Ep by ep; Orpheus
I'll be accelerating these reviews for obvious reasons.
The Good; Fabulous, the wonderful flashbacks and Faith and Willow working together with AI, just amazing!
The Bad; All too wonderful for anything like that. A bit stupid that they put Ally's name in the opening titles, spoils the surprise of her appearance somewhat.
Best line; Faith; "Dust in the wind. Candle in the wind. There'll be a general wind theme" plus flapper "Pound snow you mook!"
Apocalypses: 5
Fang Gang in bondage: Angel chained up at the end Cordy: 5 Angel: 14 Wes: 6 Gunn; 4 Lorne; 4 Fred; 2
Fang gang knocked out: Faith in a coma, again! Gunn knocked out by Connor Cordy: 15 Angel: 16 Wes: 5 Doyle; 1 Gunn; 2 Lorne; 5 Groo; 1 Connor; 1 Faith; 1
Kinky dinky:
CC accuses Connor of liking the way Faith 'cracked her whip' and thinks he wants to be in her 'leather clad lap'. Wes tells Willow about having a woman chained in a closet, she seems more intrigued than shocked. Angelus refers to keeping Faith's thighs warm. CC and Connor's relationship is described as 'icky'. Faith says of Connor 'Break me off a switch, there's going to be a whipping!". Angelus refers to 'eating' his mama!!!!
Captain Subtext; Willow describes Connor as handsome and androgynous, hmmmm? Plenty of Fred/Willow subtext, even Wes gives a little look when Willow strokes Fred's chin, especially when Willow asks 'What's Fred's story?' and speaks of 'The call of Fred'. Fred wants to discuss Baachanals with Willow. However she later tells Fred 'I'm seeing someone' by which she means Kennedy back in Sunnydale. Faith calls Angelus 'princess'.
What the fanficcers thought; Not much fic on this ep itself but quite a lot of slashfic on Willow and Faith's drive back to Sunnydale, Willow saying she 'Got a Slayer' from the whole affair.
Missing scenes; According to the commentary we have an extra scene where Faith and Angelus see Angel discovering the Hyperion? Why not include that on special edition DVDs?
Questions and observations; Willow makes her 3rd appearance on Angel. This is actually quite momentous as it means she's actually the 2nd most prolific character in the Buffyverse. Angel is number 1 with 167eps (57eps of Buffy and 110 eps of his own show), Willow is 2nd with 147eps (144 eps of Buffy and 3 appearances on Angel) and Buffy herself is joint 3rd with 146eps (144 eps of her own show and 2 guest slots on Angel not counting archive footage taken from Buffy or the movie) with Cordy who also has 146 appearances (57 eps of Buffy and 89eps of Angel). Then comes Xander with 143 eps of Buffy (he's in every ep of Buffy except 'Conversations with Dead People'), Giles with 123 eps of Buffy, Spike with 120 (97 eps of Buffy and 23 of Angel) and Wes with 107 (6eps of Buffy and 101 of Angel).
I'm sure most Xena fans will recognise Adrienne Wilkinson who played Xena's daughter Livia/Eve as the flapper whose dog Angel saves. Met her at a convention once and she's beautiful and charming. Gina Torres, another Xena/Hercules alumni will turn up in a few eps time and Orpheus is the name of an early Xena ep.
The flashbacks help us track the various stages of Angel through the years. They basically fall down to; 1. Post resouling daze; (as seen in Darla) 2. Try to get back with Darla in Peking; 3. Coming to America; ('Orpheus') 4. Brooding loner; (up until the events of 'Are you now or ever have been?') 5. Hedonism aka The Manilow Years; (up until feeding on the guy in the doughnut shop in Orpheus) 6. Street tramp; (up until meeting Whistler in Becoming pt2) 7. Sunnydale CC refers to Willow as Glinda, the good witch from The Wizard of Oz (Cordy herself doing a good impression of the Wizard behind the screen). If you haven't seen Wicked go immediately, it's great and you'll never watch TWOO the same way again. What a shame we never get Barry Manilow to guest star as he did on Will and Grace. Gunn once again tells Connor off, once again playing the father role to him. With the exception of flashback this will be the last time we see Angelus begging the question is he actually gone for good after Angel and Angelus' epic face off in the dreamworld.
Of course nowadays we know that DB will play his role on Bones for 245 eps rather putting his time on Buffy/Angel in the shade. And of course Alysson will far outdo her time in the Buffyverse with her appearances in 192 eps of HIMYM (missing out on 6 eps due to sprog dropping).
This ep doesn't disappoint on rewatching, containing all the elements the Buffyverse is famous for, plentiful action with Faith, comedy with the Faith/Angelus show plus Willow/Fred, tragedy with Angel feeding off the poor guy in the donut shop and Lornes' very poignant caring for Faith, drama with
Lorne confronting Wes and love Connor trying to comfort Wes, telling him Faith was brave and died in battle. All told the perfect ep.
Marks out of 10; 10/10 Faith AND Willow in the same episode of Angel, makes you want to cry with happiness! Rewatched this one 4 times! I know I previously said 5 by 5 was my favourite but actually this is my favourite although the Wes drops the knife bit is still my favourite moment ever