Newborn Grandmummy

 Episode 2.10: Reunion. Original Airdate: 12.19.00. 

“Angel fights to stop Darla and Drusilla as they embark on a murderous rampage across the city.”
 

Zelda’s Thoughts:

• So Gunn’s pulling a weak and limping Angel into the Hyperion. I guess Angel called Gunn and not Wes and Cordy?
• Angel’s all ripped up, traumatized really, from having watched Drusilla turn Darla.
• Wes and Cordy are properly spooked about Dru. Gunn: “Who’s Drusilla?”
• Angel’s muttering that he’s gonna save Darla, as Gunn tries to calm him down, but oh – Angel wants to save her from having to be a vampire again. He’s got a stake ready.
• Gunn’s trying to get the backstory. Darla sired Angel, who sired Dru. W&H revived Darla, then brought Dru to sire Darla anew. “That means the granddaughter remade the grandmother.”
• Angel’s pulling away from his team, so we’re back to continuing that arc. He insists on seeing Lindsey alone. But hey when we finally get there, the place is emptied out. Sorry, Daniel. The swingers bar is gone. [One more Tom Collins for the road?- D]
• Our helpful realtor gives us some exposition about Dru babbling about her pregnancy and giving birth under the stars. “I explained to her that you can live your whole life in Los Angeles and never even see a star.” but we cut to Dru looking up at them, “I can hear them singing to me.” Callback to when she was naming the stars, even though that was the ceiling and also it was day!
• We’re in some kind of rooftop solarium and Dru murmurs about her grandmother/daughter and it’s very Chinatown. But when Lindsey asks if Darla can hear Dru, a moment of lucidity as she looks him point-blank in the eye. “She’s dead.”
• Wes “Angel, I fear you may be looking for a logical pattern in the rantings of someone who doesn’t think logically.”
• Hey, Gunn once again with our breakthrough analysis: he suggests nursery could mean plants.
• Seriously, how did this team get anything done before him.
• Random question: if you stake a body that’s not yet a vampire but leave the stake in, would they ash the moment they finished turning? Anyway, Angel found Darla’s body. And I guess he’s gonna try that plan of stake ‘n wait.
• But Dru smacks him around with a shovel. “I saw you coming, my lovely. The moon showed me. It told me to come into the 20^th century.” // “It’s the 21^st century, Dru.”
• Oop Darla’s awake. And not interested in being saved by Angel anymore.
• I have trouble believing that Darla is able to throttle Angel and hold him in the air – not because of strength but because she is tiny and doesn’t have the arm span. Y’all know I’m right. 

• Anyway, Darla’s throwing Dru away too, not just Angel, so I guess she’s just generally feral.
• But hey, half-mad is how Dru likes ‘em so she doesn’t mind.
• Tiny blondes in white dresses. A common motif in Angel’s life.
• The team is desperate for Angel to have a plan, a hunch, or even an inkling. Another common motif: Angel and His Total Lack of a Plan.
• He wants to storm W&H. Cordy: “Nice plan, General Custer.”
• Oh right, Holland Manners is hosting a party. This is the blood bath, right? The “I can’t seem to care” moment?
• Omg Dru’s got a ceramic doll. I wonder if Miss Edith knows about this.
• She warns Holland and Lindsey that Angel’s on his way. They get a call that there’s an untagged vamp but TWIST it’s Darla!
• She throws Lindsey across the room, grabs a gleeful Dru’s hand, and the two flee.
• Cordy’s having a vision! It’s been a hot minute since we’ve had one of those.
• Angel tries to “maybe it’s a false alarm” her vision when it’s in the other direction and Cordy’s got no patience for gaslighting.
• Darla may have absconded with Dru, but she’s not exactly pleased with her. She’s wailing on her and finally asks “Why.” // “For you. All for you. I thought it was what you wanted, to be saved.” And Darla’s anger quiets. She even, more than she ever did in the past, seems to have affection and patience for Dru’s madness and grief, comforting her. 

