Headscratchers for ''Series/{{Angel}}''. Spoilers abound.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:The Thin Dead Line]]
* At the end of "[[Recap/AngelS02E14TheThinDeadLine The Thin Dead Line]]", all of the zombie cops revert to their lifeless state... right where they stand. So the shelter is now filled with at least a dozen dead police officers. How the heck did they explain that to the police? Did they just dump them somewhere? I would have liked at least a passing mention of how that problem was resolved.
** Possibly like vamps they turned to dust and wasn't shown due to budget and timing issues.
* Also, earlier in the episode, when talking about how to deal with the police killing them, one of the children sarcastically asks "what're we gonna do? Call the police?" Uh, yeah. Even in the late 90's, I doubt City Hall, the public, or LAPD Internal Affairs is going to take too kindly to cops, or for all they know, nutjobs disguised as cops, shooting every black person they see.
** Except they didn't shoot every black person they saw, they beat persons of color, used unnecessary force and targeted homeless and POC in an area of the City few cared about. Using fear to try and control the crime in the area. Unfortunately in same ways while the intent was noble, the execution was flawed. Instead of targeting crime only it targeted anyone out on the streets at night be they criminal or civilian.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Connor Teen Bomber]]
* Where did Connor learn to rig up bombs with wire triggers and all with just some equipment from a sports store? I don't doubt the materials to do so we're in there, but Connor grew up in a separate dimension, presumably without any advanced technology. And the only other human there was a man from the 18th century. Yes, he could have Googled "Bomb Making, 101, but ask any terrorist, making them isn't that easy.
** None of the bombs actually go off so Connor may have been simply bluffing. Nobody inside the store has the expertise to call him on it. Regardless while 'real' people might not be able to piece together a working bomb Connor is supposed to be incredibly clever. The kid grew up in separate dimension, presumably without any advanced technology and he arrives with what appears to be a wrist mounted air-powered stake launcher. So Connor could be that smart.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mom Grandma]]
* If Darla created Angel... then would that make Conner her Son and Grandson?
** Possibly yes. But it was Darla's previous life that sired Angel, while she didn't conceive Conor until after she'd been resurrected.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pylea]]
* Why does everyone in Pylea speak perfect English as their first language? It is in another dimension, a handwave would have been nice.
** Well, since Wolfram & Hart ruled that world, and the "Home Office" seems to be Earth, maybe they just don't want to need as many translators?
*** The Home Office isn't Earth. That was just a really clever mindf*ck by Holland Manners. It's mentioned in the same episode that the ring that would have allowed Angel to visit the Home Office was quickly disenchanted by Wolfram & Hart.
*** This was never stated in the episode 'Reprise' where Angel is offered the 'one-way trip' to the Home Office. Holland Manners even explains precisely WHY Earth is the Home Office - the Senior Partners' power is here, even if they live elsewhere like the Old Ones. The way the conversation and events play out does not suggest that Angel is being duped here. For the Home Office to be anywhere else, it would undermine the entire show's premise. Angel's despair after 'Reprise' allows his epiphany, where he realises that it doesn't matter if evil can never be defeated (or that W&H's power is concentrated here, not in a Hell dimension) so long as people keep fighting it.
*** Which doesn't really mean anything one way or the other. The ring being disenchanted means just that, considering how magic works it's possible there are rooms on Earth you cannot enter without the ring. If Illyria or Giles' books are to be trusted our Earth may be the "core" dimension and everything else sprouted from us. It's at least suggested that the Old Ones were here first now how and why they left seems to vary based on who's telling the story but they all seem to agree that they were here and left. Besides wouldn't the home dimension simply be where the Wolf, Ram and Hart reside and could quite easily be entirely arbitrary? As for the original question they speak perfect english for our convienence the same reason why most of the characters don't even have accents much less speak different languages regardless of if they were mummies for a thousand years or came from an entirely different dimension.
*** It does make sense from a practical perspective that wherever the Wolfram and Hart home office actually is (and the senior partners at least aren't here given it took a dimensional conduit to talk to them) they would want a common language to be able to conduct their affairs. I suspect that a technologically advanced world inhabited primarily by humans would be better suited to handling the general administration of Wolfram and Hart than your average demon dimension with bow and arrow technology. Even if the commands are coming from somewhere else, if Earth is where the day to day low management is done from then using an Earth language as the common language would make sense.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Heel face BLAM!]]
* In the series finale, why did [[spoiler:Lorne kill Lindsey?]] Even if he isn't trustworthy, we know his main goal has been for some time to take down the Senior Partners, which makes him on the right side and a useful ally. They kept Illyria on after all. Not to mention the ethics of killing an ensouled, remorseful human being.
** Lindsey's had opportunities to HeelFaceTurn already. It never really took. There's no reason to believe he wouldn't just backslide again once Wolfram and Hart offered him something new and shiny, like when he got his promotion back in the first season finale. And if ANYONE would know whether Lindsey would backslide, it's Lorne. [[spoiler: Remember his last words to Lindsey? "I've heard you sing."]] Should be noted that Angel undoubtedly ordered it, given [[spoiler: Lorne walks away from the team after doing it, calling the work unsavory,]] and Angel and Lindsey have never trusted each other in the slightest.
*** I think helping to wipe out the Circle of the Black Thorn meant that Lindsey had burned his bridges with the Senior Partners quite decisively. He would've had little choice but to still with Angel and company for the time being. And the important thing is, he was potentially useful. Even if he was likely to betray them eventually, might as well make the most of his abilities in the short term. Like against that army of demons Wolfram and Hart sent against them later in the episode.
*** Angel knew that wiping out the Circle would trigger a massive onslaught they would probably not survive. There would be no opportunity to make use of Lindsey's talents, because he would not have stuck around for the retribution. He would have high-tailed it out of that alley when he saw the army, if he showed up at all. So the choice wasn't 'kill him or use him' it was 'kill him or let him go.' I think he'd proved to Angel that left to his own devices he would do more harm than good.
** 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 Wolfram and Hart. He got his mole in without them seemingly 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 had to actively stepped and send 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' left 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]]

[[folder:What happens with Jasmine in L.A. Stays in L.A.]]
* About the Jasmine thing, it's too bad that there isn't an army of Potential Slayers, two actual Slayers, the most powerful witch ever, a mad scientist, and the only other vampire with a soul just a drive away, or this would have been too easy. Oh, wait. Why the hell didn't they think of that?
** If they'd escaped Los Angeles to form a resistance movement like Angel suggested, Sunnydale probably would have been the first stop on their way. They just didn't get that far in the plan. Besides, without Cordelia or Connor's blood available, keeping said Slayers, witches, mad scientists and vampire with a soul from getting turned into Jasmine's brand new anti-Angel squad would've been a trick in itself.
** Also this was happening in the middle of Season 7 of Buffy and the Scoobies had a lot on their plate at the time.
** And if they'd been anywhere near a TV, they were already Jasmine's slaves anyway. Not to mention, the one thing you do ''not'' throw at a wide-area mind controller is an army, for obvious reasons.
** It's also worth noting that by the time Jasmine rises to power in L.A., Sunnydale has been abandoned and isolated from the rest of the world, which explains why they weren't affected.
** Is it possible that someone called the Summers house and warned them not to watch the TV in case of that happening?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Doyle's no slouch either!]]
* Okay, this is a pretty minor one, but still. Why does everyone keep saying how Angel is so attractive and Doyle isn't? I gather that this could be Cordelia's easily justifiable opinion, but do they have to keep banging on about it with dozens of characters complimenting Angel and no-one noticing Doyle? Is it really that much of a difference?
** I never heard anyone going off about Doyle being ugly... and Wesley and Gunn aren't complimented all the time either, but they're both really good-looking. And lots of people notice Doyle... but if you think about it- he was only in about 1/10 of the entire series. (He's my favorite character in all of Whedonverse though!)
*** Yeah, I just think that there were certain things about Doyle that Cordelia didn't find attractive about him (he was short and poor, after all), but I don't believe that she ever actively said that he was ugly, or anything.
*** [[WesternAnimation/BeastMachines Chicks dig the brooding loner bit.]] Doyle isn't a brooding loner, he's a dorky scumbag with a shady past.
** HollywoodHomely?
*** This comment was made by the same character who referred to a gorgeous blonde as "Sarah, Plain and Tall", so definitely HollywoodHomely going on.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Angel's singing cell phone]]
* A good one pointed out by my girlfriend: in "[[Recap/AngelS03E14Couplets Couplets]]", Cordelia sends Groo and Angel to get a potion for her Angel gets a phone call and Groo makes the comment, "Um Angel your coat is singing." The problem is that Groo is from Pylea same as Lorne, who considered the dimension hell because it had no music or singing...
** Maybe music and singing were introduced under the rule of Groo
*** Possible but that would have meant Cordy or possibly Lorne would have taken the time to teach Groo all about music while they were all in Pylea... a more likely scenario would have been that they had to explain music to him off camera when he heard some AFTER arriving in L.A. but before that particular scene.
** The joke as I saw it was that he was still unfamiliar enough with music/singing to tell them apart. That's why he referred to a musical ringtone as "singing." It's like when infants are first learning animal names and call anything with fur a cat.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Jasmine's grandpa gets no respect]]
* Cordelia and Connor (and anyone who came in contact with their or Jasmine's blood) were immune to Jasmine's control because of the whole blood connection. By this logic, shouldn't Angel have been immune to Jasmine's control because he's her grandfather?
** They came into contact with actual red blood from her body--not the metaphorical blood of inheritance.
** Then why couldn't Angel blow Jasmine to pieces with a single punch like Connor?
*** Jasmine's Earthly form was created by the combination of Connor and Cordelia's actual, physical (and metaphysical) bodies. It was a direct link. Angel was a whole step removed from the process.
*** Did he ever try to? I think the main thing was that Connor caught her by surprise.
*** Angel tried and failed to fight Jasmine himself before Connor showed up to stop her, so it's safe to say that the "step" between them was enough to mean that Angel didn't have any kind of link that would make her vulnerable to him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Her soul's gone, take my word for it]]
* When Fred is taken over by Illyria, the doctor who gives Gunn supernatural legal abilities tells Gunn that her soul was destroyed in the process and he believes him without questioning it; despite this being the first time such a thing has ever happened, the doctor's lack of first-hand knowledge and the incredibly high rate of lying done by the villains on this show.
** The doctor was an Illyria cultist who helped set up Fred's possession in the first place, so erase 'lack of first-hand knowledge'. Illyria was a Great Old One, in its prime a vast and horrific threat to all reality, so it could plausibly be believed capable of ''anything''. Add in that Gunn was suffering a massive emotional shock at the time and isn't a trained demonologist ''anyway'', and its entirely plausible he'd believe it.
*** Now as to ''Wesley'' believing it later -- this is Wesley Wyndham-Price we're talking about here. If, after all his obsessive research into Illyria, he still believed it possible for her to have done such a thing, then we can reasonably presume it actually is.
*** WordOfGod says that the original intent was for Illyria and Fred to have a battle of souls over the body but the idea was killed when the show was canceled. However, Fred has returned in the ''Angel and Faith'' Season 10 comic. She and Illyria now [[SharingABody inhabit the same body]]. So Doctor Sparrow was indeed lying.
*** Sparrow may have been operating based on the ''belief'' that Illyria destroyed Fred's soul, when the reality is that the process of resurrecting Illyria either crippled or trapped her soul in a manner that meant most conventional forms of resurrection would have been unable to bring her back. Considering that it took rewriting the rules of magic to restore Fred, and it's not hard to see how most people would simply have assumed Fred's soul had been destroyed as it was at least as good as gone.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:No stake-proof vests?]]
* Even if we assume that most Whedonverse vampires are somehow dumb, how come ''Angel'' never wears a stab vest? Or that his friends, who happily kit him out with mobile phones that he can't figure out, never track one down for him?
** Angel wouldn't do this in case he turns into Angelus. He always wants to be sure that his friends can kill him if they need to, and it's not like he can predict when he might switch again.
*** Yes but then that just begs the question of why wouldn't ANGELUS have worn a vest? (The obvious answer being, "Its a fictional story and vampires need to be killable when the plot demands it")
*** Stab vests aren't exactly available on every street corner (at least in sane countries). It's body armour and (should be) restricted to the general public just like a bulletproof vest. This troper's bouncer friend needed to be a registered member of the association before he could even order a stab vest.
*** Angel operates in Los Angles, California and you can easily purchase any body armor you wish in the USA.
** Vampires have ''less'' use for body armor than people do--any wound that would kill a vampire would kill a human, but not vice versa, and their reflexes are better, so they don't want to be confined.
*** Considering how many vamps get stabbed in the heart in this show, I'd say they have ''more'' use for body armor, not less. Seriously, with the number of vampire slayers running around (and I'm counting every member of Gunn's old anti-vamp street gang as vampire slayers) you'd think SOME of them would try to get ahold of some stab vests.
*** Look at who is doing the stabbing though. It's usually Angel, Buffy, Faith, Riley, Spike, etc. Someone with superhuman strength and reflexes. The others that do the stabbing do so by complete accident/luck (Xander in the second part of the pilot) until they've been a regular for at least a season or three (Cordelia in the Season 3 finale of Buffy) and therefore a veteran of fighting vampires/demons by that point. Therefore, it's safe to assume vampires not in a city with an active and known Slayer wouldn't bother with something like that. The ones that do either have plot armor (Spike as Big Bad/Comic Relief) or are not exactly the brightest in the first place.
*** Wood seems to go through vampires like a knife through butter. Remember when Lockely killed a vampire behind Angel by driving a broken plank through Angel's torso and into the vampire's chest?
** Why don't all human criminals wear bulletproof vests when they commit crimes? Why don't all motorcycle riders wear helmets? Why don't all skateboarders wear kneepads? Why don't people who have promiscuous sex with strangers wear condoms?
