Original Air Date: February 15, 2000

Story by David Greenwalt and Jeannine Renshaw
Teleplay by Jeannie Renshaw
Directed by Robert David Price

Summary

In Angel's place, Wesley shows him a knife which is extremely old that he had obtained. Cordelia comes downstairs and decides to cut her brownies using the knife and Wesley protests. An argument ensues and Angel interferes but accidently calls Wesley Doyle. Meanwhile, at a normal looking house with a picket fence, two kids, a boy and his sister are arguing. Their parents come in, telling them it's time for bed. After being tucked in, Ryan and Stephanie are then padlocked into their rooms by their father.

Angel goes up to his office to brood and after a while Cordy comes in. Angel admits that he misses Doyle and right then Cordy has a vision of the house, Ryan, and his father. Angel and Wesley go to the house to check it out and they pull up just in time to save the boy from being run over by a car. His parents rush out and the mother invites Angel in, but the father seems oddly reluctant to talk to Angel. While Angel is inside, Wesley pokes around outside the house and finds a birght green, viscous glue in the house's foundation. Paige, the mother, invites Angel to dinner the next night and he accepts. Back at the office, they find out the goo comes from an Ethros demon. Angel decides to exorcise the demon but since he doesn't know which family member is possessed, he has to bring it out by feeding it eucalypsos powder.

The next night, Angel shows up for dinner with brownies containing eucalypsos powder. Everyone takes a bite and the demon is brought out in Ryan. Angel offers his help in exorcising and they bring the boy to Angel's house. They make a binding powder while Angel and Wesley go to get the priest who Wesley had found to do the exorcism. Angel warns Ryan's parents not to break the protection circle under any circumstances or they might be killed. Angel and Wesley go to the church where a nun tells them that the priest had already tried to exorcise an Ethros demon and had been killed by it. Wesley decides to exorcise it himself, with Angel's protestations ringing deaf in his ears. Back at the house, Ryan convinces his mother to break the circle and when she goes to him, he tries to kill her. Angel and Wesley arrive and Wesley commences the exorcism while Cordy discovers that an Ethros demon, when exorcised, will go into an Ethros box, effectively being trapped. Angel sends Cordy to a magic shop to try and obtain the box. Meanwhile, Ryan provokes Wesley into breaking the circle and makes Wesley stab himself with the cross he is holding. At the magic shop, Cordy can't find the exact box, but the owner offers her a smaller one which holds a Shorshack demon. Angel is fed up with the nonsense and decides to exorcise the boy himself. He brings the demon out of the boy and then it heads for the box, but it breaks it, setting the demon free.

Angel figures that the demon has to recharge before inhibiting another human and they trace it to a cave, where the demon tells them that it accpets it's death because the boy had had no soul for the demon to thrive on. All the destruction the boy had wreaked had been the boy's own soulless self. The demon had resorted to trying to kill itself and the boy by walking itself in front of a car the night Angel had saved the boy. Meanwhile, Ryan gets out of his bed and jams his parent's door shut. He heads for his sister's room with a can of gasoline and sets her room on fire. Angel kills the demon and gets to the burning house just in time to rescue Stephanie from her room. The police come to take Ryan away and their family is safe and happy once again.

Summary written by Niki

Quote of the Week

Cordelia: Geez, we get it! Circle, angry, kill, kill, kill! Go to church already.

Rating

5/5

Niki Bartl's Comments

I adored this episode. Loved every second of it. It's funny, because even as I was writing up the summary, I called Wesley-Doyle twice. I've done it before, so it's nice to know that he's not being forgotten. I loved this episode, I could watch it, like eight more times. Just the whole exorcism thing really was excellent and then the end was a total surprise. I think I liked it because I totally agree with the theory that some people just don't have souls and are just naturally evil from the time they are born. My guy friends make fun of me for supporting this idea, but I just believe that there are pure ugly, evil people out there. The only bad thing about this episode was that the mother annoyed me, but the thing is, she's was the perfect mother, refusing to believe her own child was evil, as mothers are inclined to do. Just an amazing episode all around. I'm going to watch it again. Right now.

Nika Summers' Comments

Now I liked the theme of this episode (hell, every sci-fi show's got to have an exorcism or two) but what I didn't like was how it was DRAGGED out so long! They took forever to get to the actual meaning behind the kid's so-called demon possession and even when they did tell us I was like huh? But thankfully my brain caught up and understood. As has said Niki above, I completely disliked the mother. She was WAY too delusional for my liking. I liked this episode but I just had some problems watching it. I did like the twist ending where the demon was less demonic than the kid (who, by the way, was extremely freaky. Can you imagine baby-sitting for a kid like that?) and that the demon was actually afraid of the kid was interesting as well.

Cast

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