That could be either me or Darla. In some ways, I suppose Darla has more reason than me, but on the other hand, I'd managed to make my way through to the end of 'Offspring' before the evil University computer I was working on went blank-screen with absolutely no warning. About 2000 words lost. I love these episodes so much I'm going to re-write them all, but it did take me several hours and almost bankrupting myself buying books to calm me down. So now you know the background!

3.6- 'Billy'

This episode is superb. It's also, superbly, exactly what I wanted when I asked for a Wesley episode. I wanted to see him in the centre, with the restrained exterior that we've only seen occasionally threatened really shaken up a bit. That's exactly what I got. Back to the superlative Wes/Fred plotline in a second.

We open however, with something that also needed to be addressed- namely, as yabyumpan pointed out, the discrepancy between the Cordelia-Angel of the first three episodes and that of 'Carpe Noctem'. It seemed illogical that after the 'I know you' lines Cordelia wouldn't notice the body switch. However, here there's a re-affirmation of the original development, which is nothingless than you'd expect from Minear. There's also just a touch of C/A mixing in with the C-A, I believe. It's there in the synchronicity of the swordfighting at the end, and Angel's almost ecstatic 'I get that!', when Cordelia talks about being simultaneously comforted and creeped. It becomes clear that the superficial differences between the two: Cordelia's bright cheerleading and Angel's dark broodiness are actually much less important by now than the shared experiences and the mutual aspect of mental toughness that both characters exhibit in this episode.

Now to Wesley. We are set up at the beginning of the episode with him chatting to Cordelia about his feelings for Fred. It seemed a cute little reference back to that scene with Giles about Cordelia herself, where Giles says: 'She's eighteen, and you have the maturity of a blueberry scone'. Now it's Cordelia who has to help him face his repression, but Wesley, as usual is keeping his emotions very much in check. Previously, we have only seen brief snatches of the turmoil (at least discomfort) going on underneath the fierce control. There was the demon talking to him in 'I've got You Under My Skin'. There was his inability to communicate how torn up he was about Virginia leaving to Cordelia in 'Reprise'. And of course, there was that very powerful phone scene in 'Belonging', which drew its power from the fact that Wesley was obviously deeply effected but tried not to show it in his voice.

Here, his tendency to keep his emotions behind his outer face is completely sabotaged by Billy, who is one of the most creepy 'monsters' ever on the show. Because, despite the fact that I haven't read Masq's metaphysics seciton for this yet, I think it's fair to say that Wesley wasn't simply possessed. It's not so scary when Angel's body is taken by the old man, only for everything to work out OK, and Angel to be largely unaffected. Here, Wesley's own character is being messed with, so that real aspects of his psyche are brought to the fore, and his most repressed feelings of anger and despair taken out on other people. In this case, the most apparently vulnerable member of the group, Fred.

I love the character of Fred, due to the way she has been constructed. Like Buffy, she subverts the archetype of the damsel in distress. Several times in the past few episodes, (hostage in 'That Old Gang of Mine', seeing Angel in 'Carpe Noctem', with the monster in 'Fredless' and finally here), she has been put in a dangerous position, and each time, (pretending to be willing to shoot Angel, the Fitzgerald perspective, discovering the crystals and with 'You forgot I also like to build things'), she wins through by intelligence and self-confidence. But although Fred always rebuffs any suggestion that she is helpless or uninnovative, she genuinely is rather emotionally immature, so her hunting by Wesley takes on yet another layer of extreme terror.

After the incident is over, we get the final scene. Here, we have Fred being wonderfully forgiving and, once again, interpreting the actions in the best light. Unfortunately, I don't believe we're supposed to take what Fred says at face value. Because she has a tendency to see things simplistically. We've just seen her cariacatures of the group (Wesley the brains, Gunn the muscle etc), in the previous episode. While she truly believes that Wesley is a good man, Wesley in far from convinced. He has hidden himself away in his 'cave', and is pondering the fact that 'I don't know what kind of man I am any more'. Because the things he said to Fred, were, as is clear from the opening scenes, things he was thinking, but without the restraint to hold them back. Even in his drakest moments, Wesley has had the conviction that he was Good. Even when routinely teased and shunned by Buffy and Giles. His Rogue Demon Hunter phase was really just an attempt to be cool, not a genuine channelling of his dark side. But now he has discovered another confusing side of himself, and the very profoundness makes him cry [and me, unsurprisingly].

