How *is*  Angel able to sport a woody?  Talk about this and more on the Message Board

We open with Buffy lying in bed, tossing and turning from a nightmare.  She wakes up and gets out of bed, venturing into the hallway, where Drusilla stalks her from behind.  Opening the door to the bathroom, Buffy enters the Bronze.  Obviously, she is still dreaming.  She wanders around, and sees her mom standing with a saucer and a cup of coffee.  Joyce looks at her seriously and asks "Do you really think you're ready, Buffy?"  Buffy turns around and sees Angel across the room.  She smiles and they walk toward each other.  Suddenly Drusilla shows up behind Angel, and stakes him.  Angel shouts Buffy's name, and reaches for her as he turns to dust.  Drusilla looks at Buffy's horrified face and says "Happy Birthday, Buffy", and she awakens.  That morning before school, Buffy stops by Angel's apartment to make sure he's okay.  He answers the door shirtless (aaagghhhh!), and wonders why she seems so antsy.  Buffy tells him about her dream, and Angel tries to reassure her.  Buffy persists that her dreams about the Master had come true, and she's really afraid that this could be, too.  She fearfully wonders if Drusilla could still be alive.  To stop her rambling, Angel kisses her, and they quickly succumb to passion, having a heated moment before Angel asks Buffy what she wants for her birthday.  She tells him to surprise her, and he says "I will".  Close, Buffy tells him that the part at the end of the night where they say goodbye is getting harder.  Angel agrees. At school, Buffy and Willow discuss Buffy's possible impending physical relationship, and Buffy decides that she should "seize the day".  As they're talking, they spot Oz out on one of the lunch benches.  Buffy urges Willow to go talk to him.  Gathering up her courage, she does.  He asks her out, and they decide to go together to Buffy's surprise party tomorrow night.  Elsewhere, Xander is trying to get Cordelia to go with him to the party, but Cordelia says she's got too much to be ashamed of, to ever let anyone know what she and Xander are doing.  In the lounge, Buffy tells the gang about her dream, and fears that it might be prophetic.  Cut to the factory where, Drusilla and Spike, who is now in a wheelchair with a large scar on the side of his face, are discussing Drusilla's upcoming party.  A stack of boxes sit atop the table, and Drusilla asks if she can take a peek.  Spike allows her, and Drusilla looks in one, saying that it reeks of death.  The next morning, Buffy tries to hint around about getting her license, now that she's seventeen.  Joyce turns around, holding a plate that she was washing, and asks "Do you really think you're ready, Buffy?"  Buffy's gaze shoots to the plate, and Joyce drops it.  At school, a strange, tall man with an accent startles Jenny Calendar in her classroom.  She apologizes for not having written recently....apparently she knows him.  He berates her for neglecting her duty.  Jenny says "nothing has changed, the curse still holds".  The man persists that the elder woman of the tribe senses that Angel's pain is lessening.  Jenny says that there IS a girl....when the stranger reacts, horrified, Jenny says that Angel still suffers, that he tries to make amends for his wrongs, and has even saved her life.  The man demands that for the evil he has caused their tribe, Angel must always suffer.  If "this girl" allows him one moment of happiness, it is one minute too much.  He tells her that she is still Yanna, of the Calderash people....a gypsy.  She says "I know, Uncle".  He tells her that she will do what she must to see to it that Angel and Buffy are no more.  She replies that she will. In the library, Buffy tells them that part of her nightmare actually happened.  The gang decides that the party should still go on.  Later, Buffy hitches a ride with Jenny to go meet up with the gang to 'strategize' about what to do about Drusilla.  As they near the Bronze, Buffy spies some vamps stealing something from a warehouse.  She fights them.  Inside the Bronze, the gang's hiding, waiting for Buffy to make her entrance.  She does, when she and one of the vamps crash through a window, landing on the floor.  Buffy stakes him with a drum stick, and then realizes that there was a surprise party for her.  Oz goes "hey, did everybody just see that guy turn to dust?"  They tell him that vampires are real, and he takes it without much surprise.  He says "Actually, it makes a lot of sense!".  Jenny comes in with the box the vamps had been trying to make off with, and Buffy opens it.  Inside is an arm, which somehow reaches out of the box to grab her by the neck.  They get it off her, and locked back in the box.  Of them all, Angel seems to know what it might be.  He tells them that it's from a legend from long before his time.  He says that it's the Judge.  Giles realizes what Angel's talking about, and tells them that an Army was sent against the Judge; they were able to dismember him, but not kill him.  The Judge's prophecy was to separate the righteous from the wicked, then strike down the righteous.  They determine that Drusilla is trying to assemble the Judge, and Jenny says that Angel must be the one to take it away.  Angel agrees, and says that he must leave immediately to take it to the remotest region possible.  It will take months, as he must go by boat to avoid the light.  Back at Spike and Drusilla's, Drusilla almost kills Preston for losing her box, but he promises to get it back for her. At the dock, Buffy and Angel walk along with the box before Angel's departure.  Buffy starts crying, and Angel promises that he WILL be back.  He takes out a smaller version of his Clauddagh ring, and gives it to Buffy.  