Previously: A small child was possessed by a demon but turned out to be a total fruitcake who flipped when his sister got more marshmallows in her hot chocolate and tried to light her on fire. Seriously.
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The Prodigal
Kirsti: We open on a sunny morning with a girl in a historically inaccurate costume pouring water from a well into a jug. It’s 1753, and we’re in Galway. Oh, sorry. Galway, IRELAND, because the show needs to clarify such things for stupid people who don’t know where Galway is.
Sweeney: This is an American show. Our people don’t know shit about maps or other places. They can’t even put half the US states on a map, so expecting them to identify foreign cities without clarification is just too much.
K: And yet someone decided America should be in charge of the world. Go figure… Angel, sporting the World’s Worst Accent and some truly terrible hair, appears in a doorway and begs the servant girl (who’s wearing a cray-cray fancy dress for a servant girl) to come closer. She asks why he stick to the shadows, and he says that the light hurts his eyes. “And I know the reason why!” comes a voice from behind him. It’s Angel’s father, who’s wearing a hideous Ye Olde wig and a lacy cravat thing. He pushes Angel into the sunlight and OKAY FINE. Liam. He pushes Liam into the sunlight where he promptly doesn’t burst into flames because he’s Liam and therefore still human.
Daddy’s all “You dirty drunken man whore, stop hitting on the servants,” and when Liam says that corrupting people is fun, Daddy slaps him across the face. He’s ashamed of him and says that Liam will never amount to anything.
With that, we awkwardly cut to the present where Angel is fighting a demon in the Metro.
Lorraine: I liked the cut from Liam being punched to Angel being punched! I’m also recovering from the flu, though, so. Don’t mind me.
K: It’s a far less awkward cut than one that’s coming up later, so I’ll let you have it. Up in the train station, Kate is talking to a beat cop, who says that a homeless dude went crazy and took the train hostage but that he was yanked out of the train through a roof vent while it was still moving. She’s all “….Whut,” and tells him to get statements as she heads into the train. Back to Angel and the demon. They fight some more and suddenly the demon…has a heart attack???…and collapses just as Kate appears. “Well. I guess I can forget about reading him his rights,” she says. Roll electric cellos.
Sweeney: I’m still laughing at the idea of all these people taking the metro in LA.
K: My first thought when I saw the train was “WAIT. LA has a subway system???”. After the credits, Kate’s all “Oh God, that’s a demon.” Angel tries to reassure her, but fails miserably. Back in the station, she wonders what to put in her report, and he brings up that people have a way of seeing what they want to, otherwise known as Sunnydale Selective Memory Syndrome (L: PCP!). The witnesses go ahead and prove it by describing the guy as super duper average. Kate’s father is there, and apparently retirement is boring so he spends his time listening to the police scanner and just wanted to help out. But in a “checking up on his daughter” kind of way. Kate’s touched and Angel tries to start a normal conversation about it, but Kate’s all “Demon killing + normal conversation = head explodes cannot process.” She does a lot of talking with her eyebrows and says their relationship should be strictly professional.
Lor: I’m pretty sure Kate just dumped him, but I also don’t think they were ever dating. Impressive, Kate.
K: With that, we head back to Galway (L: Ireland.) again, where Darla is staring at Drunken!Brawling Liam with glee and asking BAR WENCH CHRISTINA HENDRICKS who he is.
Lor: Oh, crap. I didn’t even recognize her. She’s come a long way.
K: Mostly it made me sad that she doesn’t turn up in Buffy at any point, because then she could have a Whedon Hat Trick. Bar Wench Christina Hendricks says sarcastically that Liam is God’s gift and a dirty lying man whore. Liam grins at Darla and then gets knocked out with a bottle.
Sweeney: The internet has told me that this show makes Darla super awesome. It probably helps that she doesn’t have to use a stupid awful accent and her wig is kind of fantastic. Regardless, I already approve.
K: Fair. Back to the present. Angel is staring off into space while Cordy’s trying to get him to decide on a code for their shiny new security system. She thinks it should be her birthday because then they’ll never be able to forget it. Meanwhile, Wes has identified the subway demon: A Kwaini demon – always female, usually non-violent. Angel asks what would make a non-violent demon turn all hostage take-y, and Wes suggests maybe something on the train. “Or someone...” Angel says.
