Angel
"Redefinition"

Airdate: January 16, 2001

Angel gets in touch with his inner ass-kicker.

So the good news is, Angel can fight again. The inevitable bad news: he's not going after the right targets. Cordelia's having visions, people are in trouble, what does he care? He's got his Dru and Darla obsession to keep him insane.

While Cordelia, Gunn and Wesley attempt to come to grips with their boss' new ex-boss-ness, Angel makes with some disturbingly Mulder-esque internal monologues. This is Angel's "Anne." Leaving Wesley, Gunn and Cordelia (despite the lack of Hilfiger) to take up the slack in the soul-saving department, Angel is off feeling sorry for himself and pretending to be someone he's not. And also training for "the war": his 'til-stake-do-us-part affaire de morte with Darla.

Man, this show is great!

We take up our narrative with the box-holding Cordy and Wes who, together with Gunn, have just been told that budgetary cutbacks and a tough economic climate mean that their positions have been downsized. (Yeah, 'cause it would have sounded nicer that way.) They later inadvertently rendezvous at the demon karaoke bar we've all come to know and dread, intent on doe-a-deer-ing their way to a life-goal. The three get drunk, sing some Queen, and realize that the true evil of the world is Tequila. (I hear ya, guys. Uh... long story.)

In a whole other part of the plot, Angel is going all Karate Kid on us, training with swords and punching bags and such (and looking, I have to say, slightly ridiculous while doing so. But still hot!). Also, he's beating on his demon snitch guy for information on his girls, and taking out a very badly-dressed group of vampires to prove himself violent enough for the coming confrontation with D&D. (That ad agency has just gone so downhill since Amanda faked her own death). Darla and Drusilla, meanwhile, are pulling a Fight Club, attempting to recruit a legion of murderous demons to their cause of destruction.

After indulging in some drunken self-pity, the former employees of Angel Investigations bond over karaoke.

And then we have Lilah and Lindsey. You didn't think I'd leave them out? After all, last we saw them, Angel had just locked the luscious pair in a wine cellar with over a dozen other lawyers and two very naughty party girls. However, it seems Darla decided to spare the two photogenic mouthpieces for reasons as sound as they are not, leaving them to bicker and gripe and bitch and moan in true lawyer-ly fashion. (That is, if Ally McBeal is any guide to real life. Which, naturally, it is.) But it's all worth it, just for the scene where to twosome venture into a glass-paneled boardroom, to face the possibly funereal music of their employer:

Lilah: If anyone's going down in there, it's you.
Lindsey: If that's what it takes.

Oooh, Lindsey. How you make me miss Doyle, with that kind of risqué talk.

Getting jointly promoted to the position vacated by the Dru and Darla-eaten Holland, the two are put in charge of Special Projects: specifically, one supposes, Angel. Angel's very own special project, of course, is still the destruction of his family members. And here's where he goes all Buffy again, 'cause first he's not ready to kill them, then he is, then he's just not. Make up your mind already, Angel! Or Angelus. Or whoever you are this week. Your indecision is bordering on pathetic.

Though you did set them on fire, which was certainly a blast from the evil past -- and it sure was no pity to have that pink turtleneck of Drusilla's burned. What, was it an extra from the Riley Collection he left too soon to don? (Though, it looked a little more Forrest-y to me.) Buffy has the dibs on pink this season, thanks Dru... go back to your satin and lace and leave the rib knit to the professionals, okay?

With that one defiant act of vicious destruction, intended, it would seem, to hurt and not to kill, Angel becomes again what he was in the heyday of his leather-pant-wearing: unpredictable. Sure, we assume he's gonna save some good guys, and defeat some bad guys, and rain on a few apocalypse parades, but as for how he's going to do these things, without his usual support crew and broody conscience, none of us can know.

But now that he can actually fight again, we've gotta guess it'll have something to do with violence.

-- Rachel Hyland

Angel airs at 9/8c, Tuesdays on the WB.

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