Trivia / Angel S 03 E 11 Birthday

• Creator's Favorite Episode: Charisma Carpenter named this as one of her two favourite episodes.
• Completely Different Title: German: Die Qual der Wahl (The Agony of Choice)
• Deleted Scene: A 7-minute excerpt of Cordy! was filmed on the redressed set of Dharma & Greg, to give it a "true sitcom feel". Tim Minear explains, "When you look at Charisma Carpenter, she does bear a resemblance to Mary Tyler Moore and she's so funny, and we all sort of had this fetish fantasy of seeing her on a brightly lit sitcom stage with people laughing at her jokes." However, the scene "wasn't quite as funny as we wanted it to be," admitted Mere Smith, and so all but the opening credits were ultimately cut from the final episode, although the clip is available on the DVD release.
• Recycled Set: The apartment set used for the Cordy intro is also the same set used in the second to fifth season of Dharma & Greg.
• Recycled Script: After making a wish, Cordelia ends up in an alternate reality where her friends are different and Angel is chained to the wall. Where have we seen that before?
• Word of Gay: Or Word of Bi, at least. The episode's writer confirmed that Angel receiving the visions in the Birthdayverse was indeed because Doyle kissed him the same way he kissed Cordelia in the main timeline.
• Word of God: In the DVD commentary, episode writer Mere Smith says that Angel lost it in the other world not just because he had the visions but because he didn't have Cordelia's humanizing influence around to keep him grounded, and laments that this wasn't made clearer because a lot of viewers didn't get it.

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