Seizure cut to the police station. Angel tells Kate that they need to talk.
Lor: I laugh for a solid minute when he just stands in the doorway for a bit, without announcing his presence at all. DUDE. KNOCK. CALL OUT. SOMETHING.
K: Yodel, like Buffy once recommended because LOL. Shit gets complicated when she insists he use the phrase “evil thing” in place of “demon” because it ends with him having to say that there are “non-evil evil things.”
Lor: He looks hurt when she wonders if non-evil evil things exist. Aw! They do Kate! As long as they have zero moments of true happiness.
K: She asks how he got in there during the BLAZING SUNLIGHT (shots!), and he tells her that the sewer system has a manhole in the underground carpark because CONTRIVANCE. He asks for the names of the train passengers so he can investigate, and she’s all “Yeah, no.”
Back in his car, Angel fills Wes in via mobile phone, and apparently the technology has come a long way since EPISODE 13 because Wes is in the subway tunnel but apparently has perfect reception. Sigh. Cordy and Wes set about doing some tests on the dead demon while Angel stakes out the guy who pulled the emergency brake on the train on account of he’s a delivery van driver who was on the train in the middle of his shift.
Lor: I’m super impressed by Cordy’s hacking at a dead demon. She makes me proud whenever she’s around the yicky stuff.
Sweeney: +1. They’re some of my favorite Cordelia moments.
K: She’s come a long way since Sunnydale. Angel watches the guy get a phone call with a case of suspicious face, which looks an awful lot like Poop Face. The guy drives off in his delivery van, and Angel follows him to an apartment block. Inside, Delivery Guy gives a package to Kate’s father while Angel lurks in the shadows. The music of “OMG WTF” swells and we fade to black.
Angel knocks on Trevor’s door, and Trevor’s all “Why the hell are you here?” Angel thinks he removed something from the crime scene and gave it to the delivery guy, and wants to know who he’s working for. Trevor asks if Angel has kids, and when the reply is in the negative, he’s all “WELL YOU COULDN’T UNDERSTAND HOW A FATHER FEELS.” With that, we head into a Terrible Wig Flashback. Liam is leaving home and Daddy is super pissed. He calls Liam a disappointment again, and Liam’s accent gets more and more American and OH GOD MAKE IT STOP. Anyway, Liam storms out and heads to the pub to hang out with Bar Wench Christina Hendricks. Then we get a montage of shots of Darla turning Angel, almost all of which are pulled from Becoming Part 1. We cut from Angel motorboating Darla to Kate and her father having lunch and HOLY AWKWARD CUTS, BATMAN…
Anyway, Trevor says he just wanted to catch up and have a bit of a chat and then starts grilling Kate about Angel and whether they’re dating. She pretty much chokes on her hot dog, and says “LOL, NOPE.” Trevor asks what Angel does and whether he’s good at his job. Kate gets the warm and fuzzies because her dad cares about her and the guy he thinks she’s seeing and it’s awkward for the viewer because NOPE. He’s just using her to get info on Angel.
Back in the Brooding Basement, Wesley is using Angel’s kitchen table to dissect demon parts. Ew. He concludes from his slice and dice that the demon’s adrenal gland was crazy over stimulated, because of something resembling PCP. (L: HEY! SEE!) Too bad Snyder’s dead. He’d have a field day! Also, WTF is Wes wearing??
Cordy turns up wearing a blonde wig because she was out following the delivery guy. She pulls out an enormous video camera and then proceeds to show them a series of still shots of the guy doing his job. I’m confused as to why it required a video camera… ANYWAY. Cordy says that he took the longest lunch break of ever, and Angel deduces that his lunchbreak venue – a mechanic’s – is the source of the demon PCP.
Cut to the mechanics where Trevor is warning a couple of dudes in suits that Angel might be onto them. He asks what was in the package, and says that he never agreed to taking stuff from crime scenes and grilling his daughter for information. Suit Guy pulls out an envelope, presumably filled with additional cash, and Trevor looks conflicted but takes it. He suggests that they tone back the drug dealing for a while, and leaves. Suit Guy turns to a huge ugly demon lurking in the shadows and asks what to do. The answer? Kill Angel, and kill Trevor.
