Darla

Previously on Angel, Lindsey became -- oh, come on. There's one burning topic on everyone's minds, and it ain't Darla. So instead of bothering with the recap this week, I've decided to write a 10,000-word essay titled, "Why Spike is my boyfriend." Ready?

Let's start with his coat. I believe that --

[Some time later, a visit from the MBTV attack lawyers results in the deletion of the remaining 9,992 words, along with the repeated use of terms like "breach of contract," "pathetic schoolgirl crush," and "mandated psychological treatment."]

Um. Sorry. So let's get right to the show! And not talk about Spike unless it's actually relevant! Or they'll have to increase my medication! Okay? Great! Previously on Angel, Darla returned, Lindsey implied that Wolfram & Hart had a plan to deal with Angel, Angelus sired Drusilla, and Angel was cursed with a soul. It didn't happen in that order, of course.

Angel is sitting in his room, sketching. We see he's adding the final touches to a portrait of Darla. Perhaps for the upcoming Angel coloring book, just in time for Christmas. My goodness, he has GIGANTIC fingers. I can't decide if it's just the camera angle or not, but I don't think it is. I mean, they're so large, they're actually in proportion to his head. That's just freakish. Wesley appears in the doorway behind Angel. Get this: Wesley's wearing a pale pink shirt, brown pants, and a burgundy and gold striped tie. All of which appear to be several sizes too large for him. Johanna says that he looks like a little kid dressing up in his father's clothes. Without turning around, Angel asks what Wesley wants. Wesley says he's just "popping 'round to see if everything's all right." Angel says it is. Wesley steps into the room and asks if there's anything Angel wants to talk about. There isn't. As Wesley walks further into the apartment, he treads on the crumpled papers littering the floor. Wesley assumes (as do we) that all of these papers are more drawings of Darla, because Angel is Captain Obsession. I suspect that actually many of them are sketches of unicorns and rainbows and fairy princesses. Because Angel is also a big poofter.

Fade up on Darla, curled up in a chair with cuts on her hands. Lindsey enters, fresh from a visit with Dawson's barber. It seems Darla's done some redecorating, if by that you mean she's smashed everything that seems smashable. Lindsey probably feels just like he's walking on broken glass. 'Cause he is. Lindsey goes over to Darla and notes her injuries. "Something happened?" he asks. Darla replies, "Oh, God, yes. So many things. I remember them all. Which one were you thinking of?" She's being a tad literal. Lindsey says that they should have waited before sending Darla to see Angel. Darla dreamily responds, "You never talk about yourself, Lindsey. Got a girlfriend? Boyfriend? Someone special?" Lindsey says, "There's no one." Apparently, Darla affected interest in Lindsey so that she could whine some more, since her response is, "You can be with someone for 150 years, think you know 'em, still, it doesn't work out." She tells Lindsey that he should have seen her and Angelus together. Lindsey says, "He was a different person then." "And so was I," replies Darla, all little-girl-lost. She asks if Lindsey knows what they've become. "Enemies," Lindsey guesses. Darla says, "Oh no, much worse. Now we're soulmates." And she giggles.

During the credits, Johanna and I discuss how Darla and Angel are soulmates in the same way that Joey and Dawson are soulmates. Then we realize that if you compare things like hairstyles and backbone-deficits, the comparison works really well. Then we realize that Lindsey has bad hair and no spine, which I guess makes him his own soulmate. Then the show starts again.

