Notes on Buffy 1.07: Angel

[maggie2]

Standard disclaimer: I'll often speak of foreshadowing, but that doesn't mean I'm at all committing to the idea that there was some fixed design from the word go -- it's a short hand for talking about the resonances that end up in the text as it unspools.

Standard spoiler warning: The notes are written for folks who have seen all of BtVS and AtS.  I'll be spoiling through the comics as well.  Basically -- if you are a spoiler-phobe and haven't seen or read it all, read further at your own risk.

Standard Credits:  I've written the material in black; Strudel (aka my Bro) writes in blue; local_max  writes in purple.  Or at least, that's what they've done when I finish editing and formatting!

Angel, aka Buffy’s Love Life part 3, in which Angel Shows His True Face, and the Greatest Romance of All Time is Launched.

Things aren’t what they seem.  We’re coming in for the first big pay-off on that, so it’s appropriate that the episode opens with the first two plays on the theme.   First we see Collin, the anointed one who looked like an innocent.  Next Darla enters -- the vampire dressed like a school girl who we thought was going to be the first innocent victim of the show.  Strudel: Note that Darla suggests that she's picked her costume because Angel is now into high school girls. Max: Which is particularly disturbing when you consider that Darla had picked out the high school outfit before Buffy's first day at Sunnydale High.  Was Angel stalking Buffy at school back at Hemery long enough for Darla to notice? 

Prior to the reveal almost everything Angel says is laden with meaning, starting with “good dogs don’t bite”.  It’s fun to watch how carefully they threaded the needle of screaming he’s a vampire without having him say or do anything that could be used to prove he was a vampire.    A fairly well-executed plot twist (unlike many that follow).

Max: Now now, Maggie, what could you be referring to?  Maggie, hmmm...
 
Romance which is not what it seems, but which really is a romance.  Willow is firmly set-up as the B/A cheerleader.  She’s all romantic about it, rose colored glasses.   Except the one time she accidentally strays into the observation that Buffy is going to age and Angel isn’t.   The episode quietly reminds us that the differences are even more profound.  Angel’s had a fully adult hot sexual relationship with a woman (Darla) and now he’s playing with the chaste sixteen-year-old.  His apartment is that of a sophisticated adult, full of books and objets d’art.  Elegant.  The contrast with Buffy’s room couldn’t be more pronounced.  The episode has a running gag with Buffy’s complete lack of interest in history.  While Angel reveals some very hard truths about his past as a vampire with a soul, including killing his own family, he still lies when he tells her that he hasn’t fed from a living human since being cursed.  He lies at the top of the episode as well when he tells Buffy he wasn't following her (he was).  Strudel has a long dissertation of just how much Angelus is on display here below.

Max adds:  The contrast between Willow and Xander's reactions to Buffy & Angel are I think significant beyond just their respective roles in the A/B/X/W quadrilateral in this season.  They both have an obvious investment in how Buffy and Angel works out, because Bangel spells the end of Bander.  But I think their attitudes on Angel, morally, have a lot to do with their different views of the world: Xander stands in judgment that Angel is a vampire ergo evil, and we find him in this "judgment" position quite often, including of Buffy; Willow just wants everything to work out in a way in which everyone is happy, regardless whether it's "right" or not. 

That said, Buffy and Angel are genuinely drawn to each other.   Buffy offers to let Angel kill him, and he really can’t even though he admits he wants to.  Instead, he stakes his sire and century-long lover.  And the ending scene really is poignant, with both of them knowing they should walk away, but not being able to do it.  They kiss and her cross burns into his chest.   We are getting two stories here.  It’s about the way romantic lenses can obscure reality ---- these two could never be happy in a house with a picket fence.  There is nothing about these two that could make a real relationship work or make sense.  The gauzy romantic lens is being called out or subverted in many ways.  But the romance is still affecting as romance.  .

The final affecting image sets up the big reversal to come: Angel may have a temporary burn mark on his heart, but Buffy is the one who is going to walk away with a permanent scar.  She may be tempting him to live, but he ends up seriously damaging her capacity to live fully. 

Local-Max: How temporary is the burn?  Angel burns for 100 years after Becoming, but still (arguably) recovers to open up his heart to Cordelia a year or so before Buffy tells Spike she loves him.  Depending on how one reads season eight, that might not have been enough for her.  Of course, how much Angel does open up his heart to Cordy is another matter--c.f. whispering Buffy's name in "Awakening." 

Angel as a hero watch.  He finally saves her!  Twice!  Go Angel!! 

