Recap / Angel S 04 E 07 Apocalypse Nowish

As Gunn and Fred gear up to deal with "spookies in a pipe", Angel and Lorne argue about when they should have Cordelia Chase sing for Lorne. Connor returns to his apartment with food as Cordelia is watching an old movie on TV. Cordelia thanks Connor for everything. Cordelia informs Connor that she has been unable to sleep, seeing visions of something horrible clawing its way up from underneath. Cordelia suddenly wakes up screaming after The Beast grabs hold of her neck.

Lorne takes a call about snakes, asking Angel if they fight snakes. Angel replies "only if they are giants, or demons, or giant demons." Fred and Gunn arrive at the client's apartment. They enter the bathroom, commenting on how big and luxurious it is as well as it being the kind of bathroom they want in the future. the room starts shaking and all of a sudden the glass on the medicine cabinet explodes. Rats are seen in the medicine cabinet, as well as coming out of every drain. They quickly leave the apartment, telling the client they need to hire an exterminator or burn the place down. Wesley arrives home, finding Lilah waiting for him. Lilah is dressed like and acting like Fred. As they begin to make love, Wesley tells Lilah to keep the glasses on. Fred and Gunn arrive back at the hotel, Fred being cool towards Gunn about taking a bath together. Gunn wants to have a meaningful conversation with her, Fred reluctantly agrees. Fred runs off after telling Gunn it wasn't his decision to kill Professor Sidell. Lorne continues taking calls as Angel arranges weapons. Gunn starts fielding calls and Lorne & Angel discuss how to arrange weapons. Connor arrives at the hotel and informs Angel that Cordelia is staying with him and that Angel should talk to her. Angel arrives at Connor's apartment. Angel and Cordelia start talking, Cordelia telling Angel that she was able to see and feel everything he did as Angelus. Cordelia gets a vision of The Beast coming through the pavement.

Cordelia tells Angel that her visions are more intense, the old ones being a lawn sprinkler and the new ones like Niagara Falls. Cordelia says she needs to know more about The Beast, asking if Lorne could read her again. Lorne and Gunn are taking calls while the phones are ringing off the hook. Lorne asks Gunn to get Fred to help, Gunn saying he doesn't know where she is, prompting Lorne to ask if they are okay. Before the discussion can get any further, a thump is heard at the door. Checking, Gunn finds a sparrow that killed itself by slamming into the door. As Gunn checks it over, Lorne yells at him to close the door which he does just before an entire flock of sparrows start throwing themselves into it. At Wolfram & Hart, Angel is waiting for Lilah in her office. Angel knows Lilah wouldn't say anything, so he tied Gavin Park to a chair. Angel tells Lilah he wanted to torture Gavin more, but that Gavin wouldn't stop talking long enough for him to do so. Angel wants to know what Wolfram & Hart has learned about the info they sucked out of Lorne. The psychics who have been working on that info haven't been good at deciphering it, as every time they peel back a layer, their heads explode. Angel tells Lilah that helping him is win-win for her - she helps him and he succeeds, she will be in their good graces; if he fails, Lilah wins with Angel dead. At Connor's apartment, Cordelia is about to leave and Connor returns, surprising her. She wants to go outside for a walk because she has been inside all day. Cordelia and Connor roam the streets aimlessly at first, finally arriving at the exact spot where Connor was born. The Beast suddenly appears from below ground.

Connor attacks The Beast, doing no damage to it as he flings Connor aside. It approaches Cordelia, looks at her, laughs, then flies off. Gunn is calling around, looking for Fred as Lorne continues taking calls. As Lorne and Gunn are about to leave the hotel to look for Fred, Wesley arrives. Wesley suggests they pool their resources to figure out what's happening. Gunn says he is going to look for Fred and Angel arrives holding a folder, telling him he isn't leaving. The guys pore over the pages of info Wolfram & Hart were able to decipher from Lorne's vision, unable to make sense of it. Angel asks Lorne to start mapping out where the calls have been coming from. The pages are made up of glyphs, symbols, and archaic languages, all jumbled together. Gunn gets up to stretch, looking over Wesley's shoulder as he does. Gunn realizes that they are looking too close at the pages, seeing a pattern from a distance. They lay the pages out, revealing an even larger symbol, the eye of fire. Lorne shows them a map of where the calls have been coming from, the pattern being a diamond. Fred is at the diner, talking to the waitress about how she feels. The diner starts shaking and Fred tells everyone to get away from the windows. Cordelia is tending to Connor's wounds from his encounter with The Beast. Back at the hotel, they draw the symbol on the map Lorne drew, finding that the center of the map is a temple to the flesh. They head off to the bar after arming themselves. After arriving at the rooftop bar, they see a pile of bodies and The Beast.

