History Headscratchers / Angel

* I know it's stupid and a tiny thing in comparison to the others listed here. But still. "[[Recap/AngelS05E12YoureWelcome You're Welcome]]". Spike is playing a video game on what is CLEARLY an UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}}. What game is he playing? ''Franchise/DonkeyKong''. Need I say more?

*** Perhaps making an illegal copy of DK for the UsefulNotes/XBox was part of WR&H's Petty Evil For Its Own Sake department.

*** If you know what you're doing (which my guy does) you can emulate virtually any game prior to the Xbox for the Xbox. As a non-specific example, my guy's Xbox plays every UsefulNotes/{{NES}}, UsefulNotes/{{SNES}}, UsefulNotes/Nintendo64 AND arcade game that he had available at the time for uploading. Which was, of course, a ton of games... INCLUDING but not limited to Donkey Kong Country (all three), Donkey Kong 64 AND the original Donkey Kong where you played as Mari.. err... 'Jumpman', I believe it was.

*** I hate to pull from the ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' saga, believe me, but what Edward Cullen says about vampire breath actually makes sense - they don't ''need'' to breath, but they still can, and tend to prefer to. I've always used that as my Buffy headcanon - so, no, Angel doesn't have any breath that would help Buffy, but he can pass air through his system, and does so for speech, personal expression (sighing, etc), and smell. The breathing after the big fight could, with a stretch, be part of the vampire trying to get a hold of their sense of smell, which is a larger part of trying to get reoriented after a fight.

** As much as Angel's been around, there's also the simpler explanation that he didn't know about him.

*** Because the show doesn't treat it like that. Angel feels guilt for the crimes of Angelus and Spike feels guilty for the sins of well Spike. If it's not you then you should feel all the guilt of owning a car that was used to run down children. It was your car but you weren't driving. Both men however are attoning for their crimes and believe it will never be enough.

*** The soul isn't Angel. The soul is the Angel's conscience, his ability to love. Angel is the person, and so is Angelus. They are the same person. Angelus is Angel's dark side, his dark desires, his darkness in general (we all have a dark side). The demon allows the person's comes to fruition.

[[folder:Hands off the Fem of Amarra]]

[[/folder: Weird bits in Birthday]]

** Lindsey is simply too dangerous. Not only would he have betrayed them at some point he quite possibly could have pulled it off. We're talking about a guy who has come as close as anybody to defeating Wolfran and Hart. He got his mole in apparently without them noticing, seems to have broken his contract, successfully hid from the partners and was giving Angel and friends the run around so well that the Powers that be actually actively stepped in sending Cordelia to help. The question is why did he trust Lorne to get it done.
*** It is very sadly partly because Lorne was probably the last person Lindsey would ever suspect of being a threat. Aside from Fred (who was dead and gone anyway), Lorne was the only 'non-combatant' in Angel's crew. Wesley had to take on Vail, Gunn the demonic Senator (plus vampires), Illyria the big group of demons, Spike the Fell Brethren and Angel was counting on Hamilton trying to stop him, so killed Sebassis in advance. Angel was relying on Lindsey going against the Sahrvin clan, and either dying in the process or being finished by Lorne. It was just very sad that he had to ask that of perhaps the most innocent and inherently good person in the series.

