Episode Reviews   

"A New World," Monday, May 6, 2002

by Anne

Episode Summary

Picking up where the previous episode ended, Connor fights with Groo, Gunn, and Angel after attempting to kill Angel with a stake-shooter. Angel gets the best of Connor, but when Angel offers to help the boy up, he escapes out into the sunlight and climbs onto a passing bus. Wes receives a visit - and a copy of Dante's Inferno - from Lilah; she offers him a job with Wolfram & Hart. At the Hyperion, the others try to decide how to close the opening left after Connor's return. Elsewhere, Connor saves a girl, Sunny, from a drug pusher and his thugs. She takes him to an abandoned hotel where she introduces him to chocolate and clothes not made from animal skins. They talk a little. After a kiss, she says she'll be right back and leaves the room. Connor goes in search for her some time later and finds her dead in the bathroom where she was shooting up. Connor turns to find Angel. Angel tries to talk to Connor and work things out with him, but Connor won't hear of it. He tells Angel that his name isn't Connor it's Steven and his "father" told him all about Angel. He wants to see Angel's vampire face; Angel shows it to him and says one day he hopes Connor can accept that part of him. Connor says he'd have to kill him first. At that point, the angry drug pusher comes in and soon a fight breaks out. Then a gun battle erupts with the police outside. As Connor is trying to escape out the window, a policeman comes in with a gun. Angel takes the bullet for Connor and together they dive out the window. Pausing on a side street, Angel tells Connor he's welcome to come back to the hotel. He wants Connor to know that he's not alone. Connor says he knows that and he leaves. As the episode closes, Connor finds the now aged Holtz in an alley and greets him with, "Hi, Dad."

Episode Review

In season two, Lorne told Angel that you go on to a new place instead of "getting back" to where you were. That concept was certainly depicted in this episode. Even the ep's title refers to a new place; the slight difference in wording - a new world - could signify that everything changed.

Connor found himself in a literal new world. Since his former home was a hell dimension, one might suppose that he found this one to be much better. However, there are bad people, and bad things happen here too. On the other hand, he thought he knew all about Angel; he thought Angel was evil and nothing more. He seemed surprised, almost dumbfounded when Angel took a bullet for him. So, Connor was also in a new world figuratively speaking, since something he thought he knew so well turned out to be untrue.

After Connor returned, Angel saw a chance for them to start again. He wanted to get back to the place where they left off. For Angel, only a few weeks had passed, and the pain of losing his son was still very strong. However, Connor had spent years in a completely different environment, and to say he came back as a different person is an understatement.

Wes is also unable to return to the way things were before. With Lilah's offer, he has a chance to enter a new world - a world with benefits such as 401K and a dental plan. Lilah's declaration that he isn't too good to work for them may have hit a nerve; in the episode Billy, Wesley expressed a fear that he deep down he's bad.

Sometimes even if you're in a good place and don't want to leave, time has a way of changing that too. The couples, for example, seem to be heading to a new, bad place. The look Cordy had after Groo said he feared her affection for him had waned belied her assurance that everything was good between them. Fred's insistence on bringing up Wesley is apparently becoming a sore spot for Gunn, but I'm surprised that he'd flat out tell her she's not calling him.

Although I knew generally what happened in this episode, I wasn't expecting it to be so, for lack of a better word, random. I was left wondering, "So where do we go from here?" Then I realized that was probably the point.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

* In Gavin's absence, Tyke filled the role of the annoying villain. (Does anyone else remember when bad guys were actually scary?)

* From the scenes with Sunny, we see again that sometimes you can't save people from themselves.

* Connor told Angel that he had to go; exactly *where* did he have to go?

* I liked how the ending mirrored the one for the previous episode, with Connor saying, "Hi, Dad."

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