Previously on Angel, Kate and Angel had a spat, Lindsey lost his hand in a scene that never stops being funny, and Darla did really icky things involving Angel's chest.
A ghostly image of Darla chuckles as the sun rises. After a blippier-than-usual blipvert, we're treated to some high-speed travel down the city streets at night, and finally arrive at the hotel, where it's day again. It's been thirteen seconds, and already I'm confused. I guess it's been a while since Bethany's visit, since all of the windows on the hotel's top floor have been repaired. Angel strides into the lobby and sits down as Wesley says, "I made you some tea." "Tea"? Has the world gone mad? Have they actually consumed all the coffee in the world? Angel looks at the mug sitting on the table in front of him, but is apparently too tired to reach for it. If that were my brother, he'd make sad puppy-dog eyes until my mom or I gave up and handed the mug to him. And then we'd have to go find a bendy-straw so that he wouldn't have to sit up in order to drink. I know, it's ridiculous, but you simply can't understand the power of his puppy-dog eyes unless you've seen them. Anyway, since Angel lacks this power, Cordy simply says, "You must be all worn out from sleeping for the last three days." She gripes to Wesley, "It's like living with the world's oldest teenager." Which is ironic, since Cordelia is the world's oldest "teenager." Speaking of things that are old, Cordy and Wesley start bickering again. This time it's about money. Eventually Cordy suggests that Wesley's salary could be cut, and Wesley suggests that she should have a vision instead. Cordy snaps, "It's not like you can hit me in the head and, wham, it happens!" Wesley picks up a heavy volume and says, "What if we test that theory with one of my big old books?" Memo to all writers: if your name isn't Glen Gordon Caron, you probably shouldn't be trying to write witty banter. Thanks. Angel turns to lie down on the loveseat, and says, "Children, stop bickering. Something will turn up. Something always does." Sure enough, Cordy goes visiony. She sees men in red robes fighting, and a green blob watching them.
Post-vision, Wesley shows various pictures to Cordelia but none of them resemble the blob she saw. Wesley should take her to a store that sells Halloween decorations; she'd spot it quickly enough. Instead, though, Cordy says, "Mush monster's not going anywhere; it's the place that we've gotta find. Its disciples are human, they're killing each other. I think the fight is over how to worship it." Behind them, Angel says, "This is why, personally, I rarely go to church." He looks around, waiting for the riotous laughter to begin. Cordy and Wesley ignore him. Angel mutters, "I thought it was funny." At least they're starting to acknowledge that his quips suck. Now if only they'd stop giving him quips at all. But alas, suddenly Victorian-era Darla is sitting in his lap, saying, "So did I." She truly is a force for evil, encouraging him like that. She and Angel kiss and snuggle.
Wesley asks Cordelia, "What did the place look like?" and Angel suddenly jumps awake, startling everyone, including me. Cordy says, "It felt sacred, in a twisted, demonic kind of way. It's underground, like in a tank or something, full of pillars." Angel figures it out: "St. Bridget's in Fremont. It's a convent built on native burial grounds. The land's cursed; they had eight murders in the past two years, before the whole place burned to the ground...Which is nothing compared to what happened in Our Lady of Lochenbee." Off the confused looks of the MoG, Angel explains, "I got a thing for convents." Ew. And note that he used present tense. Double ew. Angel goes on to say that the state bought the land and built a water tank there. They built a water tank. On native burial ground. No wonder they drink so much bottled water in California. Angel says they'll need muscle, so someone should call Gunn, and starts pulling weapons out of a cabinet. Wesley reaches for the phone, and we get a blobvert.
Monks are fighting. The Halloween decoration is drooling. Team MoG descend the stairs into a giant room full of pillars. Which are totally different from the pillars we normally see in the garage/warehouse set. Because they're round, not square, y'see. As they observe the fight, Gunn tells Angel, "You are not paying me enough for this." Hey, why don't they wait until the monks are done fighting? I'm thinking that there'll be considerably fewer of them by the time they're done. Also, they'll be tired. Angel asks Wesley if the blob is a Thrall demon, and Wesley says it is. Angel says, "So kill the big ugly, it un-thralls the groupies, and they stop killing each other." Wesley nervously says, "That's the theory. Thrall demons can be tricky." Cordy, thinking the way I do, says, "At least they're killing each other and not --" But then the blob spots them and growls, "Intruders!" The captioning says that his name is Turfos, by the way. The monks stop, look, and attack. The boys get to fighting, and Cordelia vanishes from the scene. Gunn gets to use his hubcap-axe. The kids at his camp will be so pleased. Gunn calls, "Angel, I'll try to get fat-head. Watch my back!" And by "fat-head," Gunn means the blob, not Wesley, by the way. More's the pity. Angel is busy punching a monk who's fallen to the floor. Gunn repeats, "Watch my back!" Angel punches. Gunn finally says, "Just keep beatin' on that big guy," and races toward the blob. Cordy suddenly reappears, armed with a dagger and heading for the blob, but a monk grabs her from behind. Wesley conks Cordy's attacker on the head, and Gunn rushes up with his axe raised. The blob wails, and Gunn dispatches the gruesome monster with...well, dispatch. The monks calm down. Angel keeps walloping the monk he caught until Wesley pulls him up and tells him to stop. And thus ends the only real action sequence in this episode. The rest of it's pretty much all conversation. Sigh.
