I dunno. I have mixed feelings about this one. Mainly because of the Andrew factor. Andrew was kind of a stark reminder of the flaws of Buffy’s last season, and his “slayer of the vampyres” riff, while perhaps somewhat in place in the post-adolescent world of “Buffy”, was cringe-worthingly out of place in the much more grown-up world of “Angel.” As Angel pointed out, “yeah, we know all that.” The response to Andrew in “Buffy” was “you’re such a dork,” but in “Angel,” the appropriate response is “grow the hell up.” Yes, Andrew grew a pair towards the end of this ep, but he still seemed too much like the kid playing with the adults. Angel pretty much voiced this sentiment just before they took Dana away.
While I realize that it’s about whether you can get the actors you want when you want, I think this would have been a good episode for a guest shot by Xander, rather than Andrew, because Xander has reasons to distrust Angel, Spike and Wesley, which Andrew, a relative newcomer, does not have. Thus, the fact that Angel and Wesley are running (to borrow Cordelia’s phrase from next week’s ep) “Hell, Incorporated” would feed into his already well-seated mistrust, and made for a much more interesting dynamic. Andrew’s asserting that Buffy doesn’t trust Angel anymore is jarring because it claims things about Buffy for which we’ve seen no evidence, i.e. that her opinion of him has turned so negative so rapidly, even after he gave her the tool that she needed to save the world, simply because he’s now running Wolfram & Hart. But if Xander made the same statement, it would be of the same level as him telling Buffy in “Becoming II” that Willow said “kick his ass,” rather than telling her that Willow was working the re-souling spell. We would never really know if it was Buffy mistrusting Angel, or Xander lying because he doesn’t trust Angel. He also would probably be more reliable about keeping his mouth shut about Spike’s resurrection, since he doesn’t want to see Buffy going down that road again.
It’s easy to play Thursday morning scriptwriter and casting director, I suppose, but that’s my 0.02.
Now, things I liked -
Lots of referbacks, not only to “Buffy”, but also to Spike’s history (“Sorry love, I don’t speak Chinese”) and even a throwaway reference to Angel Season 2 (“Tell the shaman no cadavers!”- an ironic reference given Lindsay’s re-emergence this season). The differentiation between Spike and Angel’s attitudes towards their vampire days was also a nice contrast, bringing out the differences between these two vampires with souls. (And also perhaps explaining why Angel feels the need to atone in a way that Spike does not - as Angelus, he took more pleasure in causing pain to his victims than Spike did). Dana was a scary scary and very tragic freak of the week, like Faith crossed with the First Slayer. So there were good points, too.