[[folder:Jasmine - Good, evil, none of the above?]]
* Was Jasmine good or evil?
** [[MathematiciansAnswer Yes.]]
** [[BlueAndOrangeMorality No.]]
** That's for the ethicists in the audience to decide, because Angel and company sure as hell couldn't. I think it was meant to be up in the air.
*** Dialogue such as "Oh yeah, and you eat people!" "The price was too high!" is 'up in the air'? Angel's final confrontation with Jasmine made it pretty plain what he considered her to be. He did offer her a final chance at redemption, yes, but when you are asking someone to change their ways and be good, that kinda hints that you think their current ways are ''not'' good.
*** Yes, but then Wolfram and Hart shows up to give them a big kudos for "ending world peace" and they wind up wondering if they did the right thing after all.
*** Consider the end result of Wolfram & Hart's actions here: to put the heroes (most especially Angel) into a tailspin of self-doubt at the exact same time W&H is handing them a vastly increased opportunity to be tempted and corrupted. Now ask yourself whether Wolfram & Hart is known to be willing to lie in order to achieve a goal. Now consider that the slickest known way of lying is to tell only half the truth and then keep your mouth shut. And after adding up all this, ''then'' ask yourself why they told Angel what they did.
*** I think the point being made above is that the gang *listened*, and consequently doubted whether they'd done the right thing. I think the audience was supposed to ask the question too. W&H's motives are fairly clear, and pretty evil, but that doesn't have much bearing on whether their statements were true or false. - "I used to tell the truth all the time when I was evil."
*** Peace has a price, unfortunately (and it's not a Buck O Five). To have no more human failing because there was no more human free will? Wolfram and Hart is just exploiting moral greyness to rub salt in the heroes' wounds.
*** To wander around the rest of Joss's canon, Jasmine was the Alliance Utopia solution - in Angel, things went the 'Browncoat' way.
*** Exactly. Think about ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' and ''{{Series/Dollhouse}}'' and how the Free Will & Pain & Sin vs. Blissful Saintly Slavery situations are portrayed there. Jasmine's arc is a little more ambiguous, but IMO it still comes down on the side of free will, especially since everybody was horrified and tried to bring Jasmine down once they snapped out of it.
** I personally think she was good, but [[PoweredByAForsakenChild unfortunately]] needed a healthy dose of HumanResources to power herself up.
*** Then again look at the first world she tried to make a utopia. Mantis spider demon world is kind of craptastic. Even if it was great when she was its living god, she got bored and abandoned it, leaving her followers to an eternity of anarchy and obsessive need to regain her love. What's the assurance she won't do the same with Earth?
*** How do you know the world we saw isn't what the mantis people think of as utopia? Maybe she left because she had done all she could for them.
*** She left tha Mantis Spider Demon world because she made mistakes - it was her first run-through, and by her own admission it wasn't a success.
*** Maybe she'd simply ate all the people there - although we "only" see her eating a roomful of people onscreen, maybe she needs to eat 1% of her worshippers/day. Compound interest is a bitch!
** I think she was so enamored of her UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, that she took away a vital part of a person's humanity in the exchange. So, good intentions, but misguided means.
*** You can say that of any KnightTemplar - Classic ChaoticGood, willing to sacrifice people and liberties for the good of the masses. The first thing a knight templar does is take away free will.
*** No, that's ''Lawful'' Good. ChaoticGood people tend to be libertarians. ''Someone'' hasn't been playing enough TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons.
*** A lawful good character would be all for the taking of free will but would never use a something requiring HumanSacrifice, killing innocents is a big no no. I figured chaotic works because they like to destroy old systems to replace them with their own "better one". Not that it matters - she is still a KnightTemplar.
*** No, a Chaotic would want to destroy old systems and then replace them with ''nothing'', so people are free to follow the dictates of their own consciences.
*** That said, Jasmine wasn't particularly lawful, either. She was more neutral on the Law/Chaos axis. As to whether she was supposed to be good or evil...well, the characters thought she was evil, but the characters aren't Gods. Not all series attempt to use the actions of their characters as "this is what is right, anyone who disagrees is wrong".
** IMHO she would qualify as "LawfulEvil". Lawful, in that she believes in imposing order in the form of universal happiness but at the cost of free will and individual liberty. Everybody was free to worship her and obey her every whim.
** I don't think that any definition of "good" or "evil" can apply to Jasmine. We can't apply human values to something that is that far away from being human.
*** Yes, we can.
*** I always assumed that she was Pure Good with capital letters, but pure unadulterated Good is so alien and inhuman that it is indistinguishable from pure evil from the point of view of a human, and can be just as destructive to humanity, which thrives on having both options available.
*** "LawfulNeutral" with her as The Law. She didn't move on from BugWorld until it was as ordered as it was ever going to be. Them she moved on, to continue to spread order throughout the multiverse. A better question would be what alignment the Senior Partners actually are.
*** The Senior Partners are textbook Lawful Evil, with most of the various demon races being Chaotic Evil, with some other Lawful Evils and Neutrals of all alignments here and there.
*** The closest "canonical" thing the Buffyverse has to Pure Good -- i.e. the beings that everyone knows and acknowledges as being the source of Pure Good -- are the Powers That Be. Jasmine is a Power That Was, because THEY KICKED HER OUT. Does that remind you of any trope?
