Props to Johanna, for introducing me to Dawson's Wrap way back when, and to Wing and Sars, who make it look easy.
The show begins with Angel's monotone -- er...monologue. "Los Angeles. You see it at night and it shines. A beacon. People are drawn to it. People...and other things." Ooo, scary. During this there's a little montage of sights in the City of Angels (geddit? geddit?). There are also some super-annoying blipvert-style cuts and double-exposed shots and overexposed shots, which recur throughout the episode. At normal speed these appear to be random meaningless images but if you look at them frame-by-frame, you'll discover that they are actually...random meaningless images. Although some of them are kinda pretty.
Angel is sitting in a bar, burbling drunkenly about Buffy, who he describes as "a hottie girl." When it was announced that Angel was getting his own show, Johanna said "I hope [the show] is just him getting drunk and falling down every week, because that would hold my interest a lot longer than the constant moping thing." Needless to say, Johanna and I were very excited to see her wish was granted so quickly. He even falls down a few minutes later! While Angel continues to blither, the three guys and two girls playing pool (huh?) finish their game and leave the bar. As the flute of tension toots, Angel prepares to follow them, and we realize he was only pretending to be drunk. Golly. Angel strides out of the bar after them in slo-mo. Well, it's either slow motion or he's taking his own sweet time going off to battle evil, so I choose to believe it was slo-mo.
In a shocking development, the three guys are vamps preparing to dine on the girls. Angel wanders up and does his drunk act again to get close to them. Then they fight, and there's the usual kicking and blocking and throwing vamps into car windshields. Angel does this stretching move which causes stakes to drop/slide/shoot out from his jacket sleeves, and he then dusts two of the vamps. That was very James Bond and all, but...um...why do that? If he can wear the coat, he can carry the stakes in a pocket. If he can't wear the coat, people will see stakes strapped to his arms. But Angel has had a lot of time on his hands; maybe he's taken up gadget-making as a hobby. The girls try to thank Angel, but he's got his game face on (and the prosthetic eyebrows look particularly awful throughout this episode). In his vampire aspect, Angel is a little tempted by the fact that one of the girls is bleeding. It seems to me that he must have been around the gang on Buffy when one or more of them was bleeding, but whatever. Anyway he dispatches the last vamp and walks away, down the clean, graffiti-free alley of downtown Vancouver. Er, I mean, Los Angeles.
Credits. Angsty cello. Shots of Angel brooding. Cue the drums as Angel breaks through a door. Angel is pensive, angsty, worried, briefly happy, and then pensive again. Costarring Cordelia's hair and that guy from Roseanne.
After a good night's work, Angel returns to his home. He apparently lives in the basement of a building that has lofts available for rent. He also goes through some abandoned but attractively furnished offices on his way to the elevator, and the whole setup seems odd to me. Is he renting the basement? Or does he own the building? I hope they explain the mechanics of Angel's life at some point. Anyway a stranger has somehow gained entry to Angel's secret hideaway! Hey, it's Becky Conner's husband! With an Irish accent! He introduces himself as Doyle, and since he doesn't have a last name we know he's some sort of supernatural being. He insists he is human, though, and then sneezes, which causes little blue spikes to briefly pop out all over his face. This is the strangest adaptation of Pinocchio I've ever seen. Doyle clarifies that he's human on his mother's side, which I mention on the off-chance that it's a plot point eventually.
Doyle says he was sent, and it turns out he was sent to recap the entire Buffy and Angel saga for those who didn't watch Buffy. I do, so I'm not going into it, except to repeat Doyle's description of Buffy as "young miss puppy thighs." Point is that Angel came to L.A. to fight evil, rescue the innocent, blah blah blah. Doyle says Angel needs to stop being a recluse. He also says that because Angel drank Buffy's blood back in last season's finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel has a renewed craving for human blood, and eventually he will feed off one of the people he was trying to rescue. So, if I'm still following this, if Angel gets to know people a little better, then he won't be so tempted to drink their blood because he'll care about them. Y'know, there are some people that you care less and less about the more you get to know them, and I can't help thinking that Cordelia Chase would fall into that category. On the other hand, Angel was in love with Buffy, so we know he's not too discriminating. Then Doyle says he needs a drink.
