"Slouching Toward Bethlehem" | |
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Angel episode | |
Episode no. | Season 4 Episode 4 |
Directed by | Skip Schoolnik |
Written by | Jeffrey Bell |
Production code | 4ADH04 |
Original air date | October 27, 2002 |
Guest appearance(s) | |
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"Slouching Toward Bethlehem" is episode 4 of season 4 in the television show Angel. Its title derives from a line from the W. B. Yeats poem "The Second Coming".
A man tries to get his stalled car started while his family waits in the car. Connor appears by the car and warns them of danger just before a tow truck arrives with a vampire driving it. The vampire attacks, but Connor intervenes and kills it. Connor breaks into the hotel through a window just in time to see Angel and friends arrive home and spot Cordelia in the lobby. They try to approach her, but she doesn't remember anything about them or herself. Angel tries to remind Cordelia about who she is, but she is scared and doesn't know what to believe.
Lorne approaches the hotel from outside, but Angel sends Gunn to intercept him before Cordelia can see him and be frightened. Angel panics with Fred in the office about how they're going to handle Cordelia's lack of memory while Cordy panics herself in the lobby because of everyone's strange behavior. The phone rings and they let the machine get it until the message reveals more than Cordelia needs to hear and Fred quickly picks it up. Without saying much, she then with runs off to get Gunn and prevent a demon from bearing its spawn. Angel takes Cordelia upstairs to one of the rooms where all of her stuff has been stored from her apartment. Cordy looks through some of the boxes as Angel again tries to convince her that she's safe and with friends.
After changing into more comfortable clothes, Cordelia nervously practices saying her name in front of a mirror and then reads the eerie messages left in her high school yearbook and searches through pictures of herself from over the years. Cordelia wanders through the halls of the hotel and follows the sound of singing to Lorne's room where he's listening to a client sing. She doesn't see much and heads downstairs to the lobby. Angel removes several jars of blood from the counter before she can see them, but she finds a drop of blood left behind and starts to worry. Gunn and Fred return covered in purple demon goo and talking about killing the demon babies, unaware that Cordelia is hiding behind the counter. She pops up and runs out into the garden only to be jumped by a couple of evil lawyers. She fights them off with Angel's help and then vocalizes her suspicions that she's a spy and they want something from her. Angel denies that and tries to calm her down without revealing the truth to her.
Back in her room, Cordelia asks about a picture of her, she wonders if she was a nun, handing him a handful of crucifixes she found in her boxes. Angel vamps out at the burning contact and Cordelia again runs away and into Lorne down in the lobby. She's fed up and wants to know the truth, but when the gang finally tells her everything, she has a hard time believing it. Cordelia sings rather badly so Lorne can read her future but the singing sends Lorne running off to his room without much of an explanation. Angel follows after in search of answers and frustrated, Cordelia takes off on her own, despite Gunn and Fred's attempts to stay with her.