I read on SciFi Newswire that Sean Austin (Lord of the Rings, Rudy) will direct this episode

Sean Astin, not Sean Austin, starred in "Rudy" and both "The Lord of the Rings" movies.

From TV Tome:

LORD, IT'S EVEN MORE ANGEL SCOOP: Lord of the Rings co-star Sean Astin moves behind the camera to direct the Feb. 5 installment of Angel, titled "Soulless." We don't have a problem with that. Just so long as he doesn't make a hobbit of it. Get it? Hobbit? Oh, never mind.

This was a very good episode, primarily because of the twist at the end (that Angel "dreamed" everything after midway through the shaman's ritual up to losing his soul). Apparently, the shaman made Angel dream all of that stuff (reconciliations between Angel and Wesley, Angel and Connor, Angel and Cordelia, and Wesley and Gunn; Angel killing The Beast with a magic sword found beneath the city of Los Angeles; Connor making peace with the Angel/Cordelia relationship; plus Angel's and Cordelia's sexual consumation of their relationship) so that Angel would experience a moment of pure happiness and lose his soul.

Isn't "Soulless" the Feb. 5 episode? Don't your comments pertain to the episode that aired Jan. 29? Or what's going on here? I'm a bit confuzzled.

Mark hasn't created boards for the 2 eps (Long Days Journey & Awakening, IIRC) that go between Habeus Corpus & Soulless.

Re: My Comments

My comments pertained to "Awakening". When I posted my message, I had forgotten the title of the episode. Plus, when I posted, there was no "Awakening" board, and nothing in the title, "Soulless," said to me, "That's not the episode I'm thinking of."

I'm watching this episode now... am I the only one who gets a 'Silence of the Lambs' feel from everyone pumping Angelus for information? Especially how whenever the audience is viewing him through the closed-circuit camera, he's looking into the camera, but when you're seeing him from inside the basement he's looking at Wesley (in SotL, Lecter often looked directly at the camera while talking).

So why didn't The Powers That Be just give her the whole story of what happened instead of just enough so they have to bring back Angelus?

And where did Lightning Lass go? Okay, maybe this question should have been asked last week, but 1 there is no board for last week's show & 2 I only thought of it watching this episode. How much real time has passed since the end of Long Day's Journey? Shouldn't she still be with them?

Wesly says, "The last time you were free you terrorized Sunnydale." Ummm, what about that episode with the false Bliss?

I wonder if the blacked out sun will ever be mentioned or shown on Buffy.

KAM--

Last episode they mentioned that Gwen Raiden (Lightning Lass) skipped town (I forget who said it)

I believe it was also mentioned in the last episode that the black out is localized in LA (this particular point is not only ludicrous but also annoying)

Oh. I was wrestling with the antannae last week. (Lousy UHF station.) So I missed that line about Gwen.

Yeah even if the 'eclipse' is currently localized to LA, I should imagine that it would, at the very least, be mentioned on the news. After all, LA is the Entertainment Capital. If it had happened in Seattle, or some lesser city, I can see the rest of the country ignoring it, but LA I would expect it to be a lead story on the national news.

Anybody else creeped out about Angelus mentioning Angel's propensity for, uh, "self-love" while listening to Fred and Gunn have sex?

One that thing should be noted is the rather poor plot line of Angel's soul "going missing." Call Willow: if she can't come to LA, then she can give them the necessary data to curse Angelus again. That particular hex didn't require the soul to be in a nice little bottle -- in fact, it seems (from the translation) to be magic that takes the soul from where ever it is and forces it into the body.

The curse and it's translation:
from the transcription by Alexander Thompson, posted at Psyche's Transcripts & Fanfiction

Te implor, Doamne, nu ignora aceasta rugaminte.
Nici mort, nici al fiintei...
Lasa orbita sa fie vasul care-i va transporta, sufletul la el.
Asa sa fie! Asa sa fie! Acum! Acum!

I implore you, Lord, do not ignore this request.
Neither dead, nor of the living...
Let this Orb be the vessel that will carry his soul to him.
So it shall be! So it shall be! Now! Now!

Too bad Buffy's on UPN now,this would make an interesting crossover between the two shows.

At the end they hint that someone will die in next week's ep.

Personally I think it might be Cordie,then I'm probably wrong.

My money is on Lorne.

Or some recurring character. Is Lilah the only one left?

I doubt it'll be Lorne somehow, as he's suppossed to be graduating to "regular cast member" status later this series...

Lilah, baby. You betcha.

I doubt it'll be Lorne somehow, as he's suppossed to be graduating to "regular cast member" status later this series...

Yeah, but on Buffy, they didn't make Tara a "regular cast member" until the episode where she died. One's position in the credits does not guarantee one's lifespan.

Lilah. And it's Cordy in the hotel with a knife!

Kai: The spell is probably asking which the Guardian of the Ether to send Angel's soul back to him through the orb of Thessalla.