Cordelia's back, and she's brought an attitude.

Written by: David Fury

Directed by: David Fury

Disgusted after a Wolfram and Hart client massacres some nuns, Angel announces his intention to quit. As he's arguing about it with the gang, the phone rings. It's Cordelia - she's awake!

Cordy is less than impressed by Angel's new role. She tells him that he's made a deal with the devil and she's had a vision showing that he's in trouble. Working with Wesley, she identifies some strange tattoos she saw in the vision as runes which hide the bearer from all surveilance.

Meanwhile, Eve and Lindsey, disturbed by Cordy's return, are working out their next move. Lindsey, protected by his mystical tattoos, breaks into Wolfram and Hart, and sets a "code seven" in operation.

Angel learns that Lindsey has tripped a fail-safe designed to get rid of him, and heads down to a confrontation. With Cordelia's help the fail-safe is turned off, and Lindsey is sucked off into a portal, presumably to face the Senior Partners' wrath.

The excitement over, Angel and Cordy grab a few moments together. When the phone rings, Cordy tells Angel to get it - and he recieves the news that she died earlier that day. Turning around, he finds she has vanished.

Quiz: - ten quick questions.

Trivia

Happy centenary: This was the 100th episode of Angel.

Hallo, goodbye: Charisma Carpenter briefly reprises her role as Cordelia to mark Angel's 100th episode. The actress had been absent from the show since the end of season four, partly because of her pregnancy, and partly becaude Joss Whedon felt Cordy's story arc had been played out.

"It came about pretty much the same way the decision to stop the Buffy run came about," he told the About.com website. "In seven years, we'd sort of run through our course of [the] character and didn't want to start just doing hollow riffs on what we'd done." Some have speculated that a reduced budget for season five and the introduction of James Marsters to the cast may have also been factors.

Both Joss and Charisma felt that it was important to give Cordelia the chance to have some proper closure in the series.

Slave to the machine: The emaciated blue demon that's being removed by a lawyer is Archduke Sebassis' slave, last seen in Life of the Party. Apparently he's been living off photocopier toner ever since then. Maybe that's why the copier had run out in the episode Destiny leading to a homicidal incident.

Going for a Kong: The videogame Spike is playing is Donkey Kong - a real classic that introduced Mario to the world.

Gotta hand it to you: Lindsey reveals to Spike that he too has lost a hand, though he doesn't explain that it was Angel who cut it off, back in season one episode To Shanshu in L.A.

Gone before: Cordy watches the video she made with Doyle to advertise Angel Investigations. It was first seen in the episode Hero, the same episode that saw Doyle's death.

Fashionista: Cordy quickly identifies Eve's shoes as being Manolo Blahniks - a top designer make that's the favourite of models and actresses, including Linda Evangelista and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Review

Having watched You're Welcome, I'm now puzzled how I've managed to enjoy quite so many episodes of the show that lack its true star. It's a testament to the rest of the cast that they've diverted us from Charisma Carpenter's absence so skillfully until now.

It also means that Charisma's return for this celebratory tale lifts David Fury's script and direction from merely great to something close to awesome. Queen C dominates the episode as as only yummy mummy Charisma can.

It's therefore doubly sad that this is only a one-off treat for Cordy fans. With hindsight, it's blindingly obvious from the first scene that a twist is coming, but it's so well handled that itstill came as a shock to me.

My only gripe would be the unfulfilled promise of Lindsey unleashing unspeakable horror from the bowels of Wolfram and Hart. I know the team are on a very tight budget this season, but a CGI tentacle or two would have been the icing on the cake.