So after the angst and gloom of the last series this one starts out a more upbeat note, with Angel in a good mood and everyone getting along well. Naturally, this state of affairs doesn't last long, Angel's ex Darla shows up pregnant (to Angel), which spells bad news for several different reasons. One, Angel's not supposed to have been having sex with anyone (because it might turn him evil), let alone an evil vampire whose been trying to kill them all for some time, so his friends aren't too impressed. Two, vampires aren't capable of having children, so a whole bunch of mad scientists, crazy religious demons and other varieties of curious maniacs are after it. Wackiness ensues.
There are a few stink episodes. 'Billy', where Angel fights a guy who has the ability to make men attack women, overdoes the allegory by a significant margin, and 'That Old Gang of Mine' feels like it was included just because they had to close off the hanging plot thread of Gunn's old-school vampire fighting backstory.
While the episodes relating to the overarching plot are good enough, but my favorites are a few of the throwaway stand-alone episodes. In 'Carpe Noctem', Angel gets body-swapped by a horny old man. Wackiness ensues. 'Birthday' on the other hand uses a pretty cliched plot, Cordelia gets to see what would happen if she had never met Angel in LA. It's pretty funny seeing her go back to being an obnoxious self-obsessed bimbo, even if the plot is a bit silly. On the DVD they've added a deleted scene of Cordelia's TV show, which I at first thought was a brilliant parody of bland, brainless sitcoms like Friends and couldn't understand why they cut it. Then the commentary revealed that it wasn't actually meant to be a parody, so I guess it's fair enough that they cut it...
The third season is one of the strongest in terms of a consistently planned plot arc (and it's also where the show finally manages to pull out of the shadow of Buffy and stand well on its own), but that doesn't pay off until the second half of the season, (which I won't be watching any time soon, because I just watched all of Season 5 in about two weeks and I'm all Angeled out for now).
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