Interior, Lindsey's apartment. I like a man secure enough in his masculinity to sleep on purple sheets. (Mauve, whatever.) Plus, all the body parts we can see are naked, and that's never bad. Lindsey's alarm goes off (awfully quietly; it takes a brass band to get me out of bed) and he turns it off with his stump.

Lindsey shaves; Lindsey puts on his hand; Lindsey grabs a (pre-tied) tie out of his closet and looks wistfully at his guitar, sitting all lost and lonely in the closet. Poor Lindsey.

Cut to another guy getting ready for work. This one is tightening his tie, as though to make it extra-exceedingly clear that he has two hands. He and his wife and two cute kids are getting ready for their day in what looks to be a normal suburban household, so you know something awful's going to happen. As his wife waits in the van (a one-car family in LA? Yeah, right!) she yells at our guy to get the bookbag and the vitamins. He's reading the paper, so I guess he can be forgiven for mistaking a big honking butcher knife for the medicine bottle. Except for the fact that they're nothing alike. As he walks out the door, still reading what's probably a faux USA Today, suddenly the knife just jumps in his eye! Boom! Also ick!

--And we see Cordy get thrown against a wall by the vision. The guys come running to help (I think they should pad the office floor if this happens every week), but this one devastates her so much all she can do is hang onto Angel and sob.

Credits. Pretty credits.

It's LA Law! Only with Lindsey and Lilah getting bitched at by a bald guy, instead of Corbin Bernsen. Can't complain about that. Great little snapshot of their daily business--bad companies, W&H doing bad things to protect them, and oh yeah, Lilah and Lindsey can't stand each other. Duh. Lindsey's developing a serious sarcasm problem here. It's like if Xander went to law school. And got his hand chopped off. Although the hating Angel thing would conveniently be already there.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, the status of Angel. Lindsey: "He's up, he's down. He's good, he's bad. He's a barrel of dead monkeys!" Um, okay. And in other news, their department is going to be re-evaluated. Meaning, as Lilah says, "they'll promote one and cut the other. Around here, that's a literal cutting." Heh. Lilah gets all the best we're-sponsored-by-demons lines. Lindsey's deep in Apathyland, but somehow he's still in favor with Boss Reed. Lilah sulks/plots/something. Also, Lindsey has a doctor's appointment. That's never good with W&H.

It's time for our semi-weekly Interrogate Cordy on her Visions show. Not going well. I hate TPTB. It's not enough she's in screaming pain and sees guys stabbing themselves in the *eye,* now she has to guess where he lives based on the view of a kitchen? Mental note: post home address on fridge. Just in case.

Gunn opens his big mouth and gets to call every hospital asking about Eye Guy. They split up for the usual investigative whatever. Cordy looks haunted, as well she should. Poor kid.

Meanwhile, back at the plot I care about, Lindsey's being all cute and ruffled and...episode, Celli, episode...concerned as some random doctor asks him random questions. Doc finally admits that Lindsey's bosses put him at the top of the transplant list. Lindsey looks alarmed, but they've already tranq'ed him, so he's stuck. And as the doc says, "This is cause for applause. In a few hours' time, you'll be doing the applauding."

Random shots of surgery (dude, I don't care what you're transplanting, full anesthesia, thank you!). The doctors and nurses are not at all fazed by the appearance of some scary red demon (a Pockla demon, my closed-captioning says) that whooshes in, does something to the stitches on Lindsey's wrist, and whooshes out. So, where's the line on the insurance form for that?

Back to AI. Gunn is making up a story to tell the emergency room people about this guy they're looking for. Seeing as how it's about the tenth hospital he's called, it sounds awfully impromptu. Behind him, Cordy's cleaning. She looks even skinnier than she did earlier.

Angel's back. How's Cordy? Pretty quiet. "She grunted once around noon, then got on with the maniacal cleaning." Angel's got nothing, Gunn's got nothing, Wes appears and has nothing. They need to ask Cordy some more questions. Wes, as Boss, is all too happy to delegate to Angel. Snicker.

Angel is his usual goofball self. Cordy's in pain. They go over it again. She thinks he had kids, which is just awful, and then she remembers the bookbag he was carrying out the door. A clue, a clue!

Next morning. Back to the purple sheets. I am *not* obsessed. I am also not going to say anything about where Lindsey's hand is under his covers. He pulls it out and looks at it; only a tiny red line shows where his wrist leaves off and someone else's hand begins. The demon does good work. There's a replay of the other morning, but this time Lindsey has two hands. And he's still half-naked.

There's some really great stuff with him playing his guitar, hesitantly at first and then more strongly. You can't recap how cool that was.

Cut to W&H. Meeting with Random Bad Business Guy. Lilah notes that Lindsey's operation was expensive. "The shaman alone is, what, a quarter mil? I guess they like you, they really, really like you!"