Blipvert. As Angel and Doyle leave a liquor store, Doyle continues his Jiminy Cricket act. He tells Angel, "It's about reaching out to people, showing them that there's love and hope still left in this world." In the midst of this, an old woman asks Doyle for spare change and without missing a beat he responds, "Get a job, you lazy sow." Okay, that did make me giggle. Doyle also points out that Angel is very attractive. ["Not." -- Wing Chun] Angel asks who sent Doyle, but Doyle isn't sure. Doyle explains that he sometimes gets headaches during which he sees images, and that whoever sends him these visions is just trying to make things right. After his latest vision, he wrote, "Tina, Coffee Spot, S.M." on the back of a scrap of paper. Doyle asks, "You game?" Without answering, Angel channels a blipvert and then drives off in his black convertible to handle his first mission. (Okay, how'd he get a car? Is there a twenty-four-hour MVA?) I think the poor guy really missed having someone to boss him around the way Buffy used to do.
Tina is a waitress at a dog-friendly coffee bar who wants to make money fast. She was also one of the many Carries on Days of Our Lives, and I recognized her as the baby-sitter in Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Anyway, Angel strikes up a casual conversation with Tina, asks her if she's happy, and after some back and forth she agrees to meet him when her shift ends at 10:00. Y'know, Angel is having one hell of a busy night. Let's be really generous and figure that sundown was at 7. Since then Angel's hung out at a bar, killed some vamps, gone home, talked to Doyle, and gone to the coffee place, and it's not even 10 PM yet! And this is Los Angeles, where it can take an hour to drive down to the supermarket.
So it's 10:00, or probably 10:30, since Tina has changed into a snazzy black dress and put her hair up. Angel asks if she wants to go out for a drink, and she pulls out mace or pepper spray or something. She says she knows who he is, and that he should tell Russell to leave her alone. Angel denies any connection to Russell, and claims that he started talking to her because she looked lonely, "and I figured then we had something in common." This melts Tina's heart, and she apologizes, explaining that she's having "relationship issues." Angel asks who Russell is, and I picture Space Ghost saying "Russell rhymes with muscle." That's probably just me, though. Tina won't say who Russell is, but does explain that she is from Montana, came to town to be a famous movie star, and now wants to go back home. But right now she has to go to a party, so Angel takes her there. Okay, if she thought that Angel was one of Russell's henchmen out to nab her, and believed that she'd need mace to defend herself against him, why the hell did she agree to meet him after work, by herself, in an empty parking lot? Methinks Tina ain't too bright.
Blipvert. They arrive at the party. Gratuitous video camera. The hostess points out that Angel is very attractive. ["Again, I say NOT." -- Wing Chun] Angel: "Who's Russell." Tina: "He's someone I made the mistake of trusting." Tina wanders off to talk to her friend. An older bearded gent points out that Angel is very attractive (do they think that if they keep telling us that, we'll believe it? ["It's not working on me." -- Wing Chun]), and offers to be his manager. Angel repeatedly insists he is not an actor. Is that supposed to be a funny self-referential nod to the fact that many Buffy fans criticize David Boreanaz's acting abilities? If so, it was a good effort, except for not actually being very funny. Angel wanders through the party and runs into -- surprise! -- Cordelia. They chat. She says she's an actress and has a small condo and so on. Then she excuses herself, saying "I really should be talking to people who are somebody." Angel sees Tina having a tense discussion with a swarthy man who appears to have spent a lot of time oiling his hair. Swarthy Guy grabs her arm and hisses that Russell wants to see her, but she breaks away, then sees Angel. He asks who Swarthy Guy is, and Tina says, "Stacy. He's just a creep." Then she asks if they can go.
