BTW, when was it established that Angel has photographic memory.
'bout midway, trough the episode, I was thinking that VolcanoGuy was not an agent of evil. Killing everything in W&H, while not killing the good guys, in the previous ep.
I really hope next episode will be better.
—Killing everything in W&H, while not killing the good guys, in the previous ep.—
Well, there were all those innocent club-goers that got ripped to shreds, not to mention everyone that suffered because it RAINED FIRE. Clearly, it has an interest in keeping Angel Inc around and alive… but if everyone at W&H was so bad, why did the little girl save Angel etc.?
I thought the episode was pretty good overall- I think some people may be overthinking things a bit. Especially in comparison to the last 2 seasons of Buffy. While not the best of Angel, this was one of the more action based episodes.
2 things which did annoy me a bit-
why did Gunn live? I was hoping there for a bit that Gunn was dead. No such luck. . .
Why did the Big Bad go to W&H in the first place-- to go after Connor or to wipe them out (or was it to go after the “girl” in the white room all along).
Anyway, I liked the episode. 7/10.
Hopefully those chowderheads at the WB will pick a night and stick with it.
I liked it while it was on, but afterwards it left kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
The “zombies rise from the dead” business was handled pretty poorly. They mentioned two possibilities:
I thought it was really cheesy. Had they just rolled their eyes and said, “Great, now Joss is rolling on the Wandering Monster table,” it would’ve hurt my suspension of disbelief less.
And Angel’s comment at the end of the episode? What an ass.
Pepperlandgirl
The Tim put his spoiler about Angel losing his soul in a spoiler-box. I wish you’d done the same thing.
Daniel
Little bad riding hood said something about the “way being among you”? Not the mumbling, which I assumed was a spell, but the words she spoke directly to the gang. I assume that wasn’t just related to getting out of the White Room, but how to deal with the Beast. I suspect it was a reference to Conner or Angel.
Another good amusing point, Angel tell Cordy that it was too dangerous for her to come along, then calling for Fred to move it.
The little girl said (according to my closed-captioning) “The answer is among you.”
pepperlandgirl, I kind of think you should have put all of your last post in a spoiler box, for those of us who don’t read spoilers at all and prefer not to know anything about upcoming episodes or plotlines.
Anyway, I liked the episode, despite all the questions I had. But the major bummer of the night was Gavin. RIP Gavin. I’ll miss his sarcasm and the tension between him and Lilah. Hopefully I’ll get to see more of him on 24, but there’ll be a Gavin-shaped hole (albeit a small one) in Angel for me.
I too was confused as to why Gunn survived the zombies, especially with the hint he had been bitten by one of them. It seemed all the zombies disappeared once Angel and Connor showed up at the other door. I have problems with the feet of the demon costume, which are so obviously giant shoes. Couldn’t the costuming or prosthetic people of whatever done something with little stilts, so that the hooves actually looked like hooves? It’s a minor nitpick, but became distracting in the White Room.
Was the first time we saw Angel’s photographic memory the episode when Fred and Gunn kill Fred’s physics professor, when Angel reconstructs the auditorium in his head?
I kept getting an uncomfortable 9/11 vibe from the burned out mess of Wolfram & Hart, particularly in the stairwells. So now who’s going to bring about the Apocalypse?
Sorry, sometimes I forget about what’s common knowledge and what’s not. I have about 6 different sources, and I’m on several boards, and everybody knows something a little different, and I get confused. I should write it down. Sorry. (It gets especially bad because I don’t even look for AtS spoilers, but they find me anyway.)
And besides the worst episode of all time in the history of television is As You Were. Fuck you Riley Finn.
[a-hem]
Finn aside, I admit that I cannot hate “Beer Bad” simply because of Buffy’s comments on the State of Beer[sup]TM[/sup].
Habeas Corpus, on the other hand, was rather dissapointing. I told my wife at one point I kept expecting to hear the creepy music from Resident Evil (the film) to start playing.
Whatever.
Did anyone else think of “Resident Evil” (the movie, not the game) during this ep? Zombies in a work area, trapped in a room as zombies break down the door, an evil that masks itself in the guise of a little girl… all it needed was a Cube-derivated-Resident Evil-derivated matrix of lasers chopping people into geometric slices.
I’m going to miss Gavin. He was such a great foil for Lilah.