Other thoughts on this episode:
-I enjoyed the Cordelia-Lilah scene. Once again, I don't believe we're quite supposed to take Cordelia at face value. She claims 'I was you. With better shoes'. Actually, Cordelia was never actively evil, she just was shallow and occasionally 'a bitch'. But the parallel is an interesting one. There's an odd feminism in Cordelia's contention that 'Someone with the mantle of "vicious bitch" would never allow this to happen'. Cordelia shows that she has becme much more perceptive to others' feelings and her ability to get across ideas since she moved to LA. Her pep talk ends up with Lilah killing Billy.

-Cordelia feels the responsibility for Billy's deaths. This is interesting. Angel tells her that only Billy is responsible- suggesting that he perhaps believes that only the direct perpertrator should be culpable. However, once again we are supposed to doubt this conclusion. Both because Angel is the character who locked the lawyers in Manners' basements in 'Reunion', and who needed to feel guilty for this, and also because Billy's crimes aren't even direct. Although he clearly is responsible, he isn't the one committing the murders, so he is one step removed, as Angel is two steps. It's another moral ambiguity to which we are not given the answer, which is another example of how ME treats its viewers as adults who need to have questions asked rather than morals imposed.

-Billy is both misogynistic, and, less obviously, misandrist. Clearly he enjoys watching the women tortured, but he also enjoys the effect that the surfacing of the anger has on the men's lives. Negative effects.

-Have I said 'Go Fred!' enough yet? Good.

An excellent episode. But this one is possibly even better:

3.7- 'Offspring'

The seventh episode of the Season has been highlighted by some people as having a disproportionate number of excellent offerings. This is because, a third of the way through the Buffy arc, it often holds many revelations. 'Lie To Me' holds moral ambiguity in love and death. The Initiative is introduced in Season Four, and transcendant love and the Slayer's supposed death wish in 'Fool For love'. There is the beginning of Spuffy proper in 'Once More, With Feeling'. And here in a Season which has had a propulsive type of movement more akin to Buffy than Angel's previous Seasons, we have a similar episode here, establishing some of the important plot twists to come.

This is an essentially Greenwaltian episode- all the crazy little bits, all the angst and humour mixed rather haphazardly together to produce a result of absolute genius. As a result, this review will jump about the place a bit.

-Lorne is having Caritas rebuilt, which allows for some humour with the Furies and the works of art. He also gets one of my pet Audience/Writer lines. After Fred gives her 'Destiny/Everything's Evitable' speech, he says, 'Oh, I like her so much!' Remember Lorne is Greenwalt, and he is so happy with his newest creation at this point, [and I assume a positive reaction] that he says so through Lorne. Incidentally, Lorne's quite right, and Fred too. 'Screw destiny' is one of the most important recurring themes of ME's work- all the way back to Buffy with her dress in 'Prophecy Girl'.

-In the teaser, there are a couple of scenes, both interesting. Holtz, in a rather brutal way, actually articulates an important eternal question of AtS: if you were to burn the demon away, just what would be left? Anything?

-We then cut to Darla arriving on the bus. This is very important, to me at least. Remember back to 'Crush', where Drusilla arrives at Sunnydale on the train. Buffy finds her out by finding Miss Edith. Drusilla is the monster and the child. In rhis episode, the same thing arrives. Darla is the Monster, and what she is carrying is the Child. Thus the link back is an extremely clever in-reference.

-While we have the Monster/Child dichotomy, the more important one to Darla in this episode is the Monster/Mother dichotomy. Angel and Cordelia summarise the two sides that she feels early on. Cordelia, smarting from having one of the only lies Angel has ever told her outed, (and shortly after some C/A shippiness), takes Darla as only the Mother. Definitely a case of 'over-identify much?' after 'Expecting'. On the other hand, Angel is ready to stake Darla, the monster, as he claimed he would next time he saw her. Then he realises that the 'offspring' has a heart-beat, and realises that she is a Mother as well.

