Hell is a house in the suburbs.
Written by: Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft
Directed by: Skip Schoolnik
As Wesley helps Illyria come to terms with this world, Angel and Spike pay a Eve a visit in their attempts to locate Lindsey. Their threats are interrupted by the arrival of Hamilton, a messenger from the Senior Partners, seemingly on a mission to kill Eve.
Making their escape, the gang return to Wolfram and Hart, where they learn Eve is an immortal being, existing only to serve her demon masters.
Gunn, recovering from the stab wounds Wesley inflicted upon him, directs Angel to Lindsey's prison - a Hell Dimension where he is forced to relive a morning of family bliss which always ends in horrific torture in the bowels of his basement.
Angel, Gunn and Wesley arrive, but their rescue plans are hampered by Lindsey's gun-toting 'family'. Forced to retreat to the basement, they face the creature that lives there before realising that the only way Lindsey can leave is for someone to take his place. Gunn volunteers as the others return to our reality, just in time to confront Hamilton.
Surprisingly, Hamilton merely wants Eve to sign over her responsibilities to him, leaving her mortal.
- ten quick questions.
Trivia
Something fishy: Illyria reveals that she once encountered a world populated with nothing but shrimp. This is a Buffy in-joke, referring to season four's Superstar. In it, Anya describes a world without shrimp as something that could exist in an alternate dimension.
Jayne's World: Marcus Hamilton, new liaison to The Senior Partners, is played by Adam Baldwin. Adam is the third refugee from Joss Whedon's cancelled Firefly series, where he played duplicitous lug Jayne. The other two were Gina Torres, who played Jasmine last season, and Nathan Fillion, who played Caleb on Buffy.
Wedding plans: Angel mentions "Trista and Ryan's big baby plans", referring to the ABC reality show Trista and Ryan's Wedding. The series follows the matrimonial mayhem of an American couple as they prepare to wed on a tropical island paradise.
Review
With all bets off now that the series is ending, Joss Whedon has launched into story arc overdrive. Forget easy-to-digest standalone tales, as plot threads involving Lindsey's plans to tackle the apocalypse of all apocalypses mix with Gunn's atonement and Wesley's interaction with the thing that killed his girlfriend.
It's all building to a rich and complex finale, showing all the signs that this could be Angel's finest season.
Lindsey's suburban hell is a delight too, with its cheesy gun-toting family and stunning basement monster. good to see Christian Kane back - I was worried that his recent trip to hell was strictly one way. Adam Baldwin has yet to create much of an impression - coming across as the Terminator as dressed by Paul Smith - but based on his Firefly work I'm sure he will impress in future episodes.