*** Jasmine was a PTB that was fed up with TPTB's passivity and doctrine of non-interference. Cordelia demonstrated her personal belief in Jasmine's philosophy of proactive interference (which they kicked her out for) which is what gave Jasmine the ability to "ride" her body back into the physical plane. Jasmine was classically "LawfulGood" from a Human standpoint, but was probably "ChaoticGood" from the more alien worldview of TPTB. Thinking that what she did made her "Evil" is a complete misunderstanding of how the moral alignment scale actually works.
*** The moral alignment scale is irrelevant, it's from a roleplaying game. The PTB are a force for good, but they don't do what Jasmine does. Angel points out that whether she means well doesn't matter - killing thousands of people, even to over time 'save billions', the price of humanity's entire free will was far too high a cost. What use is world peace if the entire human race is effectively stoned for eternity?
*** WordOfGod confirms that Jasmine was a PTB. She took over Cordelia while she was in the Higher Plane and so she willingly came down rather than be kicked out as you suggest.
*** She was a rogue, former Power, who refused to follow the PTB policy of guiding and watching over humanity from afar, rather than via direct interference. Jasmine could actually be described as a WellIntentionedExtremist - she decided the best way to 'save' humanity from itself was to take over directly. As is the way with extremists, she believed her ends justified her means. Her plan killed a lot of people with the apparent goal of a 'greater good'. It's worth pointing out however that once her plans were foiled, Jasmine declared she was going to destroy the world rather than let it continue as it was. She acted like a lot of extremists - if they can't get what they want, they'd rather as many of their enemies burned as possible.
*** And while we're on the subject: an impossible birth brings forth a heavenly being into the world who, after taking apostles to her side, embarks on a journey to save humanity from itself, but is betrayed by those close to her, humiliated, and ultimately murdered. You tell me; DOES this story sound familiar to you?
*** The Powers That Be aren't truly that close to being a force of uncontroversial pure good. Fans and characters both tend to have their doubts about them. I think they're not morally unambiguous enough that that proves anything.
** The way Jasmine continues to lie more and more to manipulate Connor to go after Angel, and the cruel and mocking way she talks to the heroes when they're on the run ("Ha ha ha! I can seeeeee you!") seems to pretty strongly imply the whole Oprah thing is pretty much just a front to make humans line up to be eaten (to say nothing of all that stuff she did ''before'' arriving on Earth).
** Perhaps the best test of Jasmine's true "alignment" is what she does when her powers are done. In the same situation Faith was put in- i.e. having just fallen pretty massively and being offered redemption and a chance to make things right- Jasmine blows a gasket and tries to kill Angel. Even if she wanted to bring about World Peace, she clearly wasn't that fussed about it unless it was strictly on her terms.
** Although Jasmine seems narcissistic, cruel toward her enemies and prone to getting bored with her world-improvement projects, she did make a good point about free will when she said "and look where that's gotten you so far". So long as people have the freedom to be sadistic jerks, the ones who choose to be jerks are always going to keep ruining it for everyone else.
** Jasmine is a perfect example of a DracoInLeatherPants. She bloody ''eats'' people and [[MindRape removes their free will]] in [[KnightTemplar the name of the]] [[WellIntentionedExtremist Greater Good]], but people still keep defending her. Seriously, what the hell.
*** Jasmine was both good AND evil. Her character was purposely given enough evidence for either side of this debate just so this debate could come to pass. Sure she manipulated people. But the powers that be do that through visions sent to people all over the world. Sure she had to kill a few people a day to keep her powers going. But those few people a day would save millions. Sure she snapped when her powers were taken. But she almost had peace across the world and that will never happen now. So to put this as plainly as possible: If you think she was good, you're right. If you think she was evil, you're right. Her character was meant to be subjective.
*** Given that Jasmine's plan centered around, well, ''Jasmine,'' I have no problem judging that stopping it was better than allowing it to succeed.
*** World Peace through mind control and mass murder is still World Peace. Imagine a world where everyone is kind to each other. There is no crime. There are no wars, and there never will be again. There is no discrimination, no hate, and no violence. All humans live together in harmony with each other, in total happiness for the rest of eternity. In short: the Christian Heaven, absolute peace and bliss forever. That's what makes it ambiguous.
*** But there still would be crime - she was ''eating'' people! A few at a time, and quite frequently... It wouldn't ''be'' a World Peace situation, as there would still be killing.
*** How many animals does Humanity kill and eat every single day? How many animals have YOU personally eaten? And yet I bet you still consider yourself an "animal person", don't you? Jasmine was a literal god. Which makes her infinitely more 'above' humans than humans are 'above' cattle. Just because people eat cows doesn't make people evil. It doesn't even make them hate cows. It's just part of their nature. They need to eat SOMETHING to survive. Everything does. It's a fundamentally necessary sacrifice. And I can tell you right now, that Jasmine did a LOT more to make sure that the animals she ate were happy and comfortable than humans do with the ones we eat.
*** This is exactly why I wish they hadn't put in the part about her killing anyone. The debate would be a lot more balanced if the "she kills people" trump card weren't available. The real, and possibly unanswerable, question is whether safety and bliss are worth the loss of free will.
*** Agreed. It was an unfortunate simplification of an otherwise nicely complex moral dilemma.
*** They might have been worried that without it, too many people might have been rooting against the protagonists. It would make moral debates after the fact much more interesting, though.
