Some More Angel Wednesdays

I really have enjoyed watching "Angel" this season. But I haven't felt the overpowering need to blog about it.

I suppose, on the offchance that all copies of the show are lost, along with every other synopsis and review, that I ought to continue blogging these, though.

After all, we're so near the end.

Next up in my recap recaps is "Destiny," written by David Fury and Steven S. DeKnight.

It features a flashback to the first time Spike met Angelus. And wouldn't you know, they hit it off immediately. Angelus is happy to have another guy around to chum around and slaughter with, and it occurred to me that I had never seen Spike and Angel as friends, in any episode that I can remember.

Well, their friendship doesn't really last, as Spike tells Angelus how happy he is to have a purpose in (un)life and that he considers Drusilla to be his destiny. Angelus then goes on to have sex with Drusilla, mocking Spike, and when Spike attacks him, Angelus soundly thrashes the younger vampire.

Back in the present, Spike gets a package in the mail. When Harmony opens it for him, there's a new burst of light . . . and suddenly Spike is corporeal again. He immediately grabs Harmony and makes up for lost time.

Harmony starts bleeding from her eyes and turns evil . . .er, and later, it happens to Gunn too. All sorts of things start going wrong around the building, and Eve proclaims that it's because there's a problem with the universe: there are now two hero vampires with souls to fulfill the Shanshu Prophesy.

Wesley is off marrying Willow, so they go to Sirk (I looked him up the first time through), the ex-Watcher in the Records Department. He's got a copy of the Shanshu Prophesy in its original language, and explains that all the translations have been incomplete. According to the original prophesy, the balance can only be repaired when the destined vampire drinks "from the Cup of Perpetual Torment," which has been recently found in a condemned building out in the Nevada desert.

Sirk says the cup is in a destroyed opera house in Death Valley, Nevada. So both Spike and Angel head off to reach it, both insisting that they are the destined vampire.

What follows is the mother of all battles: Spike versus Angel, both physically and verbally. Spike thinks he's better than Angel because he went out and earned a soul, and Angel had one forced upon him. Angel thinks he's better than Spike because he didn't get a soul just to impress a girl. Spike thinks he's better than Angel because he got to sleep with Buffy lots of times, and Angel only got the once. Angel thinks he's better than Spike because every time Buffy was with Spike, she really wished it was Angel.

They punch and throw each other around, and Spike just keeps getting back up. Spike thinks he's better than Angel because Angel works for an evil lawfirm now. Angel thinks he's better than Spike because Spike is too dumb to know the difference between good and evil.

It's an exhausting battle, and it only comes to a close when Spike picks up a broken board and impales Angel with it . . . through the shoulder instead of the heart, though he could have killed him. Spike staggers to the cup and drinks it.

It is full of Mountain Dew.

They return to Wolfram & Hart, realising that Sirk's translation was a lie. The ex-Watcher is gone, and Eve tells them that the Senior Partners stepped in and rebalanced the universe as best they could. Angel confesses to Gunn that Spike finally beat him after all these years, because he wanted it more than Angel did.

The coda of the story shows us where Eve goes at night: she has an apartment with her co-conspirator behind this whole thing, laughing about how easily she tricked Angel and Company. Her partner turns out to be good old ex-lawyer Lindsay McDonald, chuckling about their future plans. The end.

This was a much better episode than I've described (both times), and the fight was very impressive. I don't suppose we need any more flashbacks to Angel or Spike's past after this one. Except for whatever I'm not remembering.

That brings us to "Harm's Way," written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, who are the showrunners on Joss's new series "Dollhouse."

I have almost nothing to say about this one, and I figured that, the moment Joss and Company got the word that "Angel" would not be renewed for a sixth season, that we would no longer get any light and stand-alone episodes like this one. We shall see.

This was a Harmony-centric episode . . . and I never wrote it up. In fact, this post sat for a couple of years because I apparently lost interest before finishing it. Shame.