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Dear Boy

"Dear Boy" is the fifth episode of the second season of Angel and the twenty-seventh episode in the series. Written and directed by David Greenwalt, it was originally broadcast on October 24, 2000, on The WB network.

Synopsis

WHEN GOOD VAMPIRES GO BAD — Angel's continued restless nights take him all the way back to 1860 London and his first encounter with Drusilla, but when he sees Darla in his waking life, Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn fear he has gone off the deep end and may revert to his evil ways.[1]

Summary

Angel wakes up to bickering between Cordelia and Wesley, interrupted by Cordelia getting visions with sketchy details. While Cordelia and Wesley try to find the demon and location from her visions, Angel daydreams of Darla. The team arrives at an underground water facility where two groups of cloaked men fight in front of a Thrall demon, Turfog. The men turn to attack Angel and friends. Gunn uses his new axe to destroy the demon, and all the cloaked men stop fighting. Walking home, Angel is shocked to see Darla walking the streets.

During the 19th century, Angel walks through the streets until he finds Darla, who has just killed a streetwalker and her customer. Darla tells Angelus she has a surprise for him — a trio of virginal sisters wandering down the avenue. One of them is Drusilla, who Angelus excitedly regards as pure and with the gift of visions. As he moves toward Drusilla, Darla tells him to "let the plum ripen" and pulls him away.

Angel tells Wesley and Cordelia about seeing Darla in his dreams and suddenly in real life, but they think he's starting to lose his sanity.

Lindsey and Darla talk about their progress with their manipulations of Angel. He explains he wants Angel to revert to his evil self with her help.

At a police station, Kate works a desk job, having been transferred due to her strange obsession with the occult. She receives notice from a friend that Angel has moved his company into the old Hyperion Hotel.

A potential paying customer, Harold Jeakins, presents a case to Cordelia and Wesley: he believes his wife is either being frequently abducted by aliens or cheating on him with another man. Angel Investigations then spies on the woman and discovers she is having an affair. Annoyed at the type of case they've resorted to, Angel spoils their cover by confronting the woman and telling her to talk to her husband.

Having ruined the job and stopped the team from getting paid, Cordelia argues with Angel, who spots Darla in the restaurant. When he confronts her, she insists she's a woman named DeEtta Kramer, who is waiting for her husband outside. Angel gives chase, only to see Darla step out into the sunlight and into the arms of a man who comforts her. After running away from the hotel's security, Cordelia and Wesley fear for Angel's sanity.

Unable to find any information on Darla's fake alias, Angel goes to Caritas and sings to the Host to get information about Darla. The Host refuses to help him, saying he needs to stay away from Darla.

Angel finds the Kramer home and lurks outside. Inside, Darla is having dinner with an actor hired to play her husband, and she waits for the plan to take form. Meanwhile, Cordelia and Wesley warn Gunn about the dangers of an evil Angel and Darla combined.

Back in the 1880's, Angelus and Darla fool around in a convent while a terrified Drusilla watches on. Although Darla doesn't seem to approve, Angelus announces that he's decided to make Drusilla a vampire, regarding it as the perfect torment as her insanity will now last forever.

Darla and Lindsey's plan goes into effect when Angel breaks into the home in time to find he has just been set up for murdering Darla's supposed husband. The police, including Kate, arrive on scene, and Angel is barely able to escape without being captured. Kate talks with Darla and believes all of her lies about Angel — including insisting she is a woman named DeEtta and Angel is stalking her.

Angel kidnaps Darla while Kate and an officer talk nearby and takes her away to the underground facility. The facility was formerly a convent, and Angel asks his sire if she can feel it. He does everything he can to bring out the real Darla, and she resumes her old personality. The two kiss, and Darla tries to convince Angel to let her give him one moment of happiness. He tells her she showed him many things but never made him happy; because he didn't have a soul back then, he could never truly be happy. She persists and tries to bring his demon out. Angel warns her that, now that she has a soul, she will begin to feel the weight of all the evil she has done. He insists he will kill her if she is responsible for any more deaths. As he grabs her, she presses a cross against his chest, and it burns his skin. Darla taunts him about how it's proof that, no matter what he does, God doesn't want him — but she still does. Angel releases Darla and can only watch as she walks out into the sunlight.

