Gah! there was no tape in my VCR! Can someone post or point me to a recap of the episode?
Gaspode, I agree with lots of your points. Actually, when Gunn said “It’s not just me in here,” I knew right away the black cat would be replaced by himself, and my immediate thought was that it would be him dressed in his debut outfit. Wes shooting the guy in the knee was perfectly in character with the New Wes, who kidnapped Conor (who?) to save Angel, who shot his own father without hesitating when he threatened Fred… just think back to how immediately, with no remorse whatsoever, he acted to save her. Think about all of his regrets about Faith, and how much he’s grown–right up to Angel’s “Indiana Jones” fantasy a few seasons back. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. His follow-up, “please send me anyone else who isn’t working Miss Burkle’s case” was perfect. Way to make an example.
I also think Gunn absolutely got what he deserved - if he had lost his lawyer powers, communicated to his pals what was going on, they might have helped him. But, as Joss loves to remind us, when you don’t tell your friends what’s wrong, you end up hurting them. Number one theme of every Buffy episode.
I think it’s pretty clear that the cavemen win.
Oh, and a quick continuity check: do we actually know if Angel and Spike were ever in St. Petersburg together? Do we know when? And did it, perchance, overlap with Anya causing the ruckus there?
This was the first episode of Angel I’d seen in a while, and I gotta say, it was a pretty damn good one. Still, I’m another one of those people who just would like to see ONE romance end up not turning into a big festering ball of crap. I did like the opening transition from “Don’t worry, I’ll study hard and be dull” to Fred screaming and holding the flame thrower.
Lots of good emotion, and I liked watching Lorne get angry and violent. And what a friggin’ fall by Fred on the stairs! Little things like that tend to impress me as well.
The one big thing I fear…sure, it’s sad to see Fred go, but I want them to get rid of her, not just “cure” her. I mean, from the way they described it, her innards were liquifying and she was becoming a solid husk…expelling the demon would kill her instantly, but writers tend to forget things like this.
Like I said, it’s been a while since I’ve seen an episode, so could someone explain to me how Cordelia died? There was a preview a while back where she shows up again and Spike attacks her. Was that really Cordy, or someone else?
One neat point to me (that was quite probably unintended, so I’m likely reading more into this than was meant):
Spike was arguing that the cavemen, using brute force, would win. However, he and Angel, when faced with a large number of rather brutish foes, easily dispatched them using teamwork and tactics – ideas that would be foreign to the average caveman.
In other words, I think that makes the point: The astronauts would win.
I liked the mention of the West End, because that’s where Joss is right now. He’s seeing Alyson Hannigan in When Harry Met Sally and Anthony Stewart Head in Pirates of Penzance.
[happy bouncy dance] Lorne beat up Eve! Lorne beat up Eve!! [/dance]
Okay, I’m fine now.
I absolutely loved all the Angel and Spike interaction–especially the fear of flying. Oh, and that definitely was some sort of wire stretched between them, I heard it unwind, I think, and I’m pretty sure I saw something shiny. And then there was the part where the swordsmen ended up in pieces, that’s the clincher. 
I also expected the guy in the white room to be the old Gunn. I was almost disappointed when I saw suity-tie Gunn. And here’s the interesting question–if he did kill Knox (which it really looked like he did), did he do it because what was happening to Fred was Knox’s fault, or because Knox knew that Gunn had made it all possible?
And to add to what Supernova said in the spoiler …
I read a minor spoiler that Wesley would ask an old Sunnydale friend for help next week … which means either Willow or Giles. From what was said above, I guess it must be Willow!
Blue-haired Fred in the previews certainly did look fantastic, but my vote for Sexiest Evil Alter Ego has to go to Angelus … he always wears leather pants.
Lastly, most astronauts start out as military, don’t they? Doesn’t the military teach you how to kick large amounts of ass? I think the caveman would go down, man.
Okay. If they teleport the sarcophagus back, it will pull the demon to it. It will infect everyone in it’s path between LA and somewhere in England where they are. But the whole goes all the way through the Earth to “probably in New Zealand”. What if they go to the other end of the hole and teleport the sarcohpagus there? There ain’t much but water between LA and New Zealand.
Gunn’s explanation of his Gilbert & Sullivan knowledge is that “it really helps me sing along with Giles”–no, wait, hang it. It’s that “it really helps with the elocution” (paraphrased). Is there a particular theme in The Mikado (or in Gilbert and Sullivan plays in general) that might also be a big wink to the audience? I’ve only seen Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado (and I don’t remember the latter very well), but didn’t both plays have a lot to do with people pretending to be something they were not?
Also, did anyone think that Fred with the flamethrower in a nest of demon eggs was eerily similar to a scene from Aliens? Does this say anything about Fred or does it just tell us about Joss?
And my final thought: did anyone else notice that Fred called her stuffed rabbit “The Lord of Chaos”? Is there any chance that this is not just a cute nickname for a physicist’s stuffed animal, but also the title of some greater demon, perhaps the one that killed Elleria (Deleria?) the first time? Am I hallucinating?
