Angel 5x03 Review: Hungry for the Wolf

“Unleashed”
Written by Sarah Fain and Elizabeth Craft
Directed by Marita Grabiak
 
The Story
The A.I. team is having a picnic. Well, actually, they’re having a secret summit meeting away from prying evil W&H ears. Fred thinks this might be an overreaction. Some of the W&H people are good. Wes gets all irritable because he’s jealous of Knox. Angel gets them back on task: they need to find out what the Senior Partners’ agenda really is. The focus shifts to Gunn. Maybe he got some confidential info slipped into his head along with all the law. Gunn doesn’t appreciate how everyone focuses on him. Then they move on to Spike. Wes cuts into the conversation halfway through to borrow Wesley’s special silver pen.
 
Elsewhere in the park, a jogger is getting chased by a werewolf. It’s definitely already taken at least one bite by the time Angel arrives. He fights it, then stabs it in the heart with Wesley’s pen. It turns back into an older dude. By the time Angel looks around, the jogger is gone in her car.
 
Angel and Gunn are walking through W&H discussing what they need to do about the girl. Gunn has already looked up everything about the dead werewolf. Angel is determined to make sure this girl doesn’t feel like she has to go through this alone.
 
Spike pops through the wall into Fred’s office. He’s a bit miffed that nobody’s focusing on his slipping into hell problem. He feels like it’s getting increasingly urgent. Fred suggests that Wes might be able to help, but Spike says no, because he and Wes have an unpleasant history. What? No they don’t. They only just met this season. Spike tells Fred a story about how they met when Wes was a young Watcher. Fred knows he’s making it up. Bahaha. Turns out he’s just embarrassed about his problem and doesn’t want anyone but Fred knowing about it. Well that’s absurd. If there’s a time to shelve your pride, it’s when you’re literally phasing in and out of hell. Fred leaves.
 
Angel is in Fred’s lab with Fred and Wes, frustrated that they don’t have any leads. The best they have is Angel’s own sketch of the girl. Spike pops in to annoy them. Angel sends one of the lab assistants out to just ask people on the street if they’ve seen someone who looks like his sketch. Wes shows him an image from a psychic. It looks like what’s probably the girl’s bedroom. A cryptozoologist is examining the dead werewolf’s body. He says he’s a rare breed. Interesting. It’s bipedal and has longer teeth, and this is the first one in North America. Spike starts needling Angel about how he’d better find the girl before she transforms, otherwise he’ll be in the fight for his life. Fred cuts in with the story of how Angel killed this one with a pen in like ten seconds. Bahahahaha.
 
Wolf girl is having a very unrestful nap in her room. She’s all sweaty and sick-looking. She can hear what’s going on in other rooms in the house. She goes downstairs. Her sister and niece are making dinner. It seems she’s an art student. She can’t remember what happened to her the previous night, and she’s really out of it, distracted by her heightened senses. She’s been asleep all day. Her name is Nina. She stares at the meat cooking on the skillet and kinda freaks her out. Then she looks at her niece and sees a flash of horrible claw marks across her throat.
 
Angel’s sketch did the trick! Someone recognized Nina from it. They’re also tracking her car. They have it narrowed down to the Hollywood area. Lorne figures someone as freaked out as the girl was when she fled the scene would probably have been blowing red lights, so Gunn starts checking traffic cameras while making comments about how he must be a spy for the Senior Partners. Spike continues to pester Fred about helping him. Gunn gets a hit on the traffic cams. Success! Wes gets her address from the license info. Her full name is Nina Ash.
 
Nina is posing for her niece so she can draw her. She gets distracted by the sound of the pencil on the paper. She heads upstairs, feeling sick. Once in her room, she collapses on the floor. Her niece hears the noise and cautiously follows to check on her. Nina is now convulsing, then transforming. The moon is all the way up, and Nina is no longer human. Her niece is still at the door of her room. DON’T OPEN THE DOOR, LITTLE GIRL!
 
Angel pops up at Nina’s window to lure her out. It works. By the time the niece opens the door, the only sign of Nina is her abandoned clothes on the floor. Angel and Wes tag-team Nina with tranq darts and get her into a van before the niece looks out the window.
 
Nina wakes up in a steel cage at W&H, back in human form. There’s a pile of clothes outside. She grabs them and puts them on. Angel comes in. She’s very freaked out and mistrustful. He tells her she’s safe. She tries to run away. He stops her and persuades her to watch something. He shows her footage of herself transforming from the wolf back to herself in the cage while reminding her of what happened while she was out jogging. She remembers him saving her, but he says he was too late. That’s when the footage gets to the transformation.
 
She still doesn’t want to believe it, but he tells her the weird sensations she might’ve noticed. Angel tells her her sister and niece are okay, but she’s more focused on how she wanted to rip her niece’s throat out. She doesn’t want to listen to Angel, because how could he understand having a monster inside of him? *cough* He tells her he’s a monster too. She guesses Frankenstein. He corrects her. He tells her that he can control himself, and she can too. She wants him to cure her, but that’s one thing he can’t do.
 
