Dianne's Synopsis

We open on Angel coming down into the lobby, exhausted after sleeping most of the last three days away. Cordelia points out that the agency is serious financial trouble, and she and Wesley start bickering. 

They are interrupted by a vision from Cordelia -- of a "mushy moldy monster growing out of the walls" whose worshippers are apparently killing each other in a religious dispute. While they're trying to figure it out, Angel dozes off on the couch for a second and dreams Darla (wearing 18th c? dress) is sitting on his lap getting as intimate as possible while fully dressed.

Jerking back to the present (and trying to be nonchalant about it), Angel IDs the site of her vision as a convent-turned-water-tank in Fremont. (He's got a thing for convents.) He tells them to call Gunn, and the team prepares to move out.

Meanwhile, at the water tank, the baddies are indeed beating each other up. It's a thrall-demon, who turns it's minions on the team. Big puncho-kicko fight ensues, during which Angel gets seriously distracted by beating the demon he's already got down into a pulp... such that he doesn't cover Gunn's back, and in fact, keeps beating after the fight ends. Then he brushes off any complaints and heads out on his own. Gunn is (justifiably) ticked at this.

Walking down the promenade at night, Angel spots Darla in the crowd.

*****
[credits]
*****

Flashback: 19th century England? Angelus walks to an ally and finds Darla standing over the bodies of a lord and the streetwalker he was propositioning. Darla has found Angelus a treat: a young woman she points out on the street who has The Sight. It's Drusilla (pre-vamp), and Angelus is delighted at the thought of chasing down a frail thing who can see in advance what he will do to her.

Back to the present: Angel spots her in the crowd again.

Next morning, Cordelia's with a client, covering for the fact that Angel isn't available. The client's wife suffers from regular "alien abductions" (which is fairly clearly a case of inventive adultery on her part). Cordy and Wesley also manage to cover when he Angel comes in and blows off the client. Cordelia follows Angel into the offices, sits down at the computer, and next thing she knows, he's sniffing her hair. At that point Wesley comes in to ask if he's done something wrong.

Angel finally admits that he's been dreaming of Darla constantly, and now claims to have proof she's alive -- a possibility Wesley points out is impossible. 

Darla, in Lindsey's office, gloats over her 'unhinging' of Angel. Lindsey points out how valuable she is to W&H's plan to turn Angel dark again. The two have a serious sexual tension moment or two.

Kate is at her office, and obviously the hassling and harassment by her fellow officers has only increased, and she's apparently developed a real Spooky Mulder rep in no time. One of her former friends passes her a message that Angel has moved to the hotel.

*****

The Angel crew is undercover, tracking the straying wife... when Angel suddenly decides to come clean, tell the wife they're there and that her husband's on to her. As she leaves Cordelia takes Angel to task for essentially dropping a paying client like that. She's interrupted by Angel's reaction when he spots Darla leaving the restaurant. 

Angel confronts her, but she claims not to know him, and to be "Deatta Kramer" going to meet her husband. Wesley and Cordelia can't get him to back off, and just as the security guard comes over, Darla makes a break for it and runs... into the sunlight and into the arms of a man we've never seen before. Angel is stunned.

Back at the hotel, Cordelia is finishing the lecture. Wesley takes the sunshine bit as proof that Angel's wrong, but Angel insists he can smell that it's her. The he asks Wesley for a few bucks for the cover charge...

...and is doing a very intense, very flat, very bad rendition of "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight" at the Host's bar. He finally gives up, apologizes to the audience, and goes to the Host. The Host will only say Angel's heading for some serious trouble, and that he should stop trying to follow this path.

Angel calls back to the office for the location of "Deatta and Stephen Kramer"'s house, then hangs up. Westley and Cordelia decide to arm up and call Gunn, while Angel sneaks up through the bushes. We see Darla talking to "Stephen" -- an actor with an annoying personality she and Lindsey have hired. 
Meanwhile Gunn is being filled in about Angelus ("He turns evil?") and his history.

Flashback: Angelus has massacred the convent and Dru's family, but left her alive. Darla and Angelus make out in front of the babbling Drusilla while Angel explains his plans to turn her.

Back to the present: Darla calls 9-1-1 and reports an intruder. Then her bodyguard vamps out and kills the husband, while Darla starts screaming. Angel breaks in to rescue... and finds Darla asking him why _he_ killed her 'husband' as the cops show up. Lindsey is happily listening on headphones at his office as their little set-up goes down.

*****

Angel looks at the cop, tells Darla she'll pay for this, and escapes. 

Darla is talking to Kate afterwards and playing the confused, traumatized mortal ("It sounds crazy, but there was something wrong... with his face.") to the hilt, reporting that Angel has been stalking her for weeks. Kate reassures "Deatta", then turns her back for a moment. Darla is looking quite smug, when suddenly Angel leans down from the tree above her, covers her mouth to keep her quiet, and pulls her up into the tree.

The crew is back at the hotel, when Kate shows up with a SWAT team looking for Angel and the kidnapped "Deatta".

Meanwhile Angel has dragged Darla bodily down to the water tank. Angel's talking about killing her, and Darla's looking scared. He throws her up against a pillar and starts to bite her neck... when she loses the scared act and heartily welcomes back "her boy".

Kate has run Gunn's sheet, and tries to get the crew to give Angel up. They point out that Angel couldn't have gotten into the "Kramer's" house against Deatta's protests unless the real owners were dead. The Wesley pulls out a daguerreotype of Darla taken at the turn of the (last) century, and Kate can see that it's the same woman.

Meanwhile, back at the water tank, Angel breaks off the making out, but Darla doesn't want to back off. Angel wants to know why she's around, and it isn't hard for him to figure out the grand plan. Then he points out that she has a soul now, that the memories will soon start eating away at her the way they have at him.

Darla wants to recapture their "happy" times, when Angel tells her that Darla never made him happy. She's pissed that he's hung up on Buffy now, but he points out that it's the soul that has changed him, and that she has the same second chance now. Darla insists his darkness -- the darkness that made Angelus a legend -- is innate.

Kate has finished her search of the hotel, and leaves, still refusing to see Angel as good. She lays at his feet the deaths off all the innocents that died in the crossfire -- the actor, the original owners of the house.

Angel and Darla face off again -- she trying to get him to accept his inner darkness, and he threatening to kill her if she causes another death. Then she leaves him there.

Later Angel is brooding in his room, when Cordy and Wesley show up to see if he's all right (and still good). Wesley warns him that there are many forces arrayed against him now and that there will be trouble. Angel says: "Bring it on."

Lizbet's Review

How to get a billion questions answered and a few more billion asked.  Dear Boy fills in a few gaps -- most surprisingly, that they brought Darla back with her soul, and not the demon-vampire she harbored for four hundred years, and so she's human, able to walk (and run away from Angel) in the sun.  She's also able to feel remorse for her actions, past and present.

Characters:  Angel's preoccupation is finally explained, to both him and Cordelia and Wesley.

Darla is mortal <gasp!> but seems very little different from the vampire version we saw in Angel, way back in first season Buffy.  As usual, she knows exactly which buttons to press on Angel.  Her interaction with Lindsey is beyond creepy; she seems fascinated with his unfeeling hand.  Symbol for her own "unfeeling" self?

SunSpeak