*** Of course, the part where Jasmine is drawing an equivalence between sentient beings and nonsentient ones should be a big hint right there that she ain't exactly good. Or: "Human beings are not animals".
** Aside from the issue of the virtues of free will (which are easy to proclaim when you live in a warm spacious broadband connected home and don't have to worry about some bullshit warlord coming and brutalising your family just because), my whole problem with that arc was that the characters, Angel specifically, spent four seasons bitching about how the Powers That Be never do anything to help them. When one finally does, they bitch even more because she doesn't do it quite how they would like. If I were Jasmine I would have pounded a hole in his ungrateful ass too.
*** There's a reason the PTB DON'T descend from their celestial dimension and 'help' just because Angel might want them to. Look at what happens when just ONE Power comes to Earth to 'help out' - she ends up acting like an overprotective parent, trying to enslave humanity to 'save' it. The Powers know they would end up doing more harm than good if they tried, which is why they have the likes of Whistler to act on Earth for them. It's also why they brought Angel back from Hell and sent him the visions - so HE could help people. The Powers know that to do what Jasmine tried to do would strangle humanity's development, rob them of free will and basically the drive to achieve anything else ever again. Humans learn and grow through strife, through overcoming that which is in our way. Jasmine didn't understand that. It's also very important to note (it's missed in the larger debate) that the Powers that Be and the Old Ones (pure demons) were the same race - the malevolent ones stayed behind and became demons while the rest went elsewhere and became the Powers that Be. These are alien creatures and the Powers in the end aren't all that different from the Old Ones.
*** Angel is trying to stop people from being victimized by creatures more dangerous than them. Jasmine proceeds to do that on a global scale.
*** So she swaps being preyed upon and killed by demons and vampires with being preyed upon and killed by ''her'', AND takes away everyone's free will, stopping all cultural, moral and technological development stone dead, and wonders why the heroes aren't thrilled when she does it.
** Morality is subjective. But let's not go all fake philosophic ambiguity here and pretend that an entity that tries to enslave the world in a cult and stops at NOTHING to achieve this is anything but evil by common social convention. You can point out various religions as evidence for the contrary, but even these ancient institutions are under a great deal of pressure to de-emphasize their totalitarian claims and play nice with each other. Because even most brainwashed members of religion A nowadays feel it comes across as a little evil to say cultists of religion B must convert or die.
*** And yet the Cult of Jasmine still killed billions fewer people and employed infinitely less violence than all those real-life religions you're referring to. And what could have possibly ever "de-emphasized" the totalitarianism of human religions and made the various races, religions, cultures, and ideologies of the Earth "play nice with each other" moreso than what Jasmine was trying to accomplish?
*** It still is not justified depriving an entire race's free will just to stop them killing each other. It's the ultimate Big Brother statement: 'you can't be trusted to run your own lives or have original thoughts - so we're going to do it for you'. It's ironic considering that most people who would accept Jasmine's world would also protest armed intervention by a foreign power because the populace can't be trusted to govern themselves. That's exactly what Jasmine is doing - fetching up where she doesn't belong and telling us all we're now under her rule.
*** It depends on whether ''the free will to be evil'' is something that one values. A world without evil, especially when the world begins with the supernatural evil that exists in the Buffyverse, is worth a lot.
** Let's not forget that when the spell is broken- people don't suddenly hate Jasmine. They MISS what they have lost. They miss it enough that they want to kill themselves at first. The closest OTHER thing to that in the Whedonverse is Buffy going to heaven and being brought back to earth. Skip points out that Jasmine (Cordy) and Buffy were both in paradise and the conversation implies without stating that it's the same paradise. So Jasmine really MAY have been making people feel truly "heavenly" bliss.
*** People have been known to feel the same way when they're forced to stop taking heroin, too. If Jasmine had been force-feeding people a physical drug to induce compliance and such feelings of "heavenly bliss", rather than employing a supernatural effect to do so, would this argument still be going on?
*** Force-feeding people drugs to "help" them goes on every single day in every hospital, every psych ward, and and increasingly large number of private households (what do you think ADD meds and antidepressants given to children are?) every single day. From Jasmine's point of view, humans were all emotionally broken, depressed, and self-harming due to lifetimes of trauma and pain. She was using her Love to nurse them back to health.
*** Furthermore, it isn't necessarily always good to force people to stop taking heroin. If it prevents a person from leading a productive life, then it's good to force them to stop. In Europe, some countries have maintenance programs for addicts where they agree to only get a fixed dose from the government to satisfy their addiction, and they often can lead pretty normal lives while addicted. Often what makes addicts' lives so crazy is that they have to deal with the criminal underworld and worry about law enforcement on a regular basis.
** Was it wrong to drop the bomb on Hiroshima? Maybe... did good come from the evil act? Yes. Good & Evil are things WE want.
*** Evil is something we want? Without evil there would have been no Hitler, thus no Axis, and thus not only no Holocaust and war with Germany, but no war with Japan either. Heck, with no evil Japan's government wouldn't have operated as it did.
*** Godwin's Law applies here, I'm afraid.
