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Angel

Angel 5x01 Convictions - Summary

Wednesday 17 September 2003, by Webmaster

ATS: ’Convictions’ Summary

In an effort to try and make spoiler information a little more accessible, I’ve been looking into ways to have more information on the various episodes. While the Spoiler Summaries are nice, they only provide specific details on the episodes. I’ve been trying to find a way to serve both those fans who want only the main spoiler points, as well as those who want detailed summaries.

A new source, Eljay, offered to provide summaries for ’Angel’ episodes. So with their permission, I’m going to being posting summaries of upcoming ’Angel’ episodes as they are provided. They will be posted here, linked off the main page, and also linked off the Spoiler Summary page. While they might not appear as quickly as some of the other spoilers or information, I should have summaries well before the episodes air.

Before I get onto the summary, I’d like to say that I really appreciate Eljay’s hard work in putting together the info and allowing it to be posted on the site. Conviction Summary (Courtesy Of Eljay)

Episode opens with a scene that echoes *In the Dark* — girl running down an alley, fleeing from a pursuer, and getting saved by Angel. He stakes the vampire and prepares to leave as half of Wolfram & Hart show up. Lawyers with waivers for the rescuee to sign; an ops team prepared to take out opposition, headed by a man named Hauser; and an obsequious guy who nervously offers Angel a latte as he brings his car around for him.

Next morning at Wolfram & Hart, Wesley and Fred are discussing their continued misgivings at coming to work there. Fred introduces Knox to Wesley, and she and Knox head off for her office together, Wes not especially pleased that Fred allows Knox to carry her box of files after not allowing Wes to do so. Gunn shows up and is equally ambivalent about being there, even as he shows Wesley the office he has selected for himself. They run into Angel on the way to his office, and Angel is annoyed about how W&H put a tracer on him and interrupted his helping the helpless efforts the night prior. The only one who seems totally at ease with the new regime is Lorne.

Angel and co. are even less happy when they enter his office and find Eve waiting for them. She’s going to be their liaison to the Senior Partners. She explains the dilemma they’re in — if they destroy W&H, they won’t have it anymore. Evil will just set up shop somewhere else without them, and they’ll be back on the outside again. Whereas, this way, at least they can nip away at the edges of evil. Isn’t that exciting?

She points them toward their client files, and they spend the remainder of the day and evening in sickened reading. Gunn returns to his office to find Eve waiting for him with an offer he can’t refuse.

Next day, Angel discovers, much to his chagrin, that his new secretary, er assistant, is Harmony. Wes chose her — figured Angel could use a familiar face in this environment. Harmony can’t wait for Cordy to find out — oh. Oops. Nobody told her.

Wes tells Angel there’s a problem with one of their clients — Corbin Fries. He’s on trial for various nefarious acts, and it isn’t going well. Fries tells Angel and gang that if they don’t get him off, he’s going to drop *the bomb*. Which will kill pretty much everyone living in California.

Meanwhile, Lorne is checking out the staff, having them sing for him, one after the other. Knox and Fred are talking when she gets called to Angel’s office to discuss the Fries crisis. So does Lorne. Nobody can find Gunn. Angel is afraid Fries’ *bomb* might be some kind of disease or virus thing, hence, Fred’s department. She heads back to the lab to work on that while Angel goes off to interrogate *Spanky*, a freelance mystic who’s done some work for Fries.

Spanky tells Angel that he built a mystical container for Fries, that could contain anything. After some *encouragement*, he tells Angel where the container is now located. In his son, Matthew.

This hits Angel hard. Eve comes over to console him. She’s the only one who knows why he’s so upset; after all, none of the others remember Connor. He’s not happy that she knows. She tells him if he reacts this way to all his cases, he’s going to burn out within his first week on the job.

We meanwhile find out why Gunn is missing. He’s at some scary lab, having scary things done to him. We know not what.

Fred and Knox figure out that a former W&H employee probably developed a virus for Knox under the table — but since the man seems to have been killed for doing so, he can’t tell them anything useful about his creation. And apparently, all Fries has to do to release it is say a particular word, but they don’t know the word, so Wesley can’t come up with a defense. Lorne is keeping an eye on the trial, and things are NOT going well for Fries. Angel decides to seize the boy and put him into isolation to contain the possible release of the virus.

But Hauser’s ops guys have been listening, and they decide to do the job themselves by killing the boy and everyone around him. Unfortunately for them, Harmony hears this in office scuttlebutt and alerts Angel. Who has a helicopter. And gets there (to the school) first. Unluckily for Hauser and friends.

Meanwhile, as the trial is working toward an unhappy (for Fries) close, a new lawyer shows up. It’s Gunn! He demands a mistrial, because of the judge’s unrevealed stock holdings in one of Fries’ companies. He’s spouting off chapter and verse of the California legal precedents, and Wesley and Lorne, watching the proceedings, are very confused.

Gunn tells the others he’d had a procedure to stick the law in his brain. The MoG didn’t have a lawyer on their team; now they do. Of course everyone else is worried about what else they may have stuck in Gunn’s brain.

Angel and co reflect on their *victory* — they saved a scumbag from justice, and returned to him the son he had infected with a deadly virus. Hooray. But at least this buys them the time to try to figure out a way to de-trigger the boy and find an antidote to the virus.

Angel says they are going to figure out how to use W&H to best advantage, and why they were invited to work there. As he speaks, he’s tearing open an envelope, and something falls to the floor. It’s an amulet. They back away as dust swirls, and a figure appears in the dust, slowly becoming more and more clear. It’s Spike!