For a brooding bastard like Angel? He’s probably only had real happy sex the one time.
MILLER!!!
Anyone who lives in the Buffyverse AND reads Ambrose Bierce is amazing!!
Mr Vena came home from work last night with me yelling at the TV. “Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge!!”
Overall a great episode!
Exactly my point, sorry if that wasn’t clear.
I think most folks know “Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” from the Twilight Zone episode, not the original. At least I’ve never read the story, but I know the TZ version very well.
And in the fight at the begining of the dream the bottle was smashed almost immediately. I remember thinking then that this was pretty odd. And how about how quickly Angel broke the wrist restraint when the dream shaman tried to kill him? If Angel could do that, Angelus wouldn’t have had much trouble. Should have made me question things but I admit I missed the clues.
I thought the double lock made sense if the shaman was trying to kill Angel, keep the scoobies out for a while longer. Not sure why it was there in this case, unless that shaman expects to die in there with Angelus.
WOW what an amazing ending! And that evil, evil laugh…
I can’t wait for next week’s episode, 'cause Angel is good, but when he is bad, he is even better. Buffy has had a few great episodes this season, but I think that so far, Angel has been more consistently good.
Didn’t the silent episode of Buffy, “Hush”, win some fairly substantial award? (Or was it just nominated?)
Exactly. As someone who’s actually read Occurance (proof? Farquhar!), it’s pretty pathetic that they had to crib from it.
Really, really pathetic, actually. I’m amazed that anyone here thought it was a good idea. And, no, it wasn’t done particularly well, either.
Oh good, someone who is not automatically biased against Angel had the same thoughts I did…I feel validated
Well, can you be specific? What precisely was poorly done in it? How should it have been done better? Why is taking inspiration from a classic of American literature “pathetic?”
When it all came crashing down, I disliked it.
Looking back, however, I realized that it was a pretty damn good episode. Not a cheat, not a filler, not a “hey, let’s fuck with 'em this week.” A good, solid story showing exactly what happened in Angel’s mind during the spell. It all makes sense.
Judging by the teaser, they may well take the opportunity to correct one of my longstanding pet peeves – when he’s evil, don’t call him Angel.
Joss Whedon was nominated for an Emmy for outstanding writing in a dramatic series in 2000 for “Hush” but didn’t win. There was some degree of controversy in 2002 when OMWF was left off the Emmy ballot; the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences sent out a postcard to voters notifying them of the episode’s eligibility but to no avail.
Gellar was nominated for Best Actress Television Dramatic Series in the 2001 Golden Globes, but didn’t win.
The show won Emmys for makeup {I think for “Hell’s Bells”) and music in 1998. And then there was a hairstyling award somewhere in there.
I liked the episode a lot. Angelus is a bit like Krycek: when he’s on screen everything sort of lights up, but in a really evil way. Angelus’s past is what makes Angel a compelling character, and I can’t wait to see what happens once Angelus is back.
So the consensus is that it wasn’t simply “it was just a dream” but the shaman’s spell to extract Angel’s soul, right?
Okay, maybe I’m being whooshed here, but as I recall:
- Buffy. Hello, Angelus.
- Darla. No Angelus.
Am I being dim and forgetting some meaningless animal sex somewhere along there?
I have to disagree with the nay-sayers on this episode. I thought it was great. But…
Does anyone else think this episode has potentially screwed up Angel’s backstory? He got his soul back through the gypsy curse with the “perfect happiness” trigger. Now it’s been removed and presumably will be restored by the ninja preacher, but not using the gypsy curse. So doesn’t this remove the “perfect happiness” trigger? Assuming of course he gets re-ensouled at all (one never knows) and the method’s not the curse.
That would be interesting if the dark mystic can return Angel’s soul without having that “perfect happiness” trigger. Maybe only then can Angel both know true happiness and great sex! 
You know, when I saw that, I instantly thought:
“Magic Jar”
Well, it depends. If the reversal of the spell requires that the be broken, and that’s it, then putting it in a glass globe on a tippy little table is actually a good idea, considering how easily things get knocked over and broken in the Buffyverse.
I, myself, wonder exactly what kind of compensation Wesley offered the shaman to go into the cage and release the beast. Not a job with a high level of surviveability, particularly if the above theory is wrong and this guy has to do some mojo to get the soul back into Angelus…
I agree, I mean we could speculate that Angel was a whore and slept with lots of women-but got no pleasure from it.
I suppose we will have to wait until Angel porn becomes an episode on the show.
I don’t see why removing the soul would remove the curse. The curse is that if he has a moment of perfect happiness, he’ll lose his soul. That doesn’t mean that he can’t lose his soul in another manner altogether, and then have it put back, all without impacting the curse.
What would be interesting would be if Angelus has a moment of perfect happiness: would the curse get confused and give him back his soul? 
I think every moment is a moment of perfect happiness for Angelus. He’s a man who loves his work. As for how many times in the last two centuries he’s made with the happy… He and Drucilla were awfully close in season two. And who knows what )or who) else he got up to around that time. I can also see the broken, pre-Buffy Angel going in for a lot of meaningless sex. He wasn’t adverse to a little whoring back when he was human, I can see him doing the same to try and cope with the guilt and depression of being re-souled.
I’m just curious why they needed to “capture” his soul in the little glass ball at all. That wasn’t done the first time around with Buffy, and Willow was still able to restore it when the time came. I missed the first 15 min of the episode, did they explain that part at all?
The gypsy ritual needs a little glass ball that I think is used to capture the soul before sticking it back into Angelus. I’m guessing the magic jar serves the same purpose here.
There are rumors this may be the last season of Angel. (The WB probably won’t make any decisions until after February sweeps.)
If that turns out to be the case, I suspect Joss will want to “complete” the show, and give Angel his soul, humanity, and Cordelia, by the season finale.