** Instead of stab vests, why don't any of the vamps just surgically implant a metal plate over their heart, or something? Wood does not go through steel. And how come Angel can kick down a door (and bring the doorframe with it,) but he can't break ''duct tape?'' Graaah.
*** The duct tape was probably just for laughs because Angel's 200 years old and duct tape would be fairly new to him.
*** It's a different form of exertion. Kicking down a door with your full potential for movement is one thing, straining against being tied up is quite another.
*** Also, have you ever ''tried'' to break duct tape? Remember, we're not talking about Angel tearing it here, we're talking about him being tied up in loops of it and straining hard enough to stretch it to the breaking point.
*** Mythbusters did a segment on duct tape. Using only 99 strips of duct tape, they suspended a ''car'' off the ground for ''over a minute''. It's also worth noting that when the duct tape finally tore, it was the fabric part of the duct tape that failed, not the adhesive. The duct tape was holding a car up for quite awhile, and that was with the weight of the car and gravity pushing down. It's pretty hard to exert any significant amount of force when you're tied up. Angel not being able to break the duct tape is perfectly realistic.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Vampire driver's ed]]
* Where, exactly, did Angel and Spike learn to drive? How do they avoid being pulled over by every traffic cop in the state when they drive around with a blacked out windscreen? How the hell do they manage to get a driving license and insurance? Or anything else that requires dealing with government and/or ID ... like renting a building for example?
** So you can't figure out how a 200+ year old vampire would have ever found the time to learn how to drive a car (something almost every 16 year old in the developed world can do after a couple of 10 minute lessons), but the fact that almost every single main character on the show, even the non-superpowered humans, is apparently a martial arts master capable of fighting off crowds of demons without so much as a scratch is perfectly reasonable?
** I don't recall either of them having license or insurance so they just drive without those. As to the blacked out windows, cops don't actually pull people over for that as often as you might think. As for the building, I think it was rented by the humans in Angel's name. It's a mystery how Angel learned to drive but maybe it happened offscreen in season 1 of Buffy?
*** Also, the only time we see Spike driving with blacked-out windows was pre-chip, pre-getting-his-soul-back. [[KilledOffForReal What do you think happened to any cop who pulled Spike and Dru over?]]
** Around Sunnydale, you don't -want- to pull over anything weird.
*** I'm highly amused at the idea that Spike would bother with car insurance.
** The explanation for Spike doesn't seem too hard, he was active and sociopathic across the twentieth century, and driving very much suits his style. Probably he saw more and more people driving along the roads, thought it looked fun, stole the car from some hapless victim he'd eaten, and practiced until he was decent. It's not like he'd care if his early trial and error ran over a lot of people, as long as he didn't get decapitated or set on fire in any accident he could recover fairly easily. Angel is a little harder to answer, but flashbacks eventually showed he was living a relatively conventional and civilized, if solitary, life up until the 70s. It wasn't until he feasted on the cooling corpse of a gunshot victim that he transitioned over to living in alleys eating rats. Plenty of time for him to get adult driving lessons, albeit lacking valid documentation would make main channels a bit tricky. Alternatively, Whistler taught him. I could actually picture him giving that as a start of his new life from the Powers. 'Now Angel, the most important thing is you'll need to learn to drive a convertible. For your duties as a champion.' Or Angel could have even learned post Buffy S3 before he really settled in LA. He is smarter than he looks. Even if he never mastered computers or cell phones.
*** Except, of course, for the very first episode of the series, where he seems to be a master of computer based research.
** For the original office, Doyle may have been able to front for Angel. But with the hotel, there's a whole subplot with Gavin Park plotting to ruin Angel because of his lack of compliance with building codes, credit history, insurance, identification, and so on, and Lilah arranges for Angel to get a complete set of all the paperwork he needs just to screw Gavin.
** A driver's license program didn't exist until 1910 in Prussia, and the first recorded instance of one was simply a letter authorizing Karl Benz to drive his noisy automobile on the streets in 1888. The Model T was invented in 1908. That's plenty of time for someone to learn how to drive. And cars became less complex over time.
** Driving isn't exactly complicated. You can learn to drive almost competently just from arcade video games. Frankly it's more impressive that he can type.
** How did they learn? The same way anyone else learns: You steal a car and you practice.
** Not to mention that your friendly neighbourhood forger has always been around in some form or another. You can get a *real* driver's license if you have enough money and the right connections.
** These two guys are old enough to have been there for the first car. By the 50's they most likely saw the benefit of learning how to use these vehicles. Horses went out of style. Blacked out windows? Well if they are stopped, Spike would have killed that officer who stopped him. Angel likely would have just scrammed. With Spike, he likely has no id or insurance anyway. Angel probably doesn't either or he got one forged. Anything else would probably have been done in Wes/Cordelia's name.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anybody know a good demon shaman?]]
* Why didn't Angel go to the demon shaman (that Spike went to to get his soul back) and get the bad part of his curse removed, so that he wouldn't be in danger of losing his soul?
** Self-flagellation.
** In order to have the shaman restore his soul, he'd have to lose it again. The second Angelus was free he would bolt before reensoulment. Spike '''wanted''' his soul back. Angelus had it forced on him.
** Also, simple caution. Magic is very seldom reliable, and (especially when you have Wolfram & Hart for an enemy) you can never be sure if they've got to some strange demon shaman or not. So even though we know that the demon shaman's magic is reliable and trustworthy, Angel doesn't, and so he has to consider the possibility that the ritual will either backfire or be deliberately sabotaged. Remember that Spike was already soulless when he sought the shaman's aid... his worst-case scenario is that he'd simply get killed, and Spike was willing to risk his life to obtain the prize. Angel, on the other hand, has his worst-case here being not simple death, but the return of Angelus. Without significantly more assurances to the bona fides of the demon shaman than we saw on-screen (assuming Angel even knows this guy exists at all), the risk-vs-reward calculation here says "Stay the hell away, and try to avoid excessively happy moments."
*** Which brings up another question: Wouldn't the fear of Angelus returning and the knowledge of what happened the last time he did prevent any happiness from being "perfect" anyway?
*** I thought this myself. When he had "perfect happiness" with Buffy he didn't know about this part of the curse. Now that he's afraid of turning into Angelus that should be enough to make him at least a little unhappy whenever he feels good. But I also thought this was why he didn't change into Angelus when he had "perfect happiness" with Darla or Nina.
*** No, that was because Darla was, as he actually said, "perfect despair," whereas, while he liked Nina, he didn't love her. Sex wasn't perfect happiness, sex with Buffy was. The problem with the idea that it wouldn't be perfect because he'd worry about Angelus is that if he worked that out he wouldn't worry. So it would be perfect.
*** The happiness clause is at best unreliable and Angel is stupid. As much as he loved Buffy he had a moment of perfect happiness after they lost a fight that resulted in the resurrection of an unkillable (or so they thought) demon who could kill humans by mere proximity? And at the end of season three he was rushing off to lose his soul on a moonlit beach?
*** Perfect Happiness =/= Orgasm. Should Angel experience a moment where he totally forgets about the victims then he will break the curse. It's the loophole. When he had sex with Buffy, he had a moment to forget. With Nina he made sure in the back of his mind(or even the front) that not all was well. It's like worrying about the stove even though you think you turned it off. Now obviously a precaution Angel originally took was no sex.
** As much as Angel's been around, there's also the simpler explanation that he didn't know about the demon shaman.
*** This Troper agrees with the above simple explanation. Angel knew that Spike had a soul; he did not know how. He probably just assumed that Willow conjured up another gypsy curse so Buffy wouldn't feel bad about being romantically involved with him, or something. Which, in and of itself, offers a whole new flavor to Spike and Angel's interaction if Angel doesn't realize Spike isn't under said curse; all that jealousy and resentment over Buffy? "Well, HE can bone Buffy without losing his soul. That means he doesn't really love her."
*** According to Jenny Calendar's uncle the Gypsy, Angel was not cursed with a soul, instead He was cursed to SUFFER. The suffering took the form of a soul, yes, and then when he found perfect happiness that was taken away. Compare Spike in Season 7 of ''Buffy'' to Angelus in Season 2. Spike says as a vampire, he never hated himself, until he had a soul. Angelus is driven MORE mad and truly HATES the Angel part of him, and the memories of the Good things Angel has done, thus Angelus suffers. Willow restored Angels soul, not re-curse him. The Gypsy Curse never left Angel/Angelus. The initial answer is correct: Self-flagellation. Angel believes he must Atone for his misdeeds as Angelus. He would never remove the curse himself.
*** The above is incorrect. The Kalderash curse on Angelus is very clear - it's called the Ritual of Restoration. In other words, it restores Angelus' human soul, in turn restoring his human ability to differentiate between right and wrong. That also in turn allows him to feel guilt for what he has done. The curse makes Angelus suffer by making him remember his victims, and how wrong it was to murder them, via his soul. Both are linked. The curse doesn't differentiate between the soul and the suffering, because one causes the other. Unfortunately the curses' wording allows a loophole - Angelus is cursed to remember all of his victims, to suffer for all eternity. Should those criteria ever stop and he fails to remember his victims, then the spell's purpose ends and it is lifted. This means his soul returns to wherever people go after death, and Angelus is himself again. What complicates matters is the perhaps unintentional linking of the curse to sex post Buffy S2, with it being constantly brought up as a problem in their relationship and being one of the many things that is between them. Angel (by the time of the later series of Angel) has long known that he doesn't have to be having sex with someone to experience perfect happiness, and that there is no guarantee that having sex with someone will definitely cause it. He simply plays it safe after Buffy S2.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Angel's memory isn't what it used to be]]
* So the team of Angel investigations needs to remove the soul from Angel to get information about the Beast in Season 4 because all references and memories of the Beast were magically erased. Angelus would retain these memories because he did not technically exist at the time the spell was cast. So far, so good. But later, after he escapes and learns that there is a Slayer in town, Angelus calls the Summers residence in Sunnydale, and recognizes Dawn's voice over the telephone. Dawn...the artifact turned human, who was inserted into memory and record of existence during a time at which Angelus did not technically exist. How does he have knowledge of her?
** Angelus and Angel ARE the same person. According to Creator/JossWhedon, "soul" represents the feelings, conscience, the guilt, etc. It is NOT a different entity. Angelus IS Angel without guilt and human feelings. Angel even says the BTVS S3 that is the human inside him that needs to kill, not the demon. The "demon" is not a different character. The demon allows the vampire acquires the vampires characteristics and unleashes the person's dark side, but is not a different entity itself. If the demon was a different entity, Angel's quest for redemption wouldn't make sense. Scooby and Angel's (and, sometimes, even Angel himself) gang refers to Angelus as a different character because it is easier for them to deal with Angel's atrocities in his past if they do that (plus, this is a result of some bad writing at Angel's Season 4). If you pay attention, when Angel is with Spike by Season 5, he talks with him about his past as Angelus in first person. There is no "Angelus a different person" thing. It was Angel who did that, and Spike knows. There is no need for word play with Spike and Angel knows this.
*** I don't know what you're citing, but the series have made it pretty clear that the vampire is not the original person, it's a demonic imitation of them...
---->'''Giles''': The books tell the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, mixed their blood. He was a human form possessed, infected by the demon's soul. He bit another, and another, and so they walk the Earth, feeding. Killing some, mixing their blood with others to make more of their kind. Waiting for the animals to die out, and the Old Ones to return.
---->'''Giles''': You listen to me! Jesse is ''dead!'' You have to remember that when you see him, you're not looking at your friend. You're looking at the thing that killed him.
---->'''Buffy''': Well, I've got a news flash for you, brain trust. That's not how it works. You die, and a demon sets up shop in your old house, and it walks, and it talks, and it remembers your life, but it's not you.
*** Actually this is something that both Angel and Buffy were INCREDIBLY inconsistent about and the official explanation of whether a vampire was a separate entity from the original human or not seemed to change at whim depending on who was writing the episode or which vampire they were talking about. With Angel they CLEARLY treated Angelus as a completely separate entity, while Spike was obviously the exact same person and personality with or without a soul, the soul just make him a bit less sociopathic.
*** Angel with his soul ''isn't'' "the original human", the original human was a selfish twit named Liam. Not only has Angel been a vampire for far longer than he's been human, he's been a vampire with a soul for far longer than he's been human. His time as a human is only a tiny piece of his life (or unlife) experience. He's a very different person now than he was when Darla turned him.
*** Watcher propaganda to keep the Slayer in line, most likely. For all his talk, Giles was perfectly comfortable holding Angel responsible for his actions as Angelus.
*** 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 atoning for their crimes and believe it will never be enough.
*** No, it's just Angel and Spike who don't treat it like that. The only people who blame them for their pre-soul crimes are themselves (and Holtz, for what that's worth). Everyone else draws a clear dividing line between the soulless vampire and souled character and says it's not their fault. As for what they feel personally, it's powerful and real, but it's not necessarily true. Abuse victims often feel extreme guilt for what happened to them, even though it's clearly not their fault. Just because Angel and Spike feel guilty for the memories they've been saddled with doesn't mean they're actually guilty of anything, and that's how most characters in the shows (and, by extension, the shows themselves) treat it.
** Presumably, Angelus knows what Angel knows, but Angel doesn't know what Angelus knows.
** Angel and Angelus seem to receive all the memories of the previously active persona within seconds of taking control. Or, at least, that's how Angel described how it worked. Angelus described to Faith that he watches what Angel does, experiences what Angel does, but is trapped inside and cannot take over, and is tortured by having to watch everything Angel does. Angelus' explanation seems to be the more plausible one, whereas Angel's seems to be a cop-out.
*** Then again, the demon, Angelus, is in the body at all times, whereas the soul, Angel, is only in the body during the times in which Angel is active. But if you think about it that way, it just looks ridiculous.
