26 Years Later, Angel's Worst Episode Has Aged Like Milk
Considering that it first debuted back in 1999, Angel has aged incredibly well. Many iconic episodes still stand up today, remaining as entertaining and unsettling as any modern fantasy-horror series. Even after two decades, Angel’s best episodes prove just how foundational the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff was for dark ambitious fantasy storytelling on the small screen.
Sadly, for every Angel episode that has aged like fine wine, there seems to be a counterpart that has aged like milk. Some weaker episodes can be excused as products of their era, but there’s one noteworthy exception that feels difficult to defend on those grounds. Even in the early 2000s, its central idea felt dated enough to be uncomfortable even when it was first broadcast. Angel season 1, episode 12, “Expecting”, takes an incredibly harrowing premise and handles it not merely poorly, but insensitively to the point it's tough to get through.
In “Expecting”, Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) discovers she has become pregnant after a one-night stand, only to learn that the pregnancy is part of a demonic scheme. The Angel episode frames this biological violation as simply another supernatural problem for Angel (David Boreanaz) and his team to solve, with little-to-no focus on just how traumatic it would have been for Cordelia. More than two and a half decades later, “Expecting” remains a tonal low point for an otherwise groundbreaking dark fantasy series.
The Angel Season 1 Episode “Expecting” Is Tough To Watch Today
Of all the Angel episodes that have not aged well, few stand out quite like season 1’s “Expecting.” The episode begins with Cordelia discovering that she is mysteriously pregnant after a one-night stand, despite taking appropriate precautions. Her pregnancy progresses at an impossibly rapid rate, and it’s eventually revealed that she is carrying not a human child, but seven demonic fetuses.
The premise relies on tropes that were already dated when “Expecting” aired. The forced mystical pregnancy is obvious enough, but the episode also brushes against the old horror cliché of a sexually active woman being punished for having sex. To its credit, Angel briefly rejects that idea, with Cordelia worrying that her pregnancy is punishment and being reassured that it is not. However, that acknowledgment does little to address the larger problem.
What makes “Expecting” particularly difficult to watch is that Cordelia's experience is a biological violation. In no uncertain terms, a demon lying about their identity and impregnating her, regardless of whether she consented to the coitus, is sexual assault. Forced reproduction is a harrowing reality for many women and girls worldwide, yet Angel simply treats it as yet another supernatural mishap. This event extends to Cordelia remaining her usual quippy, sharp-tongued self rather than showing any signs of the emotional trauma she realistically would have been having to work through.
Instead of treating that violation as a catastrophic, potentially life-changing trauma, “Expecting” largely turns it into another monster-of-the-week case. Angel and his team investigate the demonic conspiracy, find a way to remove the threat, and move on. The story resolves the physical danger without giving meaningful attention to the psychological consequences for Cordelia, and the Angel episode feels jarringly shallow compared with the seriousness of its premise.
Several Angel Episodes Mishandled Serious Topics
“Expecting” is a tough watch because it waters down and mishandles an incredibly serious subject. Unfortunately, it is not the only time Angel does this. Several episodes take topics that require considerable care and force them through the show's monster-of-the-week structure, producing results that range from jarring and uncomfortable to deeply misguided.
Angel season 1's “She,” for example, attempts to use fantasy horror as an allegory for female genital mutilation, but its heavy-handed execution completely removes any serious dissection of the issue. “Sense and Sensitivity” similarly turns a story involving police brutality and institutional misconduct into broad comedy, while “I Fall to Pieces” uses stalking and harassment as an excuse to create a story about a neurosurgeon who can detach and remotely control parts of his body.
What makes the tone-deaf approach of “Expecting” even worse is that it’s not the only time Angel uses forced mystical pregnancy without fully confronting what that means for the woman involved. Cordelia becomes impregnated against her will as part of an antagonist's supernatural agenda not once, but three times throughout Angel’s five seasons.
When Angel use of supernatural concepts to explore real-world issues worked, it worked incredibly well. Its best stories understood that demons, vampires, and other fantastical threats could be effective metaphors that didn’t dilute the seriousness of the topics they dissected. Unfortunately, “Expecting” demonstrates that when Angel missed the mark, it missed it by a long way. By treating forced reproduction as little more than a bizarre supernatural obstacle, it turns an inherently traumatic premise into an uncomfortable monster story that has only become harder to defend with age.