Previously: Cordelia finally left glowy land after the gang rescued Lorne from his Vegas captor. If he thinks they also rescued him from the name, “The Green Velvet Fog,” then he is mistaken.
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Slouching Toward Bethlehem
Sweeney: First: I flailed a little over this episode being named after one of my favorite poems. Fun! (Weeeeee apocalyptic poetry!) When the show begins, a man is trying to jump start his family vehicle in a shady area that he shouldn’t have been in to begin with. Connor appears to be his horrifyingly I’m-going-to-wear-your-skin self, and the dad clearly wants Connor to get gone because they already called for help. Said help arrives and is, of course, a vampire towing company. IDK. Sure. Connor reappears and stakes them.
Kirsti: Our old friend Contrivance has set a new world record with this scene.
Lorraine: I love how you first recognize the evil because the vampires drive like asshats. BAD DRIVING, MUST BE EVIL. And then of course, the second vampire dies after one second of being lit on fire. Because vampire rules are made to be broken.
Sweeney: Hyperion. Connor Spidey jumps his way up the building and breaks into a hallway window. He creeps around the corner just in time to watch the gang in the lobby, picking up exactly where the last episode left off. Angel’s glad that Cordelia is back, but she’s majorly confused because she has no idea who they are – or who she is. Electric cellos.
Angel asks Cordelia what she does remember, and there’s not much. More importantly, she doesn’t remember her and that’s scary, as are these people insisting that they are her friends. Fred points out the obvious fact that Cordelia has some sort of amnesia, but as usual, a hospital is probably not the best way to go. Angel spots Lorne making his way in and sends Gunn out to intervene, afraid that their green friend will startle her. He also suggest that maybe seeing her things will help. As we discussed at great length in 4×02, we agree entirely. SEEING YOUR STUFF AFTER YOU’VE BEEN SEPARATED FOR A WHILE IS VERY HELPFUL. Except, he’s just going to go chat with Fred in the office, which isn’t actually showing her her stuff.
K: RUDE.
Sweeney: In the office, he’s in a panic because he doesn’t know what to say. Fred points out how incredibly silly it is to try to shelter Cordelia from all the demonic stuff that she’s inevitably going to find out about. More importantly, Fred wants to figure out why she’s back.
In the lobby, Cordelia is appropriately creeped out by all things Fang Gang, like a stray murder knife lying on the ground. Angel tries to tell her that she doesn’t have to be afraid, but she doesn’t know them, so that’s debatable. The phone rings and Angel lets it go to voicemail, so that she can hear her own voice on the answering machine. This helps her confirm that she does work there. The message does, of course, refer to demonic things. Fred says it’s just a messy divorce thing and she’s going to grab Gunn to terminate the situation before it multiplies. She runs off.
Cordelia says that she wants to go home and asks if Angel knows where she lives. Rather than her actual magical apartment with her magical ghost roommate, he shows her to the shoddy new hotel room, where all of her stuff is in boxes. It’s a bit of an anti-climactic stuff reunion. She picks up something that she wore to the ballet and Angel tries to jog her memory about all the fun that they had “working together.” Cordelia says she wants him to help her get those memories back, but not tonight because she just needs to be alone with her stuff right now.
K: Legit reaction, Amnesia!Cordy.
Sweeney: After Angel leaves, she sits in front of a mirror and practices introducing herself – Cordelia, Cordy, Cordelia Chase. Then, in the best combination of nostalgia and crossover magic, she sits down to her senior yearbook from Sunnydale High School. She’s unsurprised by her popularity, but is confused by all the references to her epic, apocalyptic graduation day. She goes through old photos and gets to review the many hairstyles of Cordelia Chase. The hair that she chose as, “cute again,” was definitively not, but her poor taste in hairstyles isn’t exactly news.
K: True. I’m also a little confused whenever people in TV shows have masses of portraits of themselves. I mean, in this case, they’re not portraits so much as printed screen caps. But characters always seem to have all these photos of themselves staring wistfully off into the distance. I’m screwed if I ever get amnesia, because all I have is awkward selfies at various major tourist spots around the world. On the plus side, Amnesia!Kirsti might end up thinking that she’d attended Hogwarts based on the selfies, so…there’s that.
