Angel: Carpe Noctem

Seeking out the reason for several deaths where only skin has been found at the crime scene, Angel stumbles across an old man using other bodies to keep himself alive beyond his natural span. And when he takes Angel's, he may finally have the answer to his dreams, especially when he discovers the body's added extras...

The body swap episode. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This one seems to drop somewhere in the middle. David Boreanaz has gone the out of character thing before, and he enjoys himself just as much here with comic effect. His need to talk to Fred and tell her he doesn't have a romantic interest in her to stop her crush allows for a fun scene with Wesley when the 'new' Angel believes he is called Fred and the pair are a gay couple. It's also a great excuse for Lilah to get what she deserves when she drops round to help Angel just to get one up on her work colleague Gavin Park. Next thing she knows he's trying to have sex with her, then, in a neat twist, goes vampire and bites her. It's a perfect way of the new Angel finding out what he really is, and it allows Lilah to get what she deserves without Angel having done it. Of course, it will likely cause further problems for him down the line...

The plot with Fred again makes her more sympathetic as she is badly let down by the evil Angel and finally learns that her crush can go nowhere. And that's about it for the story really. The other characters are mainly there to provide something for David Boreanaz to play off, Cordelia getting a fun moment in a gym but the others not really doing a lot bar finally figuring out why Angel is behaving so oddly. After everything they've seen, you'd think they might pick it up a little quicker. The Wolfram & Hart material doesn't really seem to add much, Angel's efforts to get back to his body are essentially time-filling measures and Darla is once more tacked on. Is she going to come back to LA soon, as I think we've exhausted these tantalizing glimpses now...

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