Angel/Angelus.  Both the Scoobies and the vampires use the names interchangeably.  The accent is on Angelus as the evil version, but Angel in the past is referred to as Angel.  The reveal has Angel’s demonic face appearing in an uncontrollable way.  Darla goes on to say he can only suppress his true nature for so long.  Angel doesn’t disagree with her on this point.  He visibly has to restrain himself from succumbing to the temptation to dine on Joyce when the opportunity presents itself.   And we actually get a fairly accurate description of what is going on here.  Angel is a demon; the soul is simply a conscience.  Without it he doesn’t care about the harm he does.   With it he cares enough about the harm to try to reign in the strong desires to do harm (both towards Joyce and towards Buffy).  The idea that Angelus is an entirely separate person is going to come later, but I think it’s clear both from what is said and shown here and what is said and shown in AtS that the idea that they are separate entities is a fiction that is convenient to everyone in the aftermath of Angelus’s actions in season 2.  Just last week we saw a dry-run on the process of setting up a convenient lie about the demonic behavior of our friends.

Max: Another revealing moment is when Angel describes the Gypsy girl he murdered as "dumb as a post"--sounds like he still sees the world much the way Angelus does.  Maggie replies: Worse, when we see the scene of his interaction with the gypsy girl over on AtS, she's all trussed up and terrified -- it's not like he actually interacted with her as a person enough to have any basis for judgment at all. 

 

Family. Max:  We see that not only is Angel demonic, but for the first time here we are shown that demonic vampires have a sense of family.  Darla implies she loves Angel (in AtS she would not use the word love, but there's clear feelings there) and they were an item for a century-plus; the Master describes himself, Darla and the Anointed as a tight family unit, with Angel the prodigal son who will hopefully return to the fold.  The Master goes into a rage at having lost Darla because she's his favourite--the only time we see the Master upset over something besides another of his plans being foiled.  Vampires can feel real feelings, as it turns out.  Buffy is identified by the Master as slowly destroying his family.

 

The other person who is identified with destroying families? Angel.  He killed his family and everyone they knew.  And Darla sets Angel up to kill Buffy's only (at this point!) close family, in the form of Joyce.  Darla knows that this is a kink of Angel's: we later find out that Angelus killed Drusilla's family before turning her, and enjoys greatly repeating his initial destruction-of-family.  (With the knowledge that Darla made him, we also get the creepy Oedipal subtext wherein one mother feeds Angel another mother.)  What motivates Buffy to kill Angel is not some abstract worry about his nature (she's still gossipping with Willow about how nice her kiss with Angel was after his vamp-reveal) but the actual threat Angel poses to her family.  And while Angel never does kill Joyce, he does pose a threat to her again and again, either directly ("Passion") or indirectly ("Becoming," in which fighting Angel causes a rift in Buffy & Joyce).  But in the end, Angel doesn't kill Joyce (or Buffy), but kills Darla, who is the closest family that Angel has in the world right now.  Angel is associated with families all the way down the line; he can't help but form them and he can't help but destroy them--whether his own or others'.

 

I won't go on about it for now, but note that Angel's immediate threat to Joyce contrasts with that other vampire's complete inability and disinterest in harming her.

 

In season eight, we have the return of the Master and Angel, but Buffy's only blood-family in the mix right now is not Joyce, but Dawn.

 

Nice resonance.  After Angel’s revelation of his demonic face causes her to scream, Buffy explains the scream to her mother by saying she saw “a shadow”.  She’s just seen how close the shadow lies to the surface of the safe ordinary world.  But the shadow really is always lurking – here metaphorically; in season five literally.  Max: And she says it to her mother, too, who in season five will learn something about shadows (on CT scans).  Maggie:  Exactly.

 
Other nice resonances:  Max:  Willow, to Giles, when he describes The Three, is upset that Giles always seems to know things and she doesn't.  Giles: "Well, you weren't here from midnight until six researching it."  WILLOW: "No, I was sleeping."  Very early we're pointed to Willow's desire to know everything without having to put all the work in that's required in order to acquire that knowledge.

 

Also, in the early snarking between Xander and Cordelia (which helps set up their romance), Xander loudly claims that her dress doesn't make her look like a hooker.  Darla, whom we learn later was a prostitute in real life (and never quite stopped defining herself in opposition to that--c.f. "It was my payment" in "Epiphany"), is also wearing a dress that doesn't make her look like one.

 
Summary on Buffy’s Love Life.  She only has eyes for Angel.  Since the lure has nothing to do with anything that suggests compatibility, it seems like we could ascribe it either to Angel as the mysterious romantic figure, or to Angel as the other being in Buffy’s life stranded between the demonic and the  human.  I tend to think it’s both.  Also, there's chemistry -- they have a basic animal attraction to one another.

