The Demon Research Initiative… as in, the precursor of the Initiative? If so, that’s about the only thing I liked about those dudes who showed up in Angel’s place at the beginning. Walking talking 1940s stereotypes. Very dull. Sort of the same thing with Mr. Stalwart. With no one even mentioning Cordelia, much less reacting to her death, I wasn’t caring about this stranger we were suddenly spending so much time with. Bad timing. Though I did think the reason Angel vamped him was a cool thing, ethically, in the abstract. And I'm going to cling to Angel telling Lawson that souls aren't contagious, because, hello, that's ridiculous.

The episode seemed so short as to last only a few seconds, in contrast to last week's. I think that's because I didn't care, and that hardly ever happens to me with Angel episodes.

Angel in the tube was hilarious. And him all weighted-down and wearing black and superhero-ey. Our Angel. Thing is, he didn’t seem as epic as the Angel he was only a decade away from being, the one in “Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?” Of course, how could he be? Not only was that episode amazing, but back then it was such a shocking revelation to see him in the past.

“I was Rasputin’s lover.” Hee. Though I was only half amused by the spawn of Yoda and Nosferatu. “He likes to pretend he’s the boss” and “You’re still a dick” were very good. And then Angel’s happy smirk when he kicked Spike out.

Hey, Angel’s like a vampire Martin Luther King, bringing the races together.

Some interesting revelations, which I think may almost create gaffes in that we never saw their reflection in later events. Angel has been trapped under the sea before. Spike knew about vampire brain modification before he was captured by the commandos. Seems like Initiative stole it from the Nazis, which is kind of cool in retrospect.

I think that there’s also a problem in the basic premise. Okay, I can believe that if you got enough men with wooden stakes together, they could overpower a vampire, tie weights to him and throw him into the ocean. So that works, whether Angel went voluntarily or no. And I can buy that he wouldn’t have been able to get the weights off while sinking to the bottom. But once inside the sub and able to remove them, neither he nor Spike nor any of the other vampires were trapped down there. Because, if they need weights to sink, presumably their natural state is to float. Whoops.

A puppet? Bloody hell.

Damn. I was working out and forgot to catch the promo for next week. I'm soooo not missing Puppet Angel. I've seen some pictures and they're So. Fucking. Funny. (Looks like poor Angel's going to have the stuffing beaten out of him.) I don't even care what the episode is about, I just want my very own frowny Angel puppet.

I also liked the idea behind why Angel vamped Lawson, but I also liked Lawson, too. I dig war movies, so I didn't mind that he was a bit stereotypical. So, this was like some kind of combo of "Enigma," (not the history-ignoring "U-571"), "The Abyss," and "The Hunt for Red October." Call it "The Enigmatic Hunt for Red-Fanged Vampires In the Abyss."

I don't know that I would have called it "Why We Fight," however. That was the title of a series of propaganda films that Frank Capra produced in the early forties, but more recently it was used in "Band of Brothers" as the title of the episode where Easy Company stumbled upon a concentration camp. Let's just say that there are many reasons why using it as an Angel title invites an unfavorable comparison.

You didn't like the Prince of Lies? I thought he was hilarious. Not as hilarious as Rasputin's lover, but still... The Prince of Lies was so much an obvious take off on Max Schrek's Count Orlok. Rasputin's lover reminded me of no one, except maybe Rip Torn a little bit.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting and entertaining, although, ultimately, a little slight. It did feel incredibly short. I have come to the conclusion that Spike just forgot about the behavior modification plans. He's always struck me as someone who wouldn't bother to remember anything that wasn't immediately important to him.

ETA: I love the look Fred is giving the Angel puppet in the second picture. It's like, "I can't believe we're going to follow a fucking puppet into battle... hey, is it me or is Angel still kinda hot as a puppet?"

The Prince of Lies was played by Camden Toy, who I'm sure has been a vampire before... was he the Uruk-Han/Grr Arrgh dude?

I'm not really into war movies or submarine movies, although they can be done well, so, yeah, that contributed. I felt like I'd been hijacked into watching an episode of JAG, when here I prefer to watch Angel.

That second picture with the puppet does look funny and like Angel, but I don't know that the puppet really looks like Angel in general. And I suspect I'm going to hate this. I don't like puppets unless they're on Sesame Street. "The Puppet Show" cast an embarrassing tinge over the entire first season of Buffy for me.

Camden Toy did indeed play the uebervamp, and I believe one of the Gentlemen also. Was he in a lot of makeup in this episode?

I think Camden Toy may have just tied Scott Schwartz for the number of unrelated characters played in ME projects.

Is that the Hell dimension demon/Harry's demon fiancee/jerk who shot Kaylee guy, or the Watcher goon/Talky Meat Demon/blue handed Federation guy?

I couldn't bring myself to watch the ep., but my morbid curiosity is peaked. Can you give me a recap?

No, Harry's fiancee/Buffy's Hell overlord is Carlos Jacott.

Sorry, Scott Schwartz was Tapparich/Deevak/vamp Buffy dusted before finding the glowy orb thing/henchman of demon arms dealer plus the voice and model of the Biker Vamp in the first Buffy game. Since we forgot that Camden Toy was also Gnarl, there is a tie between Schwartz and Toy.

