Angel
"Eternity"

Airdate: April 4, 2000

Good news for all those Buffy/Angelus 'shippers out there who think the Slayer needs a little more S&M in her daily life: with a glass of booze and a dollop of tranquilizers, you can have your evil boy back! Of course, you know it's not permanent evil. There are signs that he's just gone temporarily bad. For instance... no leather pants. Damn.

Leather: The fashionable look for the truly evil.

As a big fan of season two's gleefully evil Angelus -- and his pants -- I just can't bear to see him as a shadow of his former self. But let me tell you how he got to be Angelus the Not-So-Scary, so you'll truly understand my pain.

After sitting through a horrid play that Cordelia somehow got a part in, Angel, Wesley, and Cordy are walking... uhhh... somewhere, presumably back to their cars, when they spot a big hubbub across the street. It's a young actress, along with her pimp -- er, agent -- the same guy who approached Angel at that Hollywood party in City Of. Neat tie-in aside, actress-girl walks across the street, also presumably going to her car, while Cordelia gushes about something all wanna-be-actress-like, but Angel notices something amiss: a car down the street that suddenly starts up, pulls away from the curb, and heads straight for the actress.

Angel dives in just in time to save the day, and disappears from the scene soon after, but the starlet's apparently smitten, and Cordelia, desperate to make some contacts that'll help her "acting" career, gives the woman an agency card. The actress later shows up at the agency, asking Angel to help her with a stalker, but he refuses the case 'cause he likes her. Except, he didn't, really; he's just keeping tabs on her, and when stalker-boy shows up at the woman's apartment, Angel busts in (unheeding of the fact that so far as I could tell, he didn't have an invitation), beats on the stalker, gets beat on by the stalker, then goes into lurkerdom himself when the stalker runs off and the cops show up. When he emerges again, the actress notices he doesn't have a reflection, and puts grr and fang together to make vampire. Angel stays the night to protect her, but apparently they don't get groiny and he's still his brooding self in the morning.

Anyway, long story shorter, Angel eventually busts the stalker's ass, and the guy turns out to be a stuntman hired by the agent to boost the actress's career. Saw that coming. But it's not over yet: with her career in the dumps, and wanting to be young and pretty forever, the actress slips Angel a mickey to loosen him up before asking him to make her a vampire. He says no, but she's still in trouble, 'cause the tranquilizers she gave him are designed to produce a blissful feeling. Bliss, get it? He's happy, and says goodbye to his soul.

Now, this is where it really gets complicated. Angel doesn't really lose his soul -- as I said, no leather pants. As far as I can figure, he just thinks he's lost his soul, giving the drug a sort of placebo effect, or the drugs loosened him up so much that his soul went on a temporary vacation, allowing his demon to take control for awhile. Whatever the technicalities, he's just bad again for awhile. He terrorizes the actress for awhile, plays with her as a cat does a mouse, until Wesley and Cordelia show up. After he tells them what he really thinks of them (hah!), Wesley gets the drop on him and tosses him into the bottom of the elevator shaft. When he wakes up again, the drugs have worn off, he still doesn't have the leather pants, and his friends leave him chained up for awhile to think about what he's done.

Angel: Vamp Detective and Bodyguard to the Stars.

I have issues with this episode, and they do go beyond the fact that Angel was evil again (for all of five minutes) and didn't wear the freakin' leather pants. For one, Wesley seems to have suddenly become wise and powerful. Not only does he instantly pick up on Angel's moods -- much like Doyle would have -- but he also gets the drop on Angelus. This is sudden, but not unwelcome, and I have to say it's about freakin' time he grew a brain. Cordy was more annoying here that she's been in quite some time, which just makes me miss Sunnydale's bitchy Cordy all the more. The actress (whose name I can't even remember) and Angel apparently had some sort of heavy-duty attraction. This attraction was as inexplicable and as absent on-screen as Angel's alleged yen for Jheira. It just fizzled, and was boring, and I didn't see it. And this isn't, I might add, because I want to see Angel with Buffy and only Buffy (because I wanna see Buffy with Spike, and Angel can just go live his celibate unlife). There was no chemistry, and no real build of sexual tension. Or any sort of tension, for that matter.

Also, the whole thing with Angel losing his soul. Not only was the technical aspect confusing as all hell to those of us who actually tried to figure it out -- did he lose his soul, or did he think he lost his soul, did his soul go on vacation to the Bahamas, or was it something else that makes even less sense? -- but it was also rather anti-climactic. When Angel did actually lose his soul in Buffy's second season, that was The Big Shit. It was huge. It was scary. It was heart-wrenching. It was a lot more fun. And the Pants were there. Unfortunately, this time around, it was more like we found out that Angel's a mean drunk, rather than the broody drunk we would've assumed him to be.

So please, if you're making Angel evil? Don't do it half-assed. Make him really evil. Go all out. Take your time and make it worth it, or all you're doing is sullying my memory of the spikey-haired smirking one. And dammit, give him back his pants.

-- Lisa Kincaid

Angel airs Tuesdays at 9PM EST on the WB.

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