More on Angel/Angelus:  Strudel:  We have three cross burnings we can juxtapose.  The Master grasps the cross to show his mastery of pain.  Angel endures the searing of his flesh for the sake of Buffy's kiss (sigh, how romantic).  Spike will later drape himself over a cross while reeling from the burdens of his new soul.  The first, the Master's, is about power, the last, Spike's, about repentance.  What of the second?  While it looks like, on the surface, that Angel accepts the pain in the name of love, my thesis of the moment is that Angel's acceptance of the burning cross is really just the Angelus version of the Master's painful power grab, the difference being Angelus's preference for gaining power through manipulation.  I admit, this is a deeply, harshly, cynical read of Angel at this moment, when he appears to be achieving the height of romantic devotion.  But perpend:

Angel as a demon watch. For form's sake, I will refer to Angel as Angelus, just to set the stage rhetorically.  In the first scene, we see Angelus doing what he has been doing for years, spying on Buffy.  This time, it's at the Bronze.  Now, finally, after all these years, this lurking seems to be of some benefit to Buffy since Angelus does manage to arrive on the scene to save Buffy from the Three.  Go Angel, we can finally cheer, but this is Angelus's m.o. too, since he gets Buffy to believe that he is a full-fledged ally in the fight against vampires.  Step one in any con:  gain their trust.  Together they flee, and, just as Angelus might have drawn it up in his long hours contemplating how best to insinuate himself, they escape the Three by ducking into Buffy's house.  And in the panicky moment, Buffy invites Angelus in.  It seems so natural and benign, doesn't it?  But then we immediately start getting the hints about what an enormous breach this is.  We learn immediately of the invitation-only rule that applies to vampires and the sanctity of home (Buffy worrying over Joyce -- "There's a lot of weird people [vampires] outside at night ... I just feel better with you safe and sound inside, [with a vampire who will shortly be mortally tempted to kill you]").  Angelus has already breached that sanctity, getting his invitation from a deceived Buffy, an invitation that will be echoed when Darla (and who else comes closer to Angelus than Darla?) deceives Joyce to walk through the same door. 

The deceptions continue throughout their dialogue.  Don't worry, he tells her, vampires can't come in unless invited (implying he isn't one).  Why were you there?  "I was just out walking."  Why do you hunt vampires?  "They killed my family."  (Yeah, yeah, he doesn't say that, but he lets Buffy believe that).  He also has to pretend he can eat the dinner she got for him.  And he avoids telling her how old he really is.  Yes, we can understand the deceptions, but let's face it, this is all pure Angelus, and, with Angelus, conversations can barely move an inch without him needing to walk a fine line with the truth.

Angelus then penetrates the inner sanctum, Buffy's bedroom.  Buffy has him look out her window while she gets undressed, but we have to wonder how many times has Angelus peered in those windows to watch her.  After all, he's been watching her for a long, long time before he even makes his presence known to her.   "You even look pretty when you go to sleep," he says when she's changed for bed.  That's a funny way to say she's pretty in her PJs, which makes me think he's actually saying he has seen her go to sleep before (this line also prefigures one of Angelus's creepiest messages to Buffy in Season 2, the drawing of her asleep).  Even when denying that he read her diary (is that remotely plausible?), he highlights his lurking skills by saying he hid in the closet -- but he didn't just hide; ever the spy, he watched Joyce straightening up the room.  It's not clear this is a tenable story (is Joyce really going to straighten up Buffy's room and move her diary?), but Angelus moves the inquiry away by saying how much he's wanted to kiss her.

And here is where we get to the ick.  All along, we've been watching as Angelus slowly lures Buffy in, with the coy messages, the gruff chivalrousness, the darkly handsome brooding.  He's got her where he wants to and now the conquest is getting closer and closer.  I think Xander nails it when he calls the gentlemanly chaste sleeping on the floor routine "the oldest trick in the book."  And so, Angelus has lured her in, and now he proceeds to the kiss.  Right away, anyone with a brain, especially anyone with the experience of an immortal watching the frequent waxing and waning of mortal lives, will know how wrong this is.  Sixteen year-old Willow stumbles into this recognition ("it's kind of novel how he'll stay young and handsome forever, although you'll still get wrinkly and die, and ... oh, what about the children?").  Angelus even says this is impossible and should not be, but takes not a step away from Buffy.  He doesn't pause or pull away when they cross this line. 

Now, admittedly, the next part of the seduction is a bit harder, what with Buffy wanting to kill him and everything.  As I watch Angelus with the crossbow pointed at him, I see no real concern that he's about to get dusted.  He's a poker player and he's going all in when he stands before her, defenseless, and confesses a smattering of his crimes (including 'fessing up that he's the one who killed his own family).  It's an audacious and gutsy gamble -- unless you think that he's seen Buffy's cards.  I think he has.  He knows (and not just from the diary -- Angelus reads his victims well) he's got her wrapped around his finger and that she will be looking for reasons not to kill him.  I don't know that the text proves this point one way or another, but Angelus does not look scared or desperate when facing Buffy at this crucial moment.  He looks like he knows he's going to win.  And indeed, he does.  And once again when they kiss, with her now knowing she's kissing a vampire, he once again says this cannot be, and he once again takes not a step away.  She's the one who has to step away.  Yes, yes, he's got the burn on his chest, but what's pain in the pursuit of this, the hardest conquest?  (Think of it this way, if Spike had one-upped Angelus by bagging himself a Slayer or two, wouldn't it be an even bigger coup if Angelus could bed one?)  If this is Angel the hero, this is a hero Angelus would be proud of.

