Season 4, Episode 6
Written by Joss Whedon
Directed by Joss Whedon
Original Airdate: 10 November 2002
“Perhaps the whole point of this experiment is hair?”
Wesley
REGULAR CAST
- David Boreanaz as Angel
- Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase
- J. August Richards as Charles Gunn
- Amy Acker as Winifred ‘Fred’ Burkle
- Vincent Kartheiser as Connor Angel
- Alexis Denisof as Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
SPECIAL GUEST STAR
- Andy Hallett as Lorne
GUEST CAST
- Vladamir Kulich as The Beast
CO-STARRING
- Sven Holmberg as Delivery Guy
- Kam Heskin as Lola
SYNOPSIS
Lorne sings and speaks to an unseen crowd and starts to tell a story, that begins with Cordelia and Angel talking in the courtyard about love. Cordy continues to question the potential love they had and Angel tells her why the answer to her question is uncertain. He just wants her back as his friend and Cordelia just wants to remember who she is. Lorne arrives with the answer, bottle used for a memory spell that supposedly carries no side effects or downsides. Angel questions it, but Cordelia is more than eager to try it if it means she’ll get her memory back.
Wesley receives a call from Lorne asking for his assistance in the spell while Angel goes upstairs to wake Fred and Gunn. Lorne sets up a circular setting for the spell in the lobby floor as Wesley arrives and meets up awkwardly with Fred. Fred vaguely informs him that her mission was completed, while from afar, Gunn realizes that Wesley helped Fred try to kill her professor. Cordelia leaves her bathroom and finds Angel waiting in her room. They talk briefly about Connor and Cordelia continues to try to find the answer to her questions about her status with Angel. In the office, Gunn confronts Wesley about his helping Fred deal with her professor. Wesley tries to explain him behaviour, but it really boils down to the attack by Justine and how his friends failed to support him.
The gang hold hands and sit in a circle around candles and the bottle for the spell. The bottle spins and lights shoot out into each of the six gathered. The immediate effects make them all feel woozy and out of place as they wander and stumble. Cordelia suddenly freaks out and smashes the bottle with her boot, ending the strange effects. She starts on a tirade about kidnapping and sophomore pranks in Sunnydale, showing that her memory has been restored, but she thinks she’s the popular girl from Sunnydale High School at a time before she even knew about vampires and the Hellmouth. Further conversation with the rest of the gang reveals that they’ve all been set back to their high school years. Fred and Cordelia go back to being ordinary high school students, Wesley a student of the Watcher’s Academy and Gunn returns to being a rebellious street kid. Cordy marvels at Angel, but his memory has travelled the furthest, back to before he was a vampire when he was just Liam. Liam starts to lash out at them because he doesn’t recognize the world he’s in and he discovers that he’s missing his Irish accent.
While Liam wonders what happened to his accent, the rest of the gang question what brought them together and what they should do to solve the mystery of their current situation. Cordelia gets upset over her drastically shorter hair and Liam speculates that the devil is responsible for their situation. Gunn and Wesley butt heads on plans and when Wesley tries to demonstrate his toughness with a karate demonstration, he unintentionally activates a stake weapon up his sleeve. Things start to seem really strange when Gunn and Fred find Lorne passed out behind the counter. Meanwhile, Connor saves a young woman from two vampires, staking one as the other gets free. The woman offers to repay the favour, but he’s not willing to pay for the services she’s offering.
Back at the hotel, Wesley tapes Lorne to a seat in the lobby while arguing with Gunn over whether to cut Lorne’s head off or keep him around for potential information. When Cordelia questions why they’re not freaking out at the sight of a green man with horns, Wesley and Gunn both reveal that vampires and demons are real and they both have experience with them. Fred examines an unconscious Lorne while the guys continue to fight, only this time physically, over whether to kill Lorne. Cordelia breaks it up and Wesley shares his theory that they’re being kept in the hotel with a vampire as a test.
They all start to wonder why they don’t look 17, like they feel, and collectively decide to hunt for the vampire that will supposedly set them free once they kill it. Cordelia and Liam team up and go one way while the other three head in the other direction. Liam struggles to adjust to this strange world that is hundreds of years beyond his life. Cordy tries to comfort him, but while she turns away, Liam vamps out and much to his own surprise, realizes that he’s a vampire. In the bathroom, Liam tries to deal with his lack of reflection, vampire face, and the fact that he’s going to be killed once the gang realize he’s a vampire.
Liam and Cordelia return to search for the vampire while the others continue to search and Fred speculates that they’re dealing with aliens rather than vampires. They all meet up in the lobby again and a nervous Liam decides to bail on the hotel before the others realize he’s a vampire. Once outside though, Liam spots all the cars on the street and frightened, returns to the hotel to escape the “demons.” Wesley introduces a new theory: that the vampire may be one of them. He pulls out a cross and it’s passed around the group. When it finally reaches Liam, he manages to hide his smoking hand until a distraction develops. Lorne wakes up and although his memory has been unaffected, his spell wasn’t as perfect as he thought.