Another Terrible Wig Flashback, except without the Terrible Wig. Liam’s family stand around his grave crying while the priest sermonises in the background and I CALL HISTORICAL INACCURACY because:
1. Only the aristocracy could afford to have a set of clothes exclusively to wear for mourning;
2. The body would have been laid out at home for a couple of days before the funeral, so Angel would have risen from his coffin on the kitchen table, not a grave;
3. It wasn’t really the done thing for women to attend funerals;
4. The service would have taken place in a church; and
5. I’m pretty sure only Americans watch the coffin being put into the ground because EW WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO SEE THAT.
Ahem.
Lor: It’s such a good thing you are good at history. If you weren’t around, this recap would be solely about laughing at bad wigs. Shame.
K: The benefits of having a useless undergrad degree! After the funeral, Liam’s father stands by the grave watching the gravediggers fill it in. We pan over an incredibly modern looking headstone that lets us know that Liam was 26 when he was turned. Off topic: this somehow makes the Buffy/Angel relationship even creepier for me…
That night, Darla comes to the cemetery and waits by the grave as Liam (Angelus?? At what point does this change?!) rises. His hair is hilariously awful, and all I can think of is this:
Lor: We all know how I feel about Hocus Pocus.
K: There are no words for how much I love that movie.
Darla says “Welcome to my world,” and Liam talks about how he could feel the heartbeats of all the people walking around the cemetery while he was in his coffin, and WHY IS HE PANTING FOR BREATH?? I mean, I get that he just crawled out of the ground. But VAMPIRES DON’T BREATHE, DAMMIT. An old man in an ugly hat approaches and looks in horror at the disturbed earth. He calls them grave robbers, and Liam eats him. Darla’s all proud mama, and says that he can eat anyone in the village. He says that he’ll eat them all.
Back to the present. Cordy’s setting the security system with the code 0522. If they used her birthday, I’m confused because she said earlier that Angel would have eleven and a half months to learn when her birthday is, but it’s 25 February over in Sunnydale. ARGH. My head hurts again. Angel pops his head in to say that he’s heading out to investigate the mechanics. Kate walks in, and Cordy gets cranky because apparently she sucks at setting up security systems. Kate asks Angel if they can talk, and they head into his office. She hands him the list of train passengers, and says that talking to her dad made her change her mind. She also asks that Angel keep her involved in the case, because you have to face your demons sometime. Punny, Kate.
Seizure cut to sometime later. Wes thinks protecting Kate from what her dad’s doing is going too far, and that Trevor’s made the choice to be involved with dodgy demon drugging types, so why should they throw him a bone? “Sometimes the price we end up paying for one bad choice isn’t commensurate with the offence,” Angel says and clearly he’s thinking about that one time he became a drunken man whore and let Darla turn him into a vampire. Or maybe that one time he killed his entire family. Or maybe that one time he killed a gypsy princess and got cursed forever.
Sweeney: That’s a lot of bad choices, Angel.
K: In honour of Hyperbole and a Half coming back from the dead, Angelus clearly went “You know what I should do? Make ALL the bad choices!!”. Cordy hands Angel his keys and he leaves. Cordy arms the security system and it immediately starts announcing that doors and windows are open as a couple of Kawai demons appear. Cordy and Wes fight them, rather unsuccessfully, until Angel turns up with the little vial of demon PCP and lures them away. He then throws one through his office window (guess someone’s going to spend tomorrow in the Brooding Basement while the glazier rubs his hands with glee!) and slams the other one into the desk to interrogate her.
Post-interrogation, he phones Kate and leaves a voicemail telling her to go to her dad’s place because he’s in trouble. With that, we cut to Trevor’s. He answers the door to find the two suited guys from earlier there. They say they need to talk to him about Kate. Back to Angel, who’s apparently leaving the world’s longest voicemail. (L: Yeah, I wouldn’t listen to that shit. Delete.) He tells Kate that her dad won’t understand what the people who are coming are, and that he’s on his way.
