Lindsey is given a special gift from his employers: an operation which gives him a new hand with a spot of help from a demonic mage. The problem is, the hand appears to be evil and when another transplanted person stabs himself in his new eye and dies, Angel and the team investigate.

The most obvious factor about this story is that it closely resembles several films about, yes, evil hands. Thankfully, it's not the point of the episode, and what is really going on is far more terrifying than a possessed appendage. On the one hand (pardon the pun), it leads to a more unexpected outcome, but on the other it doesn't really explain the man who stabs himself.

It's been a while since Lindsey took centre stage, and this episode provides a revealing look into the life of a man who doesn't seem to be evil as such, he's just fallen in with the wrong crowd. His guitar playing and singing is superb (congratulations if that's really Christian Kane doing those things), and it seems churlish to turn him into a figure for Angel to mock, even if it is because he doesn't realize just how bad his own singing is. Bearing in mind Angel cut off Lindsey's hand in the first place, you'd think he might feel a little twinge of guilt about it. Then again, if it was the loss of his chance to play guitar that sent Lindsey over the edge, he needs to cool down a bit.

For a Wolfram & Hart story, this one is unusually plot-free. Aside from the hand element, it's time for a promotion to be decided on between Lindsey and Lilah, and the former seems the more likely choice. The problem, however, is that Lindsey's hand difficulties are making him increasingly unbalanced, and when he finds out where his new hand came from, he's keen to set things right. He does this by revealing that Lilah is the right person for the job (fair enough, the decision had to be made), but then Lindsey just wanders off and leaves the city. Last time he left Wolfram & Hart, they dragged him back in. This time they don't seem to care. It's a massive anti-climax to a threat that's been hanging for quite a while. The story doesn't delve enough into Lindsey's character and too much time is taken up with Angel and the team standing about and not really getting anywhere. With all this time killed in which little occurs, it's a poor as well as unlikely send-off and it comes out of the blue. Why does he go now? What's the point? For such an integral recurring regular, it's a very low-key goodbye and aside from some occasional moments of unpleasant horror doesn't really have a lot to recommend it.

**

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