Angel - S1E19

Sanctuary
First Aired: Tuesday May 2, 2000

Angel is now harboring Faith and begins to try to reason with her. Wolfram and Hart learn about this situation and send another assassin to kill both, but the biggest surprise is when Buffy shows up.

Continuing where the previous episode ended, Angel has brought Faith back to his offices and lets her stay in his bed. The next morning, Angel tries to act a bit nonchalant about it, but Wesley becomes enraged because Faith had just tortured him the previous evening. He storms out and Cordelia goes paid vacation to stay away from Faith. Wolfram and Hart learn about this curious situation and employ another demon to kill both targets now. As Angel starts to get through to Faith, the creature attacks and they kill it. While he is consoling Faith afterwards, Buffy shows up and begins to make matters worse. Elsewhere, Wesley has been propositioned by the Council Elite to bring Faith back to England. His reward would be that he would be reinstated. Wesley seemingly agrees, but shows up to Angels to let them know about the trap. Faith bolts for the roof and, with Buffy following her, begin to take the men on. Meanwhile, Kate is brought information by Lindsay about how Angel is harboring Faith. The group is able to take care of the Council men, but Angel is immediately arrested by Kate. At the station, Buffy is surprised to learn that Kate knows about him being a vampire, but before they can send him to his cell, they notice Faith. She had arrived earlier at the station to turn herself in. With her in custody, Angel is free to go. He and Buffy have a heated discussion that leads with each other hurting themselves emotionally. The episode ends with Angel and Wesley discussing their hopes that Faith will survive and find some sort of peace.

Again, Eliza Dushku does an amazing job and, surprisingly, SMG does an even better job of acting in this episode then she does on her own show. It must have something to do with the writing team dealing with more "sophisticated" themes. The rooftop action scene was bar-none the best fighting scene I have seen so far since the beginning of this first season. Also, I started to like Lindsay more in this episode then that others. His bravado didn't see as over the top. In the end, this was a nice complimentary episode to the previous one.

Score: 4 / 5