Rain of Fire

Currently on Angel, the WB claims that it is the beginning of the end, but the end is just the beginning. Given how coherent that is, I'm guessing that Darth Burger now works in their promo department. Which makes me wonder what kind of foul hell-beast is behind the UPN ads for Buffy, but I digress. Hey, did anyone else find it funny that there was an ad for the Reign of Fire DVD release right before the show started? Maybe it's an incredibly complicated crossover, and they'll fight some dragons on the show. That'd be cool.

Previously on Angel, Wesley turned down sex with Lilah in favor of physics with Fred, Gunn killed a guy so that Fred wouldn't torture him, Cordy forgot that she shouldn't sing, and then regained her memories after Cary lost a few of his own.

The show opens with Gunn picking up his hubcap-axe. Oh, I'm so depressed. Poor little hubcap-axe. It doesn't know what will happen to it. Angel descends the stairs saying "No," followed by Cary, who's saying, "Why." That continues for a while, and it gives you a good idea of how intelligent everyone's going to seem throughout this episode. Cary thinks that Angel should ask Cordelia what she remembers about "her stint as Miss Higher Power." Angel wants to give Cordy time "to adjust." Cary asks Gunn and Fred for support, but they're gathering up weapons for a case. Angel asks if he should tag along, but Gunn says it's just a woman hearing "spookies" in the plumbing. They exit as Angel cheerfully tells Cary, "See? The worst thing we've got going on is a haunted toilet. So let's give Cordy a little space -- it's not like the world's gonna end right this second."

Poof. The world ends. Closing credits. Goodnight, everybody!

Not really. Not yet, anyway. Instead we hear a woman scream, and cut to Connor's Flat of Foreboding, where Cordelia is watching a movie. Which is the source of the screaming, naturally. Connor quietly enters and says, bizarrely, "Chocodiles!" It turns out that he's gone out in search of junk food. Cordy takes one and thanks Connor: "Not just for the snacky goodness. God, thanks for everything." Connor tells Cordy to rest, and brushes her hair out of her face. Cordy says that whenever she closes her eyes, she sees "something horrible moving. Deep down, clawing its way up." She talks about tasting blood and smelling burning flesh, and Connor assures her that she's safe with him. Cordy insists that nobody's safe, adding, "I want to warn Angel, but the words won't come out." Maybe she could write him a note. She goes on being spooky for a while and finishes, "It's real. And it's almost here." Connor stands up, and a low growly voice says, "I know." Cordy looks up and sees what looks like Satan, wearing a lava suit, looking down at her. Satan grabs her by the throat. (Necks! Always necks!)

Cordy suddenly gasps and wakes up. Connor rushes to her bedside and asks if she's okay. She just squeaks and bursts into tears, crying on his shoulder as he hugs her. Credits.

When we return, Angel is polishing up his weaponry while Cary demons the phone. Cary says, "They came out of your what? Okay, okay, well, did they get up there themselves, or was this part of a, y'know, a thing? No, I'm not judging!" Hee. Cary pauses to ask Angel if they fight snakes. Angel grunts, "Only if they're giant. Or demons. Or giant demons." He suddenly starts paying attention and rather nervously asks Cary if there are giant demon snakes on the loose. ["That sounds like an incredibly complicated crossover with another current Warner Bros. product you may care to enjoy." -- Wing Chun] Cary's pretty sure they're normal-sized snakes. Angel more eagerly notes that the snakes may still be demonic. He asks whether the snakes are making "weird demony sounds."

Cut to a woman telling Fred and Gunn that "the noises are horrible." She's leading them to her haunted bathroom. Apparently, the mysterious noises started in the past week. Fred says that "the longer a specter inhabits an area, the harder it is to convince them to leave." Sigh. Poor Dennis. Gunn's sure they can handle it. The woman points them toward the bathroom and departs. Fred and Gunn slowly enter and find...

