Yeah, I see your point about Xander and Willow. The opening scene in TZ definitely is jarring; I find Willow's Doppelgangland issues less so, though there's certainly an external inciting event (Snyder's making her teach Percy) that forces the issue. My point is mostly that they are still arcy and connected to the arcs the characters have, and not completely different characteristics introduced for the episode alone (which is what I thought you were saying about The Prom and consequently about your other examples). Season 3 is actually more serialized than season 2 in some ways so I agree about the way each episode is set up to be self-contained and accessible to new viewers (one of the myriad of reasons arguments that the later seasons lost viewers because of declining quality is silly).
Buffy talks in Earshot about her Angel/Faith-related jealousy. But in Enemies itself she does seem pretty hurt by Angel's "Angelus-ness" (more on that in a sec) and while you could argue it's all an act, I think Xander ("Oh, so Angel's bruising my face was for good--it's a good bruise") is partly there to demonstrate that the pain Angel causes doesn't go away because it's an act.
The way I use Angelus by the way is meant to parallel the way the characters (especially later on in the series and on AtS) do. I think that Angel and Angelus are the same, plus or minus a conscience but without the vast difference. But Angel himself enforces the split personality, both with and without a soul. Saying "Angelus is close to the surface" is meant to be a shorthand of saying, the way Angel behaves in Innocence through Becoming Part 2 is accessible to Angel even when he has a soul, which is not at all obvious to Buffy before then.
Anyway I agree that Angel's not the cause of all Buffy's problems with men. She clearly has issues before going out with Angel and she continues to have them afterward. I'm not trying to argue that a shift in her attitude about Angel will suddenly cure her, and if I sound like that, well, sorry. I agree that her father is the root of much of her jealousy of Angel/Faith as you say. That Buffy goes after Angel when she admits she doesn't trust him (Lie to Me) shows that she has men issues to begin with. But I really don't think he helped much in her future relationships. She was open to loving Angel in a way that she was not open again until maybe season seven, and while it's true that Riley and Spike didn't exactly make it easy to have a great relationship there's a lot to indicate that she chose them either because she thought they were either dependable with nice arms or someone she hated. In Selfless she`s still saying that she will never love anyone in the world the way she loved Angel. These are all standard arguments and a little shallow, but it's of course a series-spanning story and since I don't know exactly where our differences in interpretation lie (I mean at the micro-, not the macro-level) it's my best shot at explaining my position for now. It's very possible we're not that far apart, but just focus on different features of Buffy's love life?
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Date: 2010-09-16 02:42 pm (UTC)Buffy talks in Earshot about her Angel/Faith-related jealousy. But in Enemies itself she does seem pretty hurt by Angel's "Angelus-ness" (more on that in a sec) and while you could argue it's all an act, I think Xander ("Oh, so Angel's bruising my face was for good--it's a good bruise") is partly there to demonstrate that the pain Angel causes doesn't go away because it's an act.
The way I use Angelus by the way is meant to parallel the way the characters (especially later on in the series and on AtS) do. I think that Angel and Angelus are the same, plus or minus a conscience but without the vast difference. But Angel himself enforces the split personality, both with and without a soul. Saying "Angelus is close to the surface" is meant to be a shorthand of saying, the way Angel behaves in Innocence through Becoming Part 2 is accessible to Angel even when he has a soul, which is not at all obvious to Buffy before then.
Anyway I agree that Angel's not the cause of all Buffy's problems with men. She clearly has issues before going out with Angel and she continues to have them afterward. I'm not trying to argue that a shift in her attitude about Angel will suddenly cure her, and if I sound like that, well, sorry. I agree that her father is the root of much of her jealousy of Angel/Faith as you say. That Buffy goes after Angel when she admits she doesn't trust him (Lie to Me) shows that she has men issues to begin with. But I really don't think he helped much in her future relationships. She was open to loving Angel in a way that she was not open again until maybe season seven, and while it's true that Riley and Spike didn't exactly make it easy to have a great relationship there's a lot to indicate that she chose them either because she thought they were either dependable with nice arms or someone she hated. In Selfless she`s still saying that she will never love anyone in the world the way she loved Angel. These are all standard arguments and a little shallow, but it's of course a series-spanning story and since I don't know exactly where our differences in interpretation lie (I mean at the micro-, not the macro-level) it's my best shot at explaining my position for now. It's very possible we're not that far apart, but just focus on different features of Buffy's love life?