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Angel
Episode 3.22, "Tomorrow"
Written by David Greenwalt
Directed by David Greenwalt
This is it. It's over. After a long, incredible season of twists, turns, shifting loyalties, creepiness, and just overall excellence it's come to this. It's been a year of many hits, only two misses ("Heartthrob" and "Birthday") and mixed emotions for the characters on the show and the fans out there in TV Land. So it's rather surprising that the finale of this season that many people (myself included) thought rivaled Buffy's best could only stir one emotion: I hated it. OK, I didn't hate it. But this is not the end of Angel's third season anybody was looking for. And anyone that tells you otherwise is either in denial or has dipped into the Hottest Crack Whore Ever's stash.
Quite a bit is going on in this finale. It's like the beginning is the end is the beginning and I will be racking my brain for weeks trying to remember where that quote is from. We have four threads all weaving together in this episode, so it's rather crowded, but the stuff that shines is cool and the stuff that doesn't... well doesn't. First there's the end of an era as Groo and The Host both hightail it out of L.A. Groo goes back home and The Host heads out to Las Vegas to run a club. We get the beginnings of the Cordelia/Angel pairing. We get the beginning of Wesley jumping into bed with the dark side (literally). And we get the Connor plotting horrible revenge on Angel for Holtz's death.
Connor goes back to the Hotel after burying Holtz and plays along. He acts like he really wants to bond with Angel, so they go to a movie. Now I'm no Dr. Spock, but I think taking a kid who up until a week ago was living in a hell dimension to a war movie is a little cruel. Wasn't a nice innocent teen sex comedy playing instead? I guess not, so instead we get helicopters on the screen and helicopters dropping in on the drive-in driven by Wolfram and Hart. The fight was just too cool as it ended with Connor holding a crossbow to Linwood's throat and saying "My name is Connor!" Over the top? Yes. Cool as hell? Absolutely. It was also very cool of Angel teaching Connor how to fight earlier in the episode.
The other good of this episode is of course Wesley and Lilah. Lilah is still tormenting Wesley and even asks him what getting his throat slashed was like. He grabs her by the throat and says "Are you terribly anxious to find out?" How bad ass is that? Wes is my freakin' hero. Later we see just how far down he's fallen after climbing out of bed with Lilah and growls at her to leave. She tells him not to think about her while she's gone. He shoots back with "I wasn't thinking about you while you were here." See? How cool is Wesley? These scenes alone would have made an amazing episode.
This is all leading up to the big confrontation between Angel and Cordelia where they realize they love each other. But neither one can make it. Cordelia runs into Skip who tells her that The Powers That Be have deemed her worthy of becoming a higher being with because of how well she's handled her demon powers. And Angel runs into Connor who has decided the perfect torture would be to watch Cordelia morph into Saint Cordelia over and over again. No wait, that's my idea of hell. Connor decides that the best torture for Angel is to seal him in a coffin and drop him in the ocean. Alone in eternal darkness. Gotta hand it to the kid, he knows how to torture someone.
At this point in time in the show's universe Saint Cordelia has had her powers somewhere between three days and a week. So Saint Cordelia has proven she's worthy of these powers and being a higher being by what, not killing somebody with powers she can't control? I know if I was given all-powerful, Godlike powers that I didn't understand and couldn't control it would take me more than a few days to go ballistic anyway. I don't even want to go into the myriad of plot holes this creates as I think we can all agree Buffy has given us more than it's far share of those this year. Let's just leave it at I hate the Saint Cordelia storyline and be done with it.
So Angel is about to meet Davy Jones at his locker by spending an eternity isolated at the bottom of the Pacific with no friends and no blood. So come October Angel could be a living skeleton. After all that's what Spike said a vampire who doesn't feed looks like after he was chipped. I'll just take the geek hat off now. But it would certainly be an interesting way to solve Angel's pesky aging problem.
So in the end, this episode was a rather scattershot end to the season. Much like the premiere, which couldn't possibly have been any worse unless it was about Cordelia getting turned into a demon. What was good was great and what was bad really sank the show. So I'll split the difference and say five out of ten. There was plenty of good stuff: Angel training Connor and their battle with W&H, everything Wesley did, hell even Groo was able to leave with some dignity. But this Saint Cordelia thing and their sudden realization that they love each other is just a little much. It definitely leaves a lot of dangling plot threads fro next season. Regardless of the floaty trip into heaven she took, Charisma Carpenter is still contracted for next season. And Connor isn't going anywhere, he'll become a regular.
So where does this leave Angel Investigations? Fred and Gunn are standing in the lobby alone as Angel sinks to the briny deep and Saint Cordelia ascends to heaven. Where do we go from here?Episode Rating: 5 out of 10
John the Slacker, like most of the Angel crew, has left the building.
