Previously on Angel: Wesley's working for Angel Investigations now and Angel has carved out a troublesome relationship with Kate, a detective with the LAPD who has a difficult relationship with her father. Angel's human self, Liam, had a bad one with his own father, killing his family once he became Angelus after being turned by Darla.
It's all about the daddy issues in this episode as the title suggests, opening with a scene back in 18th century Ireland between pre-vampire Angel - Liam - and his father before cutting ahead to our current Angel battling a demon. There's an encounter with Kate and her father, it all gets a little awkward and the vampire slinks off to try and work out what the demon is doing. It turns out it's a largely peaceful demon and Angel needs to find out why it attacked the train when it's usually the demon equivalent of a kitten. As he digs deeper, it turns out that Kate's father might be involved somewhere along the line, dealing demonic drugs disguised as auto parts.
This episode should probably come with an advanced "David Boreanaz does his Irish accent again" warning, but it's interesting to delve back into the past we hear about much more than we see (probably due to aforementioned accent). The episode pulls off the clever move of combining the Buffy episode Becoming flashbacks and new ones that expand upon those stories, namely the slaughter of Angel's family at his own hand. It's a grisly reminder of everything our hero has to atone for and where it all began, as well as how he got his nickname; his sister believes him to be a returning angel. It also brings back Darla, which is always a good thing (and who becomes increasingly important as the series goes on).
For both Kate and Angel, their respective relationships helped shape who they are as people/vampires; for Kate, she became a cop in order to try and win the respect that was denied to her by Trevor after her mother died. For Angel, it's about defying his father in death as he did in life, destroying what he loves. Weaving them together makes the themes of the episode thuddingly transparent and with all the subtly of a brick through a window, but daddy issues are never really an understated thing to deal with.
It doesn't help that Kate is still such a non-character, originally introduced as an unknowing human element in LA and as a potential love interest for Angel. That didn't really work out so she got her daddy issues back story. But that's all there really is to her character at this point; resentment towards Angel and her father. The episode advances her acceptance of the supernatural side of the city, but without that audience connection to her, it's tough to really care. She keeps wandering into situations she doesn't really understand, waiting for Angel to come and get her out of it. She may be able to kick ass, but it's hard to feel for a character that feels a far cry from the energy and subversion of the Buffyverse women we're used to.
As such, it's one of those episodes where the B plot tends to be a little more fun. Cordelia's decided to fit a security system in the offices to guard them against demons entering the property whenever they feel like it. Wesley and Angel aren't fussed, but eventually Cordelia gets it in place... just in time for a demon attack. How it warns them? It lets them know which door has been opened. As the fight ensues around the office, Cordelia looks despairingly on as invading demons are announced with "The left door is ajar" and Angel defenestrating one to the narration of "The window is open." It may just be one scene, but it's a moment of much needed levity in a grimdark episode.
You know it's probably not going to be the best episode when Angel gets his Irish accent on, but The Prodigal is serviceable enough for what it wants to do. If it hadn't been for Cordelia's security woes, I might not have been so forgiving of it though. It's just a bit dull.
Quote of the Week:
Angel: No, this is strictly recon. I need to know exactly what we're dealing with before we make any moves.
Wesley: Right you are! A deliberate, cautious approach would be the most sensible plan. Fools rush in.
Cordelia: No, he wants you to stay here.
Inventive Kill: Kate bags another vampire by shooting him in the shoulder to distract him and staking him before he realises she knows what she's doing.
LA Who's Who: The barmaid who points out Liam to Darla would be one Christina Hendricks, marking her first appearance in the Whedonverse before going on to become our infamous Mrs Reynolds in Firefly.
- Becky
You can read Becky's look at previous episode, I've Got You Under My Skin, here.
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Previously on Angel: Angel met Detective Kate Lockley on a routine investigation about a weird chest-sucking demon thing; she naturally assumed he's a serial killer, but hey, he saved her life and now they're pals who help each other out.
Kate's currently trying to track down a mobster wanted for murder, Little Tony Papazian and enlists Angel's help in tracking him down. Thanks to Doyle's networks, Angel gets the job done, leaving Kate to arrest Papazian. She gets a little too aggressive with him during the interview and a lawyer, Mercer, from Wolfram & Hart succeeds in getting the entire precinct to take part in sensitivity training. However, after the training, everyone gets a little too sensitive; Kate breaks down and confesses her daddy issues to her father at his retirement party in front of a bunch of cops, which promptly results in everyone breaking down as a result of their own sensitivity training. Angel and the gang get involved and try to resolve the situation before Little Tony can get to Kate.
There's a fun conceit at the heart of this episode, one which feels a lot like the Buffy episode Band Candy, when Sunnydale's adult population were cursed with returning to their teenage personalities. Here, the sensitivity training and magic talking stick allows the LAPD to get in touch with their inner feelings whilst reducing them to a bunch of emotive wrecks. It never works quite as well as its Buffy counterpart though because apart from Angel and, at a push, Kate, we don't know the personalities involved as well as we did Giles, Joyce or Snyder. The comedy derived from seeing them regress from the people we knew and therefore operated on a much deeper level than anything Sense and Sensitivity can achieve.
It doesn't help that we, as an audience, are still getting to know Kate; we know she's pretty ruthless and efficient at her job. She's one for a dry sense of humour and might be attracted to Angel. What this episode does is allow us to get under her skin whilst the narrative fills in a lot of her background fairly swiftly. Her daddy issues are ridiculously cliched, but the performance of Rohm makes up for it, resisting the easy route of breaking down hysterically at her father and instead opting for a more measured approach that escalates as she revealed how craply he had treated her. The episode's boldest move is to not have this resolved at the end.
It's easy to imagine that in Buffy, a similar situation would have ended with her father attempting a reconciliation at the end, or at least acknowledging his behaviour. For Angel, it's much more fitting to have the ending that is given; he simply shows up to scold her for making a fool of herself, ignoring anything she said and outwardly stating he's going to pretend it never happened. Angel observes this scene from a quiet corner along with the audience and it feels as if we're witnessing a personal snapshot. The moment is a quietly heartbreaking one and affirms that, in Angel's world, some things just aren't meant to be fixed and this is a relationship that won't ever be mended.
I've already spoken about the comedy of the central conceit and how it doesn't land so much for the police characters, but to end on a more positive note, let's talk about how amusing Angel is when he's being all sensitive and cuddly. David Boreanaz lands his lines so brilliantly, especially the moment where he confesses that he feels Cordy and Doyle judge him when he vamps out. Charisma Carpenter is the perfect foil as Cordelia gets more exasperated and less sensitive towards her boss as she goes on. As I said before, it works much better here because we know the characters' personalities so well and the awkward hug that Angel proffers to his colleagues makes the rest of the episode truly worth it. And obviously the Hawaiian shirt, hat and Baltimore accent at the beginning is just brilliant.
I still can't quite decide whether or not I like this episode. Admittedly, a large part of that has to do with it being Kate-centric and the show is still unsure of what to do with her, though the episode works hard to get more of a character background in place, as cliched as that might be. Yet it's probably all worth it for the chance to see Angel go full warm and fuzzy on us.
Quote of the Week:
Angel: You know, Antony, you could be a rainbow and not a [punches Little Tony] "pain" bow.
- Becky
You can read Becky's look at previous episode, Rm W/A Vu, here.
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