Angel: Double or Nothing

A demon comes to collect Gunn's soul after seven years and he is unable to think of a way to save himself.

The pacing of this episode is all over the place. It takes ages for us to find out about Gunn's deal, then there's an extended period of him doing very little, then an obviously fake break-up with Fred which she sees through immediately before the final act fight. The action is over way too quickly, and although there are some nice little scenes inbetween, most of them are once that are pretty irrelevant.

Angel spends way too long staring at Connor's cot with the now-returned Cordelia comforting him, the scenes with Wesley seem there purely to show him learning of the fake prophecies and getting home, neither of which are things vitally important for us to see, and J August Richards and Amy Acker only seem to have a degree of chemistry when the relationship between their characters is going well. Maybe it's that they can't handle a stronger dramatic role, but it's odd that the chemistry between them seems to only be there part of the time.

The gambling demons aren't particularly threatening, and when Angel runs into a problem with killing the casino owner, his solution is unusually haphazard and unlikely to work in the long term, even if it is kind of funny. Speaking of which, while I appreciate that things have gotten pretty serious, the humour in this story falls particularly flat, with Mark Lutz trying his hardest to instil some comedy into the proceedings and not getting very far. In the end, the saddest thing is that it's not really much of an insight into Gunn either; all we discover is that he sold his soul for a truck. And yes, as he himself admits, that is remarkably silly.

**

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