The monks and the MoG wander outside. Gunn says, "So this whole 'teamwork' deal -- that's a thing of the past, now?" Angel says the job got done, and tells Cordy to take the car as he tosses her the keys. "I need to, uh..." he non-explains as he wanders away. Wesley tells Gunn that Angel hasn't been sleeping well. Cordy adds, "He's off his game." Gunn stares after Angel and asks, "Since when is it a game?"
Angel walks through the wackiness that is the Promenade. He glances to one side and spots Darla walking parallel to him. Need I mention that she's wearing red? As she passes in and out of view, he has little flashes of his dreams of Darla. His expression is...worried? Sad? Happy? Excited? Scared? Well, it's his catch-all expression for "I am experiencing a powerful, unspecified emotion." You know the one. Credits are due.
We're plunged straight into a flashback. Oh, joy. Angelus strolls along the streets of what we'll soon enough understand to be Victorian England. The credits inform us that Juliet "Drusilla" Landau will be in the episode. The WB's spoiler hotline starts ringing as viewers call in to complain. Angelus has long hair, of course, but for once, it doesn't look horrifying. I'm not saying it's great, but it's better than usual. Of course, that could be due to the dim lighting. He ducks into an alley and reaches out to take a woman's hand. As Darla steps into the half-light, Angelus slurs, "I thought we were meetin' in the square." He says this quietly, so that his attempt at an Irish accent doesn't cause any permanent ear damage. Darla glances at the man's corpse behind her and explains that "he was propositioning a streetwalker and dickering over the price. Can you imagine? I told him I'd do him for nothing." That's what she says. I expect she meant to say something more like, "The spoffy cove was trying to be catchy with a sloop of war when I said I'd fake the rubber." I've got some strange books. Angelus tells Darla that she's very charitable, and they smooch. Then Angel asks why she killed the prostitute, and the camera pans up a bit more to reveal a dead girl to the man. "I just liked her," Darla explains. She leads Angelus back into the street saying that she has a surprise for him, but he has to guess what it is. He looks around at the passersby, and spots a family walking away from them. "The three daughters," he says. "All virgins." Darla says he's close. Angelus says, "The one in the middle has something delicate and unique. Did you find me a saint?" Darla says it's even better: "She has the sight." As the family stops, the middle girl turns and we are not particularly surprised to see that it's Drusilla. Angelus hisses, "She sees the future. She is pure innocence, yet she sees what's comin'. She knows what I'm gonna do to her." Dru stares as Angelus and Darla approach. As Dru turns back to her family and walks away, Angelus adds, "I'll really have to come up to snuff for this one." Darla stops and says, "Down, boy. Let the plum ripen." Dru stars in her very own blipvert.
In the present, Darla walks past people holding balloons. While trying to follow her, Angel gets caught up in the crowd surrounding a clown and a guy wearing a hot dog costume who's handing out fliers. After getting through the bottleneck, he looks around, but Darla has vanished.
