“You’re Welcome” Written by David Fury Directed by David Fury The Story Angel, Wes, Fred, and Gunn break into a convent because they’re tracking a runaway client. Turns out, the client has killed five nuns and skipped dimensions because he didn’t want to risk prison. Fred’s equipment can’t track him outside this dimension, so he’s pretty much getting away with it. Angel is so utterly done with all this “our clients are evil” garbage that he announces he’s quitting W&H. Swoosh! Rapid areal pan across the city to a hospital, where Cordelia suddenly wakes up. Back at the office, Angel is still determined to quit because it’s too hard to do good in these jobs at W&H. Gunn points out there might be serious consequences if they tried to leave. Angel retorts that Gunn just doesn’t want to leave because he’s enjoying the brain upgrade so much. Gunn says he’s not the only one who got perks. The phone rings. Cordelia’s awake! Angel and Wes go to the hospital. The room they enter has a woman lying on a bed, her face out of sight. They think that’s Cordy, but then she walks up and closes the curtains around that bed and turns to get hugs. Which she does! And she already seems far more like herself than she did at any point in the second half of S3 or S4. She looks perfectly healthy, despite the long coma (and this is my favorite Cordy hair ever). She remembers everything about Jasmine hijacking her. Angel and Wes are very bad at pretending everything’s okay. She wants not-hospital clothes, so Wes announces they can go shopping. They go back to W&H once the shopping is done, and Cordelia is super reluctant to even leave the elevator. Angel tries to convince her it’s totally normal, but then that little demon who’s the Archduke Sebassis’ personal blood supply wanders right up to her. It turns out, he’s been hiding in the building, living off toner fluid ever since the Halloween party. Oh hey, so is that why there was no toner, prompting that one dude to go bloody-eyes insane in “Destiny”? Because that would be hilarious. The demon gets led away and Angel brings Cordy to his office, where Lorne, Gunn, and Fred are all waiting to see her. More hugs! Also, Cordy is very surprised that Gunn turns out not to have been bald. Cordy asks about Connor, but Harmony runs in squealing before she can keep asking. Angel explains that Harmony’s his secretary. Harmony really wants to catch up and hang out. Angel sends everyone back to work. Once it’s just Angel and Cordy, Angel tries to reassure Cordy that they’re doing good at W&H. They can save anyone! Cordy isn’t so sure. She was woken up by a vision of Angel in trouble. It also included the symbols Lindsey has tattooed all over him and painted on his flat. Eve emerges from Angel’s private elevator. She’s here to express the Senior Partners’ displeasure over Angel letting a client skip bail to another dimension, because now they have to cough up $10 million. Cordelia coolly introduces herself to Eve and isn’t particularly interested in Eve introducing herself back. Eve gets rather catty. She tells Angel he has no control over where she goes, and then she slips in a gross reference to her and Angel’s mystical sex in “Life of the Party.” Cordy is disgusted, but Angel explains it was mystical and they couldn’t control it. Eve leaves, unfazed by Angel’s anger. Cordy is entirely convinced this whole thing is a giant Faustian deal. And a red-skinned dude with horns and a tail walking up to shake hands with Angel over some business arrangement and confirm plans to play racquetball pretty much confirms it. She huffs and goes back into his office. Spike is rehabilitating his hands by playing an X-Box game. Lindsey enters without knocking. He isn’t impressed with how Spike’s sending his time. Spike doesn’t care; he’s allowed downtime after getting his freaking hands chopped off. Spike says Lindsey has no idea how much this sucks, and behind his back, Lindsey makes the greatest expression. He knows exactly what it’s like to lose a hand (and he says as much). He also knows what it’s like to live without it for the better part of a year. At least Spike got his reattached after a few hours. Lindsey wants Spike back on the job. Spike’s fine with that. Eve calls Lindsey with the news that Cordelia is awake and leading Angel directly towards her and Lindsey because of a vision. Why isn’t Spike hearing this? He has super-hearing. He should be able to eavesd—oh. He’s so into the videogame that he’s deaf to all else. He’s doing that thing my brother does a lot where he loses, then blames the game and throws the controller. So yeah, he definitely didn’t hear Eve’s side of the conversation. I’d be impressed if he even noticed Lindsey’s on the phone. When Angel returns to his penthouse, he finds Cordelia there, watching the awkward little commercial Doyle filmed in “Hero” and getting a bit misty over it. He pauses to watch too. She apologizes for snooping. He doesn’t mind. They quietly talk about Doyle. Cordy was so mad at Doyle for sacrificing himself like that, but she understands why he did it—how important it was to make sure Angel would keep fighting. Angel tries to convince her he had good reasons for taking over W&H. She thinks he was seduced by all the resources. While she’s ranting about it, she gets