As they step out of the elevator to the hotel parking garage, two men grab Angel and pull him back into the elevator before the doors close. Another man grabs Tina as Stacy comes out of the other elevator. Stacy tells Tina that "he" (Russell, one assumes) just wants to see her. Tina seems to calm down, makes a break for it, and is caught again just in time for the commercial. Gee, lucky thing she had that mace.
Having dispatched (killed or KO'd, it's hard to tell) the two henchmen, Angel races to the rescue, leaping into his black convertible, trying the key, pausing, and then realizing that he is actually in the wrong black convertible; his is a few spaces over to the right. Heh. Stacy, Tina and henchman #3 speed off toward the exit. I'm not sure why they're speeding, since they have no reason to think they're being chased at this point. Having found his car, Angel races after them. Oh wait, somehow he got in front of them, because now they're driving toward each other. Maybe Stacy parked his car in a far corner of the garage or something. I don't know. Anyway, they play chicken, and henchman #3 loses, crashing into a parked car. A few punches are exchanged, and Tina is rescued. Hooray!
Cut to Cordy, who is living in a crappy efficiency apartment and has no jobs and no food. That was the entire point of this scene. The end.
Angel makes tea for Tina back at his swinging bachelor pad. Angel: "Do you take milk and sugar?" Tina: "Yeah." Angel: (with a nice tone of embarrassment) "...'Cause I don't have those things." Heh. Tina notices Angel's decorating style, which consists mainly of swords and battle-axes hanging on the walls, and Angel explains that he has some relationship issues himself. Tina asks if this is the part where he "comforts" her, since he's earned it. I thought that was a nice way of showing that Tina was accustomed to being used, but Johanna thought she was just being a whore. Tina starts crying, and Angel offers her a dishtowel, which I also liked, because Angel's even less likely than most men to buy tissues. Angel asks if Russell has a last name because he too realizes that having just one name means you're a demon, and Tina says yes but won't say what it is. Tina does say that Russell likes pain, and implies he may have killed a girl she knew named Denise.
Blipvert. While Tina sleeps, Angel looks through her phone book, finds Denise's last name, and goes down to the library. Using Find-A-Loved-One.com, he is able to pull up her headshot and aliases. A search of news archives pulls up some more blipverts, as well as articles about female murder victims. (If you have freeze-frame, you can look at the text of these news articles and learn some interesting facts about restraining orders, recycling, and rhino horns. You can also see Angel sticking his tongue out.) Then a search of missing persons reports finds a girl with a rose tattoo just like the one Denise has. Well, had. Also, Denise looks suspiciously like Cordelia in bad makeup.
As the sun rises after a really, really long night, Angel makes his way home through the sewers. He arrives just in time to wake Tina, who is having a nightmare. After comforting her, he tells her that her friend Denise is dead, and that Russell has probably killed a lot of other girls. I think Tina might have been happier with her nightmare. But then Tina spies the note Doyle wrote with her name on it, and deduces that Angel showed up at the coffee bar looking for her. She decides that Angel is in on whatever game Russell is playing with her head, and runs upstairs toward the door. Angel follows her and grabs her arm, but as she tries to break free his arm is pulled into a ray of sunlight and bursts into flame. He jumps back as his vamp face appears and another blipvert bewilders us all. Horrified, either by the blipvert or the really terrible vampire makeup, Tina runs away. D'oh!
