''A woman who uses fire to kill. A woman he can't resist.''

She - 1ADH13

Written by Marti Noxon - Directed by Dave Greenwalt - First Aired on February 8, 2000
Synopsis - Creature Feature - Cool Quotes - References - Continuity - Goofs - Trivia - The Morgue - Cast - Famous Faces - Points Of View

Synopsis

The Short: From the WB11 home page: Cordelia throws a happenin' soiree. While Wesley attempts to mingle, Angel spends most of the time brooding in the kitchen. The next morning, Angel officially hires Wesley, and Cordelia receives a vision of a murder in an ice factory. Angel locates the corpse and encounters a demon named Tay, who tells him his mission is to stop the bringer of chaos. Angel tells his findings to Wesley and Cordelia, and they get right into the research. That night, Angel pays a visit to the corpse's office and encounters a female demon. She sends him a powerful jolt then leaves. Angel recovering quickly, jumps into his car and follows her to a museum. There, he discovers the demon is attempting to help other females escape their homeland via a portal in the museum. Back at Angel Investigations, Wesley discovers Tay is a Vigorie, a herbivore species from Oden Tal that enslaves its female members of the race. Back at the museum, the rescue is a bust after Tay and his cronies burst in. Angel and the demon (who soon introduces herself as Jheira) manage to get rid of them, but not before they take the runaway captive. They unmake her by removing her 'ko.' Jhiera later explains to Angel that the ko is located in the spine and controls a female's physical and sexual power. Meanwhile, Cordelia and Wesley pay a visit to the California Flower Mart to spy on the Vigories. They discover the demons know of Jheira's whereabouts and report back to Angel. We soon learn the other female runaways are at a spa called Palm Ridge. Angel figures out the location, and together they high-tail it to the mansion to warn Jheira. After assisting the escape of the women, Wesley and Cordelia are trapped by the Vigories. Jheira abandons them, but they manage to fight on their own. Jheira pays one final visit and Angel warns her not to hurt any more civilians.

Angel & Jheira

The Long: After a ''previously on Angel'' segment (see Continuity #1) we open on Cordelia's apartment during a lively party. She greets her guests and checks on Angel, who isn't mingling well (see Continuity #2). Cordelia is excited Steve Paymer came to the party (see Reference #1). Wesley is dancing up a storm and wants to chat up the ladies, but when one actually talks to him he makes a fool of himself. Angel socializes with a girl named Laura, but refuses to dance for fear he would make an ass of himself. He ends up in the kitchen having a beer with Dennis the ghost (see Cool Quote #1). Elsewhere a man in a warehouse is looking at a large box marked hazardous waste. He seems anxious about the box, but once he hears strange sounds coming from it he is drawn into opening it. (Listen to the teaser here.)

Unfinished.

Creature Feature

The Vigorie are a race of demons from another dimension called Oden Tal.

Males have four ridges on their foreheads and are said to be fierce warriors. The males are herbivores who consume a stew of rotting plants and flowers, and they consume half their body weight a day.

The females appear mostly human except for the two raised ridges running down either cheek, violet eyes and the row of raised ridges on their back. These ridges are called the ko. This area contains the personality and passions of the demon. When the females come of age, ko controls their physical and sexual power and it signals when they are aroused and have met desirable mates (it glows). When a female Vigorie matures she goes through a period where her ko supercharges them with energy, which manifests as heat and intense strength. At first they can't control this power and need to be cooled constantly. With practice and time they can use this power at will. When the ko is removed they are more easily controlled. Females live enslaved to the males in their home world, who cut off the females' ko. Males may also have a ko, but no powers seem to stem from them.

Cool Quotes

Angel: ''Hi Dennis. How are you doing? Hmm, still dead? I know the feeling.''
The comedic high point of the show. Listen to the quote here.

