S01. E04: I Fall to Pieces

[Joe Hellandback]

The Good; Great horror concept, you could almost imagine a feature film based upon it, some excellent emotional stuff too and as always Cordy brings the funny. My favourite scene is where Meltzer throws his teeth at Angel and then recoils in pain as Angel smashes them against the wall.

The Bad; The severed limbs scenes don't really convince, when you see Thing in The Adams Family it's much better

Best line: Cordy; "Here's this poor girl, she hooks up with a doctor. That's supposed to be a good thing!"

Jeez, how did they get away with that? Virtually all of the Beast with Five Fingers stuff

Apocalypses: 4

Angel Clichés

Damsel in distress; yep, making 2. However, Doyle says there's 4 in total and 3 very much alive. Presumably the girl from City of Angels is the dead one and the girl from In the Dark is another making 2 more we don't see.

In disguise; 1. Angel poses as a successful businessman but no disguise

DB get's his shirt off; not this ep so still 1

Fang Gang in bondage: no Cordy: 5 Angel: 4 

Fang gang knocked out: all of them Cordy: 7 Angel: 7 Doyle; 1

Kills: Cordy: none this ep. 3 vamps, ½ a demon from her time in Sunnydale Angel: 1 human for Angel. So that gives Angel 8 vamps, 2 demons, 2 humans.

Fang Gang go evil: Cordy: 1 Angel: 1

Alternate Fang Gang: Cordy: 1 Angel: 3

Characters killed: the poor cop Kate sends to guard the building 10

Total number of Angel Investigations: 3, Angel, Doyle and Cordy

Angel Investigations shot: Angel with the tranquiliser gun (as with Dopplegangland in Buffy why not use that to knock vamps out then cut their heads off?) Angel: 5,

Notches on Fang Gang bedpost: Cordy: 1? Angel: 1;Buffy

Kinky dinky: What the heck do Meltzer's hands do under the sheets?

Captain Subtext; Doyle admits that Angel holds a certain attraction to him

Know the face, different character; 1 Andy Umberger who plays Dr Meltzer is a Whedon hattrick who is also

Spoiler

D'Hoffryn on Buffy and plays the Captain of the Dortmunder in Firefly.

Parking garages; seemingly a staple of the series, one here and in COA 2

Questions and observations; This is the 4th ep of the series and we're told that Cordy has been working for him for a month so this suggests the series is in real time, one ep per week. Angel drinks coffee now, presumably to keep him up for his cases as he told Joyce he didn't drink it in The Prom. Isn't it a bit unpatriotic for Doyle to drink Scotch, shouldn't he drink whiskey with an e? Cordy gives the Angel Investigations motto 'We help the hopeless'. Oddly here Cordy 'Scullys' Angel, suggesting a non-supernatural solution. He's actually open to the idea but points out correctly that Doyle has a vision. Angel just appears to be able to walk into Kate's police station no problem at all. Meltzer actually shows a lot of compassion for Angel's story of his wife. I don't know if it's deliberate but Scrubs has a character called Dr Zeltzer who's also a major weirdo and even looks quite like Dr Meltzer. It's noticeable that at this stage of Angel the supernatural underworld is just that, it's not out in the open as it will be later, we're still dealing with the everyday clashing with the incredible.

Marks out of 10; 8, one of the classic eps of season 1

[Joe Hellandback]

7 hours ago, nosleepforme said:

I think this episode tends to not be a favorite, but I think it's a fun episode, I actually like it more than the crossover episode before. The only problem about the early episodes is that they focus too much on the guest star of the week who we don't quite care as much about. I think it's good that they corrected that later in the season to focus a little more on the characters.

 

The best part of this episode is just seeing Angel, Doyle and Cordy work as a team.

And that was always Joss' puzzle, he wanted an anthology show with a different person helped each week but instead the AI gang always took precedent, much to the fans delight.