-The most powerful expression of this duality of roles is through Darla at the arcade. When she finds the child, is she aboutto eat him or is she merely broody? Is she looking at theparents with scorn or jealousy? This is a question that has to be continued to be dealt with throughout the arc.

-Darla's 'Hello Lover' echoes Buffy's opening to Angelus in 'Becoming'. This is important. Darla wants to play the adversary, but realises that instead she's going to have to fit into a whole new relationship archetype [!].

-And then there's the extremely shocking resurrection of Holtz at the end. We expect the teaser just to be a flashback to emphasise Angel and Darla's connection, but actually, it's something much more. Like Darla at the endof 'Heartthrob', this is a twist which initially seems tacked on if powerful, but actually is perfectly thought through.

-Talking of 'Heartthrob', it's interesting how Angel immediately equates the child's heartbeat with having a soul. This is telling as to how abnormal he feels. The soul is in some ways represented by the heart-beat, but Angel is outside the pattern. Still, and ever, the isolate.

-Gunn. What to say. Not much. He gets to juggle. Very Greenwaltian. And the line 'I'm uneasy because there's a man with a rifle standing behind you'. Very funny.

Super episode.

3.8- 'Quickening'

Right, so now I'm not repeating myself, which is a nice thing, although drafting the last two actually appears to have made the points clearer, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

In this episode, there are three perspectives going on, all important. It's a bit of a commentary on the opposite of the Virgin birth- we might call it the Virginia birth. In the nativity, there was no sex, just love on all sides, but a child to redeem the world. And it was physically impossible.Here, sex is all the conception was about, nothing else. Just empty passion. There was no love, and now a child is here who ma wreck the world. And it was physically impossible. So, rather like the Gospels, and the various interpretations of them, we see the birth from three angles. The angle of Angel, the family, like Mary and Joseph. The angle of bureaucratic evil- Wolfram and Hart endlessly trying to control everything, turning everything to their advantage. And the angle of the man with the vendetta. The man who has been wronged before, and is now here to end the damage which the two vampires have done for 220 years.

Holtz and Sajihan are very interesting and important in this episode. There are an unusually high number of long, smash cuts put in in editing, which suggests both the discontinuity of 227 years in Hotlz's life, and also the way that time is pushing inevitably ['Screw destiny!' seems irrelevant here] towards a moment of complete crisis. The idea of destiny is important to Holtz and Sajihan, and the scenes where we see Holtz learning about modernity just highlightshow history seems to be centring in on this one point. A point Wolfram and Hart have an important prophecy for. A point Holtz has been waiting for 200 years to see. And a point where Angel, Cordelia and Darla are just acting the best that they can to take the situation which they have no prior knowledge of into hand. Isn't it always so? We read what will happen, but ultimately we must merely make choices which seem impossible, and hope for the best, knowing only afterwards how important our choice was, for better, for worse, or for neither.

So this is one aspect of the idea of 'Quickening', the speeding up of time towards the crucial moment at the end of the episode. But I think there is most definitely the connotation as expressed in:
'The third day He rose again from the dead
He ascended into heaven
And sitteth on the right of God the Father Almighty
From thence he shall come to jusge the quick and the dead'.
Almost puzzlingly, nothing is born in this episode. But this is not the point. The idea is 'quickening', becoming alive. Holtz, despite already being resurrected, is only just learning how to live in the 21st century. And all the time, the thing inside Darla is becoming alive. There's a quickening process going on.

There's some nice writing of Linwood/Lilah/Park by Bell. They have a real office feel in this episode, which contrasts jarringly and so effectively with the human trauma and the idea of destiny provided by Holtz. In a sense, that's the trichotomy [who cares if it's a word]; family, destiny, bureaucracy. How many people's lives does that, ultimately describe. Relatiobnships, (our versions of) religion and work. These three really help to focus the birth.

I can't believe they ended the episode on definitely the biggest cliffhanger ever, as Darla's waters broke. Can't believe they made you wait a week for the conclusion. Having finally beaten the evl computers, I can go and watch it now. And what's more, it's a Minear episode. I can the tingles already.

Thanks for reading- this was a struggle to get done, one way or another, but it was worth it, and I love this Season.