"Slouching Toward Bethlehem"
Connor saves a family from vamps. Don’t worry about it. He then sneaks into the Hyperion and watches the MoG encounter the newly-returned Cordelia (see “The House Always Wins”). Angel tries to assure the amnesiac Cordelia that they’re her friends; she then asks who she is. Angel tries to fill her in a little and Gunn wonders if they should take her to a hospital. Angel spots Lorne heading into the lobby and gets Gunn to intercept him, so that Cordelia won’t be freaked out by seeing a demon. Angel and Fred chat in the office, debating whether or not to tell her about her demon-related life. From the lobby, Cordelia labels Fred and Angel’s cheerful behavior “creepy,” then gives the same label to a nearby weapon. She hears her voice on the answering machine and realizes that she works there. She also hears part of a message about a demon birth and Fred picks up the phone before she can hear the rest. Fred heads off to take care of the birth while Angel stays back with Cordelia. Cordelia announces that she wants to go home, but since the MoG moved her stuff out of her apartment in “The House Always Wins,” Angel takes her upstairs. She looks at some of her things, including a shoe she wore to the ballet in “Waiting in the Wings”; Angel is disappointed that she doesn’t remember the, uh, special moments they had during that episode. Later, Cordelia looks through her high school yearbook, noting that she was popular and reading the strange messages people wrote her (“homeroom was fun. Too bad it burnt to the ground”). She looks through various photos, seeing her changing hairstyles, and wonders, “Was I a spy?” She comes across a baby photo of Connor and wonders whose baby he is.
Down the hall, Cordelia hears one of Lorne’s clients singing and getting his reading. Downstairs, Cordelia sees some blood from one of Angel’s mugs, then hides when Gunn and Fred return, covered in demon goo. She hears them talk about killing (demon) babies and gets up quickly to avoid coming in contact with demon goo. She runs out to the garden, where she gets attacked by two guys in black and fights them off. After the fighting, Cordelia asks the others if they’re all spies and this is some weird brainwashing thing. Angel explains Wolfram & Hart to her, saying that the guys in the garden must have been lawyers and the firm must know that she’s back. He manages to convince her that, as strange as things are, she’s at home and safe. Back upstairs, Cordelia asks about Connor and learns that he’s Angel’s son, but she’s not his mother. She wonders if she and Angel were involved romantically and they almost kiss. She then wonders if she was a nun, mentioning that she found a bunch of crosses and rosaries. She hands them to him and he vamps out, which, of course, freaks her out. Cordelia runs off and winds up in the lobby, where she encounters Lorne. This freaks her out again and they both scream. Cordelia demands answers from the other MoG. Later, after receiving all of her answers, Cordelia is still freaked out, so Angel tells her to sing something and let Lorne read her. Cordelia chooses “The Greatest Love of All,” which she sings as badly as she did in “The Puppet Show.” This time, Lorne’s the one who freaks out; he lies that everything’s okay and rushes off. Cordelia decides to take off as well, telling the others not to come with her. Angel goes after Lorne, who doesn’t want to tell him what he read. He finally gives in and says that, according to his reading, something wicked this way comes.