Leading a SWAT team, Kate breaks into the Hyperion to search for Angel, determined that he always will be evil. Cordelia and Wesley try to convince Kate that Darla was once a vampire and that Angel didn't kill anyone. Gunn points out that Darla's story is a lie because Angel — a vampire — couldn't enter a house without a valid invitation from someone inside the house; the only way he would be able to enter is if the legal residents were already dead. Kate counters that, since they are so busy fighting a grand battle against the forces of darkness, they forget all the innocents who die in the crossfire, and those innocent people are the ones Kate cares most about. She affirms that she believes Angel is, at the very least, partly responsible for all those deaths.

Angel broods in his room until Cordelia and Wesley nervously confront him to make sure he has not turned evil. He tells them that much trouble is on the way, and he's looking forward to it.

Continuity

Appearances

Individuals

Organizations and titles

Species

Locations

Objects

Death count

  • A Thrall demon, axed by Gunn.
  • Stephen Kramer, blood drained by a vampire.

Behind the scenes

Broadcast

  • "Dear Boy" had an audience of 3.6 million households upon its original airing.[2]

Pop culture references

  • Wesley mentions the fictional characters Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe as example of great and eccentric detectives.
  • Kate refers to her desk as Siberia, the remote region of Russia known for its penal labor camps during the Soviet Union.
  • Cordelia compares Angel and Darla to the criminal couple Bonnie and Clyde.

Goofs

  • After singing at Caritas, Angel apologizes turns the monitor of the karaoke machine off. When the camera shows him again from a distance, the monitor is on again.

Music

International titles

  • Czech: "Miláček" (Darling)
  • Finnish: "Lontoon terveisiä" (Greetings from London)
  • French: "Cher amour" (Dear Love)
  • German: "Wiedersehen macht Feinde" (Reunions Make Enemies)
  • Italian: "La trappola" (The Trap)
  • Hungarian: "Drága fiam" (Dear Son)
  • Portuguese (Brazil): "Meu Menino" (My Boy)
  • Russian: "Милый мальчик" (Sweet Boy)
  • Spanish (Latin America): "Querido Niño" (Dear Boy)
  • Spanish (Spain): "Querido Niño" (Dear Boy)
  • Turkish: "Kıymetli Çocuk" (Precious Child)

Gallery

Promotional stills

Behind the scenes

Quotes

Harold: "Well, it's my wife, Claire, she's really a lovely..."
Wesley: "Go on, it's all right."
Harold: "She gets abducted by aliens, on a regular basis."
Wesley: "Aliens."
Cordy: "From outer space?"
Harold: “It’s more common than people realize — one minute she's there and the next — she always comes back in a day or so."
Angel: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to— I've been so out of it — lately, because of her. I saw her, here in town. Last night."
Cordy: "Oh no, not again. Look, I like Buffy as much as the next..."
Wesley: "Vampires don't come back from the dead."
Angel: "I did. And I saw her. I'm not crazy!"
Wesley: "Where?"
Angel: "Right between the clowns and the big, talking hot dog."
Wesley: "This is all just precautionary. When push comes to shove, Angel's our— We trust him."
Gunn: "I see."
Cordy: "It's not like he turns evil every time he gets this cranky."
Gunn: "He turns evil?"
Wesley: "Well, there are forces that can make Angel revert to Angelus, the vampire he was before he got a soul."
Gunn: "And as evil, blood-suck vampires go, how would you rate Angelus?"
Wesley: "Historically as bad as they come. Especially when he was with his sire, Darla."
Darla: "But you can escape. You can escape it all. Remember what it was like to get lost, huh? Every thought a million miles away, every part of you being alive! All you have to do is let me give you one little moment of happiness."
Angel: "You took me places, showed me things, huh? You blew the top off my head. But you never made me happy."
Darla: "But that— That cheerleader did? We were together 150 years! We shared everything. You're saying — never?"
Angel: "You couldn't understand."
Darla: "I understand alright. Guy gets taste of something fresh and he thinks he's touching god."

References

  1. ↑ "Season Two." City of Angel. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011.
  2. ↑ "Nielsen Ratings for Angel's Second Season." Nielsen Ratings for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, & Firefly. Archived from the original on July 19, 2008.