Dominion - Godspeed

The Angels only reveal their wings at moments of heightened emotion and
budget allocation.

Episode 2 of Dominion gives us a little more meat than the pilot, which was pretty much all sauce and setting and no substance; high on action and background, but not much for character.

Alex is fighting his destiny as the saviour, angry at being abandoned by his father to grow up in the lowest echelon of society. It's a pretty stock storyline, but it gives him a lot more substance. Alex still intends to run away from Vega with Claire, but when an undercover angel attacks him in her house, decides to just leg it and remove the risk to her. He's not exactly Raskolnilkov, but it brings him up past being just a whiny git.

Evil Giles and Gabriel meet on a mesa to do the feeding the ducks thing, but no-one else gets a great deal of advancement. Evil Giles continues to manouevre against Alan Dale and the senate, but they conspire to suppress word of Alex's chosenness for the sake of public order. We do get to see the angels at rest, however, apparently hanging out and being debauched in their corporeal forms for shiggles. Pseudosapphic Diplomat poisons her handmaidens with lethal nail polish to create a blackmail opportunity against Evil Giles, securing her release and continuing presence in the main credits.

The strengths of Dominon remain the creepy wall-crawling 'eight balls' and the occasional burst of mad, wing-slapping angelic action. It's weaknesses are still its characters, who are the opposite of a fairy tale prince; ever so sincere, but not charming.