Happy Anniversary
Teleplay by David Greenwalt
Story by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt
Directed by Bill Norton
Lizbet's Synopsis | Lizbet's Review
| SunSpeak
Lizbet's Synopsis
The new offices of Angel Investigations are a come-down... and that's saying a lot. No electricity, no phones, and an persuasive offensive olfactory menace rank this definitely below the cockroaches from City of. But when Virginia stops by with news of a rich client, they are raring to go.
Meanwhile, Angel's asleep in the hotel, Star-Spangled Banner playing in the background. Awww. Is the poor widdle vampire so lonely that he has to turn the TV on for company, and it's going off the air? Naaah. It's the Host with the Most, coming by to collect Angel for the purpose of... saving the world. Again. It seems as though the world is scheduled to end at 10 PM tomorrow night.
The Host tells Angel that a very boring guy got up to sing All By Myself -- and the Host passed out. When he came to, no one who sang that night had a future. Zip. Zilch. Nada. So something about Morose Boy causes the world to end. Reluctantly, Angel helps him investigate.
Meanwhile, at a physics laboratory, a brilliant-if-a-bit-dull physicist, Gene, is working on the theory that a moment can be taken out of time, preserved unchanging, forever. He's so enthralled by this that he barely notices his girlfriend Denise, who stops by to check on plans for their one-year anniversary dinner the next night. He doesn't even notice that the formula on the board has changed slightly; Ludder demons have altered it in accordance with their prophesy that Gene is their Chosen One who will end the world.
Tracking Gene through karaoke bars, Angel and the Host hit a local university looking for their mystery world-ender. Gene, enthralled by the success of his new formula, goes looking for Denise, and overhears her tell her friend that she wants to break up with Gene, she feels Gene doesn't have enough time for her, but she won't do it on their anniversary -- one more night, and then she'll break it off with him. Dejected, Gene returns to his lab, where he gets an idea about how he can have more time for Denise.
By the time Angel and the Host get to Gene's lab, all his equipment is gone. On their way to Gene's place, where they presume he (and his equipment) will be, Angel finally spills to the Host about stuff. He's sick of fighting the good fight and expecting something out of it. He didn't want to drag Cordy and Wesley and Gunn down into his depresso-world, so he fired them.
At Gene's apartment, Denise pushes her dinner around on her plate as they haltingly make conversation. After dinner, they go into Gene's bedroom to make love. At his moment of perfect happiness, Gene throws the switch that will preserve he and Denise in that moment forever. But the Ludder demons have sabotaged the machine, and the bubble expands and expands, until Angel, working just outside of the bubble, unplugs the machine, and the bubble collapses.
Confronted
with what he had almost done, Gene is contrite. Gunn, Wesley and Cordy
kill the demon who was threatening a (rich) family, and then Wesley, Hercule
Poriot-style, fingers dear old auntie for hiring the demon to clear her path to
the family wealth. Partying at the new digs, Wesley, Cordy, and Gunn
respond when someone appears on their doorstep looking for someone to help
him. "Which one of you is Angel?" he asked. "It's
just a name," Wesley tells him.
Lizbet's Review
Wow. Gotta get back into the swing of doing these. OK. Happy Anniversary is a nice, tidy little episode that mostly suffers from a really bad promo. :-p From the promo, I was guessing that somehow the world ended, Angel (and the Host, and maybe anything supernatural) was unaffected (imagine a world where everything is frozen in place except for monsters) and Angel was having to run around trying to undo the Apocalypse and save the world -- particularly Cordy, Gunn and Wesley -- before it became, well, un-undoable. As the episode progressed, I was calling that it would be like Eternity -- a decent workman episode with a fourth act that would knock you out of your socks.
It was a little bit jarring to have the major point of the episode -- the Apocalypse -- last about ten seconds. But what the episode didn't have in suspense (and most of the disappointment comes from by expecting the promo to be accurate... what was I thinking?) it made up with in character stuff.
First and foremost... the Host. He's been a blast in his glimpses at the karaoke bar, but you would almost expect that he would suffer from being removed from those surroundings and pushed into a larger role in the ep. Amazingly, Andy Hallet and the writers are up to the challenge of keeping the Host in character without making what really was a-little-goes-a-long-way personality grating. Angel needed someone to interact with, and the Host provides interaction that is of a different flavor than the C, G & W trio. (We really need a short-hand for those three... I'm getting sick of typing it. <g>)
Speaking of, C, G & W do nicely in this episode. They have Moved On. They might regret Angel's actions, but they're not going to wallow around and wait for him to come back. And I'm glad that Virginia is a regular part of Wesley's life (and a semi-regular on the cast... although I can't get over, "That's Sasha! She's a vampire!!!") The campy aspect of the Agatha Cristie ending should have jarred more, I know, but in an episode that didn't have a firm feel to begin with, it just seemed like a nice moment of levity.
Gene and Denise were well-drawn for the purposes... perfectly nice people stuck in a very real dilemma... not the end of the world for anyone, even them, but still nasty and a bit painful. But the stand-out of the real world cast was the friend, Val, played by Victoria L. Kellember. For being the least necessary to the plot of the three (she basically existed so that Gene and Denise would have someone to talk to) she was a beautifully sketched character, fun and real. Kudos to the Josswalt (Joss and David Greenwalt being too long to type repeatedly as well, as in, "Ave Joss and David Greenwalt, the bastards!" or, "I've been Joss-and-David-Greenwalted!")
Angel is Broody Boy for, what, the third episode in a row? But when the Host finally pokes him enough, he spills, and it's slightly different than I expected. I'm working from memory and without notes here, but I got the definite sense that Angel was much more aware of what he was doing that I'd credited him with. The firing had come off as a lash-out move, as, "If you're not going to let me do what I want, then get the hell out." From what Angel was telling the Host, it sounded more like he realized that he was going to be heading into the dark side... and he was not going to take them with him. He's also not getting any joy out of his little rampage (OK, maybe he enjoyed terrorizing Lilah a bit, but...) He's angry and frustrated that, not matter what, his life keeps falling apart on him.
Quick bit: Luddites were a movement protesting technology, specifically technology that would change lives and livelihoods in Regency England. They would sabotage machinery in factories in protest. Were the Ludder demons protesting the changes humans had made to the world?
Rating:
Give it a 3 1/2 out of 5. I liked it, but it was way too... generic? for
it to be a favorite. Now, then, let's see what February sweeps has to
offer next week...
SunSpeak
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This page last updated February 9, 2001.
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