*** The soul isn't Angel. The soul is 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.
*** Here's how I see it: Angel isn't the soul OR the demon. Angel is the person. He is made up of one part Angelus and one part Liam, both of which exist in some form within his subconscious, but neither of which are individual entities unto themselves. They're just parts of who he is. Think of it this way: Angelus is his id and Liam is his superego. Angel can feel guilty for Angelus's crimes because even though Liam wasn't there for them, Angel was - AS Angelus. Additionally, Angelus talks about being trapped inside Angel because he is, in a sense. Without Liam's soul, Angel reverts to being PURE Angelus, unrestrained id incarnate; with the soul, Angel gets the control his superego provides, and becomes a better person for it. Angelus isn't consciously trapped inside Angel's body, raging against his choices; he's an integrated part of the complete whole.
*** The real reason Angelus wasn't affected is not because he wasn't there. He was there, albeit dormant in Angel. He was unaffected so that Jasmine, who must have set up the Beast-amnesia, would have a reason to unleash him as a distraction.
*** If the two series don't always take place at the same time (and we can assume they don't since only about a month passes in season 4 of ''Angel'' and a at least four pass in ''Buffy'''s seventh season) then we can just assume that dawn was inserted into the world during the events of "[[Recap/AngelS01E17Eternity Eternity]]" (That's a very late season one episode where angel is drugged and becomes Angelus briefly. And if you're going to point out that the episode right after picked up the plot of a season 4 episode of Buffy, it isn't said how long after said episode "[[Recap/AngelS01E18FiveByFive Five by Five]]" takes place and there's no reason to assume it doesn't take place just after season 4 of Buffy or early in Buffy's 5th season.
*** Yes, there is. "Eternity" occurs ''before'' Five By Five/Sanctuary (E: 1x17, [=FbF=]: 1x18, S: 1x19), and then Angel goes to Sunnydale in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerSE120TheYokoFactor The Yoko Factor]]", which obviously happens before Dawn shows up. Also, he wasn't really Angelus there - he just thought he was.
** I always just figured Angel (and therefore Angelus) would have visited Sunnydale after Buffy died and then actually met Dawn. If not then I'm sure Angel wanted a very detailed description of the events surrounding Buffy's death from Willow which would have included explaining Dawn and the memory spell. So when Angelus picked up the phone he just put two and two together.
** I just see it like this: The monks inserted memories into anyone who would've known Dawn. Angelus would've obviously known at least of her existence during season 2, so the monks put in memories of her into Angelus, whether dormant, demon, different or the same as Angel, the monks would've taken care to put them in either way.
** The major problem seemed to me to be that Angel suffered because he ''remembered all of Angelus's crimes.'' The whole point of the curse rested on Angel remembering Angelus. And then he can't remember something he knew as Angelus. I realize that the explanation given above gets around that hole, but I never got that point from the actual show, and I've watched the whole thing several times.
*** That's only because Jasmine and the Beast planned it that way. They cast a spell that would erase the Beast from the historical record (including Angel's memories) but not affect Angelus precisely because they wanted to BatmanGambit Team Angel into removing Angel's soul. However hard it was to work out a spell that could do that, that was really its only purpose. The monks, having no such ulterior motive, simply cast a more thorough spell that rewrote everything equally.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Angel's sleuthing skills]]
* How did Angel lose his private detective abilities? You don't lose smarts. Unless Lorne screws up...
** When did Angel ''have'' detective abilities?
*** Angel's always been able to find rare books and stuff on demand. He has contacts, despite spending most of his ensouled years moping about in a sewer.
*** Having contacts is not the same thing as having detective abilities. 90% of the time he (and the rest of the team) failed at basic reasoning skills.
*** But he had a good memory and was able to pick up on small clues.
** What's the evidence that he lost them?
** He never really had detective skills to begin with he only opened up as a PI because it gave him plausible reasons why he kept showing up at various crime scenes and because you can't exactly advertise being a super hero (though considering the number of people who come to him apparently having a pretty good idea that he deals mainly in "weird stuff" and how rarely he gets summoned for regular things despite how good he'd be at them. Like his ability to track people by scent would make him well above average at finding cheating lovers) he must stop just shy of advertising as super hero. To address what he actually lost, which was incredible amounts of knowledge two things come to mind. Mind you they don't make a whole lot more sense when combined with what we know of his background but still. Most of this is carry over from Buffy where his knowledge often rivals or even outstrips Giles. As a vampire and by blood a member of the Order or Aurelius (as much or more than Spike, there is no evidence I can recall that suggests Spike and/or Dru ever directly met the Master unlike Angel.) it's possible he was an expert on the order he was a part of and had books relating to the Master specifically because he found time to between mopes to study and locate books. The real reason is because Wesley and later Fred were the smart ones and they couldn't have Angel solving problems all by himself.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:L.A. needs patrolling, get to work!]]
* I am also bugged by the very small amount of simple, basic patrolling they do.
** What would be the point? The LA Greater Metropolitan Area covers ''five counties''. Foot patrol works in Sunnydale because the town is that small. In the LA basin, you could split the entire 1st Marine Division into squad-sized units and still not be able to cover half the territory.
*** SUNNYDALE IS NOT SMALL!!!!!!!!! Did you see ''Chosen''? That crater was huge!
*** It was also surrounded by a whole lot of nothing and most likely exceeded the actual city limits.
*** I think that was more for visual effect. The pilot and other episodes emphasize the fact that Sunnydale is rather small.
*** Although apparently it had space for several parks, a lake, a dock, a university, a military base, a train station, a bus station, an airport, a zoo, a museum, 12 cemeteries, and 43 churches!!
*** Sunnydale had a population of 38,500 as of the second season. (Check the sign Spike crashes the [=DeSoto=] into.)
*** Can't be the actual population, just the resident one. That number barely covers the number of STUDENTS in a UC campus, let alone staff and faculty, and the population base that would cover the demographics of Sunnydale High.
*** That's not entirely true. Several of the UCs had enrollments of 10k-15k students ten years ago. That would put it at around the size of (school and town) of Santa Cruz, CA.
*** Even a small town is going to leave a pretty big hole in the ground behind if it suddenly collapses into the earth. In any case, it's pretty clear that regardless of how big Sunnydale actually is, Los Angeles is no doubt still much bigger by several orders of magnitude; Sunnydale might not be a ''very'' small place, but it's no doubt still going to look pretty small compared to the sixth largest city in the United States by land area.
** Also protecting all of L.A. wan't their job. They just helped people they got visions about.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Being human, who needs it?]]
* So in "[[Recap/AngelS01E08IWillRemember I Will Remember]]", Angel becomes human for an episode, has a perfect day with Buffy, then realizes that he's essentially useless like this and undoes it. Why is it then, that Angel spends the rest of the series motivated by the idea of becoming human again as predicted in "[[Recap/AngelS01E22ToShanshuInLA To Shanshu in L.A.]]"? I don't think I'd mind so much if they at least explained a change of heart or something since this episode, but there's no mention of it ever again to my knowledge.
** The Shanshu occurs after the ''end of the world''. Presumably he thought he wouldn't need to be badass after that.
*** 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. The Oracles specifically implied that Buffy's life expectancy would be shorter if he stayed human. Whereas the Shanshu was a reward from ThePowersThatBe, so he was OK with it.
*** Which came true, in that if he had stayed human he wouldn't have been able to top Jasmine, or that time stop thing in season 2 or jumped in to stop Caleb in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E21EndOfDays End of Days]]". Any of those might have ended the world and/or resulted in a dead Buffy.
*** Jasmine wouldn't have been able to be born if Angel had stayed human, since a human wouldn't have been able to impregnate Darla and thus Connor wouldn't have existed. But point taken.
*** Though considering how many "end of the worlds" there are in this universe, what's the point of even bothering? After whatever "end times" results in him turning human, wouldn't it be likely for another apocalypse to come about, which he would fail to prevent?
*** No, the Shanshu specifically states that it's THE end of the world. Not an area specific apocalypse like the ones that the series usually shows, but a giant universe ending GambitRoulette of doom. It was destined to be the final one and Angel would help or hinder it for the reward.
*** Of course when you take that into account, it's obvious what the outcome will be. If Angel helps the apocalypse there would be nothing left and the lack of existence might hinder him getting his reward. If there is something left, then becoming human would be a punishment because he would be at the mercy of all the evil forces that conquered the universe. So the only logical outcome is that he has to stop the apocalypse to get the reward.
*** 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 away 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 easily. 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.
*** Alternatively, it's possible that the entire concept of "signing away the prophecy" was invented by the Circle of the Black Thorn as a test. It doesn't have to actually be real; Angel just has to believe it's real so that they can determine the sincerity of his desire to join the Circle. If prophecies could really be signed away so easily, I think Sahjahn would have done it a long time ago.
*** 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 out 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.
*** If your reasoning is that because they believe that he's been corrupted, they should believe he wouldn't want to be human, it should follow that asking him to sign away the prophecy would be a good way of testing if his corruption were genuine (since only if he weren't corrupted would he want to be human and therefore not sign away the prophecy). So that makes perfect sense. Regarding why Angel doesn't point out that the prophecy could be interpreted to mean he should play a key role for them, while it's a possible argument it could just as easily come across as an excuse for why he doesn't want to give up his chance to save the world. He can help them end the world without a prophecy. If trying to hold on to the prophecy made them realise that he wasn't genuine, it could completely blow his chance.
*** ''After the Fall'' confirms that signing away the prophecy was just a test and didn't affect anything because the Senior Partners never filed it. They still want Angel to fulfill the prophecy, but on ''their'' side.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Just how old are Cordelia's memories?]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS04E06SpinTheBottle Spin the Bottle]]", all the characters are reverted to their teenage personas - Fred believes that she is 17, and none of the others suggest they are different ages. However, Cordelia at 17 translates to Cordelia in Season Two of ''Buffy''. She would have a) recognized Angel instantly, b) at least mentioned Buffy, if not actively tried to find her, and c) responded to the terms "Watcher" and "Slayer" which Wesley used. The Cordelia persona we see corresponds to Season One or even earlier, which puts her age at no more than 16. What gives?
** Simplest explanation: it reverted them to different mental ages. The entire thing was a random magical backlash, after all, it's got every excuse ''not'' to be LaserGuidedAmnesia.
*** Cordy says something about it being a "sophomore hazing prank" right after the memory wipe, indicating that she does in fact hail from pre-season 1 (as it would make her a very early sophomore, where Season 1 started halfway through the year).
** Alternatively, it reduced each character's mental age by a set amount. Fred was older than Cordy, so...
*** Except Angel reverted to his teenage years, and he's centuries older than the rest of the characters.
* Well, the only thing that's implied to an exact age is Fred saying "None of you look exactly 17." That doesn't necessarily mean they ALL thought they were 17 just that they all knew they must now be OLDER then 17. So if Cordelia's memory was set back to 16 or even 15 it's not all that suspicious that she wouldn't have said she was YOUNGER then 17 when Fred was obviously implying that she is now OLDER then at least 17.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:And by "distract," I mean "kill him"!]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS05E22NotFadeAway Not Fade Away]]", Angel had Harmony keep Hamilton busy. Why not order her to kill him? She's perfectly capable of seduction. She could have gotten him into her bed, probably had sex, then ate him. OK, Hamilton could have fought back, but if he wasn't expecting it, at least in Angel's mind, it could have worked.
** Harmony wasn't ordered to seduce Hamilton. In fact, he seduced her for the information. Harmony would've disobeyed the orders even if they had been given to her so what would have been the point?
** Hamilton, the guy who Angel only recently found out could kick the crap out of ''Illyria'' in hand to hand combat? What exactly is Harmony supposed to kill him with, a tank? (Granted, that makes you wonder what the hell Angel thought ''he'' was doing taking him on with his bare hands and a knife, but even Angel admitted he was being overly optimistic on that one.)
*** Maybe the normal way that vampires kill humans: drink their blood. Ironically, that would've actually given Harmony strength on par with Hamilton's.
*** Question: did they even know Hamilton was human? I can't remember anyone saying anything that would indicate that Hamilton was human.
** Angel also knew full well that Harmony was untrustworthy, and was going to betray him sooner or later. Counting on her to risk herself in fighting any type of opponent would be stupid, doubly so with one as dangerous as Hamilton. And I'd opinion that Harmony isn't capable of seduction with disguised malevolent intent because she has no capacity for convincingly lying. The Buffybot could probably tell she wasn't being sincere in a given lie even before she started stammering. As a final point, I don't believe Angel knew she was sleeping with Hamilton.
** Moreover, Angel didn't even think he could take Hamilton. His original plan was just to keep Hamilton busy long enough for the other members of Team Angel to finish their assignments. Angel was going to play a little game called self sacrifice.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Vampires in the ER]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS01E03InTheDark In the Dark]]", why did they think Angel needed to go to a hospital? He's a ''vampire'', poking holes in him a bunch of times won't kill him.
** Depending on how early in the series this was and the extent of the injuries, they simply could not have known how much damage a vampire can take before it becomes permanent and were being cautious.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Dirt-poor millionaires]]
* Why do they always act like they are in such a dire financial position when they have ''millions' of dollars. Did the writers just forget they had given him all that money?
** If you're referring to the cash from "[[Recap/AngelS02E02AreYouNowOrHaveYouEverBeen Are You Now or Have You Ever Been]]", I kinda figured Angel gave it back. It was stolen, after all.
*** Actually, I was referring to all the money they got from David Nabbit in "[[Recap/AngelS01E20WarZone War Zone]]" as well as the $50,000 they stole off those monsters in season 3.
*** Oh yeah, I forgot about that. OK then, Nabbit's check or the cashed money thereof was in the office when it blew up at the end of season 1 and I don't think they actually did moan about lack of cash for a while after the $50,000.
*** $50,000 split between 3-5 people in Los Angeles, CA would last about....5 minutes. That probably wouldn't even pay the rent for their office.
