Angel"Unleashed"
DVD Season 5, Episode 3
Tara I. – TwoCents Staff Reviewer
tara@thetwocentscorp.com
Angel Broodometer: 1
Ugh. That was my first reaction to realizing that Unleashed was the next episode on my Angel DVD. Can we just skip this one? No? Darn.
We meet up with Team Angel pretending to be out for a Chinese food nighttime picnic. They're only pretending to be picnicking though (not suspicious at all guys! Good cover!), because paranoia is running rampant through Team Angel after only a month of working at Wolfram & Hart. Of course, when you're dealing with lawyers who specialize in apocalypses, it's probably less paranoia and more rational behavior.
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Angel
ReplyDelete"Unleashed"
DVD Season 5, Episode 3
Tara I. – TwoCents Staff Reviewer
tara@thetwocentscorp.com
Angel Broodometer: 1
Ugh. That was my first reaction to realizing that Unleashed was the next episode on my Angel DVD. Can we just skip this one? No? Darn.
We meet up with Team Angel pretending to be out for a Chinese food nighttime picnic. They're only pretending to be picnicking though (not suspicious at all guys! Good cover!), because paranoia is running rampant through Team Angel after only a month of working at Wolfram & Hart. Of course, when you're dealing with lawyers who specialize in apocalypses, it's probably less paranoia and more rational behavior.
After a few barbs and some sniping, to show us, the viewers, that the cracks in our crack team are showing, Angel's super-vampire hearing alerts him to a young, blond woman in distress (I'm just going to create a macro for that one).
In this case, the young lady is in distress from a werewolf. Fortunately for her, Angel arrives to kill him with Wesley's silver-plated pen. Ha! Sadly, it's too late for weregirl--or Nina (Jenny Mollen). She's been bitten, and, as any sane person would do when confronted by a man with Angel’s hair holding a bloody pen, she runs away.
Angel gathers together all of the Wolfram & Hart resources and demands that they find her. This is where they lose me. Why such a panic? Worse things happen all the time in L.A. without Angel freaking out quite so much. I know that they're trying to make a point about Angel being the same even though he's now running Wolfram & Hart, but it just doesn't work for me. It's too clumsily done, and well, boring. I don't care about weregirl, really, so it's beyond me that Angel should lose his cool.
Spike agrees with me. He spends the entire episode stalking Fred and reminding her that he's fading faster everyday. At first Fred is lackadaisical about the whole thing, but she finally realizes that Spike really is spending larger amounts of time just wandering in and out of reality. Her pleas to help Spike fall on deaf ears--since she's mainly talking to Angel, that's not surprising.
Meanwhile, Angel has managed to track down weregirl just as she's changed for the first time and is about to make a tasty snack out of her little niece. Angel and Wesley manage to subdue her and take her back to the fort. A handy, incredibly creepy video, of her changing from a werewolf to a human convinces Nina that she is in fact a werewolf. Apparently being bitten by a giant wolf-like creature and suddenly acquiring a taste for bloody meat and hyper-sensitive senses wasn't enough of a clue.
Angel tries to convince Nina that things will be okay. Right. Because Angel is the poster child for dealing well with freaky supernatural changes. It took him 100 years to come to terms with his soul--he could at least give Nina an hour or two!
Fred takes Nina back to her house to get some soothing reminders of home. Unfortunately, someone else has a better idea. A team of thugs knocks Fred out and steals Nina away.
Some Lorne-style interrogation later and the Wolfram & Hart lackeys are cleared of leaking the news of Nina's transformation. At least until Fred follows a shadowy Spike into the office of one of Wesley's team: Dr. Royce played by John Billingsley. She finds a chemical that can block Lorne's telepathic abilities. Before you can say "grrr", Angel convinces Royce to talk.
Nina is toast--or more correctly--being served on toast. It's dinner time and live, raw werewolf is on the menu. Ew. We get to witness them "preparing" her and can I just say? What on earth? Were the ratings low or something? Was it necessary to have a scene where the poor actress is half-naked, sprayed with water, and then scrubbed. Charming.
Fortunately, for Nina (now nicely garnished), Angel arrives in time to save her from being dinner. But what of those poor, rich, hungry diners? Well, fortunately for them Nina bites Royce and provides them with a rain check werewolf in about a month. Strangely enough, Angel seems just fine with that.
Our final scenes of the episode are bonding scenes: Angel bonding with Nina, who has decided to return to her sister and niece, and Team Angel bonding in Angel's new bachelor pad. They decide to order in: werewolf-free this time.
The Broodometer is a sorry 1 this episode. Spike did all the brooding, which doesn't really count.
Well, as I said, not my favorite episode. I think of this one as filler. What did you think? Are you pro weregirl or against? Leave your Two Cents below. See you next week for Hell-Bound.