Terrible Wig Flashback: Liam’s father is boarding up the windows and hanging bunches of herbs everywhere. From behind him, Liam says that he’s just like the others – superstitious. Daddy calls him a demon and says he has to be invited in. Liam’s all “LOL, nice try. But Little Sis let me in. And I ate her.” Daddy stares at her body in horror as Liam says “She thought I’d returned to her – an angel.” Daddy attacks Liam, who fights him off easily. As his father prays, Liam vamps out and says, “You see, Father? I have made something of myself after all.” Then he gets his bite on. I tried to find a picture for you, but when you search for Angel+”The Prodigal”+father, most of the results are religious, and UGH. So I gave up.
Sweeney: ON IT:
Lor: He just ate his dad. Ew.
K: I think my favourite part is that he smooshes his dad’s nose. Like, he could have just turned his head to one side by grabbing his chin. NOPE. Full scale face smoosh. Back to Trevor’s. He asks the suited men what they want. They ask if Kate knows about him working with them. He says she knows nothing, and she’ll never have to because he’s provided for her future. He goes to the drinks cabinet and reaches towards a hidden gun. The suited men say that there’s just one more thing, and then there’s a knock at the door. Trevor goes and answers it. It’s Angel, who demands to be let in. The suited men appear behind Trevor as Angel struggles against the Uninvited Vamp Bubble and begs to be let in. Trevor tells him to leave as the suited men vamp out. They pull Trevor away from the door and drain him as Angel watches helplessly. They drop Dead!Trevor to the floor as Angel falls through the door now that the spell’s broken. He grabs a broken chair leg and stakes one. The other runs out the door just as Kate arrives.
She sees her father’s body on the floor and starts screaming and sobbing. She stares at the bite marks in horror and makes this face which looks unfortunately like jazz hands:
Angel tells her that Trevor invited them in without knowing what they were. She blames Angel because he knew, and tells him to get out. He reluctantly leaves. Back at the office, he’s arming himself to the teeth. Wes is all “Sooooooooooooo. Whatcha doin’?” Angel says they’ve moved onto Plan B. Wes wants to know what that is. Angel spins around with an axe in his hand and says, “Do I REALLY have to explain it to you, Wesley??” LOL.
Back at Trevor’s, Kate’s sitting in the corner staring at her father’s body. She sees the envelope of money lying on the floor, along with a card for the mechanics. We cut over there to see a bunch of shady men in suits standing around a desk. A gun appears in the foreground, kind of like a first person shooter game, and takes down three of them. The fourth is the vampire who killed her father. She shoots him in the shoulder, then stakes him. The giant demon appears, and she shoots until her clip is empty, but he doesn’t budge. A bunch of vampires surround her. Lucky for her, Angel and his personal arsenal arrive. Between Angel and Kate, they kill the vamps.
For some reason, Angel decides they should leave without killing the demon, because YES. Let’s leave a demon supplying everyone with PCP alive. “You’re dead!” the demon yells, as it comes after them. “I’m already dead,” Angel quips as he decapitates it with an axe. He asks Kate if she’s okay and that he knows about what happened to her father. “My father was human. And you don’t know anything about that,” she says. BURN. She walks out without another word.
Lor: Bitch. I saved your life. Sorry. I’m torn, because it’s cool that Kate is having a realistic reaction, but also STFU.
Sweeney: WORD.
K: Also, where the fuck does she think vampires come from?! Terrible Wig Flashback – Angelus sits at the table, surrounded by his dead family members. He says that he’s won because he proved who has the power. Darla says, “You think?” and Angelus is all “Uhhhh. Whut?” She follows up with “Your victory over him took but moments. But his defeat of you will last lifetimes.” Welp. Nice try, Angelus. Cut to the present and Kate standing in a cemetery. She leaves flowers on her father’s grave, and walks away as Angel lurks in the shadows. Fade to black.
Well. That was a big barrel of depressing…
Next time on Angel: You do not talk about Fight Club. Also, the super annoying lawyers are back. Find out the full story in S01 E16 – The Ring.
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.
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.