...a palatial bathroom. Gunn says, "Marble countertops, whirlpool tub, bidet -- this is the kind of place I imagine us movin' into one day." Gunn fantasizes about owning a bidet? Sure. And what exactly leads him to think his current lifestyle is going to eventually lead to a fortune? Oh my lord -- Gunn's planning to kill Angel and steal his krugerands! Oops, sorry, I'm missing the angst. Fred is uncomfortable about Gunn's line of conversation, and I can see how she'd feel uncomfortable at the idea of sharing a home with Gunn, considering she's currently sharing a single hotel room with him. Actually, I don't understand that at all. They're both acting like completely different characters, frankly. Maybe this is like "Waiting in the Wings," and they've both been possessed by the tormented spirits of some extremely dull middle-class couple. Gunn tries to reassure her: "I'm not sayin' tomorrow. It'd be nice one day, that's all." To have a bidet. Fred starts to reply, but they're interrupted by creaks and other generic mysterious noises. Gunn peers into the sink, and I'm suddenly convinced that horrible things are going to come out of the drain. The noise stops, and just as Gunn lifts his head the bathroom mirror breaks and out come rats. Rats behind the mirror, rats poking out of the shower drain, rats hopping out of the toilet, rats in the tub, and yes, rats in the bidet. Fred and Gunn shriek and yell, and Fred observes that the rats aren't ghosts. "Oh, they're gonna be!" Gunn insists. Then a rat falls on him from the ceiling fixture. Fred tries the door but it won't open. More shrieking; Gunn finally shoves the door open and they make it outside.

Gunn keeps on panicking and shouting, "Get 'em off me!" I thought it was odd that Gunn was this freaked out by a bunch of rats, but then I remembered that he mentioned not liking rats before. They quickly walk down the hall, past the woman, and Fred suggests calling an exterminator. "Or just burn the place down," Gunn adds.

Shut up, Wesley's apartment. Wesley comes home, closes the door, and we hear Lilah ask, "Hard day at the office?" Wesley mentions an encounter with a swarm of bugs and asks, "Why are you dressed that way?" The camera swings around so we can see that Lilah's put her hair in pigtails and is wearing glasses and a -- well, she's dressed like Fred, is the point. She swings her legs like a little girl and assumes a fake Texan accent as she drawls, "Isn't this what you like?" Wesley tries to interrupt, but Lilah insists, "I'm good, and I'm pure, and science turns me on, and one day, if I pray hard enough and eat all my vegetables, I just might have hips!" Hee. I love Lilah. In her normal tone, she asks if Wesley was turned on by Fred's lecture. Presumably she's referring to the thirty seconds of the lecture that happened before Fred was wrapped in the coils of a vicious hell-beast. Although, given Wesley's habits of late, maybe not. Lilah says that she doesn't care about Wesley's crush on "the Texas twig." She adds, "I know whose bed you'll be crawling into at the end of the day," and starts kissing Wesley. He responds, then pulls back to ask, "You think you know me?" "Better than she ever will," Lilah responds. And then they break into a rousing game of chess. Um. Strip chess. Yes, that's it. Lilah starts to take off the glasses, but Wesley barks, "Leave them on." She hesitates a second and then does so, but she looks a lot less happy about, um, castling.

Gunn and Fred walk through the Hyperion's courtyard talking about how horrible all the rats were. Fred wants to take a long bath, and I really like that lipstick she's wearing. There's just no way to work that kind of observation smoothly into a sentence. Gunn cheerfully asks, "We have bubbles?" Fred stops and gives him a look as she slowly pulls a Garbo. Gunn nods quickly and wishes he was back with the rats as Fred goes on about how the bathtub isn't that big. It suddenly strikes me that on Buffy, the females are the main characters and also the ones who suffer heartbreak, and on the more guy-focused Angel it's the guys who pine away, and I wonder if that says something about how the sexes are more alike than different, because almost everyone identifies with characters who feel rejected and have relationship traumas, and just when you think I'm going to start a chorus of "Kumbaya" I swerve and end up ruminating on how the point is, regardless of gender, most people suck. Not to get all philosophical on you or anything. Where was I? Gunn is asking Fred what she wants from him. Fred says, "Nothing," and Gunn agrees, "Yeah, you've made that pretty clear." He complains that ever since he snapped her ex-teacher's neck in front of her, she's acted weird. It's so out of the blue! Gunn argues, Fred whines, and I'm still unclear on whether Fred's upset that her boyfriend is capable of murder, or if she's upset that he committed murder for her, or if she's mad that he kept her from being a murderer. Gunn says that murder "isn't in [Fred's] heart." Fred asks, "But it's in yours?" Gunn looks away and says, "It is now." See what I mean? It's all ambiguous. With that, Fred sniffles and pushes past Gunn to run away. What about her bath?