*** It was mentioned a couple of times that Angel was so worried about money for Connor's college tuition that he put all that away and called it a college fund. Gunn even mentioned they wouldn't have to "dip into" it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hey, who invited the vampire?]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS01E18FiveByFive Five by Five]]", Faith is keeping Wesley in an apartment she found out about through one of the victims, a man she assaulted and put in the hospital. Angel figures out that this is where Faith is most likely holding up, and charges off the the rescue. In a very dramatic scene, he kicks down the door and....enters the apartment. Which he hadn't been invited to by the man who lives there, nor anyone inside. Ummm....how?
** Three possibilities present themselves (all relying on something happening off screen).
*** First, maybe the man died of complications in hospital (it's been shown this allows vampires to enter their homes).
*** Second (this is a bit of a stretch but possible) maybe that wasn't actually his home. It's possible he had the keys to an abandoned apartment on him (but lived primarily somewhere else). Faith wouldn't have searched him for two sets of keys. Angel may have gone to his real home first (got invited in by someone who lived there) but then, not finding Faith there, found out about this place and went there.
*** Third, maybe he didn't live alone and a roommate or relative was visiting him in hospital. Angel was then able to somehow talk that person into giving him an invitation to come over (something like "The truth is the people who did this to your brother/father/uncle were coming after me and he saved my life. When he gets better, I'd like to come over to your home and thank him personally." "Sure, come on over.").
* I have a theory about how Angel got into Kate's house uninvited when she tried to kill herself. Considering that Buffy was counted as 'dead' for the purposes of the slayer line when her heart had stopped, yet was easily revived by CPR, the definition of 'dead' for a vampire being able to come in someone's house might be the same. Kate's heart could very well have been stopped at that point.
** When I rewatched that episode recently something came to mind. Kate called Angel telling him off, obviously for attention. In other words it was a figurative call for help, and may be interpreted as an invitation to enter her house for the purpose of saving her. An invitation doesn't necessarily have to be "come in and know me better man!" does it?
*** Kate's words in the end of the episode seem to support it, but it's frequently lampshaded that vampires in Whedonverse need "invitations" with very specific words. And Kate knows that and says "... I never invited you in." Kinda bugs me.
*** They enjoyed playing with the rule and giving it new dimensions; in "Untouched", Angel had to wait until one of Bethany's attackers was pulled from life support before he could enter.
** When Holtz's daughter stepped aside to let in Angelus and Darla she implicitly invited them it. But he had to ask "Is that an invitation?" and get "Yes." before they could enter. Given that, it seems likely that an explicit invitation is required; something that could be interpreted as a cry for help probably wouldn't qualify.
*** But Angel and Darla never actually ''tried'' to enter. There's no way to know if they could have or not, they were probably making absolutely sure they could before they tried as to not tip her off. Besides, a general invitation not aimed at the vampire counts (such as a flyer inviting everyone to a party), so why not a veiled invitation actually meant for him?
*** I think it's because an invitation has to be verbal, and gestures don't count.
*** If an invitation needs to be verbal flyers wouldn't count either (and vamps got into a party on Buffy once because of flyers). And mute people would be unable to invite them in. I think the person just needs to make a conscious decision that they want that vampire to enter and it counts. I also think most vampires are ignorant of this fact and assume you need a verbal invitation.
*** It's possible that the invitation needs to be a definite, ''explicit'' invitation. There's ''[[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer BtVS]]'' season 4 episode where Angel asks if he can come into Buffy's dorm room, and she tells him "I guess". He says that's not enough, and doesn't come in until she directly says he can. Hence a written invitation works, responding "yes" to the question "Can I come in?" works, but a gesture that can be interpreted as allowing entrance doesn't. And no, it is incredibly unlikely that a "call for help" that isn't stated explicitly and makes no mention of him coming in anywhere would negate the threshold. Otherwise just shouting "Help" would count as a general invitation to anyone nearby.
*** I think that was Angel not wanting to intrude against the wishes of the love of his un-life particularly when she wasn't exactly thrilled with him at the moment. Spike didn't need an invitation to get in the room and unsuccessfully attempt to bite Willow when he escaped from the Initiative.
*** He did, actually. He knocked at the door, and Willow responded, "Come in." Then Spike entered the room and attacked Willow. Willow really should have known better before blindly inviting someone into her dorm room.
*** Don't forget Vampires got into Sunnydale High because the entrance sign said "Enter if you seek knowledge." Or something like that.
*** I always figured that was just Angelus being a wiseass, since a school is a public building anyway.
*** Yeah, vampires only need permission in order to enter an actual domicile or living space, not just any random building. People don't LIVE at school.
*** Possibly it was meant as a taunt at Jenny, reminding her how careless she was to be in a public building after dark when she knows vampires could attack - and if she thought she was safe, that plaque above the school guaranteed that there was no protection.
* Keep in mind, though, that most vampires really can't set out to test exactly what constitutes an invitation; you'd need some cooperative mortals (to establish and invite past the anti-vampire threshold) who are also able (and willing) to muck with the magic necessary to rescind the invitation and really try to find the boundaries. And a vampire who guesses wrong about what counts and what doesn't who bounces off the threshold has pretty much given the game away.
* For that matter, IIRC, we don't hear the entire phone conversation, who knows what she might have said on the phone. Or for that matter, we could simply interpret it as it was intended; the powers that be interfering.
* Intent seems to somewhat play a part in how magic works. It could be that, under certain circumstances, vampires can enter homes without explicit invitations. It seems the 'no entrance without invitation' is in place to protect humans when they're not in public, wherein they presumably have other humans watching their back; if a person lived alone or was sole guardian to young children, they'd be prime bait. Suicide is considered by many to be a cry for help; maybe, if a person was badly hurt or dying and a vampire only intended to help them, they could enter, especially if the person actively wanted help or were in a position where they could neither accept nor decline help. Angel couldn't save Kate's father, but that could have been due to him making it clear that, whatever the circumstances, he did not want Angel in his flat. The magic respected his desire to keep the vampire out over Angel's desire to enter, regardless of why Angel wanted in.
* Didn't the PowersThatBe just make a one-time exception to keep Angel from going back off the deep end?
** A possibility is that the Powers That Be allow Angel to break that rule when it's in his best interests. Compare "Dear Boy" with "Epiphany"; Angel has to wait for Stephen to die before getting into the house so the murder frame-up doesn't work. In "Epiphay", he's explicitly saving a life that has the potential to save more lives herself as a prominent detective. And in "Five By Five", breaking into the house would save Wesley from Faith. That's a twofer in saving a valuable ally for good, while also assisting in redeeming a Slayer gone bad.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:No, he told me to kill him, honest!]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS04E09LongDaysJourney Long Day's Journey]]", when Angel is getting his soul removed, he tells Connor that if Angelus breaks out it'll be his job to kill him. ''In private.'' That just seems guaranteed to alienate his son from the rest of the group when he inevitably gets out. I mean if he actually wanted them to kill him if he escaped shouldn't he have impressed that on the rest of them instead of just talking about how dangerous Angelus is? He knows from last time this happened how reluctant people are to kill him in that state. I mean, they would still have shouted Connor down, but it might have come across a bit less like "Oh, and Angel's psycho son wants him dead again. Ignore him, he's crazy. WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong by making him distrust us?"
** 'If I go Angelus again, you'll have to kill me' was the standard operating procedure of Angel Investigations since at least season 3. Connor's the only person who needed to be told, everybody else already knew. Wesley may have chosen to consciously disregard this policy (presumably due to guilt over what he'd inadvertently done to Angel & Connor last season), but it ''was'' policy.
** I'm pretty sure that for something to be "standard operating procedure" the possibility of maybe adhering to it has to be at least brought up. Like the Prime Directive on ''Franchise/StarTrek''. Do they follow it? Hell no. But they do note what action it would dictate, while there's no evidence for Angel's team that killing him was even considered. So maybe they could have used a reminder given that they were embarking on a course of action with a staggeringly high probability of requiring that policy.
*** It ''was'' brought up. Here's one instance from the end of Season 3 Episode, "That Old Gang Of Mine"
---->'''Gunn:''' No matter what else, I think I proved that you can trust me when I could have killed you and I didn't.
---->'''Angel:''' No. You'll prove that I can trust you when day comes that you have to kill me, and you do.
*** Brought up when it was ''relevant''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Connor's Quor'toth accent?]]
* Holtz was the one who taught Connor to speak English, and Quor'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?
** Because no one wanted to listen to a season-long repeat of Angel's ghastly Irish accent. Probably they were worried about too much OohMeAccentsSlipping.
** So get an English actor to play Connor. They exist, you know.
*** NONSENSE!
*** People tend not to quite think through the intricacies of casting. They think that there are either an infinite number of suitable people lined up outside the studios waiting to be chosen for a part 24/7, or that the studio has the time and money to spend crawling the world looking for the perfect person for the part. Yes, English actors exist. Okay, now we need one who's of the right age, the right look, is actually good at acting, lives in the area of the filming or is willing to uproot their (and their parents', in this case) life to relocate to the area of filming for a part that will last several years. This is not a small thing and anyone who blows off the difficulties of it is probably being rather shallow in their consideration of the effort and expense involved for a minor thing like "Has the right accent".
** As a rationalization, perhaps Holtz's elaborate GambitRoulette to make Connor and Angel bond before framing Angel and alienating them forever included planning to make Conner have the same general accent. That way he'd sound like Angel rather than have Angel hear his voice and remember Holtz every moment. So he carefully grilled Conner to have him talk without an English accent, amidst his other borderline abusive parenting.
** On the other hand, Holtz didn't actually have an English accent, nor is it realistic that he would have, since people in 18th century Britain didn't have anything we'd recognize as an English accent anyway. So.. well yeah. Also pretty sure Holtz's plan was initially to just have Connor kill Angel, but when they started bonding he came up with a new plan.
* 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.
** This is the best explanation. Connor doesn't have an American accent. He has a demon accent. Americans only have American accents because demons run the American entertainment industry, as we already know thanks to Lorne (who also has a demon accent).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fear my Star of David, vampire!]]
* [[InAWorld In a Lovecraftian Horror-type universe]] in which even the PowersThatBe are more like {{Magnificent Bastard}}s than a straight-up force for obvious good, why do Christianity and its symbols affect demons/vampires? Why don't other religions work? For example, how come Willow always wore a cross instead of a Star of David if it wasn't because Christianity is the "true religion" of the Buffyverse?
** The cross works against vampires because the Church has been a major player in anti-vampire efforts.
** To elaborate, WordOfGod has it that the cross doesn't work because it's Christian -- Christianity adopted the cross as its primary symbol because it works against vampires (and yes, there's the crucifixion, but they could just as easily wear little fish symbols, or a miniature crown of thorns, or whatever).
*** To elaborate, the cross as a religious/mystical symbol predates Christianity. It represents the sun. One can see rather easily how a vampire might be averse to a mystical symbol embodying sunlight. And, to this troper's knowledge, in the Buffyverse, only vampires demonstrate any adverse reaction to the cross, because of their racial vulnerability to the sun. Other demons just kind of shrug it off.
** That explains the cross pretty well. But that raises the question of how Holy Water has the power to hurt vampires.
*** Because it's blessed with a crucifix.
** The Ethros demon did recoil from a crucifix and was affected by a Catholic exorcism. But then that whole thing was an Exorcist reference.
*** Pre-Christianity the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_cross cross]] was a symbol for both fire and the sun. It would be that symbol and not the religious one that has the effect and it wouldn't transfer to other faiths symbols.
*** The above logic falls apart because it's been frequently shown ANYTHING holy hurts vampires. I don't recall the episode's name, but once Angel went into a bookstore to get some info from the owner, and the owner, perhaps thinking he's a vamp hands Angel a Bible and it burns him, as well as the countless times Holy Water has affected vampires as well.
*** The book burned Angel either because bibles tend to have crucifixes on them or because it had been properly blessed like holy water (or possibly both). Bibles are not inherently holy items, they're books.
* As another point, a Star of David is not a '''religious''' symbol. It's a racial - or, perhaps, a cultural - symbol. the appropriate holy symbol for a person practicing the religion of Judaism would be a Torah.
** This is the correct answer. The Star of David is not an actual symbol of the Judaic religion, it was a geometrical decoration that was originally part of the family crest of King David, that was later adopted in the Middle Ages as a symbol of Jewish nationalism by various governments and kings. Its a political symbol, not a religious one.
** As a side note, it's been implied - though never [to this troper's knowledge] out-right stated - that other Holy Symbol's DO work... it's just that the only "Non-Christian" around is Willow, who happens to start Jewish and end up Wiccan. The history, in-universe, of the Cross would apply to any other Holy Symbol associated with the Sun [i.e. a Symbol of Ra, for Helios and/or Apollo, etc]. The Cross is just the most well-known and most common, as well as being the easiest to mock up. And is ''known'' to work - if you were fighting a vampire, would YOU risk using a Holy Symbol that wasn't PROVEN to work? Kind of chancy... But this troper would dearly love to see SOMEONE use a different Holy Symbol.
*** It is NEVER implied that other holy symbols work. Every character, even Jewish Willow, has used crucifixes to ward away vampires. Willow even nails crucifixes to her bedroom walls near her windows to aid in the Revoke Invitation spell they use to keep Angelus away. It doesn't even matter whether the vampire was religious as a person. Throughout both series its explicit that it's the SYMBOL that works, not the faith. The best explanation for the crucifix affecting vampires is that it always has (though we don't know the source of this weakness - it may have been a spell). Christianity is adept at appropriating pre-existing symbols and festivals and making them Christian ones. Since the crucifix has been around for a lot longer than Christianity, the only answer is that it's the symbol that affects the vampire. Holy water is blessed by clergy, who do so while wearing, touching and referring to crucifixes. It's actually quite refreshing and unusual that a modern take on the vampire myth DOESN'T use the tired old 'it's not the symbol, it's the faith of the wearer' cop-out that has become widely overused.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:And then, after the End of the World...]]