Maggie replies:  I do think that's all in play -- Angelus is always inflected in Angel.  But let us do recall that Angel has some good motives here.  He's been moved by Lolita, er... I mean the teenage girl with the large heart.  She really has inspired him to get into the game of trying to beat back the forces of darkness.  That's his conscious idea, and it's plainly a better idea than moping around in alleyways eating rats.  In this episode Angel does finally step up to the plate and do some saving.  That his m.o. is pure Angelus just reminds us of the ginormous gap between who Angel aspires to be and who he actually is.  That's what's so dangerous.  Angel is in denial about who he is to himself, and that's what makes his denial to Buffy as effective as it is.  Indeed, much as I'll emphasize Buffy's romanticized view of Angel as her knight-protector; Angel has a romanticized view of Buffy as the vision who called him out of the alley and onto the path of being a champion.

One quick note:  Spike flat out says he always thought that bedding a slayer would be better than killing one in Wrecked, so you're not just making up that comparison.  Cool!, I love it when I'm not just making stuff up! 

So, yes, Angel has some ostensibly good motives here, but they are all filtered through Angelus.  Help the girl?  How 'bout let's seduce her?  Do selfless acts of good?  Who said anything about having to do that?  It is worth remembering that Angelus has barely done a lick of good in his hundred or so ensouled years, so it makes sense that he's a bit of a novice at figuring out how to do the right thing.  Unfortunately for him and Buffy, he's gotten off to the wrong start.  Instead of becoming her ally, he decided to be her lover, which sets them on a disastrous course, and emotionally cripples Buffy for the better part of six seasons or more.  Doubly unfortunate, we'll see that he actually starts learning about this heroic redemption stuff, but it comes too late to undo this disastrous first move of his.  He became Angel too late to stop Angelus from screwing this up.

Max: Let's add staking Darla to the list.  Angel is clearly very angry with her in his scenes with her.  We don't know it yet, but it was Darla who rejected Angelus because of his soul, not the other way around.  Angel's killing Darla at the end of the episode is a sacrifice that helps to prove to Buffy that he's on her side--"Look! I killed the love of my life for you! Isn't it romantic?"  But Angelus has a good reason to kill Darla too--the moment he got his soul, Darla turned on him, the way she always turned on him when the going got rough.  Now, after a century of leaving Angelus trapped with a soul, Darla wants to be best pals again, right when she's trying to marshal together an army for the Master, whom Angel both resents and fears.  So staking Darla means Angel gets to feel like he's moved past Darla's influence and is a good boy now, and Angelus gets to kill the bitch, stick it to her and the Master, and close the deal with Buffy.  Of course, while Angel doesn't talk about it much, we see in season two of his own series (and it's implied in "Becoming") that the revenge wasn't enough to get Darla out of his system.  (Indeed, in "The Prodigal" Darla herself points out that killing someone does not free one from their influence.)

 

Anyway, Angel's seduction starts pretty early--you guys covered most of this in WttH/The Harvest, but I noticed also how in "The Harvest" Angel meets Buffy in the mausoleum, where the door leading to the underground is chained, locked and bolted.  The Master et al. are planning on luring Buffy down as bait, so why would they lock the door?  And why is Angel there in the middle of the day, when (if the door to the world below was indeed locked) the only way to get into the mausoleum was by the front door?  We are left with two (not mutually exclusive) possibilities: 1) Angel has been waiting there since before dawn; or (the big one) 2) Angel is the one who chained and locked the door, and waited for Buffy to get there so that he could have another conversation in which to insinuate himself with her, while not helping her.  Granted, it may just be an artifact of the plot (Xander apparently followed Buffy through the mausoleum but didn't notice Angel!), but it looks like Angelus-style manipulation.

Maggie adds: Season 8 has really plugged back into the darker aspects of Buffy and Angel -- hence this dark reading seems even more salient.   But I want to underscore the poignancy of it.  Angel *does* want to be Buffy's knight protector.  It's the essence of his drama.  The soul (and Buffy) give him ideals that are difficult for him to live up to given that he's burdened with a cursed demon at his core.  The juxtaposition of his ideals and the damage he causes in trying to achieve them is what makes the guy such a compelling tragic figure.

 

Comments

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Resonance: Angel kills his sire, proving his worth to Buffy. She sees him as the romantic hero.

Compare this to Crush when Spike offers to kill Drusilla for her. Going with Strudel's thoughts on Angel/Angelus, it works for Angel because he's the master of manipulation. He sets it all up and plays Buffy like a violin, getting on her good side. He uses his angelic face and builds on Buffy's expectations.