In the lobby, Angel is sorting weapons while Cary continues answering the phone. I know I should bitch about why Angel isn't helping answer the calls, but I can't work up the energy. He probably realizes that he doesn't have the wit for these calls. For instance, Cary is saying, "No, that certainly doesn't sound normal for a boy his age. We'll send someone out as soon as we can. Just, um, just don't poke it." In single shot, the camera swirls around in a very satisfying way so that we see the lobby from a lot of different angles and little things like that make the sets feel like real places and not just sets, so I thought I should give props to the director there. As we pan around, Gunn stomps inside. Angel asks how it went, and where Fred is. Gunn answers, "Bad. Out," and immediately starts helping Cary answer the phones.

Cary takes a break and starts chatting with Angel about the surprisingly large number of cases they're getting, but Angel dismisses it by guessing that "it's gotten around that [he's] back." Ha! 'Cause they had so many cases last year. Angel and Cary discuss the best way to arrange the weapons cabinet. Which, for reasons that are unimportant, leads to Angel asking, "What if I were fighting a Glurgg and I ask for a Khopesh to finish him off. What would you throw me?" Cary answers, "A towel? Glurggs are 90% pus." That was such a long way to go for such a dumb joke, and needless to say, I totally respect that effort. Cary suggests that they need more help around the office, and he's got someone in mind: "A certain somebody with a good understanding of higher dimensions? Could tell me what got Hoovered out of my head? Name starts with a 'C'?" Angel looks across the room and says, "Connor." Cary says he was thinking of a "perky love muffin," and no comment, but the point is that, of course, Connor has just entered the lobby. Angel awkwardly greets his son and reassures him that last week's nonsensical spell wore off as soon as Whedon left the set. Hey, Angel? Connor knows that. He was there at the end when everyone tasted of the magical hummus. Angel also thanks Connor for protecting Cordelia. Connor shrugs and his hair isn't parted evenly and it's bugging me, but he's still a cute kid. As long as he stays clothed. Connor tells Angel that Cordelia is staying with him again. Angel pretends that he's totally fine with that, adding, "Couple of days, everything'll be back the way it was." Connor says, "You should talk to her." Cary cheers that suggestion, but Angel demurs, "The last thing she needs is me --" Connor interrupts, "Dad? Please?" Angel looks stricken at the "D" word. Maybe he's thinking,"Gee, you haven't called me 'Dad" since that time you tried to kill me!"

Cut to Connor's lofty place of weirdness. There's a staircase in one corner that I don't remember noticing before. Didn't they have to climb a ladder to get to this place? But once you climb the ladder, there are stairs going up another level? There are also a lot of candles burning, which seems like a safety hazard. Cordy sits facing the camera as Angel and Connor enter. "I'm gonna kill him," Cordy says. Angel says, "He's just worried bout you. We all are." Cordy doesn't reply by saying, "I was talking to Connor." Instead she asks, "[Was] that the royal 'we,' or the populace?" What an odd line. Angel quickly sits down to Cordy and says, "I always wanted to be a prince." Seriously, are they speaking in code? Angel holds Cordy's hand as Connor turns and heads for the door. Cordy asks Angel how he "make[s] everything feel like it's not spiraling apart." He does? And is she referring to the widening gyres? Connor gives Cordy a final look before he leaves, possibly in search of someone who can translate this scene into English. Having driven Connor away, Angel and Cordy begin a normal conversation. Angel mentions how Cordy fled the Hyperion, and asks if he did something wrong. Cordy ominously whispers, "I love you." I'm not sure why she's whispering. Maybe this is more secret code. Angel's reaction is to stare at her, unblinking, which is pretty funny. He looks like someone just dropped a rock on his head. Cordy adds that she'll always love him, and Angel finally says, "I don't suppose we could stop there?" The poor guy wants to say, "Yippee!" but he can sense that there's more. Cordy explains that when she got her memory back, she also remembered things from her trip to Higher-Being Land, including seeing Angel's bloody history. Angel tries not to sound too defensive as he quietly points out, "I never tried to hide who I was." Cordy says, "Knowing's different than living it." As she explains that she saw and felt everything Angel did when he was evil, Angel starts avoiding her eyes and looks guiltier and guiltier. He's actually doing a good job in this scene. Cordy finishes, "I felt you, and how much you enjoyed making them suffer. I love you, Angel. But I can't be with you." Angel stares gloomily into space. Cordy tries consoling him by suggesting that things might change in time. Angel quietly wonders if he can get Cordy to go for another memory-wiping spell. That train of thought is interrupted when Cordy starts gasping and shaking. Angel grabs her shoulders as her eyes suddenly go all-white.

Quick shot of something with horns bursting through what I guess is an earthen wall. Cordy gasps, "He's coming. He's coming now!"