Tina races home and starts frantically packing her bag. Among her possessions is a revolver. She suddenly grabs it and whirls, aiming at the well-dressed man standing there. If she's that quick with the gun, why was she bothering with mace? This man is, of course, Russell. He calmly says he's been looking for her, and that he owns this building and most of the rest of the block. Tina asks what he did to Denise. Russell says he bought her a ticket home. He says he only wants to help Tina, takes the gun away from her, and claims he'll provide anything she wants. She says she wants to go home. Then he vamps out and bites her. Okay, it's daylight. I guess the fact that he owns the building is meant to imply he knows about some underground route in and out. Especially since we then see Angel busting into the room some undisclosed amount of time later to find Tina dead on the floor. (How'd he find out where she lived?) He tries to check her pulse at her neck and his fingers come away wet with blood. Blood. On his hands. We get it. I will say that I was surprised and pleased that she got killed. Earlier in the show I'd thought, "I hope he screws up sometimes, because it's much more interesting if you don't know he'll always save the day." And then he screwed up right away! Cool.
Cut to the body bag being zipped up around Tina while some cops confer. Angel watches from a rooftop across the street, prior to casually hopping to the ground. Then he storms into his basement with Doyle in tow. How'd he contact Doyle? Or did Doyle just turn up? They get to work tracking down the bad guys through the car they were driving. Doyle tries to delve into Angel's guilt complex, but Angel says he doesn't want to share his feelings: "I want to find the guy that killed Tina, and I want to look him in the eye." "Then what?" Doyle asks. "Then I'm gonna share my feelings." Angel says this in such a gruff whisper that I half-expect him to follow it up with "I'm Batman."
At a big ol' mansion, Russell is talking to his lawyer while watching the videotape of Tina from the party. I will not make any of the obvious jokes about lawyers and vampires. Russell spies Cordelia on the videotape, and decides she looks tasty.
Blipvert. We see the window of "Stacy's Gym Supplies," and then Angel smashes the window and begins beating up Stacy and demanding information. Cordelia is meditating when she gets a phone call from the party's hostess. Russell Winters wants to meet her. Tonight. Ruh-roh! Angel is packing up his bag o' weapons while Doyle makes chit-chat. Cordy rides in a limo, on her way to Russell and CERTAIN DEATH! Angel tells Doyle he has to drive. Doyle protests. Angel is having none of it. Why does he want Doyle with him? Cordy admires the Russell mansion as the butler escorts her through it toward...RUSSELL. Who will KILL HER. Then she walks into the room Russell is in, and he dismisses the butler. The tension is just indescribable. Thank god there's a commercial here so I can catch my breath.
Back at Casa de Vampire, Cordy admires the heavy curtains on the windows, and provides her backstory for those coming in late. (Her parents were rich, they didn't pay taxes, the IRS got 'em, now she's broke.) Then she pretends to be doing very well with her acting career but gradually reveals the shocking truth that she isn't. Charisma Carpenter still tends to look, well, a lot older than 18, but in this scene I thought she was very good at imitating the mannerisms of a nervous teenager here, and that helped a lot.
Angel drives up to the mansion's gate with Doyle in shotgun position. For some reason, Angel does his version of an Irish accent while performing the old "we're lost and need directions" bit for the guard. Then he loses the accent and asks about the football game the guard is watching. Then he punches the guard and pulls the wire out of the security camera. Angel instructs Doyle to tie up the guard, and says "I'm out in ten minutes or I'm not coming out." Angel then leaps to the top of a very high wall.
Meanwhile, Cordy is still revealing her deepest insecurities to Russell. She starts to cry, but pulls herself together suddenly and apologizes. This bit is pretty amusing, so I shall transcribe:
Cordelia: I probably look really scary. I finally get invited to a nice place...with no mirrors and...lots of curtains...Hey -- you're a vampire!
Russell: What? No I'm not.
Cordelia: Are too!
Russell: I don't know what you're talking about.
Cordelia: I'm from Sunnydale; we had our own Hellmouth! I think I know a vampire when I...am alone with him...in his fortress-like home...and you know, I think I'm just feeling a little light-headed from hunger. I'm just wacky. And kidding! Ha ha!
