Angel : Season One, Episode Four : I Fall To Pieces

Grade: B

When Doyle has a vision of an apparently endangered young woman named Melissa, Angel goes to her workplace and offers to help her in any way necessary; she initially refuses his aid, but changes her mind after a frightening encounter with an apparently mild mannered middle-aged doctor. Explaining her situation to Angel, Cordelia, and Doyle, Melissa recounts the story of Ronald Meltzer, the doctor who performed a near-miraculous surgery on her eye; subsequently forming a frightening obsession with her, the man apparently knows the details of what does inside her own home. Angel investigates the matter, paying a visit to the doctor's office and inquiring for any criminal records on the man, eventually coming up with the name of another surgeon, since retired, who is known to have been a strong proponent of the use of mysticism in the practice of medicine. Gaining an audience with the man, Angel learns that Meltzer took the study, dubbed "physic surgery", to a level which frightened even its most ardent advocates. Beginning to understand the situation, Angel arrives at Melissa's house to find her traumatized after being assaulted by Meltzer's detached hands, which he is able to control at will, along with any other individual body part he chooses to remove. Taking Melissa back to headquarters, Angel leaves her with Doyle and Cordelia while he attempts to neutralize Meltzer. Seeing through Angel's cover story, Meltzer injects him with a paralytic and sets out to find Melissa; Cordelia and Doyle attempt to secure their headquarters with locks and duct tape, but their measures are no match for Meltzer, who makes his way in and takes them both down in his search for Melissa. Confronting her with a knife, Meltzer prepares to kill her, but is put off when she unexpectedly defies him, buying time for Angel to return and destroy Meltzer for good. Freed of her deranged stalker, Melissa goes on with her life and becomes Angel Investigations' first paying customer.


Observations:

• The disagreement over Angel Investigations' financial matters is actually a fascinating bit of drama; everyone has to make a living, but how doing you go about playing the mysterious, caped vigilante if you're forced to trot back to the person you just saved and ask for a fee? Angel's romanticized idea of how he wishes to be perceived clashes head-on with Doyle and Cordelia's more practical concept of a maintaining a functioning demon-slaying business; somehow I suspect that they'll never quite reconcile the two.