Dead End

Angel Episode Review

I Predict

Lindsey gets a new hand - which used to belong to a psychotic with a grudge against someone. You'd think there would be some kind of screening process for these things.

Of course, we're dealing with Wolfram & Hart, so there probably was a screening process, just not the kind normal stable people would expect. I'm guessing that they knew exactly what would happen and went ahead anyways to either a) send Lindsey (who's become somewhat expendable) after the victim or b) just to see what happened, you know, for kicks.

The written blurb states that Lindsey and Angel wind up working together, but the TV promo didn't show much evidence of cooperation. It's implied that Lindsey is threatening Angel, but we don't actually get to see who he's talking to, so it could be anyone. And we see gunshots flying past his new boss (the one that looks kind of like a turtle-boss from a Super Mario Bros. game), so who knows who, if anyone, is going to bite the dust.

What'll be interesting is to see whether Lindsey just caves and goes off shooting, or if whatever force winds up possessing him has to work for it. Lindsey hasn't been the cold-blooded killer type. He'll manipulate, mess with, steal from or send someone else to do the deed, but unless Angel was the target, he hasn't gotten his own hands dirty. ('Course, it's not his hand here... sorry.)

I predict the "my hand wants me to kill someone" scene just before the second commercial break and complete mental breakdown at about 9:40PM, giving Angel just enough time to reluctantly ride to the rescue.

Was I Right?

Yeah, about the second break was when Lindsey started doodling "Kill" all over his legal pads. I was wrong about the mental breakdown, depending whether you think he was messing with Reed at the end or not, but Angel did show up and they started working together with twenty minutes left in the show, so I think I had a pretty good grasp on the timing.

Part of the miscalculation was that the promos made it look like Lindsey was maybe going off the edge for the final time, but the episode was really more of the redemption story that "Blind Date" wasn't. He only threatened Angel once, at Caritas, and that was more along the lines of a casual he-made-fun-of-my-singing kind of threat. Too bad he was too snarky to notice even a little just how annoyed Angel was that Cordi and the others were impressed with Lindsey's performance.

There was a fairly nice balance between Lindsey making the decision to leave Wolfram & Hart and keeping his character consistent. He falls into that category of characters like Spike, or even Angel, that are more interesting when they're not so perfect. And it was nice to see him go off on those snobs at Wolfram & Hart. While I would like to see what would happen if he met up with Darla again, I am glad that they didn't kill him off. One thing I do like about Buffy and Angel is that they keep track of their characters.

What Did I Think?

This story doesn't really follow the "old friends" formula, but it's an example of something that happens all the time on television: it isn't just that "someone" gets hurt, it has to be "someone" with a connection to a main character. In this case, Lindsey knew the guy in the glass tube.

Apparently, realizing that his employers have given him a hand harvested from a person who was still alive and maybe still interested in holding on to all his body parts doesn't really make a dent. Nor is finding out that said employers are keeping that person alive so that they could take a few more limbs and/or organs if the need arose horrific enough. It's got to be "good old Brandon that I used to work with."

Granted, Lindsey maybe isn't the best character to use as an example. Ignoring the reality that his actions have consequences for people who aren't him has kind of been Lindsey's problem all along. I would argue, however, that he'd gotten the point by then and it stands to reason that the story could have been just as effective without making the guy in the glass tube someone Lindsey knew.