"I've Got You Under My Skin"

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Episode 14 of Season 1

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"I'm just trying to hold my family together."

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Original US airdate: February 15th, 2000 (aired directly after the Buffy episode "Goodbye Iowa")

Rewatched: July 16th, 2022

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• Writer: Jeannine Renshaw

• Director: R.D. Price

• Guests: Elisabeth Rohm, Will Kempe, Katy Boyer, Anthony Cistaro, Jesse James

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Cordelia has a vision that leads Angel Investigations to help a family where something is not right. At first glance, it seems the father might be terrorizing his family. Wesley finds evidence that someone in the family is possessed by a demon, but as Wesley notes it takes more than a demon to make a father terrorize his family. In the end, the father has been trying to keep his family together. It is his son who is possessed.

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During the exorcism, Wesley’s father issues are raised. Angel’s guilt over Doyle’s death is, too (the importance of Doyle is raised earlier in the episode when Angel calls Wesley Doyle by mistake). But the demon is expelled. Angel and Wesley track it down to kill it and it explains that it never manifested the boy. In fact, the boy he possessed is without soul, a complete void. Angel and Wesley save the family from a fire their son has set.

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The father worries he can’t protect his son and that all he tried to do was protect his family, but Angel emphasizes that he did. Although his son might now be in police custody, he still has his wife and daughter.

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Angel has once again underlined the gray areas of life. Not all demons are bad and not all humans are good. Goodness is not defined by species, but by your soul and your actions.

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Finally, in this episode, the demon says that Wesley wants to kill Angel. Angel later notes that he knows Wesley doesn’t want to kill him, but would if he needed to. This shows to a certain extent why the family metaphor of Angel is flawed. Wesley’s readiness to kill Angel means he can never really accept Angel as family.

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"The Prodigal"

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Episode 15 of Season 1

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"What we once were informs all that we have become."

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Original US airdate: February 22nd, 2000 (aired directly after the Buffy episode "This Year's Girl")

Rewatched: July 23rd, 2022

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• Writer: Tim Minear

• Director: Bruce Seth Green

• Guests: Elisabeth Rohm, Julie Benz, John Mahon, J Kenneth Campbell, Henri Lubatti

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This episode is about fathers and their expectations for their children. It is also a bit about Angel and Kate. Kate is still having issues dealing with learning about Angel. She is willing to work with him, and admits to her father that he is very good at his job, but she is not willing to even be friends. As Angel quips to Wesley, it’s been different since she ran him through with a 2x4.  

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It is the father and children theme that is at the center of this episode (and, indeed, give it its name). The first pair to look at is Angel and his father, with this episode sending us back to Galway in 1753, learning more about Liam, seeing him become Angel, and return to his family to kill them. He seemed to have a middle-class life, living with his father, mother and much younger sister Kathy, in a house with a servant. Liam was born in 1727, and was 26 when he was turned into a vampire by Darla. Liam is also not the son his father wished for, drinking and having lots of sex, rather than making something of himself. In fact, this episode sees the conflict between the two coming to a head, with Liam leaving the house (in a similar scene to the fight between Buffy and her mother in Season 2 of Buffy). Basically, Angel/Liam hopes to gain his father’s approval, in the way so many others (including Kate) hope to, but for Angel, becoming a vampire and killing his father means he never will get that approval. Although he tells his father before he kills him that “I have made something of myself”, Darla points out that while killing his father was a victory, his father’s defeat of him will last lifetimes and Angel will never actually be able to gain his approval.  He will forever be looking for something he cannot get.

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Then there is Kate and her father. Kate is at first pleased that her father shows up at a crime scene, seemingly checking up on her, and later invites her to lunch to catch up. However, Angel finds out her father is involved in something and was at the crime scene to take evidence, took Kate out to lunch to pump her for info about Angel, and is in over his head. Trevor thought he was helping move illegally imported car parts, but really he’s been helping demons push drugs to other demons. He is not happy and the demons decide to take him out. Angel tells Kate to get to her father and Angel rushes to the scene as well. However, while Trevor let the vampires he’s been working with into his apartment, he refuses to invite Angel in. Angel watches him die, and Kate is too late to help, either. As Angel said earlier to Wesley, “Sometimes the price we end up paying for one bad choice isn’t commensurate with the offense”, which is very true. Trevor was willing to be a dirty cop, but he didn’t deserve to die (just as Angel’s fight with his father didn’t warrant his death, and so many other characters on both Angel and Buffy end up paying high prices for bad choices). Kate is rightly angry, taking the fight to the demons, with Angel showing up to help. Both survive, the demons die, but Kate is not ready to be friends with Angel. When he offers warm words, she tells him that her father was human and he doesn’t know anything about that. So despite the viewer seeing the parallels, Kate is unwilling to admit to any.

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This episode does not focus as much on Kate’s desire to have her father accept her, as this was just dealt with in “Sense and Sensitivity”, but it is clear that Kate still desires her father’s acceptance, and his death means that Kate will never get closure and is left to navigate her life, her job, and the demon world alone. So, like Angel, Kate will never gain her father’s approval and killing the vampire that killed her father doesn’t bring her closure. So, a rather universal theme, shown by two key characters, as well as many other characters in many other episodes (Doyle, Faith, Wesley, to name a few).