Virginia Colony, 1609. For some reason, they've elected to left-justify the date/location captioning over to the left on Angel. Which is fine as a little bit of style to distinguish this from Buffy, but since they used to put captions in the center it's a little jarring to change things now. We pan up to Darla, looking pale, wan, and well, syphilitic. Or something. A doctor is removing leeches. The whole thing is straight out of Dangerous Liaisons. And if I hadn't thought that before, I certainly would when Darla moans, "Someone close the shutters." Oh, why doesn't she realize that Valmont loves her? It's all so sad. Darla mutters about how wrong it is to die while the sun is so bright. A robed priest appears in the doorway and says, "You'll not see it again." Ah, her master's voice. Darla complains that she didn't ask for a priest, the priest says she called out for him. We establish that Darla is a fairly successful whore, like we didn't know that already. The priest says, "You should have asked for a priest long ago, child. Your life may have been the better for it." Darla gets a decent line as she replies, "You should have paid me a visit before today, Father. Your life may have been more interesting because of it." He asks whether she'll ask God for forgiveness, and Darla says that God never did anything for her. The priest asks everyone else to leave, noting, "You can't save her life. Perhaps I can still save her soul." As everyone exits, Darla says that her soul is past saving: "Let the devil take me if he'll have me. Either way, I die." The priest finally pushes back his hood, revealing himself to be that batty old nemesis, the Master. He tells Darla that she won't die, but will instead be reborn. Darla asks whether he is Death. The Master says, "I am your savior. God never did anything for you, but I will." And so Darla is sired, with much blipverting of: happy long-haired Angel in a suit, burning Gypsy caravans, and shots from "Dear Boy." Anybody who wants to figure out why the Master felt like making the super-fun Atlantic crossing, feel free. Did he invent the concept of cruising for babes? You tell me.

Angel still wants to rescue Darla. No one else does. Cordelia asks, "And this would be the same woman that you didn't notice was in your bedroom every night for, like, three weeks straight." Angel says that was different. Cordy replies, "Different in the 'sitting right on top of you' sense, yeah." Wesley has put an olive sweater over a red-and-white checked shirt. Why? He notes that Darla wanted to be found last time; now it may be hard to track her down. Cordy adds, "She could be sitting on top of anybody." Tee hee. Gunn lurks in the background, wondering if he really had to show up this week. Doesn't he have Found Boys to lead? Camps to run? Sheesh. Angel insists that since they run a detective agency, finding Darla should be easy, but Cordy points out that they actually run a lousy detective agency, making things more difficult. She says, "Unless there's a website called www.OhByTheWayWeHaveDarlaStashedHere.com, we're pretty much out of luck." Then she suggests that Angel could sniff Darla out if they drove around the city with the top down. No one is enthused about this idea. Gunn, desperate to wind this scene up, notes that a firm like Wolfram & Hart would probably find a way to write off Darla's housing expenses. Darla and Wesley rush to their cache of implausible research devices, and Angel calls after them, "She'd want something with a view." More quietly, he adds, "Darla always loved something with a view." Can anyone else sense a thematic refrain coming on?

London, underground, 1760. And I don't mean the subway. Darla takes Angelus to meet the folks. Or, uh, folk. Or, uh, the Master. Darla catches the Master up on her misadventures with Angelus: "On the way back we cut a bloody swath through South Wales and Northern England." Angelus sucks up (so to speak) by quipping, "Yorkshiremen -- tough as leather." They explain that the Master is head of the Order of Aurelius. Angelus, unimpressed, notes, "And you live in the sewers, do ya?" The Master says he prefers to call it lurking, and that one day they will "arise and lay waste to the world above." Angelus suggests that it's actually rather nice above ground, especially in comparison to the "rat-infested stink-hole" where the Master lives. He says he has to have a proper bed, and then goes on about how Darla needs to have a view. Darla is probably thinking, "Why can't my boyfriends ever get along with my dad?" The Master says, "We stalk the surface to feed and grow our ranks; we do not live among the human pestilence." "Grow our ranks"? Ugh. Kill him. Oh, right, someone will. Good job, too. Angel snarks, "You really couldn't with that face, now could ya?" Angelus makes himself at home in the Master's throne while Darla huffs, "The Master has grown past the curse of human features!" Angelus worries that he'll end up getting a "bat nose" like the Master's. The Master says that few vampires live as long as he does, and hurls Angelus across the room. Angelus laughs, picks himself up, and invites Darla to Naples. The Master tells Angelus to show the proper respect and clobbers him again. They could have done something nice here and implied that Angelus's reaction to the Master is influenced by his relationship with his own father, but it's probably for the best that they don't since I don't need any more anvils just now. Plus, I think we're all well aware that all fathers, and father-figures, are evil. Angelus tells Darla, "You belong by my side, out in the world, feeding as we like, taking what we need." But we can't escape all the anvils, so he adds, "I'll give you that view you crave, darlin'. I'll give you everything." He concludes by asking whether Darla would rather look at the Master's face or his. Wow, tough call. The Master chuckles, "Idiot, I made her!" Then he hesitates, and asks Darla, "You're leaving with the stallion, aren't you?" Stallion? Stallion? I am deeply disturbed. Darla rushes to Angelus, helps him up, and away they go. The Master tells his henchvamps, "It won't last. I give it a century, tops."