• Anyway, let’s kill this homophobic driver I guess.
• And now that Darla’s had a meal, she’s less crabby. Dru: “You’re all new again.” // Darla: “Let’s go shopping.”
• Random emo guy summoning a demon. Oh this was Cordy’s vision, okay.
• Angel deals with it … not delicately. “You’ve got, you know, a million reasons to live … I bet.”
• Gunn and Wes point out that this may have been a move from the PTB to stop Angel from going after Darla and Dru, but Angel’s beyond listening to reason.
• “Why settle for a spree when you could have, say, a massacre?” That’s Holland Manners’s blessing on Darla and Dru painting the town red.
• Holland: “We won’t have to worry about Angel anym—” // Angel: *crashes through the window*
• Oh this is the first time Holland and Angel have met.
• Holland clarifies that Darla isn’t the project, Angel is.
• A: “People die. Innocent people.” // H: “And yet I just can’t seem to care. But you do.” Yep, this is the massacre episode. It’s funny how certain lines stick with you.
• “You misunderstand us, Angel. We don’t want you dead … yet.”
• Wow they’re arresting Angel for breaking in. Lindsey “The firm may not want you dead, but I’m cool with it.” And who’s in the squad car waiting for Angel? Why, it’s Detective Kate Lockley.
• And she’s here to tell him Dru and Darla killed two women. “They’re not done, are they?”
• A: “Why are you telling me this?” // K: “Because I don’t think I can stop them. Maybe you can.”
• And I guess this is the moment Kate moves past her anger at Angel. They’re not friends anymore, but she’s no longer seeing him as the enemy.
• Holland’s party is taking place in his wine cellar. I wonder if it has a cask of Amontillado? No reason. Just curious.
• Darla and Dru join the party. Invited in by Holland’s wife. “Very sweet she was. Like clover … and honey.”
• Darla’s there to offer Holland his massacre, and honestly it’s cute that he thought they would join up with him and do what he says like wind-up toys, especially when we’ve been warning Lindsey for ages that Darla won’t be loyal to him once her soul leaves the building.
• It’s that meme about people being surprised that the face-eating wolves they voted for are now eating their faces.

• “Pretty lawyers all in a row.” Dru can at times overstay her welcome but I’m enjoying her this episode.
• Lindsey’s the only one smiling to see Darla, the only one who doesn’t seem scared.
• Angel finds someone cowering in a dressing room in the store where Dru and Darla were shopping. They left her alive. I still wonder why (beyond the need for exposition). They would have been able to smell and hear her, and Dru would definitely be able to sense her.
• She gives Angel what he needs to know, where they’re going next.
• Holland reveals that the wine cellar used to be a bomb shelter. Nice and secure.
• I gotta say, Darla has much better massacre follow-through than Angelus in Buffy S2 had.
• Darla: “Do you know what I’m getting from you, Lindsey? Nothing. Why aren’t you afraid?” // Lindsey: “I don’t know.” // D: “You could die here. Chances are you will.” // L: “I know.” // D: “And you don’t care.” // L: “I care. I guess I just don’t mind.”  It’s such an interesting character moment but I’ll also admit that I don’t really know what it means.
• “Dru honey, in our new digs, we have to put in a people cellar.”
• Angel arrives and Holland’s wife isn’t completely dead yet. Just alive enough to invite Angel in.
• Angel looks at Darla. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you in time.” // “I’m not.”
• And even though W&H’s Project: Angel has clearly this whole time been about trying to turn Angel evil, Holland, Lilah (not so much Lindsey, who still has a small smile), they still hope Angel will be good, good enough to save them.
• Holland: “Angel. Please. People are going to die.” // Angel “And yet somehow I just can’t seem to care.”
• And he closes the doors and locks them. And the massacre begins. 

TFW the leopard eats your face

• Wes, Gunn, and Cordy are quietly horrified that Angel let them kill the W&H party. Wes: “You could have stopped them.” // Angel: “And I will.” // Cordy: “When? After they’ve finished off all the people you don’t like?”
• “Right now the three of us are all that’s standing between you and real darkness.”
• Angel agrees. And he fires the three of them. And leaves the room.
• We have begun Dark Angel Arc for realz now. It’s upsetting but oof this episode’s beats are well made.

 

Daniel’s Thoughts:

• We start this episode soon after the last one.  Gunn is helping a beleaguered Angel back into the Hyperion.
• He’s delirious and mumbling. Gunn says he managed to get him home without him bursting into flames (nice throwaway explanation there) but Gunn’s still not sure what happened.
• Wesley & Cordy ask lots of questions.
• But finally Angel tells them about Darla & Drusilla.  
  
