Angel

The Good;
Great horror concept, you could almost imagine a feature film based upon it, some excellent emotional stuff too and as always Cordy brings the funny. My favourite scene is where Meltzer throws his teeth at Angel and then recoils in pain as Angel smashes them against the wall.

The Bad;
The severed limbs scenes don't really convince, when you see Thing in The Adams Family it's much better

Best line:
Cordy; "Here's this poor girl, she hooks up with a doctor. That's supposed to be a good thing!"
Jeez, how did they get away with that?
Virtually all of the Beast with Five Fingers stuff

Apocalypses: 4
Angel Cliches
Damsel in distress; yep, making 2. However, Doyle says there's 4 in total and 3 very much alive, Presumably the girl from City of Angels is the dead one and the girl from In the Dark is another making 2 more we don't see.
Inverting the Hollywood cliche;
In disguise; 1. Angel poses as a successful businessman but no disguise
DB get's his shirt off; not this ep so still 1

Fang Gang in bondage: no
Cordy: 5
Angel: 4
Wes: 1

Fang gang knocked out: all of them
Cordy: 7
Angel: 7
Wes: 1
Doyle; 1

Kills:
Cordy: none this ep. 3 vamps, a demon from her time in Sunnydale
Angel: 1 human for Angel. So that gives Angel 8 vamps, 2 demons, 2 humans.

Fang Gang go evil:
Cordy: 1
Angel: 1

Alternate Fang Gang:
Cordy: 1
Angel: 3

Characters killed: the poor cop Kate sends to guard the building
10

Total number of Angel Investigations:
3, Angel, Doyle and Cordy

Angel Investigations shot: Angel with the tranquiliser gun (as with Dopplegangland in Buffy why not use that to knock vamps out then cut their heads off?)
Angel: 5,

Notches on Fang Gang bedpost:
Cordy: 1?
Angel: 1;Buffy

Kinky dinky:
What the heck do Meltzer's hands do under the sheets?
Captain Subtext;
Doyle admits that Angel holds a certain attraction to him
Know the face, different character; 1
Andy Umberger who plays Dr Meltzer is also D'Hoffryn on Buffy.
Parking garages; seemingly a staple of the series, one here and in COA
2
Questions and observations;
This is the 4th ep of the series and we're told that Cordy has been working for him for a month so this suggests the series is in real time, one ep per week. Angel drinks coffee now, presumably to keep him up for his cases as he told Joyce he didn't drink it in The Prom. Isn't it a bit unpatriotic for Doyle to drink Scotch, shouldn't he drink whiskey with an e? Cordy gives the Angel Investigations motto 'We help the hopeless'. Oddly here Cordy 'Scullys' Angel, suggesting a non-supernatural solution. He's actually open to the suggestion but points out correctly that Doyle has a vision. Angel just appears to be able to walk into Kate's police station no problem at all. Meltzer actually shows a lot of compassion for Angel's story of his wife. I don't know if it's deliberate but Scrubs has a character called Dr Zeltzer who's also a major weirdo and even looks quite like Dr Meltzer.
It's noticeable that at this stage of Angel the supernatural underworld is just that, it's not out in the open as it will be later, we're still dealing with the everyday clashing with the incredible.
Marks out of 5; 4/5 one of the classic eps of season 1

One of the most loathed episodes by fans, I actually really like I Fall to Pieces.



Many fans and critics criticized the first season as they were mostly demon-of-the-week stories with more emphasis being put on the guest stars than on the actual main cast.



I actually loved the first season and loved how the series was essentially a supernatural take on the detective show, with Angel Investigations protecting damsels in distress from inventive bad guys.



I Fall to Pieces centers around a young woman, Melissa Burns, who is being stalked by her ex, the sinister Dr Meltzer. Unknown to Melissa, Dr Meltzer has the ability to remove his limbs at will, leading him to detach his eye to watch her constantly and to detach his hands to crawl into her bed.



The episode is quite voyeuristic and the scene where Dr Meltzer's detatched hands pleasure Melissa whilst she is sleeping is just plain disturbing.



However, the episode takes a sudden detour toward the end, with I Fall to Pieces becoming unintentionally hilarious due to the "killer detatched teeth" scene. I mean, c'mon, what was that?



The rest of the final scene is excellent though, with Doyle getting dragged into the basement by Dr Meltzer's hand and Dr Meltzer, literally, falling to pieces before having his head sliced off.



Andy Umberger gives an underplayed, sinister performance as the creepy Dr Meltzer and Tushka Bergen is also excellent as this episode's victim-of-the-week. There is also some wonderful interplay between Cordelia and Doyle and the former gets most of the best lines.



Ignore the fans who hate this episode, it's a fun, creepy and effective hour which is guaranteed to freak you out.