At the hotel the day, a man is saying, "I really need some help." Cordy explains that Angel is out on an important case. The man says that his wife, Claire, is regularly abducted by aliens. Oh, that gag just never starts being funny. Anyway, he recently found a hotel receipt for the Franklin Hotel and is starting to wonder if Claire is getting probed right here on earth, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Angel pops up out of the tunnels and enters the lobby. Cordy introduces the guy (Mr. Jeakins, not that it matters) to Angel. Mr. Jeakins asks, "Do you think my wife's cheating on me?" Without pausing, Angel fires back, "Probably." Well, not tactful, but he's not wrong either. Wesley hustles Mr. Jeakins to the door, explaining that Angel is a bit eccentric. "All the great ones are. Sherlock Holmes, Phillip Marlowe..." Marlowe wasn't that eccentric. Jeakins notes, "Those are fictional characters." Wesley responds, "Right you are, which gives Angel rather a leg up when you come to think of it." Cordy bitches at Angel for his rudeness as she sits down at her laptop. She whines about the fact that Jenkins has money while, behind her, Angel leans over and sniffs her hair. He closes his eyes and puts a hand on the side of her head as Cordy trails off. She notices what he's doing and jumps up, shouting, "Personal bubble! Personal bubble!" Wesley enters, rolling up a sleeve, and says, "I have to speak with you, man to man. Cordelia, you may not want to be here for this." But he doesn't even give her time to leave before whining, "Was it something I did?" Cordy tells Wesley, "He was feeling my hair." She looks every bit as creeped out as I would be under those circumstances. Angel apologizes, and says it's "because of her." Wesley and Cordy look confuses as Angel semi-explains, "I saw her here in town last night." Cordy sighs and says, "Not again. Look, I like Buffy as much as the --" Angel cuts in to say, "Not Buffy. Darla."
They all stroll into the lobby as Angel explains that he's been dreaming about Darla. He chuckles, "I thought I was losing my -- my mind. But, you know, she's here, she's alive." Wesley points out that Angel killed Darla three and a half years ago, and that vampires don't come back from the dead. Angel points out, fairly, that he did. "I saw her. I'm not crazy!" Wesley asks where Angel saw Darla, and we all enjoy the punchline: "Right between the clowns and the big talkin' hot dog." Beat. He adds, "Walking on the promenade." Wesley theorizes that Angel is dreaming about Darla out of guilt. Cordy chimes in, "Right! Guilt. Who loves guilt like you love guilt?" She tries to interest Angel in the Jeakins case. Angel mutters, "Maybe I'm dreaming about her 'cause she's here." Wesley suggests, "Maybe you think she's here because you're dreaming about her."
In Lindsey's office, Darla says, "He's falling apart." An unattractive girl in the background picks up a file and -- oh, sorry, that's Lindsey. Dude. Get. A. Haircut. Lindsey says, "Unhinging a man with all his strengths and weaknesses takes a lot of work." Huh? If he's got a lot of weaknesses, it should be easy to unhinge him. Darla says she created a lot of Angel's strengths and weaknesses. Well, sure, if you're including weaknesses like "sunlight can hurt him." Lindsey says that Darla's provided them with more information on Angel: "Nobody knows him better than you. Especially the side we're interested in." Darla slithers toward Lindsey, arches her back to make the most of her lack of endowments, and asks if the plan is for her to "tease him to death." She's only now asking what the plan is? Lindsey looks like a talking mop as he says, "We don't want him dead. We want him dark. And there's no better way to a man's darkness than to awaken his nastier urges, is there?" Darla looks at Lindsey's fake hand and asks what it feels like. Lindsey, reasonably enough, says, "It doesn't feel like anything." She takes his fake hand and feels it, moaning as is her wont. She asks, "You don't feel anything?" "Not in my hand," is Lindsey's reply. I feel ill. Darla backs away, and Lindsey asks how it feels to see Angel again. Darla says it's strange, and starts playing with the scales held by a small Justice sculpture. Ah, we're going for the subtle imagery, are we? I think we passed it about three exits ago, unfortunately. Lindsey says, "He betrayed you." Darla replies, "Everyone betrays you. That's not what eats at you on the long winter's night." Lindsey plays along and asks what does. "Missed opportunities," she replies. "He got a soul, and it sickened me. All that power wasted on a whiny, mopey, do-gooder. God, I could eat his eyeballs." As I recall, Darla was disgusted as soon as she found out Angel had a soul. Okay, he was guilt-ridden, but maybe if she'd been patient, he wouldn't have been a "whiney, mopey do-gooder." I'm just saying, she did made a snap judgement there. Lindsey says they have big plans for Angel, "but if you can't help yourself, by all means, be my guest." Darla turns and smirks, saying, "You're fun for a human." Lindsey says that he, and a lot of other people, have a particular interest in Angel. You can feel the transitional gears grinding away, can't you? Sure enough...