Spike... just doesn't do that. He's no good at manipulating Buffy. He tries to get on her good side in Season 5 once he realizes he's in love with her, but it never works. I'm sure Spike heard the story of how Angel staked Darla (did they ever talk about it on screen?) and so I have to wonder if he offered to stake Drusilla for Buffy because he knew it worked for Angel. He definitely mentions Angel earlier in Crush as an example of why Buffy should give him a chance.

Interesting also how both Darla and Drusilla are the ones who spurn their lovers, then try to win them back only to be killed or threatened with death.

Once again, Angel is the romantic hero where Spike is the grungy, dark reality.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

This is a great observation--and I think it ties in with the way Spike's behaviour in season five is often a replay of Angel's in season one/two: he tries stalking Buffy, he expresses petty jealousy of other boys in her life, etc. But Spike just can't pull it off; Buffy is not only not swooning the way she did with Angel, she barely cares one way or another (e.g. the stalking). The Angel model completely fails.

And on your point about Darla and Dru wanting to take them back--in both cases the spectre of family is raised. Dru wants Darla and Angel(us) and Spike and her to be a happy family again. Darla wants her and Angel(us) and the Master together. The reentry of the Master/Darla into Darla/Dru's lives seems to be the main change that makes them want to reclaim lost lovers.

I'm pretty much certain that no one ever told Spike on screen about Darla being staked; in "Crush" he got the update on season two AtS though via Dru.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

For all Buffy's creative thinking in battle tactics, I can't help but think she has a rigidity of thought when it comes to judging people. Angel will always be the mysterious hero to her because that's who he was when she first met him.

Spike enters a villain and it takes forever for her to change her mind on who he really is.

With Angel, I don't think she ever really changed how she views him... maybe in Season 8.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Ooh, super cool comparison! I'd never made the connection between Crush and Angel.

I hate IDW's insistence that Spike wants to grow up and be as wonderful as Angel; but it is true that Spike is spit with envy about the way all the women in their world fall for Angel. It'd make sense if Spike got the idea about staking Dru from what happened in Angel.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Interesting also to go off Local_max's thought about how Angel is a very real threat to Joyce and that's the only reason Buffy starts treating Angel like a threat. When you compare this to Spike who is so not a threat to Joyce ever (I think Spike kinda probably thought she was one helluva woman when she hit him on the head with the axe and ordered him to "stay the hell away from my daughter"), it does make you wonder. Spike does have the history of threatening to hurt the Scoobies several times and fighting with Buffy, which is significant, so he qualified as a threat to the family. But still... Joyce.

Of course, Angel gets to set the rules. Soul is what matters. Spike doesn't have one. End of discussion. But I can't help but imagine how things would've gone differently if Spike were the vampire to get there first, before Angel set all the rules for how Buffy viewed a vampire straddling good and evil.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

One thing is, and it's a point that I do not think that Buffy would ever concede but nontheless I think is true, is that Buffy actually believes that Spike loved Drusilla (she'd say in a twisted vampire way that wasn't 'real'... but I think she actually views Spike/Dru as a real tie, so to Buffy Spike turning on Dru wasn't seen as 'impressive' but as him turning on his lover whereas, most likely to the current time (Because Buffy doesn't know the return of Darla or Connor until we're told otherwise) Buffy never really thought of what Angel/Darla was. It was oh-so-romantic that Angel killed Darla 'for her' because she doesn't grant Darla the place of being someone 'real' in Angel's life. The betrayal is just as great, but in Buffy's eyes it's not because to Buffy Angel is 'hers' and was never 'Darla's'... even though by all other measures the myriad of things that Angel shared with Darla provides more ties than he's ever really developed to Buffy.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Buffy probably didn't fully appreciate who Darla was to Angel, but I do think she knew who Darla was to Angel because Darla told her.

Buffy: (looks at Angel) You guys were involved?

Darla: For several generations.

Buffy: Well, you been around since Columbus, you are bound to pile up a few ex's. You're older than him, right? Just between us girls, you are looking a little worn around the eyes.

Darla: (smiles) I made him. There was a time when we shared everything, wasn't there Angelus? You had a chance to come home, to rule with me in the Master's court for a thousand years, but you threw that away because of her. You love someone who hates us. You're sick. And you'll always be sick. And you'll always remember what it was like to watch her die. (smiles) You don't think I came alone, do you?

Buffy: I know I didn't.

While Buffy is definitely dismissive (because hello vampire but also because Darla tells Buffy that Angel loves Buffy), I don't think it's totally about Buffy not understanding who Darla was to Angel. I mean, do we even fully understand who Darla was to Angel? How could we understand what it's like to have a companion for centuries? I imagine whatever understanding we think we have of that is only slightly more informed that Buffy's naive judgment at the age of sixteen.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

This is great, you guys! I can't really add anything to your wonderful character readings, except to say that this ep is the last (only?) time I am interested in Angel as a character. It's probably because the adult, difficult relationship he has with Darla is vastly more nuanced and fascinating that the supernatural Humbert Humbert he quickly devolves into with Buffy. (Humbert had just about as much control and guilt as Angel, but more self-knowledge and wit.)

