Those were great moments ("Reunion" and "Reprise" are my favorite AtS episodes)... but you could as well say that none of the main characters on
Angel ever skinned a man alive and tried to kill their friends and end the world. Not even Angelus (who was actually quite tame on AtS and only managed to kill the Beast, which did everyone a favor!).
Yes, Buffy is a different kind of hero from Angel, that's an essential part of the character. But that doesn't mean that BtVS has no moral ambiguity or main characters crossing the line. How about Giles strangling Ben in "The Gift"? Did anything like that ever happen on
Angel? Ben wasn't a bad guy or someone with a past like Lindsay McDonald, he was just a nice human doctor who happened to share the body with a hellgod, and whose only crime was that he was too selfish to want to die to save the world (and was willing to have a teenage girl die instead)... But that really doesn't make him any different than a huge percentage of the human race. And Giles was Buffy's mentor figure, he wasn't going dark - he was just being himself, and he wasn't being impulsive and angry like Angel in "Forgiving"; he was just being a utilitarian and deciding that he has to do what has to be done (and save Buffy from having to make the same decision).
- Lilah and Wesley was always twisted and edgy because you knew she was never going to stop actually working on the side of evil. It wasn't like Spike and Buffy.....Spike had already committed to fighting on Buffy's side and while it's true he dabbled in some shady dealings, we all knew which side he was on.
And yet nobody really seems that upset with Wesley for sleeping with Lilah (or, for that matter, Angel sleeping with soulless Darla), and everyone thinks that Wesley was so cool when he went dark... while Buffy/Spike always was and still is incredibly controversial, and you get a bunch of people either saying that they didn't want to watch the show anymore, or just slut-shaming Buffy, and saying things like:
While some of these effects, such as Willow’s virtual mind-rape of Tara and the latter’s subsequent withdrawal have valid roots, Buffy’s liaison with Spike is just disgusting. As with what happened in the Anita Blake series proves: once you start sleeping with the monsters, you lose all credibility as the heroine. Can anybody ever really look at Buffy the same way again?
Also I was really disappointed with what happened to Buffy in season six. Season three Buffy would have never would have never gone to Spike and started fucking him since she was depressed. That bizarre plot also made Spike look like a complete loser who took the abuse so he could get some sex. Took away any menace the character every had. Also the near rape scene was the worse thing ever done in the Buffyverse. I felt bad for Masters having to do that crap.
The only think I hated about season 6 was the disgusting Spuffy relationship were they had degrading public sex every chance they got.
...It's pretty obvious which show was
edgier there.
I think that Buffy/Spike relationship was portrayed in a far more raw and dark and riskier way and with more depth than Wes/Lilah, and even Angel/Darla didn't quite go there like the episodes like "Dead Things" and "Seeing Red" that make people really uncomfortable, instead of just allowing them to pat themselves on the back for liking something that's "cool and dark and edgy".
But I think the real reason why so many people react so differently to Angel or Wesley on AtS vs Buffy or Willow on the late seasons of BtVS is really about gender. Male and female heroes are judged by different standards in fandoms. Flawed heroines are rarer in fiction, and tend to elicit much more controversy and love/hate reactions. Male characters that are flawed and morally ambiguous will usually get almost universally embraced for being 'so cool', while female characters will get a lot more bashing and character-hate for the same things. See, for instance,
Battlestar Galactica fandom reactions to Kara Thrace or Laura Roslin and Saul Tigh. Therefore many of the people who praise the darkness and edginess of
Angel are at the same time saying that they couldn't like the late seasons of
Buffy because Buffy was 'dour', 'bitchy', 'unlikable' and 'not fun anymore'. It's so cool whenever Angel goes dark and morally ambiguous, and everyone loves Wesley once he starts going dark, but on the other hand, Buffy is supposed to be a perfect heroine who saves the world and kicks ass while having great hair and being chipper all the time and also being the perfect girlfriend, friend and sister, and it's so shocking and disappointing when, after all the horrible things that she's been through and all the responsibility, pain and loss, she's not the funny and bubbly teenage heroine of season 1. Or, for that matter, that Willow doesn't remain an incredibly sweet cute little nerdy thing, but turns out to have a dangerous and dark side to her.
Now, hear this part clearly: Buffy was a hero in the truest sense of the word and did not waver from her convictions to do right and protect the innocent. In a million years she never would have locked two vamps in with a bunch of lawyers like that, nor should she have.
For her to do some of the things that people that Angel did would not have worked, nor should Buffy have even tried....that's not what they were shooting for. Angel was a demon with a soul fighting to earn redemption, but never far away from temptation or his past sins. The darkness or edginess that was on Angel was never meant to exist on Buffy, nor should it have.
I think both shows stayed true to themselves for the most part and they were very different shows in a lot of ways, especially after season 1 of Angel. Joss himself was the one that said "Angel was one of the only new shows on TV right now not trying to be Buffy" (at the time). Just because Angel was edgier doesn't make the show "better" anymore than Buffy being more heroic or Buffy the series having better humor made her a "better" lead.
In other words, it's OK that each show did certain things better than the other.....they weren't trying to be clones, nor was it a competition. Angel excelled at dark and edgy while Buffy excelled at relationship centric angst and humor and many other things that Angel didn't do as well.
All this is true, but I just think that people tend to exaggerate when making the comparisons between the two shows. I've certainly seen it on this forum. "
Buffy is high school,
Angel is adult life." Um, no, late seasons of
Buffy are also adult life - if the poster stop watching, it's their problem. Calling
Angel 'adult, edgier and darker' usually goes hand in hand with implying that
Buffy is a 'girly' show - while, curiously, those same posters either ignore or are very uncomfortable when that girly show gets adult and edgy and dark.
And ironically, other people saying that they couldn't like Buffy in later seasons because the characters became 'unlikeable' and because Buffy became 'bitchy' and dour. Well, duh! That happens to people when they have to deal with horrible crap and a lot of responsibility and pain and loss year after year. That's character development for you. Or I guess it doesn't count as 'character development' unless it's a bitchy vain girl becoming sweet, caring and heroic, or an awkward stuffy bookish guy becoming a skilled, brooding, scruffy demon fighter. And people comparing Wesley's descent into 'darkness' to Willow's is ridiculous - if Wesley had skinned a man alive for revenge and tried to kill all his friends and to destroy the world, then we could talk the same level of darkness.
Awesome dark Wesley moment. 
