Angel and the team investigate a portal on behalf of The Host and discover several missing people who disappeared through them. However, one of them spews out a member of The Host's family.

This really is a poor excuse for a story, and looking ahead at the rest of the titles this season, it seems the gang are going to be trapped in The Host's realm for the rest of this run, which is a bit of a worry. The main problem here is that there's not enough material for 45 minutes, and much of it is spent with the Angel Investigations people trying to fit into normal society and investigating The Host's problem very slowly. Now, I understand that the main crew have all become separated from normal human life in some way and want to get back into it, but watching Gunn go back to the 'Hood and Cordelia do a poor quality commercial in a bikini are extremely tedious. On the positive side, there's a bikini. Likewise, yet another hint is dropped about Wesley and his father and their relationship, but it's way past time this aspect was dealt with in a more overt way. Here, it's simply filler material.

The Host is on great form as usual, but the arrival of his cousin leads to far more tedious background information than we need, and of all the people whose character I was expecting to see expanded, The Host wasn't it. Frankly, he serves a perfectly adequate purpose as the karaoke bar owner and we don't really need to know any more about him. His difference of opinion about how to deal with an encroaching demon is played on for far too long, the new arrival isn't interesting, and the demon itself is little threat, not to mention not very well realized.

Then there's the ending. Cordelia is thrown into the parallel universe the portal opens into, where no doubt the rest of the team will have to follow. The problem is, I'm just not sure it's going to be that promising a trip, especially if it's going to last for three more episodes.

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