"She" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Angel and the thirteenth episode in the series. It was written by Marti Noxon with David Greenwalt and also directed by David Greenwalt. It was originally broadcast on February 8, 2000, on The WB network.
Synopsis[]
INTERNATIONAL FILM STAR BAI LING GUEST-STARS — Angel joins forces with a warrior princess to save the enslaved women of her homeland from a dangerous patriarchal society of fierce warriors.[1]
Summary[]
At a party in Cordelia's new apartment, Wesley participates with an enthusiast dance, but, when Cordelia's friend asks Angel to dance, he imagines himself even more enthusiastically, preventing him from saying yes. Angel retreats into the kitchen, where phantom Dennis offers him a beer.
Elsewhere, a man standing watch at an ice factory picks up a can of beer and drinks it. He hears voices crying from inside the coffin-sized crate he's guarding. He breaks open the box, then stands staring in shock at his discovery.
In the Angel Investigations offices the next morning, Cordelia tells Angel he wasn't any fun at the party and even Wes was "cooler." Wesley checks the office fridge for leftover canapés. Realizing his friend is short on cash, Angel offers Wesley a staff position at Angel Investigations, which Cordelia approves — reassured by Angel that the hiring will not entail a cut in her paycheck. Cordelia suddenly has visions of a man being burned alive from the inside.
With no sewer access to the Jerico Ice Factory, Wesley's first job is to drive Angel to the scene indicated in Cordelia's visions. Inside the facility, Angel finds the incinerated corpse of Peter Wilkers as well as the crate he was guarding, now containing only ice. Hearing a noise from another section of the factory, Angel discovers the presence of a humanoid demon named Tay. He tells them he is from another dimension, sent to bring back a vicious demon, a "vessel of pure rage," which has escaped from his realm into an unsuspecting L.A.
Angel begins his investigation by breaking into Wilkers' office and pulling the factory files. Jimmying open the desk's top drawer, Angel finds an envelope containing an invoice for Jerico Ice and a large amount of cash. Angel is then surprised by the sudden appearance of a female demon, who effortlessly knocks him out of the way with a blow that scorches his arm. Receiving a call on her cell phone, the demon leaves in haste, pulling up the hood before she climbs into a vehicle.
Recovering quickly enough to give chase, Angel calls Cordelia on a bad cell phone connection and describes the attractive demon so she and Wesley can begin their research. Angel follows the demon to an art gallery, but she asks for the help of the museum security, telling them a man in a black coat is following her. As cover, Angel removes his coat and begins to lecture about one of the paintings to a group of people who stand rapt. The security guards move past, and Angel sees his quarry head toward the back of the building. Wrapping up his presentation to the applause of his audience, Angel follows.
Wesley discovers that the men of the Oden Tal demon species are called Vigories. Reading from an ancient volume, he tells Cordelia that the Vigories are said to be fierce warriors, and the women live enslaved to them. Also learning that the Vigories are herbivores and must eat half their weight in partially rotted vegetation each day, Cordelia and Wesley leave the office to go looking for compost.
In a storage room at the back of the gallery, the female demon turns when Angel comes in behind her. Realizing he is a vampire, she orders him to leave, but has no attention to spare to forcibly eject him. At that moment, wind, lightening, and thunder spring, and there is a disturbance in the air near the room's back wall. A swirling portal forms, and a naked demon girl drops out of the portal and hits the floor hard. As Angel pulls over a tarp to cover her, he notices the demon's smooth forehead and of the raised ridges running along her upper spine.
At that moment, Tay and his all-male demon team break into the room armed with daggers. The female demon and Angel fight them, but Tay abducts the newly arrived girl and drives away with her. Looking helplessly after the speeding vehicle, Angel asks the female demon what will happen to the girl and learns that she will be "unmade."
The male demons take the frightened girl to their base, where they use a clamping tool to cut out the raised ridges extending down from the girl's nape to between her shoulder blades. The girl screams in agony at the first cut.
At Angel's apartment, he brings his wary guest a bandage for the shallow cut on her arm while she takes a look around. In response to her challenge that vampires are known killers, Angel tells her he was cursed, then evades her skeptical theory that he's been "cursed to help people," focusing the inquiry on her situation instead. The demon accepts Angel's invitation to tell her story and introduces herself as Jhiera, a princess from the Oden Tal dimension, dedicated to helping other female refugees escape her home world to the relative safety of L.A. Jhiera tells Angel that for the women of Oden Tal, the personality is located in an area of the body called the "ko," the source of their desires and passions.
