Birthday

Angel Episode Review

In which there is an alternate world.

What Happened

Cordelia gets yet another mind-blowing vision, which has the effect of knocking her into a coma. Skip, a guide from The Powers That Be, arrives and offers her a chance to have the life she would have had if she hadn't started fighting evil with Angel. In this world, Cordi is the star of her own television show, while Angel has inherited Doyle's visions and been driven mad by them.

What Did I Think?

There is, unfortunately, not much of a chance to play around in Cordi's new life. Immediately, she goes off on her odd little side trip to the house in her vision, which seems contrived and takes up too much time. It wouldn't have been that much of a stretch for her to bump into Wesley and Gunn at random, and that space then could have been used to show a little more of her new world, more than just the credits from her TV show.

And it takes so long to get there. Cordelia spends more than half the episode wandering around the hotel, talking to people who can't hear her before Skip finally shows up.

Overall, we don't learn anything that's new. We know that Cordi and Angel are in that more-than-friends/less-than-lovers phase. It's the central relationship of the series, but it's been playing out so nicely in the background, without being shoved down the audiences' throats. Gunn and Wesley, though a bit grittier in this alternate reality, are essentially the same.

The nice scene of Angel telling an unconscious Cordi how upsetting it is that she kept her condition a secret, is unnecessarily saddled with the ending where she overhears him ranting and leaves before he gets to the nice part. Another effective moment is Alternate!Angel huddled in a corner, driven mad by the visions, and the basic idea of seeing Cordelia reaffirm her desire to help others is solid. The good scenes, however, are spread too far apart in the show and the momentum gets lost.