Lah, lah, Bad Business Guy's company sold cancer-causing chocolates. How's that for evil? I mean, chocolate, man! Lilah reassures him that any jury this goes to will be hand-picked or "enchanted" by W&H. Bad Business Guy: "Why can't people take responsibility for their own problems? We didn't give 'em cancer, the Chinese did!" Lindsey posits some weird-ass solution involving a spin-off company that I don't really care about. Fortunately, that company's about to go bankrupt, wink wink nudge nudge.

We're saved from more of BBG by Lindsey's new hand, which is writing "KILL" over and over on his legal pad. Apparently the hand likes chocolate as much as I do. Lindsey wigs and runs off. To get a Hershey bar?

Lindsey's place, night. Lindsey's trying to make his hand do the weird thing again. He even pokes it with a letter opener--ow! Careful! You just got that thing, you don't know if that'll void the warranty! He gives his hand a very suspicious look and whispers, "Who are you?"

This would be a bad time for me to start singing the CSI theme, right? Thought so.

Back to AI the next afternoon. Angel takes a box from some guy and says, "Keep the change." As the guys leaves we hear, "Wow, a whole dollar just for me. I'm the luckiest delivery man ever." Heh. Angel brings it over to Cordy. He was hungry. Riiiight. "You don't eat," she points out. "Sometimes I get a hankering," he says, and God, can he not lie or what? Finally he admits that he didn't know what Cordy liked, and since she snaps the guys' heads off every time they ask what she wants, he just ordered everything. He's starting to do the turtle shrink into his blue shirt, when she says very matter-of-factly, "I love you." He gets this great gooby grin on his face, and Cordy declares, "You should do that more often."

Okay, this is officially my favorite. Episode. Of Angel. EVER.

Cordy gets a non-painful (ish) flash of her vision again, and remembers that the guy had an eye thing. Other than stabbing it. It was new. (You know what? I had eye surgery a couple years back. In LA. Should I be nervous?)

Wes and Gunn are back with some news. Found the family, but they're out of the country and the house has been not only stripped but sanitized. They're at a dead end (nice use of episode title there), and--duh duh duh--there's only one thing they can do. Everyone is horrified at the prospect. Except Angel, who's doing that kind of John Wayne swagger at the thought. Heh.

Cut to Caritas, where Lindsey is...umph. Did you want objectivity? Hot. Very hot. The boy can sing! And the camera shows him and the guitar at the same time, so you know it's actually him playing, too.

Dude, this is my favorite episode of *anything* EVER.

The AI crew comes in. Angel's jealous. Everyone else keeps telling him to shut up. Including me.

Did I mention that he looks incredibly hot too?

Right. Plot. Storyline. Can't he just sing for the rest of the ep? No? Grr.

Lindsey's there for more than just making me whimper; he wants to know what, exactly, his hand wants. The Host tells him that he has to throw his lot in with the AI people. He is *not* happy to see them. Cordy: "I know you're evil and everything, but that was just so amazing." Yup.

Host: "Two enemies, one case, all coming together in a beautiful buddy movie kind of way." The eye and the hand are connected. Lindsey's not about to work with Angel, but when he leaves, he leaves behind a glass with fingerprints on it. Another clue! One more and a blue cartoon dog is coming by with his friend Steve.

Stop the presses here. I have a problem. If it's the hand that's doing weird things, and Eye Guy got an eye transplant, how--what--the hell?? is basically what I'm saying. Did they eye magically attract the knife to it? I don't get it!

W&H offices at night. Lindsey sneaks in to the boss's office. (Dude, if you look like you're afraid of getting caught, you will be. If you look like you're supposed to be there, no one will bother you. Don't you *read* spy novels?) He hacks into his boss's computer (Lizbet, I'm sure, is happy to see that W&H use Macs).

He gets into the "Special Projects Reevaluation File." For your geeker reference, here's a list of the folders:

Project History
Personnel Rosters
Manners Massacre
Bethany Project
Project Darla
Drusilla (vampire)
Project Angel
Vampire Detection
Lilah Morgan
Lindsey McDonald
Youth Cntr. Project
Demon Relations
Terminated Employees
Pending Projects

He goes into Reed's To Do List (which includes "Vacation Plans" and "Shaman Contracts," which amusingly are due April 15) and searches for the Fairfield Clinic, where his operation was done

Meanwhile, Angel is all smug because he found out who the fingerprints belong to--and all silly when he has to admit he hired a PI to get them for him. Angel: "You know, when I was in charge here, no one questioned my methods or my singing." Cordy: "You're half right." Anyway, Lindsey has the hand of a guy named Bradley Scott, who has a record, not for murder, but embezzlement. Also, big shock, he worked for W&H. He apparently reported to his parole officer once and disappeared.

