Angel/Home

Home
Season 4, Episode 22
Airdate	May 7, 2003
Production Number	4ADH22
Written by	Tim Minear
Directed by	Tim Minear
← 4x21 Peace Out	5x01 → Conviction (1)
Angel — Season Four

Home is the twenty-second episode of the fourth season of Angel, and the eighty-eighth episode overall. Lilah returns from the dead to give Angel an offer that he can't refuse: Wolfram & Hart itself.

David Boreanaz (Angel), Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia Chase), J. August Richards (Charles Gunn), Amy Acker (Winifred "Fred" Burkle), Vincent Kartheiser (Connor), Andy Hallett (Lorne)

and Alexis Denisof (Wesley Wyndam-Pryce)

Guest Starring: Stephanie Romanov (Lilah Morgan), Jim Abele (Connor's Father)

Co-Starring: Jason Winer (Preston), Michael Halsey (Sirk), Jonathan Woodward (Knox), Merle Dandridge (Lacey), Jason Padgett (Suicidal Cop), James Calvert (Surgery Patient), Anthony Diaz-Perez (Hostage Father), Adrienne Brett Evans (Connor's Mother), Stacy Solodkin (Connor's Aunt), Emma Hunton (Connor's Kid Sister), Ariel Baker (Angel Greeter #1), Michael Ness (Angel Greeter #2), Alex Craig Mann (Angel Greeter #3), Nichole Pelerine (Angel Greeter #4), Joshua Grenrock (Angel Greeter #5)

Plot Overview

The gang of Angel Investigations are baffled when Lilah shows up with an offer from the Senior Partners. Having effectively ended world peace by killing Jasmine, they are going to allow Angel and crew the chance to run the rebuilt L.A. branch of Wolfram & Hart. While Angel is the most steadfast against the proposal, he stands the most temptation of using their resources, as a despondent Connor is still roaming the streets.

Notes

Monster of the Week

There is no monster of the week in this episode.

Body Count

There are no deaths in this episode.

Music

There is no licensed music in this episode.

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• Wolfram & Hart: Lilah has come back from the dead in order to make Angel Investigations an offer from the Senior Partners. Instead of being mortal enemies, they're offering Angel the entire Los Angeles branch of the firm. The firm was recently reopened after the Beast destroyed it.

• Big Bad?: Considering that the very evil Wolfram & Hart is offering them the Los Angeles branch of the firm for destroying hopes of world peace, maybe Jasmine wasn't so evil after all.

• Angel Investigations: Angel Investigations is absorbed into the corporate property of Wolfram & Hart once Angel agrees to take control.

• As part of the deal, Wolfram & Hart offer files and a bauble that are said to help in the fight against the First Evil. When Angel takes the deal, he takes the intel and bauble with him.

Characters

• Connor: Still reeling from having to kill his daughter, Connor has finally snapped. He holds a sporting goods store hostage and threatens to blow up people with homemade bombs until Angel comes and frees them. After their altercation, Angel erases everyone's memories of Connor and he is given a normal family life. In this life, his name is Ben and he's a brilliant high school student bound for any college he wishes to go to.

Referbacks

• Habeas Corpses: After the Beast rampaged through Wolfram & Hart, killing all of their employees, the recently deceased turned into mindless zombies. It was never clear what exactly made them into zombies, but it seemed to point to a contractual thing, like Lilah's return.

Lilah: Oh, it's back. Re-staffed and zombie-free.

• BtVS - 7x09 - Never Leave Me: The Watcher's council was destroyed by agents of the first evil, the season-spanning evil that threatened to open the Hellmouth and wreck havoc on the world. The council headquarters was blown up while in peak hours, killing everyone inside.

Sirk: There is no Council.

Trivia

The Show

• Final Appearance: This episode is the final appearance of Stephanie Romanov in the series as well as the Hyperion Hotel. It's also the last episode for Charisma Carpenter and Vincent Kartheiser as the part of the main cast.

• Crossover: The "nifty little bauble" does in fact play a role in the final battle to come on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Following this episode, Angel crosses over to the main series in the episode "End of Days".

Behind the Scenes

• Ratings: On its first airing, this episode scored a 3.4/5 in the overnight Nielsen ratings.

Allusions and References

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Lilah refers to the children's book by Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the book, Wily Wonka, the owner of a chocolate factory, holds a competition where several lucky kids are given an opportunity to tour the mysterious facility. At the end of the novel, Charlie is given the factory when the tour turned out to be a test.

Lilah: Just you and me, boss. Come on, Charlie. Let me show you around the Chocolate Factory.

