Fred is on the run from Jasmine, and therefore the population of LA. As the world closes in on her, she makes one last stand in the hope of saving her friends.

Uh-oh. It seems Buffy syndrome has kicked in: this episode is really playing for time. It's most obvious at the start, as Fred's cross-LA odyssey takes her here, there and everywhere. While it's no doubt a great help to the tourism industry, here it just seems wasteful and overlong. The demon she meets is purely to bolster the plot, as he starts off nice before turning on her. It seems his only function is to prove that demons have fallen under the influence as well, and it's not worth the amount of screen time it gets. Likewise, Fred is barely tested here. She runs, she hides, she keeps out of the way, but in the end she still makes a beeline for Angel. Now, okay, so she can hardly fight a creature this powerful without help, but her attempt to do some research meets with very little of worth, and the book shop has now gone up in flames. It's a shame, as it's way past her time to save the day.

So padding is the order of the day, ladies and gentlemen. Things start to get more interesting when Fred works out how she can release others from Jasmine's spell: blood. While on Buffy it seems guns never do anything good, in Angel they've been a positive boon in recent weeks, killing Skip and helping Angel to see what Fred sees. The upshot of all this, of course, is that it takes most of the episode to release the rest of the Angel investigators, and assuming they have no trouble getting back out of the hotel, everyone in LA will be looking for them. That's 'everyone'. How the hell are they going to go unnoticed? Jasmine will certainly lock down all the mystical hot spots pretty damned tight. Anyway, that's a problem for next time. It's just a shame that this all moves along so slowly and obviously, right through to Connor being incurable of his love for Jasmine, presumably partly because he created her, or possibly for another reason as yet unexplored. Either way, his betrayal of the others leads to only one good moment, that of Wesley saying he'll go and get the kid, because "I've kidnapped him before". It's that wonderful dark side that's so enjoyable to see and so welcome when it returns.

The other most notable thing here is the lack of comedy. There's little to laugh at, the odd wry snigger, yet even Angel and Connor doing a duet of 'Jasmine' to the tune of Mandy seems to miss the mark. While Angel is hardly hilarity central, it needs the balance of light and dark to keep it on the right track. This episode doesn't show it, and lacks something as a result. Although it contains a couple of nice little shock moments: Cordy's awakening, Angel's full-on vamp attack on Fred when she shoots Jasmine, this is still the first dull episode we've had of the show in quite some time.

**

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