Commercial. Johanna asks, "Is he coming for chocolate?" Because it looked more like he was breaking through giant blocks of dark chocolate, honestly. Perhaps he was being held prisoner by the Cadbury people. Then Johanna complains about how jealous she is of Cordy's Chocodiles. Personally, I was wondering if that was a shout-out to Pop Culture Junk Mail.

Connor sits to Cordy, who is recuperating in bed, as Angel says, "I thought [the visions] weren't supposed to hurt anymore." Cordy says that it wasn't a normal vision, then sighs, "If that word actually applies to anything that ever happens to me." Point. Angel asks about what she saw. Cordy gives a vague description of the demon and how it won't stop until they're all filled with creamy nougat, instead of just saying, "He looks suspiciously like Satan." Perhaps she doesn't want to be guilty of demonic profiling. Angel says he'll take care of it, no problem. Cordy isn't so sure, saying, "I think I know more about this thing, or I knew more when I was all high and mighty, but I just can't get at it." Angel suggests getting Cary to read her again, and Cordy wonders if Cary would be willing to try. Angel shrugs that off: "I can hold him down." Without coming to any clear decision about that option, Cordy insists that she needs to know what's going on. Angel looks inexplicably sad at that.

Hyperion. Gunn finishes dealing with one caller by saying, "If Snowball hasn't tried to eat your spine yet, hit her with the catnip 'til we get there." Cary tells his caller, "I don't think that much mucus is ever a good sign. Uh huh. Please, yeah, describe it in detail." Cary puts the phone against his shoulder as he complains to Gunn about how swamped they are, and suggests that they get Fred to help. Gunn barks, "If Fred wanted to be here, she would." Cary puts his caller on hold and asks Gunn if everything's okay with Fred. Gunn is passive-aggressive, Cary tries to be reassuring, and they throw in some more exposition about Dr. Seidel and the portal and Pylea and yawn. Luckily, they're interrupted by something slamming against the door. Gunn goes to investigate and finds a dead sparrow outside. Aw, it heard them expositioning and felt a sudden urge to dash its brains into a solid object. I know how that feels. Cary tells Gunn to close the door, but Gunn reaches toward the bird saying, "It might not be dead." Cary shouts, "Close the door!" and Gunn looks up and quickly does so. A second later, hundreds of birds start splatting against the hotel. I bet that was fun to shoot, with people out of camera range hurling fake birds and bags of fake blood at the set. Whee! The kamikaze attack ends quickly, and Gunn looks around and says, "I'm guessing this isn't a good sign."

Lilah strolls the corridors of Wolfram & Hart, talking on her cellphone about a 300% increase in something unspecified. Oh, her hair. They'd finally figured out how to do her hair, and now I guess they forgot. Or maybe this is yet another sign of the apocalypse: "Yea, and in the last days, the servants of recurring and never-very-threatening evil shall be tormented with hair that takes the form of ugly ringlets." Anyway, as she reaches her office, she says that she wants Gavin to come to her office, adding, "Somebody's trying to muscle in on our apocalypse." She opens the door and sees Angel sitting on the edge of her desk.

Lilah gripes, "How did you get in here? Vampire detectors, my ass." She assumes that Angel wants to have their long-delayed chat about sucking out bits of Cary's brain. To save time, she summarizes their conversations: "You threaten me, I threaten you, yada yada yawn. Jump directly to the 'throwing you out on your thick, meaty head,' because you know what? You're not getting anything out of me this time, either." Angel says that he didn't expect to: "But Gavin? He was more accommodating." Lilah turns and sees a gagged and bound Gavin sitting in a chair. Lilah grins at the sight and asks why Angel didn't torture Gavin some more. Angel admits, "Really wanted to, but he wouldn't stop talking long enough for me to get into it." Lilah prods Angel into recapping what he's learned. He says that nobody can decipher the information they got from Cary, and that when Wolfram & Hart's psychics try to figure it out, their heads explode. Cool! Angel also claims that Lilah's scared: "You're afraid of what's coming. Maybe we can help each other. The enemy of my enemy --" "Can kiss my ass," Lilah finishes. Angel points out that, per Gavin, Wolfram & Hart doesn't know what's going on. He says that if she helps him, maybe he can keep the coming badness from messing up Wolfram & Hart's plans for...coming badness. And if Angel gets killed instead, Lilah still comes out ahead. Lilah ponders this very silly argument.

