Outside, Billy smirks his way down the hall and into the credits. So. Watching Lilah get her head smashed in? Whaddya think? Personally, I found it funny. Now I don't want to give anything away here, but in the course of this episode there's a certain implication that violence against women is sort of, well, not to be judgmental or anything, bad. As Shack ably noted, this is different from the show's normal message, which is that violence against women, particularly Cordelia, is a good story hook. And I find it a bit odd that the first such act of violence we see -- the most surprising one -- is directed against Lilah. What with her being evil and all. I mean, when Angel threatened to kill her recently, there were plenty of people shouting, "Don't threaten! Just kill her! She should be killed!" A clever writer might do this intentionally, in order to make us realize that in cheering for the death of a female character, we, the audience, are in fact victims of the same misogyny that affects the characters on the show. That is, if for "clever" you read "stoned." Because most of us are able to distinguish fiction from reality.

Wesley's. Huh. Guess they wanted to get some use out of the set. Fred watches while Gunn and Angel play a videogame, and Cordy helps Wesley pour coffee. Wesley compliments her on her "initiative" in training with Angel, and says they should all be "battle-ready." Out in the living room, Gunn shouts, "Dead! So dead! So very, very dead! Just how dead are you?" Angel grumps, "I'm tired of being the dead one." Heh. Wesley says he might train Fred to fight, and Cordy says, "If she can help you fight, why not?" Snerk. Cordy says she's kidding (but she's not!), and changes topics: "If you want to get to know Fred better, maybe the next time you have her over for an intimate dinner for two, you won't ask the rest of us to come along." Wesley's embarrassed, and claims that Fred is extraordinary. He adds, "The last thing any of us should be doing is...coupling." He worries that office romances are a bad idea, but Cordy points out that the MoG will have a hard time finding someone who can deal with their hobbies. She wonders, "Maybe we are meant --" "For each other?" Wesley wonders, and then the audience wonders whether he meant himself and Cordy, or himself and Fred. And then there's the portion that thinks he means himself and Angel, but I digress. Cordy explains, "Actually, I was going to say, 'To be alone.'" Ouch. She encourages Wesley to "go right up to [Fred] and...hack her into little pieces." Foreshadowing. Got it. That's not actually Cordy's advice for Wesley: she's just getting a vision of a man plunging a big knife into a woman. Everyone rushes over and helps her up. Cordy says she saw a man attacking his wife at a convenience store. Angel wonders how many convenience stores there are on the West Side, and Fred starts to estimate the local population, which goes on way too long before Gunn answers, "A lot." Wesley suggests splitting into teams, but then Cordy says they shouldn't bother: "This murder happened a week ago. Why would [The Powers That Be] show this to me now?"