Back at the mall -- and there's a phrase that doesn't belong in recaps of Angel -- Connor is duct-taping his "explosives" to himself. Angel slowly moves toward his son. Suddenly, there's an explosion. Connor monotones, "The people are rigged, too. You can't save 'em all, dad." He says Angel doesn't know who'll be first, and turns around with the propane attached to his shirt. "Could be me," Connor says. Then he steps aside and adds, "Could be her." We pan down to see Cordy lying on the floor with her own propane-pack. Props to the posters who rightly wondered whether Connor dragged Cordy into the mall in a duffel-bag and then went nuts, or if he went nuts and then went back to get Cordy before taking hostages. Doesn't make much sense either way, does it? Props to whoever invented schnapps, because now these details don't bother me. As much.

Commercials. I call Johanna and moan, "I don't like this, I don't like this. And I wanted to, even when I heard disturbing spoilers, I wanted this to be good, and it's just not." She tells me, "Lilah's pretty. Just focus on that part." She also says that this reminds her of "Touched": "With both of them, it seems like the script was written by someone who'd heard the show described to them, but had never actually seen it." Later, Johanna also asked if maybe they wrote or rewrote this episode at the last minute, when renewal seemed uncertain, which would probably explain a few things.

Here's the other scene that makes sense in terms of plot and characterization. I mean, if you ignore how we got here in the earlier scenes. Angel tells Connor that he's upset because of Jasmine: "We all felt it, that perfect love, and when we had to give it up --" Bzzz, wrong thing to say. Connor smashes a display and shouts, "I didn't feel anything! I can't feel anything." Kinda wish they spent more time on that. I just think it's so tremendously telling that the only times Connor seemed to belong, he had to hide how he actually felt.