• Wes & Cordy know Dru. Gunn does not: “Who’s Drusilla?” Whedonverse fans: “WELL-“
• Angel rifles through drawers mumbling about Darla.  He finally pulls out a stake.  Oooh.
• When we come back from the credits, Gunn has been given the cliff’s notes version of Angel/Darla/Dru.
• “The Granddaughter remade the Grandmother,” Gunn says with confusion. If you’re confused by that, I do not recommend an ingenious little Netflix show called Dark. But seriously, everyone please watch Dark.
  
• Angel’s plan is to go to Lindsey’s.  He explains to the gang that he can already enter since he was already invited once.
• When he gets there, though, it appears he would have been able to come in because no one currently lives there. 
  
• The real estate agent reminds me from Alison Brie.
• “That sweet but very odd English Woman that was visiting him.”
• She gives Angel a clue of where Darla & Dru might be. Something about giving birth and a nursery.
• And here we are in a greenhouse….with Darla, Dru & Lindsey.  Joined by Lilah & Holland.
• Holland: “Can she hear you?” Drusilla: “She’s dead.”
• Dru, talks about Darla’s resurrection as a birth – as if she’s going to “be a mommy.”  I love it.
• Back at the Hyperion, the gang is looking for where Darla & Dru might be.
• Angel: “Stick with cemeteries then.  Something with a night sky.” Cordelia: “So Just outside cemeteries then?” Cordelia, master of the sass.
• They figure out Nursery means plant kind and not baby kind.  But what nurseries do W&H own? TO THE INTERNETS.  I very much doubt they’d be able to find that info.  They need a Willow-type-computer-geek. 
  
• But of course, they do.  Angel finds dead Darla, laying in dirt.  He takes out his stake but….he’s interrupted by a shovel-wielding Drusilla.
• They fight. Darla wakes up.
• And then Darla is suddenly strong and holds Angel by the neck.
• More vampire strength fighting!
• Darla goes all vamp face and fights with Dru.  Angel stops her for some reason. He goes to stake Darla but he can’t.  And then they escape.
• Cordelia: “How’d it go?”  Not great.  Your boss froze a few times and let them escape.
• Angel’s in plan mode which we all know is never good. They weapon up. And Angel wants to go to W&H.  
  
• Back at the W&H offices Holland & Lindsey have a heart to heart.  He seems genuinely concerned about Lindsey having a work/life balance & to have healthy attachments - of course he just wants him to stop obsessing over Darla. He doesn’t realize Drusilla is there.
• She’s holding a doll all creepy like. She’s worried about Darla.
• She also informs him that Angel was there.
• “Security alert”: There’s a vampire in the building.
• But it’s not Angel, it’s Darla.
• Darla hugs Lindsay and then throws him across the room. She grabs Dru and runs.
• “Healthy attachments, Lindsey.” Hah!
• Oh no!  Cordelia is having her first vision in ages.
• She tells them her vision is from another direction.
• Darla’s not saving Dru, though.  She’s fighting her.  
  
• Dru even gets hit by a car and gets up scaring the shit out of the driver.
• Darla wants to know why Dru did it.
• Dru is extremely genuine when she says she thought it was what Darla wanted.  It’s actually sort of sweet.
• Interesting note, this (well, last episode) was the first time we've seen these two in the present.  Darla died before Drusilla & Spike made an entrance on Buffy. Up to this point, we've only seen them together in flashbacks.
• The LA crowd just assume these are just two crazy drunk women having a fight/cry.
• Some homophobic, misogynist asshole comes out of a truck and hurls some insults.  Darla makes her first kill. Ah, well.
• Angel and his crew stumble in on some kid who wants to kill himself because of a demon.
• Angel has no time for this shit.  So he just throws a stereo at the kid, grabs the kid’s gun & throws it in a tub of oil.
• Mission done, according to Angel.  But the rest of the gang want to stay.  So Angel leaves them there.
• Meanwhile the WOMEN BE SHOPPING.  