slightly sidetracked by the amazing view from his windows. Angel tells her it was for Connor. He explains about giving Connor a new life and altering everyone’s memories. Cordelia thinks that’s horrible, but Angel tells her Connor was about to kill himself, her, and a whole mess of people; Angel had no other option. Besides, they’re doing fine at W&H. That’s the part where he sounds less convincing, and she can tell. She’s awake because the Powers want her to get Angel back on track. Angel doubts it. He at least partially believes that Spike is their champion now. Oh, by the way, Cordy, Spike has a soul now and he’s helping people. This detail is one crazy thing too many. She doesn’t understand how all this happened in just the few months she’s been in her coma. He’s felt totally lost without her. She tells him he’s someone who fights for what’s right no matter what, and that made him special. She nearly slips and says it’s why she fell in love with him. He’s not sure that guy exists anymore. They speculate sadly on what could’ve happen if they’d been able to actually meet up at the end of “Tomorrow.” Lindsey and Eve are doing more naked cuddling. Do they do anything else when they’re together? Eve is very pessimistic about what will happen now that Cordy is awake. It seems one of Lindsey’s biggest reasons for doing everything he’s done this season is that he’s pissed at the Senior Partners for handing Angel the job he wanted. He’s bitter, and he wants to punish both Angel and the Senior Partners for it. Wes and Cordy are researching the symbols from her vision in his office. She regrets suggesting they do the research themselves like they used to, instead of pawning it off on his subordinates. He actually kind of misses researching like this. She asks him why nobody’s talking about all the stuff she did while possessed. He assures her it’s because they all know it wasn’t her. Aww, Cordy. She’s very sorry for Lilah’s death. Then she spots the tattoos in the books. They’re Enochian protection runes that can hide a person from angels and stop angels from entering. No, wait, that’s Supernatural. Here, they’re meant for hiding you from detection from higher powers or even modern security devices. Handy! Cut to Lindsey strolling through W&H’s maintenance areas in a jumpsuit. He walks right through the laser grid like it’s nothing and waves snarkily at the camera. None of this stuff can see him. He stabs the demon employee in the room beyond the lasers and steals his security key. Cordy is lost in the halls of W&H when Spike comes walking up to him. He vamps out and bites her. He lets go pretty fast, but not in time to avoid being seen apparently attacking Cordelia by Angel, who tackles him to the ground. They fight, and Angel wins easily this time, threatening to end Spike if he touches her again. Cordy can’t believe Angel called Spike a hero. Spike is very touched. Angel says that was before Spike went around biting people. Spike explains that he was doing an evil taste test on Cordy. The reason he felt that was necessary is that he got a tip from his heavily tattooed vision guy, “Doyle.” Angel and Cordy’s faces both turn to stone. Down the hall, Eve has been watching this interaction, and she’s extremely anxious to see them talking instead of Spike killing Cordy. She’s telling Lindsey about it on the phone. He’s not troubled by the setback. He tells Eve to leave the building, because he’s just about done with whatever he’s doing downstairs. She hangs up, only to come face to face with Angel and Cordy, who aren’t interested in letting her leave. They sit her down in Angel’s office, where the whole team is gathered, including Spike. Angel tells her exactly why they think she’s working with “Doyle” to weaken Angel and lead Spike around by the nose. She tries to brush off the accusations like she always has, but they’re not letting her waltz off again. The reason Angel is so particularly furious about this is that unknown tattoo guy is calling himself Doyle. Cordy too. Harmony pops in to ask if she can go home early, like everyone else in the building is. The reason they’re all leaving is that Lindsey has activated some kind of failsafe. Upstairs, all the team has been able to find out about this is that it’s a Code 7. Eve claims not to know what that means. Cordy loses patience and tells Angel to torture her. Ha! Angel doesn’t want to just torture her, so Harmony happily volunteers! She smacks Eve a couple of times and she admits that there’s a failsafe designed to destroy Angel if he ever turned on the Senior Partners. They know it wasn’t Eve who activated the failsafe, which means she really is working with “Doyle.” Angel asks Spike for more info on him, and he, Wes, and Cordy are able to guess that it’s Lindsey based on Spike’s description. Wes and Lorne head off to try and do something about his tattoos. Gunn goes to lock down the building to keep him from getting gout. Cordy explains who Lindsey is to Fred. Angel tells Harmony to eat Eve if she tries to run. Fred doesn’t want Angel going to deal with the failsafe alone. He won’t risk anyone he cares about. Spike volunteers, and Angel’s fine with that. Cordy is also coming and she’s not taking no for an answer. She is taking a katana, though. Nice. The first level