They start attacking The Beast, having little to no effect on it. The Beast is easily able to deflect any attack, only the shotgun blasts seem to slow it down a little. Angel engages The Beast in hand to hand combat, not doing any damage. The Beast grabs Angel and stabs Angel in the neck with a stake and tosses him off of the rooftop. The Beast then slams his fist into the ground, starting a fire in the shape of the symbol they discovered earlier. The Beast then flies off again. As the guys regroup, they realize Angel isn't with them. Angel is laying on the ground, gasping and bleeding. A column of fire shoots towards the sky. Fireballs start raining down on the city as Connor and Cordelia make love. Angel watches them from a rooftop as fireballs continue raining down.

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Tropes:

• After-Action Patch-Up: Ramping up the UST between Cordelia and Connor.
• Annoying Arrows: Angel yanks a pair of quarrels out of himself.
• Bad Vibrations: In the coffee bar where Fred is when the ground starts trembling.
• Bait-and-Switch: Gunn is peering down the sink, and instead of the expected faceful of blood or a plumbing demon, the mirrors break to reveal a swarm of rats.
• Battle Discretion Shot: Wesley enters his house with a bruised face from fighting a swarm of bugs.
• Betty and Veronica: Lilah vs. Fred.
  Lilah: Oh, come on. Do you think I care about your little crush? Moon all you want over the Texas Twig 'cause I know whose bed you'll be crawling into at the end of the day. (puts arms around his neck) Or the middle of it. (starts kissing Wesley)
• Big "NO!": Gunn when Angel gets tossed off the roof.
• Bigger Stick: Wes goes from crossbow to handguns to pump-action shotgun. None of it works.
• Blank White Eyes: Cordelia having a vision.
• Bound and Gagged: Gavin getting Perp Sweated by Angel.
  Lilah: Couldn't you have tortured him some more?
• Buffy Speak: "Snacky goodness" (a Pun on last week's "salty goodness").
• Catch and Return: As part of The Worf Barrage when the Fang Gang battle the Beast, Gunn throws his axe made from a hubcap. The Beast catches it, crushes the axe then throws it back at him.
• Connect the Deaths: The Fang Gang plot the recent mystical disturbances on a map to find out where the Beast will be.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Gunn being afraid of rats, mentioned in "Heartthrob".
  • The Loa told Wesley that the prophecy would be fulfilled, and that various signs would foretell it coming to pass. The first was an earthquake (which accompanied the Beast rising from the earth), the second that the air would burn; the Beast lights up the alchemical symbol of fire at the Sky Bar, causing fire to rain from the sky.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The Fang Gang vs. the Beast at the Sky Bar. It's just toying with them, keeping them alive for its own purposes. They can't hurt it, it does hurt them.
• Curse Cut Short: Wesley enters his apartment to find Lilah dressed up like Fred.
  Lilah: (in Southern accent) Isn't this what you like? Big brain and a tight little—-
  Wesley: (rolls eyes) Lilah...
• Daydream Surprise: Cordelia's Catapult Nightmare.
• Divide and Conquer: Angel points out that helping him fight the Beast is a win-win situation for Lilah. Either way, one of her enemies is going down.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Huge horned demon coming up from the fiery depths below...
• Double Entendre: Angel gets in a barb at Wes when he says that Lilah can be pretty giving.
• Downer Ending: The Beast kicks everyone's ass, fireballs rain down on LA, and Connor and Cordelia have sex.
• Dual Wielding: After losing his sword, Angel attacks with a couple of handaxes.
• Enemy Mine: Subverted when Angel comes to Lilah for information on the Beast and suggests they work together:
  Angel: You're afraid of what's coming. Maybe we can help each other. The enemy of my enemy—
  Lilah: Can kiss my ass too.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The Beast certainly does.
• Fan Disservice: A grim-faced Angel watches his son having sex with Cordelia. A lot of fans had an "eeeewww" reaction as well.
• Fanservice:
  • Cordelia's loose, cleavage-revealing tops. Connor's hormones must have been going off the scale.
  • Lilah Morgan playing dress-up games with Wesley is sheer unapologetic fanservice for geeks.
• Friend or Foe?: Lorne and Wes fire their crossbows. The Beast deflects the quarrels into Angel.