• Dungeons and Dragons: Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D) is a pen-and-paper role-playing game designed by Gary Gygax in 1974. The fantasy game puts several players in the imagined environment of the dungeon master, who guides them on a game where the players become the characters and must accomplish some goal decided upon by the master.

Knox: No. I'm strictly R&D. Although occasionally some D&D.

• MacGyver: MacGyver is an adventure series that aired on ABC starring Richard Dean Anderson as an extremely resourceful ex-secret agent. MacGyver has become something of a cult symbol and is often used as an adjective or verb (e.g., "I MacGyvered a solution to this problem.") meaning to solve something with very little tools at hand.

Fred: You're like the MacGyver of Wolfram & Hart.

• Let's Make a Deal: Let's Make a Deal is a game show most regularly hosted by Monty Hall where the constestant is offered a small prize. From there the contestant can either take the safe bet or trade it in for something potentially bigger and better. However, it was just as likely that the "bigger" item was a gag prize or nothing at all.

Angel: This is what you came back from the dead for? To play Let's Make an Evil Deal?

• Die Hard: Die Hard is a series of films starring Bruce Willis as John McClane, a New York City police officer who winds up getting caught in the middle of a terrorism plot outside of his jurisdiction. In one scene in the first film, McClane is forced to travel through crawlspaces and elevator shafts in order to stop a terrorist plot that has his wife held captive.

Lilah: Die Hard your way up here?

Quotes

• Angel: Lilah.

Lilah: Angel. What's the matter, ace? Didn't think you were the only one who ever got to come back from Hell around here, did ya?

• Wesley: It's a lie.

Lilah: Lah. It's a Lilah.

• Lilah: I have been authorised to make you kids an offer.

Fred: You can't possibly think there's anything we'd want from you.

Lilah: I don't think you'll want it, but you'll take it. Because this is the offer of a lifetime... just not, you know... mine.

• Gunn: You wanna run that by us one more time?

Lilah: What was unclear?

Fred: I think the part where you offered us Wolfram & Hart.

Lilah: Just the L.A. branch.

Lorne: Just the L.A. branch. Hi, I'm from another dimension. What the hell does that mean?

Lilah: Means we give. You win. We're moving out. The Senior Partners are ceding this territory to you. And to prove it, they want to give you controlling interest in our L.A. office. You get the building, assets, personnel, letterhead, paper clips, all of it. It's yours to do with as you see fit.

Fred: But there is no Los Angeles office of Wolfram Hart. The Beast destroyed it.

Lilah: Oh, it's back, restaffed and zombie-free. We're bigger, better, and shinier than ever. And we wanna give it to you.

• Gunn: You wanna give us your evil law firm? We ain't lawyers!

Fred: Or evil... currently.

• Angel: She was eating people.

Lilah: They knew what they were getting into.

Lorne: Her stomach?!

• Wesley: You can't possibly think that's an option.

Gunn: Well, I know it's an option 'cause I was standing there when the dead lady offered it to us.

• Gunn: How long you gonna be satisfied sticking pins in maps and blowing dust off your books? Sorry, man. I shouldn't have said it like that.

Wesley: No, no. They are rather dusty.

Gunn: That's not what I meant. Couldn't have been easy for you, seeing Lilah again like that.

Wesley: Oh. Yes. That was awkward, wasn't it? You decapitate a loved one, you don't expect them to come visiting.

Gunn: Loved one?

Wesley: Figure of speech.

• Lilah: Just because we tried to kill or corrupt each and every one of you at one time or another doesn't mean we can't be trusted.

• Preston: Thought you might want to take a gander at our roster. Just a rundown of some of the talent we represent here.

Lorne: Uh, no, no, no. I don't think you have to tell me what you represent here, young man. I know. Evil. Pure evil and... (looks at roster) which is also apparently everyone I've always wanted to meet.

• Lilah: People don't need an unyielding champion. They need a man who knows the value of compromise and how to beat the system from inside the belly of the beast.

Angel: The beast's belly? Doesn't that usually mean you've been eaten?

• Angel: Buffy can handle herself.

Lilah: But isn't it more fun when you handle her?

• Connor: (to Angel) I guess I really am your son. Because I'm dead, too.

• Connor: You tried to love me. At least I think you did.

Angel: I still do.

Connor: But not enough to hang on, dad. You let him take me. You let him get me. You let him get me.

• Angel: I really do love you, Connor.

Connor: So what are you gonna do about it?

Angel: Prove it.

• Fred: Who's Connor?