* How exactly does the Shanshu Prophecy turn Angel human after the end of the world? It's ''the end of the world''. Becoming human is a little difficult - hell, shouldn't everyone have died out with the world?
** I see you are unfamiliar with the use of the phrase "End of the world" in the fantasy genre. (Also, becoming human was his reward for stopping the end of the world).
*** The Shanshu never said Angel would stop the end of the world. His role in the Shanshu was heretofore unknown to the protagonists, and they just all assumed it means he'll be the hero. [[spoiler: After the Fall reveals that no, Angel will be the villain bringing about the end of the world, which raises all manner of questions about why he'll become human after it.]] Additionally, keep in mind that the Shanshu never said he'd become human either; that's just Wesley's interpretation of the word "shanshu", which represents the cycle of life and death. Prophecies are tricky, deceitful creatures. Never take them at face value.
*** Close but not quite. It is most definitely '''not''' set in stone that Angel will be a villain in the Apocalypse, merely that that is what the Senior Partners have foreseen and would prefer to have come to pass. Visions of the future do not necessarily come true; they can be changed, as evidenced by ''every single vision that Doyle and Cordelia have throughout the series.'' The point of visions is that they give you a preview of what can happen in the future, allowing the viewer to take action to change or ensure the outcome.
*** Depends on the type of visions. Visions sent by the PTB seemed designed to aid the changing of the future (but not always working out that way). Whereas, elsewhere in the Buffyverse, you have characters like Cassie (i.e. Cassandra) who received visions of the future which were 100% unchangeable.
*** Visions, yes. But I can't think of a single prophecy in either Buffy or Angel that has ever not come to pass.
*** The father shall kill the son? Unless you're gonna go WAY out on that limb and claim that when Connor's memories were erased that counted as killing him or Angel killed him and had Wolfram & Hart resurrect Connor with new memories.
*** "The father shall kill the son" was never a real prophecy. That was merely a failed attempt by Sahajin to rewrite the ''real'' prophecy, "The son of the vampire with a soul shall kill Sahajin". Sahajin is a time travelling demon who has painstakingly rewritten all texts quoting, mentioning, or vaguely alluding to this prophecy throughout history, but literally the only thing he's accomplished is that there is no transcribed record of the real prophecy in the current world. The prophecy itself still stands, and his fake version was never a prophecy. This also explains why Angel never actually kills Connor, but Connor does successfully kill Sahajan.
*** But that's the whole point. If ''that'' prophecy is fake, then who's to say there aren't other fake prophecies? BecauseDestinySaysSo becomes a lot shakier once some of its messages turn out to be false.
*** Angel '''did''' "kill" Conner though, at least symbolically. In "Home" Angel takes a knife and slashes Conner's throat right before the spell takes effect and rewrites history. WordOfGod on the DVD commentary even states that this was done as an allusion to the "The Father Will Kill The Son" prophecy.
*** But the show flatout said that it wasn't a real prophecy. So even if Angel did kill Conner, it's just a coincidence, unless traveling back in time and vandalizing a prophecy to make it say something different can warp the future into even making the fake prophecy come true.
*** The point is both prophesies did come true. One can clearly see Angel slit Connor's throat before the Senior Partners warped reality, and because of his efforts to change the future, Sahajan changed the prophesy and forced his own death to occur at the hands of Connor, leading to both prophesies, the fake one and the real one, to come true. [[AWizardDidIt It was probably all set up by Jasmine anyways]]
*** A LOT of prophecies in both Buffy and Angel ultimately wind up being self-fulfilling. Connor, for example, probably would never have had any reason to kill Sahjahn had Sahjahn not put himself in Connor's life trying to kill him first. The prophecy way back when that the Master would kill Buffy when he rose would never have come about if Buffy hadn't gone to face him in response to the prophecy, because he could not rise without her blood. Prophecies tend to will themselves into existence by the simple act of existing; "The Father will kill the Son" is no different in this regard, with Wesley's theft of the child ultimately causing the prophecy to come true for no other reason than because it exists.
*** Yes, but the Father Kills Son prophecy is not real. Sahjahn stated that prophecies had a very specific process for coming about, that is 'carved in blood on an official scroll' and one assumes that they are written by beings with very powerful abilities to read the future. His plan was to kill Connor before he could 'grow to manhood', but obviously, the real prophecy trumped the fake one.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Magic vampire blood pressure]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS01E04IFallToPieces I Fall to Pieces]]", the doctor shoots Angel with a paralytic dart. ''Angel has no circulatory system''. How does that work??
** The same way in "[[Recap/AngelS04E02GroundState Ground State]]", Gwen Raiden can hit Angel with enough electricity to fry a human being like a bacon strip and just annoy him, but a cattle prod will knock Spike unconscious. Sloppy damn writing.
** Of course vampires have a circulatory system. They bleed all the time. They just don't die from [[FateWorseThanDeath lack of blood.]] Or being unable to breathe.
*** Yeah, well, that cheeses me off too.
*** I'm sorry, how does one have blood moving through their veins when their heart isn't beating? Vampires have a circulatory system in that they have veins and arteries with blood in them, but the blood isn't moving. It's like how if you cut a dead body, they bleed a lot less than if you cut a living person in the same place. They are, however, still bleeding. Digressing, without blood circulating through his body, there is absolutely no way that a tranquilizer dart would work on Angel, or any other vampire.
*** The heart doesn't do all the work pumping blood around the body, obviously it isn't enough to keep you alive without one; but muscle expansion and contraction also help to push blood through your veins. Particularly when the blood is back en-route to your heart. Perhaps this is enough to give vampires a small amount blood flow. And there's also the obvious level of showmanship that goes in; bleeding is always unrealisticly excessive in television and movies, for dramatic effect.
*** Vampires do have blood flow, otherwise they could not be affected by chemicals, or have sex. The clue is in Spike's speech in 'The Gift' where he explains that living blood is what both reanimates vampires and makes things like sex possible. Vampires may be dead, but they couldn't do many of the things they are shown to do in the series (in particular eat, drink, have sex or be affected by drugs) unless the reanimation also includes a way to both move the blood around and process food/drink/chemicals. Spike also mentions in Season Four that it is possible for a vampire to starve to beyond the point of no return, destroying their brain and ultimately leaving them a weak, skeletal zombie. Vampires aren't just ambulatory corpses - they're being reanimated and controlled by an actual soul, albeit a demonic one.
** They also get drunk, and in one episode Spike incapacitated Drusilla by a choke hold. They can also get erections, which indicates blood flow. It's reasonable to assume this happens by some mystical means. AWizardDidIt.
*** 'Fraid there's little hope for head-canon on this one. As you said, Spike was able to take Dru down with a chokehold, however, in Angel's infamous encounter with Spanky in Conviction, we got the following conversation: Spanky: 'You know what I'm doing now? I'm applying pressure to your windpipe. You'll pass out, and then I'll let Mr. Fries decide if he wants you to wake up again.' Angel: 'Do you know what I'm doing now? Not using my windpipe.'
*** Strictly speaking this is not a contradiction. Without boring you with the mechanics of the respiratory system breathing doesn't directly effect blood flow or vice versa. In fact in humans cutting off the blood supply to the brain is more effective in rendering them unconscious than preventing air from entering the lungs. That serves as a sloppy if somewhat workable solution to most of these issues. Whatever demon inhabits a vampire is in the blood. The blood still moves so you can "choke" a vampire with a proper hold that blocks blood through the carotid arteries but not one that only blocks the windpipe. The demon not only can, it MUST circulate blood around the body to keep it animated and vampires must ingest blood. Which explains the suspended animation Angel went into. It's clear the writers were goofing but that seems to work.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Some demons with visions are more equal than others?]]
* OK so the visions are too powerful for humans to handle and thus Cordelia had to become part-demon to handle them. Makes sense, they were obviously quite painful. Except Doyle was also part-demon, and they were clearly just as painful for him, he reacted in the same way Cordelia did originally to them. And while it's possible to be painful yet still not deadly, this is rather inconsistent with how Cordelia could handle them with no issues post-transformation.
** Unless they imbued her with demonic powers that could make her resist the pain caused by the visions. As sort of a 'thankyou' for being so noble.
*** That was the cover story (and also true), to hide the fact that they were prepping Cordy to be the host for Jasmine. By that point, Jasmine's plan was in action - it began in 'Reprise' when the 'new life' that Angel earned for Darla in the Trials was used to create Connor, another part-demon being. Jasmine's plan hinged on getting Connor and Cordelia (both part-demon for different reasons) to procreate a body into existence for Jasmine while she was inside Cordelia, ensuring her own birth. The plan didn't really go any further than Cordy and baby Connor until Season Four.
** Doyle not accepting his demon lineage may also have affected how he handled the visions. Seeing his ex-wife then Cordy accepting a date might have set him on the path of pain-free visions; however, he didn't have time to grow like that and only passed on "imperfect" visions to Cordy.
** I think it's due to changing casting resulting in a retcon. Originally Doyle was supposed to be a permanent caste-member and all the vision-related plot-points were intended for him. In the original concept, Doyle is gradually dying because he's just half-demon and he needs to be full demon to survive the visions. Doyle's actor gets fired so presto-chango-retcon-magic Doyle would have always been fine as just half-demon, and now it's Cody being completely human that is causing the visions to be gradually fatal.
*** Also, if you compare when Doyle got visions to when Cordy got them, for him they were just mildly annoying, a slight headache at most, but when Cordy got them they were damn near crippling, often causing her to collapse whenever she had one. It could simply be that Doyle's demon side was enough to not make visions damaging, but Cordelia was just a mere weak human and thus would eventually die from them.
** [[WordOfGod Word of God]] said in an interview (or commentary, can't remember which) that killing off Doyle was not an accident and was fully intended as a result of messing with the fans expectations. Putting him in the credits was part of the ruse to make everyone think he would be around for the entire season. When he was offed mid season the shock was not just because he was a marginally (in my opinion) lovable character, but because of the fact that he was "main cast" in a genre and time when killing off main cast was still pretty harsh to do. Now it seems to happen all the time and the shock is gone, so in hindsight, the plan worked wonders. If that is true, then we come back to some retcon, or other justifications. The easy one still being that it was all planned to bring Jasmine to be.
*** That was the line at the time, but it did eventually come about that Glenn Quinn's drug habit was the main reason in him being dropped. David Fury said "It just became a situation. The work situation became difficult... It's hard enough to make a television show without the headaches."
*** What I read is that Doyle was intended to be killed off, but not as soon as he was. Glenn Quinn's drug problem caused them to abbreviate his arc.
*** Another thing to think about is what the people of Pylea called Cordie's visions: "the curse". Maybe they were more accurate in calling it the curse than they knew. After all, it ended up killing Cordie and bringing an old one to the world. Seems like a curse to me.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:What happened to the Groo?]]
* What the heck ever happened to Groo? I mean, it's established that he abdicated a throne and made what's honestly a fairly tricky transdimensional hop to show up, so it's not like he can really just casually go "Oh, THAT'S the way it is," and go home. Plus, his whole deal is being cartoonishly noble and heroic, so you would think, even if he was just maintaining a healthy distance, he'd keep in the loop enough to show up for, at a bare minimum, a few things in the second half of season 4.
** Maybe he found his own apocalypse somewhere.
** WordOfGod is Groo is now a free-agent good guy in a somewhat normal Los Angeles.
** WordOfGod also states that Groo was meant to come back in series four for a couple of episodes, but for unknown reasons it fell through.
** Reading "After the Fall" helps here: Short version, he's doing fine, thank you for asking.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:And why doesn't anyone care about what happened to the Groo?]]
* I have a better question. Why does no one in the show ask what happened to Groo? In "[[Recap/AngelS04E01DeepDown Deep Down]]", everyone is fretting over finding the missing Angel and Cordy, but nobody is concerned at all that Groo vanished. I mean, it's not like Cordy told anyone he'd left before she became a higher being.
** Lorne got the impression that Groo was leaving in the previous episode. Presumably he told them Groo left.
*** "It is a beautiful day. If my princess asks, tell her I've gone for a walk. - If she asks." [[ExactWords She never asked]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Single PTB seeks bad vampire]]
* So why did Jasmine need Angelus?
** ''No one knows.''
** To keep Angel Investigations busy dealing with him so they'd be less likely to notice the details of her scheming, all the while making them think he was integral to her plans in some other way as a form of misdirection was what I gathered from it.
** To keep ''Angel'' out of the way. Angelus was much less of a threat to her.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hey Willow, you got a spare soul we can borrow?]]
* So Darla comes back human, Angel hopes that he can save her and turn her into a better person, then Drusilla turns up and turns her into a vampire, so Angel goes headfirst into darkness and angstiness, thinking that all hope is lost. Why didn't he just call Willow up and ask her to stick a soul in Darla?
** Because magic demands sacrifice. Something quite horrible would have happened, even if the spell worked.
*** Nothing horrible happened when Willow re-souled Angel in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E22BecomingPart2 Becoming Part 2]]" or "[[Recap/AngelS04E15Orpheus Orpheus]]".
*** That spell set Willow on the path to becoming a witch, leading to the absurd "magic addiction" storyline in season 6 of Buffy. There's your sacrifice.
*** Alternatively, remember that Willow wasn't "sticking a soul" in Angel, nor was she casting a new spell requiring a new sacrifice. She was ''reactivating'' the gypsy curse, and the sacrifice for it had already been made by the gypsy's murdered family.
** Best guess: Darla's even older than Angel. He may have done things that are more horrible, but she's done more horrible things. Angel took a century to even begin to get over what he'd done before he was ensouled--it's entirely possible he considers it a FateWorseThanDeath. (Not that anyone on the show ever seems to think of ensouling ''any'' vampire but Angel.)
