Welcome to Rewatching Angel, the part of the blog where I rewatch the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off: Angel. Each Tuesday evening, you’re invited to join me as I attempt to rediscover what made me love these shows so many years ago.

Spin the Bottle

• Lorne takes the stage and sings a couple lines of the Barbra Streisand classic, “The Way We Were.”
• Lorne is narrating this episode…
• Cordelia confronts Angel about his feelings for her and he doesn’t know how to answer her questions.
• But he makes clear that she was his dearest friend and he just wants that back.
• Lorne walks in on the conversation with the magical answer to getting Cordelia’s memories back.
• It’s a bottle.
• But it’s a magic bottle.
• And Lorne is convinced that it’s foolproof and cannot go wrong.
• Narrator Lorne makes a face, which clearly indicates that it can and will go wrong.
• Angel’s not sure about the magic, but Cordelia is ready to take the chance.
• Lorne says they need to gather the six.
• Which means they need to call Wesley to be part of it.
• And that means things are awkward thanks to last week’s “kill the professor” shenanigans.
• Wes and Gunn nearly get into it over Fred.
• Then the magic happens.
• Everyone sits in a circle and the bottle goes crazy, spinning and toppling over.
• Oh… now I get the title of the episode.
• Everyone’s out of it… Lorne wanders into the office and collapses.
• Fred starts talking to a plant.
• They’re all basically high as a kite.
• And Cordelia, in her rattled state decides the best move is to smash the bottle.
• Suddenly, Cordelia is the same person she was in pre-Buffy Sunnydale.
• Good call back when she sees Angel for the first time, saying the same thing she said the first time she saw him back in the first season of Buffy.
• This is fantastic.
• Everyone is back to their 17-year-old selves and I forgot how amazing this is.
• Angel is his pre-vampire self, Liam.
• Should be a nice surprise when he discovers he’s a vampire.
• Wes is a student at the Watcher’s Academy.
• Cordelia freaks out because she realizes she has short hair now.
• They decide to look for weapons and find Lorne unconscious in the office.
• And they assume he’s the devil.
• Meanwhile, Connor is still pissed about Cordelia leaving him and takes it out on a couple of vampires.
• The hooker he saves claims she’s gonna reward him, but she wants $50.
• So… Connor’s still an angry, horny teenager.
• Ugh… I really don’t like this season.
• Gunn and Wes argue over what to do with Lorne while Fred examines him.
• The gang’s arguing finally leads to them figuring out that they’re not 17 anymore.
• Wes has a theory that they’ve been placed in the hotel as a test.
• Like what they do to Slayers, trapping them somewhere with a dangerous vampire.
• So they all split up to explore the hotel.
• Angel and Cordelia split off and he discovers that he’s the vampire in this scenario.
• Angel decides his best move is to leave, since the hotel is clearly evil.
• But he can’t handle the outside because cars.
• He runs back in and claims there were demons outside, so it’s safer inside the hotel.
• Wes decides that one of them could be the vampire, so he passes around a cross.
• When Angel gets the cross, Lorne wakes up and distracts everyone from his burning hand.
• They confront Lorne about leaving them with a vampire and Lorne lets it slip that Angel is the only vampire in the group.
• He doesn’t realize what’s happened to everyone.
• To shut him up, Angel knocks him out again… and kinda realizes he has super strength.
• Then he starts stalking his victims.
• Connor shows up just in time to meddle in things and manages to save Cordelia.
• She tells Connor that if he kills the vampire, she’ll give him a big reward.
• Women keep throwing that phrase around this episode…
• And it’s really just feeding into Connor’s Oedipus complex.
• Fred is alone with Lorne and he convinces her that he’s her friend.
• While they fight, Angel and Connor kind of bond over their hatred of their own fathers.
• Fred unties Lorne and he manages to put together a little one-at-a-time potion that should fix everyone.
• It works on Fred… now on to everyone else.
• Well… this makes things awkward.
• Cordelia is the last to receive her share of the potion and, with her memories returned, she backed away from everyone.
• Because, with her memories, came a horrible vision of a horrible creature whose eyes have just been opened.
• Lorne wraps up his story on stage by telling everyone to stay away from magic.
• Angel goes after Cordy and she tells him she remembers all of it and she just has to be alone for a while.
• But before she leaves, he asks her if they were in love.
• She says they were… past tense… and walks away.
• And this whole time, Lorne has been playing to an empty house…
• Sidebar: I keep saying I really don’t like this season, and I mean it.
• But it does have its bright spots, like this episode.
• Most of what I don’t like about this season, I can’t talk about because it will give away a lot of the overarching plot of the season.
• Hopefully you’ll all come to understand what I don’t like about it when the time comes.
• Body count: Vampires – 2