Mike's Synopsis

So, see, there was this guy, and this portal, and the thing with the book and the demon and the thing, and now Cordy's gone--

--and we open with three different stages of panic on display. Wes is freaking out responsibly, Angel would rather believe Cordelia's playing the worst timed game of hide-and-seek ever, and Lorne is simply mute with fright. Cordy, for her own part, is in the place that's very far away from everyone else. She yells really loud, but upon hearing that the denizens of the forest are capable of matching her own lungpower, begins to rethink that strategy. I have to say, I like the earrings. Now she's trying to find cheery things about her surroundings, but "cheery" not a concept that has staying power with this crowd as a rule. There's a large demony thing that looks something like a cross between a Thundercat and one of the Rippers from _Tank Girl_. Cordy tries to sweet-talk it, then gives running a shot.

I want an Angel/Columbo crossover. It could happen.

Back in the club, Wesley's trying to think, Angel's sold his impulse control to the highest bidder, and Lorne's attempting to wash away his newfound terror in Midori Sours (although alcohol apparently doesn't affect him, interestingly enough). Angel's got the portal book, and he wants to use it not now but right now. Wes tries to advocate for retreat and research, but brash recklessness wins out over cerebral reason once again. Lorne ducks behind the bar, and Angel begins the vowelless incantation. Suddenly the club is filled with big, blinding gusts of--well, nothing, really. Angel tries again, this time on the stage. Not even a ding to tell him to turn the page. Lorne's no help, and Angel is now desperately in need of a time-out. Wes, having a comparative moment of peace, has taken no notice of Angel acting out; he's gone to his thinking place. Angel duly crashes in time, sitting down hard as he grapples with the unthinkable. "I just got her back," he says plaintively.

Now that someone will actually listen to him, Wes begins to impose order. The portal-summoning isn't working, so they're going back to the hotel for research. This does nothing for Angel's mood. Lorne subsequently suggests that portaling might not be a great idea under any circumstance, and as death begins to swim up in Angel's face, hastily explains that humans have a hard time of it in his world.

Which Cordy is discovering for herself. Good thing she dressed to move, but even so, the gimpy orange thing is on her despite being a guy in a suit trying very hard to look like a beast that runs on all fours. Finally, she can no more, and it gets her down, lunges--and licks her within an inch of her life. Demon drool not the greatest present, but infinitely preferable to demon teeth. In the midst of this mixed blessing, another advertisement for Retin-A pops up, this one slightly more humanoid. He calls the beast toward him, and treats him in a distinctly petlike manner (and of course, this denizen of a faraway dimension unknown to anyone on Earth speaks perfect King's English). Cordy tries to make nice, but the doughy dude doesn't pay her any mind; talking to his hellpet, he praises it for finding him a "cow." Cordy has a momentary flashback to her commercial shoot, but this guy is definitely not union. He has a clamp-rope-thingy in his pocket, obviously quality, not from the 99-cent store, as it loops around Cordy and binds her with one swing of the arm. As he places a gag in her mouth, Cordy reflects on the prospect of reversal-of-fortune whiplash.

Back in the (relatively) sane world, Angel is beginning what will be a long tradition of getting Lorne to do favors for him without asking nicely. Lorne, however, really doesn't want to talk about home. Angel gives him a look that promises something less than sweet persuasion, and Lorne begins to relate: lived in sucky dimension, one day portal opens, grabs Lorne before he knows what side the butter's on. Found himself in L.A., and heard music for the first time. Turns out there's no music in Pylea, Lorne's home dimension, and yet Lorne instinctively knew of it, but didn't have the chance to hear it until he came to the good old USA. But as to the portal's origin, he has no information. Meanwhile, Wesley's found the right book; the portal is still there, but needs time to recharge before it can open again. And that's not all; we also have this lovely problem, that even if all three of them jump into the portal together, there's no guarantee that they'd all come out in the same place, or even the same time. Angel's kept from biting through the back of his chair by Gunn's entrance.

Wes asks Gunn where's he been; apparently Charles was already brought up to speed by phone. Angel starts relating the frustrating particulars, but Gunn's not in. He tells them about George's death, and in a pained voice explains that he simply can't risk not returning to L.A. now. Wes stands silently, hearing him out; Angel's face is a seastorm of battling rage and empathy. He closes with a plea-- "Please. Find her."--and goes. Angel watches him leave, unable to stay angry. The same can't be said for his attitude toward Lorne, who informs them in a decidedly less wrenched tone of voice that he has no intention of accompanying them either. But he does have an idea for finding another portal, and he'll be right back. Angel is near apoplexy; how the hell are they supposed to navigate Lorne's dimension without him to guide them?

