Angel Investigated - 1.10 Parting Gifts

Posted by Jason Chamberlain on 06.16.2009

After the departure of Doyle, Angel and Cordelia mourn their friend while struggling to move on. Meanwhile, a rogue demon hunter comes to town hot on the heels of a dangerous killer. Check out the full review of "Parting Gifts"!

A big thank you to our own Jeremy Thomas for using his mad HTML skills to pimp our review!
1.10 Parting Gifts
Writer: David Fury and Jeannine Renshaw
Director: James A. Contner

Whedon Speak

Barney: I just realized its 3:45 in the afternoon. If you’re a vampire, why aren’t you in your coffin?
Angel: I hate that stereotype. You’re a demon and you don’t know anything about vampires?
Barney: Only what I’ve learned from TV.
Angel: Vampires don’t sleep in coffins. It’s a misconception made popular by hack writers and ignorant media. In fact you know, we can and do move around during the day, as long as we avoid direct sunlight. Got it?

Cordelia: Wesley? What are you doing here? Are you working with Angel?
Wesley: A lone wolf, such as myself, never works with anyone. I’m merely allowing Angel to assist me. I’m a rogue demon hunter now.
Cordelia: Oh, wow. What’s a rogue demon?

Case Files

This is the final episode in which Glenn Quinn appears in the opening credits... From this point on, Wesley will appear in every episode of Angel save for Season Five’s “Destiny” (filmed when Alexis Denisof was on his Honeymoon with Alyson Hannigan).

Jeremy Thomas has the full review!

December 14th, 1999. It had been a week since the shocking first major death on Angel, leaving audiences with a whole host of questions. What happens now? Do Angel and Cordelia go it alone? How will Angel get his messages from the Powers That Be, now that his sole link to them is gone? All that and more was handled in "Parting Gifts." The episode starts off with Angel and Cordy still reeling from the sacrifice of their friend, and Angel goes to the Oracles to get Doyle back, but they refuse and leave him with the cryptic message “When one door closes, another opens.” When he goes to talk to what we will soon learn is that other door—Cordelia—she’s searching for something to hold onto that will remind her of the man who she learned only too late loved her. Unable to find something, she latches onto Angel as someone to hold onto and runs off to her audition. However, when she gets there she breaks down in tears and in her second try she suffers what will be the first of what will become a long run of visions. She quickly surmises that Doyle passed them onto her via their kiss and tries desperately to get rid of them. Is she desperate to get rid of the pain and supernatural status, is she livid at Doyle for subjecting her to it under the guise of an act of love, is she afraid she might end up sharing Doyle’s fate or is she just afraid of having to come to terms with the fact that she finally has something to remember Doyle by, something that will make it agonizingly real (in more way than one) that he’s gone?

Fortunately or not, she doesn’t have a lot of time to figure it out, as Angel Investigations is found by Barney. Barney is an empathy demon that’s being hunted down by someone, a black leather-clad biker who has bad things for the demon on their mind. Barney convinces Angel to help, pointing out that like Angel he’s not perfect but he’s not evil either. Angel leaves Barney in Cordy’s care and leaves her to make some sense of her vision while he goes to confront the person hunting down Barney. This shows the difference between Angel and Cordy in how they deal with grief right off the bat. Cordy hasn’t had a lot of real grief in her life—sure, she’s had bad things happen and she’s encountered hardships since leaving Sunnydale, but she’s never lost someone really close to her. Not even Jenny Calendar, who was closely associated with the Scoobies, made much of an impact on her. When she loses Doyle she tries to run away from the gift he gave her that makes for the episode’s namesake. Angel, conversely, has had too much grief in his life. This is old hat to him…losing people, watching those close to him die. When that happens he retreats as well, but instead of running away from the situation, he retreats inside himself as he looks for something to kill. It makes sense; he’s a vampire, and while he has his soul, vampires still have instincts. Those instincts say that when you’re in pain you have to lash out and attack, and that’s exactly what he does, heading after Barney’s hunter instead of taking the time to dissect Barney’s story and get to the truth of the matter.

