Angel : Season One, Episode Five : Rm w/a Vu

Grade: B

After losing patience with the condition of her dingy motel room and returning from yet another failed audition, Cordelia invites herself into Angel's home for an indefinite period, inconveniencing everyone concerned. Meanwhile, Doyle finds himself at the mercy of a demon sent to collect various debts he's racked up in his dealings with the underworld; after begging Angel for help in the matter, Doyle is forced to go house-hunting with Cordelia in return for Angel's intervention with the demon. After viewing a number of uninviting apartments, Doyle turns to his underworld contacts in order to find an affordable home which will live up to Cordelia's standards; eventually, he finds just such a place, a large, cheap apartment with which Cordelia expresses satisfaction. However, despite the real-estate agents claims that there is nothing unsavory about the bargain-priced home, Cordelia experiences unmistakably supernatural phenomenon during her first night at the apartment. The next morning, receiving a housewarming visit from Doyle and Angel, Cordelia tries in a panic to conceal the goings-on, but is unable to do so after the invisible presence targets both Angel and Doyle in unpleasant ways. Returning to headquarters, the three make plans to perform an exorcism on the apartment, while Angel enlists Kate to find any record of mysterious deaths in the apartment in an attempt to identify the poltergeist. She is unable to discover any murders connected to the place, but does uncover a string of suicides which all took place in the apartment. Angel, however, settles on an old woman from the 50's who died of a heart attack on the same night her son ran away from home with a girl she disapproved of. Suspecting that the son may have murdered her, thus creating a tormented ghost, Angel attempts to call Cordelia; however, to their horror, and and Doyle learn that the poltergeist has already lured her to the apartment by imitating Angel's voice on the telephone. Arriving there, Cordelia is subjected to psychological torture by the old woman, who obviously believes her to be the girl her son ran off with. Angel and Doyle arrive with ingredients for an exorcism; however, Cordelia is traumatized by the poltergeist's treatment and is unable to play her part in the ritual. At that moment, several demons sent to collect Doyle's debt in blood make an appearance, and Angel is forced to fight them off while the poltergeist reacts in rage to their attempted spell; bringing Cordelia into the bedroom, it attempts to convince her to commit suicide like the previous tenets. Finding the strength to defy it, Cordelia returns to the living room as the last demons are neutralized. However, just as everything appears calm, another entity takes possession of her, using her body to knock down an out-of-place wall she expressed dislike of earlier. The old bricks crumble down, and the possession ends as a skeleton is revealed behind the wall. Caught up in the mystical forces at work in the apartment, Cordelia, Doyle and Angel realize that the old woman's son never left her... in fact, when she began to fear that she would, she bricked him into a wall alive, herself suffering a heart attack shortly afterward. As the ghost of Dennis, the murdered son, clashes with that of his mother, her possession of the place is ended. Later, Cordelia sits in the refurbished apartment, talking on the phone and acknowledging to a friend that unfortunately, she does have a roommate in her new home, while the ghost of Dennis benevolently makes his presence known.


Observations:

• This Cordelia-centric installment is solid and engaging, but nothing out of the ordinary. It's interesting to see her attempting to strike a balance between her bitchy Sunnydale persona and the maturity she's slowly gaining under Angel's employment.
• The Doyle-and-Cordelia-apartment-hunting montage is definitely the highlight of the episode. "The chanting starts at four!"
• Nice, disturbing twist at the end there. I assume "Phantom Dennis" is going to make a cameo appearance every now and then.
• All right, show, I get that Doyle has a Mysterious History; just out with it already. This is getting annoying.