Although I am going to do a little tiny bit of griping about 3.10, the other two episodes in this section were undoubtedly as strong as anything I've seen, for pathos, plot, pacing, directing and even enough comedy. This Season has a consistency matched by no other Season I've seen on either show so far. Maybe I'm not quite as emotionally involved, although Angel and Fred and even Cordelia are starting to really matter to me.

3.9- 'Lullaby'

This is Minear right back on top form, after his last slightly diappointing solo effort with 'That Old Gang Of Mine'. The story focusses carefully around Darla and Angel. They are the parents who will bring a child of such apparent destiny into the world- something that has never been seen before. But, as hinted at in 'Quickening', Angel and Darla are starting to become a simple, archetypal couple waiting for a baby as well. Darla is feeling emotions as a reaction to Connor's as yet unborn soul. Angel is starting to think just what it means to him to be a Father. So we have these two very normal people, surrounded by ridiculous circumstances, just trying to do the best by the child. 'The only good thing we ever did together', Darla argues, and she really is quite right. Because despite the powerful relationship that made them accompany each other round the world killing, and the quiet moments where Angel tries to connect with a human Darla, nothing they have ever done has been constructive. It has always been a relationship bent on destruction, sadism and carelessness. Now, for no good reason, they appear to have been given an opportunity for those centuries of liaisons to finally yield something. And, ever so slowly, speaking like a woman who has seen heaven, Darla starts to realise what it is she must do.

There are iconic moments in history and in art. Usually, they are to do with someone committing an act or betraying a revealing emotion. And very often, there is a compelling visual shorthand to go with it. For me, the visual shorthand of Jesus on the cross adds to the beautiful story- helpless, in pain, but suffering nobly as a man for the sins of man. In a completely different way, Marilyn Monroe's delight at the freedom and tearing down of sexual repression as her skirt billows up in 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' is another example of visual stimulus adding to a movement. In 'Lullaby', the very idea of a vampire mother, who has attempted to give her all to nourish the child, despite her initial distaste, and ultimately ends her unlife for a life with more potential, is powerful enough. But the scene where, in an unearthly personal calm, despite the siege and the rain, she stakes herself, and leaves the baby to Angel, helps re-inforce the power of the message. It is a perfectly crafted narrative moment. Darla's vampire body may not be able to bear a child, and so the only logical way is for the body holding the child to disappear. Yet the very corporeality and literalness of the 'Dust to dust' idea with Darla gives it something extra beautiful. And the very absence of her body, and the replacement with a tiny, vulnerable possibility of good, shows exactly what her sacrifice is about. Darla has the strength of character to believe that, despite 400 years of failure, prostitution, despair, sadism and hopelessness, her child, her only gift to the world, can still bring what she couldn't. And can still survive to laugh, and comb his hair, and eat eggs. To experience the simple pleasures which Darla never had the chance to understand in her constantly developing, debilitating lives.

This is clearly the central tableau of the episode, and it sustains it quite happily on its own. However, there were some other moments...

-The three factions I mentioned from 'Quickening' meet. Bureaucracy/work is temporarily defeated. Love conquers all. Religion/faith (but a warped one with no love, only vengeance), stands idly by, expecting a chance to deal with the child and the Father later. For now at least, family and love win the day. Darla's love, and Angel's family.

-The teaser finishes with Darla's angry yet despairing 'I don't breathe', to Wesley's suggestions of how to ventilate. Humour at its darkest, buit also the first hint that Connor is making Darla vulnerable- she is becoming the being Cordelia believed she was in 'Offspring'.

-Talking about black humour, Minear's line 'They don't crucify here. It's too Christian', from Lilah is a deeply twisted perspective frm her. Clearly it is the possibility of the noble suffering of the employees to be killed that W+H disapprove of, not the habit of agonising death.

-I'll mention this several times in the next two episodes, but, finally, hooray for David Boreanaz. For me, his reading of the line 'You don't just get half a miracle', and his subsequent terror as Wesley explains that the baby itself, the thing that seems so impossible and which he has labelled as Hope, could itself be evil and apocalyptic, is as successful a piece of acting as he's ever done. There was the vulnerability, the confusion, the disbelief, and the horror, all mixed nicely and believably. He's certainly come a long way as an actor in the last five years.

-There's the lovely line, almost as an aside, 'Do you have to be so damned honest?', from Cordelia to Gunn. Good old ME subversions- still plenty bubbling through this series.