Director: Vern Gillum

Teleplay: David Greenwalt

Story: Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt

Rating: A

Beyond the fact that this is perhaps my second least favorite episode, I don't honestly know what to say. The girl is genuine, it was a good save, she was a walk-in so no help from the Powers, and yet the doctor was working some mojo so it had a nice little mystical edge.



I think I reacted badly to Doyle hitting on Melissa, since he's full-on for Cordelia in the next episode, and I'm not entirely certain he isn't also on some level crushing on Angel, so make up your *mind*, dude.



Cordy's getting the office fixed up a little, so that's pleasant.



The thing I really cannot get over about hating this episode is that damn' floating *eye*.



Sure he's mystical. Sure he may have learned the power of levitation -- [doubtfully] I guess [/doubtfully]. I mean, Willow could levitate stuff almost right away, so I guess it's *sort* of possible.



But I really don't like it. He's a surgeon. Even if he'd trained in the discipline of disassembling himself, that *alone* feels like something he'd never have the courage to do. Surgeons treat their hands like Stradivari. He'd always have some nagging suspicion that the hand wouldn't reattach. I don't see him pursuing this discipline to begin with.



And to use this power to stalk this woman and invade her home. I mean, once you subsume ego to the extent you must in order to get very far with Eastern mysticism, you really don't become a stalker.



So there's this deep mind-body-spirit power that feels grafted onto a spiritual lout, and let's be honest with ourselves, obsession is one thing, but I'm pretty sure he'd be able to find someone who would love him back. The "one thing you can't have" angle is solid enough as a cliche, as is the arrogant "but of course you want me, my sensibilities are offended by the mere possibility that you do not" but it's deeply childish.



So this is a difficult character to get my head around and he feels like a villian someone made up for a television program. And frankly, once you get past the initial horror of realizing there's a spare part in bed with you, it's easy enough to put a knife through it, or to catch it in a net.



Very little love for this episode.



P.S. -- Oh btw, Angel shouldn't be able to be poisoned. He just shouldn't. I didn't like it in Buffy, and I don't like it here. He has no functioning circulatory system, and standard neurotoxins shouldn't do anything to him since he's already a walking corpse, and I disapprove of his having any reaction at all to the injection.



Also, a *doctor* developed something, for working with animals, that will "slow your heart until it stops altogether"? *Puppy!* :o

‘I Fall To Pieces’ is a very well written episodes with some creep factors, good storylines and hilarious character interactions (mostly between Doyle and Cordelia).



It begins with Doyle and Cordelia talking about Angel and about starting with charging people, they are both going to stand up to Angel and make him charge people. Doyle then dozes off when he talks about Angel, he obviously has a little crush on him. Then comes Angel but they can’t stand up, Doyle then has a vision and Angel goes to save the girl and has a good exit. Doyle then admits to be a little attracted.



Melissa is the victim in this episode, a girl who is being stalked by a doctor and he can see every move she makes. He knows what she does and everything. He also changes her pin number and after that, she goes to meet up Angel for help. Nobody understands how he sees her, turns out he can take out his body parts and an eyeball watches her change and take off her clothes (naughty doctor!)



While Doyle keeps a watch on Melissa and tells her that she will be jumping off a bridge after being helped by Angel in no time, Angel visits Kate for help and she says that Melissa has to do the fighting, because Ronald took her power away and now the only thing a woman like her can feel is helpless.



Angel goes to the doctor and he wants him to help him, Angel says he has a wife who needs help with an operation that nobody could do. After that, Angel steels a book of a man who used to talk about this and he visits him, the guy says that Ronald was different and that he stopped teaching after he completely believed what he was telling.



When a cop is guarding Melissa’s house, he sees Ronald and makes him put his hands up but he doesn’t have hands. The hands are under Melissa’s covers and she begins to scream. The cop goes to help her but he gets attacked from behind and chocked to death by the hands. Angel comes to help her and Ronald sees them together and is furious.



Doyle is afraid that Ronald may want to kill them because they are standing in the way. But Angel takes Melissa over to his place and he tells her that she has to be strong and that Ronald needs her to be stronger, without her she’s nothing so she has all the power to beat him. When Angel goes to Ronald, he gets shot by something that would kill an animal but since Angel is already dead it doesn’t affect him much.



Ronald goes to Angel’s place where he knocks Doyle and Cordy unconscious. When he tries to take Melissa’s power away she says that he needs her and that she would never want to be with him because he’s a freak/ Ronald begins to fall apart and when Angel arrives, he beats Ronald into little pieces and puts them in different boxes. He saved Melissa, the next day she comes for the bill and gives him money and hopes to never see him again. Cordelia wants more money so she wants Doyle to have another vision.



