"Blind Date" is episode 21 of season 1 in the television show ''

Angel In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles inc ...

''. Written by Jeannine Renshaw and directed by Thomas J. Wright, it was originally broadcast on May 16, 2000, on the WB

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

. In ''Blind Date'',

reluctantly agrees to help lawyer

Lindsey McDonald Lindsey may refer to : Places Canada * Lindsey Lake, Nova Scotia England * Parts of Lindsey, one of the historic Parts of Lincolnshire and an administrative county from 1889 to 1974 ** East Lindsey, an administrative district in Lincolnshire, a ...

save a group of three blind children from a blind woman assassin hired by the Senior Partners of Wolfram & Hart. However, Lindsey struggles with his decision to save the children and betray the firm when

Holland Manners This article features minor fictional characters who appear as guest stars on the television program ''Angel'', ordered alphabetically. For the show's main characters, please see the article list of ''Angel'' characters. A Alonna Gunn Alonna ...

, Lindsey's supervisor, offers him the promotion of a lifetime.

Summary

reluctantly agrees to help

crack the secret files of Wolfram & Hart to save a group of three blind children from a blind woman assassin hired by the unseen Senior Partners of the firm to kill the children. With a little help from Lindsey and Gunn who cause a diversion, Angel sneaks into the ultra-high-tech security firm to steal the firm’s computer files and also takes an ancient scroll he finds in the building safe. But Lindsey isn’t sure if he can stick by his decision to help Angel and betray the firm by sabotaging the deadly mission when

, Lindsey‘s supervisor, offers him the promotion of a lifetime.

Acting

Jennifer Badger, who guest stars as Vanessa, has previously been Charisma Carpenter and

Eliza Dushku Eliza Patricia Dushku (; born December 30, 1980) is an American actress. She is best known for starring as Faith in the supernatural drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Pl ...

's stunt double in both '' Buffy'' and ''Angel''. She was also one of the victims in

Somnambulist Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism or noctambulism, is a phenomenon of combined sleep and wakefulness. It is classified as a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. It occurs during slow wave stage of sleep, in a state of low ...

, the eleventh episode of Angel season 1.

Production details

Special effects Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual w ...

Supervisor Loni Peristere says they couldn't afford to shoot Vanessa's perspective using greenscreen, so instead they came up with the "crazy idea" of painting the actors with glow-in-the-dark paint and shooting the scenes in the dark. The effect was intensified by offsetting the footage to create tracers, and then reversing the image - "it was supposed to tell the story that she sees the action before it actually happens," explains Peristere. "It was such a wacky idea and it really worked out well."

Writing

Producer Tim Minear explains that this episode provides a "detailed exploration of Wolfram & Hart, establishing the power base there and laying the groundwork for Season Two." It also provides backstory for the character of Lindsey, including his motivations for working at Wolfram & Hart.

Reception

In an essay entitled "Why We Love Lindsey", M.S. West says the scene at the end of the episode "fulfills Joss Whedon's earlier promise of a more adult show with less clear fault-lines of right and wrong." Lindsey makes a difficult choice between redemption and power, ultimately choosing to accept the promotion. "In that moment," West writes, "Lindsey is what ''Angel'' the show struggled through its first season to be."

References

External links

* {{Angel episodes Angel (season 1) episodes 2000 American television episodes