There's rare meat on the menu.
Written by: Sarah Fain and Elizabeth Craft
Directed by: Marita Grabiak
There's werewolf on the menu at an exclusive club that cooks up exotic monster meals. A club member working undercover at Wolfram and Hart attempts to deliver them Nina, a recently created lycanthrope who Angel is attempting to keep out of the cooking pot.
After Nina's capture, and subsequent daring rescue, Nina turns the traitor into a werewolf himself, making him the new special of the day.
- ten quick questions.
Trivia:
Doctor, Doctor: John Billingsley, who plays Doctor Royce, is best known as Doctor Phlox in Star Trek: Enterprise. He also cameos as a hapless technician in Stargate SG1 from time to time.
Big gay possums: The werewolves in Unleashed were a step up from the ones previously seen in the Buffyverse. Monster-maker Robert Hall had an interesting brief for the creature:
"They were saying Oz looked like a gay possum... We were going back and forth with [executive producer] Jeff Bell, because he was real specific about it. The script wanted a big, bad wolf that didn't look like a gay possum. I think it literally said, 'Don't make it look like a gay possum.'"
Little green men: Angel is told that leprechauns don't exist, backing up Giles' belief in the Buffy episode Faith, Hope and Trick. Seemingly nobody told author Nancy Holder, who features the little Irish mischief makers in her Buffy novel Blood and Fog. Oops!
Review:
Unleashed is a reasonably tasty feast but, like a Chinese takeaway, ultimately leaves you feeling a little empty. It's great that the writers are revisiting the werewolf mythology that once formed such an integral part of Buffy, though.
The creature design is particularly impressive - for once we have a werewolf that you'd genuinely want to run screaming from, rather than just tickle behind the ears.
Good to see Enterprise's John Billingsley (who also features in Stargate SG1) playing the bad egg at Wolfram and Hart. He's a fine actor, clearly enjoying the fact that he has a decent script to work with.
