I’m finding it very difficult to rant about this episode. Not because it was good; on the contrary, it was 44 of the most excruciating minutes of my life. Just totally, completely, utterly dreadful television. The fact is that there was so much badness that I have no idea where to begin.

I suppose I could attack the plot. What the hell made them think that anyone out there was dying for more werewolf crap? Yeah, yeah, I know that Angel isn’t Buffy, and they should be able to tackle the same subjects in their own fashion, but honestly? The werewolf stuff is cheesy and it really only worked on Buffy because it was centered on a compelling character (mmmmOz), not some vacant and vapid blonde mouth breather. Oh, wait, now I get it. They were trying to cast a female, non-Brit version of Spike to compensate for his relative lack of screen time.

Speaking of that show-killing asshat, there was still far too much of him given that they went no further with his predicament than they did last week. And what the fuck is wrong with Marsters? Did he forget how to do Spike’s accent over the hiatus? And since when does Spike say things like “growly?” That’s Buffy-speak and, last I checked, it wasn’t his style.

Hey, do you think Gunn might be evil? Because I’m absolutely, positively sure that they’re not trying to make us feel that way at all. What? Just because it was mentioned it in every single fucking scene doesn’t necessarily mean they’re trying to plant seeds of doubt and suspicion in the viewers’ minds. My theory is that the writers got lazy this week; they only wrote three scenes, then repeated them a few times and let the actors ad-lib the changes. Do you doubt it? Go watch the Spike/Fred, Angel/Wolfette interactions again and tell me how each successive conversation was substantially different.

There’s a lot of other stuff I could get into…the annoying camera work in the kitchen scene, the squicktastic, straight-from-a-women’s-prison-movie “strip and scrub,” that ridiculous pop music playing over the last scene, Fred…but I’m just too damn tired. And seeing as Marsters will be parading his pasty flesh some more next week, I think it’d be best if I saved my strength.