The whole Connor/Cordy thing is still stupid and no doubt she’s conceived because of it, to explain Charisma’s pregnancy. Ridickerous.
Why is Fred softening toward Wes? I’m glad to see it, but I don’t remember any reason for it.
Well, damn. Gorgon’s post wasn’t there when I wrote mine!
The worst episode in the Buffyverse is “Bad Eggs”.
This episode was a really GOOD episode of Angel. I’m surprised to see the negative sentiment. I came in here expecting to see praise about this and the last episode. I really think season four is shaping up to be Angel’s best.
I think I like the darkness and “adultness” of the show now. It is far more serious than before. What can I say? I like it.
I was going to respond to what I thought the little girl had said until Twin said she/he had closed captioning. But anyway, what I thought I had herad the little girl say was that it was a “new one among you” . I thought that might bring in a “eww” kind of story being that Cordy’s pregnancy might be written into the script and, you know, with the whole Cordy/Conner thing… Anyway, it’s kind of a moot point now that it’s been established what the little girl said.
And, just my 2 cents, I really liked the episode. You can’t have knock out’s everytime, especially when everyone has been waiting for so long for a new episode and the expectations are so high. I say, we’ve allowed Joss to take us this far, give him a chance to show his genius in his own time and his own way.
AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHh
I made a huge fuss about setting my vcr timer just right so that I wouldn’t miss this episode, only to discover I had it set to THE WRONG CHANNEL! I’m such a shmuck.
Somebody, please spoil me. What happened?
Beadalin, excuses, excuses. 
Not a great episode. Angel is acting like a spoiled teenager – you’d think 200 years would have matured him a bit. Not like he and Cordelia could get it on anyway (curse? what curse? ). Anyway, not a good look for him. Connor is ultra-unsympathetic. Gunn is acting like a jerk. Fred is acting like a jerk. Wesley is acting like a jerk, but at least in a manly, stoic antihero sort of way. (I kind of like the way he let Lila stagger away in the tunnel with nasty abdominal trauma – who says chivalry is dead?)
And the kindest thing to say about Cordelia is that she’s made some bad life choices recently.
The episode * would [\i] have been better if we could have had a scene of some badass Wolframm and Hartt spectral warriors getting their heads handed to them by the demon.
The following is probably rife with errors in detail and sequence, but should more or less fill you in.
The night of fiery rain ends. Conner and Cordy wake up in bed together. Cordy seems somewhat shocked at what transpired between them, while Conner is ready for more. Cordy tells him it was a one-time thing, and mentions that they need to focus on the demon that appeared in the same place as Conner’s birth. Conner accuses her of blaming him for the demon’s appearance and storms off.
At the hotel, Gunn, Wesley, and Fred are licking their wounds. Wes and Gunn do some alpha male posturing. Angel walks in and goes directly to his room. Cordy shows up.
At Wes’ apartment, Lila drops in. It’s evident she was very concerned about Wesley during the rain. He tells her their relationship is over, that he has chosen the side he wants to be on, that it is a black and white issue. She tells him he can never go back to the black and white way of thinking when he has been in the grey zone so long. She storms off.
At W+H, Lila and Gavin are discussing the demon and the possibility of making a deal with him, since they both want the same thing (death, destruction, Apocalypse). Conner appears and tells them he wants their help in finding out who and what he is. Lila sweet talks him while hitting a silent alarm button. Two security guards appear and Lila tells Conner they’ll be vivisecting him soon. Conner knocks out both guards with one punch and grabs Lila by the throat. She becomes much more agreeable at this point, but the power suddenly goes out. The demon has come to W+H and is slaughtering everyone.
Lila sends Gavin out to deal with the demon. Conner grabs a sword and goes to fight the demon as well. The demon finds Gavin in a supply closet looking for something. The demon snaps his neck. The demon attacks Lila and stabs her in the stomach with a claw. He may be about to kill her when he is attacked by Conner. The demon recognizes Conner and says his name, right before punching him through a support column. Debris buries Conner.
In the meantime, Lila has run away and the demon is in pursuit. Wesley shows up, claiming that his sources at W+H told him about the attack. W+H security measures have gone into effect, sealing off the building, but Lila knows of an escape. It is in the supply closet where Gavin was searching for it. Wes and Lila make it to the escape just ahead of the demon. The escape tunnel takes them down to the sewers. Wes tells Lila to leave LA. She tells him that Conner is still trapped inside. Up at the floor they just escaped from, the presumably dead Gavin’s eyes pop open.