References

Cordelia: ''Okay, Steve Paymer came, can you believe it? David Paymer's brother, Steve?''
Steve Paymer is an actor, and as Cordelia states, the brother of better known David Paymer. Steve has appeared on the television shows Will & Grace and Mad About You.
David Paymer is an actor whose works run back to the 1979 film The In-Laws. He was nominated for an Oscar for his 1992 film Mr. Saturday Night. He was also in the film Amistad with Harry Groener, who played Mayor Richard Winkins in season 3 and 4 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Cordelia: ''I'm so glad you came. You know how parties are. You're always worried that no one is going to suck the energy out of the room like a giant black hole of boring despair. But there you where, in the clinch!''
A black hole is a cosmic body of extremely intense gravity from which nothing, not even light, can escape. A black hole can be formed by the death of a massive star. When such a star has exhausted its internal thermonuclear fuels at the end of its life, it becomes unstable and gravitationally collapses inward upon itself.
Cordelia: ''Did she Carrie you? Carrie, the movie, you know?''
Carrie is a 1974 horror novel by Stephen King about a girl with telekinetic powers. It ended with the spectacular destruction and burning of her school dance. It was made into a film in 1976 starring Sissy Spacek as Carrie White. Plot: Carrie is the story of Carrie White. She is a girl brought up, almost in isolation, by her psychotically religious mother Margaret. After an embarrassing incident in the showers causes her fellow pupils to tease Carrie ruthlessly, her teacher Miss Collins disciplines them severely. Determined to have revenge, the other students hatch a plot against Carrie, which turns horribly wrong when Carrie's strange mental powers are unleashed during the school prom. This was one of the movies used to train the hell hounds and was referenced by Buffy in The Prom.
When Angel is following Jheira in the car he drives past the Los Angeles Theatre showing the 1983 romance film Heartbreaker. The Los Angeles Theatre was constructed in 1931 and is located at 615 South Broadway.
Angel: ''And this brings us to Manet's incomparable La Music Aux Tuileries. First exhibited in 1863. On the left one spies the painter himself. In the middle distance is the French poet and critic Baudelaire, a friend of the artist. Now, Baudelaire, interesting fellow. In his poem Le vampire he wrote: 'Thou who abruptly as a knife didst come into my heart.' He, ah, strongly believed that evil forces surrounded mankind and some even speculated that the poem was about a real vampire. Oh and, ah, Baudelaire was actually a little taller and a lot drunker than he is depicted here.''

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) was a French painter The son of a magistate, Manet went to sea rather than study law. On his return to Paris in 1850 he studied art with the French academic painter Thomas Couture. Manet was influenced by Velázquez and Goya and later by Japanese painters and printmakers and the objectivity of photography.

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a french poet, translator, and literary and art critic whose reputation rests primarily on Les Fleurs du mal, which was perhaps the most important and influential poetry collection published in Europe in the 19th century.
Wesley: ''Look! Nancy's Petticoat. Oh. They're quite rare. They were named for Nancy Mitford, the author, because of her love for...''
Nancy Mitford (1904-1973) was an English writer noted for her witty novels of upper-class life.
Jheira: ''Where are the girls?''
Mars: ''...and namaste to you too.''
Namaste is an ancient Sanskrit word meaning ''I honor the place within you where the entire Universe resides, I honor the place within you of Love and Light, of Truth and Peace. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only One of us.'' (Thanks to Rob from the Watcher's Diary for helping me research that.)
Mars: ''They're chilling. The little sisters are fine. REM-ing.''
REM stands for Random Eye Movement, the state of sleep where dreams occur.
Mars: ''My shaman has a place in the dessert. He never could turn away scantily clad women in distress, from any dimension. You know, I wish you would let me work on your mirth chakra.''
Chakra, from the Sanskrit cakra for wheel, are any of a number of psychic-energy centres of the body, prominent in the occult physiological practices of certain forms of Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism. The chakras are conceived of as focal points where psychic forces and bodily functions merge with and interact with each other. Among the supposed 88,000 chakras in the human body, six major ones located roughly along the spinal cord and another one located just above the crown of the skull are of principal importance.