Someone approaches Kate's desk at the police station. She greets her visitor as "Jack." Kate fills in the back story by establishing that Jack's an old friend on the force who hasn't been in touch lately. Jack returns the favor by alluding to Kate's growing interest in unusual cases and mentioning that she's been moved off the downtown beat. Kate's hair is practically white, which might mean that she's been really scared by all the supernatural events she's witnessed. Or it might mean that TNT's hairstylists are as useless as their "original programming" executives and that no one should mourn when their Atlanta offices are destroyed by enraged mutants in 2002. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Jack hands Kate an envelope and says, "A friend of a friend thought you might want this." She pulls out a photo of the Hyperion Hotel, which has an "Angel Investigations" business card paperclipped to it. Stuck on the photo is a Post-It reading, "He's moved." They bought the hotel, right? How hard would it be for Kate, a police officer, to find Angel if she was looking for him? Whatever.
Cordelia is posing as...Let me start again. Cordelia is at the Franklin Hotel. She's in disguise, I think. She's wearing a costume that resembles nothing so much as a French maid's uniform, in yellow instead of black. Is this an "olde time" theme hotel? Is she meant to be a waitress? A chambermaid? An on-site hooker? I don't understand. I left out the part where she's wearing a black leather mini-skirt under the dress. I repeat: I don't understand. At all. She walks past a couple seated at the bar. The man is asking, "You're sure about this? Right in the middle of the day?" Cordy places a stack of napkins with something hidden underneath on a nearby table. The woman responds, "Marty, the aliens abduct me when the mood hits. The mood hit real hard this morning, right about the time Harold left for work." The captioning says, "Carl" instead of "Harold." Cut to Angel, lurking in a corner, listening in to the conversation. Guess that's a microphone under the napkins. Wesley snaps a quick photo of the couple from the chair he's seated in nearby. Given their financial woes, they sure have a lot of fancy equipment. Marty says he's in the mood too, but he's "still got a lot of repairs." I don't know what he means, either. The conversation continues until they finally agree to go upstairs. As they stand up, Angel walks into the bar and grabs the camera from Wesley. He calls Claire. She asks, "Do I know you?" Angel says, "I've been listening. I'm over here behind some plant with this machine recording you two, while my associates here have been tailing you around all day taking pictures. I don't like doing this. It's crass." He tells Claire to go home and talk to her husband, and tosses the camera to Marty. Claire and Marty look stricken, and leave. Angel just gave someone a perfectly decent, and probably expensive, camera. For no reason. But that's not why Cordy starts yelling at him. She yells at him for ruining their case, even though they were just hired to find out what was going on, and they did, so it seems to me they did their job. While they argue, Angel spots Darla getting up from a table. She's not wearing red. I don't know how he managed to recognize her.
Angel races up and steps in front of Darla. "Guess you didn't take that whole dust to dust thing to heart, did you?" he asks. Are you kidding? That was an awesome episode, with G'kar looking into Londo's mind and...oh. He's talking about something else. Angel grabs her pocketbook and looks through it, asking if she's trying to pass as a human. Darla grabs her stuff and tells Angel to leave her alone. As she starts to move away, Angel grabs her arm and says, "I don't know what kind of game you're trying to play, but you're not going to win." Wesley tries to calm Angel down, and someone from hotel security joins the fracas. Darla says, "My name is Deetta Kramer." Deetta? The captioning, which is normally in all caps, shows her name as "DeETTA." So maybe I should write it "DeEtta." But that looks even stupider, so I'm not going to. Darla, near tears, says that her husband is getting their car, and that she doesn't know who Darla is. Angel says, "I know you're not going out in that sun anytime soon." The security guy grabs Angel, and Angel tosses him away. Darla runs away screaming, "Stephen!" Angel freezes as he sees Darla run out in the sunlight, straight for her supposed husband's waiting arms.
As they all return to the hotel, Cordy whines, "That was really fun! The public humiliation, running from the hotel security staff, and the nifty little outfit which seemed to tell so many conventioneers, 'Pet me. I'm a whore'" C'mon, Cordelia, you must be used to that reaction by now. Wesley says that the silver lining is their discovery that Darla can't be Darla, since sunlight doesn't bother her. Angel ignores all this while he looks through a phone book. Wesley says that he and Cordy have to help Angel "come to grips with this thing." Wesley tells Angel that they're his friends, and won't condemn him. Cordy pipes up with immediate support: "You're crazy. You need professional help." Angel responds, "It was Darla. She's back. And she's human now. I know her scent." Wesley chuckles, "You can't just sniff a person and --" Angel sniffs the air around Wesley and tells him, "You had sex last night with a bleached blonde." Let the record show that the captioning spelled it "blonde." Wesley gasps in astonishment at Angel's olfactory powers. Cordy, and the rest of the world, is still getting over the idea that anyone would have sex with Wesley. Angel tosses the phone book aside and says that Deetta Kramer isn't listed. He asks Cordy to run a title search for the Kramers while he tries some "other avenues." Cordy offers a skeptical "ooookay," and goes on her merry way. Angel asks Wesley if he can borrow a few dollars "for the cover charge." Wesley obediently pulls out his wallet and then, stunned, asks, "Cover charge? You're going to--" "Do whatever it takes," Angel finishes.
