"Angel" Blood Money (2001)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

R.D. Price

Writers:

Joss Whedon (creator) &
David Greenwalt (creator) ...

TV Series:

"Angel" (1999)

Original Air Date:

23 January 2001 (Season 2, Episode 12)

Genre:

Action | Drama | Fantasy | Thriller

Plot:

Wolfram and Hart are sponsoring a fund raising benefit for a local teen shelter. Angel is suspicious of their motives and starts investigating. Meanwhile, Wes, Gunn and Cordy work to establish their own detective business. |

Plot Keywords:

Vampire | Vampire Slayer | Redemption | Actress | Supernatural

Cast

David Boreanaz	...	Angel
Charisma Carpenter	...	Cordelia Chase
Alexis Denisof	...	Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
J. August Richards	...	Charles Gunn
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Sam Anderson	...	Holland Manners
Gerry Becker	...	Nathan Reed
Deborah Carson	...	Liza
Jeffrey Patrick Dean	...	Dwight
Matthew James	...	Merl
Christian Kane	...	Lindsey McDonald
R. Martin Klein	...	Husband
Julia Lee	...	Anne Steele
Jason Padgett	...	Holden Raines
James Pomichter	...	Zorn
Jennifer Roa	...	Serena Tate
Mark Rolston	...	Boone
Stephanie Romanov	...	Lilah Morgan

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour

Company:

Mutant Enemy

Goofs:

Continuity: Angel and the target of his attentions act towards each other as strangers, despite the two meeting in Buffy episode "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lie to Me (#2.7)" (1997). This is in seeming contradiction of Angel's well-established feats of photographic memory (as seen in the Angel episode "Angel: Supersymmetry (#4.5)" (2002)).

Quotes:

[first lines]
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce: You think I don't have what it takes?
Charles Gunn: I know you don't have what it takes?
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce: I guess we'll just have to find out.

Soundtrack:

Legion

The most skip-able episode of the season

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

If I was going to skip one episode in season two, "Blood Money" would probably be it. Nothing much happens and it doesn't make a lot of sense in the over all plot line. You could watch Anne in "The Thin Dead Line" and really pick up everything you need to know to follow the story. If you're in a hurry to get through the season, you could probably skip "Blood Money" and not miss a thing.

Basically, "Blood Money" revolves around a fund raiser for the local teen shelter. Wolfram and Hart is sponsoring the event, which causes Angel to get involved. He tries to convince the woman who runs the shelter, Anne, that Wolfram and Hart are the bad guys. They're out to steal the money from her, not use it to help homeless teens. Anne doesn't want to believe it, at first. Slowly, she begins to see that Angel may be right. Meanwhile, Wes, Cordy and Gunn are struggling to make a go of it on their own. They want to keep Angel Investigations open and decide to rent an office for themselves. Also, a demon has come to town to challenge Angel to a duel. The two of the fought a few decades before but never got to finish the battle. Now he wants to know if he could beat Angel. He can't.

There are some good parts to this episode. I like Angel donating Cordy's clothes to Anne's shelter. His generosity will come up again in "The Thin Dead Line" and "Disharmony," so it's funny to see him actually giving Cordy's outfits away in this episode. He's gonna pay for that. Also, I like that Cordy's Angel Inc. logo continues to be so unpopular. No one can even tell it's suppose to be an Angel. (Gunn guesses "lobster.") It's just a cute running joke. And I like the benefit, where someone asks one of the actresses attending if her character's homosexuality is just a ratings grab or what? It's a nice little nod to BTVS, where Willow's homosexuality caused some controversy. Finally, you just have to laugh at that video Angel has shown. Wes dancing around, Cordy doing lines from milk commercials, the two of them bickering over the camera... It's just hilarious.

On the downside, I can't believe that no one mentions that Angel and Anne already know each other. How can "Blood Money" just ignore their history? In BTSV season two's "Lie to Me." Angel tried to talk Anne (who was then going by the name Chanterelle) out of her vampire obsession. Spike attacked Anne in that episode, ruining her romantic image of vampires of "the lonely ones" once and for all. And in BTVS season three's "Anne," Buffy saved Anne (who was then going by the name Lily) from a hell dimension. "Lily" took on Buffy's middle name, which is why she's called "Anne," now. I just don't understand why "Blood Money" misses all those references. Also, would a huge, profitable law firm like Wolfram and Hart really go to so much trouble to embezzle two million dollars? It seems like small change to them. And what was Angel's plan, again? Just to make Lila and Lindsey look bad? It seems like this was a really complex way to go about embarrassing them.

My favorite part of the episode: Gunn, Cordy and Wes arguing over the name of their new detective agency. All three of them want to name it after themselves, which is pretty funny.