The Re-Watcher's Council
Angel S3E05 "Fredless" Spoiler Review | Re-Watcher's Council
Fred's parents showed up in LA and the gang immediately assumed they were evil. They are distressingly, confusingly normal. This is somehow more suspicious. This week on Re-Watcher's Council, we're covering Angel Season 3, Episode 5: "Fredless" — the Fred episode, and a really warm, character-rich hour that earns its ending completely. Fred's parents show up in Los Angeles to bring her home, and Team Angel is instantly suspicious of them — they seem a little too normal. Roger and Trish Burkle are sweet, well-meaning Texas parents who have spent five years desperately searching for their daughter, and the gang's immediate assumption that they must be sinister is both very funny and very telling about how warped everyone's frame of reference has become after years of fighting demons. When Fred panics and disappears rather than face them, Team Angel and the Burkles have to work together to find her. What the episode is really about is belonging — again — but from a completely different angle than S2E19. Fred spent five years in a demon dimension writing equations on cave walls just to stay sane, and she came home to find that the people who saved her have become her world. The question this episode asks is whether that world is something she chose or something she fell into by default. Her answer, when she finally gives it, is one of the sweetest moments of the season. We also get the gang quietly reflecting on their own complicated parental relationships — a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene that says volumes about every single character without making a big deal of it. And Cordelia and Wesley's dramatic reenactment of the Angel/Buffy reunion that none of them got to witness is exactly as chaotic and wonderful as it sounds. Oh, and Fred solves the demon problem with physics. Of course she does.