At Caritas, Angel drones "Everybody have fun tonight/Everybody Wang Chung tonight." The other patrons look at each other in shared horror. The host -- that guy, that guy with no name, which is driving me nuts -- anyway, he sits down to watch. Angel finally decides he's caused enough pain, and shuts off the machine, then mutters, "I'm very sorry," into the microphone. Heh. He gets the very definition of a smattering of applause as he hurries to the host's table. "Tell me about Darla," he insists. The host says, "You are sending out some family-sized vibes. My fillings are still humming!" He holds his glass up and calls over his shoulder, "Rico, top off my Sea Breeze, win my everlasting devotion." I'd like to think I'm not the only one who said, "Suave!" as soon as he said "Rico!" but I probably am. Sometimes it's hard to be me. Turning his attention back to Angel, the host says, "You're at a crucial juncture, big guy." "So talk!" Angel demands. Pursing his lips, the host says, "So...no." Angel asks if the host is going to tell him anything. "I'll tell you [that] you're headed into trouble. With a capital 'troub.' Let her go, bro. That way lies badness." Angel whines that the host gives murderous demons free advice but he won't help Angel. The host says, "I set people on their paths, okay? And this is way off your path, sweetie." Angel again demands to know where Darla is, and the host somehow avoids waggling his head as he says, "I know you aren't gonna start anything in here." The host stands, adding, "You're a good boy. Have a drink before you go. On me."
At the office, Cordy has changed into a sheer black shirt layered over a perilously low-cut tank-top. Yeah, that hotel uniform was whorish, but this isn't. She answers the phone, and Angel asks if she found an address for the Kramers. Cordy covers the phone and tells Wesley, "It's him!" Back on the phone, she affects a calm and soothing manner as she says, "Wesley and I really think you need to --" Angel barks, "Cordelia! Address! Now!" Cordy reluctantly says that the Kramers own a house at 1409 Galloway in Studio City. Angel hangs up and moves out. Wesley walks up to Cordy and notes, "You really stood up to him." Meanwhile, the camera pulls back a little allowing us to see that Cordy's hair is piled up in some kind of crazy, twisted, gigantic ball on top of her head. It's indescribable, not to mention indefensible. Wow. Anyway, Wesley strikes a fey pose and says in falsetto, "The time I talk to him, I won't weenie out like you, Wesley." Cordy says, "Don't start with me. And if I sound like that, shoot me." Wesley pulls out a gun, and Cordy drops her last request. Wesley says it's a tranquilizer gun. Cordy says, "Do you mean, if Angel really does go off his rocker like he's done before? Think that'll do it?" Wesley realizes he might need a bigger Gunn, and picks up the phone.
Angel lurks outside the Kramer house and sees Darla through the window. Inside, she and her "husband" sit at the dinner table. We quickly establish that Stephen is a hired actor, from the method school, so within seconds I'm begging Darla to kill him. Angel lurks. Stephen mentions the Actor's Studio. Oh, that James Lipton. There's another man in the house, who looks like a security guard with his tidy little earphone. Stephen asks, "What'd this guy do to you, anyway? You're going through an awful lot of trouble to teach him a lesson." Darla toys with her hair for no reason except to allow us to see that she, too, has an earphone. As Stephen natters on, Darla finally takes matters into her own hands, literally, by squeezing a vulnerable portion of Stephen's anatomy. She explains, "If you don't shut up, I'm going to kill you." Leaning back, she says, "Lindsey, can you hear me?" From his office speakerphone, Lindsey says that he can. Darla says, "He's here. I can feel him." Lindsey says that he needs a few more minutes to "set things in motion."
Gunn eyes a gun, manacles, and a pile of chains. Wesley assures him that this is just a precaution, and that they trust Angel. Cordy agrees, "It's not like he turns evil every time he gets this cranky." "He turns evil?" Gunn asks. Wesley explains that Angel is a soul-fortified, vitamin-enriched version of Angelus. Gunn leans in and wonders, "As evil, bloodsucking vampires go, how would you rate Angelus?" Wesley's comforting answer is, "Historically, as bad as they come. Especially when he was with his sire, Darla." Okay, we don't know what Angelus did while he was with Darla, but is it likely that any of it was worse than almost sucking the entire world into Hell, which he did after Darla was dead? Cordy says that they're trying to determine whether Darla has "resurrection powers." Gunn restates that Angelus and Darla together are bad news. Cordy says, "Imagine Bonnie and Clyde if they had a hundred and fifty years to get it right." Gunn asks, "If he gets up to his old tricks, how bad can it get?" Thanks for cueing that flashback, Gunn. And I thought you were different.
