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.

Damage

• In a psychiatric hospital, a medication mix-up leads to a violent encounter with one of the patients.
• She aggressively knocks down the door to her room.
• Her doctor addresses her as Dana.
• They try to cage her into her section of the hallway while the doctor tries to soothe her and help her understand they just want to help her get better.
• That doesn’t go well because she sees the syringe in his hand and tears the cage door off its hinges.
• She then violently decapitates two orderlies and paints her face with blood.
• The team meets in Angel’s office, further discussing what should be done about Eve following her attempt to kill Angel last week.
• Gunn points out that since Eve is the liaison to the Senior Partners, they need to be careful about how they deal with her.
• Harmony interrupts with news about Dana, the girl who just escaped the asylum.
• Spike shows up at the hospital at the same time as Angel.
• They talk to the psychiatrist, who explains that a psychopath killed her family and tortured her as a child.
• In recent months, Dana began exhibiting off the charts strength.
• Spike takes off to track her down, but Angel sticks around to find out from a nurse that the doctor videoed all his sessions with Dana.
• Dana, meanwhile, is at a store eating whatever she feels like.
• When an employee tries to tell her she has to pay for those items, she breaks his arm.
• She then finds some new clothes so she can change out of her hospital gown.
• The clothes cause a bit of a flashback for her…
• She sees the man who tortured her as a child.
• Then security arrives with a gun drawn.
• I won’t assume what she did to the security guard, but she then walks out of the store with the new clothes and the bone saw she stole from the hospital.
• Angel watches a session where Dana is channeling someone who speaks Romanian… a language he is all too familiar with.
• He calls Wes and tells them they need a tactical team to take this girl.
• They’ve been assuming this is a possession, but Angel realizes she’s a Slayer.
• Spike tracks her down, still thinking she’s possessed.
• He puts on his game face, ready to take down the demon within… and she just smiles.
• Spike manages, barely, not to get slain.
• Dana, with the memory of the Chinese Slayer that Spike killed during the Boxer Rebellion.
• Then he quotes himself… “Sorry, luv… I don’t speak Chinese.”
• Angel picks Spike up after he’s thrown out the window and they head back to the office.
• Wes reached out to Giles, who was allegedly sending his top guy.
• Except it’s Andrew…
• He wears a suit and smokes a pipe now because… reasons.
• Andrew explains that Dana is now part of the army of Slayers that exists now as a result of Willow’s spell in the Buffy finale.
• He also explains that Giles and the others are out there gathering the Slayers and teaching how to deal with these super powers they suddenly got six months earlier.
• Spike gets tired of talking and leaves to find Dana… Andrew secretly sneaks out to follow him.
• Back at the office, Lorne suggests they start looking for Dana where it all started for her, the home from which she was abducted.
• They take a psychic to Dana’s childhood home and he can sense the killer that took her.
• The psychic then tries to sense where she was taken… a basement that smells like molasses.
• Sure enough, that’s where Dana returns.
• She finds her captor’s tools hidden in a furnace and pulls them out, along with a box that has a syringe and various drugs inside.
• In her flashback, young Dana then sees Spike as her torturer.
• Andrew follows Spike as he tracks the scent of blood, and he asks what it smells like.
• Spike compares the scent to tasting a penny.
• Then Spike brings up Buffy and Andrew realizes that she doesn’t know he’s alive again.
• Angel gets Gunn to start looking for info on whoever killed Dana’s family, even though the police never caught him.
• Andrew keeps running his mouth and Spike suddenly stops, saying he smells blood… but it’s different… stronger.
• “Like nickels?!”
• Dana has drawn them in, easily knocking out Andrew and luring Spike further into her Slayer lair.
• In the basement, Spike tries to reason with Dana.
• But her Slayer memories and personal memories are mixing together.
• She channels Nikki Wood, then injects something into Spike and chains him up.
• Dana still sees Spike as her tormentor from childhood.
• Back at Wolfram & Hart, Fred has the brilliant idea that the basement could be in an old whiskey distillery.
• Andrew shows back up and gives the news that Dana got Spike.
• In the basement, Dana has decided to cut off Spike’s hands so he can’t touch her anymore.
• Spike still tries to help her understand that the man who hurt her was someone else and that her Slayer visions are just mixing with her real memories.
• Dana doesn’t care that he wasn’t the one to hurt her… Spike is still responsible for killing two Slayers.
• Angel arrives before Dana can kill Spike and gives her the name of the man who killed her family.
• He tried to rob a liquor store five years ago and was shot by police.
• This doesn’t stop Dana’s Slayer instinct from kicking in and fighting Angel, a vampire.
• He’s able to hold her long enough for the tactical team to shoot her with several tranquilizer darts.
• Spike is loaded into an ambulance and Fred has the surgeons prep to reattach his hands.
• Angel is ready to keep Dana under lock and key and help rehabilitate her… but Andrew steps in.
• Andrew says she’s a Slayer problem, so Dana will be going with him.
• Then he’s backed up by a dozen Slayers.
• He breaks the news that his orders come from Buffy herself.
• No one in the Slayer camp trusts Angel anymore, not since he started working for Wolfram & Hart.
• Angel visits Spike as he recovers from his surgery and they have a decent heart to heart.
• Body count: Humans – 2