Date Posted:11:28:37 03/06/02 Wed Author: Princess Twilite Subject: Review for Sleep Tight is up
"Test Pattern TV Episode Review: Angel
Episode: "Sleep Tight"
Airdate: 03/04/02
Anyone who says they prefer the lighter episodes of Angel is a moron. Plain and simple: the dark, tragic, violent episodes are the best ones, and if last week's wasn't a good indication of that, then this week's certainly was. After an uneven season that has seen a bit too much romance and not enough pain, Angel is back doing what it does best, and damn does it do it good. "Sleep Tight" picks up the day after the earthquake/fire/blood dealy that ended last week's episode and fully convinced Wes that Connor was in danger (grave danger? Is there another kind?). Angel is as chipper as ever around his son, and everything is normal at the hotel, except for Cordy's absence, the continued prominence of Angel's glasses of blood, and the sounds of one of Lorne's clients singing a song in the courtyard. After a violent demonstration of her problem (she grotesquely lapses into demon mode during the chorus), the gang realizes that Lorne's client has been infected by some wraither demons who are a part of her band. Angel, Gunn and Fred go off to kill said demons, while Wes takes a trip to Holtz's behind their backs. Thankfully, the Fred/Gunn cooing was kept to a minimum this week, and it seems that Wesley is as irritated by it as I am, though for different reasons. The bottom line is, this episode was packed with action, drama, and unpredictability, and that, my friends, I'll take over a forced unrequited love plot-line any day, Cordy/Angel shippers be damned.
Wesley's visit to the enemy's demonstrates both his troubled mindset and his immense bad-assed-ness. The former was displayed by his decision to bargain with Holtz for Connor's safety, betraying his friend in order to defy a prophecy, and the latter was evidenced through his unflinching stare and lack of hesitation when he turned Justine's knife on her own throat. At this point, Wesley is a bit off his rocker, but he's one bad mother. As he walked home from Holtz's after bargaining with the midget to ensure that no innocents would be hurt, Justine followed him, seemingly unsure about her alliance with Holtz, whom Wesley continued to paint as a vengeance-minded psycho.
Speaking of bad mothers, or should I say bad fathers, Angel's violent side was on display a bit more than usual in this episode. The huge glasses of blood he's been drinking so prominently the last few episodes came in to play when Angel began acting a bit loopy and then extremely aggressively, as he tore one of the wraither demons' arms off, and began ranting about Connor's crying. His situation demanded investigation after he finished his tirade by tossing his glass of blood against the wall in a fit of rage. It was soon sussed out that Angel's normal pig's blood had been spiked by W&H, and spiked with some of Connor's. Angel admitted that the spiked blood tactic had begun to make him crave human blood, and that Connor was beginning to smell like food. Gulp. So, with the news that Angel had unknowingly been drinking Connor's blood, it seems that he may have "devoured" his sonafter all. Whether the drinking of Connor's blood was the "devouring" that the Burger Man had mentioned to Wesley is yet to be seen, but it didn't amount to Connor's death, so the "the father will kill the son" strain of the prophecy didn't pan out. Yet.
Angel quickly headed off to find Lilah and get some answers, which he did while she babbled on about having grown heartless as a result of her job, while confessing that she finds meaning in making life crappy for Angel. While she went on and on, saying nothing new (character-wise), Sahjahn showed up, bristling that Lilah appeared to be in cahoots with his sworn enemy. That little misunderstanding was cleared up easily enough, but Sahjahn failed to shed any light on why he was so hungry for Angel's death, instead keeping a bemused Angel guessing along with the rest of us.
Unfortunately for everyone, Wesley wasn't around to hear all that news about Angel's blood, since he was dealing with Holtz, so when Angel was off threatening some answers out of Lilah, Wesley was gathering up Connor and his things for a long trip away from Daddy. After listening to Wes sing Connor a brief little lullaby as he got ready to leave, the Host was able to read Wes' mind and learn enough about his plans to inspire the Brit to smash him over the head but good before he could stop him. It was shocking to see Wesley turn against Lorne in such a tangible, violent manner, for even while witnessing Wesley's slow turn to the slightly darker side, and seeing him grow a bit unhinged, it didn't seem so drastic (after all, he was only trying to protect Connor), until he physically tuirned on the harmless Host and knocked him out. Bridges aren't burnt yet, but the wick is dwindling.
Wesley got away with the baby, as Lorne's unconscious body was unable to tell the gang what was up. Plus, Holtz and his men stormed the hotel before Angel and the others even had a chance to notice that Lorne was there and that Wesley had lied about the Host being out. Holtz surveyed the scene and noticed that the baby was gone, and then took off to leave his troops to die, or at least get their asses kicked, by Angel and company. Wes was off with the baby, preparing to get into his car and take a long vacation, when a bruised and beaten Justine emerged from the shadows with evidence of Holtz's fury all over her face. Wesley turned to help Justine, falling, like the rest of us, for the carefully played scheme she had cooked up to steal Connor. As soon as she could, she caught Wes off guard and swiped her knife across his throat, then stole the baby, and his car, and sped off t pick up her boss.