of security down there, when they trip the laser grid, is a bunch of zombies. Spike offers to keep them occupied so Angel and Cordy can go ahead. They get to the boss chamber just as Lindsey’s going to leave. Angel and Lindsey face off. They start fighting and Lindsey reveals that he somehow got super strength while he was gone for two seasons. And possibly telekinesis? He only uses it to shut a door, locking them in, and maybe he had some kind of device for that. Whatever. Cordy tosses Angel the katana, and Lindsey makes his smallish knife turn into a big sword. Dang, that thing is cool! I hope it occurs to Angel to loot the magic transformer weapon after he wins. Angel tells Cordy to shut down the failsafe while they fight. The thing isn’t easy to shut down, because the buttons shock her. Lindsey is having fun (in an angry kind of way). He likes fighting Angel to the death much better than making complex plans. Angel reminisces about the first time they met, way back in “City Of,” when Angel kicked Russel Winters out the window. The rest of the team (including a Gunn who would rather be helping the fight) is making progress in a spell to remove Lindsey’s Enochian tattoos. The final ingredient is arterial blood from an “unclean.” Which means demons. Which means Lorne. Sucks to be him. Angel and Lindsey keep fighting, and Lindsey’s shirt ends up torn open. For once, this actually is necessary to the plot, because it’s good to have a clear view of the tattoos. They leap from platform to platform, and then Lindsey impales Angel and tosses him down to the central platform, where he...uh...mockingly takes his shirt the rest of the way off and throws it at Angel. Okay, yeah, I’m sure that was important too. *swoons* Okay, I’m back. But seriously, can someone make a TV show about Gambit and cast Christian Kane to play him? Lindsey implies that he sold his soul to get all this power. Angel rips the sword back out of his chest—nice move, dude, stabbing a vampire with a metal sword. They keep fighting, with no weapons now. Cordelia finally succeeds in deactivating the failsafe. Lindsey yells in anger. Also, Angel is winning the fight now. He throws Lindsey to the ground, his hero music playing for the first time all season. He feels good about himself and his purpose.
Down on the ground, Lindsey asks if Angel’s going to finish him off, but that’s when his tattoos start peeling off and floating away. The team’s spell is working. Fred watches Wesley say the incantation like he’s the most attractive man she’s ever seen. Lindsey knows he’s screwed. A sucking vortex appears in the air above him, and he gets yanked up into it. In the lobby, Angel is kicking Eve out. She’s very bitter and planning revenge, but for now, she can’t do anything. Spike is all bummed because his whole destiny was just a ruse to get to Angel. He wants to go get drunk. Fred thinks that’s a fun idea. They should all go! Angel heads to grab his coat. He’s no longer going to quit W&H. Cordy stays behind with him, though she does make sure to compliment Wesley’s mystical prowess first. She’s suspiciously wistful about it. When Cordy finds Angel in his office, he tells her he feels good, but he feels guilty about it. Bahahaha. I actually forgot about this. I’ve been 100% sure he’s the type who has a hard time believing he deserves anything good, but I forgot he actually came out and said it. Cordy points out that sometimes he needs saving just as much as the people he helps. That’s what she’s here for. He now feels more confident that he can face what’s coming and beat W&H. She already knew that; she just needed to make sure he knew it. She stands up and tells him she can’t stay. She’s only here because the Powers owed her a big one. She used it to help Angel get back on track. Tears in her eyes, she turns to leave. But then she rushes back to him and kisses him. It’s a good kiss. Then the phone rings. He really doesn’t want to answer it, but she tells him he has to. It’s the hospital, telling him Cordelia died. He doesn’t believe it, but when he turns around, she’s gone without a trace. His voice breaks and he looks so lost. It turns out, Cordy never actually woke up. The whole episode, she was like a ghost or a guardian angel or something. I’m pretty sure it was her lying in that hospital bed when Angel and Wes came to pick her up. “You’re Welcome” is absolutely fantastic. Cordelia could not have had a better final episode. It’s almost enough to make up for the awful characterization she had in S3 and how utterly demolished she was by S4. Ultimately, it’s a far better send-off for her than essentially being a prop for five episodes because of a coma. The nod to Doyle was heart-wrenching and perfect, along with all the other references to S1 Angel. I don’t know when they were told they weren’t getting renewed for a S6, but this episode kind of feels like it’s starting to wrap up the show by hinting at an endgame while doing lots of callbacks to how it began, which is what Buffy did in S7. Maybe that was less about wrapping up the show than it was about wrapping up Cordelia’s character, but it still has that overall effect, which is cool. The showdown with Lindsey was fantastic. I particularly love how angry Angel and Cordy get over Lindsey having the