Why hasn't Angel thought of this? It's brilliant! Necro-tinted Ninja wear!

 In a desperate ploy for ratings, ME attempts to draw in the much-desired "people into women being antiseptically scrubbed down by other women" demographic.

 
 Evil.

Angel 5.3: Unleashed

I thought this episode blew. Just to, you know, warn you. Totally blew. Massive chunks. Huge, massive, gargantuan chunks. So there you go.

The fang gang starts off this episode having a nighttime picnic to get away from the evil that is supposedly plotting against them at W&H. Fred scans them all with a thingy to make sure they’re bug free, and I can only assume that it not only sweeps for bugs of the man-made variety, but also of the mystical and demon variety. And I’m sure it does, because Fred is super duper smart. Super duper.

Once the super duper smart Knoxless Fred has swept them and given them the go ahead they turn like a pack of ravenous wolves on Gunn. Generally speaking, I’m assuming they’re all just jealous of his new wardrobe and smarts. I’m sure Fred and Wesley are feeling rather threatened as they are supposed to be the smart people, and if Gunn takes that away from them, what have they got left? Not a whole hell of a lot, people. Not a whole hell of a lot.

My god. You're so full of crap.

Anyway, they’re suspicious. Maybe he’s a baddie now. Maybe he answers to the big guys in the alternate dimension, or wherever the hell the “senior partners” hide out. Gunn is, naturally, offended. The gang didn’t mean anything by it—just that he might be evil. Because he let them put stuff in his head. And because he solves things without rambling on endlessly or decapitating anyone/thing. But really none of it matters, because they’re just trying to trick you into thinking that he’ll be the first one corrupted when it obviously means he won’t be. We’ve all had way too much experience with the misdirection fairy to even contemplate for falling for such a weak, juvenile ploy. Personally I’m hoping Fred embraces her inner naughtiness. Then maybe they’d have to, you know, take her out or something. That’d be cool.

Angel’s super duper hearing kicks in and he grabs Wesley’s silver “I joined an evil law firm and all I got was this fucking pen. A fucking STERLING pen. Fucking Gunn got a fucking brain. It’s not fucking fair” pen and runs off to kill a werewolf. Buffy would be appalled.

Sure, the werewolf was attacking a girl. But still. Appalled. It could have been Oz, the fucker.

It wasn’t Oz, in case you were worried, but rather some man that gave up and let the beast win and blah blah blahcakes. Angel is determined not to let the beast take the girl-victim over. He’s gonna make it all better, even if she did get bit by a werewolf and is in for a life of constant leg shaving and suppressing desires to slash annoying peoples’ throats. So they start to hunt her down and blah blah blah whatever.

There's no need to be dramatic.

The girl in question is a young woman and we are never really told why she chose to jog around a sketchy park late at night alone. Obviously not important. This young woman whose name I will learn when she proves to be someone I have to pay attention to, lives with her sister the nurse and her precocious niece and takes art classes and helps out or something. I don’t know. She baby sits. She wakes up the night after the attack bruised and nauseous and hearing things really loudly and she can’t remember what happened and really, it doesn’t seem all that much different than the morning after a Jaeger bender, but it’s real serious shit, mmkay?

And I’m here to tell you that the morning after a Jaeger bender when you closed down the bar and your ass has to get out of bed at 6:30am and go to work is some real serious shit too, thankyouverymuch. Way worse than being bitten by a wolf. Way, way worse.

The gal has to baby sit her niece that night, and of course she starts to change so she goes upstairs and just before she goes to rip the throat out of her precocious little relative Angel crashes through her window or..no, wait…I must have seen that wrong. He couldn’t crash through, because he’s a vamp and I’m sure we’re not reliving the whole saving Kate debacle of Season Two…and, in any case, I suppose now is a good time to admit that I spaced out. So somehow the werewolf’s unsuspecting ass goes through an upstairs window per usual. They never really use the doors on this show, do they?

The fang gang then apparently leaves the very young niece by herself all night while they cart the tranqued out werewolf and lock her in a cage at W&H overnight. Nice. Angel assures her her niece is fine even though really she was a 9-year old left alone overnight in a big scary house missing one window and shows this week’s blonde the video of her transformation. The gang goes about convincing her to love herself, even if she is an evil, evil demon that Angel may someday kill with a pen, and Fred takes her to her house to get her wubby for the last night of the full moon cycle because the writers remembered at the last minute that Angel cannot technically walk outside in the sun until they work in that storyline about W&H’s senior partners necrotinting the sun. She needs her wubby, in case you were wondering, so she’ll be comfortable with familiar things. In her cold, steel cell.

So, what? You're, like, Frankenstein?

Bad things happen, of course, and I’m not talking about the awkward confrontation with her sister over leaving her niece alone all freaking night long, but more like the be-masked commandos that run around the neighborhood in the middle of the day, shooting people with tranquilizers and kidnapping werewolves. Because that’s what happens.

Fred feels bad, as well she should, and Angel is determined to find her. The girl. Whatever. He’s totally all about the girl this episode. I have no idea why. They decide it was an inside job and rather than turning on Gunn again, which would have been way funner, they make the staff sing for Lorne. Blah blah blah, through wacky hijinks and the semi-transparent Spike, they figure out it was some lab dude that showed up earlier and we all knew it was him anyway because who else would it be, and they make him take them to his leader.

His leader is one very twisted SOB who serves werewolf for dinner. Live werewolf. But not leprechauns, because they don’t exist. Unlike werewolves. The gang busts in, saves the whiny little SOB even though she was all “no, let them have me. Let them eat me.” and then she changes, of course, and bites the very bad lab dude. Angel then tells the maitre d’ that his guests will have werewolf in a month. Everyone just sort of soak that up—Mr. Evil Angel getting down with his dark self without the use of leather pants. Only not, because they ruin it by saying in the next scene that the twisted dining room has been shut down. So we can only assume that they let him go. But whatever. It was the thought that counted, right?

It all ends with the gang hanging out in Angel’s swank new pad, ordering Chinese food and pinky swearing to be the best friends 4eva. Sort of. Anyway, they love each other.

Ladies and Gentlemen, hell just froze over.

Also, Spike hung out and was really annoying, interjecting completely unnecessary and annoying comments often, he disappeared, he came back, Fred vowed to save him and, well, all I really want to know is where the hell is my Knox?

You know that whoosh thing you do when you're suddenly not there? Yeah, I love that.

angel 5.2: just rewards | angel 5.4: hellbound