Yep, Epiphany. And it was sooooooooooo good.
Angel 10th Anniversary!
- Thread starter Ethros
- Start date
Heh, haven't watched it yet, but it'll be particularly good I think.
Got my brother to pick a random number between 1-5 and then between 1-22, without giving him context. He picked 2 and 16.
That's quite a fortuitous random choice. Of the entire series, I'd say the "Reprise"/"Epiphany" 2-parter is the most important moment in the show's history. (Of the two, I prefer "Reprise" slightly more just because that's the one with Holland Manners' big Hell on Earth speech.)
Much as I enjoyed Seasons 3-5, I think that they had really finished telling Angel's story in "Reprise" & "Epiphany." It's the thesis statement of the entire show. After that, Seasons 3-5 were just a kickass epilogue. That's why Seasons 3 & 4 had to spend so much time focusing on other characters like Wesley & Connor. Season 5 brought Angel back to the forefront but thematically was a rehash of Season 2.
I love the Faith episodes. I just rewatched "Five by Five" & "Sanctuary." I think these episodes are absolutely fantastic. These episodes demonstrate that Angel has more to offer than just killing the bad guys. There is no doubt in my mind here that he saved Faith's soul. And its astonishing that they were able to make Faith such a sympathetic character in "Sanctuary" so soon after she had so brutally tortured Wesley in "Five by Five."
While Faith's 2nd run on Angel was weaker, the Faith/Angelus fight scene in "Release" is one of the finest in the history of the series. And "Orpheus" is the best episode in all of Season 4, not just for the Faith & Willow appearances (although those certainly help), but because it's a rare moment in Season 4 that brings us back to the central theme of Angel's redemption. The flashback to Angel in that 1970s donut shop gives us a great glimpse into just what demons reside in Angel's soul. And I wish we had gotten a bigger fight between Angel & Angelus at the end.
The Faith episodes are fantastic, and I think they're even more poignant if you remember the Buffy episodes that happened right before. It makes her breakdown at the end of "Five by Five" hurt that much more because she started to realize just how evil she had been in Buffy (I think the episode was "Who Are You?").
^All the stuff she had done on Buffy was kids stuff compared to the way she tortured Wesley.
I thought it was weird that Buffy seemed to focus so much on Faith's attempted seduction of Angel. Other than when she thought she & Mayor Wilkins had turned him evil again in "Enemies," Faith never showed much interest in Angel. In fact, didn't she try to kill him in "Revelations"? In Season 3, Angel was never more than a minor pawn in the Buffy/Faith conflict, yet that seemed to be all that Buffy was able to talk about in "This Year's Girl."
Man, Buffy was a bitch in "Sanctuary." This is like a sneak peek of how cranky & unreasonable she would ultimately get in Season 7.
I thought it was weird that Buffy seemed to focus so much on Faith's attempted seduction of Angel. Other than when she thought she & Mayor Wilkins had turned him evil again in "Enemies," Faith never showed much interest in Angel. In fact, didn't she try to kill him in "Revelations"? In Season 3, Angel was never more than a minor pawn in the Buffy/Faith conflict, yet that seemed to be all that Buffy was able to talk about in "This Year's Girl."
Man, Buffy was a bitch in "Sanctuary." This is like a sneak peek of how cranky & unreasonable she would ultimately get in Season 7.
imho, Buffy never worked well on Angel. She always came across as a bitter, stuck up cow. Even in I Will Remember You, the 'restored timeline' Buffy is a bitch for essentially no reason. The Faith episodes are even worse.
Out of her own element, the character of Buffy isn't very sympathetic.
I know. I'm just saying that her experience while she was in Buffy's body helped her to start realizing how bad she had been. When she ran away from Sunnydale and ended up LA, she was just really overcompensating.
In her Season 1 Angel appearances, I just chalked it up to her still being a stupid teenager. We have to remember that at that point she was only 18/19-years old.
And the fact in both cases she had just been "wronged" by Angel... He's just showed up and not let her see him, and he was harbouring Faith after she'd don'e the body swap thing.
Let's face it, Buffy and Angel were a shitty couple and never had any idea how to deal with each other. They just thought they were pretty.
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