Reviewed by: Adam Bardwell
Rating: 9/10
Angel slips into top gear in this quality hour of drama. It marks the first appearance of Faith. It deals very much with Faiths mental state and draws parallels to Angel when he gained his soul in flashbacks. The whole thing culminates with a very powerful scene which has to be one of the most moving of the season. Add to this the first proper presence of Wolfram and Heart and you have one busy episode.
We last saw Faith in the Buffy episode, "Who Are You?" where she learnt what life was like in Buffy's shoes. This rocked her world for she discovered that people can genuinely love and care about you. We see this from her reaction to Riley after they slept together. She also discovers that saving people can be more satisfying than killing them. Then at the end it became apparent that she hated herself and her life probably out of regret. She basically comes to LA confused and when W&H contract her to kill Angel she sees the opportunity to die. This is why she wants Angel "In the game" - she wants him to hate her and believe she is evil so he will kill her because it is easier than dealing with what she has done. As you may have gathered this is a pretty gritty episode.
This is a fascinating, cleaver episode. The use of flashbacks is great foreshadowing for what Faith is about to go though. We get to see Angelus kill the Gypsy which leads to his curse. The fact that he bits her in the thigh region shows just how perverse his killing is. We then see Darla discovering that he is cursed. Her reaction seems to suggest that she isn't too surprise which could indicate that it has happened before. We then see a hungry Angel attack noble passers by. There is a struggle and he cries out repeatedly that he is a monster. This is a direct parallel to Faiths pleas at the end of the episode. He then bits the woman and for I a while it looked like he killed her. Near the episode the story is concluded with him unable to kill her - he's reached his cross-roads and chosen to take the hard road and not kill. Faith is now at these cross-roads.
It is about time that we got to find out a little more about W&H. I was very pleased that characters from previous episodes were reused. Lindsey ("City Of..."), Lee ("Sense and Sensitivity") and Lilah ("The Ring") all play a role in holy trinity which gets Faith to assassinate Angel. Angel has a very good scene with Lindsey after Angel breaks in looking for Faith. This set up their interesting relationship for "Blind Date" and indicates an initial mistrust between them. It seems a little weird that this trio all have LM as their initials.
The dialogue in this episode was very mixed. Many scenes were very solid but there were quite a few poor lines. These trended to be with the jokes. Not a joke as such but Faiths; 'English Cannel' remark was awful. I also didn't like the way Faith kept saying 'lover' it was way to similar to Angelus' exchanges with Buffy in season 2 of Buffy. Some of the dialogue worked very well. I particularly liked Angels complaints about 'some British guy' messing up Angel's chances to get though to Faith in the episode, "Consequences". The fact that Cordelia jumped in to defend Wesley shows how strong her friendship with him is although once she realises that the 'British guy' is in fact Wesley she lets Angel continue.
Faith's torturing of Wesley showed how unstable she was. I did, however, think that it was a bit too similar to Angelus torturing Giles in "Becoming". The Faith / Angelus parallels are great but this took it a bit too far (the flashbacks were all that was required). I liked the fact that Wesley didn't break. It shows how far he's come since his first encounter with a dire situation in "Bad Girls". Straying slightly from the subject but Faiths question to Wes. about fate is flawed for he was both hers and Buffy's Watcher.
The fighting action is brilliant despite the fact that Angel isn't always trying. The fighting in the rain at the end could be seen as reusing an idea from Innocence, however I'll forgive the writers for it adds to the scenes power. Faith collapses in Angel's arms as she begs for him to kill her. Then as the scene cuts to creates we hear roles of thunder. Whose ever idea this was - its genius. The thunder adds so much power. I'm sure you could argue that it is symbolic of Faith's soul reasserting itself but I don't want to seem pretensious!
Great Angel Moment: Faiths break down in the rain along with Wesley's reaction and the thunder.
In a Nutshell: A truly powerful return for Faith which hopefully will set up an interesting road to redemption for her beyond the second part of this episode, "Sanctuary".