*** Dropping the bombs, plural, on Japan was pretty unambiguously evil and unnecessary pure show of force, and the only reason you think any "good" came of it or that is was at all required in order to end the war (and yet obviously not necessary to end any war before or since) is due to a lifetime of nationalist propaganda and cultural brainwashing to convince you of this fact. So in a way, you and millions of Americans like you are under the sway of Jasmine-like mind control.
*** Yet from the US POV, it saved hundreds of thousands of lives that would've been lost in an invasion. Every soldier (and some non-soldiers) would've been instructed to fight to the death in the defence of the Japanese home islands.
*** So MAYBE save a few hundred thousand soldiers by DEFINITELY killing a few hundred thousand civilians, including women and children? Wow, nice moral tradeoff.
** Another thing nobody has mentioned: Jasmine turning earth into an Eden like paradise is her PLAN B. She did everything in her power while still in Cordy to make the world an EVIL PARADISE (rain of fire, blotting out the sun). She says Wesley is right about it being "birth pains" but the disappointment when Angelus kills the demon and brings back the sun is obvious.
*** That's probably just because she wanted to set up her own BigDamnHeroes appearance, having the Sun restored and everything becoming Paradise the moment she appears in the flesh in order to really cement her role as a messiah. If it weren't for her mind-control powers, her rebirth happening separately from the Sun's return would have struck everyone as pretty anticlimactic. It also kept Team Angel guessing about what's going on and too busy running damage control to pose a threat (once they had some breathing room to figure it out, they came within a few seconds of stopping her).
*** And I'm failing to see how the minor, localized Apocalypse that preceded Jasmine's birth and efforts to bring Peace On Earth was any more significant or "evil" than the Christian Apocalypse that is supposed to precede the Second Coming of Christ and his efforts to do the same. I dont know of any Christians that consider God to be "evil" because He rains fire from the sky.
** That depends on whether you would rather live in a flawed world as an individual or in a perfect world as livestock. Some people say "Screw utopia, I'm my own person, [[ThisIsForEmphasisBitch bitch]]." Some people say "Moooo."
* One thing that I think deserves being mentioned; Remember when Lorne read Cordy and ended up with a huge mind rape of apocalyptic end of the world imagery? Death, destruction, terror, etc. etc. That was all Jasmine, and its likely that it wasn't simply the stuff with the Beast that he was picking up. Jasmine may have appeared to be all sweetness and light, doing it all to save the world, for the greater good, but Lorne definitely got some major nastiness from her early on. Its possible, even likely, that her future plans for humanity and the world, once she established global control, wouldn't have been as pleasant as she made them out to be. For all we know, she may have ruled over us for a while and then decided to eat all of humanity in one go.
** As long as we're in Administrivia/ThreadMode anyway, that's just completely unsupported.
** The greater the Sin, the more significant the Redemption. By the very nature of Christ-like figures, they seek the salvation of all people, without exclusion, since in their eyes everyone is guilty of Sin, and none are beyond the reach of God.
** She also might have done the same thing she did to the insect people: gotten bored after a while and then left us in despair. Though she said that the insect species were just a test run, and implied that her commitment to the humans was real, who's to say, given her clear emotional instability, that she even knows herself enough to know if she would do the same thing to us?
** Which also brings up another question: if the insect priest knows Jasmine's name, he shouldn't still be under Jasmine's spell. If not, why has he not told the rest of his people the name so that they won't be under her spell either. (The actions of the minion sent to Earth indicates that most of them are.) Also, how did the insects get her name in the first place?
*** The insect priest knowing her name rather effective proves that he ''is not'' under her spell at all, and legitimately sees Jasmine as being something better for their world. Which does not necessarily mean that she is; remember, Connor was never under her spell either, and he's hardly a reasonable judge of what's good for everyone. But it is interesting.
* What's overlooked here is how Jasmine was born. She took over Cordelia's body, her mind still in there (as Cordelia in Season 5 said that she experienced everything that Jasmine did while she was in her body). Cordelia's body gave birth to Jasmine ... after Connor had impregnated her. Jasmine, controlling Cordelia's body, made Cordelia experience having sex with her best friends/love interests son without Cordelia's consent. Thats rape by mind control, which in my book puts Jasmine very much over the edge into evil territory.
* Whether Jasmine is traditionally "good" or "evil" is really besides the point. She's a metaphor for people like Chairman Mao. Ostensibly fighting for a world of justice and peace, she appears and tears the instrument of the bourgeois system (Wolfram & Hart) to pieces and proceeds to remake the world in her utopian vision, but at a terrible human cost. ''Angel'' has always had a latent Marxist theme, with the rich and powerful preying on the poor and the vulnerable. Now here comes Jasmine to end that, but, as Angel explains, authoritarian brainwashing isn't really a viable solution either. He ends her reign, and for stopping the ersatz Maoist revolution, he's rewarded by the agents of the bourgeois status quo, Wolfram & Hart. This interpretation is more or less supported by Whedon himself: he named Sartre's ''Nausea'' -- an existential Marxist work about the crippling effect free will has on people -- the most profound influence on him, and at Comic-Con in 2012 was critical of both capitalism and the socialist trends of the 20th century. Angel, like Whedon, thinks there should be a middle way between the two extremes, negating the idea that either Jasmine or Wolfram & Hart are wholly "good" or wholly "evil", inspiring him and the others to take control of the law firm and try and guide it towards good. [[spoiler:It doesn't work.]]
[[/folder]]