‘I Fall To Pieces’ was a great episode, it had a lot of comedy but also horror. Yet another reason why this show is so powerful and well done.

This episode is weird lol. The fact that someone can "Fall to Pieces" is freaky.

I love this episode alot. Probably one of my favorites. Tushka Bergen does a great job and IMO is very talented.

A great episode and IMO underrated. The storyline is pretty unique and cool to watch.

Eew. The guy can remove his body parts. That would be so cool if it wasn't for such a nasty purpose.



The main body of this episode shows Angel trying to get to grips with the subtler sides of Detective work when dealing with the terrorized woman and trying to get an angle on the Doctor.



The plot was a mightly clever one showing the abuses of power. And gave some frankly hypnotically horrible shots. This is one of those kind of episodes were Angel tries to pull itself away from Buffy a bit without alienating the fans, and it succeds, the plot wouldn't have worked so well with the characters and style of Buffy.



Very good. One that sticks with you.

fantastic episode with funny moments and also some scary and gross ones.



the episode is like most of the first season just its own storyline but funny and original i loved cordy and doyle they were so fantastic together and i love the doctor because he was funny with taking off his parts of boddy, my favorute moment was when the woman is in bed and the hands go there too that was icky and funny. the episode was great and nice feeling to it

This was about a guy who could detatch his limbs and then re-atatch them. GROSS! Especially when he did it with his eye! And then, with his hands, and his hands are crawling over that poor girl. EWW! He was an old man. GROSS!! Okay, I think I've said that enough. After all that, Cordy and Angel still debate whether or not to charge for their services, and in the end, Cordy wins, but also promted by the girl he rescued, so it was all good. And they get to have fresh coffee. YAY!

I'm glad this wasn't the first episode of Angel I saw, or it would have been the last. To criticize an episode of a series about a good-guy, crime-fightin' vampire as being unbelievable might seem sort of silly, and I, as a sci-fi fantasy fan can generally suspend disbelief effortlessly, but not, for some reason, in the case of this episode. How on earth can a pair of disembodied hands choke anybody? Where does the muscle strength come from? How can eyes disconnected from a head and trailing a severed optic nerve relay visual information to a brain? Sure, this is a fantasy, but come on already. There's just something about the tone and gruesome nature of the episode, and the fact that the baddie is a doctor presumably employing medical science as opposed to purely supernatural forces that makes the impossibility of what's shown jarring to me. The vague suggestion that the doc is employing mystical forces just isn't enough to render this believable IMO.



The episode is sorta creepy, I suppose, but is hardly up to the standard I expect from a product of the Jossverse. It's probably my least favorite episode of Angel.

I wasnt crazy about this episode. Yeah it was kind of cool that this Dr could see everything that Melissa (the victim) was doing. For some reason I thought it would end up having something to do with the eye surgery he performed on her, like he may have implanted a camera (yeah far-fetched) in her eye. I was wrong, of course. Seems our good Dr could fall to pieces, literally. He could take his eye out and it could travel of its own accord to whatver he wanted to see at the time. Yeeesh! Angel and co. dealt with him handily enough and all was fine and good. And Angel finally found the courage to ask for payment from the customer, how novel!

Fun words to learn and know: Cordelia: “Okay, flesh. Anytime you want to stop crawling is okay with me.”



Dialogue to lose inside the sofa in Hell: Doyle: “This ain‘t single malt… it‘s polymalt?” Please don’t take too much offense to the Onion quote I used in my blurb. I just thought it was far too funny to pass up -- that, and it sums up my feelings on this episode pretty well. Was this the worst hour of television I’ve ever sat through? Certainly not. However, in a world obsessed with reality TV and sit-coms which become more mind numbingly inane by the day, that’s not actually saying much. When all is said and done, there are some good lines in this episode; it just didn’t work for me as a whole.



So, what, exactly, was it that made this episode so sub-par? The lamest villain in history, that’s what. All right, so the guy can detach parts of his body at will and send them out to terrorize mankind… So? How much damage could his errant limbs conceivably cause? I’ll grant that the spying eyes and hands that creep around in your bed are… well… creepy; I just don’t see that the hands could do much physical damage. Not to harp on this too much, but, apart from the self-separating body parts, Dr. Creepmeister is an average Joe, right? So, how is it he’s able to choke Officer Dumb Ass to death and drag Doyle through the grate so easily? And speaking of Officer Dumb Ass, let me get this straight… the hand-deprived are somehow incapable of stalking? Jesus Christ in a neon pink jumpsuit! If anyone deserves to be choked by a villain with ill conceived abilities, it’s this guy.



Last, but nowhere near least (on the stupidity meter, anyway): Flying teeth! This has got to be the single funniest “special” effect I’ve ever seen on a Joss Whedon show. I see no way in which this could be even remotely frightening. We’re talking laugh out loud funny, people.