• Girlish Pigtails: Lilah is aware of Wesley's unrequited interest Fred. So, just to get his gears spinning, she does a fetish impersonation of Fred, complete with pigtails to show how she sees Fred's relative immaturity.
• Glasses Are Sexy: Jealous over Wesley's attraction to the geeky Winifred Burkle, Lilah Morgan waits for him in his office dressed in Girlish Pigtails and Nerd Glasses. As they're ripping off each others clothes to have sex, Wesley interrupts their passion to insist she keep the glasses on. He still breaks up with her in the next episode, despite Lilah's offer to wear the glasses again.
• Gonna Need More X: The Fang Gang barge into the Sky Temple Club to find a huge horned demon with rock-like skin holding up a corpse in one hand after killing everyone in the place for a blood rite.
  Lorne: Ooh, uh, I'm gonna need a bigger arrow.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Lilah tries to take control of events by dressing like Fred. She's stunned when Wes coldly demands she keep the glasses on.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: As Lorne and Wes reload, the Beast throws Angel into them.
• Guns Akimbo: Wesley with dual handguns. Not quite a Leap and Fire, more like Run Sideways While Shooting In Slow Motion.
• Hidden in Plain Sight (along with Hidden Depths): After Wesley and Angel drive themselves to frustration over the symbols, it's Gunn who realises that all the pages form a symbol. And a map.

• Heroes Prefer Swords: Angel starts the battle by attacking the Beast with a sword.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Angel gets stabbed in the neck by his own wrist-stake.
• Hope Spot: The first is when Wesley's shotgun blasts bring the Beast to its knees, with him advancing on it firing from closer and closer - until he gets within range, at which point it grabs him, hurls him into a wall, and stands up as though its apparent injury was just an act. The second is when Angel puts his Game Face on and goes in for a rematch. He also manages to knock The Beast to its knees, produces a stake, and stabs it towards The Beast's eyes, the only seemingly vulnerable part of it. He stops an inch away, and the camera reveals the Beast had caught his wrist. Then it stabs him in the neck with his stake and hurls him off the skyscraper.
• It's All My Fault: Connor doesn't think it's a coincidence that the Beast erupts from the ground in the exact same place he was born.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: Subverted
  Lorne: A certain somebody with a good understanding of higher dimensions could tell me what got hoovered out of my head. Um, name starts with a "C."
  Angel: Connor.
  Lorne: No, I was leaning more towards a perky love muffin, but... Oh. (sees that Connor has walked into the lobby)
• I Resemble That Remark!:
  • When Angel says that Lilah can be very giving Wesley is all, Okay that was for my benefit.
  • A waitress friend of Fred says she might warp into another dimension because she Must Have Caffeine leads to her opening up.
• Lady in Red: When Wesley rips open the top of her geek outfit, Lilah shown to be wearing a red bra that matches her nail polish.
• Love Confession: Cordelia says she loves Angel, but while she was a higher being she looked back in time and saw (and experienced) all the evil that Angelus did.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!":
  • The Fang Gang stop and stare in alarm at seeing the Beast.
  • And everyone looks horrified when the rain of fire falls from the sky.
• Mighty Glacier: When it comes down to just Angel and the Beast, the latter lands all of one real hit, with Angel dodging or blocking every other swing. Unfortunately, the Beast's armor prevents Angel from doing any lasting damage - and its reflexes are still good enough to stop Angel going for the eye.
• Mook Chivalry: The Fang Gang should co-ordinate their attacks a bit. Not that it would have done much good.
• Must Have Caffeine: Fred hangs out in the coffee bar for hours while she ponders what to do about her Love Triangle.
• Must Not Die a Virgin: Played with.
  Cordelia: You've never had anything that's real... [...] and if this is the end, I want you to have something that is.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Lampshaded in the famous scene where Lilah Morgan dresses up in Nerd Glasses and Girlish Pigtails to taunt Wesley over his attraction to Fred.
  Did it turn you on? Watching her up there in front of all those brainiacs knowing she was the smartest one in the room?"
• Neck Lift: The Beast to Cordy.
• The Nicknamer: This time Cordy does it to herself.
  "Don't worry. I'm not gonna turn into Amnesia Action Figure Cordy again."
• Not so Dire: After a Genre Blind Angel decides to tempt fate by saying the world isn't going to end, we cut to the sound of a Screaming Woman. Turns out Cordelia is watching a horror film.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Wolfram & Hart (and by extension the Senior Partners) want to stop the Beast because they the world to end their way, not its way.
• Pre-Climax Climax: Cordelia faced with fire raining from the sky makes love to Connor.

• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: The Beast stands there and repeatedly soaks the best shots of almost the entire cast, effortlessly bouncing flurries of punches, axe strikes, sword blows, bullets, and shotgun slugs, before casually throwing them through walls or off buildings.
• Rooftop Confrontation: The battle with the Beast in the Sky Lounge.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: The camera view lifts just as Wes is about to yank up Lilah's short skirt. Apparently much of their sex scene had to be cut too, after Joss Whedon requested more "thrusting" and the actors complied.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The Beast smirks at Wesley emptying a couple of clips into its chest. Wes pulls a Mossberg 12-gauge from under his coat and empties it into the Beast's face.
• Signs of the End Times: There are birds crashing into buildings, snakes doing obscure things, rats swarming out of the plumbing and eventually, all the locations of the phone calls they get about these things, when laid out on a map, make an ancient symbol of destruction.
• Single Tear: Connor when Cordelia kisses him.
• Snakes Are Sexy: That is, if we read one of Lorne's phone conversations right.
  "Snakes? Uh-huh. And they came out of your what? OK, OK, well did they get up there themselves, or is this part of a, you know, a thing. (laughs nervously) No, I'm not judging."
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Cordelia makes a point of mentioning (in this episode and the previous one) that Connor is eighteen years old, despite being only sixteen the year before. They could have plausibly made him seventeen, so Connor would be the same age Buffy was when she had sex with 243-year old Angel, but well...
• Stating the Simple Solution: Lorne suggests holding off until they know more about what they're dealing with.
  Angel: If it's alive, we kill it. If it's not, we bury it.
  • Gunn reverts back to his old habits by seeing the clue in the files: it's not a translation but put them together a certain way and they form a pattern, leading to where the Beast is.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Apparently It Runs in the Family, as Connor too has this power. Along with Angel's silver tongue.
  Cordy: It must be genetic.
• Super-Toughness: Nothing even phases the Beast.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Wolfram & Hart's much vaunted vampire detectors aren't working at all now.
• Talented, but Trained: Connor does fairly well against The Beast, but Angel, with centuries of experience, rather than just a decade and a half, fares better.
• Tempting Fate:
  • "It's not like the world is going to end this second."
  • "As long as you've got love, it can't be that bad." (Bad Vibrations start)
• Terse Talker:
  Cordelia: Guess the sneaky's not the only thing you got from Angel. Getting pretty good with saying the right words, too.
  Connor: Complete sentences. I've been working on it.
• This Is the Part Where...: Lilah and Angel.
  Lilah: Swell, but I'm having a bit of a day, so let's say we skip the usual two-step, you threaten me, I threaten you, yadda, yadda, yawn.
  Angel: (later) Normally, this would be the part where I'd make a grand threat...
• Title Drop:
  Lorne: I hate to be the little demon that cried apocalypse nowish...
• Trespassing to Talk: Angel shows up in Lilah's office to have that promised conversation about Lorne.

• Twisted Echo Cut
  Angel: (re Lorne's snake call) Are they making any kind of weird demony sounds?
  [Cut to Gunn and Fred investigating a haunted house]
  Housewife: The noises are horrible. The thumping, the groaning...it's impossible to sleep at night.
  • Angel says "We need to figure this out." Cut to Gunn saying after pondering the portents, "We're never going to figure this out."
• Wall of Weapons: Angel wonders how he should rack them — alphabetically or by potential damage inflicted?
• Watching Troy Burn: Heroes and villains alike look on with fear as The Beast rains fire on Los Angeles.
• The Worf Barrage: The Fang Gang hit the Beast with everything they have - axes, swords, crossbows, wooden stakes, Guns Akimbo pistols and finally a shotgun. None of it works.
• The Worf Effect: The Beast trounces Connor and later the Fang Gang.
• Wrecked Weapon: When the Beast makes his appearance, he trounces our heroes in a Curb-Stomp Battle which includes crushing Gunn's signature axe made from a hubcap.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: When Connor tries to encourage a reluctant Angel to talk to Cordelia, he calls Angel "Dad".
• Your Head Asplode: Wolfram & Hart have been burning through their psychics trying to find out what Lorne read from Cordelia.
  Angel: You're trying to decipher what you took out of Lorne's head. Hundreds of psychics probing and prodding—Well, not quite that many now, because every time they peel back a layer, their brains end up decorating the walls.
  Lilah: You should see the cleaning bill. Now that is terrifying.

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