* The Broodiest Vampire spent several episodes being incredibly, often [[TastesLikeDiabetes far too]] [[BuffySpeak mushily,]] happy over his baby. Did ''anybody'' at Angel Investigations ever worry about the ramifications of that happiness?

*** Yep, Angel couldn't fully enjoy being human as he knew that the End Times were still coming and he was dodging his destiny for selfish reasons, whereas the Shanshu was a rewards from ThePowersThatBe, so he was OK with it.

*** That's assuming that it's a reward. The Shanshu never states that Angel is rewarded by becoming human; simply that he plays a pivotal role and then he becomes human. It may well be a punishment; stripping Angel of his vampiric abilities and rendering him a powerless human being, at the mercy of whomever he fought against. After the Fall tinkered with something like this, and This Troper once wrote a fanfic to the same effect; wherein Angel plays the villain in the Shanshu, and is defeated by restoring his humanity, rendering him powerless. As the series has shown countless times, prophecies are deceitful creatures that tell you one thing and then give it to you, but never in the way you expect.
* When Angel signed The Shanshu Prophecy in the presence of The Black Thorn Circle, he supposedly forfeited his chance to become human. Wouldn't he have to sign it "Liam [last name]" since that was his birth name?
** It's hard to imagine that The Black Thorn could be fooled that easy. It's a mystical contract. Perhaps it doesn't matter if he signs "Angel" or "Liam" or "WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse" -- it's the act of signing that matters.

*** Which still doesn't make much sense; if Angel really had been corrupted and was joining the Circle for real, why would they think he would ''want'' to be human, and therefore mortal? For that matter, why did Angel not point the fact that the Shanshu prophecy only says he'll play a key role in the apocalypse, not which side he'll be on...and that joining the Circle could easily be seen as fulfilling that, since keeping the apocalypse in motion is their entire job.

[[folder:Connor's quar-toth accent?]]
* Holtz was the one who taught Connor to speak English, and Quar-toth was so remote that surely there were no demons there who spoke a human language (unless they learned it from Holtz himself). So with no other models for how to speak English, why doesn't Connor have an accent like Holtz's? Why does he have a perfect American accent?

* When they visit Quor'Toth in ''Angel & Faith'', they have no trouble understanding the demons, so perhaps Connor speaks English with an "American" accent because the demons in Quor'Toth do, like the demons in Pylea.

[[folder:Hands off the gem of amarra]]