"Angel"
The Thin Dead Line (2001)

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Into next season, Gunn will be torn between his former life and his new job at Angel Inc. While he still feels an attachment to his old neighborhood and friends, he no longer fits in with them. He belongs with Angel, Cordy and Gunn now and he's seen too much to just go back to his old way of life. Gunn's divide loyalties cause him a lot of trouble and this is an important episode to understand his conflicted feelings. Also, "The Thin Dead Line" is where Wes gets shot. His injury will play into a lot of episodes this season and will help to make him a tougher guy in the end. So, if you're watching the season on DVD, you should see the "Thin Dead Line."

"The Thin Dead Line" revolves around a group of zombie cops cracking down in LA. They're fighting crime with a brutal disregard for the rights of citizens, beating people and scaring everyone. When Anne, the woman who runs the local teen shelter, learns that her kids are being terrorized by overzealous police officers, she goes to Gunn for help. Anne and Gunn are old friends and Gunn agrees to look into the situation. At the same time, a woman comes to the new Angel Inc. offices because he daughter's been infected by a demon. The little girl has a third eye growing in the back of her head. Wes and Cordy work on curing the kid. But, when they learn that Gunn is planning to go out and try to video tape the police attacking him, they decide to put the third eye investigation on hold. Cordy goes to the shelter to help Anne, while Gunn goes out to find Gunn and stop him form getting hurt. Unfortunately, he stumbles across a zombie cop trying to arrest Gunn and his friends. The police officer shoots Wes. Gunn, Wes and the other escape back to the shelter, while the zombie chases them and calls for reinforcements.

Meanwhile, Angel has been spying on his friends, keeping an eye on them from a distance. When a cop tries to arrest him, Angel and the officer get into a fight. Angel kills the zombie and then heads off to see Kate. He says that something supernatural is going on and, after some investigating, he and Kate discover that a police captain is making an army of zombie cops. The captain is reanimating officers who dies in the line of duty and putting them back out on the streets. As the zombie army attacks the teen shelter, Gunn, Cordy and Anne try to fight them off. The kids at the shelter fight, too. Wes is in bad shape and needs a doctor. Back at the police station, Angel breaks the magic statue controlling the zombies and the spell is broken. All the dead cops go back to being dead. Wes is rushed to the hospital and finally gets help.

There are some good parts to this episode. I like Wes and Cordy's annoyance over Gunn's plan to video tape police brutality. "That's a really dumb plan." Wes mutters. Cordy arches a brow, "Ah, but you forget that Gunn graduated with a degree in dumb planning from Angel University." They finally decide to go and save Gunn form himself, which is pretty ironic since Wes is the one who winds up in trouble. Also, I like Cordy spotting one of the homeless teens wearing her clothes. "The lady at the store said that blouse was one of a kind." Angel donated some of Cordy's stuff to the shelter back in "Blood Money" and it's fun to see it play out over several episodes. And I like Angel fighting that zombie cop. He kicks the guy's head right off which, even for Angel, is just unexpected... Especially, when the decapitated police officer keeps talking.

On the down side, this just isn't the best episode. The teenagers are kind of annoying most of the time and the story doesn't really contribute a lot to the larger story line. Also, it seems kind of ridiculous to take Wes to the shelter and not to the hospital after he's wounded. Poor Wesley could have bled to death, for crying out loud.

My favorite part of the episode: Angel trying to work up the courage to go into Wes's hospital room and see him. Angel quickly gives up on the idea of letting Wes know that he's there, but Cordy finds him and really lets him have it. I feel bad for poor Angel, but I'm happy that he's finally starting to seek out his friends again.