Lindsey sneaks back out of Reed's office, nearly taking a plant down as he goes, and notices someone else breaking into the file room. It's Lilah. She puts a paper we can't see into her purse--along with a gun and an impressive collection of prescription bottles.

Lindsey goes to see a man about a hand. Sorry. The guy is a parole officer, and his name was in Reed's Fairfield Clinic file. The guy asks him for "the code," and when Lindsey can't provide it, he punches him and then hits him with the butt of a gun. Hey! Stop that!

Just as the guy's about to shoot Lindsey, Angel throws a trash can through the window. Nice move, considering he can't just walk in. The moron shoots in his direction, then actually goes to the window to see if he got him. He leans out, and Angel gets a rope around his neck while Lindsey gets the gun away from him.

What follows s probably the best-played game of Good Cop (er, vampire), Bad Cop (er, lawyer) I've ever seen:

Lindsey: "What are you doin' here?"
Angel: "Gee, I don't know. Saving your life?"
Lindsey: (waving the gun around)"I don't need you to save my life!"
Moron: "Hey, watch it with that!"
Angel: "Say, a little gratitude, Lindsey, goes a long way."
Lindsey: "You got no business--why--why aren't you trying to kill me?"
Angel: "'Scuse me. I'm on a case here, Lindsey. Does everything always have
to be about killing you all the time?"
Moron: "I can see you guys got issues. So I'll just g-ack--"
Lindsey: "That is my lead! You're choking my lead!"
Angel: "'He's my lead! He's my lead!' What, are we on the schoolyard here?
Look, if you want to get to the bottom of this, you gotta learn how to play
with others. (to Moron) "Okay, look, I'm gonna loosen the rope, and you're
gonna tell me all about your parolee Bradley Scott."
Lindsey: "Who?"
Angel: "The guy whose hand you're wearing. You might want to listen up."
Lindsey: "You don't tell me what to do."
Angel: "He's so immature."
Lindsey: "SHUT UP!"
Angel: (to Moron) "We're waiting."
Moron: "I'm not telling you zip. You can kill m, but Wolfram & Hart will do
a lot worse."
Angel: "Kill you. Why would I kill you--" (vamps) "--When I could live off
you for a month?"
Moron: "Aaaah!"
Angel: "Mmm, can't you just taste that butterfat?"
Lindsey: "You are really gross, you know that?"
Moron: "Aaah! I'll tell you, I'll tell you!"

Cut to Cordy having a nightmare, and Wes and Gunn getting way concerned that she's losing it. They hear her making odd noises, and break in to her office--to fins her talking to Angel. On the phone.

Lindsey and Angel driving to the address they got from the parole officer. It's like anti-bonding. For a minute, I'm convinced Angel got 'hold of the Sensitivity Stick again. Then he redeems himself by snarking, "You just keep on moping. You're good at that."

They get to Ye Olde Secret Lab, disguised as a travel agency. Lindsey doesn't has his computer, so he can't override the security; Angel tosses an axe through their window and suggests Lindsey get some aggression out he old-fashioned way. By punching people.

They get in. I'm still a geek, and the posters on the walls are for Washington DC, Montana, and Scotland. Oh, and Nepal, presumably before their entire royal family was assassinated. Angel notes that the floor is hollow (how?). They go down into--I was right--a lab. People in stasis chambers (that's what they'd call them on Star Trek), missing various body parts. Ugh.

Lindsey sees the guy who pre-owned his hand, Bradley. They used to work in the mailroom at W&H together. The guy's semi-conscious and muttering "kill."

"Who do you want to kill?"

"Kill me."

Lindsey asks Angel what to do. Angel says that's his call, but he's going to help the ones that can be saved.

Lindsey pulls the plug on Bradley, who looks grateful as he dies. Lindsey looks about to cry. He and Angel get everyone out, and then Angel blows the place.

Back to AI. Cordy's better, but the visions are starting to "take their toll." Just part of the job, she says.

W&H. Reorg time. Lilah's getting the "you were great, now you're mud" speech, and she scrambles for her purse--is she going for the paper or her gun? Lindsey stops her. Then he gives the best monologue ever ("You do know you gave me an evil hand, right?") which doubles as the best resignation speech ever. I've never shot a security guard in the foot as part of my resignation speech, but that's just me. In the process, he mentions that Lilah has dirt on pretty much everyone in the room, virtually guaranteeing her job for the next millennium. "Me? I'm unreliable. I've got these evil hand issues. And I'm bored with this crap."

On the way out his evil hand smacks Lilah in the butt.

Night. Lindsey heads for his truck with a duffel bag, his guitar case, and a very stylin' leather jacket. Angel's there. "If you're here to kill me, grab you a ticket and get in line." More anti-bonding. "So you're here to talk me to death."

It's a nice, subversively funny little scene, and then Lindsey's gone. Sigh. Still. Great episode.