The question of whether they are good
or evil to the side for a moment, the Powers very much intended for Cordelia to
end up with the Visions.
A vision herself on her date with the Armani-clad cardboard cutout, she leaves
Angel and Doyle with a suggestion that her home-apartment-apartment-wife plan
articulated a couple episodes back might indeed be coming to fruition. I don't
know where she met this boy or how big the dollar signs in her eyes were when she
did, but it turns out that having money and position is a lot more
interesting to Cordy than how it is acquired.
Relationships form a constant theme for this episode. Along with Doyle's
estranged wife turning up (does Angel Investigations have a web presence now? I
didn't think they did until Fred showed up [beyond Angel being on the
chattyboards], so how Harry tracked Francis to that little office suite is ...
an open question), a photo of Buffy pops out of the book Angel's reading (Buffy
gave him an 8x10 monochrome photo? When did she have a black-and-white photo of
herself made? It's clearly a portrait, and every other photo of Buffy is in
color. I wonder if that's a photo that appears in Spike's Buffy shrine later,
which includes the red-background senior class photo Buffy never sat for and
some of Angel's drawings of Buffy and other stuff he has no good reason to
have) and Doyle doesn't recognize her right away, even though she figures
prominently in the vision that drew him to Angel in the first place.
Interesting.
Anyway, after Cordy leaves for her snoozefest of a date -- in which she
realizes that she has unwittingly grown as a person and is upset by this --
Doyle has a vision that leads them to a nest. They dispatch the vamps -- all
but one, who Angel somehow doesn't smell because Angel's nose is only as good
as the script needs it to be -- and save the kid and it's wonderfully heroic,
but as epic battles go, this isn't one.
Angel goes ... someplace else, while Doyle heads back to the office (somewhat
out of character, since he could be expected to repair to any bar in L.A.
rather than that boring place -- really, what was he going to do there?
Sit around in one office, and then sit around in the other one?) -- just in
time to rescue Cordelia from the one that got away.
A vamp that wouldn't be in his life at all if he hadn't had a vision.
Captain Courageous hops in his Beemer and hightails it out of there, leaving
Cordy do deal with the vamp -- attacking it perhaps with her high-pitched
screams -- and in another one of those Joss ex machina things, Cordy
bites the vamp rather than the other way around, which is wild, given
how grab-bite-sire Harmony's rather more instantaneous transformation was.
Doyle shoots it in the foot and then dusts it, becoming Cordy's hero.
Never mind the bravery. Now Cordy has to deal with the fact that this schlep
was once a husband to a beautiful woman and a third-grade teacher. Talk about
hidden depths.
But I'd argue that if Doyle had never saved Cordy, he'd never have really been
on her radar, and it basically set the stage for the kiss that happens in
"Hero."
Harry sure know how to pick them. I love that in the Jossverse, there are
ethnodemonologists, and that they get as involved as they do in their work. And
as with most things, the problem isn't the fiance so much as the in-laws. Turns
out they're way more traditional than Harry bargained for, but it's pretty
wild, given that they operate restaurants with expensive doors ...
Doyle was one thing. Apart from Giles' first-season suggestion in
"Buffy" that demons are beings of pure evil, the writing on Doyle
would suggest ... not so much. Demons are as multivaried as they need to be,
and the way is completely paved for Lorne's appearance in S2.
But Harry's new clan is mostly acculturated, to the point where it's
just bizarre that they would hold onto the tradition of eating the first
husband's brains -- especially since the betrothed is human and the
ex-husband is from a different species and a half-breed to boot.
I loved Harry going off on them about all the other traditions they ignore.
It's nice that they found Capt. Pike's hoveround from "Star Trek" for
the ceremony itself. That's gotta be a pretty spendy noun on eBay. Never mind
the right shrimp fork, that's the accessory you need when you're gonna
pop the lid on the entree.
Mostly I thought the writing in this one was really well done. And revealed a
lot of excellent development on Doyle. While there's reason for us to wish that
we could've just continued this joyous exploration, in "Bachelor
Party," Angel gets the lion's share of his request in "Rm" that
Doyle share his backstory. There's more to come, but not much more, given that
we're coming up on the end of his character arc.
I mean ... wow! Imagine how much more we're going to learn about Doyle, and how
great his and Cordy's kids are going to be.
What?
Ah, Joss, you bastage.
If none of us saw it coming, it seems that The Powers That Be did, and are
making the appropriate arrangements.
Damn' fine eppy.