A stained-glass window gives us a clue as to the setting. An unkempt Angelus leans against something as Darla enters the room. She hugs him, saying, "We made quite a mess out there. Blood and habits everywhere." That rhymed! Angelus says, "Convents. They're just a big cookie jar." While they kiss, a voice says, "Black sky. It wants a lit'le wormy me!" Oh, that wacky Dru. Angelus and Darla stop and look over to where Drusilla is cowering on the floor, crying. Darla asks why Drusilla is there, and I wonder why Darla didn't see her immediately. "I thought you killed her," Darla says. Angelus replies, "Just her family." He lunges down to the floor, taking Darla with him, as Dru scoots away. Dru mutters, "Eyes like arrows. Like needles." She's probably thinking of Rudolph Valentino. Well, she does see the future, y'know. Angelus explains, "This one's special. I have big plans for her." He and Darla make out while Dru repeats, "Snake in the woodshed!" several times. It's as if Dru and Darla are in a contest to see who can annoy the audience more. Darla rolls on top of Angelus and asks, "Do we kill her during, or after?" Sobbing, I reach for the rum. Angelus says, "Neither," and sits up with Darla atop him. Victorian fashion really enchanced Darla's breasts. A lot. Yikes. Angelus proposes that they turn Drusilla into a vampire. He explains, "Killing is so merciful in the end, isn't it? The pain is ended." Darla points out that Drusilla is...well, nuts. "Eternal torment," Angelus explains, and rolls over so that they are in Dru's lap. "Am I learning?" he asks. If Dru wasn't nuts before, that certainly would push her over the edge. They kiss again, and Dru laughs at Angelus's hair. When they still don't stop kissing, she starts crying. I know her pain.
Angel's still lurking outside the Kramer house. Darla carries her plate into the kitchen and throws it to the ground. My god, she's not just evil, she's a careless housekeeper! "Lindsey, I'm waiting," she declares. From his office, Lindsey says, "You're on. Have fun." Darla picks up the phone and dials 911. Her voice quavering, she says, "My name is Deetta Kramer, I live at 1409 Galloway. There's a man outside. I told him to go away. Oh my god, he's breaking into the house! He's gonna kill us! Help me!" As she throws the phone down, Stephen expresses some ethical qualms. Darla tells the security guy, "Do it, and make it look real." The security guy vamps out and backhands her.
Outside, Angel hears Darla screaming for help. He breaks through the door and runs into the kitchen, where Darla is kneeling by the dead Stephen. She immediately recoils and cries, "Don't hurt me! What did you do?" In his office, Lindsey smiles as he hears sirens approaching the house. "Woman should have her own series," he declares. Lindsey has bad taste. Back at the house, the cops burst in and aim their weapons at Angel. Fade to black.
During the commercials, I call Johanna to declare that if Angel doesn't immediately realize that he shouldn't have been able to get into the house, I'm going to shoot myself. I'll buy that he didn't think of it immediately upon entering, but as soon as he has time to think about it he should realize something funny's going on. By the time the show is back on, I wonder if betting my life on Angel's ability to think clearly might have been a tad rash.
The cops order Angel to kneel. He raises his hands, looks at Darla, and says, "You'll pay for this." And then he races down the hall and hops up into the attic. One of the cops demands a SWAT team, and hears the pitter-patter of Angel's feet as he makes his way to the roof. Angel decides that the best place to jump to the ground is right in front of a large window, and the cops run out to give chase. Darla looks after them and smiles to herself.
Later, Darla bonds with Kate out on the street. Darla asks how Angel was able to get away, and Kate replies, "Adrenaline. They chased him for sixteen blocks." Kate says, "One of my officers said that you recognized this man, and his name was Angel." Darla claims that Angel has been following her for weeks, calling her Darla. She stammers, "And then tonight, he came here. I told him to just stay out, that I was calling the police, and he just broke in...This is gonna sound crazy, but there was something wrong with his face. And he was biting." Kate also misses the key point that Angel wasn't invited in. I'll buy that Kate's happy to believe bad things about Angel, but she's not normally stupid. Until now. She assures Darla that they'll find Angel, and turns away. Darla smiles smugly -- at least until Angel swings down out of the tree she's standing under and spirits her away. I know that should have been scary, but the image Darla's little feet moving up out of the frame makes me laugh. It's not the comedy gold of Lindsey losing his hand, but it's still funny.