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I think who Angel is to Buffy is interesting. Angel as a character, OTOH, doesn't become interesting until he gets to his own show.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Thanks for dissecting this episode. I agree with the dark reading, but lean towards Maggie's understanding of Angel: The interesting part, the one which makes this romantic tragedy so compelling, is the difference between who Angel is and who he wants to be .

Without this "split personality" Angel would be a straight villain, but he is not. He is captured between his (demonic) self and his self-image/what he wants to be(come).

Another "resonance" is, how Whedon himself lays out his own schoolgirl kink: Darla is the "bad schoolgirl", while Buffy is the "good schoolgirl" (and isn't there a whole kinky industry around these cliches?). On AtS, Darla is allowed to move on from that, while on BtVS Buffy is captured in that role forever - or at least it is revisited in the comics (which is also the reason why i think the surface story of season 8 is a very important and true reading of the B/A relationship: Whedon likes his first/true love trope with a "good schoolgirl" as one of the characters).

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I follow your last point, could you elaborate? It sounds interesting.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Bennett- > Topher (her personality when she meets/is to meet him for the first time, right through the bullet to the brain; but arguably the "schoolgirl kink" is just subtext here - learning, brain power, testing as school related themes),

Kitty Pryde -> Colossus (Kitty Pryde is Whedon's inspiration for Buffy, interestingly the first published comic books about Kitty Pryde in the 80s have Kitty fall in love with Colossus at the age of 14(!) in school, but the "romance" was quickly broken up by editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, due to the implications of showing such a romance, like statutory rape. Kitty Pryde and Colossus remained friends - sometimes with sexual undertones, sometimes without - until Whedon continued the X-Men, when Kitty Pryde and Colossus consummate the relationship)

Buffy -> Angel ('nuff said).

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Whedon likes his first/true love trope with a "good schoolgirl" as one of the characters

Likes to show how it's wrong and dangerous?

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Likes to show how it's wrong and dangerous?

Hopefully. ;-)

I know my commandment of the english language is sometimes lacking, but i did choose the word "kink" for a reason. Yes, Whedon likes to play around the more harmful or dangerous notations of said relationships - but on the other hand, he does them over and over again. Kitty Pryde/Colossus is a straight romance, no subversion, no nothing. Bennett/Topher is set in a twisted setting, but still true (until the bullet through her brain) and Buffy/Angel - well, i really don't know anymore. I mean, i saw that "ship" sink so many times, but it is still there. Still played as the one big love of the Buffyverse. I agree with You, that a) it is dangerous and b) it gets subverted in the subtext a lot. Still, the text remains the same as well as the constant return to that ship, while painting a glorious picture of it in text and image.

And that's what i mean by "kink": subversion: yes, played as straight romance: yes, too. Whedon wants his cake and eat it, too (he loves Veronica Mars because it is romantic, he himself called VM's boyfriend "true love" while reviewing the show).

And that's the point where i'm not sure i can take the subversion seriously anymore. How could season 3 happen after season 2? How could season 8 happen after season 7? I really don't need spacefrakking to get the frikkin' point, You know. ;-)

[lusciousxander.livejournal.com]

I personally wish they kept calling Angel-without-a-soul by Angel like they do in the earlier seasons. I'm not sure when they started naming the evil one Angelus and the good one Angel.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I think it's a deliberate effort on the part of the characters to maintain a construct of difference so they could live with Angel after he goes evil. Sort of like Giles' gentelmen's agreement to keep Xander's secret about his hyena memories. Only a much more elaborate mechanism.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

There seems to be so much to say about Angel that Buffy gets (to my taste short shrift). I’d certainly agree that she has a view of Angel based largely on what she wants to see but I wouldn’t really characterise her illusions of him as being of the knight-protector or romantic hero variety. Buffy even at 16 doesn’t strike me as the Catherine Moorland type. Buffy’s no Willow, based on the Hemerey flashbacks she’s actually relatively experienced with boys or at least high school boys. Angel has, as Cordelia put it, “salty goodness” simply by virtue of being hot and old (as in not a high school boy old). He’s not so much the father type as the type Daddy would hate.

Daddy does come into it, but Buffy’s relationship with her father strays from him being her hero-protector early on and never recovers. He takes her ice-skating, he shares her otherness but then he starts cheating on Joyce, fighting with her, sending Buffy to be fixed by a mental institution before finally abandoning her altogether. Buffy’s relationship with Angel follows something of the same pattern. Initially he’s a potential fellow demon hunter and she’s interested but it’s all a bit of fun. But then he turns out to be a vampire, one of the impossible ones she’ll feel compelled to go after knowing that they’ll always live down to her expectations just like Daddy did. Angel brings living down to a whole new level. She kills him but rather than being cathartic it devastates her. And then he comes back.

