Angel: I've Got You Under My Skin   Rewatch 
September 10, 2015 6:22 AM - Season 1, Episode 14 - Subscribe

Angel and Wesley exorcise a demon from a child, then find out that the demon wasn't the problem.

The theme of family (especially loss) is writ large across this episode, with Angel accidentally calling Wesley "Doyle" and mourning his friend, while simultaneously trying to keep a family together despite unimaginable evil tearing it apart. There's also one of our earliest glimpses into Wesley's relationship with his father: "A father doesn't have to be possessed to terrorize his children. He just has to..."
posted by Etrigan (2 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
of the subtext of “monstrous humanity” becoming text. The child psychopath is far more terrifying than the demon (which is the point). How did he get the gasoline, though?

Characters being called by their deceased former colleagues’ names is always a great recipe for angst. The last scene, about protecting someone and keeping your family together, is a glaringly obvious thematic callback/return to Angel’s angst about Doyle, but I like it anyway.

This one has some atmospheric creepiness and a couple of relatively unexpected twists.

Cordelia has a point about most nursery rhymes being creepy and inappropriate for children.

Wesley’s slip-up about his father is a nice moment. Poor guy gets stabbed in the neck for the first time, but not the last. First inkling that he might betray Angel at some point. I was really hoping that he would succeed on his own, but I guess that would be too soon in his development.
posted by ilana at 1:00 PM on September 14, 2015


The gasoline could've been for the family's lawnmower or something like that. The final scenes of this one are genuinely very, very creepy to me, where it's not just that the kid is a psychopath, but that he apparently has no potential for good, or remorse, or anything, and Seth is of course terrified for him as the cops take him away. Just the hopelessness of it all hits me hard for some reason.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:31 PM on October 25, 2015


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