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Post by Techno-bot on Jun 15, 2004 21:53:37 GMT -5
Teleplay by Jeannine Renshaw
Story by David Greenwalt & Jeannine Renshaw
Directed by R.D. Price
Air date: 2/15/00
An exorcism Angel and Wesley perform on a young boy possessed by a demon takes an unexpected turn when they discover just how much the demon wanted out.
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Post by Lola m on Sept 27, 2004 12:43:10 GMT -5
I've often thought this ep is one of the most disturbing Angel eps ever. It's those final "twist" ending scenes, when the very cruel and violent Ethros demon reveals the truth about the boy. All his creepy lines ("what soul?" "no conscience, no fear, no humanity, just a black void" "I couldn’t control him. I couldn't get out" "I just sat there and watched as he destroyed everything around him. Not from a belief in evil, not for any reason at all") intercut with the shots of the boy so chillingly looking at his sister with the extra marshmallows and then calmly going about setting her on fire. **shiver, shiver**
Suddenly the earlier descriptions of events sound a little too familiar to anyone whose heard about the warning signs to spot a budding sociopathic serial killer. (Animal deaths, etc.)
**shiver, shiver, shiver**
And it's now such a . . . human problem. There's nothing that Angel or Wes or Cordy or any of their supernatural methods can do. This is just . . . real life. He goes off to whatever the law and the medical establishment can do, and we're left wondering what's next. Like Hitchcock always said, it's the violence and horror we are left to imagine ourselves that's the scariest.
Also, Angel is really at his best in this ep. Love his comfort offered to the dad at the end.
Seth: "I won't be able to cover for him anymore. . . . I wanted to protect him. . . . I was just trying to hold my family together."
Angel: "I think you did."
Angel even "helps" the Ethros demon by killing him - something that appears to turn all we've ever thought about on it's head. Yet, it really just fits the AI mission, doesn't it? After all, it was the Ethros demon who said "save me" and "I had given up - hope". Hmmm. Helping the . . . hopeless?
It's rather an important Wes episode, too. Wes stepping up to take over the exorcism shows how much more powerful and action oriented he will become. We also get our first hints about his past traumas ("All those hours locked up under the stairs and you still weren’t good enough. Not good enough for Daddy, not good enough for the Council.").
But, most interesting of all, it's not the usual taunts about his supposed weaknesses or his father or the Watchers that cause Wes to break and mistakenly cross over the binding line. Nope. It's talk about how he would kill Angel and that Angel is more afraid of Wes than the demon. And I loved how Angel handled that later in the cave. "I know you’re not planning to kill me, Wesley. - But you’re willing to – and that’s good." It's a sentence of perfect understanding. Too bad (for them, great TV for us) that their relationship gets so murky and complicated and twisted later.
Lola
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