The thing is while I think Angel would like to see himself as Buffy’s protector (Angel wants to be everybody’s daddy) when he comes back from hell he’s more like a child, he’s the one who needs saving. For me the definitive image of their later relationship is him fallen to her knees at the end of Beauty and the Beasts. She saves him or tries to again and again (Amends, Graduation Day), it only stops when he ups and leaves. There’s a similar pattern to her relationship with Spike, he’s also the impossible one who then becomes the one who needs saving and then he leaves. There’s a reason she can’t tell them apart.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree that Angel doesn't actually play the protector role -- the gap between what he is and what he's supposed to be is the point. But I think I'm going to have to stand pat on the basic draw for Buffy. She's already "the lights dim when he's around" before she finds out he's a vampire. We see the way she responds to him giving her his coat -- a protective gesture. It's not surprising to me that a girl who has to save the world might want to be taken care of. Buffy is no damsel, but a part of her wants to be. It's a complicated mix, but I think the evidence of a latent desire to be the damsel is overwhelming: she loves that he gives her his coat when she shivers; she pulls to him after the master is dead in PG even though he played a not particularly important role in the outcome; Halloween is all about wanting to be his damsel, and he hasn't fully talked her out of it at the end because in the next episode she's still mooning over Drusilla's dress; She runs to him for protection in Surprise when Spike sics the gang on her; her whole fear about Cordelia being ultimately attractive because she's such a girl. Oh, and the annoying little girl voice she uses with him. I'll keep pointing it out as we go forward, but Angel's supposed to be the savior. None of that has bad boy vibe to me.

That doesn't, of course, mean that's all there is. Motives being dense and all. Does she expect him to fail her deep down? That I don't see. But I do see him as reflecting thanatos along with eros for her. I think it's intoxicating to her that he represents both safety and threat. She has a lot of rage, and I think that's in the mix as well. There's the fact that the two of them are the only ones who straddle the demon-human boundary. Not to be underestimated, because it's clear that her 'otherness' is a problem for her. Note that these themes amplify for Buffy and I think that's part of why we open on season 2 with them as a 'couple' despite remarkably little interaction bewteen them for the rest of season 1. We'll see what you think when we get to Prophecy Girl. Anyway, her view of Angel is interesting. Not just Daddy. But definitely not not Daddy. I actually think the fact that she wrestles with the desire to be a girl to be protected and cherished is what makes her an interesting figure. She'd be less so if she were a Sarah Connors-style woman who most definitely does not need a man around sort.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

There’s a similar pattern to her relationship with Spike, he’s also the impossible one who then becomes the one who needs saving and then he leaves. There’s a reason she can’t tell them apart.

And here i thought if noone ever said it out loud - it had not to be true. Damn You. (Of course You are right - it is depressing.)

[local-max.livejournal.com]

In response to your series of comments, I think that Angel as daddy does get some fairly obvious play throughout the show; Buffy wants Angel to take her ice skating (like her father did), in "Helpless" Angel's description of himself wanting to protect her heart and warm it with his (cold body) seems to be connected with the episode's themes of parents failing their children. I tend to agree it's less about Buffy wanting to be a damsel as wanting to be a child, but it seems like the two are closely intertwined.

It is interesting that Buffy has a caretaking role for Angel. Certainly Angel wants Buffy to play mother/Darla in some key ways (though not as much as Spike wants her to play mother), and Buffy feels responsible for Angel as a parent does at several key points ("I Only Have Eyes For You," for example, and "Beauty and the Beasts" as you mention) but I don't think the two readings--Buffy as protector and as desiring protection--are remotely mutually exclusive.

And older bad boy and daddy figures also seem not mutually exclusive to me, especially when it turns out that daddy was a bad man himself. (This isn't a gendered argument, incidentally: Drusilla was totally a bad girl and a mommy to Spike, and similar for Darla to Angel.)

[vampmogs.livejournal.com]

Ouch. I never expected to go into this review thinking people would love Angel but I have to admit, I didn’t expect it to be this cynical or brutal :(

I appreciate that you acknowledge that Angel is very sincere in wanting to help Buffy but I gotta disagree with you about how manipulative he’s being here. I don’t think he’s playing games with Buffy or trying to seduce her, I just think he has very conflicting feelings about what he wants. He’s sincere about wanting to stay away from her or he wouldn’t have kept unseen for a year. His cryptic guy act in S1 is a lot about Angel trying to help Buffy but also keep her at a distance. For example, in The Harvest Angel tries to hide just how concerned he is for Buffy but the audience are privy to the truth;

BUFFY
You gonna wish me luck?
He says nothing. She looks at him a moment more, then heads into the darkness.
He stands there, not moving. Quiet concern on his face.