He tells her what it means...that the hands represent friendship, the crown represents loyalty, and the heart, love.  If you wear it with the heart pointed toward you, it means you belong to somebody.  He holds up his own hand to demonstrate.  Buffy begs him again not to go, and they kiss.  When they separate, Angel starts to say "I love you" , but is interrupted by a gang of vamps attacking them.  They nab the box, and Buffy gets thrown overboard, into the bay.  Angel sees this, and leaps over the rail after her.  At the library, Buffy shows up and tells the gang how Drusilla's guys got the box back.  Giles tells her that he's been doing research on the Judge, and it turns out that a touch from the Judge will literally burn the humanity out of you.  Only creatures of darkness and pure evil can remain unscathed.  It will kill any normal living person.  They figure that this is going to turn into an all nighter.  Later, everyone's researching but Buffy, who has fallen asleep in Giles's office.  Giles remarks that Buffy must have needed her sleep.  Angel agrees, saying that "She hasn't been sleeping well, tossing and turning."  Everyone stops what they're doing, and looks at him.  Realizing what they thought, he gets indignant  "She TOLD me, because of her DREAMS!"  Speaking of which, Buffy finds herself in another dream.  She's wandering around in the warehouse that Spike and Drusilla are staying in.  She sees Jenny Calendar walking by, and then Drusilla, holding Angel in front of her.  Drusilla holds a machete to Angel's throat, and Buffy screams and wakes up.  At the warehouse, the party has begun, and the vampires assemble the boxes.  In a burst of light, the Judge steps forward (played, by the way, by Brian Thompson:  the same guy who played the Master's right hand vamp in Welcome to the Hellmouth, the series Premiere).  As an offering from Drusilla, the Judge touches Preston, and he burns up....his energy absorbed by the Judge.  Back at the library, Buffy thinks she knows where to find Dru and Spike.  She tells the gang to check around town and see where these boxes might be coming in through, while she and Angel go do recon to find out how far along the assemblage of the Judge has gotten.  At the warehouse, Buffy and Angel look on in horror as they discover that the Judge has already come, and he senses them watching him.  They are quickly captured, and the Judge makes ready to zap Buffy.  Angel thrusts himself forward, shouting, "Take me instead!", but Spike tells him there is no 'instead', merely a first and a second.  While the Judge advances upon Buffy, Angel looks around wildly for something to stop him with.  Buffy kicks the Judge, sending him flying backward, and Angel pulls on a chain that releases an overhead TV display.  It crashes to the floor, creating a large hole that Buffy and Angel are able to escape through.  Drusilla sends vamps after them, but they escape in the tunnels, and make their way up to the surface through a manhole.  It's raining hard, and Angel grabs her hand and they run off for cover. They end up back at Angel's place, where he gives her some clothes to change into.  She starts to take her shirt off, and winces at a cut on her shoulder.  Angel looks at it to see how serious it is, pulling the strap of her shirt down over her shoulder to look at it.  He says it's not serious, but the closeness has done its work.  Buffy falls back into his arms, and sobs that she almost lost him that day.  Angel is close to tears himself, and reflects that he almost lost her too.  Moved, Angel tells Buffy for the first time that he loves her.  That he tries not to, but he can't stop.  They kiss, and Buffy  desperate with how close they were to not being together  and despite Angel's doubt that maybe they shouldn't, - gives in to passion.    Later, Angel wakes with a panicked look on his face, and breathing heavily.  Buffy sleeps silently next to him.  He gets out of bed, and runs outside, where it is still raining.  He falls to the ground, apparently in agony.  He screams "Buffy!"  And the screen flashes with "To be continued" Flaws:    Just one:  I have a problem with the whole "they had sex" thing.  Why? Because as Angel stated in 'Prophecy Girl' last season..."I have no breath".  He doesn't breathe, his heart doesn't beat, etc.  Because he's DEAD.  So...if his heart is not circulating blood around in his body...how, exactly, did he get an erection? Just curious.  I know they back this up by other scenes of or allusions to other vampires having sex, but it just grates me.  It shouldn't be possible with the physics they've presented us with.  Especially since they made a big deal about the "not having a heartbeat" thing in the Ats episode "I Will Remember You". Thoughts on the Episode:      I LOVED this one.  This was BTVS's first big two parter (other than What's my Line), and it was done really well. It sets the stage for the cataclysmic events in the next episode, and really draws you in.  Permeating the whole episode is Buffy and Angel's relationship, which has gotten very close, and very loving.  Two people meant to be together, on the run, and fighting the world together.   Fighting desperately to not be drawn apart.  *sigh*   I miss the good old days. Best Line:    Too many to count.  I DID love Oz's method for asking Willow out, though.  Oz:  "I'm gonna ask you to go out with me tomorrow night.I'm kinda nervous about it, acutally." Willow:  "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm gonna say yes." Oz:  "It does, actually, it creates a comfort zone.  So do you wanna go out tomorrow night?" Willow:  "Oh, I can't!" Oz:  "See now I like that you're unpredictable."

"Surprise"

How *is*  Angel able to sport a woody?  Talk about this and more on the Message Board