Lor: That… is amazing. I’m also screwed if I get amnesia. I mean, a few selfies and a terrible amount of nail polish pics is all I’ll have to piece my identity together with.
Sweeney: Yeah, but you guys are overlooking the fact that we have social media. And are bloggers. Our lives are insanely well documented. “WHO WAS I? Oh, apparently I watched a lot of TV and had a lot of feelings, unpopular opinions, and a love of gifs.”
Upon reviewing the vast spectrum of hair she’s sported in the last few years, Cordelia wonders if she was a spy. A valid guess.
She walks through the halls and overhears some noise coming from one of the rooms and listens at the door. It’s Lorne’s room and she overhears some decidedly demonic singing and runs off when she hears him coming to the door.
In the lobby, Angel is hurriedly putting away jars of blood. She doesn’t see him doing this, but does spot a drop of blood on the counter and freaks the fuck out. She hides when Fred and Gunn return and loudly discuss how gross and nasty their latest kill was. Gunn wants to know when Angel’s going to tell Cordelia, which is the cue for some nasty purple goop to drip off his weapon and onto Cordelia so she can freak out some more. Angel reappears and tries to tell her it’s OK, but she flees. Out in the courtyard, they are met by two conveniently appearing dudes that she effortlessly fights (with Angel’s help).
K: Right, because she’s basically a Slayer now… *eyeroll*
Sweeney: She decides that she is a spy and that they are all Russian spies who have brainwashed her so that she will reveal some big secret. “So, I look Russian to you?” Gunn asks. Angel explains that those dudes were Wolfram & Hart lawyers, who must know that she’s back. Cordelia says that sounds like BS, what with people talking about murder and also all the singing, which she mentions repeatedly.
K: She also calls Angel “Angie” which makes me LOL forever and ever. He, on the other hand, is not amused.
Sweeney: Angel tries again to insist that they’re going to help her and that she really is among friends there. She reluctantly agrees. Up in her room, she’s bummed that she’s not really a spy. She asks if she was a mother and shows him a picture of Connor. Angel explains that this is his son and she’s not his mother. Cordelia asks if this means that they weren’t a happy family, which somehow leads directly into almost makeout time. Said kiss stops short when Cordelia asks if they weren’t a happy family because she was a nun. She pulls out a handful of crosses and hands them to Angel, who vamps out as his skin sizzles. Cordelia panics, as one with amnesia does when their strange new friend turns out to be a vampire.
After a Not Break, Cordelia runs away. In the lobby she runs into Lorne, which terrifies her some more. Angel helps her up and Fred and Gunn come to investigate the screaming and try to calm her down. Angel admits that they haven’t told her the whole truth because they were afraid it would scare her. “Yeah, and the lying and deceit have been so comforting.”
Angel says it’s time they come clean about everything. Seizure cut to everyone sitting in Angel’s new room as she tries to process. She recounts the story for them with all the expected crazy. She says she clearly doesn’t remember because she doesn’t want to. Angel suggests that Cordelia sing in order for Lorne to get a read and help them sort this whole situation out. She’s hesitant, but finally agrees and it’s terrible and also the expression on Lorne’s face is terrible.
K: I stop to have nostalgia squees, because she sings “The Greatest Love of All,” which is what she sang at the talent show waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in Buffy season 1. Which was, incidentally, the first episode that featured Principal Snyder, and also the episode in which Sweeney joined the Buffy party, AND one of many early episodes in which Buffy earned herself a ho suspension. Good times, y’all. Good times.
Sweeney: He finally cuts her off and runs away. Angel makes up a silly excuse and goes after him.
Cordelia wants to go out and Fred and Gunn offer to go with her because it’s not safe. Cordelia, in spite of her lack of memory, is still very much her sassy old self and is having none of their shit, especially as they are, in her estimation lowly sidekicks. LOLZ.
