"Dear Boy" is the fifth episode of the second season of Angel and the twenty-seventh episode in the series. Written and directed by David Greenwalt, it was originally broadcast on October 24, 2000, on The WB network.
Synopsis[]
WHEN GOOD VAMPIRES GO BAD — Angel's continued restless nights take him all the way back to 1860 London and his first encounter with Drusilla, but when he sees Darla in his waking life, Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn fear he has gone off the deep end and may revert to his evil ways.[1]
Summary[]
Angel wakes up to bickering between Cordelia and Wesley, interrupted by Cordelia getting visions with sketchy details. While Cordelia and Wesley try to find the demon and location from Cordelia's visions, Angel daydreams of Darla. The team arrives at an underground water facility, where two groups of cloaked men are fighting in front of a Thrall demon, Turfog. The men turn to attack Angel and friends. Gunn uses his new axe to destroy the demon, and all the cloaked men stop fighting. Walking home, Angel is shocked to see Darla walking the streets.
In a flashback, Angel walks through the streets until he finds Darla, who has just killed a streetwalker and her customer. She points out a young woman to Angel: Drusilla. He regards the woman, pure and with the gift of visions, as a challenge and a delight.
Angel tells Wesley and Cordelia about seeing Darla in his dreams and in real life, but they think he's starting to lose his sanity.
Lindsey and Darla talk about their progress with their manipulations of Angel.
At a police station, Kate works a desk job, having been transferred due to her strange obsession with the occult. She receives notice from a friend that Angel has moved his company into the old Hyperion Hotel.
A potential paying customer, Harold Jeakins, presents a case to Cordelia and Wesley: he believes his wife is either being frequently abducted by aliens, or is cheating on him with another man. Angel Investigations then spies on the woman and discover she is having an affair, but Angel spoils their cover by expressing disgust at the job they're doing, confronting the woman and telling her to talk to her husband.
Having ruined the job and stopped the team from getting paid, Cordelia argues with Angel, who spots Darla. When he confronts her, she insists she's a human woman named DeEtta Kramer. Angel gives chase, only to see Darla step out into the sunlight. He almost gets arrested for harassing her, and Cordelia, Gunn, and Wesley fear for his sanity.
Angel goes to Caritas and sings to the Host to get information about Darla. The Host refuses to help him, saying he needs to stay away from Darla.
Angel finds the Kramer home and lurks outside. Inside, Darla, beside an actor hired to play DeEtta's husband, waits for the plan to take form. Meanwhile, Cordelia and Wesley warn Gunn about the dangers of an evil Angel and Darla combined.
In a flashback, Angelus and Darla fool around in a convent while a terrified Drusilla watches on. Although Darla doesn't seem to approve, Angelus announces that he's decided to make Drusilla a vampire, regarding it as the perfect torment as her insanity will now last forever.
Darla and Lindsey's plan goes into effect when Angel breaks into the home in time to find he has just been set up for murdering Darla's supposed husband. The police, including Kate Lockley, arrive on scene, and Angel is barely able to escape without being captured. Kate talks with Darla and believes all of her lies about Angel — including that Angel was stalking her.
Angel grabs Darla and takes her away to the underground facility. The facility was formerly a convent, and Angel asks his sire if she can feel it. He does everything he can to bring out the real Darla, and with some persuasion, she resumes her old personality. The two kiss and Darla tries to convince Angel to let her make him happy. He tells her she never made him happy, because he didn't have a soul when he knew her, and one needs a soul to be truly happy. She persists and tries to bring his demon out.
Leading a SWAT team, Kate breaks into the Hyperion to search for Angel. She's determined that Angel is and always will be evil. Cordelia and Wesley try to convince Kate that Darla was once a vampire and that Angel didn't kill anyone. Gunn points out that Darla's story is a lie because Angel, as a vampire, couldn't break into a house without a valid invitation from someone inside the house, unless the legal residents were already dead. Kate counters that, while they're so busy fighting a grand battle against the forces of darkness, they seem to forget all the innocents who die in the crossfire, and those are the people Kate cares about. She affirms that she believes Angel is at the very least partly responsible for all those deaths.
Darla refuses to give up on Angel, but he warns her that, now that she has a soul, she will begin to feel the weight of all the evil she has done. She leaves him then, and he is stuck underground until sunset. Angel broods in his room until a fearful Cordelia and Wesley confront him to make sure he's not evil. He tells them that much trouble is on the way, and he's looking forward to it.
Continuity[]
- Angel declares his age as 247. Considering he was sired in 1753 ("Becoming, Part One"), he was 26 years old at the time.
- Angel discovers Darla is alive; he killed her in "Angel," Wolfram & Hart resurrected her in "To Shanshu in L.A.", and she has been haunting his dreams since "First Impressions."
- The flashbacks show Angelus seeking Drusilla for being pure and making her insane in her convent, as he first described in the episode "Lie to Me."
- Darla refers to Buffy as a cheerleader; she was one in Hemery High School (The Origin, Part One) and temporarily in Sunnydale High ("Witch").