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In fun facts, Cordelia has a security system installed and wants to use her birthday as the code, implying that her birthday was two weeks earlier (beginning of February). Later, in the episode “Birthday”, the date will be in January. Cordy ends up choosing 0-5-2-2 as the code, which does not line up with either birthday.

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"The Ring"

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Episode 16 of Season 1

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"I’m giving you another way out."

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Original US airdate: February 29th, 2000 (aired directly after the Buffy episode "Who Are You?")

Rewatched: July 30th, 2022

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• Writer: Howard Gordon

• Director: Nick Marck

• Guests: Markus Redmond, Douglas Roberts, Scott William Winters, Stephanie Romanov

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In Lilah Morgan’s debut episode, introducing viewers to their 2nd key Wolfram & Hart lawyer, Angel is kidnapped through a very involved plot and kept as a slave along with other demons, who are forced to fight each other to the death with the promise that 21 kills will set them free.

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Angel is not to keen on the idea of killing to gain his freedom. He tries to get the demons to band together against their captors, claiming that they can fight them, but only if they stop fighting each other. At first, it doesn’t seem like he can convince the other demons. Indeed, Angel himself is forced for kill one demon in the ring to save himself. It’s not looking good for Angel.

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While Angel is captive, Wesley and Cordelia show their own moves. Wesley confronts a bookie and his minions, showing them that he is far more than meets the eye. Wesley and Cordelia use their brains to find a key to the bracelets used to keep the demons captive (horsehair, from a bracelet Cordelia made from her old horse’s mane). In the end, Wesley is able to confront the ring leader (and Cordelia pushes him into the ring with the demons), showing that even without Angel, they are effective fighters of evil.

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While Angel is being held, he is able to take one of the MacNamara brothers, who are the ring leaders, hostage. He hopes to trade the brother for everyone’s freedom, but the MacNamaras are evidently not that loving and Darin shoots his brother Jack. This, however, prompts Wolfram & Hart, who are involved in the fights and may have wanted Angel taken captive, to offer him his freedom instead. Of course, this comes at a price. Angel has to look the other way, both with the fights and anything else Wolfram & Hart might be involved with. Lilah, who makes the offer to Angel in her office, tells Angel it’s a big city with lots of people to save and that sometimes compromises must be made. She tells him “I prefer to think of it as picking the battles you can win.” Angel doesn’t see it that way and turns her down. Lilah has created the perfect scene of temptation, trying to seduce Angel to compromise his morals and he has stood strong. He returns to the ring.

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In his next fight, Angel is ready for the kill, but can’t go through with it. As the fight continues, the other demon gains the upper hand, but in the end, he also decides not to kill Angel. Wesley has arrived with the key. Another demon steals it from him and takes off his bracelet. It seems he is ready to leave on his own when he changes his mind and uses the key to free all the demons, storm the ring to take out their captives. The McNamara’s are both dead, the demons free, and good has prevailed. The good fight might not be the easy road, but it is the right road.

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"Eternity"

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Episode 17 of Season 1

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"You walk a fine line, Angel. I don't envy you."

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Original US airdate: April 4th, 2000 (aired directly after the Buffy episode "Superstar")

Rewatched: August 6th, 2022

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• Writer: Tracey Stern

• Director: Regis Kimble

• Guests: Tamara Gorski, Michael Mantell

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Angel saves the actress Rebecca Lowell, who starred for many seasons as Raven in a well-loved TV series but who has had issues finding work since and is facing the fact that she is getting older, while her TV series is running in syndication, reminding the world of who she once was. After Angel saves her, Rebecca tries to hire Angel, but he declines her because he kind of likes her. However, he does secretly watch her and ends up saving her again. She figures out he’s a vampire and hires him to be her body guard. He saves her again, but this time Rebecca recognizes her attacker as a stunt man represented by her agent, Oliver Simon, who we know from the party Cordy and Angel go to in episode 1, and it turns out this has been a publicity stunt.

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Rebecca, however, decides that Angel can turn her into a vampire, allowing her to be young forever. Of course, she doesn’t really understand that Angel has a soul and she wouldn’t be like him if she were turned. But she hatches a plan. She takes Cordelia shopping and pumps her for info, then drugs Angel, releasing Angelus. He is evil to Rebecca, Wes and Cordy and ends up changed to the bed, having hurt a lot of feelings, but Cordy and Wes were able to keep him from hurting anyone.

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While Wes, Cordelia and Angel end the episode making amends, it does indicate that Cordy and Wes know Angel can turn evil at any time and they are ready for it. This inherent distrust (especially from Wesley) is one reason the family metaphor in Angel only goes so far.

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In the fun facts category, there is some irony in a bunch of TV stars acting in an episode about a fading TV star. And in this episode, we see Cordelia act very badly in the play A Doll’s House.

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