In a moment of intended self-preservation, Liam hits Lorne when the demon identifies him as a vampire to the rest of the group. Everyone gets put on guard and when calm talking fails, a fight breaks out between Liam, Wesley and Gunn. The girls run in separate directions and Liam chases after Cordelia. She screams loudly when he catches her and it draws a lurking Connor out of the shadows. Connor throws Liam out of a window and into the hotel kitchen and Cordelia offers to reward him for his assistance. Connor finds Liam in the kitchen and a fight ensues between them. Upstairs, Fred comes out of hiding and Lorne tries to get her to release him so he can fix the spell. Liam rants to Connor about fathers and teases him about Cordelia while the two continue to battle it out.
Lorne mixes a concoction together to restore their memories and places a touch of it on Fred’s tongue. She later appears at the window above the kitchen and stops the fight between Angel and Connor. In the lobby, the gang pick up the mess left by the spell as Lorne puts a touch of the mixture on Cordy’s tongue. She pauses a minute as she gets a vision of a frightening demon and then runs off. Lorne finishes up his story at the lounge much to the disappointment of the crowd. Back at the hotel, Angel catches up with Cordelia and she reveals that she remembers everything again. She needs to be alone, but he has to ask her a final question: Were they in love? She tells him they were and walks off, leaving Angel behind.
TRIVIA
Joss Whedon says this episode grew out of his desire to see Wesley return to the “bumbling moron” of the past. “We were reminiscing about the days when he was a complete idiot, and so we thought we wanted to see old-school Wesley but also cool, new-school Wesley,” Whedon explains.
Whedon gave Lorne’s spell the side-effect of making the gang “high” to differentiate this memory spell from a similar one used in the episode Tabula Rasa, readily admitting the spell itself is “lazy writing,” meant only to set the plot in motion.
This episode took much longer to film due to the cast finding it difficult to stop laughing. Amy Acker and Andy Hallett ruined dozens of takes by giggling, and Alexis Denisof and David Boreanaz prolonged shooting for an hour and a half when they couldn’t stop laughing. To get the scene, Denisof explains that he and Boreanaz resolved not to look at each other; on the episode’s audio commentaries, Whedon points out background shots where Boreanaz is still failing to keep a straight face.
CONTINUITY
Most of episode takes place immediately after the previous episode, Supersymmetry. Lorne’s narration must take place after the season as a whole for him to know the consequences of the spell. Quite when the scenes take place is unknown: it has to happen after Home, but could even happen after Not Fade Away, as the events of this episode lead to the rest of the show’s arc. We don’t even know who he’s talking to, as the audience that we hear have either gone or never existed by the end of the episode.
When Connor first appeared as a teenager, it was mentioned that he was sixteen years old (Tomorrow) but, in this episode, Cordelia says he is already 18.
When Cordelia, under the spell, first sees Angel, she says: “Hello, salty goodness,” the same thing she said upon first seeing him in Never Kill a Boy on the First Date.
This episode marks the first appearance of the being later known as Jasmine, whilst possessing Cordelia. As it’ll be revealed in Inside Out, Jasmine is released from the safeguard, set in place by the Powers That Be to hold her at bay, which is broken by the spell the group performs.
The age the characters regress to is unclear; Fred states “not one of y’all look 17,” implying that would be the age they think they are — although she may have simply been “rounding up” — but Cordelia has no recollection of Slayers or vampires nor does she recognize Angel, despite meeting him when she was 16 (Never Kill a Boy on the First Date) and learning about the supernatural world in her sophomore year.
When Wesley talks about the test Watchers have done to Slayers, he is referring to the Tento di Cruciamentum, a test first seen when Buffy underwent it in Helpless.
Fred speaks to a plant in this episode, as she previously did in That Old Gang of Mine. Spike mentions that speaking to plants might be one of Illyria’s powers in Origin.
Fred confuses a Slayer with the thrash band of the same name. In Doomed, Forrest also mentioned this connection.
Fred asks if anyone else took a personality test recently, with questions “about politics, and your bowel movements, and if you want to be a florist…” This would seem to be the same florist question test that was mentioned in Doppelgangland – in which wanting to be a florist seems to equate to ‘crazy’.
Cordelia says Connor is 18 years old, the first time he is given a concrete age after returning from Quor’toth in The Price. See above though, regarding how accurate she is.
This episode follows a similar plot to the episodes Tabula Rasa (erased memories) and Band Candy (reversion to teenage personalities). Like Buffy in Halloween, Angel mistakes cars for demons. Oddly in Tabula Rasa, soulless Spike identifies himself with a path of righteousness after discovering he is a vampire, while Angel resorts to being evil, despite having a soul.
While Lorne is unconscious, Gunn suggests cutting off his head. There’s No Place Like Plrtz Glrb showed that this would not have actually killed him.
Lorne is seen smoking on stage during his narration. He was also seen finishing off a cigarette in Fredless.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
EPISODE
Supersymmetry / Apocalypse, Nowish
STORY ORDER
Supersymmetry / Potential
The Watcher's Guide 