At this, Jhiera turns her back to Angel and shows him the raised ridges running for several inches along her spine. Angel reacts to her nearness and bends his head closer to her neck. He listens as Jhiera tells him that the men of her dimension control the women by cutting out the ko, thus removing their "physical and sexual power," their volition. Jhiera begins to circle Angel as she explains that young women of Oden Tal must learn to control the raw power of their maturing ko, to which men of this world respond involuntarily. She tells Angel of her own struggle, with the help of the frozen water, to contain the "heat under her skin."
Jhiera proceeds to demonstrate her power to arouse them both, as well as her iron control of that power. Angel, fighting for self-control, moves a few steps away and asks about the incinerated corpse at the ice factory, and about the other four men crisped to death over the past year. Jhiera grows defensive of her manifesto and starts to storm off, but Angel blocks her path. Her power flashes to the surface, and they are drawn to each other until Jhiera damps the intensity of her heat. Telling him again to stay out of her way, she escapes.
Wesley and Cordelia find Tay's team headquartered in a large plant nursery, where they overhear their plans to capture Princess Jhiera, cut her, and take her back to Oden Tal to signal the end of all rebellion.
Jhiera, meanwhile, returns to Palm Ridge Spa, where the other female demons are being kept, rendered safe by lying in whirlpool tubs filled with ice. Jhiera informs the spa's proprietor, Mars, that this sanctuary has been compromised and the girls must be moved a safer location. She says they will leave the following day.
In the meantime, unable to contact Angel by cellphone, Cordelia and Wesley barely escape detection at the Vigories' base. They return to Angel's apartment to seek his help, and they find him just emerging from the shower. Upon hearing their report that Tay's group plans an assault on an undisclosed location that recently started receiving large shipments of ice, Angel remembers the address listed on the invoice he lifted from Wilkers' office. Determined to get there first, Angel gathers his team and heads to the Palm Ridge Spa.
Arriving at the spa, Angel leaves Cordelia and Wesley to act as lookouts. Angel brushes past Mars and, finding Jhiera with the still-somnolent girls, tells her that Tay is closer behind than she thinks. At that moment, Cordelia rushes in to report Tay's approach. Cordelia and Wesley are still rousing the girls toward the back exit, when Tay and his team burst in. Jhiera and Angel engage Tay and his men in a fight, and the two manage to hold their own until Wesley and Cordelia are taken hostage. When presented with Tay's ultimatum to hand over the refugees or see the humans die, Jhiera says: "Then they die." As she leaves, Cordelia and Wesley break away from their captors.
Outside, Jhiera makes her way towards the cab of the truck loaded with crates of ice-packed refugee girls. She is just steps away from freedom when two of the Vigories grab her and restrain her. Tay holds up the cutting tool and prepares to mutilate her. Angel appears and grabs Tay in a headlock, threating to snap his neck unless the Vigories release Jhiera. As soon as they do, Angel tells Jhiera to get the girls to safety. She climbs into the cab of the truck and drives away. As soon as Jhiera is out of sight, Angel releases Tay and tells him to go back to Oden Tal, revealing his vamp face to reinforce his threat.
The next day, Angel arrives in the office first and squeezes a bag of whole coffee beans to test Cordelia's theory that he can effectively grind the coffee with his "vampire strength." The bag bursts, scattering coffee beans everywhere, just as Cordelia and Wesley come in the front door. Wesley slips and falls, then starts to sweep the beans up with his bare hands, apologizing for making a mess. Standing up, Wesley also apologizes for being taken hostage by Tay's men. Angel reassure his friend and compliments him on a job well done, and Wesley express his regard for Angel. Jhiera then walks in. Cordelia asks if they can offer her anything, such as a couple of hostages to kill. Angel shows Jhiera into his office and closes the door.
After ascertaining that the other women are safe, away from the city, Angel again tells Jhiera that he'll stop her if she crosses the line and endangers people of his world while trying to protect people from hers. Tensely, Jhiera looks at Angel, then agrees with his terms. She hesitates, and he grows breathless. As Jhiera leaves, Angel notices her ko glowing.
Continuity[]
- Having assisted Angel in Cordelia in "Parting Gifts," "Somnambulist," and "Expecting," Wesley becomes an official member of Angel Investigations.
- Angel will say once again he doesn't dance in "Judgment," when he will also display his inability to sing.
