Are You Now or Have You Ever Been
Review: Filler with the sole purpose of inserting Gunn a little more firmly into the AI Fang Gang, and kicking off the Darla arc with a bang, which it succeeded in doing. However, the episode itself it little better than mediocre--not out and out bad, but not stellar. Just kind of there. Knowing how good Charisma and Jay are, their scenes should have crackled with sparkling wit and intensity but instead the Cordy/Gunn pairing is a bit forced and stilted in this episode, other than the excellent scene in the hospital waiting room. Any progress made was then beaten to death with a sledgehammer by the Afterschool Special end of Act IV, in which born-again Cordy gives Gunn the speech that will just wipe his self-destructive tendencies away. Other than that, however, parts of the episode were solidly enjoyable. The tease, which takes place in Caritas, was particularly good--as were most of the Darla/Angel dream sequences. And Wesley and Angel's interactions--slashy as they are--were wildly entertaining and injected a welcome note of levity into this heavy handed clunker of an A plot.

My rating: 5/10

Next week, Carrie....