Wes goes to the hotel and tells the gang about Conner. There’s another round of Wes. vs. Gunn bickering, as well as some snide comments from Angel to Cordy. Angel tells them they are going to go to W+H to rescue Conner, but they will avoid the demon. He tells Cordy it is too dangerous for her to go. The rest of them head to the escape tunnel, which they are able to access due to Angel’s strength. They enter W+H to see everyone slaughtered. They sometimes hear things moving around them, and Wes notices that Gavin isn’t where they left him. They are unable to find Conner, and Angel sends the rest of them off to search one stairwell while he searches the other. Angel finds Conner, and around about this time all the dead W+H employees reanimate as zombies and attack both parties. Wes, Fred, and Gunn are attacked and Gunn is bitten. The three of them run into a room with only one locked exit. Fred manages to break through the exit, but by this time the zombies have surrounded Gunn. He yells at Wes to make sure Fred is safe. Wes pulls Fred through the exit door, shuts it behind them, and blocks it off with a desk. The room they are now in also has only one exit, and there’s a mess of zombies on the other side. Gunn manages to fight off the zombies and join them. Angel and Conner burst through the other door.
They decide they won’t be able to make it out the regular exits. Angel tells them about the White Room. They fight their way to the elevator. Fred hotwires the elevator power, and Angel remembers and punches in the code for the White Room. They are sent there, only to find the demon kneeling over the Little Girl, who is lying flat on the ground. Some sort of black energy is flowing from her to the demon. She turns to the group and says something (see above posts). Angel says the demon came to W+H to get to her all along. The flow of energy stops and the demon advances on the group. The Little Girl says a spell that transfers the group back to the hotel. Cordy is thrilled to see they are all OK, until Angel lets her know that he is aware of her sleeping with Conner by telling her to take her new boyfriend and get the hell out.
I’d definitely put that one in the Top 5, along with "Doublemeat Palace, " but as far as first place…(drum roll, please), clearly that dubious honor goes to “Go Fish” in Season 2 (where the swim coach turns the swim team into dolphins).
Yeah. Cordy and Conner = creepy. This was such a bad move on the writers part.
Okay, why exactly does Lilah (and W&H) want the world to end? She’s obviously falling in love with Wes. And why would a corporation want this to happen? Usually people are motivated by greed and money. What’s the payoff for them? Do they get to rule hades or something?
I read (in USA Today, perhaps?) the other day that the WB is on the fence about whether to renew “Angel” for next year. Which means that the series may end abruptly with unresolved issues. Or perhaps the writers have anticipated a possible series’ cancellation and have written this season’s finale to be a series ender, if needed…it’ll be interesting to see.
The same article said UPN is also unsure what will happen to “Buffy” next year. Said there are four options once SMG’s contract expires: 1) She’ll sign a new contract and continue on with business as usual; 2) She’ll sign up to return part-time and other characters will be featured more prominently; 3) The series will end; or 4) the series will spin off into a new series (presumably with Dawn as the new slayer).
Interestingly, the head of WB said that should “Buffy” end this year, he has told Joss Whedon that he will not stand in the way of Angel making an appearance should the storyline dictate it.
I’m glad I’m not too weird for my liitle “aww, I kinda liked him” when Gavin got snapped. Maybe this will pave the way for the return of… um… Leslie? Was that the name of Lilah’s partner in the seasons 1 and 2? You know, the “evil hand” guy.
Ok, did some searching. I meant Lindsey. I knew it was an ‘L’ name that sounded like a girl’s name.
I hated how I just got around to liking him that last episode when he left.
JW writes every season like it’s the last (except for BtVS S6 because UPN signed for 2 years.) So even if it’s dropped suddenly, JW will be prepared for it.
I doubt very, very much that a spinoff would feature Dawn the Vampire Slayer. Mainly because nobody would watch. I suspect that at the beginning of the season, Dawn and the HS was supposed to have a bigger role, especially since Kit and Carlos were supposed to be on like 5 episodes. But the various online fan factions united in their displeasure with this, and according to a few of the sources from UPN, UPN was not impressd with the idea, and put the kibosh on that.