While Cordy backpedals, Angel sets up a gizmo; this one looks like it'll blow the lights in the house. Now Cordy is running away from Russell, who somehow managed to be a vampire even though he has a last name. Now Angel is using his vamp-rope to climb up to a second-floor balcony. Since we just saw him jump to the top of that wall a minute ago, I don't know why he needs the rope. Angel has just been dying for an opportunity to use all of this stuff, hasn't he? Doyle waits in the car. Russell grabs Cordy at the top of the foyer stairs just as the lights go out, and Angel finally runs out of gadgets and gets around to doing his job. Angel and Russell exchange threats, and then there's some more vampire-fu. At one point Angel actually pulls the rug out from under Russell to trip him. Yawn. Some henchmen turn up and start shooting, so Angel runs in front of Cordy to shield her, grabs her, jumps from the stairway railing down to the ground floor, and away they run.
Cordy effectively fell two stories there, and the fact that Angel was carrying her doesn't make a difference. In fact, his carrying her meant she "landed" on the small of her back. I think she should have been injured. Hey, I can nit-pick if I want.
At the sound of gunfire, Doyle drives away, but his Jiminy Cricketness gets the best of him and he turns the car around and tries to ram through the gates. The gates hold. Good effort, though. Just then Angel and Cordy run out and jump in the car, and the Scooby Gang MK 2 drives away.
Back in the basement, Doyle pulls bullets out of Angel's chest, and I think I really prefer Angel with a shirt on. ["Word. I mean, I've seen my dad without his shirt on and lived to tell the tale, but that doesn't mean I want to see it on TV. See, because David Boreanaz is my dad's age." -- Wing Chun] Cordy says "You really put the fear of God into that Russell guy. He's not going to come looking for me...right?" Angel and Doyle look pensive.
It's daytime at the Russell Winters Enterprises building. And other places too, I expect. Russell is chatting with his lawyers again about tracking down the intruder from last night. Ironically, just then Angel walks through the conference room doors. Am I the only one who was reminded of The Crow here? The lawyer threatens Angel. Angel ignores him. Russell tries to talk sense to Angel. Russell says he doesn't make waves, and adds, "In return, I can do anything I want." Angel appears to contemplate this, as he puts one leg on the chair Russell is sitting in. Johanna thought this was a seductive move on Angel's part, but I think Johanna is out of her mind. "Can you fly?" Angel asks, and with that he kicks the chair so that it rolls back and smashes through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind Russell. Guess ol' Russell never saw The Hudsucker Proxy, or he might have gotten shatterproof windows. Russell is vamped-out and falling a very long way and outside in the daylight, so you wind up with a plummeting flaming vampire who finally burns up before he hits the ground, which is fairly cool. His chair mysteriously vanishes while he's falling, but we do see it hit the ground. Angel leaves, while the lawyer takes out his cell phone and arranges a meeting to discuss the "new player in town."
Back at home, Angel calls Buffy but hangs up when she answers. Which was the clever little tie-in to the episode of Buffy that aired just before Angel, where we saw her get this mysterious phone call. Ain't that cute? Ho-hum. Doyle wanders in and asks why Angel isn't more pleased that he took care of Russell. Doyle doesn't realize that for Angel, that particular inert expression means he's overjoyed. Angel says he didn't help anyone, but Doyle points out that there's a girl upstairs who'd disagree. Cue Cordy's scream. They race upstairs (which has a lot of windows letting in a lot of sunlight, I'd like to point out) and of course Cordy was scared by a bug as she tidied up the office. Blah blah blah, we establish the premise that they'll all work together and help people and so on. Cordy wanders off, and then Angel asks Doyle if he thinks Cordy is "a hottie." Doyle's response is "Ah yeah, she's a stiffener all right, I can't lie about that."
Too. Much. Information.
Anyway, Doyle says there are a lot of people who need helping, and again asks Angel, "You game?" If he wasn't, shouldn't Angel have mentioned that during the conversation with Cordy? There's a dramatic, blipverted, pause, before Angel finally says "I'm game." What a lousy last line.