Why Angel?
- Thread starter indranee
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For starters, love of fighting, directness, snarky sense of humor... One thing is for certain, their conversations were always a lot more fun than B/A conversations, even when they were enemies/reluctant allies. See "Becoming part II" where they act like they've known each other for ages while they're arguing, and then working together as a team, and then the wonderful scene with Buffy's mom where they're pretending to be in a band together
They always knew how to push each other's buttons, and fight together as well as they fought each other. And that's all before she started confiding in him in early S6 after her resurrection, and in S7 they get very emotionally close after all they've been through (and all they put each other through) and build up ties of trust and support. Most importantly, by that time they knew each other much better than Buffy and Angel ever did, having seen each other at their best and worst. Eh, at least from season 5 ("Intervention") onwards, it was way more complicated than "hates his guts"... She didn't seem to hate him until they started getting 'physical' in season 6, and however one defines what she felt for him while they were sleeping together, "hate" doesn't quite describe it... There was hate in the mix, but there were lots of other things, too.
Spike in season 4 (talking about Riley being a part of the Initiative): "Gotta hand it to you, Goldilocks. You do have bleeding tragic taste in men. I got a cousin married to a regurgitating Frovalox demon that's got better instincts than you."
Love often does come out of the left field.
And this is not in reply to you, but someone mentioned Buffy was a shallow sixteen year old. I'd say no. She wasn't a normal sixteen year old girl, neither was she truly shallow. She may have exhibited surface shallowness but anyone who calls the character "shallow" hasn't really watched the show in its entirety or with any depth of understanding.
I'd much rather tag Bella from Twilight as shallow. She does or says nothing throughout those four books to convince me otherwise. She's the epitome of a shallow 17-year-old girl.
ETA: I don't really want to get into the thing but I like both Buffy/Spike and Buffy/Angel, albeit, for different reasons.
That's all well and good. I just felt like their relationship didn't have enough build up. One minute Angel was some creep lingering in the shadows, the next minute Buffy is telling him she loves him. I felt like there was stuff missing in between.
No problem, though. Once I accepted that they loved each other, their relationship was fun to watch.
^I get what you're saying and agree. There seemed to be chunks missing in the writing of it. Hence why it makes me think that it wasn't entirely expected. I think Angel was only supposed to last as a guest role for the first season but he became much more, both to the show and to Buffy the character. I think my OP was supposed to question the efficacy of another show for an already less-developed character that needed more fleshing out. I questioned the need to give the character ANOTHER show while he wasn't really explored in THIS show (Buffy).
But I get now as to why he was given the other show.
In fact, I like Angel so much more in AtS that, other than his turn as Angelus, his role in BtVS pales to almost nothingness other than as Buffy's Great Love. So I'm happy they created AtS.
I believe they didn't realize at first how popular the character (Angel) or the pairing was going to become. It snuck up on them and they had to play catch up. But the reason I like the pairing is its almost mythic quality. I mean, the vampire falls in love with the slayer. It's just... very poetic. I doubt it'd happen in real life though
so it's entirely reasonable that it might be hard to explain in prose.
But I get now as to why he was given the other show.
In fact, I like Angel so much more in AtS that, other than his turn as Angelus, his role in BtVS pales to almost nothingness other than as Buffy's Great Love. So I'm happy they created AtS.
I believe they didn't realize at first how popular the character (Angel) or the pairing was going to become. It snuck up on them and they had to play catch up. But the reason I like the pairing is its almost mythic quality. I mean, the vampire falls in love with the slayer. It's just... very poetic. I doubt it'd happen in real life though
so it's entirely reasonable that it might be hard to explain in prose.
I think it makes sense why Angel fell in love with Buffy. He says in season 3 that he fell in love with Buffy as soon as he saw her - and we see in the flashbacks that he really did become obsessed with Buffy when he first saw her, after Whistler found him and drew him to her. In the flashbacks, Buffy was a 15-year old, apparently ordinary girl whose life changed completely when she was 'called'. Angel saw her fight vampires, and he saw her sad and lonely at home while her parents were fighting over her. So, I think he fell in love with her for several reasons: before Whistler found him, his life had no aim, he was a useless bum living in the streets and eating rats and torturing himself over his past - and Whistler gave him a purpose, and Buffy became that purpose; he saw her as lonely and an outsider, like he was; he admired her for what she did, for being a hero fighting for a good cause, and saw her as someone pure and innocent. Another factor is that she was physically quite similar to Darla - something that has been pointed out a lot of times on AtS - but very different from Darla in other ways, she was the anti-Darla, although there is a similarity as they were both strong women that Angel looked up to, but Darla was his muse/teacher in evil, while Buffy was his muse/teacher in good.
As for Buffy, well, she was a 16-year old looking for love, like 16-year olds do, and she was still a bubbly, emotionally open teenager back then, so falling in love quickly wasn't that surprising (later, as an adult, she was a lot more emotionally closed and not prone to giving her heart away that easily). She was at first drawn to him as a handsome, brooding, mysterious older guy (even though she found him a bit annoying at first with his sudden appearances and cryptic advice), but it got serious after their first kiss when she found out he was a vampire. I think she fell in love with him because of the whole romantic idea of forbidden love with the good vampire with a dark past but a deep, tormented soul. She also felt that he was an outsider and lonely like she was - she was the Slayer, "the one girl in the world", so she felt like a "freak" and couldn't really live like a normal human (and dating 'normal' guys like that Owen didn't work well for that reason), while he was the only vampire with a soul, and therefore an outsider both in human and demon world. (Which is also a big part of what later brought Buffy and Spike together, after he got a chip in his head and couldn't fit in the vampire world anymore, and Buffy herself felt more and more 'freaky' especially after her resurrection.) She told Angel in S2 that he was "the one freaky thing in my freaky world that still makes sense". (If you asked Faith, she thought that Buffy was also drawn to danger.)
Basically they both fell in love with romantic ideals of each other, even though they didn't know each other that well. It's obvious why it was so intense for Buffy, since it was her first love and she was a teenager, and teenagers tend to see everything in over-dramatic terms and believe that their love will be forever. For Angel, I suppose it was because she was the first person he got close to since he was cursed with a soul, and because she represented to him an ideal of goodness and a hope for redemption.
On the other hand, I see this as a major weakness in their relationship: though it got deeper after what they went through and after he returned from Hell, I don't think they ever quite let go off their initial romantic idealized views of each other. (Or rather, not until the last issues of season 8.
Buffy's idealized image of Angel is shattered now, and even if she forgives him, I think the possibility of their romantic relationship being rekindled is now dead as a dodo.
DevilEyes, I haven't done any thing with S8 yet. Would you please send me a PM as to what happens in it? I wanted to re-watch both shows again before doing S8 but I'm really curious. I haven't watched BtVS and AtS in such a long time that I'd forgotten certain key elements in both story arcs, so re-watching is bringing it all back. But I'd love to have a short synopsis of what happens in S8.
Uh... The plot of S8 is so insane that if I told you what happens, you'd just go "Whaaaa..?!"
It's because comics form allows more freedom, and they got carried away and went OTT... At least season 9 seems like it's going to be more normal. I think you should just read it and see for yourself. It's not just that the plot is crazy (in the last 1/4 of the season in particular), it's that the motivations and feelings of characters are often ambiguous, and anyone who tells you what happens will involve their own interpretation in it...
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