** If that's the case, that's quite poorly thought out by Angel and crew. Clearly the resurrected, human Darla remembers everything of her vampire days. The mere fact that she recognizes Angel and talks about their history should prove that, since she only met Angel when she was a vampire for a couple hundred years or so. She also knows more siring vampires than one who had been around for 20 years (granted, that vamp at the bar was clearly a couple splinters short of a stake, but still), and she's clearly unimpressed when he mentions his age. Giving her a soul would just put her back to where she was when W&H brought her back, except without the pesky "dying of syphilis" part. Angel should really have just built a cage (like they had for him a few seasons later) and contacted Willow. By this point (concurrent with season 5 of Buffy), Willow is advanced enough to do the restoration spell without suffering excessive harm (plus she would have had a talented which like Tara to help out). With a soul, Darla would have been an incredible asset. Vampires are like scotch...they strengthen with age. So as strong as Angel is, Darla could have mopped the floor with him. Remember, she only died because she never even considered the possibility that Angel would kill her, and he snuck up and impaled her from behind (which sounds dirtier than it is). So worth the trouble of a phone call and a 45 minute drive from Sunnydale? Absolutely. At this point, Team Angel and the Scoobies are in contact and on good terms. (And also, it's pretty early in the season, so Glory wasn't an imminent threat yet.)
--->'''Harmony''': Hi, I suck at being evil. Can I switch sides and join your team?
--->'''Angel''': [[strike:Sure, we'll get Willow to ensoul you to make sure you don't screw it up.]] No! I'll never allow it...okay, Cordy wants you in, so I'll let you betray us to prove how impossible it is.
*** While it's a good rule of thumb, in the few fights we have for comparison Darla does not come across as stronger than Angel. By that extension, Kakistos and the Master should've been far harder fights than Angelus or Spike, but both Kakistos and the Master were dispatched fairly easily. Angelus and Spike may be younger vampires, but they are far, far more dangerous. Darla is a dangerous vampire to most, but doesn't have Angel's fighting prowess despite being older. In pen and paper RPG terms, Darla is older but Angel has more experience and training.
* Well, it's possible that for Harmony the spell wouldn't be too effective. She doesn't have the history of centuries of evil. Sure she's killed some people, but human Harmony didn't have the strongest conscience ever. She would probably brood for a while, maybe a few months or a couple years, sure. But to assume the soul would be constantly plaguing her thoughts and causing her suffering seems a stretch. All she needs is to be happy and she's back to the (evil) way she was. On the other hand, it could be argued that Harmony isn't a deep enough person to experience "a moment of true, perfect happiness."
** Wasn't the spell created especially for Angelus? It makes sense that it would be, in a way, customized to his soul-specs or whatever the technical term is.
*** Except that this is concurrent with season five of ''Buffy''. Between Willow's power and Tara's understanding of magic, they could definitely figure it out.
*** It wouldn't, as discussed above. The gypsy curse wasn't designed to put a soul into Angelus, it was designed to make Angelus suffer, and the most effective way to do so was to restore his soul. Putting the same curse on Harmony, for example, would've probably made her ugly or bald or something. Putting it on Spike might've made him fall in love with a Slayer...[[FridgeBrilliance hey]]...
*** However this is just commonly accepted fanon. There is no reason to think that the spell said "suffer" instead of insert soul. Based on the fact that gypsies in this universe serve vengeance not justice it seems unlikely that they had a spell that simply causes suffering in the most effective way possible and they forgot how to cast it. More likely it was actually a spell to put souls back in, perhaps a cure for one of their own that [[NiceJobBreakingItHero didn't turn out so well.]] They still had it on hand when Angel did his thing though and it was a very cruel option as they already knew.
*** ...just read a translation of the curse. "What is lost, return" and all that. It's an ensouling spell, not a suffering spell.
*** It's not fanon when it's directly stated in canon. "The curse. Angel is meant to suffer, not to live as human. One moment of true happiness, of contentment, one moment where the soul that we restored no longer plagues his thoughts, and that soul is taken from him." Enyos's own words make it pretty unambiguous that the purpose of the curse is to inflict suffering upon Angel. See also: the definition of the word "curse": "A solemn utterance to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something."
*** That doesn't mean curses can't be designed to inflict a ''specific'' harm or punishment.
*** Additionally, don't forget that Jenny Calendar needed an Orb of Thesulah to be a receptacle for the soul on its way into Angel(us). She has a little exchange with the shop-keeper that makes it pretty clear that the spell that Jenny is translating and planning to use is strictly a spell for souls. And as mentioned above, the wording of the spell is even less ambiguous.
*** The curse was to make Angel suffer ''by'' restoring his soul, so that he would feel constant guilt for the atrocities he'd committed. The "perfect happiness" bit was so that if he ever reached the point that not even the slightest bit of his thoughts was devoted to those feelings of guilt, he'd lose the soul since it was no longer making him suffer. Of course, that was a dumb idea on the gypsies' part since once the soul was gone the suffering would be ''permanently'' gone as well, barring another casting of the spell. But that's how they did it.
** Regarding why they never ensoul any other vampire but Angel (with the exception of Spike, who ensouled himself), remember that the ensouling curse is a horrible, brutal thing. The act of providing a soul to a vampire does not benefit either the vampire or the soul in any conceivable way. The vampire obtains the conscience and moral compass that it had in life, which it now has to apply to everything it's done since its siring. If, in life, the person was someone with a strong moral compass, this is a horrible and traumatic form of torture. If they weren't, and are just going to wind up killing more people, then the act of ensouling them probably wouldn't be such a great alternative to the stake anyway. Meanwhile, the human soul you've placed in them gets the heavy load of, "So, hey, here is everything your body's been doing while you were gone," taking them along for the traumatic emotional torture ride. The ensouling curse is probably the most absolutely terrible thing that could be done to a vampire, and the only reasons to perform it on a vampire are purely selfish. Ensouling Angel can be excused because the original ensouling curse was not done by our protagonists; it's not a fresh ensouling, but restoring the Angel they've grown to know and love. Any new ensouling doesn't have this; it would simply be an act of cruelty.
*** That would be the case if they were seeking to re-ensoul any old Tom, Dick, or Harry. But in the context here, it would be more in line with re-ensouling Angel. Darla already had a soul; and by the end of the episode, she wanted to live, however a short, painful life she had, with that human soul rather than turn into a vampire again (But Dru and WH had other ideas) so you have to imagine that in this specific instance, if the idea was pitched to her "what if I turn you into a vampire, and then we return your soul with the curse like with me?" she would have jumped on it. She wouldn't be human, but she would be complete, and able to "live" out her second chance rather than dying a meaningless death. And considering that at the end of the episode Angel was desperate enough to suggest turning Darla anyway, and counting on the hope that him having a soul would let her keep hers, it's strange how the idea of a re-ensoulment was never floated even once. Darla would be making the choice to become a vampire with a soul, similarly to how Spike did. She'd just be pawning it for a little while until they worked out the specifics. Darla had been through a lot of torment and pain brought on by a soul already; if anyone would be able to tough it out through the process of becoming a vampire with a soul, it would be her, especially with Angel by her side.
** It's possible they just didn't think of it because everything happened so quickly. Darla is turned by Drusilla thanks to Wolfram and Hart, so Angel is reeling from that curveball and not prone to thinking rationally (it's the whole point of the two episodes with Darla and Drusilla that he's going off the deep end). To be charitable, maybe the idea of re-ensouling Darla didn't seem like a promising one because they need: a) a witch to perform the spell, and Willow is the only one they know, b) she has to prepare the spell first and c) no obstacles preventing her from casting it. They have Wolfram and Hart to contend with as well, and they could potentially make things difficult for Willow if she were trying to perform the spell quickly. Angel's first priority was in stopping Drusilla and Darla from the inevitable slaughter they would cause - and sure enough they started killing innocents within minutes of Darla resurrecting. Then after that is stopped, Angel is estranged from his crew and brooding by himself. Darla eventually just leaves town and doesn't return until she's pregnant with Connor, so it is possible in all the chaos that possible plan didn't occur to them.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:New-fangled cell phones, who needs 'em?]]
* Angel seems remarkably blaise about not knowing cell phones, considering how essential they are to saving lives.
** What do you expect, he's over two-hundred years old. Take your grandfather huffing and puffing over these new-fangled gadgets and times that by ten.
*** But old humans have diminishing mental capacity, memory loss, etc. How do you explain that sort of brain failure in a vampire? He learned to drive and use landline telephones, after all. That seems like a bigger leap in technology than landlines to cellular.
*** Cars and landline telephones have been around for over 100 years. This Troper is only 32 and thinks your Snapgrams and your Instachats and your Twitbooks are ridiculous nonsense and still uses an 8 year old flip-phone that cant even connect to the internet.
*** We are not told how long it took him to make the leap to cars or landline phones. Angel may well not have been an "early adopter".
*** Those are terrible examples however. Those are silly little "fads" for the most part. Angel seems to not understand cell phones. However it's easy to forget because things got so much better so quickly but when Angel was having his cell phone problems there were plenty of places, even in LA where you needed to know ancient voodoo rituals to get reception and God help you if you're outside a major city. Angel also seems to have very little issue navigating the internet, he's no hacker but he doesn't seem to struggle with any of the basics.
*** There's a little bit of inevitable memory loss as you get older, but senility isn't inevitable or even the norm and some mental processes actually keep growing throughout one's lifetime (like social skills and empathy, according to some recent research). Most elderly people aren't huffing and puffing over new stuff because they can't learn it, but because they don't ''want'' to learn it; they're already comfortable with what they have and don't think it'd be worth the effort. The same thing applies to Angel, especially since his definition of normal has included barn stables and tavern wenches (and he's said as much).
** Angel may be a bit odd on this as well. Spike is shown being comfortable enough around technology to video tape the Slayer, Darla seems to understand what a cell phone is the moment one is put in her hand. So it's not just about age.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hands off the Gem of Amarra]]
* So, the Gem of Amarra supposedly makes a vampire invincible. How about just CUTTING HIS HAND OFF? There's a whole problem solved with just a knife and a swing. Or a tranquilizer dart from afar and just, y'know, taking the ring off the vampire's finger. "Invincible" might be one of the biggest overstatements ever.
** The entire schtick of the ring was that the vampire was immune to all of the few things that could kill a vampire ''while they were wearing it'', not that they were immune to damage or anything close to invincibility. If I remember correctly only Spike referred to it as invincibility, and he has repeatedly demonstrated he isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
** Invincibility does not equate to "always wins every fight". The vampire is completely invulnerable to anything that would inflict CriticalExistenceFailure while wearing the ring. That there are ways to get around this does not diminish the fact that as long as the vampire continues to wear the ring, he cannot die.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anybody else remember what we did last year?]]
* Okay, so at the end of Season 4 and for most of Season 5, everyone in the main cast except for Angel (and Cordelia) have no memory of Connor. What memories go in that place, then? Who impregnated Cordy with Jasmine? Why did Wesley leave the group and start a relationship with Lilah? They definitely remember Lilah and Wesley being together, but if they don't remember his alienation from the group during that time, what do they remember instead? Did they just forget most of the conflict that happened in Season 3 and 4? I'm frustrated that the show never explains what memories filled the gaps left by the old ones.
** In Season 5, Wesley is MUCH less broody than he was in the latter half of 3 and all of 4. This troper just assumed that nobody actually remembered Wesley kidnapping Connor, since, for them, there was no Connor to kidnap, and thus, Wesley didn't leave the group. Come to think of it, I can't think of a time when Wesley's relationship with Lilah is refered to after the Season 4 finale.
*** Thats not true, the relationship comes up at least once in season 5. Cordelia apologizes to Wesley for killing Lilah, and it seems like he is still broken up about it.
** Memory isn't as strong as people like to believe it is. Entire events have happened to you that you just don't remember because they aren't important, or they didn't leave a lasting enough impression. You can remember DOING something without remembering WHY you did it, and if you try hard enough to remember, your brain can even go so far as to INVENT a reason that never happened. Memory is an extremely fuzzy and blurry thing that changes with the wind. It's very likely that removing everyone's memory of Conner changes NOTHING about the events people remember occuring, just whitewashes Conner out of them. So Wesley betrayed the group and shacked up with Lilah, that's memorable, but the reason for WHY he did it isn't. And before you start thinking that they would notice they're missing memories, memory just doesn't work that way. The only time, for example, that the absence of Conner in the betrayal memory would come up is if someone asked Wesley, "So, hey, why DID you betray us anyway?" and even then, his spotty memory would fill the holes with whatever it needed to, perhaps, "I was upset over the fact that Fred decided she wanted to be with Gunn instead of me." Memory is terribly unreliable as a source of factual information.
** Wouldn't it work much like Dawn's entry into ''Buffy''? All they did was alter their memories so that they were the exact same person, just with memories of Dawn in there. It would act on the same principle, with the difference that they would be simply removing Connor from most people's memories.
*** Or the time that Jonathan cast the Superstar spell. Everything still happened, but everyone remembered Jonathan as being the big hero instead of Buffy.
** After Fred's death, Wesley does get suspicious doesn't he? Perhaps he did notice inconsistencies before but just brushed them off until everything finally made sense one day.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Convenient that Connor was kidnapped to Quor-toth]]
* The Broodiest Vampire spent several episodes being incredibly, often far too [[BuffySpeak mushily,]] happy over his baby. Did ''anybody'' at Angel Investigations ever worry about the ramifications of that happiness?
** I think you are trying to imply that PERFECT happiness is what he is experiencing with Connor in his arms. I do not think any parent anywhere in the world would claim their children ever brought them a moment of perfect happiness. The curse is magic so obviously the "rules" are always fuzzy, but I would say that all the happiness he feels is that of any father. Not to mention that of a father who was never supposed to have kids. Nothing however in the events leading up to, including, or after the birth of Connor lead me to believe that Angel might have experienced a moment of perfect happiness with his child. Lots of happy moments might have happened (had his entire life not been stolen from him), but perfect happiness? Doubtful.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Donkey Kong for the Xbox?]]