Angel goes out to update Fred and get advise from the cryptozoologist guy. Spike makes more unsolicited remarks. The cryptozoologist anticipates Nina harming herself in the cage. She might be calmer if they brought her some of her stuff. Spike keeps being super negative about it, then disappears. Fred takes Nina to get her stuff, accompanied by security guys. Nina figures out what they’re for. Nina still feels like this whole thing is nuts, but she’s not going to argue with their terms. Fred tells her about Angel saving her from Pylea. Nina asks if they’re together, which Fred thinks is ridiculous. She tells Nina Angel doesn’t really date much because of his circumstances. Nina clearly feels bad for him. Fred doesn’t think it’s too bad; the team is like a family, so Angel isn’t completely alone.
 
Gunn tells Angel stuff about the werewolf dude, but Angel’s spacing out. Gunn accurately guesses that Angel’s in a remorseful funk about not saving Nina in time to spare her the life of a werewolf. Angel tells Gunn to can the pep talk. Lorne walks in and gets a major whiff of Angel’s bad mood. He wants to talk to him about his issues. He’s irritable about Spike, bummed about Nina, and at a loss as to how to deal with W&H. He needs to remember that he’s got people on his side.
 
Nina suddenly doesn’t want to face her sister and niece. Fred convinces her to go inside. Her sister Jill has been so worried about Nina that she’s worked herself into a fury. Fred tries to soften the blow by pretending to be Nina’s neurotic friend who needed help the night before. The fury eventually turns into what it really is: intense worry and frustration. Nina tells Jill she won’t be able to count on her all the time from now on. She grabs her bag. Fred grabs some other things, and they both leave. Fred tries to convince Nina that it went well, but then they realize that the door of the W&H van is ajar. When they open it, the security guys are dead inside. There’s another van nearby. Fred and Nina run. Masked dudes leap out of the second van. Fred tranqs at least two of them before they manage to subdue her and haul Nina away. One of them calls their boss to tell him they succeeded in getting “the package.”
 
The dudes from the van chain Nina up by the wrists while she struggles, then hose her off. A large woman in a lab coat cuts her clothes off and then shaves her. Holy crap, that would be so beyond freaky.
 
The cryptozoologist guy is singing for Lorne. He’s just the latest of several dozen people who’ve done the same, because the team is convinced someone inside W&H made the kidnap possible. Fred says they were incredibly organized. Wes makes an oblique reference to the Initiative. Fred is blaming herself, but Angel would like to keep the blame for himself. Gunn mentions Spike, and Fred remembers his slipping into hell issue. He’s been missing for hours. Before she can get anyone to focus on that, the cryptozoologist shows up with some information for them. He has a list of possible suspects, including anti-monster vigilantes and werewolf packs recruiting members.
 
Fred spots Spike walking in the lobby and goes out to check on him. He’s transparent, and he can’t seem to hear her as he continues down the hall, eventually going right through a wall. She goes into the room he went in, but he goes through the next wall too. She accidentally kicked over a trash can in pursuit of him. turns out, she’s in the cryptozoologist’s office. He returns there, and she realizes that the garbage she’s holding is very incriminating. He’s their inside man. She knocks him out with a lamp without so much as blinking to indicate her suspicion. The tipoff was the remnants of a drug that would have protected him from Lorne’s abilities.
 
Gunn, Fred, and Wes are all checking out the guy’s office for more clues. Gunn finds a false bottom in one of his drawers. Next, Angel tosses him around a bit until he talks. Fred, Gunn, and Wes find more stuff too. They bring it to Angel just when he’s finished interrogating the cryptozoologist. Nina was taken to a creepy blackmarket restaurant as a main course.
 
Cut to the restaurant, where Nina, bound, gagged, wrapped in a white sheet, and garnished with various vegetables, gets wheeled out into the dining room. They’ll be eating her alive and raw once she turns into a werewolf, because that’s the only way to eat a werewolf without them turning back into a human. Gross. The boss dude or chef or whatever describes the treat they’re all in for, because he’s had it before.
 
The team barges in, Gunn taking down the guard. He loves being genius lawyer guy, but beating people up is still fun. The boss dude isn’t happy the cryptozoologist spilled the beans. Angel knocks another dude out with a serving platter, then starts to free Nina. She would rather just let them eat her and not have to live like this. Angel continues to work at her bonds while Gunn keeps the boss dude at gunpoint. However, he has a few hired guns of his own. The boss dares Angel to make a move; he considers his own men expendable, so threats won’t work. Angel starts beating people up. And now Nina has transformed. She bites one of the guests on the neck. He’s dead. Wes tranqs her. The boss dude still doesn’t want to let them take her away, because his customers paid ridiculous amounts of money for this. Nina fights through the tranqulizer long enough to bite the cryptozoologist on the ankle. Angel has a compromise for the boss. They can have the cryptozoologist to eat next month, but Nina leaves with them. Bahahaha, nice.
 