This scene was by far the most shocking of the episode, and I doubt it would have worked so well and caught us (or at least me) so off-guard if there hadn't been little hints of Justine's ambivalence towards Holtz over the past few episodes. I completely believed that Holtz had turned on Justine, especially since the previous scene between them was when he caught her talking with Wes after she trailed him. Regardless, she was still firmly entrenched on Holtz's side, and Wesley's compassion, not so buried as his steely demeanor makes it seem, left him bleeding to death on his front lawn. Back at the hotel, Lorne told Angel and the others what had happened, before the melee, and Angel was enraged that Wesley appeared to have betrayed him to Holtz. Gunn wanted to hear the whole story first, but Angel, whether it was the effects of the human blood he had been drinking or not, went off on Gunn and threw him against the wall. For the first time since "This Old Gang of Mine", the tension between Angel and Gunn was made palpable, and Gunn demanded Angel let him go. Obviously, Angel gets a little leeway, since his son was just kidnapped by one of his best friends, but there is definitely some conflict there. With Angel acting a bit more Angelus-y lately, Gunn has reason to be wary.
Gunn and Fred left to find Wesley while Angel did the same, albeit in a different manner, as he tracked down Lilah and her crew and commandeered one of their jeeps in pursuit of the baby. When he caught up to Wesley's truck, he forced it to the side of the road and watched as Justine and Holtz emerged, the latter carrying Connor. Then Lilah and her crew arrived behind him, and Sahjahn appeared out of thin air to watch it all go down. Fearing for his son's life, Angel was willing to concede the baby to Holtz, who vowed to raise the child as his own, harm-free, in some remote wasteland, perhaps Utah. But Sahjahn's plans were made more apparent, as it became clear he needs the baby dead, perhaps more than he wants Angel to die. So, rather than allow Wolfram and Hart to possess Connor, and rather than let Holtz take the baby away alive, Sahjahn opened a portal to what he called the most terrifying dimension out there. Stuck between a corpse, a lawyer and a hell place, Angel was at a loss, until Holtz took matters into his own hand, and, apparently out of his mind, leapt into the hell dimension with Connor in his arms. This development both stunned and pleased Sahjahn while leaving Lilah satisfied and Angel consumed with grief, writhing on the ground, trying to deal with the fact that his child had disappeared, in the arms of a madman, into some unknown dimension where Angel was unable, at least for now, to follow.
Wowsers. I stopped having any idea what was going to happen about the same time that Justine slashed Wesley's throat. I am surprised that the situation came to a head so quickly, especially since Holtz was planning on leaving for good to raise the baby with Justine, before Angel and Sahjhan and Lilah intervened, of course. Now we are stuck with 5 weeks and 6 episodes to go, and without a road map. For a second it looked like we might take another season-ending sojourn into a different dimension, and I guess that's still possible, but who knows? There is a lot of speculation flying around about who Connor is, or who he becomes. Is he a baby Sahjhan? Maybe he is, and maybe all those scars on Sahjahn's face are indications of the pain he endured in his life, and he wants to end such pain by killing himself before he gets older. It sounds a bit much to me, but maybe. Is he a baby Groosalugg (please God no)? That might explain the similarities between the two warriors, and gives plenty of fodder to A/C shippers, since Cordy will have been attracted to Angel's genes, but to tell the truth, such a scenario reeks of contrivance. What will become of Wesley? He can't die, especially after becoming the show's most compelling character. But should he live, he is going to have a lot of 'splaining to do! The relationships within Angel Investigations have certainly changed a lot recently. It was nice seeing Gunn come to Wesley's defense, but how will Wes and Angel relate now? Gunn and Angel? Wesley and Lorne? Where's Cordy? Does anyone else barely miss her? How will Angel cope with the loss of his son? What were W&H planning on doing with the baby? Will Justine and the rest of Holtz's army (those who survived) be a factor now without Holtz around? Will Holtz even return this season? Will the gang chase after him?
When the show returns, I expect Angel to try and discover exactly what is up Sahjahn's ass, where Holtz and Connor went, and why Wesley would do what he did. The prophecy will hopefully hold some clues as to what will happen and what they can do, but without Wesley up and about, and part of the gang, who will interpret them? Sure, Angel may have fulfilled the "devours his son" part, but the killing his son part is still lingering, and that is clearly the most important. When Cordelia returns, how will she react to these major developments? If Groo is still with her, it seems safe to say that he'll at least help. How deep into despair will Angel plunge without his son? I don't think he'll go bad, and I don't think he'll react the same way he did last year when he went all Amoral Avenger, but he certainly won't sit still.
You know it's a good episode when it raises so many intriguing questions. You know it's a great episode when it ends without you having even a vague idea of what's next. I am even willing to say that "Sleep Tight" was one of the best installments of Angel ever, and had to be the best yet of Season 3, which, suddenly, is back on track in a major way. Oh, and though there's still, always, the possibility of something turning Angel bad again, I think we can rule out that "one moment of happiness" part. I don't think he'll be smiling for a few weeks. And neither will we, until April 15. Five weeks is a long time to wait, but at least now we have something worth waiting for.
[Reviewed by Michael S. Julianelle.]"
--- Well, I have to say I'm glad that the episode got such a great review. Although I am going to say quite clearly that the guy is a pompuas ASS in most ways!! He has a tendency to reaaaally piss me off- I don't know, how about you guys- what do you think?