The MoG are chillin'. Gunn says that he's "adjusting to the idea that this good-guy vampire that I work for can go bad." Cordy says that Angel's good 99% of the time, although I'm not sure what she's basing that figure on, given that he's 247. Gunn says that he respects their loyalty, "but if the bad Angel walks through that door, I will kill him in two seconds flat." Writers, don't put ideas like that in our minds and then deny us. I want to see Gunn vs. Angelus. And not just fighting. The door opens, everyone reaches for weapons, but it turns out it's only a heavily armed group of policemen. Phew, nothing to worry about from cops in L.A.! Everyone relaxes. Kate storms in and demands to know where Angel is. Cordy says that Angel isn't there, and Kate orders the cops to search the building. Wesley asks if she has a warrant, and Kate fires back, "Seeing as how he just murdered Stephen Kramer and kidnapped his wife, I think I've got probable cause." Wesley and Cordy insist that Angel isn't that type of person. Kate says, "In fact, he's not a person at all, is he?" I'm happy to spy a cop in the background looking taken aback at that declaration. She goes on, "You guys wanna help yourselves out here, or go down with the boss?" In unison, Cordy and Wesley fold their arms against their (respective) chests. Kate spies Gunn, and asks if he's a "new player." Gunn introduces himself, and Kate asks him for ID. With a world-weary expression, Gunn hands it over. Kate asks another cop to check Gunn's record. Wesley starts to make excuses, but Kate interrupts to ask who Darla is.
The Angelmobile is parked outside the burial ground/convent/water tank/former home to the blob. Angel drags Darla down the stairs inside and shoves her into the middle of the room. "So you're what Wolfram & Hart brought back in that box, and they brought you back as human," he says. Darla looks down to see the dead blob, but has no comment at this time. "They think I won't kill one," Angel goes on to say. "Want to know what I think? I think they don't know me that well." Oh, it's so nice to see little hints of the Angelus that I knew and...didn't loathe as much. Darla, frightened, starts to run away. Angel chases. Then they both stop. Angel explains that this place used to be a convent, "before they excavated it." I'm not sure that "excavated" is the right word, but whatever. He reminds Darla that he likes convents. Darla crosses herself and looks down as if she's praying. Angel laughs, and says they're both too old to play games. He vamps out and adds, "I need to talk to the real you." He rushes forward and pins her against a pillar. He rips her shirt away, bends her neck, and notes, "It's been a long time since I said this to anyone, but you can scream all you want." Darla pants as he slides his fangs over her skin. Then her gasps change in tone, and she insists, "I'm not gonna scream!" Again with the kissing. "There's my boy!" she says, before sucking his face some more. I scream for her as we go to commercials.
Kate's going over Gunn's priors: "Disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, GTA, assault...You've led a rich, full life, haven't you, Charles?" Gunn says he gets around. But doesn't his camp mitigate all those things? Cordy insists that Gunn helps people, and that all of his arrests probably happened a long time ago. Kate agrees that some of it is from years ago, "and some of it is in the last two weeks." Kate tells Gunn that his current company will probably get him into even more trouble. Gunn sarcastically says, "I can see you're looking out for me, Detective." Cordy tries to distract them both by saying that they all want to find Angel. Kate says that they don't, and that Angel stalked Deetta Kramer. "She begged him to stay out, and he knocked down the door, and killed her husband." Words cannot express how happy I am that Gunn is the one who sees the problem with that story. "So how'd he get in the house? She invite him in?" Kate dismisses that idea, and then gets the point. Cordelia explains it to any members of the audience who missed it the first time. Wesley does his part by showing Kate "a daguerreotype of Darla, taken over a hundred years ago." So, when she wasn't leaving a bloody trail through several continents, Darla posed for pictures. Lordy, she's vain.