Well, hopefully they can avoid being gagged and tied to a long pole, which is more than Cordy can say. Ah, market day; lots of non-human things wandering around, weird gong-like things for sale, the odd knight on horseback, the sweet smell of demon horse dung. Cordy's pole is hung on a couple of V-branched supports; that can't be comfortable. She's viewed, and unkindly critiqued, by an old farmer woman; the art of the Pylean deal is not a pretty one. Finally the once-and-future May Queen discovers her life is worth a pig and a pint of demon draught, and once her gag is removed, it's pieces of Cordy's mind for everybody. At least until the woman activates the electro-collar around Cordy's neck. As she's led away, another bedraggled young "cow" watches unseen.

We get a brief glimpse of Gunn sitting at the wheel of his pickup, staring into space, then cut to an office. A young woman is giving a typically vague psychic reading to an unseen hopeful--who she quickly cuts off when Lorne enters her cube. He gets an enthusiastic hug, and they banter a bit about the falsity of the psychic gig, before Lorne gets down to business. He needs a hot spot, and she can locate one. But she's not giving up any information until Lorne comes clean about the thing that's obviously bothering him. He spills about Pylea, and she gently needles him into agreeing to go back with the crew; it's the only way he's going to resolve his own ambivalence about his point of origin.

Wesley's brainstorming about how to get through the portal, but every possible he posits has a downside. Angel's taking it all with a calm, almost Zen-like serenity, however. And if you buy that one, I've got a piece of maple root that will cure all credit card debt. He's interrupted mid-rant by the entrance of two Wolfram & Hart lawyers; and we're introduced to Gavin Park, who will provide many moments of smarm and tedium on future Mondays. They coolly inform Angel that they're interested in buying Angel's hotel out from under him. Angel is incredulous, and Gavin coolly asks if they can walk around. Angel suddenly is wearing his not-so-happy face. Gavin informs him, again coolly, that all leases can be broken, and the lawyers beat a hasty retreat. But coolly. Angel now has his 629th reason for wanting to go to Pylea.

Cordy, by contrast (a contrasting segue in an ME production--that _never_ happens!), can't begin to numerate her reasons for wanting to go back. Dirty, clothed in rags, shoveling bad stinky stuff, and acting as the new feature attraction for the neighborhood flies, she makes for a sorry sight. Upon being zapped by the cattle-prod collar one too many times, she begins to fiddle with it, but a voice warns her that it's not a good idea. She starts, and looks around; it's coming from a knothole in the stable. The girl we saw before is hiding behind the wall, and whispering furtively that messing too much with the collar will remove one's head, which is a rather extreme solution all around. Cordy tries to inquire as to the girl's origin, but she first urges Cordy to keep shoveling, then proves herself to be quite a seeker of alternatives to linear thought. In the midst of much scattered (and now that we know her, let's face it, adorable) babble, she informs Cordy where she is, and what she's won; namely to be worked until death. She presses Cordy for how she came to be her, and gets very excited when she hears about a portal. But before they can learn anything further, guards storm in and seize the dotty girl. A large, far less benign version of Lorne is leading the posse; he remarks on Fred's disabling of her own collar and she's carried off.

Angel is leaving a good-bye message for someone, more than implying that they likely won't be coming back. Lorne comes in, and Angel informs him that they're just waiting for Wesley to say "Eureka!" And isn't it just so serendipitous how Wesley then yells "Eureka!" and runs in the room. I think I wanna make an Angel See-n-Say: "Wesley says 'Eureka!' Lorne says, 'What I wouldn't give for a Seabreeze.' Angel says, 'I've got to find a way to help her.' " Wesley's figured out how to get through the portal, and Angel doesn't need any more than that fact to start moving.

We're back at the Pylean market again, and I'm tempted to throw in a Wall Street joke, but it just ain't happening. Cordy's trying to chat up her overseer, asking her about the girl from before, but the art of conversation not catching on in Pylea. The owner chides Cordy for being careless with her viper's milk. Cordy, however, is currently disturbed by something other than the notion of drinking reptilian secretions; she's getting stem-wracking pain and visions of a Drakken demon, similar to the one from last episode, attacking a villager. She relates this information as best she can to the now-gathered crowd, and is struck by the lack of an immediate response team. The villager who "owns" Cordy (yeah, right) points to her, exclaiming "My cow is cursed!" The other marketers like the sound of that last word, and join in.

Lorne has the other two drive to the new hot spot, outside a movie studio. They've got the book with the portal incantation, and there's no small amount of apprehension in the car. Wes has figured that the metal enclosure will enable them to transport through the portal without separating, but he's not 100% sure, and Angel would rather like him to be 100% sure. As Wes starts to protest--"Aw, suck it up, English," Gunn says, climbing into the car. He got Angel's message, and it apparently sounded desperate enough to make Charles do a turnaround. Lorne sees this as a wonderful opportunity to bow out, and is roundly silenced. Wes begins to read, reality begins to shimmer, they fasten their seatbelts, and Angel peels out. The car disappears, and the book with the incantations in it thumps to the blacktop. That's bad, isn't it?

