Original Airdate: November 30, 1999

Plot: Angel is called upon to help a group of half-demon, half-human hybrids escape from the Scourage--a demon purity group that seeks to exterminate them. Meanwhile, Cordy makes a discovery about Doyle's true identity...

Warning: If you strongly believe in seeing the latest episode of Angel, "Hero" SPOILER free, I suggest you turn back now. There are major SPOILERS just ahead for "Hero"...

In short: A solid effort.

As most of you who are long time readers of my reviews know, I watch a lot of sci-fi related television. And over the years, I've seen a lot of "deaths" of main characters. Some I've seen have been handled rather well, while others have been cheezy and overblown. In most cases, the genre has the bad habit of putting so much around the emotional impact the death of a main character will have on the audience, that they leave the little things such as plot and storyline development on the backburner.

Which is why I was a bit worried going into "Hero."

I was not a good camper this time--I heard the details of Doyle's death months ago on the Internet. (Not that it would have mattered as Entertainment Weekly gave it away last week with the review of Angel they published...those SPOILERS are everywhere I tell you!). Needless to say, I knew that his death would probably be an emotional, if not a defining moment for Angel.

And going in, I hoped that Joss and company would once again play with my expectatiosn and not give us just a hollow episode that was merely concerned with the death of a major character.

I'm glad to say, I shouldn't have worried...

"Hero" was successful for on a lot of different levels. For one thing, the build up to Doyle's death was nicely done. If you didn't know what was coming, you'd get an inkling of it, but it didn't give it away. (Well, alright the whole speech about defining moments between Angel and Doyle was a tad obvious, but otherwise, it all worked pretty well...) Also, the actions that Doyle took seemed to come out of the character we've come to know and love over the past nine weeks..and which made it that much harder to see him make that sacrifice.

Overall, it was one of the better TV deaths that we've seen in quite some time. In fact, it may have the most resonance, for me, since Jenny Calendar was killed by Angel back in Buffy's second year.

But what made the episode work for me, even more so, was the plotline that got us to the point that Doyle felt the need to sacrifice himself. As we found out last week, there are dark forces on the rise and Angel is the one who is going to have to fight them (you wonder if Buffy might not be joining the party as well...and if that would mean a truly explosive season finale type crossover for both shows...). We saw last week what Angel had to give up in order to fight the good fight....now we had Doyle give up something, and to an extend, Cordy.
But this week, the stakes get higher...

Apparently, there's a bit of demon purity squad out there who wants to rid the world of the half-human/half-demon people. To see the Nazi overtones to the group was interesting and it certainly brings up a lot of interesting issus--namely that Angel and vampires are considered to be lower rung types of demons and unpure as it were. How and if this will affect what we see for the rest of the season will be an interesting development.

Also, seeing Angel as sort of a savior for the downtrodden of the demon world was nice. You've got to wonder if now he may not become some kind of hero to the downtrodden demons and if he won't be stormed with a flood of such demons coming to him for help. Apparently, one group's legend speaks of him...it will be interesting to see if there are others that do.

And while this was interesting, the plotline itself, at times, really stunk of cliches.

The idea of having a demon who didn't like his past and was ashamed of it seemed to work on paper, but on screen didn't quite gel. Part of it may have been the fact that everything about the character was so cliched--he hated his past, he hated Doyle for appearing to be more "normal" and he ran off, thus creating the sequence of events that took place at the end of the episode. Had he not run off and had Doyle not had to go after him, odds are that Doyle might still be with us today.

But, again, these things were not to be...

Otherwise, there were lots of other nice things...

I loved the tragic outcome of the Doyle and Cordy love match. It certainly had overtones of the Angel/Buffy relationship in terms of here are two people who are attracted to each other and can't be together for whatever reason. To see all of the series regulars have to give up a strong, very passionately felt relationship in the past two weeks was heartbreaking. I only hope that since we got to see long term consequences of Angel's decision to erase the time he was with Buffy, that we see Cordy face long term consequences of losing Doyle. It certainly will be interesting to see where this plotline goes.

As for Doyle being gone, I've got to say I'm gonna miss him. Glenn Quinn was really coming into his own as Doyle and I really felt the character was growing on the show into an interesting part of the trio. Part of me wonders just how the show's dynamic will change now that a major part of the dynamic triangle is gone...Yes, I've heard rumors on the replacement and who it might or will be (and if you want to know and haven't heard yet, e-mail me privately...I don't to ruin the joy of being SPOILER free for those who choose to do so). And to be honest, I can't honestly say that it will be as interesting or as fun as Doyle...I just hope the show hasn't made a major mistake by killing him off. I suppose that time will tell...

And who knows? This is a show where no one may be really, actually dead...:-)

Well, that's about it for now, except a few small things....

--For those of you who might be wondering where my review for last week's episode is, I admit I got cuaght up in the holiday travel thing...it should be up by the middle of next week...
--Howard Gordon and Tim Minear both used to write for X-Files...I found it interesting how XF like at times this week's ep was...
--I liked the effort from MInear better this time. I think part of it may be that he had Gordon along with him to help cover up some of the more glaring faults from his last ep....

Well, that's about it for now....Overall, it wil be interesting to see the new direction Angel takes in the next couple of episodes...I can only hope they do well with it....

My rating: 8.5 (out of 10.0)

Next up: Repeats...on both Tuesday and Friday.