turns out to be something super obvious, and that I swore we already knew.
And, just like that, we are down to five more episodes left.
Next time: Some stuff with the big plot hole memory wipe comes to the forefront when Connor’s new parents need help in Angel S05 E18 – Origin.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
