Angel: The Price (3.19)

There are two ways to view this episode. Either you can enjoy the season one-style monster-of-the-week angle, with the Angel Inc. team fleeing from CGI monsters around various Hyperion corridors -- or you can literally see it as an episode with a lot of people running up and down corridors. Whichever group you fall into, The Price is still a total filler hour saved by a strong cliffhanger ending and a couple of noteworthy bits of characterization. It's not as pointlessly redundant as last week, but still feels a little bland and unassuming at certain junctures.

The luminous green slugs were fun little antagonists, with their possession of random victims and their subsequent need to slurp down whatever liquid they can get their hands onto. Similarly, there was an enjoyable angle to the story in that their arrival is treated as a punishment for Angel's actions two episodes ago, his losing sight of being a champion and calling upon dark arts to get Connor back. As Cordelia states (in one form or another, anyway), nothing goes unpunished in the Whedonverse. It's unfortunate that the story is resolved by Cordelia, you know, glowing the things to death, but the stalk-and-slash horror movie tone of most of the episode provokes some vacuous entertainment.

Wesley's brief appearance is particularly affecting. He has dialogue for the first time in weeks and finally manages to articulate his angst over his former sidekicks. Of course, you can't entirely fall in support of him, but you do understand where he's coming from somewhat. But, jumping back to Cordy's warning, nothing ever goes unpunished, even if your heart is in the right place.

Throw in a couple of fun Lilah moments, and The Price is passable. It's all ridiculously lightweight as an episode, but David Fury manages to write a couple of guilty pleasure moments into his script. And Pete Campb -- I mean, Connor's home! Huzzah! C+

Credits
Guest stars Andy Hallett (Lorne); Stephanie Romanov (Lilah Morgan); Daniel Dae Kim (Gavin Parks); Mark Lutz (Groo); John Short (Phil Spivey)
Writer David Fury Director Marita Grabiak