Darla and Angel are still sucking face. Angel pushes her away, finally, saying, "That's enough." It's way past enough, in point of fact. Darla disagrees, and does something involving her face and his chest that we are luckily unable to see. Angel grabs her arm and pulls her off. Darla says, "You're hurting me. I like it." I pause the tape for a while, to regroup. She pulls away, and Angel loses the game face. Turning to her, he asks, "What's the play, Darla?" Well, the setting would work for Becket, but that's just a suggestion. Darla says she's just having fun. Angel replies, "Wolfram & Hart didn't bring you back for fun. The dreams, the frame job...What's the big plan, huh? Get me so screwed up I go bad again?" Darla agrees that the plan is "trite, I know, but what do you expect? They're only human." Angel tells her to "embrace that mediocrity," and I think mediocrity might be step up for her, actually. He goes on: "You're talking about your own kind now." Darla insists that she remembers everything they did, and everything they could do. Angel strokes her hair and says, "But the bitch is, you have a soul now." Darla backs away. Angel says that soon the guilt will eat away at her, the same way it eats at him. Darla proposes a solution: "All you have to do is let me give you one little moment of happiness." Angel whispers, "You took me places, showed me things, huh? You blew the top off my head. But you never made me happy." Darla looks hurt. "But that, that cheerleader did? We were together a hundred and fifty years. We shared everything. You're saying never?" Angel tells her that she couldn't understand. Darla, feeling jilted, says that she does: "Guy gets a taste of something fresh and he thinks he's touching God!" Okay, I kind of sympathize with that feeling. Angel denies it, but Darla continues, "There was a time in the early years when you would have said I was the definition of bliss." She sneers, "Buffy wasn't happiness. She was just new." Angel chuckles, "You're getting awfully bent over this, Darla. I couldn't feel that with you because I didn't have a soul. But then I got a second chance. Just like you have." Darla declares Angel to be "a poster child for soulfulness." She embraces him again, and says, "Before you got neutered, you weren't just any vampire. You were a legend. Nobody could keep up with you. Not even me. You don't learn that kind of darkness; it's innate -- it was in you before we ever met." Okay, I like where this is going. Until she goes on to say, "You said you can smell me? Well, I can smell you, too. And my boy is in there, and he wants out!" Before, it was ominous. Now it's just gross.
At the hotel, the cops declare that Angel has left the building. Kate leaves some on guard and prepares to move out. Cordy stands up (metaphorically) and says, "We solved the damn case! Find out who did away with the real owners of that house and you'll find your killer!" Kate says that they don't get it. Gunn asks, "The fact that he's innocent?" Kate explains, "The fact that while you're fighting your big battles of good and evil, the innocent are the ones that get caught in the crossfire! Those are the ones that I care about! Like that man tonight, or like the real owners of that house, if what you say is true. And those are the ones that I chalk up to your boss." She has a point. Wesley says that those crimes aren't Angel's fault. Kate dismisses that by saying, "That's right, he's good, I keep forgetting. I'm sorry, and why did he kidnap that woman again?" When no one answers, she leaves.
It's daytime. Angel and Darla are both panting. No one knows why. Angel again says that soon Darla will feel guilt for what she's done. For instance: "That man you got killed." Darla says, "Please. He was an actor!" Hee. Angel says he's serious, and Darla says, "Yeah, like a heart attack, and just about as much fun!" Angel says that if Darla hurts anyone else, he'll kill her. Darla asks if that's against his "Cub Scout code." Angel says he'll make an exception. Darla insists that he'll miss dreaming of her, adding, "You should have heard the things you said in your sleep. Nasty things, Angel." Angel grabs her by the throat and tells her to stop. I wish he'd done that half an hour ago. How'd he last a hundred years listening to that voice? Darla pulls out a crucifix, presses it to his chest, and says, "No, you stop!" As his flesh sizzles, she says, "You see, no matter how good a boy you are, God doesn't want you!" They fall apart, and Darla adds, "But I still do." Huge crescendo on the soundtrack. Darla drops the crucifix and runs to the stairs, which are bathed in sunlight. A few steps up, she stops to look back at Angel and ask, "What, no goodbye kiss?" And so she leaves. With Angel stuck there till sundown, since his car is outside with the hood down. What made him think that this was a good hideout?
The following evening, Angel is sitting in his apartment, brooding. Cordy and Wesley knock on the door. Angel opens it. Cordy, hands behind her back, notes that they haven't seen Angel all day, and says they wanted to make sure he was okay. Angel says, "I didn't go bad, Cordelia." Cordy insists that they weren't at all worried, while handing something over to Wesley. Wesley, never good at playing along, can't figure out why she handed him the tranquilizer gun. Angel asks if there's anything else. Cordy says there isn't, but Wesley says, "With Darla back, in league with Wolfram & Hart, there are a lot of forces arrayed against you. There's going to be trouble." Angel laughs mirthlessly and agrees, "There's gonna be a lot of trouble. And I say, bring it on." Total shout-out.