• Dru & Darla are in a shop trying on clothes. And oops, the shoplady is dead.
• W&H gave Dru a cellphone, weirdly enough.
• Holland calls & says, “why have a spree when you could have - a -say- massacre” and knowing the end of this episode, I assumed he was inviting them to the party and was setting up his colleagues for some unknown reason.  But I guess he was speaking of some hypothetical future because he ends up signing his own death warrant by planting the idea into Darla’s head.
• And…Darla kills the other shoplady, complaining about customer service.  What a Karen, amirite?
• Lindsay, Lilah & Holland are in an office. Holland, “At least we don’t have to worry about Angel anymore.” *Angel swings through a window.*  HA! Holland is really forking things up this episode, isn’t he?
• “You don’t kill humans.” “You don’t qualify.”  This, dear readers, is foreshadowing.  But I guess kinda misleading foreshadowing?
• Angel is almost immediately surrounded by stake wielding security guards.
• Instead, the cops arrest him.  He’s put in the back seat of a cop car with Kate.  Her neck looks ok, so I guess she’s healed?  She is wearing a collar, to be fair, but it still would have been nice to see evidence of what happened to her. 
  

• 

  Maybe she's hiding it with her collar?
  

  
  
• Kate fills Angel in about the shopladies.
• Kate’s not her usual brooding self.  She shows her thankfulness to Angel by letting him go. She also knows she can’t stop Drusilla & Darla on her own.
• Meanwhile, Lindsey arrives at the party and is greeted by Holland’s wife.
• Later, Dru & Darla interrupt the festivities in the wine cellar. There’s blood on their mouths so they’ve apparently killed Holland’s wife.  They both vamp face and remind Holland they were promised a massacre.  Also Darla got her hair did somewhere along the way, I guess.

I guess she killed a hair dresser after the shopladies.

• Back at the shop, one of the cops is collecting evidence in front of a mirror, he has an eerie feeling but sees nothing.  Angel, of course, is behind him and it’s a nice moment.
• Lilah actually looks scared as Darla talks to her.
• There’s another scared lady in a changing room.  The actress is really good and she looks familiar.  She gives Angel the clue he needs.  Darla & Dru are headed to a party.
• The wine cellar that everyone is huddled in used to be a shelter….a great place to lock people in.
• Darla continues to taunt everyone but the only reactions we really see are Lindsey, Lilah & Holland’s.  Everyone else is just background & it’s weird how we don’t really see any of their reactions.
• “In our new digs, we have to put in a people cellar.”
• Angel arrives. Oh!  Holland’s wife isn’t dead….she’s just been bitten.  She may die later, though.
• “Here for the tasting?” So many double entendres.
• “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you in time.” Darla: “I’m not.” 
  
• And here’s the darker side of Angel.  He locks everyone in.  He’s just so tired of W&H’s bullshit.  And he lets everyone die.
• Wes, Gunn & Cordelia are floored after Angel tells them what happened.
• Angel’s reasoning is that he didn’t bring Darla back.  That it’s W&H’s own fault.
• Wesley: "You could have stopped them." Angel: "And I will." Cordy: "When? After they've finished off all the people you don't like?"
• They are seriously worried about Angel.  That he’s turning to real darkness.
• And so…he fires them all.  And this isn’t out of nowhere.  The groundwork was laid out in this episode and a little in past episodes, too.  His gang has been arguing with him (and rightfully so) at every turn.  Angel has had enough.  It’s dark, it’s chilling & it’s an interesting path for the show to go on.  Let’s see how it turns out. 

Crossfire!

Z: Angel locking them in the cellar … was that an evil reveal?
D: No … I’m not angry at him, I’m just disappointed.
 

Favorite Lines:

Zelda: Angel: “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you in time.” // Darla: “I’m not.”
Daniel: Wes: “You could have stopped them.” // Angel: “And I will.” // Cordy: “When? After they’ve finished off all the people you don’t like?”
 

Arc/Continuity:

First Appearance: Dru’s thing for ceramic dolls
Recurring: Detective Kate Lockley, Lindsey McDonald, Lilah Morgan, Holland Manners, Darla, Drusilla

Stats:

Cordelia’s Hair – dark, shoulder bob with a flip, partially clipped back
Dead Humans – 19
Dead Undeads – 0
Dead Flashbacks – 0
Dead Lawyers – 15
Cordelia Has a Vision – 1
Wesley Prat-falls – 0
Lawyered Ex Machina – 0
Evil Reveal – 0
Unevil Reveal – 0
Shenanigans Called – 0
Apocalypse Called – 0
Prophecy Called – 0