-Holtz is an intriguing character. He's not the obviously evil (W+H), and not the possibly good (Angel). He is fighting against both, for vengeful justice. This is a marvellously grey area. Holtz is well within his rights to feel aggrieved to see his children and wife killed. Now, 230 years later, he sees Angel, finally, after such a terrible struggle, produce something which just might be good. How logical does it seem to enact the Old Testament mantra 'an eye for an eye'. Now Angel has a beloved child. Holtz knows what it is like to believe that a child has been saved, to sing 'All through the Night' to her and feel protected, only for her to be a vampire, and to have to kill her. Using only vengeful logic, there is no mercy involved- no mercy, no forgiveness and no redemption. Only justice. We can see his pain back in 1765, and we know that for him, after the long sleep, it still feels immediate. But Angel has described the arc of a New Testament figure- one who can be redeemed ultimately, who can be cleansed and loved- one who can provide something good to the world. As is underlined by the final line, Holtz only understands the Old Words: Justice and Mercy. There is no true Christian faith in him, only an age-old personal vendetta. Yet how does the wronged against become the do-er of wrong? How can he let his life's aim dissolve. I await more with interest. -Holtz marching to the scene at the end is given a shot not at all dissimilar to the Fanged Four in 'Darla'. We must consider exactly which role he is playing. Certainly, he is playing the threatening character, the person in control while chaos surrounds all else. Whether we are supposed to interpret further I don't know. Neither Spike in 'Fool for Love' nor Angel in 'Darla' seems to really fit his motivations here.

-Screw destiny! The prophecy's are ambiguous again, meaning something the interpretor did not pick up. More on that in 'Dad'.

Overall, the most visually rewarding denouement to a character journey I have seen. Possibly the most rewarding per se. Because Darla has fashioned new life out of 400 years of disaster, and is willing to let it supercede any selfish idea of dregs of despair that would continue if she continued to live.

3.10- 'Dad'

OK, this review's heading down before the up again of 'Birthday'. This episode, while perfectly average in Buffy Season Two or Angel Season One, lets down the almost inevitable consistency this Season has had up to now, with really few complaints by me on anything. Although it has several good moments, the pacing is too lumpy, the twist at the end seems a little contrived and unsatisfactory, and the plodding is really only offset, to begin with at least, with the one-note joke that Angel is desperate about being a good Father. Not a great joke when it is also the serious theme of the episode. Some of the jokes seemed to undermine exactly what the narrative structure was supposed to be highlighting.

Here's some good things for poor David Goodman.
-The teaser is about the personal versus the prophetic. Angel is worried only about the baby's welfare, and is cutting himself off from the outside world.
-Angel's possessiveness is fairly obviously going to lead to major problems, but there's a fairly good balance struck between how worried Angel is that he might fail his 'mission', and how he is being inadvertently selfish by ignoring his 'family'
-The speech from Lorne is where Angel realises he has been going wrong- treating Connor as a mission, not a wonderful gift as well. Hence, any switched-on viewer will see the jarring discontinuity between this scene and his apparent taking off with Connor, only to have their initial thoughts (a tad predictably) justified by it being a bomb.
-Connor appears to be happy when Angel is honest. When he stops trying to 'play' a Father, and goes into vampire face. What he really is. Presumably, this is just baby co-incidence, but the point is set up for later on in the life that Angel attempting to be something he's not is something of which Connor will be uncomfortable.

Justine is interesting. There's the parallels set up between Buffy and Giles, with Justine and Holtz. Justine uses the pop culture, while Holtz is deadly serious. But the parallel is only there to make the point that Holtz is again doing something wrong. While Buffy, (somewhat like Angel), is called to fight for Good, and Giles is instructed to help her in her struggle, Holtz is the reason behind Justine's mission. His vendetta. He cannot be an adequate guid because he is the employer. And his mission is an intensely personal one filled with anger. Yet, a little like Wesley in 'Billy', he appears to control the volume of his voice well. He shows little of the turmoil inside. Maybe the idea of British restraint is backed up in the Buffyverse. Certainly Giles, Wesley and Holtz all attempt to hide deep feelings in some way. Not Spike though. He represents the rebellion against the Empire ways, in some sense. Although, as Rahael has postulated he fits credibly well into the role of coloniser. Sorry, rambling.

I loved the files and records woman. One of the funniest little vignettes of the Season. 'It's my job'. Very Kafka-esque, once again highlighting the confusing offices and double-dealings of Wolfram and Hart. Meanwhile, Linwood is nice and evil.

Holtz sees himself as 'an instrument of vengeance'. Vengeance and justice, the two not quite equivalent ideas. Halfrek wants to be a 'Justice Demon'. But justice is about conforming to a universal idea of Fairness and Rightness. Vengeance is just about even-ing scores from one person to the next. Whether either is healthy remains to be argued- but both are occasionally a source of evil in the Buffyverse.

At the end, we see that Angel has taken Lorne's advice well. He has started to humanise his son, rather than him just being a mission. And the ultimate expression of that is to, if rather belatedly, give him a name.