Cordy paces around in Connor's Runaway Hideaway and suddenly grabs her coat. Connor immediately pops out to ask where she's going. Cordy tries to insist that she just wants to take a walk, but quickly gives up and admits that the visions are pulling her toward something. Connor asks, "So you were gonna go face it by yourself?" Somehow, this leads to Cordy whining that when she was a Higher Being, she wanted to be human again. Now she is, but she doesn't know why. She wonders, "Am I on vacation? Did I go cosmic AWOL? Did I do something to piss off The Powers That Be and get kicked out? Why am I here?" Connor says she's important. Cordy brushes that off, and Connor repeats, "You're important to me." Cordy observes that Connor's got Angel's knack for "saying the right words," and I giggle at the idea that Angel has such a knack, but whatever. Connor jokes, "Complete sentences. I've been working on it." He actually smiles -- which is kind of exciting because it happens so rarely -- and then looks down. Cordy ponders, and decides that maybe she was sent back to defeat the evil beast from chocolate-land. She heads for the door, and Connor insists on tagging along.

A passing blipvert takes them to an alley. Cordy's still saying she thinks she has a purpose for being here again, and gosh, she's spending a lot of this episode jabbering. Connor observes that he, too, wonders why he's here. Cordy dismissively chuckles and says, "It's called being eighteen. If you make it past twenty-one, things get a lot better!" "If"? That's very reassuring, Cordy. Connor stops and insists, "They already have." Cordy looks at him warningly and says, "You really are getting awfully good with the words." Then she smiles, and they head down another alley.

Cordy thinks the new alley looks familiar. Suddenly she realizes why, and gasps, "Darla. She died here. Connor, this where you were born." Connor gets to ponder that revelation for about two seconds before the street suddenly explodes in front of them, and the big chocolatey Satan hops out of the ground.

Commercials. Johanna keeps insisting I love Angel. I point out that she's the one who has dreams about him. She had one where she had to "rescue" him. He was all tied up, you see. Modesty forbids sharing further details. And she's very lucky I'm not mentioning the other dream she told me about. Not yet, anyway.

After the ads, Connor leaps to attack Satan with a sword. Satan blocks the blows and knocks Connor thirty feet down the alley. Cordy just watches this from her supine position on the ground. Satan strolls over to her and helps her to her feet by yanking on her throat. Hee hee. This is not something you'd notice while watching the show normally, and I'm not really complaining about it, but Satan's feet look sort of silly. It's like he's wearing giant novelty slippers. Hee. Satan holds Cordy up at his eye level and looks like he might be about to say something to her. But then Connor runs in for another attack, this time with a lead pipe. I think. Satan drops Cordy, glares at Connor, and then backhands him into a nearby wall. There's a close-up of Satan's hooves advancing as he marches toward Cordy. Oh, that's why his feet look silly. You know, when they promised him that he could "Add inches now!" he probably should have asked them to be more specific about the location. Unless he really wanted to be taller. Cordy has, once again, decided that staying motionless on the ground is a good defensive tactic. Maybe she's trying to play possum? Satan leans over Cordy. Connor looks up and shouts, "Stay away from her!" Satan looks at Cordy, chuckles, and abruptly leaps upward, vanishing from sight.

Gunn hangs up the phone after leaving a message for Fred with someone. Cary gives a caller a temporary fix for problems with bleeding walls: "Spritz it with a little 409; we'll get back to you." Gunn says he's going to go for a drive, presumably looking for Fred. Cary grabs his coat, too, saying, "I'll hang my head out the window, see if I can pick up the Burkle vibe." Gunn asks if Cary really can detect Fred that way, and Cary says, "No, but it sounds comforting, and I could use the air." Wesley enters, declaiming, "It is a bit ripe in here." Does he just lurk outside the door and eavesdrop until he can make a quippy entrance? Gunn tells Wesley that Fred's out. "Didn't ask," sniffs Wesley. "Didn't have to," Gunn responds. Wesley has no answer for that, so he obligingly asks where Fred is, and then Gunn snarls that it's none of Wesley's business, and finally Cary intervenes by pointing out that there's bigger weirdness than Wesley afoot. Everyone agrees that something strange is going on. It took them half an hour to figure that out. Wesley suggests that they "pool [their] data," and Gunn replies, "Go pool yourself." Hee. He says he's going to look for Fred. Angel interrupts, "No, you're not." 'Cause of the apocalypse, or whatever. Okay, so we've officially established that everyone thinks something bad is happening. Can we move on now? I know this episode is all set-up, but it doesn't have to feel like it's all set-up. So much talking. Sigh.

