beginning | blinding torment | boils | lies | making me bitter | evil compounds evil | blah blah bity blah

theirloveissodull

 

 

 

 

 

 






 

 











 













 

Angel 5.12: You're Welcome


 

Cordelia returns! As does her ample, heaving bosom! It appears, in fact, to have gotten its own contract for it is prominently featured! Moreso than Cordelia actually is!

 

However, you know, not the point. Well, it's sort of the point. But, mainly, the point is that Cordelia and her prominently featured bosom are back! They’re back to die, but I’d rather have her dead than a floating-head-Mother Theresa-wanna-be, so I’m totally okay with this. Shocking, I know.

 

 

He's a Wolfram & Hart client. Our client. Oh, and he's evil. What are the odds?

 

 

To set up this week’s bucket o’fun scenario: Angel’s bitter because he’s working for an evil law firm and one of his clients just killed a bunch of nuns and he wants to quit because it just really makes him feel bad about himself. And makes it hard for him to look at himself in the mirror. Or it would, if he could. But he can’t. So, really, it’s just metaphorically hard for him to look at himself in the mirror, which isn’t really as gripping when you stop to think about it, so let’s not. Meanwhile, back in the most craptastic hospital room ever (obviously Lilah’s a liar in death as well as in life) Cordy has a vision of Angel being moody and gets flashes of a bunch of threatening tattoos and wakes from her coma. Lindsey, continuing his vaguely defined and probably poorly thought out plot to usurp the Shanshu throne from Angel, even if it means putting the ever-annoying Spike on it, is annoyed by this news and opts to take it, whatever “it” may be, to the next level. Let’s hope he has as much success as NSYNC in that arena.

 

 

Wesley and Angel pick up Cordy from her not-so-fantastic hospital room. A few things: 1) I didn’t watch the actual episode or anything, but keeping in mind that I did read a very detailed spoiler summary of said episode, I do believe that Cordelia was promised by one Lilah, deceased, a 5 star hospital room with a 24 hour manicurist and other amenities. Now I’ve seen hospitals and call me crazy, but this looks like a pretty typical, tiny, craptastic hospital room without a 24-hour manicurist. Wolfram and Hart couldn’t spring for a posh set up in a private residence? 2) Cordy comes around the curtain of the “other” person in the room and complains about how they couldn’t give the one-foot-in-the-grave gal a single, but if you look around it’s clearly a single room as there are no other beds in the room. But, know what? I’m feeling kind of generous, so let’s just chalk this one up to Angel and Wesley being excited about Cordelia waking up and/or them contemplating two hot chicks in comas sharing a bed, rather than them just being unobservant dumbasses per usual. And 3) clearly these people have never visited Cordelia in the hospital, which I find hilarious.

 

 

You'd think they'd give miss one-foot-in-the- grave a private room... which brings me to, hey... couldn't you stick me someplace that smells a little less like ammonia-soaked death?

 

 

After shopping and facing what must be a fairly serious button shortage in LA as none of the clothes they purchased for her seem to have enough buttons to actually close properly, the trio arrive at W&H to fanfare and hugs and groping that lasts approximately 5 seconds before everyone goes back to work. Which seems a bit callous on the surface but I guess, in all honesty, there really couldn’t be a whole lot to say—Cordy’s been asleep for a couple months and is a bit tentative about everyone working for the Man and not remembering Connor and lord knows the fang gang hasn’t done jack in that amount of time besides sell their souls, so 5 seconds is about right for catching up.

 

Angel and Cordy go up to bond in Angel’s apartment, Cordy gives him some sappy shit about letting W&H change him, and we get a glimpse of Doyle’s video from Hero so Cordy can wax philosophical about how she totally gets his sacrifice now. I guess this is to make things more poignant while simultaneously assisting those of us who have forgotten who Doyle was. Right. Like we could forget the rakishly charming character they killed and replaced with Wesley Wyndham Price. Please. That wound has yet to scar over. I mean, Wesley? Of all the tertiary characters on Buffy they could have tossed under the bus, they brought over Wesley? Anyone else ever wonder what might have been, and what might now be, if they’d brought over, say, Percy? Or Jonathon? Ghost of Snyder? Mr. Gordo? Anyone but Wesley?