ANGEL
(softly)
Good luck.

I think his snarky smart-ass cover is as much for his benefit as it is hers. Angel has very low self-esteem so he’s trying to appear more confident than he really is and at the same time it holds Buffy at a distance, maybe even is meant to keep her uninterested, and it almost works;

BUFFY
I suppose some girls might find him good looking... (gets a look from Willow) ...if they have eyes, alright, he's a honey, but... it's just he's never around, and when he is, all he wants to do is talk about vampires, and... I, I just can't have a relationship...

It almost turns Buffy off him and his “shop talk” in S2 actually becomes something they argue about regularly. Even in “Angel” he’s telling Buffy that “I’m older than you, and this can't ever...” before he gives in to temptation and kisses her. And it appears he’s being totally sincere at the end of this episode when he says “he has to walk away from this” because we don’t see him again until Out of Mind, Out of Sight and he tells Giles that it’s too hard to be around her. He ends up getting sucked back in during Prophecy Girl but points for effort. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of us but what I’m trying to say is that I don’t believe Angel is playing games with Buffy. I think he’s giving mixed messages because he’s totally confused himself and is at conflict with what he really wants and what he thinks is appropriate. I just cannot see this as some elaborate scheme by Angel to manipulate and seduce her. IMO, if he’s guilty of anything it’s being too emotionally weak to stay away but at the same time I’m sympathetic to that because this girl is the first thing in 90 years that has truly sparked some life in him.

The Crush comparisons also don’t really work for me because I think the situations are just way too different. Angel only kills Darla when she’s endangering Buffy’s life and it happens way too quickly for me to see it as some calculated move on his part. If I were to compare it to anything in Crush it’d be the moment where Spike saves Buffy from Drusilla and knocks her to the ground. That was real and it was the moment Dru realised Spike really was out of her reach now.

The moment where Angel stakes Darla is one of those scenes that you really can’t appreciate until the following seasons add more weight to it. I think it marks a huge moment in Angel’s story where he makes a definitive choice about who he wants to be. He chooses the girl who took him out of the alley instead of the girl who lured him into one.

I've loved reading your thoughts as always but with this episode we just viewed it very differently :)

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Vamps -- thanks for reading and for your comments! I think my brother (Strudel) is overly cynical. Our format may be a bit strange, but there are three voices here, not one.

I think all you say about Angel is actually right. I just think it's inflected by the things Strudel says. Angel does want to help Buffy. He has been inspired to leave the alley way. Absolutely. Yet it is also true that Angel lies to Buffy constantly. It is the case that he plays the mysterious stranger bit in a way that just is manipulative. He's in seductive mode from WTTH. The mixed messages might stem from his confusion, but part of his confusion is that he's Angelus trying to be Angel.

I think Strudel pushes it too hard, but the last line resonates for me: Angel is a hero Angelus would be proud of -- not in terms of aim, but in terms of method. You are talking about Angel's aims (his sincere aims); Strudel about how they get played out. What is great about the character is that he really is both. Your Angel and Strudel's Angel are the same guy.

Good point about the limitation of the Crush comparison. But I actually think it works. Unsouled Spike would only see the external similarities and not the way they are different. The greatness of the portrait of season 5 Spike is that he's aping good behavior that he doesn't understand. See Triangle where he wants props for not dining on the victims. He's so confused then. (Interesting that for both vamps the complexity drives from their effort to reconcile their core beings with their aspirations. Angel has the aspiration implanted with the soul, and has difficulty navigating things because he jumps to identifying with the aspiration and doesn't fully realize how much of himself isn't playing on that team; Spike internally adopts the aspiration, but without the soul he doesn't fully understand (or understand at all) what the aspiration is. All of this should tell you why I think the vampires are an essential part of the show -- their issues are so interesting!)

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I'd like to add that I'm ambivalent about the very dark read of Angel--which is something that I don't think got across very well in my comments. I do think that the read is plausible, and worth exploring. I think many details, like Angel's saying "Good luck," e.g., run against it. For my part, the reason it's worth emphasizing the possible read of Angel's dark side is specifically because it's de-emphasized in the show, and requires some digging. Angel's light side is visible here. The dark side is harder to see, but I think in play as well.

(Similarly, I love Willow--she's probably my favourite character--but I will probably go on about her dark side as much as possible, because while it's definitely present in the early seasons it's very well disguised.)

Great observation about Angel trying to keep Buffy away. I'd add that Angel's push-pull again has two readings: on the one hand this actually makes Buffy want him more, but on the other hand it is Angel's attempt to get her to stay away. Angel is a complicated fella, and I think both the valiant man and the seducer are in play.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

I love these posts to bits. I don't have much of anything substantial to say in response, unfortunately. I'll read the comments now. :)

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're reading!