Mark: I think you've got a faulty calendar. May 4th is a Thursday. April 4th is a Tuesday.

(Mark's original About message read Airs Tuesday, May 4th.)

Cordelia is REALLY Tan in this episode. Glaringly tan. And her teeth are really white.

Plus, she looks way older then 19 in this episode. Especially during the opening teaser

Okay, Angel was cursed to have a soul until he experienced happiness, or bliss, then he would lose it.
He experienced bliss with Buffy, lost his soul and only got it back when the gypsy curse was reestablished.
Here Angel is given a drug which lets him experience bliss. He becomes Angelus again, apparently losing his soul, but once the drug wears off, his soul is back where it belongs, without the need of any kind of magical spell.
Yeah, right.
Either Angel loses his soul when he experiences happiness, or true joy, or bliss, or whatever euphamism you want to use, or he doesn't. The curse shouldn't know the difference between happiness caused by sex, love, or a drug so unless Wesley & Cordelia recast the gypsy curse, Angel should still be Angelus there at the end.

Good thing Kate didn't happen by while all this was going on. She probably wouldn't have had a problem staking him.

Cordy looks so much older than 19 cuz Charisma Carpenter is ten years older! I never bought her as a teen for a second, but that might be cuz I remember her years ago from an early season of Babewatch, when she was about 18. Man, was she hot then! I mean she was steaming! She's not as cute as she used to be, but still has a great bod, though, due to excersize, diet and working out.

That's my point. It's kind of hard to see a lot of these characters as teens. Nicholas Brendon and David Boreaniz (sp?) are both 30, if I remeber correctly. Faith was the only one under 19.

I submitted a term in the glossery called "Dawson's Syndrome". It's where Teens look way older than their supposed age. Granted Dawson's Creek isn't the Worse Offender. I think "That Seventies Show" is the Worse offender. 7th Heaven Gets special mention for age warping Mary and Lucy's age and the actresses who play them. "The Phantom Menace" gets a blotto for age of the Queen being 14 and the Actress playing her about 17. Granted teenagers can't act and using older actors avoids child labor laws. But it's still a nit.

I remember watching the pilot of Twin Peaks & wondering why these college students were sitting in children's desks, then somewhere along the way it was mentioned that they were supposed to be high school students.

I believe Beverly Hills 90210 is generally considered the worst offender.

The Legion of Super-Heroes comic in the 70's had some old looking teenagers. One story even said they were 20-year old teenagers.

I don't think they ever tried to pass Angel off as a teen. In one episode of Buffy she told her mom that he was a college student. Okay, you can be a teen in college, but I don't think they ever pretended he was 18 or 19. (And if he looks older than that, it's because he's really over 200. ;-)

In the first season of Buffy, Buffy and her friends thought Angel was around 25 in the early episodes.

Well, in those early episodes, that wasn't that far off David's own age.
Charisma's having the most trouble looking her supposed age, but at least she's not in an age-based thing like school, so you don't think about it as much. Nicky Brendon was doing fine until season three or so of BUFFY...now look at him.
I think Eliza Dushku turns 20 this year, which works...especially since Faith's age has only been inferred, not actually stated - so she could well be at the far end of two decades.

Finally saw the whole thing this time.

Mark, you're wrong. The goofiest thing in this episode was her constant gushing over the celebrity.

Actually most actors who play 'bad actors' usually go over the top and overact being bad. I thought she gave a nice, restrained, believably, 'bad' performance.
(The biggest problem with playing bad acting, is that the actors try to be bad, while true bad actors are actually trying their best to be good.)

NNANJAO: When I did some Community Theater, the directors said that even if you have to ask for a line, Stay In Character!
Obviously, Cordy's director never drilled that into her.

One thing did confuse me about the performance. It seemed to me that it was a rehearsal, not a performance in front of a paying crowd. Why else would she yell for a line instead of ad-libbing? Presumably she just recently got off book and hadn't memorized all the lines. However, the way Wesley & Angel acted and a comment about the press showing up, implied that this was a real performance.

Isn't Angel stronger than humans? Why does he seem to be struggling with the 'stalker'?

So now that the 'stalker' has been arrested, what is the manager gonna do? Would the stuntman really keep his mouth shut about the 'stalking' and criminal actions or will he squeel like Ned Beatty in Deliverence?

Cordy says about Angelus, "at least he's honest." I would imagine that Angelus is only honest when the truth hurts. Other times he'd probably lie like a rug.