Oh, and hey look! Camden Toy. Lots of makeup on the Prince of Lies, I'd say.

The Gentleman — that was the thing I remembered him from.

Holy hell. It's been pointed out to me that when Spike first met the Initiative in Season Four, he did ask right away (half-jokingly) if it was the Nazis. I can't believe that's even retroactive continuity... I think it's just a freaky coincidence in the writers' favor.

Or... it's all real.

German submarine transporting vampires to be experimented on (Russian guy who claimed to be Rasputin's lover; Prince of Lies, who looked like the ubervamp, what with being apparently played by the same actor; and Spike) gets captured by the Americans. Vampires escape, wreak havoc. Humans send out distress signal. Angel kidnapped by Shadow Government Organization and sent to retrieve sub. Wackiness ensues. Eventually the only American who can fix the engine gets stabbed, so Angel vamps him so that he can do the work.

That's all flashback. In the present day, guy-who-Angel-vamped is back in W&H and is holding Gunn/Wesley/Fred hostage to mess with Angel. Fighty fighty, various very portentous and meaningful-to-the-theme-of-the-season statements, bad guy gets vamped.

The two random vampires were fun, and my eyes got a lot of exercise from the rolling, so that was nice. Otherwise, I really actively disliked it, because it was stupid and nonsensical (and I still get a little irritated on Buffy's behalf every time a vamp gets taken down by two guys with stakes).

On the plus side, next week Angel's a puppet. Whee!

Lamest. Episode. Ever. Where the hell did the find the guy who played Lawson - Acting School for Wooden People (someday we'll all be real boys)?

UGH GET HIM OFF MY SCREEN.

Ahem.

Thanks, Kmm! It does sound awful, though I like the idea of Angel being all angsty about his decision to vamp the mechanic guy. I'll definitely tune in for the puppet Angel. Those pictures are so strange. Oh shit, I won't be able to tune in, I'll be on a plane. I'll have to figure out how to set my vcr.

I know! I couldn't get past this. They don't need to breathe, so they can either swim upwards, or even walk along the ocean floor if necessary. Unless they meet a shark, I suppose. Also, why didn't Angel stake Spike and newvampLawson?

I wish I could work out who Spike reminded me of with that greased back hair. Martin Kemp in The Krays? Phil Daniels in something from the 70s? Really bugging me. Only the fact that Spike is really, really stupid allows me to accept he didn't guess that Angel was ensouled/good throughout the whole thing. He guessed it pretty quick in BTVS.

I thought it was pretty dumb, but okay. It's like the writers thought: ooh, Spike in a Nazi uniform, then dreamed up the rest to support it. Lawson was the whiniest vampire ever. How many times can Angel have that glass partition in his office broken before he gets that it's a bad feature to have?

The more flashback episodes we get, the more it seems like Angel's life has gone up and down, up and down. He seemed quite confident and in command here, but by the 50s was beaten down and nervous. Still, I do get that his experience here may have led to him feeling inadequate for a decade or so.


Cor, that's great! I do like things set during the war, but there was a lot of jarringly out-of-period dialogue here, annoyingly. I can slightly buy the premise because the Nazis did actually do research into esoteric subjects, including witchcraft and the occult, so it's not unbelievable that, were there vampires, they might look into them.

Were there vampires? Are you saying there aren't?

I think Angel refrained from killing Lawson because of guilt at having turned him. Why didn't he kill Spike? To answer that, you'd have to first answer why Buffy/Giles/Xander/Willow/Riley/Oz/TinkyWinky didn't kill Spike in a hundred other episodes. Spike is unkillable.

It could be that Angel's experience during World War II led to him being fearful and withdrawing from the government and the societal system at large, which would play in nicely to his attitude a decade later during the McCarthy Era. He, like the humans of the time he was in company with, just wanted to hide.

Well, Tinky Winky fancied Spike, I don't know about the rest of them ...

Oh, that was sooooo awful. Really dreadful, and such an anticlimax after last week. I can't believe not one of them said a single word about Cordelia.

I think Pandrea's theory really encapsulates the whole episode:

And I really could have done without seeing that. Spike was supposed to be evil in the 40s, and I wish they'd showed that. Instead, he became comedyNazi, and I think the issue was badly fudged and mishandled. "Heil Hitler" and the finger is not a joke.

The plot was ridiculous from start to finish: why did Angel do what the proto-Initiative wanted, when he could so easily have escaped; what was what's-his-name (half an hour after watching and I can't even remember) doing in the intervening 60 years; why didn't he just kill Angel's colleagues instead of induging his Hooded Claw fantasies ...

While Angel's vamping of the one to save the many was potentially interesting, it wasn't given any depth. It might have been forgiveable if it had been a plot twistm but it was telegraphed a mile off - even *I* got it.

Hated it, hated it, hated it.

Don't worry. You'll love the next one.

That episode sucked. Sucked big time. What was the point of it? There was no point. It was pointless. Without point.

I want my 422 meg back.