Angel tries to join in the researching by looking "Darla" up in a dictionary, and concludes that it must be the name the Master gave her. Wesley reports that they're still trying to track her down. Angel can't figure out why Wolfram & Hart would bring Darla back as a human. Wesley suggests that it was the only way they could control her. He tells Angel, "You have all your attention focused on finding this one woman." Angel asks if he thinks that Wolfram & Hart are just trying to distract him. Wesley thinks that it's possible. Have they been ignoring Cordy's visions or something? Because as far as I can tell, there's nothing going on for Angel to be distracted from.

Lindsey escorts Darla into his office and opens the curtains. So she can have a view, y'see. Holland enters and says howdy, then asks to talk to Lindsey privately. Out in the hallway, Holland says it isn't "prudent" to keep Darla in their building. Lindsey explains that he's worried about her. Holland says that "she's cracking up," and before Lindsey can reassure him, continues, "She's way ahead of schedule." He cheerfully says that Lindsey did the right thing to bring Darla back, and advises Lindsey to keep Darla there, and to rid his office of any "letter-openers, staple guns, even ball-point pens."

London, 1880. Darla, Angelus, and Drusilla answer the musical question, "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?" Apparently, you drink his blood and leave his corpse in the gutter. Dru stares down at the body and says, "When I bit into 'im, I could 'ear the ocean." Darla dryly responds, "Of course you could," while Angelus looks on. Dru says she's all alone, and Angelus says, "You've got us." Dru complains, "You won't even hurt me just a little bit." Yawn. Darla smirks, "All you have to do is ask." Dru calls Darla "Grandmother," which Darla doesn't care for. Catfight! Angelus suggests that Drusilla could "make [herself] a playmate," and Drusilla gets all enthusiastic: "I could pick the wisest and bravest knight in all the land, and make him mine forever with a kiss." On cue, William the Bloodless stumbles into them and rushes off to nurse his broken heart. The vampires stop to watch, and Darla suggests, "Or you could just take the first drooling idiot that comes along." As Angelus and Darla walk on, Drusilla continues staring after William.

Angel sums up the MoG's research efforts: they've found a property owned by one of Wolfram & Hart's clients. With a view. Angel doesn't think they can assume that Darla is there. Cordy says that he place has a view, and Berber carpeting. Angel remains unconvinced until Cordy says that her sister is staying in unit 319. She continues, "My older...way older...like, 400 years older...blonde sister, Darla, no last name. I've been desperately trying to find her because Mom and Dad are in the coma. Sue, the property manager, was very helpful." With a final grin, Cordy adds, "She even cried." I feel like I should make a joke about Cordy's age, especially when it's handed to me this way, but she's looking so pretty lately that I just can't do it. After processing all this, Angel grabs the address and races for the door. But Wesley thinks it would be a better idea if he and Gunn went on a reconnaissance mission first. Cordy seconds that emotion, "since it's one o'clock in the afternoon, and that address is in Sun Valley." Angel gives in, and chuckles, "Right. Sun." Cordy explains, "Actually, I was thinking 'Valley.' I mean, why go there if you don't have to?"