1.12 Expecting
This episode was interesting inasmuch as it gave Cordelia some of the limelight, which to me currently seems to be the episodes which do best. I personally find Angel's character too enigmatic to take up the centre stage. He was conceived as a shadow to Buffy, and I wonder whether the pattern people have been mentioning recently in Angel, where they enjoy the minor characters' developments outside of Angel's immediate story, is somehow a consequence of a slight deficiency of him in the title role. Buffy, such a powerfully realised character, makes her series All About Her, while Angel's essential foil status allows other characters to be more interesting.
The specifics of this episode. Wesley and Angel as Laurel and Hardy in the initial scene I enjoyed, although even in only his third episode, I was starting to get tired of Wesley as amusing comic relief. His character needed to shed the superficiality.
Cordelia in this episode. First of all, it may just be me, but I notice a fairly strong resemblance between Charisma Carpenter and Michelle Trachtenberg. They have extremely similar facial expressions, and the cadences and intonations in their voices also often match up. I hadn't noticed this before, and I wonder if it is somewhat to do with Cordelia's new circumstances. In LA, she's the baby of the group, and has a habit of babbling on endearingly but aimlessly, somewhat like Dawn. It's the insecurity and seeking of validation in the characters that perhaps makes the resemblance more than a co-incidence.
I couldn't quite tell, (but assumed that someone had told Charisma) whether Cordelia was a virgin up until this episode. The dismay and denial when she wakes up, and the whole idea that she was somehow being punished for having sex, made me believe that it might have been. We've never been told specifically one way or the other whether she had sex in Sunnydale, although to me her lines in 'Out of Mind, Out of Sight' and her relationship with Xander suggest maybe not.
There was a lot of sneaking up in this episode- Angel to Cordelia to start with, then Angel to Wilson and finally Wesley to Angel. I take this as being more than a co-incidence and actually hitting on the idea that turns in life can come very unexpectedly. Of course, the idea of becoming surprisedly pregnant after a one-night-stand (although it may have been more in real life), is not unusual- it's just that ME shrinks the timescale to heighten the sense of disorientation.
The lines from Cordelia and Wesley:
both showed Cordelia's vulnerability in the scene, and also, to me at least, were an obvious flashback to Giles' scene with Buffy at the end of 'Innocence'. Here, Wesley for the first time shows a slightly more rounded character. And of course, the bit at the end where Cordelia pretends to have learnt all the wrong lessons ('Sex is bad. All men are evil') is a classic subversion. Instead of moralising some abstract rule, we instead get a beginning of trust between the three characters.
1.13 She
I was extremely disappointed with this episode overall. There were some 'look, this is funny' moments which didn't quite come off for me (Wesley's ridiculous dancing, the opening the coffee conceit). I did enjoy Angel's dislike of mobile phones, (I don't have one myself), and his knowledge of Manet and Baudelaire.
But my main criticisms were with the style and the plot. The style reminded me of a Star Trek episode. Suddenly invent another world with a nasty side and a wronged side, (the women with the bit in the neck extracted). Then show the women aren't whiter than white. Leave a beacon of authority, (Angel/Picard) to sort it out. The same vibe came from what they were wearing, and many of the sets.
I personally felt the plot was a trifle over-complex. There was a lot of showing without explaining. It reminded me of the Hitchcock line: 'Never confuse the audience. When they're confused, they can't emote'. I felt like this, and it's worth remembering that the majority of people only watch the episode once.
I thought the dialogue and characterisation was minimal and substandard, and that the idea of a patriarchy had been done better before on the two series.
1.14 I've Got You Under My Skin
I thought this was one of the best episodes of Angel I've seen thus far, and it made me feel much less depressed than during 'She' where I wondered whether I might give up on the series.
The episode's premise is dark and haunting. There's real pain in every character- the terribly dysfunctional family, the taunting of Angel and Wesley, and Cordelia's vision. Wesley's father issues were only hinted at, but I'm fascinated and eager to find out more about them. I felt like I was interested in the character of Wesley for the first time, (he's been extremely 1-dimensional so far). There's plenty of characterisation and tidy thematic plot which would have made the episode excellent on its own. Cordelia's support for Angel about Doyle at the beginning. The intelligent if guessable mislead of the child, not the father, being possessed. And some really good performances by the minor characters.
But I was a little bit puzzled by something. Why does the episode begin with the apparently entirely irrelevant reference to Doyle? Was it just to highlight the beginning of a Cordelia/Wesley ship? And why does the episode end, instead of back at Angel's appartment, with Angel's conversation with Seth, and the three surviving members of the family hugging? It seems odd and untidy.
And then suddenly everything fitted into place, and I realised how stupid I was being. Of course! The family that Angel helps IS Angel Investaigations. Just as manwitch contends below that Faith IS Buffy. And it all fits. Angel is asked his relationship to Cordelia in 'Expecting', and responds 'I'm family'. Here, we are shown that they really are. The four members of the family to date have been Angel, Doyle, Cordelia and Wesley. Angel, the head of the family, tries to keep them together. He is the embattled Father, Seth, trying to do his best. Doyle is the possessed child. And, of course, at the end of the episode, we see how the family of the exorcised child react to the loss of the boy, just as we see how Angel Investigations react to losing Doyle. Now, the only thing that the 'real' family have is each other. They have to struggle through, with just the Mother, Father and child. In the same way, so does Angel's group, with Angel as Father, Cordelia as Mother and Wesley as Child.
The tidiness of this correlation raises it from a beautiful dark, brooding meditation on your responsibilty for children, personal actions and their consequences and how events can cleave even happy families, to a really excellent episode, up there with 'Hero' and 'City of' as my favourite so far.