- Darla complains that Buffy was capable of making Angel happy, which resulted in him losing his soul in "Surprise."
Appearances[]
Individuals[]
- Angel
- Jack Carlson
- Cordelia Chase
- Darla
- Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan
- Drusilla (Only in flashbacks)
- Durthock the Child Eater
- Charles Gunn
- Claire Jeakins
- Harold Jeakins
- Stephen Kramer
- Kate Lockley
- Marty
- Lindsey McDonald
- Montgomery
- Mordar the Bentback
- Lord Nichols (Only in flashbacks)
- Rico (Only mentioned)
- Buffy Summers (Only mentioned)
- Turfog
- Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
- Darla's guard
- Drusilla's mother (Only in flashbacks)
- Unidentified prostitute (Dear Boy) (Only in flashbacks)
Organizations and titles[]
Species[]
Locations[]
- Los Angeles, USA
- 1409 Galloway
- Caritas
- Frank's (Only mentioned)
- Franklin Hotel
- Hyperion Hotel
- Lady of Lochenbee (Only mentioned)
- Saint Bridget's
- Wolfram & Hart Los Angeles branch
- London, England (Only in flashbacks)
Objects[]
- Blood
- Charles Gunn's axe
- Cross
- NKO714
- Soul (Only mentioned)
Death count[]
- A Thrall demon, axed by Gunn.
- Stephen Kramer, blood drained by a vampire.
Behind the scenes[]
Broadcast[]
- "Dear Boy" had an audience of 3.6 million households upon its original airing.[2]
Pop culture references[]
- Wesley mentions the fictional characters Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe as example of great and eccentric detectives.
- Kate refers to her desk as Siberia, the remote region of Russia known for its penal labor camps during the Soviet Union.
- Cordelia compares Angel and Darla to the criminal couple Bonnie and Clyde.
Goofs[]
- After singing at Caritas, Angel apologizes turns the monitor of the karaoke machine off. When the camera shows him again from a distance, the monitor is on again.
Music[]
- David Boreanaz — "Everybody Have Fun Tonight"
- Damn! — "Stinky Stinky Ashtray"
- Robert J. Kral — original score
International titles[]
- Czech: "Miláček" (Darling)
- Finnish: "Lontoon terveisiä" (Greetings from London)
- French: "Cher amour" (Dear Love)
- German: "Wiedersehen macht Feinde" (Reunions Make Enemies)
- Italian: "La trappola" (The Trap)
- Hungarian: "Drága fiam" (Dear Son)
- Portuguese (Brazil): "Meu Menino" (My Boy)
- Russian: "Милый мальчик" (Sweet Boy)
- Spanish (Latin America): "Querido Niño" (Dear Boy)
- Spanish (Spain): "Querido Niño" (Dear Boy)
- Turkish: "Kıymetli Çocuk" (Precious Child)
Gallery[]
Promotional stills[]
Behind the scenes[]
Advertisement[]
Quotes[]
| Harold: "Well, it's my wife, Claire, she's really a lovely..." |
| Wesley: "Go on, it's all right." |
| Harold: "She gets abducted by aliens, on a regular basis." |
| Wesley: "Aliens." |
| Cordy: "From outer space?" |
| Harold: “It’s more common than people realize — one minute she's there and the next — she always comes back in a day or so." |
| Angel: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to— I've been so out of it — lately, because of her. I saw her, here in town. Last night." |
| Cordy: "Oh no, not again. Look, I like Buffy as much as the next..." |
| Wesley: "Vampires don't come back from the dead." |
| Angel: "I did. And I saw her. I'm not crazy!" |
| Wesley: "Where?" |
| Angel: "Right between the clowns and the big, talking hot dog." |
| Wesley: "This is all just precautionary. When push comes to shove, Angel's our— we trust him." |
| Gunn: "I see." |
| Cordy: "It's not like he turns evil every time he gets this cranky." |
| Gunn: "He turns evil?" |
| Wesley: "Well, there are forces that can make Angel revert to Angelus, the vampire he was before he got a soul." |
| Gunn: "And as evil, blood-suck vampires go, how would you rate Angelus?" |
| Wesley: "Historically as bad as they come. Especially when he was with his sire, Darla." |
| Darla: "But you can escape. You can escape it all. Remember what it was like to get lost, huh? Every thought a million miles away, every part of you being alive! All you have to do is let me give you one little moment of happiness." |
| Angel: "You took me places, showed me things, huh? You blew the top off my head. But you never made me happy." |
| Darla: "But that— that cheerleader did? We were together 150 years! We shared everything. You're saying — never?" |
| Angel: "You couldn't understand." |
| Darla: "I understand alright. Guy gets taste of something fresh and he thinks he's touching god." |
References[]
- ↑ "Season Two." City of Angel. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011.
- ↑ "Nielsen Ratings for Angel's Second Season." Nielsen Ratings for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, & Firefly. Archived from the original on July 19, 2008.