Offspring

Offspring
Written by David Greenwalt
Directed by Turi Meyer

Original Airdate: November 5, 2001

Plot: As the group at Angel Investigations obtains and tries to decipher a prophecy, Darla shows up in L.A. to confront Angel about the consequences of their night together and to try and make some sense of how she could be expecting. The prophecy leads the gang to believe that the child Darla carries could be a force of good or evil and Angel must weight whether or not to destroy his former lover and his unborn child...

Review

Warning: Here's my prediction: If you keep reading this review, you will find SPOILERS for the latest episode of Angel, "Offspring." If you've not yet seen it and would like to go in unaware of how the plot twists and turns, I suggest you turn back now....

In short: A good beginning.

A lot of the first third of Angel's third season has been spent on character building. We've seen an episode that has given each character their own moment to shine.

But in the background of each of these character building episodes, we've had some simmering plotlines.

With "Offspring" it's the background plots that have come to the foreground in a big way.

If the first six episodes were about strengthening and building the family of Angel Investigations, "Offspring" is the episode that's all about putting the first real test on that new family as they face a crisis--namely the pregnancy of Darla and the possibility of how the child might be the answer to a prophecy.

Suddenly the family unit that was Angel Investigations is tested. It's an hour of darkness for this crew. Darla is the splinter that drove this gang apart last year. It's interesting how her return to L.A. is serving to drive the crew together and unify them--at least for now.

Yes, we did get some dissension from Cordelia--at least as first. But I think that as we saw how the episode developed, we saw the gang supporting Angel and circling the wagons to protect each other--especially after Cordelia is attacked by Darla.

I have a strong feeling that this was the first part of a multi-part story arc and, thus, it makes it a bit difficult to judge it too positively or negatively because we have no idea yet where these plotlines are leading. Obviously the biggest unanswered question at this point is--what exactly is the baby inside Darla going to turn out to be? And we're not talking the question of if it's a boy or a girl here.

Overall, I liked what Offspring was doing here.

For one thing, it seems to have derailed a bit of the Angel and Cordelia budding relationship plotline.

I'm still not a strong proponent of this development, but I admit I get a bit more won over to it each week.

This week it was sort of a two step forward and one step back type of moment.

I enjoyed seeing Fred's conversation with Angel about his relationship with Cordelia. Initially Angel denies he has feelings for Cordelia, but then we slowly see him realize that maybe he does feel something more Cordelia than just friendship. Watching him go up to the lobby of the hotel to talk to Cordelia about his new enlightenment was nicely done and I liked the awkwardness of his attempting to bridge the gap and maybe open the conversation. And while it was interesting to see him try and lay his cards on the table, it was also nice to see that Angel still has no more grasp of how to express his feelings in the initial stages of a relationship than he did on Buffy all those years ago. (Was anyone else reminded of Willow's dressing down of Angel in "Reptile Boy" about being distant and not assertive enough in how he felt to Buffy. Plus, the whole coffee conversation always amuses me.)

Certainly seeing Angel's overcompensating by trying to be non-chalant about everything was nicely done.

However, it did lead to one of the more awkward moments of the storyline--namely for what seems like the hundredth time we had Angel apparently misunderstand what Cordelia meant when she said she loved him. This is one of those jokes that can be amusing the first time, but it gets tedious quickly. And it certainly felt a bit forced here with Cordelia saying that she loved Angel and then adding that she loved everyone at Angel Investigations. It's been done and I think that at some point it needs to actually go beyond just being merely thrown out there as a wacky misunderstanding set-up and punch line and should move forward.

Though I will give credit for the funny line from Cordelia about hoping Angel didn't need a hug now.

Of course, as is usual with these types of on-screen romances, the course of true-love never does run smooth. And it's certainly a cliché that as soon as our hero figures out he's in love with our heroine that the past usually comes back to bite you in the behind.

And it does for Angel in a big way.

And while I'm glad that this put a bit of a wedge between Angel and Cordelia, I'm glad that the hatchet was quickly buried. Honestly, there's nothing that get more tedious quickly than having one half of a potential romantic entanglement carry a grudge for a long period of time over something that happened in the past. Yes, I will admit that Angel will have to deal with repercussions from this and I think that it should affect Cordelia in small ways. But I'm glad that Cordelia was able to put aside her initial anger and defense of Darla and the whole "men are evil" bit to be supportive of Angel as her friend.

It helped to make Cordelia's sudden defense of Darla a bit more tolerable.

I found parts of it hard to stomach. I can see Cordelia identifying with another woman and how she can empathathize that Darla has suffered at having to face her pregnancy alone to this point, but I kept saying to myself--"It's Darla!" She can be sympathetic, yes and we've certainly seen a lot of her background. But the one thing we've always seen is that even in the depths of her own needing pity and to be loved, she can turn on your in a heartbeat. So I guess it was a bit much to see Cordelia let her guard down enough to have Darla be able to attack her and feed on her.

The rest of the Darla plotline was fairly interesting enough. Julie Benz pulled off parts of it with flair. Seeing Darla's need to feed on children was chilling. Her attempting to get the child to go with her so she could feed was a chilling part of the episode.

As for her final fight with Angel, I found myself too much reminded of the battle and breakdown between Faith and Angel early in season one. Indeed, the whole idea that Darla had come to L.A. for Angel to kill her was far too close to Faith's coming to L.A. for Angel to do away with her. In both cases, I think Angel sees his chance for some redemption by helping another. But I think we saw him wander down the dark path last year in trying to save Darla. I hope we won't see him go too far down the same road this year. The boy's got to learn from his mistakes!

But, as I've said, I think this plotline is just beginning to get rolling and it will be a few weeks before we see the resolution to it.

Another plotline like this was the return of Holtz. I realized that the prologue of showing how obsessed with finding Angel and Darla Holtz is was foreshadowing his return at episode's end. And certainly, we've seen this guy can hold a grudge--anyone who would have himself turned into a statue so he could wait for the time to come out and go after Angel is really taking grudge carrying to a new art form. And while I can understand why Holtz hates Angel so much, I am interested to see if we'll get some more depth on him. Again, any man who carries a grudge this long has something else at work. And that could make for some GREAT moments--especially after Angel finds out that Holtz is coming for him.

Again, I think we're getting set-up for the next run of episodes. And based on what I've seen so far, I'm intrigued and definitely along for the ride.

So, that's about it for now, except a few small things...

--Fred's comments about Darla being the second girl she knows about how once loved Angel and is now back from the dead were great.

--The demon who release Holtz stopping for a smoke break was a nice moment.

--Seeing Wesley overcompensating with the "Be nice to Fred since I hunted her down with an axe last week" portion was nicely done. I am glad to see there's some awkwardness between them.

--I loved seeing Fred continue to become an integral part of the team.

--Anyone else sort of disappointed that because of the no cross-over thing that we won't get to see Buffy hear about Darla's child and come to L.A. to confront Angel about it?!? (I smell fan-fic!)

So, all-in-all, Offspring is a good episode. It does have some flaws, but I think that it's setting up the rest of the season arc. I'm along for the ride and intrigued to see how this all begins to play out.

My rating: 7.5 (out of 10.0)

Next up: Wolfram and Hart get wind of Darla's baby and Darla goes into labor.

"Do you have a chart of all this?"

"I've got it on file. I'll show it to you later."

--Fred & Gunn, on Angel's romantic past.