It was “astral-projection Cordy” that showed up to put Angel and Co. back on the right track. The episode ended with Cordy saying goodbye to Angel, running back to kiss him…then the phone rings. She says he has to answer it, and when he turns his back on her, she vanishes. The phone call is from the hospital, telling him she just died without regaining consciousness.
The cavemen would so win. No doubts, just attack. The astronauts would overthink things too much.
“Like 007, but without the poncy tuxedo.” 
(This may be my new sig line!)
I took those 2 things as maybe showing them giving in to their dark sides, as the result of working at “Hell, Incorpoated,” since that’s been one of their concerns since they took it over.
I was cracking up at Wes’s “you’ve been screaming at each other for 40 minutes,” to Spike and Angel, only to find out it was over whether astronauts or cavemen would win a fight!
I hope we see The Guardian again.
I liked Fred well enough, but didn’t expect to feel as emotional as I did. I lost it when Wes told her she was a hero. I like the blue hair and blue eyes, tho! Poor Wes. I liked him better with Lilah, but I was hoping he’d be the exception to the “no happy relationship” rule. It’d be better if it was with me, of course, but I guess I can’t have everything!
One of my favorite parts of the episode was when Spike snaps at him and starts with the mundane question because he doesn’t care about the quirks.
TV Tome Usually has a pretty good recap.
Actually…
According to the Recap, the guardian is named Drogyn. A quick Googling finds nada, except a bunch of threads asking, “Who’s Drogyn?”
One thing I forgot to mentioned…
Loved the part where Angel offers Spike all the resources he wants to go around the world and fight good. (You mean I’d be like 007?)
My words when seeing that, “I smell a Spike spinoff…”
The thing with Wes shooting his (faux) dad and the lawyer is part of a continuity error, which bugs me. It fits very well with bad ass Wes from last season. But there were a lot of things leading up to bad ass Wes, the most pivotal being Connor.
It also bugs me when there are references to him and Lilah. Bookish Wes would never go for Lilah Morgan, dressed up as a Texan schoolgirl. Wes living in a dark hole would. But in acknowledging the relationship after the memory wipe, the continuity falls apart.
And I’m still waiting for that memory spell to backfire.
Evidently, the corporate jet has vamp-proof windows too.
Ok, first, I’m totally unspoiled. If this is the last season of ME TV we’re getting, I decided I don’t want to be spoiled.
Second, I really hope Fred’s dead. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Fred, no, I LURVE her. (thanks, Woody Allen). But this all is looking a little TOO much like EvilWillow and EvilCordy to me. (I wonder if Angel is supposed to see the paralells between Fred’s transformation and Cordy’s? I wonder if the others will remember it? Apparently they remember Gunn and Fred’s relationship, and Wes’s estrangement from the group last year. I wonder if Joss is making a point of history repeating itself?) Anyway, I hated what they did to Willow’s and Cordy’s characters…prior to their transformation to ‘Big Bads’ I really liked the characters, but afterwards, they were never the same in my mind. I don’t want the same thing to happen to Fred…so I hope Fred’s dead. I hope that’s why Joss made it pretty clear that Fred died in Wes’s arms, and then something else took over the shell that was her body.
That said, what a great, yet horribly sad episode. Since I knew Joss was writing, I should’ve known they wouldn’t save her, but way up until the last 3 minutes, I was holding out hope. There were so many lines that made me cry like a little girl…(loosely paraphrased):
“You have to tell my parents I wasn’t afraid.”
“Would you have loved me?”
“I loved you since I knew you…no that’s not true, it was before that.”
“I walk with heros”
“You are a hero.”
Man, Joss can write dialogue.
I also want to say that I really hope Gunn didn’t kill Knox, because I CAN’T WAIT to see what Wes will do to him. As an aside, I’m losing a lot of respect for Gunn. Talk about corruption…and it’s all for selfish reasons. Maybe history will repeat itself, and Wes, (instead of betraying by kidnapping Connor) will kill Gunn too? Wild, wild speculation there, but I wouldn’t want to be on Wes’s bad side this season.
The Spike/Angel moments were great. In fact, in the middle of the tears, Spike made me burst out in laughter when he said the line that went something like:
“Are you serious? And what’s your favorite color? And what’s your favorite song? And how does that make you feel? You wanna try to kill me, well come on!”
That was priceless. And the “there’s a hole in the world…seems like something we should’ve known.”
What a great episode. I loved Fred. When I used to watch “Fredless” from S3, I cried when she decided to come back to the FG. Now I’ll cry for an entirely different reason.
Can’t wait to see where they go from here.
My wife turned to me at that moment and said, “Why do guys have these arguments?” And I had no answer at all. One wonders whether it was an actual argument in the ME offices that Joss borrowed for the show.
It was.
I’ve been spending the past two days trying to figure out who sided with the cavemen and who supported the astronauts.
Also, I’ve been wondering if the writers spend most of their time very, very stoned…
Anyone else disappointed that Spike didn’t ask the astronaut/cavemen question to this guy? Or, “What’s the ground speed of an unladen swallow?”
I was thinking on this today, and I think I found a deep truth.
Clearly the astronauts win, because one assumes the caveman is just any old caveman, while an astronaut is the very smartest of the smart, and meticulously trained, physically and mentally.
Yes, but the cavemen would fight dirty.