Continuity

Angel: ''Previously on Angel.''
Rm w/a Vu - Cordelia got a new apartment with it's own ghost.
Parting Gifts - We learn Wesley is a rogue demon hunter.
Cordelia: ''Hi! Are you having fun?''
Angel: ''Sure. This is, ah...''
Cordelia: ''Your idea of hell?''
Angel: ''Actually in hell you tend to know a lot of the people.''
Becoming Part 2 - In order to save the world from being sucked into hell, Buffy had to send Angel there instead.
Faith, Hope and Trick - Angel mysteriously returns to Earth several months later, but for him hundreds of years passed in hell.
Wesley: ''What did you see?''
Cordelia: ''I don't just see, I feel, okay? Thank you Doyle.''
Hero - Cordelia was given the visions from Doyle.
Parting Gifts - Cordelia learned she gained visions from Doyle.

Goofs

Unfinished.

Note: Although some people wonder how Angel was able to enter the house uninvited at the end of this episode, if you watch carefully you will see this place is the Palm Ridge Spa, a place of business, not someone's home.

Trivia

One of the songs played in this episode is Supreme Beings of Leisure's Strangelove Addiction. You can download a clip of the song here.

We see Angel's license plate, it's NKO 714.

1863 when La Music Aux Tuileries was first exhibited, Angel had been a vampire for about 110 years and had already sired Penn and Drusilla.

I wrote up a conversion of Jheira for Champions 4th edition role playing game at http://angel.fcpages.com/csjheira2.html.

The Morgue

Peter Wilkers: Burned alive in an ice factory by a female Vigorie demon.

Note: According to the newspaper files Cordelia found there were four men killed in a way similar to the death Angel was investigating. The dates appeared to be December 3rd, October 23rd, July 14th, and May 12th, 1999.

Cast

Starring:

David Boreanaz as Angel

Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase

Alexis Denisof as Wesley Wyndham-Pryce

Guest Starring:

Ling Bai as Jheira

Colby French as Tay

Heather Stephens as Shari

Sean Gunn as Mars

Co-starring:

Tracey Costello as Laura

Andre L. Roberson as Diego

P.J. Marino as Peter Wilkers

Honor Bliss as the Girl

Chris Durand as Demon Henchman #1

Alison Simpson as Demon Girl #1

Lucas Dudley as the Security Guard

Famous Faces

Ling Bai, who played Jheira is a famous Chinese actress who has appeared in numerous foreign and domestic films. One of her most recent works was the 1999 film Wild Wild West, where she appeared as Miss East alongside several other Buffy/Angel actors. There is a very good fan site for her at http://homex.coolconnect.com/member2/bailing/.

Colby French, who played Tay, played Ensign Weldon in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode When It Rains 7.21. He also played the deputy in the X-Files episode Millenium 7.04.

Heather Stephens, who played Shari, went on to play Michelle on the television series Men, Women and Dogs. They have a page devoted to her at http://www.thewb.com/Faces/CastBio/0,7930,64,00.html.

Sean Gunn, who played Mars, played the part of Lucas in Hero.

Honor Bliss, who played the woman who talked to Wesley at the party, is a professional model with L.A. Models. They have a web site at http://www.lamodels.com/. Maxim magazine has a page devoted to here at http://www.maximonline.com/girls_of_maxim/girl_575.html.

Points Of View

Mathew:

I had a lot of trouble understanding Jheira's speech, which kinda turned me off this episode. Plus I have to wonder if maybe the male Vigorie demons had some justification in cutting the ko off. If all female Vigories turn into super powered, super sexy, women who burn whoever they have sex with when they mature, it's only self defence, they don't want to die. Maybe I didn't understand it right. I still laugh at the Wesley and Angel dance scenes, and of course I'm glad to see Dennis again.

Page by Webmaster Mathew - July, 2002

Special thanks to The Complete Buffy Episode Guide for inspiration and technical help, as well as Buffy episode links and all the readers of the Watcher's Diary for their feedback in making this page what it is.