Cut to everyone looking over papers covered in various scrawls. Angel explains that the papers are everything that Wolfram & Hart's people could decipher from Cary's reading of Cordy. Got that? Wesley asks, "They just handed these over?" Angel doesn't look at Wesley as he replies, "Lilah? She can be very giving." Wesley blinks and looks at Angel. Hee. Angel goes on to explain, "She's got an interest in stopping the end of the world before it ruins Wolfram & Hart's end of the world." Angel's clever plan is to figure out what's happening, and then "do something large and violent." Brilliant. But it's always worked for him before, I suppose. Angel tells Cary that if he'd retained the knowledge Wolfram & Hart took out of his head, he'd have died. Really? When did Angel learn that? As Cary goes to answer the phone, Angel tells him to mark the location of the disturbances on a map to see if they're concentrated anywhere.

Time passes. We see one of the pages in close-up, and the words are running across it in all different directions, overlapping, at which point I guess that if they put all the pages together it'll make a map of Los Angeles. Gunn says that this is hopeless, and Wesley agrees that the writing is gibberish. He reads, "Heat, fallen, shrine, flesh -- none of it makes any sense." Gunn gets up and says, "Maybe we should just take a step back," at which point I say, "Ah ha! I'm right!" While Wesley continues whining, Gunn looks over his shoulder at the papers. He takes one page and holds it against the page Wesley is holding, so that we can see that the designs combine to form a larger picture. It's a great big jigsaw puzzle! I'm so happy that Gunn got to be the smart one, for once. He grabs the papers and begins laying them out on the floor, putting them together. We pull back to see that the pages create a giant "X" inside a square, with smaller symbols around it. Hm. So maybe it's not a street map. But I still had the right idea. As they all stare down at the giant "X" on their floor, I can't help expecting a piano suddenly to fall down and land right on it. Gunn asks what it is, and Angel calls it "The Eye of Fire." Wesley translates this as the alchemical symbol for fire. "And destruction," Angel adds. Gunn says, "You had me at fire," which doesn't exactly make sense. Cary calls the guys as he holds up the map he's been plotting calls on. "Hate to be the little demon who cried 'Apocalypse, Nowish,' but, uh..." Aw, poor Cary. Deprived of another chance to say the title by a last-minute change. He points to the map, where the dots representing calls have lined up into a neat square.

Fred sits in the diner that has provided her and Gunn with so many, many meals. Her waitress banters with her about drinking too much coffee. The extremely nosy waitress also says Fred should call Gunn, adding, "As long as you've got love, it can't be that bad." As the waitress writes up a bill for chipping in with the foreshadowing, an earthquake hits. Things start rattling and Fred pulls the waitress away from the windows, although not really very far away from the windows. Under the tables might be a better move.

Connor's Fort of Fortitude. Cordy is bandaging his wounds as the tremor rattles the building. Again, I think about how unsafe all those candles are. Connor starts to get up, insisting, "I gotta stop it." An earthquake? How, exactly? Plus, it seems to be over already. I don't think Connor should be living in Southern California when he's so jumpy. Cordy pulls him back, and then notices his bruised side and guesses that he's broken several ribs. Connor calmly says, "I've never been broken. Not even in Quor-Toth. I didn't think I could be." Cordy gibbers that he's hurt because of her, and I stop paying attention and instead admire the nice work they did putting bruises on her neck from when Satan grabbed her. Blah blah. Connor tells Cordy that if Satan hurts her again, he'll kill Satan. Oh, that's reassuring.

Angel plots the center of the disturbances on Cary's map as the earthquake hits the Hyperion. Gunn says that the location is the site of "the old Kimble building," and says there's a club on the roof called "The Sky Temple, or something." A club on the roof? Oooookay. Also, how big is the scale on this map, if Gunn can use it to locate individual buildings? Cary says the club is "a watering hole for the tragically hip," and Wesley intones, "A shrine of the flesh." So I guess that gibberish wasn't meaningless after all, eh Wesley? Also, shut up. Angel and Gunn start grabbing weapons. Cary thinks they should have a plan. Silly Cary. Angel says, "If it's alive, we kill it. If it's not, we bury it." He tosses a crossbow to Wesley and asks, "You in?" Wesley looks menacing, and we cut away before he trips over nothing and mews, "Oh yes, please!"