 

Back at the bat cave, Spike is playing video games. Lindsey is watching Spike play video games. There is vague bonding of the male sort over losing limbs. Pay attention, this is important later. I realize this may not seem important, as the two leads in the scene appear to be reciting their lines in their sleep, but it is. Eve calls, in all her glorious blandness, to inform the tiny Texan that Cordelia no longer slumbers. Lindsey decides that this means the best thing to do is to send Spike in to eat Cordelia. Oddly enough, he chooses to do this by stalking towards her in slow motion with an evil look on his face rather than, say, using his stealthy vampireness to sneak up on someone he thinks is an evil demon. The more Spike sticks around, the more I wonder how the hell he’s survived as long as he has.

 

 

I heard you weren't evil anymore, which kind of makes the hair silly.

 

 

He bites Cordelia, Angel interferes, Spike announces that Cordy’s not a demon even though his boy Doyle told him she was and then everyone’s all up in a snit over someone daring to use Doyle’s name. The heretic. A bit more back and forth and the subject of the aforementioned bonding over missing limbs comes up. Angel and Cordy immediately figure out it’s Lindsey. Eve is interrogated and beaten up by the still-technically-evil Harmony (she’s has no soul, so it’s totally okay) and way-too-easily gives up that Lindsey’s in the basement flipping the kill switch. Seems the all-powerful and knowing Senior Partners created something or other to take out Angel if he didn’t play nice. Lindsey, for some reason, knows what this is and what to do even though the SPs presumably didn’t create this kill switch until Angel moved in and this is all supposed to explain why he’s prancing through the corridors of W&H in overalls doing naughty things like murder and thievery, but I don’t really care.

 

Cordy, Angel and Spike go down to the basement to fight the very bad wee man. Spike tangles with some zombies while Cordy and Angel move on to what will go down in the annals of time as being the most non-slash slashy swordfight ever. Props to ME for trying, but when you have to spell it out, it’s no longer fun. For instance, having Eve say to Lindsey while lying naked in his arms “he’s still the center of your universe, isn’t he?” and following that up with a very long swordfight fraught with flirting and Lindsey ripping off his shirt for no good reason and tossing it at Angel and, well, do you see what I mean? If my boyfriend can recognize it as slash, it’s no longer cool.

 

The rest of the gang, for a change, does something useful. Wesley incants some spell that takes away Lindsey’s protective tattoos and he’s sucked up into a vortex, presumably to meet with the senior partners. I reiterate my hope that this was his plan all along, and that they didn’t just bring him back because they could because that would mean they suck. So let’s just pretend that Lindsey wanted to see them, and to do that he had to piss off Angel, so that meant going to Spike and setting forth an intricate chain of events that led him to this chamber. And the shirt? A distraction so Angel wouldn’t realize that Lindsey’s plan was thisclose to fruition. Success!

 

 

I mean, all I did was beat up a tiny Texan. It's not like I helped anyone.

 

 

If ME can insist that the last 6 years or so were all the machinations of Jasmine just so she could arrange her own birth, I can manipulate this season to fit my need for Lindsey to have a brain and an actual plan. Thank you for your understanding.

 

In the end, goodness and light and all things unholy prevail (for example, Fred magically falls in love with Wesley). Cordy tells Wesley that he works the best mojo, macks on Angel, explains that TPTB owed her a big one, I assume for forcing her to spend her summer as a floating head but it’s not really made clear, and sort of disappears with a “you’re welcome” off screen while Angel answers the phone. It’s the hospital telling him that Cordelia died without ever waking up. Aw. Good-bye Queen C. We’ll miss your bitchy, crass ways.

 

Thank you.

 

 

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