5. Angel - "Birthday"
Cordelia Chase had pretty much always wanted to be a famous actress. Or the trophy wife of a millionaire. Pretty much whichever is more convenient. (Given the acting ability we've seen from Cordelia, it might be in her best interest to just try and bag a rich one.) As good old Sunnydale luck would have it, she ends up working for a supernatural detective agency, sharing her apartment with a ghost. So when Skip (easily one of the coolest minor characters on Angel) offers her the opportunity to live in a world where she is a star with her own television show, it is understandably pretty hard for her to pass it up. No more head-splitting visions, no more occasionally getting impregnated with demon spawn, no more monsters of the week. But her alternate universe is a lot darker than the quirky "Cordy!" TV show opening credits would imply. The rich actress version of Cordelia immediately goes looking for her friends, Wesley and Angel, to see how they've been doing. Answer? Not so good. Wesley is a brusque, one-armed demon hunter, and Angel spends his time in a dark basement, driven mad by the visions that Doyle passed on to him. Angel's version of Los Angeles has always been pretty dark, but this interpretation of the City of Angels is positively grim.