* 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 Platform/{{Xbox}}. What game is he playing? ''Franchise/DonkeyKong''. Need I say more?
** Is there any chance there was some sort of collection thing that made that possible? If not, maybe it was a magical [=Xbox=]. Still, it seems like ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' would be more up Spike's alley.
*** ''Franchise/DonkeyKong'' is owned by Creator/{{Nintendo}}, who doesn't make games for the Xbox. That said, the wide realm of hacking and bootlegging makes it possible for a particularly focused individual to make an illegal ''Franchise/DonkeyKong'' game for the Xbox. It'd be a hassle, though.
*** If you know what you're doing (or how to look it up) you can emulate the ''arcade'' version of Donkey Kong on the Xbox
*** 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 Platform/{{NES}}, Platform/{{SNES}}, Platform/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.
*** Perhaps making an illegal copy of DK for the Platform/XBox was part of WR&H's Petty Evil For Its Own Sake department.
*** Note this is the episode right after Andrew made a guest appearance. If anybody knew how to rig an Xbox, it'd be him, and he'd be happy to do it too. Especially to help out Spike, whom he obviously has a crush on.
*** While I would easily believe that Spike would be completely fine with piracy, I can't really imagine him caring enough to go to all the effort (nor being tech savy enough) of setting up the Donkey Kong emulation. Nor is it particularly feasible that he would care enough to ask Andrew to set it up. Unless Andrew crashed at Spike's and set the game up for himself or something.
*** Andrew is in love with Spike. He probably rigged the Xbox up as a gift.
** Given WR&H and how they could make robotic humans that fool anyone, heck Warren had several including a Buffy version that Spike was happy with, the show could easily have Buffy or Chaos Bleeds on the Box, even if just as some kind of meta joke.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pucker up, Angel]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS01E09Hero Hero]]", Doyle transfers his visions to Cordelia by kissing her. Then in the episode "Birthday" Cordelia enters an alternate reality when she never met up with Angel in L.A. At the end of the story, she saves Angel from the torment he is getting from obtaining the visions, by kissing him (thus transfering the visions from Angel to her). So in that alternate reality, where Angel got the visions after Doyle died... how did Angel get the visions?
** Answer:
--->'''Doyle''': "[[HoYay Maybe]] [[EvenTheGuysWantHim I'm a little]] attracted."
* ^ best answer. But seriously, it is never stated that a kiss is the only way to get the visions, and in my opinion based on the scene, that was never Cordie's intent in the scene. She just felt sympathy for Angel and it seems that is her way of showing affection for a character. But more seriously, if it worked that way once for her, she might have been under the impression it would work that way again for her. Key words, ''for her''. Maybe there are other ways to pass along the visions that are not shown on the show since it is not important to the plot.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Wolfram & Hart, now hiring]]
* The Beast killed everyone at Wolfram & Hart near the end of season 4. So where did they get all their staff from at the beginning of season 5? It's not like they could've easily hired that many replacements with the whole Jasmine arc in the middle.
** In "[[Recap/AngelS04E22Home Home]]", it is made very clear that Angel and crew is only getting control of the LA branch of the firm. And in the Pylea story, as well as from Illyria herself, we find out that the firm actually has roots in many alternate dimensions, presumably ones where humans live, like the shrimp one, or the Superstar one. One can only guess that when the Senior Partners decided to give the firm to Angel and crew, they took a few employees from each branch, and left them there until they could slowly replace their dead employees and send the current ones back to their home offices or dimensions.
*** There are no humans in the shrimp one. Only shrimp.
*** Hmm the "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E17Superstar Superstar]]" (and the Wishverse) were parallel realities not other dimensions though (there is a difference).
** I don't think the troper above the above troper meant they got humans from the shrimp dimension. I think it was simply implied Wr&H have employees in every dimension. Probably including the one that is only shrimp. I imagine being a Wolfram & Hart employee in the dimension of only shrimp ends badly for them. And probably includes some cocktail sauce.
** This troper is more Bugged by how The Beast managed to kill everyone. It isn't exactly fast, it only possesses melee attacks so it can only kill two people at any one time, the building is quite large, and unless Wolfram & Hart locks their employees inside at the first sign of danger (which would be terminally stupid but perfectly in character) then there is no way no-one aside from Lilah escaped. Hell, the corpses are practically ''lying on top of each other''. Did they all run at The Beast and attempt to clog its weapons with their wreakage?
*** The whole building DID shut down and lock the employees in. That was why Lilah had to escape using that secret passage, and not out the front door, and why Angel and co. had to get in the same way.
** Yes, the building was locked, but the employees still could have hidden or run from the beast until sometime opened the building up eventually. And are we really supposed to assume Lilah and Gavin, two mid-high level employees, were the only ones who knew about the secret passage? Really, these kind of illogical massacres are just a staple of horror movies and fantasy as a whole. Realistically, there's no way Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, or even most of the monsters of the Buffyverse could commit the no-survivors massacres they did, even if they are {{Nigh Invulnerable}}, because they have only melee attacks, and the people would have run. In real life, even entire squads of people armed with automatic weapons have trouble killing tons of unarmed people who all start off in one place. You just gotta roll with it.
** And as for where Wolfram and Hart got the backup, remember, The Beast only got the LA branch (Lilah later states we went around the county, killing everyone who wasn't in the building at the time, so at least that problem's partially cleared up). If that was the only branch in this dimension, they probably would have said "Earth (Whatever # universe the Buffyverse is) branch". They probably called in employees from around the other North American branches to put on a show for Team Angel. And even if they couldn't, there are other dimensions W&H has access to. If Weyland-Utani is one of their clients, it's not to much of a stretch to say Lexcorp, Oscorp, Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, Electronic Arts (What, they're already evil), and Abstergo are to, so they must have access to plenty of other human-filled dimensions as well were their employees are just begging to be sent somewhere with less superheroes.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hey Pavayne, put on this necklace]]
* When they rescued Lindsey from the suburban hell dimension, Gunn puts on the necklace and volunteers to stay, explaining that if someone leaves someone must stay and a void is impossible. He obviously knew this beforehand, probably from his brain zap. So then why not just bring with the guy from "[[Recap/AngelS05E04HellBound Hell Bound]]" earlier in the season who at that point was still stuck in the Wolfram and Hart basement? Drug him, drag him in, get Lindsey out and put the necklace on him. Easy fix.
** They didn't know to expect that. This does not, however, explain why they didn't bring Pavayne on a return trip and trade him for Gunn. "Hey, scary executioner guy, look that way for a sec while we swap out your prisoners." The guy clearly doesn't care WHO he tortures, just as long as he can get his bloody groove on.
*** Plus as Angel said, Gunn knew about the Clause. Gunn wasn't only there to get Lindsay he was there to get punished for what he did. Gunn's a physical sort of bloke, when you do something terrible you don't brood about it. Grow stubble, get drunk and have sex with hot evil lawyers. You own up to it and pay, and getting your heart torn out and not making the same mistake twice when another offer is made is a very good start.
* Gunn's whole reason for going with them to save Lindsey was to intentionally take his place to punish himself for his part in Fred's death. He knew that someone else needed to put the necklace on and he went there with an agenda to do it himself. He didn't give a damn about Lindsey or saving him, and he certainly wouldn't have cared enough to replace the guy without his own hidden agenda.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Five years ago, who can remember back that far?]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS05E22NotFadeAway Not Fade Away]]", Angel mentions not remembering what it was like to be human. Because he never turned into a human for a day in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS01E08IWillRemember I Will Remember]]", just a few years earlier... Oh wait, this is ridiculous.
** Yeah, for one day, five years previously. How well can you remember the details of one specific day five years ago? Alternatively, what Angel was asking Harmony was whether she remembered ''living'' like a human, leading a normal life, which he didn't get a chance to do during that one day five years previously, and hadn't done for centuries.
*** Depends on the day. If it were the one day I could feel what it was like to have a beating heart, feel the warmth of sunlight on my skin, and to taste food, then I'm fairly sure I'd have a pretty vivid memory of it. And those are the sensations Angel was asking Harmony about; "What was it like, being human?" going on to say it's been too long for him to remember. Not the actions, the sensations. Also, its a plot point that gets used sparingly, but Angel has a near perfect memory, able to recall codes he saw being put into the WR&H elevators only once, a year or so earlier, to get to the white room, among other cases.
** This is what bugs me about Harmony's reply to the question. He's not asking what it physically feels like to be human, but what it feels like to care about others- to emotionally be human, which he's forgotten.
*** Hobson's choice; Harmony is the only vampire Angel is on remotely friendly terms with that was still human recently enough that she might actually remember it. Spike's a century and a half past being able to do that... and Angel would rather gargle holy water than ask Spike to talk about this touchy-feely kind of stuff anyway.
*** I personally have a WMG that Angels memory of that day (The day that didn't exist, anymore) is faltering because of the reality rewrites since and the Oracles not being there anymore. Reality has been overwritten in Superstar, the introduction of Dawn, and the negation of Connor, which was probably the most major, since it recured some major rewrite.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Home Sweet Wolfram & Hart]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS01E21BlindDate Blind Date]]", it's shown that W&H has "vampire detectors." Wouldn't it be easier to just pay someone to live in the building?
** Considering their clientele, they don't necessarily want to keep vampires OFF the premises. They just want to know when they're present.
*** Besides, given the mortality rate of employment at Wolfram and Hart, the unsavory clientele they keep already, and the fact that only the person who lives there would be able to perform an Invitation, erecting a Home barrier around the building would ultimately wind up hampering and potentially prohibiting vampire business. Having to have the same guy greet every vampire that wants to come in the door could potentially get overwhelming, depending on the volume of their vampire business. Additionally, once an Invitation was performed, that vampire would then have free, unchecked reign of the building; the vampire detectors, on the other hand, do not stop working just because the vampire's been here before. And then if anything happens to the Live-In Guy, all vampires everywhere can roam free in the building until they get a new one. The Home barrier just isn't reliable enough.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Angel fails the stock market]]
* Angel is smart enough and careful enough to have lived without getting staked for over 200 years...but not smart enough to use the knowledge he's gained to make himself a fortune and be able to more to fight "evil" vampires?
** He's socially stunted. Angel doesn't really understand human civilization and he's very bad at interacting with others. Blame 200 years of repressing every human quality he has ever possessed because he believed humanity to be an inherent weakness.
** Also, he's shown on multiple occasions to have plenty of money, like buying a hotel despite never getting paid by his clients. Sure, he's not absurdly rich, but that's harder than it sounds.
*** He did get paid by his clients. He didn't initially, but after enough needling by Cordelia, he finally consented to her writing up invoices. Not a lot of fuss is made of it, but Angel Investigations did become a For-Profit agency, if only for people who could afford to pay (customer-by-customer basis). People like billionaire David Nabbit, who not only paid a significant amount of money to Angel Investigations after his case was finished, but also came back to organize all the finances and teach Angel how to manipulate the system in order to get the hotel at an affordable rate.
** Explained in vampire crime novels: ''Literature/BloodBooks'' "Oh, sure, I could have bought IBM for pennies back in nineteen-oh-something, but who knew? I'm a vampire, not clairvoyant."
*** The Stock Market much like property values has only increased historically, you might see a few bumps but when all is said and done you always end up better off than you started in the market. Angel either didn't care for various reasons that mostly involve being a vampire. For example he doesn't need much to live. He doesn't eat food or need shelter. He can probably steal more clothing than he needs so it's literally not until he starts his detective agency that he has any practical use for money. Until then he could simply live off the land. If he had an interest in money he'd probably have quite a bit since even working a standard job and parking the cash in a savings account would add up between say 1900 and 1990 just because of the combination of inflation and interest.
** You guys are forgetting the obvious: he didn't think he deserved it. Until just before the events of ''Series/{{Buffy|the Vampire Slayer}}'', he wasn't thinking about fighting evil at all; he was wallowing in filth and self-pity. (And in his brief reprieves from the filth, like his Naval stint or stay at the hotel, he was still doing the self-pity and the isolation from humanity.) He didn't try to make money partly because he had no interest in helping himself at all. Not to mention that he was a vampire, and vampires in general don't participate in human society that way.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Have you seen my PTB's?]]
* Please correct this troper if she's wrong...if both Doyle's and Cordy's visions were orchestrated by Jasmine in order to make way for her Utopia... where were the other PTB during the show? Is anything we see EVER of their doing, or is it all Jasmine? The Oracles are dead; Lorne didn't really see it coming. But then the Powers are back in "[[Recap/AngelS05E12YoureWelcome You're Welcome]]" to give her one last "we're sorry for what happened to you." Are we supposed to have a retroactive understanding and linking of Jasmine to the the events of the early seasons?
** The only early ''Series/Angel'' events known to be orchestrated by Jasmine were Connor's conception and Cordy's conversion into a part-demon. Those were the first parts needed, then Cordy had to come to the PTB's dimension in order for Jasmine to 'hitch' a ride into our reality. After that, Jasmine's plan got into full swing. Anything else is fan speculation based on Skip's claim that Jasmine has manipulated their whole lives. Gunn's response is basically 'just because he said it, doesn't mean it's automatically true'.
** It's never really answered if there were any [=PTBs=] that took an interest in Angel other than Jasmine one way or the other. However, it is important to remember that the one post-Jasmine vision that Cordelia gives Angel... came from Cordelia. Who is a PTB now. So, still inconclusive.
*** Yeah, the PTB are just another flavor of evil. Is that a mystery to anybody, even after Cordelia's S5 visit caused Angel to create the apocalypse in "[[Recap/AngelS05E22NotFadeAway Not Fade Away]]"?