Not really one of my favorite episodes, because I think these body parting things are really creepy.



The only really funny stuff in this episode is the paying client!



I guess in a first season all the actors have to fit their new roles and I can say I love to watch Glenn Quinn as Doyle.



But there are many, many better episodes I`ve seen in the first season.



Hmmm? Don't know many things to say here and if you don't really like an episode it's much more difficult to fill in the 100 words minimum!



So what do you think about this one?

Oh my what a creepy episode. A stalking neurosurgeon? Who, by the way, can pull himself apart? Melissa definitely has it hard. At least she was able to stand up to him in the end. Wow, Angel really held himself together when he threatened him.



I was really confused when the doctor shot Angel with that dart. Was he faking it or something because from what I know of Vampires, they are dead. There really shouldn't be any living tissue for that stuff to attack. then again, they can heal themselves very quickly, but that still confuses me.



They finally get paid. You know, the fact that Dr. Freaky started falling apart really didn't surprise me any in the slightest.

I Fall To Pieces-As Cordelia and Angel continue the debate over whether or not to charge their clients, Doyle receives a vision of yet another woman in distress. Angel pays a visit to her workplace and learns that the woman is being terrorized by her neurosurgeon who is somehow mysteriously able to watch her every move.



If being stalked wasn't bad enough, it had to be by doctor who can literally be at 2 places at once. Dr. Ronald Meltzer is an inventive villian and played effectively creepy by Andy Umberger. Tushka Bergen plays the defenseless Melissa well, especailly the scene where she stands up against Ronald. Also the episode has some creepy scenes with Ronald's hands detacted and attacking Melissa in her bed. The end is very abrupt though with Ronald being decapitated so easily by Angel, but hey, it can't always be big ending. All and All, a good episode that brings some creepy scenes and villain.

So it isn't bad enough to have a psycho stalker...Angel seems to have found a damsel in distress being stalked by a man who falls apart! Talk about Creeepy! It was a little unnerving to see the man fall apart like that and Cordelia made a good point that we trust our doctors to know our bodies, not come apart and then stalk us.



It was also weird how Angel went down after the doctor shot him. The poison was supposed to stop his heart and it looked like it was causing him some serious pain, but Angel's heart doesn't beat. I don't understand how this was hurting him. Plot hole?



I loved the episode, but it was a little creepy!

I Fall to Pieces is a good, yet very unremarkable episode of Angel. It's not the most entertaining or cleverly plotted but serves its purpose as a filler episode. The performances were a high point. Cordelia never fails to make me laugh no matter what the situation and Charisma Carpenter really kept this episode entertaining. Andy Umberger was good as the doctor but I think he's much better as D'Hoffryn on Buffy. However, I found the entire plot of seperating limbs ridiculous and definitely a weaker point of the episode. Melissa was also played well but ultimately she was a forgettable character.



IFTP is one of the weaker episodes of Season 1. Whilst not being horrible it definitely was Angel standard.



Line of the episode:



Cordelia: If I smacked you on the head, would you get a vision?

As if you didn't see it coming, but four episodes in, and we've had five blond women in need of help. Is nobody else seeing this?! Maybe it's just casting, but, seriously, we get it - this show isn't Buffy 2.0. Now that we have all that out of the way, this is another fine example of Angel S1 going for the gross factor and generally speaking, succeeding. The whole Surgery deal is a tad too ridiculous, sure, but the performances and genuinely creepy villain make it a decent stand-alone. Oh, and Angel kills a human in this episode. Sorta. Already the show begins to dip its toes in the "shades of grey" territory the series will become known for.

I Fall to Pieces was a great episode of Angel. This episode had a unique story which was based upon a serious issue. The writers have of course tackled this issue by adding a supernatural element, while the director and actors did an amazing job of making it all too real. There were some good laughs along with serious circumstances. There was some action and surprise. I enjoyed watching this episode. It was nice to see Kate the police officer and look forward to seeing her again. I can't wait to watch the next adventure facing Angel and his team!!!!!

This was a real fun episode not to be taken seriously at all. Some -what of a change from the previous episode. It added a whole new meaning to the word stalker.

Special FX were great. Those hands creeping up the bedclothes and the disembodied eyeball - yuck. Gruesome bits apart - and there were plenty- the most enjoyable things in the script were as usual the banter between Doyle, Cordy and Angel, and the great one-liners. Love the description of Angel as a 'vacuous LA pretty boy';Angel worrying about whether he is intimidating and changing into a pale cream sweater;lousy coffee and polymalt scotch.

This is why 'Angel' is difficult to categorise- is it horror?,drama? comic horror. Anyway it is good fun.