gall to use Doyle as his alias. Also, the dialogue is seriously on point the entire time. As to the Angel/Cordy stuff, I hated it whenever it popped up in S3 and S4, but this feels like what that relationship could have been like if the writers had actually wanted it in the first place, instead of just being forced to do it by meddling network execs. If it had been like this all along, I might’ve had a hard time maintaining my uncompromising Buffy/Angel shipper mindset. The Characters Angel is definitely the guy who will fight for what’s right, but first he has to know what’s actually right. It was easy to do that when he had Doyle and then Cordy getting visions from the Powers, but he hasn’t had that kind of clarity since the end of S3. And he was sure that getting rid of Jasmine was the right thing to do, but his reward for it was W&H giving him their L.A. branch, which was extremely confusing. And with Spike apparently becoming a better candidate for his destiny, he no longer knew how to move forward. Now he does. You don’t really realize how much you like a character until she’s written horribly for a season and a half, unceremoniously written off, and then gets to come back for one episode at peak awesomeness. That’s definitely the case with Cordelia. This episode majorly highlights the value she has when she’s being written properly. She’s the rudder of the team. She takes crap from no one, isn’t afraid to call people out or it, and is directly connected to the Powers. Fred’s a bit too timid and polite to quite perform that function, and Wesley is pragmatic but not really direct. Lorne offers advice, but doesn’t push very hard, and Gunn has never really been the one to call people out—especially now, when he’s the happiest one at W&H. As for Angel, he tends to be much harder on himself than he needs to be, so Cordelia often assures him that he’s doing the right thing as much as she calls him on his crap. Cordelia is brutally honest, both with herself and with everyone else. She provides a great deal of moral clarity that would be hard to find without her. Spike really didn’t have a better way to establish Cordelia’s moral alignment than to take a good chomp? Wow. In spite of that, though, his character development from “Damage” seems to be holding. He’s still prone to snark, but he’s far less determined to be obnoxious for the sake of it. He and Angel still don’t like each other, but they’re able to work together much more easily now that Spike isn’t making it difficult on purpose. I particularly like how he volunteers to keep the zombies busy instead of insisting on claiming the final showdown for himself. A few episodes ago, Angel probably would’ve had to argue him down first, but now he willingly offers. Very nice. And he handles the revelation that the whole him having a shot at the Shanshu thing was entirely a sham very well. He’s not angry at Angel about it (or even upset he didn’t get a crack at Lindsey for making a fool of him), he’s just going to go get drunk. Gunn may love his W&H upgrade and all the things it allows him to accomplish, but the streetwise guy who loved a good fight is still in there. The longer he’s at W&H, the more he seems to miss that, but it’s nowhere near a deal-breaker for him. By the time you’re in S5, you kind of forget that Fred hasn’t been around long enough to have ever met Lindsey, because her first episode was the one after his last in S2. That bit of info-dumping was a little surprising, but I guess it makes sense that nobody would’ve told her about him. Angel’s the one he mostly went after, and Angel is famously not very chatty. Unless Lindsey was relevant to a current problem, he would’ve felt no need to reminisce before now. Anyway, the most important thing about Fred in this episode is that she’s officially in love with Wesley now! That look. Dang. Lorne having to donate blood for the ritual feels like a callback to when Angel had to twist his arm to get his help on cases. He may come across as reluctant and cowardly sometimes, but he always comes through. Wesley hasn’t had many moments with Cordelia since S2, but their friendship really got some good closure in this one. I love how he got the most screentime with her after Angel. Spending time with Wesley was definitely one of the top items on her list of things to do on her secretly last day alive. Which is incredibly heartwarming. Favorite Quotes “What’d you think, that I was prematurely bald?” “...” “I wasn’t.” “I don’t know, I think I sort of missed this. You and me and the books, kickin’ it oldschool as they say...and I never will again.” “She’s evil, you gormless tit!” “Excuse me! Who bit whom?” “Did you just call me a tit?” “I thought he had a soul!” “I thought she didn’t!” “I DO!” “So do I!” “Well, clearly mine’s better.” “Get out of that chair and I will feed you those Manolo Blahniks. Which are stunning, by the way.” “Yeah, save it Angel. You can order me around all you want, but I know my rights.” [Unsheathes katana.] “And I want to see a lawyer.”
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The Watcher's Diary
In this blog, I'll be reviewing, analyzing, and generally fangirling over excellent television. Exhibit A: the Whedonverse. Archives
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