So, there were a number of complaints in the forums that Connor and Cordy should have called Angel and mentioned that they'd run into Satan. I'm not entirely sure what difference it would have made if they had, since Angel already knew something was going on, plus Connor and Cordy didn't know where Satan was going. So I'm willing to bet that they planned to, but didn't see any point in rushing to the Hyperion before tending their wounds.

Blipvert across town. The MoG run through a doorway and stop dead. Satan turns to look at them. Then we see that he's standing inside a square made of neat lines of crumpled bodies. Cool! A bunch of civilian casualties! That hardly ever happens. Satan is also dangling one last body, holding it by one ankle. Cary says, "I'm gonna need a bigger arrow." That's a shame. That line, I mean.

After a final burst of ads, Satan hurls the body across the room toward them, cueing the MoG's super-slow-motion action extravaganza. Oh, great. Just when there's finally action in this episode, we've got slo-mo to make it drag on forever. Angel runs slowly, then finally hits normal speed as he takes a few whacks at Satan with a sword. Satan quickly yanks the sword away and punches Angel, sending him flying into a pillar, which crumbles on impact.

Gunn throws his hubcap-axe at Satan. Satan catches and calmly crumples it into a useless mess. Khan! Man, first that dog on Futurama, and now the hubcap-axe. What a depressing evening of television.

Angel hops up and pulls a few more weapons out of his coat as Satan throws the ruined axe back at Gunn, who leaps out of the way. Angel races back in and starts swinging at Satan with what I think are a pair of battle-axes. Although he gets in some exciting whirls and floor-rolls, Angel doesn't actually seem to make contact with Satan at all. Stop aiming for his torso! Go for his big, silly feet! That's clearly his weak point! Notice how he just stands in one place instead of chasing you around? Satan finally catches Angel's arms on a downswing and shoves, pushing Angel away.

That's when Wesley and Cary fire their crossbows, and we go slo-mo again, but at least it's for a reason. The arrows fly across the room, and Satan swipes at them, knocking them off-course. One arrow ends up in Angel's shoulder, the other in Angel's stomach. Ha ha ha! Angel doubles over in pain. I double over laughing. I expect to hear Cary and Wesley shout, "Whoops, sorry!" but they don't. It was still funny, though. Satan turns to look at them as they reload the crossbows. Then Satan picks up Angel and throws him at Cary and Wesley. As they all fall in a pile, Angel's leg knocks over a shotgun. Wait, was the shotgun already there in the club?

Gunn races in with another sword. Satan throws him around. I'm starting to wonder if Satan killed all those other people by just tossing them into things repeatedly, since that seems to be all he can do. That must have been exhausting. Poor Satan.

Wesley hops up in slow-motion and whips out two shiny pistols. He moves sideways as he fires repeatedly. In slo-mo. Yawn. So I get the impression I'm supposed to reference John Woo here, since everyone else has, but since I haven't seen any John Woo movies, I'm not going to. Although I am pretty confident that there are actually other movies with exactly that shot. Anyhow, the bullets spark on Satan's chest but don't hurt him, because, duh, he's Satan. He stares agreeably at Wesley until Wesley finally gets a clue and drops the guns. And then hefts a shotgun. Or the shotgun, if it's the same one that was across the room a minute ago. Wesley fires the shotgun a few times as he advances on Satan. Satan jumps a little at the impact, but doesn't seem too bothered by it otherwise. Until he suddenly falls to his knees. See, he is tired from all the people-tossing. And those silly shoes probably don't provide good arch support. Wesley steps a little closer, because he's a blithering idiot, and Satan looks up at him, smirking. Satan grabs the shotgun and yanks it away, then -- can you guess? -- tosses Wesley across the room.

Angel chirps, "We're just getting started," and pulls the arrow out of his shoulder, then runs straight at Satan. Good lord, they're all so dumb. Weapons and firearms haven't bothered him at all, Angel. What are you going to do now, tickle him to death? There's some punching and a nice kick, and Satan swats Angel so that he goes up, somersaults in slo-mo, and makes a perfect landing on a ledge above the door. Well, that looked fun, at least. Angel vamps out and hops back down to resume fighting. More punching and so on, and Angel does manage to knock Satan down, at least. Then he whips out one of his wrist-mounted stakes and jabs it toward Satan's eye. Satan grips Angel's arm, and they struggle for a second, so we get the impression that Satan's eyes might be more vulnerable than the rest of him. Then Satan knocks Angel back, grabs the stake, and shoves it into Angel's neck. Necks! Also, yowch! Angel devamps and makes a goofy face as his mouth fills with blood. Satan smiles, and in the traditional low, booming voice, asks, "Do you really think she's safe with him?" Satan tosses Angel -- not into a wall, surprisingly, but straight over the building's edge. So it really is an open-air club on a building's rooftop. They must have incredible liability coverage. And it's in Los Angeles. With the smog. Ah well. Gunn wails, "Nooo!" as Angel plunges out of sight. That's probably a delayed reaction to the axe. Satan slams his fist down in the center of the square o' carnage, and an "X" of fire blazes up within the square. Then the bodies catch fire, and a burst of flame knocks the others back. Cary ends up plunging through a skylight and down into the building. Because there's a skylight on a building that has an open-air club on its roof. I should let it go, right? Okay. Wesley looks up in time to see Satan laughing with delight the day the music died, or something. Then Satan disappears in a cloud of fire that explodes up into the sky. Wesley scrambles toward Gunn.