Back at W&H, Fred goes into her office. When she turns on the light, she sees an extremely transparent Spike in there. He’s actually surprised to be back this time. And he didn’t lead her to the cryptozoologist’s office on purpose. Fred very much wants to tell Angel about his problem, but Spike refuses. Fred promises she’ll do everything she can to bring him back for real. He’s fine with that.
 
Angel drives Nina back home. Niece Amanda is drawing on the sidewalk while Jill watches. Nina asks Angel how he lives with what he’s done. Angel reminds her that those people were going to eat her. She just wants her life to be normal again. He tells her that eventually, this will just become one more part of her life. She can handle it. She wonders how well he handles being a vampire. He does like some of the perks. Nina doesn’t want to tell her family the truth. He says she doesn’t have to. She’s tempted to just disappear, but he tells her that’s what makes it easiest for the monster to win. (That’s what the other werewolf dude did, after all.) She’ll see Angel in a month. She gets out of the car and walks over to Jill and Amanda. Hugs! Angel leaves.
 
Back at the W&H building, Angel has invited the rest of his team up to the penthouse for the first time. Lorne is psyched about his bar, and everyone else loves his view. Fred orders them all Chinese food, which will be Angel’s treat. Gunn ships Angel/Nina. (Stop it, Gunn.)
 
Points to this one for not having Harmony in it. And also for how Spike tries to make it Spike-centric but actually fails. I don’t think that ever happened on Buffy. It was very satisfying. Seriously, though, I do like “Unleashed.” The title is probably the weakest of the werewolf-related episode titles, but the story is fascinating. Like “Phases,” the werewolf turns out to not be the villain, but this time it’s much twistier than simply having a werewolf hunter. There are a bunch of rich freaks who want them some werewolf meat! (Again, so gross.) And oddly, even though Oz was around for three seasons, the stories surrounding him never quite delved this deeply into how his transformation screwed up his life. I suppose it helps that Nina actually emotes. This is her first episode, and she already has two more onscreen family members than Oz ever had, and we get to see how they’re affected by her transformation, not just Nina. She feels like an impressively well-rounded character already. Also, I’m kind of annoyed that we didn’t get to see how werewolf instincts affect Oz in human form, the way we saw Nina imagining ripping out Amanda’s throat. Did he have to deal with that? Was that what he was running from when he left Sunnydale for good? Because that would’ve made his whole arc even more sympathetic.
 
The Characters
I’m not sure where Angel’s share of the supblot about the importance of surrounding oneself with supportive friends came from. I mean, I guess none of them were involved much in the previous episode and he’s just sort of been doing his lone vigilante thing while they all ran their own departments, but it didn’t feel like he was pushing them away or anything. Maybe the final scene where they’re all hanging out in his penthouse wasn’t so much about Angel opening up to people as it was making sure they continued to be like a family instead of letting W&H separate them into isolated corners of the building. So it’s like Angel could see where them not spending as much time together might lead, and inviting them to his penthouse was a first step towards making sure that didn’t happen. That makes more sense. Also, I like how Angel handles Nina. I especially like his pragmatism when it comes to the one dude she did bite.
 
Seriously, what is Spike’s problem? He’s slipping into hell, and he feels this is urgent enough to monopolize Fred’s time, but not to tell anyone else? Does he honestly think that asking Angel for help is worse than spending eternity in hell? And he still won’t let Fred ask Angel for help after that last episode, which lasted several hours? What is wrong with him?
 
There haven’t really been negative consequences to Gunn’s mental upgrade yet, but there certainly are social ones. If he wants the rest of the team to be okay with his choice, then maybe he should explain it to them. Just being generically defensive only contributes to their sense of not really knowing him at all if they didn’t see that decision coming.
 
Fred is excellent in this one. Knocking out the cryptozoologist like a pro (so she’s come a long way from how frightened and skittish she was when Wesley went all evil on her in “Billy”) and shooting multiple goons with tranq darts. Mad skills. And mad people skills too, being a very effective comforting, normalizing presence with Nina. Also, I really like how she refuses to let Spike monopolize her time. If he won’t let her bring anyone else in on the project of helping him, then he clearly isn’t treating it like a top priority issue, so why should she?
 
Wait, so there’s a drug people can take to block Lorne’s abilities? Why didn’t Jasmine just have Cordy taking that regularly in S4, then? Why don’t all of the evil W&H employees take that? There are only like two lines of dialogue about this drug, but it creates significant plot holes. And I’m still waiting for Lorne to have real character moments instead of being like a walking lie-detector test that sometimes doesn’t work. He does have a chat with Angel about emotional ties, but that’s just part of the Plot B stuff that I’m not sure was set up sufficiently anyway. Bah.
 
Wesley doesn’t really do all that much except be jealous of Knox and continue to be part of the group, even though he no longer remembers why he wasn’t a part of the group for a whole year. Grr. I want a Wes plot as much as I want a Lorne one.
 
Favorite Quotes
“You know that ‘whoosh’ thing you do when you’re suddenly not there anymore? I love that.”