Angel S1-15: The Short Review

'The Prodigal'

Written by Tim Minear

Directed by Bruce Seth Green

I think I liked this episode rather more than it deserves to be liked. The central premise is very good indeed, and Trevor Lockley's death, with Angel looking on helplessly, is a wonderful scene. However, somewhere in the execution the episode falls down, and the end result is certainly the worst episode to come out of a Tim Minear script, even if it does answer several long-standing questions about Angel's origins.

The plot, such as it is, is fine; Angel tracks down drug-running demons and stops them. There are no glaring holes in the plot, and indeed it is a mark of how irrelevant that story is to the central thrust of the episode that several key questions are left unanswered at the end - the answers wouldn't add anything to the episode. That said, it was nice to see Angel Investigations doing some actual investigation for a change. Wesley and Cordelia don't have much else to do anyway this week (the alarm was, I think, a mistake), but I don't begrudge Angel the screen time.

No, the main interest of this episode lies in how it deals with Angel's relationship with his father, Kate's relationship with her father, and the similarities and differences between their stories. Angel the human - Liam - was a layabout, a drunkard, albeit with the impression that he was driven to this state by his father, who, it seems, was impossible to please. Kate is a model daughter; a successful cop, everything her father could have wished for. Yet I think there is a sense that both fathers are concerned that they have failed their children. Angel's father shows this in his stern words, because he knows of no other way to do so; Trevor Lockley turns to crime to provide for his daughter, because he sees no other option.

Yes, the flashbacks have failings. However, for me the main problem with them is not the wigs or the accents; I can look past those, most of the time, and enjoy the story that is being told. The main problem for me is that we are constantly told what a stupendous badass Angelus was, and never shown it. In this episode, and in others, we are told that he decides to wipe out his home village after rising as a vampire. However, nowhere do we actually get to witness any of this carnage. I understand that this is partly due to budgetary limitations (as was the vampiric breath after Angel rises, I believe), but after a while it does get frustrating.

This is the first real insight we have had, either here or in 'Buffy' into the sire-childe relationship. Darla in this instance is very much Angel's parent; watching over and guiding him from his first kill to his ultimate revenge on his father. As usual, the supernatural phenomena are relevant to the real world; when Darla tells Angel that 'all we were informs all that we have become', it refers not just to vampires, of course, but to everyone as they mature from a child into an adult. As to the siring event itself, well, the montage is quite nicely done, but just because we've been shown it once on Buffy doesn't mean we don't want to see it again.

A word about the music; normally, I'm quite impressed with the scoring on Angel, but I really, really dislike the cheesy seventies cop show music seen in this episode (and also during the end fight scene of 'Somnambulist'). Sadly, it's not the last we hear of it; thankfully, we don't hear it too many more times. The fight scene itself was fun, though - a cameo from the stake launchers is always welcome!

The problem with this episode, perhaps, is that it doesn't feel as pivotal as it should. The revelations about Angel's past, coupled with the death of Kate's father, should make this one of the major episodes of this series; instead, my lasting impression is of unfulfilled promise.