Wesley and Lilah are at his apartment, getting friendly. She tells him that Wolfram & Hart and Angel know about what they’re doing. Wesley doesn’t care what Angel thinks, since they don’t work together anymore, but Lilah thinks he’s lying. Wesley uses the word “relationship,” and according to a bet they have going, he owes Lilah a dollar. She makes him sign it as proof “of now. Of this.” Back at the hotel, Cordelia has a run-in with Lorne’s client, who seems to want to eat her. Connor saves her and tells her that she’s not safe there; she asks him to get her out of there, and he does. In the lobby, Angel blasts the others for letting Cordelia leave; they point out that she’s an adult and can do whatever she wants. Angel worries that Cordelia knows something important about the coming evil and Wolfram & Hart might kidnap her because they want to know what she knows. Lorne and Angel fill Fred and Gunn in on the coming apocalypse, and Lorne adds that he only saw a piece of what will happen. Angel announces that they have to go out and find Cordelia before anything can happen to her. Connor takes Cordelia to a natural history museum and explains that he was at the hotel because he saw that she was back. Once she learns Connor’s name, Cordelia realizes that he’s Angel’s son. They go up to a loft where Connor has been staying and he fills her in on some of his history with Angel. She thanks him for being the first person to be completely honest with her. Later that night, while Wesley’s (pretending to be) asleep, Lilah gets a call informing her that Cordelia is back and with Connor. She orders someone to get Cordelia from the museum, then leaves, dropping the dollar bill Wesley signed for her. At the museum, Cordelia notes that Connor is leaving and asks him not to, admitting that she’s scared. He tells her that she’s brave, especially since she’s “lost everything” and is still being strong. She says that she has the feeling that something bad is going to happen, but she doesn’t know what it is. She says that he’s the only person she trusts, even though she doesn’t know why, and she thinks that he’s lost everything, too. “I had nothing to lose,” he replies.
Wesley heads to the Hyperion and tells the MoG that he knows where Cordelia is. He then proceeds to blast them for losing track of her when she hadn’t even been back that long. He says that Wolfram & Hart are going to try to capture Cordelia, since she might have been with the Powers That Be. He doesn’t think that Connor will be able to stop them, but Angel thinks that Connor will protect Cordelia. Things almost get friendly at the museum just before lawyers arrive to get Cordelia. She and Connor decide that this is the perfect time to see what she’s capable of. Connor and Cordelia fight the lawyers as one of them puts a camera on the wall so Lilah can keep an eye on things. Just as the lawyers are about to make off with Cordelia, the other MoG arrive to join the fight. Lilah calls off the attack and Angel congratulates Connor on a good fight. Angel tries to get Cordelia to return to the Hyperion, but she wants to stay with Connor, since he was the only person who was honest with her. Angel, Fred, and Gunn leave, Angel telling Connor to take care of Cordelia. Wesley returns to his apartment alone and finds the dollar bill that Lilah dropped. Angel, Gunn, and Fred return to the Hyperion to find Lorne unconscious, bound, and gagged; he also has a hole in his head. He lets them know that Wolfram & Hart came after them; Angel realizes that they must have known that he read Cordelia and extracted the reading from Lorne’s head. Gunn wonders if Wesley was in on the plan, but Angel says it doesn’t matter - Wolfram & Hart now knows more about Cordelia’s future than they do. Wesley heads over to Lilah’s apartment and accuses her of playing him; he thinks that she wanted him to overhear her phone conversation so that he would send the MoG over to the museum. She argues that she was just doing her job and it was his choice to do what he did. She adds that she could have killed Lorne, but she left him alive because he’s a friend of Wesley’s. “If I’d thought you’d ever trust me,” she says, “I would’ve never played you like that.” “It’s never simple, is it?” he asks. At the museum, Connor leans against a wall as Cordelia sleeps. At the Hyperion, Angel leans against his own wall.
MORAL, or CRAMMING COMPLEX ISSUES INTO A NUTSHELL: The Powers That Be are weird.
GRADE: C+ Blah, blah, apocalypse, blah - get on with it already.
MEMORABLE QUOTES: Cordelia: “I am a spy. I get it now. You’re all spies. Probably all Russian. And you’ve brainwashed me, and want me to believe we’re friends so I’ll spill the beans about some nano-techno-thingy that you want.”
Fred: “It’s his gift.”
Written by Jeffrey Bell; directed by Skip Schoolnik
Gunn: “Do…I look Russian to you?”
Cordelia: “Black Russian.”
Angel: “That’s a drink.”
Cordelia: “Says the head spy.”
Lorne: “Au contraire, ma petite frite. My gift is my song.... Sorry. I can never walk away from that one.” (from the original script)