Angel fights evil with evil.

Written by: Joss Whedon
Directed by: Joss Whedon

Settling in as the new bosses of Wolfram and Hart's L.A. branch, team Angel immediately find themselves on the wrong side of the law. They must work to prevent a criminal from being jailed - or risk the city's destruction from a deadly biological.

New faces and old friends help, including technical genius Knox, liaison with the Senior Partners Eve, and Angel's new secretary, working girl vampire Harmony.

The mission accomplished thanks to Gunn's brain being augmented with lawyer knowledge, Angel receives a package containing the amulet he recently gave Buffy to help save Sunnydale from the First. The team watch, astonished, as the mysterious object calls forth Spike from beyond the grave.

Quiz - ten quick questions.

Trivia:
Don't touch the hair: Angel gets a new, non-spiky haircut for this season. David Boreanaz had grown his locks for a role in the latest Crow movie, and the stylists decided to work with it to create a more slicked-back look.

Perfect Harmony: With Cordelia's character having matured so much that Joss Whedon had allegedly run out of stories to tell about her (Ed- Hmmm...), Charisma Carpenter is now absent from the cast. In her place comes Mercedes McNab as delightfully ditzy Harmony. With Charisma gone, Mercedes becomes the longest serving of the Buffy/Angel characters, having debuted in Buffy's unscreened pilot episode.

The Spike Show: Blondie Bear is back, due to network insistence rather than any master plan dreamed up by Joss. The amulet used to bring him back first appeared in the season four finale, Home, in which Lilah informed Angel that it was important to the events in Sunnydale over on Buffy. In the Buffy series finale, Chosen, Spike donned the amulet, causing him to radiate a kind of solar energy which wiped out the Turok-Han ubervamps before destroying him too. Marvel at how he steals every scene and effectively takes over the show from now on.

Review:
How cool is it to be the boss? Gourmet blood, your own private helicopter to thwart baddies with, and foxy assistants. But enough about Joss Whedon.

Even if Angel wasn't really broken enought to warrant fixing, this is certainly a joyous revamp for Team Angel. With Whedon in charge of both script and camera for his first season premiere in five years, it's a lavish mix of arty camerwork, hilarious dialogue and cool wirework stunts.

The only real disappointment is Cordelia's contractual coma, even if the blow is somewhat softened by Mercedes McNab's cunning impersonation of the earlier, ditzier Cordy. Bring Charisma back soon, please.