If I’m not mistaken, ”power play” is a hockey term, and describes the situation when one team has one of its players in the penalty box, meaning that the other team has the benefit of having one player more on the field. Or ice. Or whatever it’s called. Thus, it is a fitting title for this episode, seeing as Angel is, in a way, out of play; the “other side” has the benefit of superior numbers.

But the title has more to it more than that. In “Time Bomb” we witnessed Illyria giving Angel a lesson in Machiavellian power politics, a lesson Angel really learned back in season one, I think it was (I have the exact quotes somewhere; I’ll post it later), after Holland Manners outsmarted him in some way. Then he said that the world’s structured for power, not justice, and this is why people like Holland kept winning. Illyria and Cordelia reminded him of this fact, and he found a way to exploit it after Fred’s death.

Anyway, this episode is ingeniously plotted; it creates enormous amounts of suspense, both for the episode’s and the season’s finales. Small clues to the real intentions of Angel are dropped all the time, but personally I don’t remember discovering them the first time around; it’s only now, when I have some inklings about what’s been going on for the last ten episodes and about what will happen in the next, that I read any deeper meaning into Angel’s “casual glances” around the room after his initiation, and other scenes like this. Or, I probably understood that appearances were deceptive, but not exactly what. Which only helps to emphasise how gloriously well written this show is. Not that it necessarily takes much to fool me, but you get the idea, right?

Now, for “Not Fade Away”. I’ve been looking forward to this since before I started watching season one again last October.