They pop back into sight in a sunlit forest, and Angel promptly panics, darting for cover from the normally lethal light, but he soon stops, noticing a marked absence of flame. Wes theorizes that the new dimension might be responsible for Angel's extreme flame-retardedness, Lorne points out the double shot of sunlight, Gunn's still bugging off the interdimensional jaunt, at least until Wes points out that they didn't all merge into one misshapen body, which takes the edge of Charles' buzz. Lorne, the only one who's not even approaching 'whelmed', let alone 'over', by the arrival in Pylea, suggests getting the car covered, and Angel bounces at the chance to frolic in the sun for a bit. Lorne takes another moment to pontificate on the slimness of Cordy's chances at ingratiating herself with the locals.

And as usual, when someone says something bad is happening to Cordelia, guess what we go to. Now we're in a torchlit catacomb, surrounded by Pyleans who look about as happy as they ever do. Cordy is haltingly explaining what her visions are and their total lack of evilness, but it's only raising the excitement level. Then the big green guy who caught Fred comes in. He totally gets what the visions are, and still describes them as a curse. Cordy protests that they're a force for good, but now a Darth Maul-looking cat in a monk's robe comes up. This is the heavy. He's got a test they can determine whether Cordy's telling the truth or not. It involves a knife. Cordy, scared good and proper now, starts to plead with him, the pleas turn to screams as he draws closer--

The gang is covering the car with brush, and Angel's just starting to get a little annoying with this glad-to-be-in-the-sun thing. Wes reminds Angel to take the book, and that cuts through Angel's good mood like a knife through banana skin. He doesn't have the book; Wesley does. Except that he doesn't. Lorne is now the leader in a four-way race to panic; he suggests looking in the car. It's not in the car. Before Lorne can go all Donner Party on the lot of them, Wesley surmises that the book must only exist in their own dimension. This doesn't exactly put everyone in a party mood, but Angel refocuses; they're here to save Cordy, and they'll worry about getting home afterwards. Thus resolved, they start off; but there may be some slight book-related bickering left to do.

The robed guy has finished his tests, and he proclaims that Cordy "carries the curse of the sight." These dudes really aren't a glass-half-full type of people. Cordy herself is pretty much past fear at this point; whatever they've done to her has taken her out of the land of the loudly protesting. This is getting serious.

Angel and the gang are making their way through town; Lorne plans on getting help from an old boyhood chum. He goes into the guy's house full of hope, and comes out in a hurry, trailed by a blade-wielding Pylean hurling accusations. "We should run now!" Lorne yells to the others, and as more join the pursuit, they're compelled to agree. They find themselves in the town square, surrounded; of course, they fight for it. Several knobheads go down, and Wes gets confident, which can only mean they'll all find themselves hog-tied and on their knees in front of the fountain by the end.

Big Green Guy is here, and he's ID'd by Lorne as "Constable Narwek" which is certainly less prosaic. Narwek knows Lorne as well, and is rather bemused by the fact of his return, and the company he keeps. Disgusted, he has Lorne dragged off. Angel protests, and gets a mouthful of Pylean fist. Narwek charges them with assault, and says they will be arrested until "her Royal Highness" pronounces sentence. Gunn wises off like he was back in South Central, and gets one in the kidneys; he must be feeling really nostalgic right now. He keeps it up and gets it in the face this time. Wes tells him to quit it. Narwek orders them all taken away.

The robed guy again, cursed with the sight, rumblings of blood. We get it.

The cell is nice and expansive, and well-lit, I'll give them that. And someone was even thoughtful enough to put hay down for the gang. Gunn and Angel are gauging the impossibleness of breaking free, and Wes is recalling stories of the Tower of London from his childhood. Angel shrugs off the hype; been there. As Wes and Gunn bicker male-bondingly, Angel's listening at the door. Wes and Gunn hasten to hear, and they both look cute shuffling along with chains on their legs. Angel's picking up the basics: girl, visions, curse, covenant, screamed--that one gets the guys to react. Now there's news for the home team; they'll be taken to a castle where they'll be sentenced. Angel hears guards approaching, and there's more of the ridiculous hopping.

They're led to a castle chambers; Lorne's there and a quick confab gives the info, but Lorne's no help. Narwek comes in for more of his comedy stylings, and lets slip that he hopes fervently for Lorne's death. Some people just get a fruit basket. Angel's trying to put together a plan of attack, and Lorne remains helpless--"I've never been sentenced to death before!" Narwek gives a nice intro speech, the gang tenses, Angel counts off, Narwek opens the door, everyone springs into action--

And a familiar throat-clearing brings everyone up short. Sitting on the throne, resplendent in jewelled lingerie and tiaras, and munching on what appear to be macademia nuts, is Cordy, surrounded by courtiers.

"Hi, guys," she beams.

Lizbet's Review

Lesse... seasons done, check. Vidding done, check. MediaWest done, check. Wow, it's time for me to work on synopsis again!

Reviews later. :)

SunSpeak