Downstairs, Cary moves enough to let us know that he's not dead.

Wesley helps Gunn walk to...somewhere.

Down on the street, Angel rolls over. "A little help?" he fails to say. He reaches up and yanks the stake out of his neck, then gasps in pain for a while.

A sheet of plastic is torn down from a window so we can look at the volcanic burst of flame that's roaring up into the sky. It suddenly fades out, and there are explosions up in the clouds as it starts, yes, raining fire. "What's happening?" Connor asks, as he and Cordy watch. Well, it's raining fire. Pretty self-explanatory, if you ask me. There were also a lot of comments in the forums about how all the buildings should be catching on fire. It's terribly hard to judge scale, but I don't have trouble believing that this is more like a shower of sparks falling than huge blistering fireballs. Think of it as a light spinkle of fire. Connor suspects that Satan is behind this phenomenon, but Cordy says, "We don't know that." Yeah, Connor, don't go pinning every little thing that goes wrong on Satan! This could be a coincidence. Connor blames himself for not stopping Satan. Cordy says it's not his fault, and Connor asks, "What if it is?" He points out that Satan rose at the site of his birth, and sniffs, "I was never supposed to happen. The child of two vampires. What if --?" Cordy's sure that it has nothing to do with Connor. She whispers, "It's not you, baby, it's not you," over and over, and strokes his hair, and then they kiss. I was hoping she'd finish that with, "It's not you, it's me," but nope. When they stop, Connor asks why she kissed him. Cordy answers, "Because I don't think it matters anymore." How flattering. Forget the college fund, Angel. All that money should be spent on extensive therapy for your kid. Cordy talks about how Connor's been so deprived, saying, "[You've never had] anything that's real. And if this is the end, I want you to have something that is." Real, honest, pity-sex. How...sweet? She puts his hand on her hip and kisses him again as a tear drips down Connor's cheek. This is so tremendously odd.

Cary looks through a window at the blazing skies.

Wesley pulls an unconscious Gunn into a corner. I think he's meant to be gazing at the sky with concern, and maybe wondering if this is what that pesky Darth Burger was going on about, but as he clutches Gunn tightly, it's hard to distinguish concern and fear from manic glee. We cut away before Wesley can shout, "At last, he's mine! All mine!" I wonder what Gunn's gonna say when he wakes up.

At the diner, Fred peers through the window, holding her cell phone, while behind her we see the frightened patrons and staff. Oh my goodness, we've finally found what it takes to get her to shut up! And maybe it's a high price, but it seems worth it.

Lilah watches the sparks falling and rubs her arms as if she's cold.

We pan across Cordy and Connor in bed. Playing chess. And then we get an overhead shot of them playing chess. It just goes on and on, and while I have nothing against the game of chess, there comes a time when I really don't want to watch people playing chess anymore, especially when the game is made to look as unappealing as it is in this case. So eventually I start re-reading my notes, glancing up occasionally just to make sure that yes, they're still playing chess, all right. Which means that I almost missed the part where we keep panning up, and out the window, and suddenly see Angel standing, er, somewhere, looking down. And while it isn't entirely clear, there's a strong implication that he's looking down at Cordy and Connor's chessboard. And while it's hard to tell because there's a lot of dramatic lighting going on, he looks pretty damn pissed off. Call it a hunch. Parenthood just ain't what it's cracked up to be.

time, a perky girl goes to a faraway land, and -- oh hell, are they going back to Pylea? Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, they're going to revisit that nightmarish land? Oops, sorry. It's just a broadcast of The Wizard of Oz. Phew. Looks like Angel is in reruns till after the New Year. With any luck, by then we'll have forgotten this ever happened.