Killing a demon that he thinks is attacking a young woman, Angel finds he’s murdered a protector and must save the woman from The Tribunal, who will judge the fate of her child by combat to the death between her champion and theirs.

Like Buffy, the season starts brilliantly with an extremely cool sequence in which the Angel Investigations team march into a gym, find a sacrifice in progress and kill those responsible. The rapport between the regulars is superb as ever, and the regular inclusion of Gunn doesn’t look likely to upset the established order of things, with J August Richards fitting in nicely with the others.

Killing an innocent demon is a good rite of passage for Angel, as we notice that the writers are concentrating more on his character than ever and he realizes that his route to becoming human through his good deeds isn’t going to be as simple as he first thought. His visit to Faith at the end of the episode is a nice touch, as they’ve now both gone through the same thing by killing an innocent while outwardly trying to do good, but only Angel has got past it without doing the same again. How Faith will figure into this season is anyone’s guess, but it’s good to see that she hasn’t been forgotten.

However, despite being bookended by two great sequences, plus a visit to the Wolfram & Hart offices just after the opening credits, the main plot isn’t particularly wonderful. I was expecting some exciting Darla action, but it clearly wasn’t to be. Too much time is spent chasing the pregnant woman around in order to protect her, and the horseback joust at the episode’s end somehow manages to lose the cool factor and come across as very silly indeed. We know the outcome, we pretty much know how Angel’s going to win, and I’d just rather have seen some other method of winning than the final surprise decapitation trick that we’ve seen before.

I just know this series can do better, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll go up from what is, in all fairness, not actually a bad start.

***

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