Of course, when he learns the truth, he quickly wishes he had taken that time as he finds out that the dangerous hunter is actually none other than Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. Wesley’s trying to be all bad-ass now that he’s left the Watcher’s Council, but he’s still a neophyte and it takes little effort for Angel to disarm him. Wesley reveals, in a way that can only be described as a kitten trying to be a tiger, that he’s now a rogue demon hunter—emphasis on the “rogue”—and he’s not hunting down Barney, he’s hunting a Kungai demon. Or at least, he thinks he is. As it turns out, he’s hunting the Barney, he just doesn’t know it. Barney has been stealing items from demons with powers to sell at a supernatural auction, and Cordelia is next on his list. Now it’s up to Wesley and Angel, working together, to stop the demon before Cordelia ends up powerless AND eyeless.

“Parting Gifts” isn’t the powerhouse of an episode that “Hero” was, but that’s certainly no insult. Any episode was going to be a let-down after that piece of work, and to simply say that “Parting Gifts” doesn’t drop the bar much lower than its predecessor is very high praise indeed. David Fury and Jeannine Renshaw, who teams to write the script, do an excellent job here in replacing Doyle with the returning Wesley. Wesley is exactly the kind of person who fits in well on Angel, and seeing the former Watcher back in a regular role in the Buffyverse was a welcome sight. At the same time, they did an excellent job of using Barney as a way to force Cordy to deal with the grief of losing Doyle. Credit goes to Charisma Carpenter for really stretching out her acting talents to play Cordy’s grief in a very real way, and to Alexis Denisof for sliding smoothly in with Carpenter and Boreanaz instantly. Ultimately, while “Parting Gifts” is about finding someone to fill the hole left in the Angel crew, it’s also about dealing with one’s grief and trying to find a way to move on, something that is done very well.












GRR!!! ARGH!!!

Ronny Sarnecky	This is the first episode post-Doyle. We learned pretty quickly in this episode how Angel will receive the messages from the Powers that Be that Doyle used to provide. It turns out that Doyle transferred his “gift” to Cordelia when he kissed her before taking his own life. This was yet another in a long line of early season great episodes by the “Angel” crew. With the departure of Doyle, a big hole was left in the show. Thankfully, that void was filled with the addition of “Buffy” alumni Wesley Windham Price. I thought that introducing Wesley as this bad ass “rogue demon hunter” was a terrific idea. Last time we saw Wesley, he was a wimpy, shy “mini-Giles.” Now, he was a leather clad wearing, motorcycle driving, renegade. Of course, as the episode wore on, we discovered Wesley was still the same clumsy Wesley we knew from “Buffy.” Another key note to this episode was that Wolfram & Hart is starting to get very aggravated with Angel messing with their plans. As a big Wesley fan, especially as he grows out of his klutziness as the series roles on, I was very glad to see him take over for the departing Doyle. For that, this episode gets higher marks then others may give it.	9.0
Jason Chamberlain	As JT said, any episode would be a letdown after the masterpiece that was ‘Hero’, and yet the Mutant Enemy crew managed to deliver one of the most enjoyable episodes of the season nevertheless. Now, I’m biased, because Wesley is my second favourite Buffyverse character ever, so I was and am thrilled to see him added to the mix (let’s all take a moment to remember how badass he gets before the series ends, and contrast that to the wimp he is here!). Cordy getting the visions is also a master stroke that will pay off in a number of ways as the series progresses. All in all a perfect grace note to the “Doyle era” of the show.	8.0

The 411: If “Parting Gifts” isn’t the epic encounter that “Hero” was, it stands strong in Angels’ first season. It’s a much mellower experience that has more character building than major events, and that’s perfectly fine because we needed something like that. With this episode the Angel cast and crew give the viewers a chance to say goodbye to Doyle, and say hello to Wesley. That the transition doesn’t seem cheap is a major testament to the episode’s quality.

Final Score:  8.5   [ Very Good ]