Appearances[]
Individuals[]
- Angel
- Cordelia Chase
- Diego
- Jhiera
- Laura
- Mars
- Dennis Pearson
- Shari
- Tay
- Peter Wilkers
- Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
- King of Oden Tal (Only mentioned)
- Unidentified shaman (She) (Only mentioned)
Organizations and titles[]
- Angel Investigations
- Kalderash (Only mentioned)
- Seer
- Shaman (Only mentioned)
Species[]
Locations[]
- Earth
- Los Angeles
- Angel Investigations offices
- California Flower Mart
- Japanese American National Museum
- Jerico Ice Factory
- Palm Ridge Spa
- Pearson Arms Apartments
- Peter Wilkers Private Security
- Los Angeles
- Oden Tal (Only mentioned)
Objects[]
Death count[]
- Peter Wilkers, burned by an Oden Tal demon.
Behind the scenes[]
Production[]
- Writer Tim Minear had originally put the dance David Boreanaz performs in his imagination into "Sense & Sensitivity" but removed it on Joss Whedon's request; "Plus," Minear says, "we wanted to save it until it was just right. Here's this guy who looks like this, and he's a complete social retard. I think we've had a lot of success playing that aspect of the character."[2]
- Angel follows Jhiera into the real Japanese American National Museum, located in Los Angeles.
- The end credits feature additional footage of Wesley and Angel's dancing skills. This is the second time in the Buffyverse that a scene is played as the credits roll, a format also used in the episodes "The Puppet Show" and "Judgment."
- Bai Ling, who played Jhiera, said of her character: "[She's] so cool. She seduced Angel, and yet she's very dangerous and independent. She's got all those things that a modern woman wants, yet she's a princess. She has her own duty to do good things for the people in her land. She's got all this complexity and beauty." She also said that the character was considered for a return,[3] but it never happened.
- This is the second guest appearance for Sean Gunn, who played Lucas in "Hero."
- Jhiera's mission is an allusion to ending Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) because women in some societies undergo the procedure to make them marriageable. Women on and off screen are having the source of sexual arousal removed to control their behavior and ultimately them.
Broadcast[]
- "She" had an audience of 3.6 million households upon its original airing.[4]
Pop culture references[]
- Cordelia asks whether Jhiera acted like Carrie, referring to the character's telekinetic abilities.
- Going undercover as a museum guide, Angel gives a professional exegesis on one of the painter Édouard Manet's most famous works, which he refers to as "La Musique."
- Angel implies that he is the eponymous demon of the poem "Le Vampire," published by the poet Charles Baudelaire in Les Fleurs du mal in 1857.
- Cordelia's wish fulfillment dream features the high-end department store Neiman Marcus having a going-out-of-business sale.
- On the hunt for "the world's biggest compost heap" at the plant nursery with Cordelia, Wesley is distracted by a flower he calls Nancy's Petticoat.
Music[]
- 60 Channels — "Light Years On"
- Extreme Music Library — "Pure Roots"
- Supreme Beings of Leisure — "Strangelove Addiction"
- Morphic Field — "In Time"
- Christophe Beck and Robert J. Kral — original score
International titles[]
- Czech: "Ona" (She)
- Finnish: "Paholaisnainen" (Devil Woman)
- French: "Guerre des sexes" (War of the Sexes)
- German: "Die Frauen des Oden-Tals" (The Women of Oden-Tal)
- Hungarian: "Fagyos szenvedély" (Frozen Passion)
- Italian: "Jhiera"
- Portuguese (Brazil): "Ela" (She)
- Russian: "Она" (She)
- Spanish (Latin America): "La princesa Jhiera" (The Princess Jhiera)
- Spanish (Spain): "Ella" (She)
- Turkish: "O (Kız)" (That (Girl))
Gallery[]
Promotional stills[]
Advertisement[]
Quotes[]
Cordelia: "I was so glad you came. You know how parties are? You're always worried that no one's gonna suck the energy out of the room like a giant black hole of boring despair. But, there you were in the clinch!" |
Cordelia: "Well this is great! Now we're really— Do I have to take a pay cut?" |
Angel: "No." |
Cordelia: "A team!" |
Wesley: "You won't be disappointed. There's, uh, something in my eye." |
Wesley: "Perhaps we need a plan." |
Angel: "Here's the plan. We go in, I start hittin' people hard in the face. See where it takes us." |
Cordelia: "Wow. Groveling isn't just a way of life for you, it's an art." |
Angel: "Hey Dennis. Still dead? I know the feeling." |
References[]
- ↑ "EpisodeGuideSeason1." Geocities.ws. Retrieved on January 9, 2023.
- ↑ Edward Gross, "ANGEL: Season One, Episode By Episode with Tim Minear - Part 3." TimMinear.net 5.0, August 28, 2000.
- ↑ Matt Springer, "Some Like it Hot." Buffy the Vampire Slayer Magazine #17 (UK, February 2001).
- ↑ "Nielsen Ratings for Angel's First Season." Nielsen Ratings for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, & Firefly. Archived from the original on July 18, 2008.