Angel bangs on Lorne’s door. Lorne says that he can’t tell Angel anything because he’s going to vom again if he has to think about this any longer. You guys in the comments have been talking for a few episodes now about a gag-worthy pairing on the horizon and I’m wagering that these things are related? (K: Sort of, but not really) And I have a guess that I really, truly hope is wrong because I’m not even comfortable typing it out. (L: For once, I’m spoiled because someone put this pair on Twitter as their NO-TP. And yick.) (S: I AGREE. NO-TP! NO-TP! DON’T DO IT.) Anyway, Lorne goes onto to ask Angel if the words, “slouching toward Bethlehem” mean anything to him. Xander’s “help” star was pretty lazily earned, but you quoted Yeats, Lorne. This a classy fucking star, friend:
Lorne continues to say that SRSBSNS evil is coming and this either means that I was totally on point or way off the mark because this has nothing to do with the vomit pairing.
Shifting to a different kind of uncomfortable pairing, Lilah is lying in bed with Wesley, and they’re discussing all the people that know about their relationship. Wesley says something about not caring that Angel knows and actually refers to it as a relationship. Lilah gets very giddy because he owes her a dollar for using the R-word first. She wants him to sign it first as proof of this. Aw, that was unexpectedly sweet!
Lor: Agreed. I’ve been hard on them but this was indeed sweet.
Sweeney: Elsewhere, Cordelia’s roaming the halls and hears someone behind her. She starts to tell them to give her some space. It turns out to be the crazy demon that Lorne was with earlier in the episode that I didn’t bother to mention because his gross mouth was gross and I didn’t want to think about it. Angel’s somewhere else in the building, but the zoomy cameraman informs us that he’s hearing all of this with his super hearing. Cordelia runs. In the lobby, Lorne’s gross friend is about to get his Cordelia snacking on when Connor appears and takes him out. He tells Cordelia that she’s not safe there and she agrees. She asks him to get her out of there and he obliges. GUYS. NO.
K: Welcome to my world.
Lor: I literally paused the episode here to have GUYS. NO. freakout party of 1. It’s nice to talk about it now: GUYS. NO.
Sweeney: In the lobby, Angel asks how they could let her wander off alone and A MILLION POINTS TO FRED for her response, “The words ‘grown woman’ come to mind.” 1430. (K: AGREED.) Angel panics that this is the beginning of something horrifying. Lorne enternounces that something horrifying has begun, but it has nothing to do with his now deceased gross friend. Lorne again says that the thing is horrifyingly gross, but won’t actually explain what it is. Angel’s gathering weapons because Cordelia is out there without a memory and afraid.
Cut to Cordelia, less afraid and more in awe of a giant stuffed polar bear. Or a statue of a polar bear. I don’t know. (K: Taxidermied. This “museum storage area” set was clearly put together by someone who’s never seen a museum storage area. Especially not one used for taxidermied specimens.) Connor is very short with her and shows her up a ladder to his hideaway home. He tells her his name and she quickly puts together that he’s Angel’s son. Upstairs, Connor admits to the whole sunk-Angel-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean thing, along with the fact that he tried to kill Cordelia because he was new to this world and didn’t understand things. Rather than getting upset, Cordelia thanks him for being the first person to be truly honest with her and sits on his bed. NO NO NO NO NO.
Cut to Lilah, waking up to a phone call. She steps out to take it – W&H know that Cordelia is back and with Connor. Wesley gets up and listens at the door, but manages to get back in bed before she looks. Some vampire speed right there. Lilah gets dressed and says goodbye to Wesley.
Elsewhere, Cordelia panics that Connor is leaving, but he’s just locking the door to keep her safe. She says she still feels so afraid and says that she is trying so hard to remember even little details about her life and the fact that she can’t makes her feel horribly lonely. Connor says that she likes shoes and donuts and is very brave. She says that she has the strongest feeling that something bad is going to happen – or already has – and for some reason Connor is the only person she trusts. She says she has a feeling that Connor has lost everything too, and with that he goes to brood by the window.
K: The Angel DNA is strong with this one.
Sweeney: Hyperion. Angel wants to give the LOLPD a call because his suggestions just keep getting worse. He says she can’t have just disappeared – not twice anyway. Wesley enternounces, full of macho bravado, that he knows where she is and snarks that it was careless of them to try so hard to locate her only to “misplace her.” Fred doesn’t say the thing again, but I replay it in my head. Angel backstories that she just showed up without a memory. A fresh start sounds nice to Wesley. Wes says that W&H is going after Cordelia and that Connor won’t be able to stop them. Angel relaxes considerably at this, because he’s sure Connor is taking excellent care of her. (L: EW.)
