ANGEL

S3x08 – Quickening

Review by Terry J. Aman

 

 

An intriguing installment. We discover that the bun in Darla's oven is not necessarily evil, that it is indeed human, that she's ready to drop any second, and there's another one of those "Let us never speak of this again" in-house staff assessments at W&H.

There was a lot of W&H in this eppy. We had Gavin's sneak-peekery, Lilah's scheming, Linwood's ass-covering, and mostly we had the guy from the mailroom:

Lilah: I don't date guys from the mailroom.
Guy from the Mailroom: Oh, neither do I.

And we also had lots of running around by Team Angel. There were a few tiny little picky detail problems in this eppy, so I'll just run through them and get them out of the way:

Problems: What bugging equipment was Gavin set up with? Lily Tomlin's leftover switchboard from "Laugh In"? Also, I do not believe for a second that Holtz with his sword fended off a roomful of W&H-trained operatives. I guess it's somewhat believable, tho. The mystical telekinetic hack-and-slasher Lilah keeps on her speed dial was the first to go down in the hospital.

Loved the scene with the psychics, of course.

More problems: Now, Darla's been a vampire longer than anyone, just about, and Angel for a pretty long time, too. Is there some reason neither of them in their centuries walking the earth have ever heard of this "Blessed Child" prophecy, while a dozen or so of the stealthiest mo-fo vampires have?

Wes has already stated that he -- and, presumably, the Watchers Council -- has no information on a vampire giving birth. Yet he gets agitated about getting back to the hotel to get his books. Heck, never mind the books. You had a bunch of postulates standing around, and you KILLED ALL OF THEM!

Idiots.

That and there was no reason for Fred to deliver that "They don't know I can't hurt the baby" line. Just none.

I did like her taking the initiative, however. That's four times she's done that -- "Through the Looking Glass," "That Old Gang of Mine," "Fredless" and now "Quickening." I really like when she does that.

Finally: With no Angel there, what's keeping Darla from eating everyone?

Hmm, lots of problems. Must've been a lot of drinking going on in the writers' room that week.

The Holtz flashbacks were nice, however. And the whole Sahjahn thing: "I'm not a man ... but I'm clearly masculine. You get that, right?" and "I've had some work done ... mostly around the eyes." Very cool. Sahjahn is just always so cool.

We close on a very cold note: Holtz finally confronting Angel, giving a nice full-circle ending on this eppy, which began with him searching for Angel.

* sigh * Artistically, it all worked. Logically, however, very little of it did.

Sad, really.



                                                                                                          

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