We end on Connor's family. Cordelia has explained to Angel that they will all need to help- all of them can contribute something to Connor's upbringing. We see the forging of this most diverse of families in a hopeful ending to the episode. The events of Darla's arrival, while being extremely strssful, have not yet broken the strength of the unit at its high point, at the end of 'Fredless'.

3.11-'Birthday'

This episode caught me completely off guard for several reasons. Firstly, after seeing Darla pregnant in 'Heartthrob', I assumed they'd round of the arc with Connor's birth in this episode. That's another reason why his un-birth from his un-dead mother in 'Lullaby' was surprising to me. So I didn't know whose birthday it was. We haven't seen Cordelia's birthday before, so it was an interesting surprise.

Then secondly, when I saw that she had left her body, I expected the episode to be a somewhat light-hearted chance to let Cordelia see what the others really thought of her. But the episode kept building more and more ominously towards the quite stellar multiple conclusions. Not at all what I expected. Here's some notes:

-I don't think I've ever taken the opportunity to mention how funny the name Phanton Dennis is. It still makes me laugh, partly due to the essential debasement of that horrible film George Lucas had the cheek to let loose worldwide. And he's turned into such a charmer. A nice possibly-to-be-developed couple of moments between Gunn and Fred- a relationship which we haven't seen much of yet. Here, Dennis is supposed to be the counter-point to Cordelia's early sense of dislocation. While Dennis is invisible, he can at least do things to help, where Cordelia is entirely powerless.

-Excellent to see Skip again, who I really enjoy as a character. There's that something excellently subversive about the cheery demon who looks like a warrior- much more so than the also-splendid Clem. While Clem is just lovely, Skip is funnier in always giving the impression that he is about to slice someone's head off, and then referring to Gladiator and The Matrix in such a jolly way.

-It's interesting that Cordelia has projected her reality as her ideal self, and is ultimately the key to the episode. While her life is extraordinarily hard, the visions have shaped Cordelia form the shallow, manipulative bitch of early Buffy to the sensitive, brave, articulate sufferer of 'Birthday'. Cordelia, despite still fostering her desire to be an actor, knows ultimately that she has grown out of that opportunity.

-So what leads to her decision to become that acting star anyway. Most obviously, there's the apparent inevitability of death otherwise. Then there's the fact that the title sequence for 'Cordy! just had to be done, (superb stuff, and probably some in-jokes that I didn't catch). But then there's Angel's behaviour. He is desperate to get Cordelia back, but, in a classic 'Shrek'-like way, Cordelia keeps overhearing the moments where he is most critical or dsimissive of aspects of her character. There is the neat irony that Angel believes Cordy is not a Champion, cannot take the visions any more, and yet in the Alternate Reality, Angel has completely mentally folded under the strain. The visions were obviously meant for someone as strong as Cordelia, and her strength is something well exploited here, which has been brushed aside too easily by writers in the past.

-Wesley with his arm missing reminded me vaguely of the White Hats in the Wishverse. A desperate struggle against unface-able odds. Again, a touching irony that Cordelia has come such a long way that her absence is reminiscent of Buffy's absence in the earlier episode.

-When Angel falls down to talk to the forces with multiple voices, the fall appears to be an allusion to 'Being John Malkovich'. Exactly who is Angel, and how does his experiences modify others' thoughts- particularly Cordelia in this episode?

-CC does a good job of playing the other Cordelia- the one who doesn't care about her PA, and is only interested in what part of twn she is in.

-There's references all over the place- which is tricky for the first-time viewer. We see 'Hero', 'City Of..', have the reference to the demon who Cordelia managed to stop from cutting off Wesley's arm, and also had various suggestions back to Buffy Season Three. Although I liked them all, a less faithful watcher might creek under the narrative thrust.

It certainly didn't stop my enjoyment though, and Cordelia's final choice- to be part-demon, is bound to have consequences throughout the rest of the Season. Largely because it is a choice almost as big as Spike's returned soul- although presumably Cordelia will act more like Doyle- demon but due to upbringing and circumstances, working for good. The end of 'Birthday' though, leaves a lot of unanswered questions for the mid-term break.

Ought to note that I generally don't think that there is much crossover between simultaneous Angel and Buffy episodes, [a view I realise many disagree with], but here it is impossible to see the girl harnessing dark magics and not consider the almost parallel 'Wrecked' episode on Buffy. This is a small pen-portrait of Willow's more epic tale.

Great writing by Mere Smith. She always surprises me with her episodes' qualities, so I suppose I should rate her more highly. I liked all of 'Untouched', 'Redefinition', 'Fredless' and 'Birthday', and thought 'Over The Rainbow' was serviceable. Definitely my third favourite Angel writer after Minear and Greenwalt. Thanks for reading as always. Only half a season left.[Or not. Giggle]