Segue Magic to Connor groping her boob in their sleep. NO. They wake up at the same time, she because of the boob thing, I guess, and he because he hears that someone is there. (K: And probably also because of the boob grope. He’s a teenage boy, and it’s been a good long while since his druggy girlfriend of five minutes overdosed in the bathroom.) Someone enters the room and is strung up by a trip wire. Connor tosses Cordelia a weapon and says that although he set traps, she’s going to have to fight and he hopes she remembers how.
After a Not Break, dudes keep coming in through the windows and Cordelia is, indeed, a solid fighter. Just when things are going south, with Cordelia collapsing, the Fang Gang bursts through the door. Up on the roof, Lilah who was watching the whole thing, gets word that something has been done, so she calls everyone off.
Angel tries to get Cordelia out of there, but she says that she’d like to stay with Connor. She gets that they were all trying to help, but says that the truth is the only way to do that. Angel gets very sad and mopey, but goes, but not before telling Connor to keep Cordelia safe. I get what they were going for, but they should have gone a different route because that was groan-worthy, given how much Cordelia has been discussed as a passive, child-like entity that must be cradled. I get that she has no memory and it’s dangerous for her now, but bitch can still handle herself, so everyone needs to cut this shit out.
K: SO. MUCH.
Sweeney: Back at Wesley’s place, he finds the dollar bill on the floor, because Lilah left it behind.
Brooding Hotel. Angel admits that using their words would have been the best way to go, but Gunn isn’t entirely sure. They figure Cordelia will quickly get over the lying in favor of the rescuing. This pep talk is interrupted by a noise in the office. They run in to find Lorne tied to a chair with a bad head wound. As they untie him, he struggles to say that Wolfram & Hart did this.
Angel realizes that the thing with Connor was just a decoy so that they could come for Lorne and figure out what he saw when he read Cordelia. He wouldn’t talk so they had something burrow inside his head and took Cordelia out. Gunn suggests that Wesley was in on it. Angel says that they don’t know any of that for sure, but they do know that Wolfram & Hart know more about Cordelia’s doom and gloom future than they do, which is a problem.
Wesley shows up at Lilah’s apartment, pissed that she played him. Lilah makes the fair point that he’s being self-righteous about the outcome of using information he overheard behind her back. And, you know, trusting Lilah, in general. She goes on to say that the outcome could have been way worse for Lorne, but she went easy on him because he’s a friend of Wesley’s. He asks if that’s supposed to lull him into trusting her, but she says that if she thought he’d ever trust him, she wouldn’t have played him.
K: Thank God she left that signed dollar on the floor so he could join the dots.
Sweeney: Elsewhere, Cordelia is sleeping, while Connor and Angel sit at their respective windows and do a little father-son unison brooding. End credits.
Welp. That’s an episode. I’m still not sure if the horrifying thing is actually going to be a thing, but there was enough pointing that way to suggest it. Aside from that, I wasn’t a huge fan of this episode, because it relied so heavily on people not using their damn words and you all know how we feel about that. From Angel’s weird sheltering nonsense at the start, to Lorne’s repeated refusal to just tell Angel what he saw. The whole thing was stupid, contrived, and frustrating.
Strangely, the Wesley/Lilah stuff was probably the best of all of it. Shady, evil Lilah was probably the character I found it easiest to root for in this episode and that about sums the whole thing up for me.
K: The best thing for me was that fabulous special guest star, the Sunnydale High year book. Plus, that second piece of crossover magic in Cordy’s song choice. Other than that, it was contrivance-tastic from start to finish. And, having seen the show before, I’m dreading what’s to come like you wouldn’t believe.
Lor: Apart from the how the story got there, I’m struggling with where the story is going, which is just a personal preference thing. So far I hate the amnesia thing, I hate that we’re supposed to believe that Cordelia feels super safe with just post-pubescent Connor, and I hate any and all boob groping that happened in this episode.
Guys? No.
Next time: Fred discovers who sent her to Pylea and she is PISSED in Angel S04 E05 – Supersymmetry.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
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