Why would Angel, agree to escort this actress to a big premiere where there will be lots of cameras around? Doesn't he think that since cameras have mirrors inside them, that it would raise a few questions when the pictures developed and she is arm in arm with no one!!! Oh, well, I guess Vampires only show up on mirrors that are easy to avoid, such as huge wall mirrors in a celebrity's house.

Angel appeared through the viewfinder of a videocamera in the series premiere for this show. It seems that in the Buffyverse, vampires are only invisible in mirrors, not cameras.

Hopefully none of the cameras got Angel in a mirrorshot, though!

When I saw Oliver for the first time, I just knew he'd be the one behind the attacks. It was that transparent. Also, it didn't make sense. If Oliver wanted to give her career a boost, he should have called the police or the press. Rebecca said that she didn't want him to, but she didn't want him to hire the attacker in the first place, so why did he listen to her this time? Also, I find it EXTREMELY hard to believe that someone who's willing to turn vamp in order to stay young wouldn't be willing to be attacked for publicity reasons.

If Cordelia told her all about Angel, why does Rebecca think that she'd stay the same person as a vamp. She seems much too shocked about Angelus. Also, didn't Cordy tell her about the curse and about perfect happiness?

So Angelus is honest, which is why he tells Cordy that Angel found her performance horrible. He also tells Wesley that he's useless and has no balls. I don't think Angel would think that way about Wesley, who came up with the key in last week's The Ring and has been a Watcher for quite some time. Wesley's no fighter (like Giles, whom Angel also respects), but he's far from useless, and Angel should know.

Just thought of something else: Cordy said that she told Rebecca everything of turning into a vamp, so presumably she told her about the drawbacks, too. Would it do Rebecca's career any good to become a vamp? She couldn't do any work in daylight, and the make-up people might get suspicious if she didn't show up in the mirrors. Perhaps she was planning to star in a Buffy or Angel episode.

Interesting... it didn't occur to me about the problems being a vampire would add to her career [g]. re: makeup: perhaps she'd have something written into her contract about having her own make-up person available at all times, then confide in that one person? The sunlight thing would be hard to get around, though....

Also, while people expect stars to stay young.. they might notice after a few decades if she didn't get any older. Perhaps she was planning on something along the lines of Death Becomes Her... she gets a limited amount of stardom then disappears from the public view?

I'm assuming that the drawbacks she was told about didn't sink in... it's one thing to hear about it, another for it to be right there in your face, real as unlife.

And, I think it wasn't that her agent hired someone to attack her that bothered her - it's that he didn't tell her he was doing it. She was genuinely scared that some psycho was after her, remember... if she'd been in on it from the beginning, it would have been a different matter entirely. IMO

Re: Angelus being honest... he was more than that, he was malicious. Angel may have known Wesley wasn't useless, but he also knew Wesley himself feared that he was. As Angelus, wanting to cleanse himself of all that nasty human emotion and have some fun along the way... he'd use that knowledge to his best advantage, true or not.

It also dosen't work that way. She would get sent to the NEXT DIMENTION, and her body would get occupied by a demon. The Demon would use her memories, though, but I don't see Vampires doing any career than "Gothic Punk Will to Power Hot Topic Employies."

Didn't like this episode at all.

First of all, the aforementioned trivializing of such a profound plot point (Angel & true happiness) really irritated me. I really felt that the show was insulting itself to suggest that the contentment Angel feels in the afterglow with Buffy could be replicated with a pill. I suppose that also means that Angel should stay away from any happy thing like roller coasters (some parks are open @ night), good Scotch, and Godiva chocolates, too.

The very idea was so sstupid, that I didn't buy it at first. When Angelus was throwing Rebecca around, I just assumed that Angel was just trying to scare her, and show her what vamp life was like, just like he put on that whole show for Faith in "Enemies". It wasn't until Rebecca, Cordy, and Wes talk about the drug that I even CONSIDERED that this was serious, and even then I assumed that Wes & Cordy were in on Angel's little ruse. When Angelus started tormenting Cordy and Wes, only then did I think "If this is just a joke, then Angel's going a little over the top." ONly in the aftermath was I finally convinced, that it wasn't a joke.

And since it WAS real, did anyone else think that Angelus talked too much and didn't make any really sincere effort to kill? Granted, in season II BTVS, Angel liked to tease& torture his victims/ would be victims, but he was always timely about trying to kill them.

Godiva chocolates
Considering he can't really taste chocolate, I think he'd be okay.