*** They never said the ''vision'' came from Cordelia, anymore than they've ever come from her or Doyle. They're just the radios picking up the [=PTBs=] broadcasts, and Cordelia passed the role onto Angel (for that one vision, at least). The vision itself amounted to a hit list against Wolfram & Hart's terrestrial leaders: it seems to me that the Powers simply abandoned Jasmine's rescue-of-the-week strategy (which was really just buying time for her own schemes to come through) and instead got down to business. Besides, given Angel's role in the Shanshu prophecy, how could they ''not'' be interested in shaping his destiny and winning him to their side? It seems far more likely that Jasmine manipulated their existing plans for Angel to serve her own ends than that they've had no awareness at all of what she's been doing in their name for the past decade.
*** There isn't any evidence whatsoever that Jasmine was sending the visions. I'm not sure where that fan theory has come from, but Jasmine simply CLAIMED to have been manipulating their lives - as Gunn says in the very same episode, there's no reason any of them should believe it just because Skip said so. It's the same as the First taking credit for brining Angel back from Hell - it CLAIMED to have done it, but Buffy pointed out that it could be talking utter nonsense because it's, well, evil.
*** Because they don't have to. Just because the prophecy is ambiguous on what role Angel plays doesn't mean the role itself is. If the prophecy is as infallible as we've been led to believe, then Angel ''will'' play the role he's meant to play. If it's not, then it becomes meaningless. Just because the person who got the prophecy and wrote it down to parchment couldn't make out what side Angel's fighting on doesn't mean he actually could fight for either side. If the role he is foretold to play turns out to be for the Good side, then he will play that role regardless of, because of, ''or'' in spite of actions taken by the PTB. Likewise, if the role he is foretold to play turns out to be the Evil side, then nothing they do will change that. Think of it like Cordelia's visions: she may not be able to see who a demon is attacking in the streets, but that doesn't make that person Schrodinger's Victim, capable of being anyone in the world; it's still going to be the one person that was shown to her.
** Well, in "[[Recap/AngelS04E18ShinyHappyPeople Shiny Happy People]]", Jasmine herself tells the gang how she arranged her parentage and specifies that it all truly began to take shape after Angel went to the trials to earn Darla a new chance to live, and says she did it trough Lorne, who sent Angel to said trials. This tropper got the impression that it was then that Jasmine focused her actions on Angel. She mentions that thanks to those trials, Angel did earned a new life, only it was Connor's; given that vampires cannot get pregnant and Darla's whole pregnancy mystery went unexplained at the time, it's fair to assume that much of Jasmine's story is true, even if in the episode of the trials, the host said nothing could be done since Darla had already gotten her second chance at life. It could be that only that episode needs to be reinterpreted, and even then, all that is needed is to assume Angel winning the trials and Darla's situation created a loophole that allowed Jasmine or some associate of hers to introduce the possibility for a vampire pregnancy.
** I always took it as the majority of the visions before Cordelia's Ascension were true visions, with a few thrown in to help Jasmine's plans. Or maybe Jasmine's role has a PTB was to send the visions. Although, we still have to remember that a good majority of the Jasmine arc was changed due to Creator/CharismaCarpenter's pregnancy, and was made to look like that was the plan the entire show.
*** They were all true visions. Jasmine simply took advantage of certain events (Angel winning an extra life for Darla but not being able to use it; Cordelia not being able to withstand the visions because unlike Doyle she's 100% human) in order to arrange her own birth and thus 'save' humanity from itself. There's no evidence except Jasmine's word that she did anything other than that, and since Jasmine is the same entity that thought killing a dozen people and creating a ritual rain of fire from their corpses was okay, her word is certainly not law.
** It's not just the visions that need explaining; PTB meddling in Angel's life dates back as far as being approached by Whistler, back before Buffy was even called as a Slayer. There's also the question of who brought Angel back from the Hell Dimension, and who blanketed Sunnydale in a snowstorm to keep him from dusting himself. Someone very clearly has had a plan for Angel since before he ever even heard the name Wolfram and Hart, and we know it's not Wolfram and Hart because they weren't even sure who he was when he first arrived in L.A., referring to him as simply "a new player in town". That leaves the options of "Jasmine has been playing Angel since before he ever met Buffy" and "Multiple PTBs have all played their hands around Angel, none of which we have ever confirmed the existence of except for Jasmine". Occam's Razor suggests it was always Jasmine.
*** How, exactly? To assume (and its a big assumption) that it was 'always' Jasmine makes the flawed assumption that all of Skip's assertions that Jasmine has been meddling in the affairs of everyone from 'the start' were true. What evidence do you have? All we know is that it was the Trials and Angel winning a new life that kicked everything off - very slowly. None of Jasmine's plots hinged on Fred or Gunn being involved, so why meddle in their lives? The PTB have been a very clear force for good in Angel's life from day one. We know (from a viewer perspective) that there is no way something in Angel Season 4 was being plotted and planned all the way from Buffy Season 3. Just because someone tells you something, doesn't make it true, and the same applies to Jasmine. Her plan began at the earliest in 'The Trials' and she didn't actually act on the nascent plan until 'Reprise', when Darla gets impregnated. There's also the problem that at some point, she had to do her 'dry run' in the demon dimension to make sure she could make her plan work on Earth. Add to that the fact that the PTB are almost always referred to as the POWERS that Be (plural), and even Jasmine herself explains that the Powers are essentially half of a race that once lived on Earth, the other half being the Old Ones. There are many Old Ones, and thus many Powers, all of whom had the same 'hands off' policy - until Jasmine went rogue. She's far from the only one of her kind.
*** The First was the one who brought Angel back from the Hell dimension. Supposedly so he would kill Buffy. The snowstorm to save him was presumably sent by the PTB, but who knows?
*** As is mentioned in the episode 'Amends', the First simply claimed to have brought Angel back. It was never confirmed either way, and a lot of fans (including this troper) find it more likely that it was the PTB that both brought Angel back and saved his life. Why would the First bring Angel back from Hell, only to encourage him to kill himself later?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pain-free visions (Mystical pregnancies not covered)]]
* Also, Cordy became half-demon to deal with the visions, but then she still ended up not being strong enough to avoid the ConvenientComa until she woke up (but not really) for a day in "[[Recap/AngelS05E12YoureWelcome You're Welcome]]". So her being a demon pretty much failed her when she really needed it.
** Well, she became half-demon to deal with the visions. Nowhere in the half-demon package was it suggested that she'd be able to deal with being the host body of a PTB.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Spike the Friendly Flying Ghost?]]
* Ghost Spike. If you watch Season five you'll notice that the only answer that makes any sense is that ghost Spike can fly and doesn't know it. He passes through objects like walls and doors but he can lean on walls and sit on desks. We know he's not actually sitting or leaning on anything because it requires intense concentration for him to so much as write words on glass or pick up a mug. And that comes and goes so he can't be sitting. Also he can ride in cars, if he's not flying at the same speed and direction as the car then once the car starts to move Spike should still be exactly where he was.
** Metaphysics.
*** Or maybe it's just that doing some things take more desire than others. Simply standing, sitting, or walking around doesn't even take actual conscious effort on Spike's part, but actually physically interacting with the world does.
*** Maybe floors are "corporeal" to some ghosts the way open doorways can still be "corporeal to vampires," and it was just easier for the producers to make Spike into the semi-corporeal (instead of being more like Phantom Dennis)
*** It's made pretty clear that the amulet was in possession of the L.A Branch Wolfram and Hart, thus Spike's essence was then owned by that branch, hence why he always manifested back there. It's not out of all realms of probability, given the spiritual nature of the company itself, that permanent things like the floors are enchanted in a way that a company owned ghost (like Spike) could walk on them, where as doors and walls would probably be prone to refurbishment and change (i.e. office extensions/divides) and thus do not endure such spell. Basically, Spike isn't actually walking on the floor, he's walking on whatever enchanted matter emits from that floor. Pretty much the same way ghosts work in any other fiction or real life, they follow the path they're bound to follow, and walk the floors they're bound to walk on. Walls don't affect them, because they aren't bound to lean on them or anything.
*** I assume he basically works like [[ComicBook/XMen Kitty Pryde's phasing]]. All he would need is a Professor X to train him how to "air-walk."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Side effects may include losing your soul]]
* So in "[[Recap/AngelS01E17Eternity Eternity]], Angel gets drugged and turns into Angelus, and then turns back when the drug wears off. But isn't it perfect happiness that causes Angel to lose his soul, thus releasing Angelus? Shouldn't they have had to go re-ensoul Angel at the end of the episode?
** He didn't really lose his soul, it was more like a hypnotic suggestion. The drug made him ''think'' he'd experienced perfect happiness, and then his drug-addled brain ran with the assumption that that meant he was Angelus again and should be acting accordingly. Once it wore off, the confusion did too.
** If his soul was really taken from him, it wouldn't have self-restored. The drug probably just lowered his inhibitions, that's what they do in humans. And it's mentioned frequently in the show, that Angelus is always there and the soul has to work extra hard to keep him in check.
** Also, why weren't drugs a perfect solution when they needed to reach Angelus later on, rather than forcing evil monks to remove his soul and then also relying on dark magic to restore the soul? Why not slip him a couple of tabs of something?
*** Because as said, that wouldn't have been Angelus. It would have just been Angel under the influence and imagining that he's turned into Angelus. Since they were looking for a memory that only the real Angelus had, it wouldn't have helped.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Careful with that axe, Angel]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS01E22ToShanshuInLA To Shanshu in L.A.]]", when Lindsey goes to burn the scroll, Angel throws an axe and chops off Lindsey's hand, which flies across the room and leaves the scroll unharmed. How could Angel be so sure the hand wouldn't just fall in the fire and burn up with the scroll? Is it just a matter of physics?
** Yes. The axe was larger/heavier than the hand it chopped off. Transfer of force would cause the hand to move in the same direction as the axe.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Eve and the idiot ball]]
* I don't understand Eve. If she really loved Lindsey, a plain ol' mortal human, as much as she said ("The only thing I care about is trapped in a hell dimension") you'd think she'd be a little more open to signing away her immortality after Angel brought him back, as opposed to having to watch him grow old and die while she presumably is going to look and feel like she's twenty years old for eternity. And what if the events of Underneath never happened: Angel never came to see her and the senior partners never found her? Was she planning to hide alone in the invisibility apartment until the end of time? Is that even physically possible? It seems like all of the smarts and manipulation tactics she possessed during the first half of the season disappeared as soon as Lindsey was taken away which, if I really thought that was the writers' intention, I could turn into an issue of feminism (she needs a Man to do the thinking for her; all her character traits are dictated by her boyfriend), but I don't honestly think that was the angle they were going for.
** Eve was never that good at getting things done, just at pissing people off, so nothing much changed. As for the feminism part: Yes, she's not a super strong and cunning woman who goes around dwarfing all men around her every chance she gets- but a weak relatively spineless character. So what's misogynist about that? The implication that women are not infallibly superior?
** It's entirely possible, likely even that Lindsey was the brains of the duo and she really was just pretty. Since Buffy and Angel share a universe I outright reject that having a weak woman is an issue worthy of an issue of feminism. Even if Eve is nothing but a silly girl who needs her man to explain to her how to breath properly she still doesn't balance out the slayers, Anya, Cordelia, Lilah, Glory, Willow etc etc. She also doesn't balance out Xander, young Wesley, Johnathan, Andrew and (debatably) David Nabbet as far as worthless males go. That said I suspect there is a difference between being under the radar of Wolfram & Hart and being clearly targeted for retribution.
** The existence of a woman who needs her man, especially as a third or fourth tier villain, doesn't undermine the other feminist messages in the Buffyverse.
*** It's interesting to note that the capacity to follow in love is seen as a humanizing factor for certain villains like Lilah; in Eve's case, it has the opposite effect, making her seem far more pathetic.
** Also, its possible that Lindsey's end goal involved immortality in some fashion; if so, that means they'd get to live together forever.
** Much is mysterious about Eve. She was created by the Senior Partners. Why would the capacity for love even be part of her makeup? Further, you would think her creators would keep close tabs on her. How on earth did she even manage to meet Lindsay beneath their notice in the first place?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hey Fred, have you seen Illyria around?]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS05E20TheGirlInQuestion The Girl in Question]]", when Ilyria [[spoiler: pretending to be Fred]] is giving Fred's parents a tour of Wolfram And Hart, how did they not encounter anybody [[spoiler: making comments about Fred being back or "I thought you died horribly," or anything like that]]?
** Well everyone knew that Fred had turned into Illyria cause, you know, she looks exactly like a blue Fred. If the ancient superdemon wants to pretend to be its human host, are you going to blow its cover?
** Besides, between the moody and amoral HumanoidAbomination and the brooding alcoholic prone to shooting people for asking him the wrong questions, I think most of the office staff had learned to give the two of them a wide berth.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Where do bad vampires go when they die?]]
* Question; what part of the person goes to whatever afterlife there is after they die? Their soul, right? Then...why are Angel and Spike going to hell for everything they did as vampires, again? They didn't have souls then, their souls had already (presumably) passed on. All of Angelus' crimes were committed by a demon animating a husk of meat into walking around and killing people for his personal amusement. There's nothing there to, for lack of a better word, judge after said meat has been dusted. Does the soul get retroactively blamed for everything the body did while it was gone after being put back in?
** If you believe Pavayne, that's exactly it - the soul's tainted by the vampire's crimes:
--->'''Pavayne''': Won himself a soul. No more dirty things. Thinks himself special. Thinks it matters. Hell still waits. ...beginning to understand, aren't you? The soul that blesses you damns you to suffer forever.
*** Then again, the portal in "Hellbound" might have been opening ''just'' for Pavayne, and he was playing on Spike's soul-embued guilt to try to break his will. Angel and Spike might not be going to Hell at all, and they just assume they are because they remember their crimes and feel like they deserve it.
*** Except that when Angel died in Season 2, he went to Hell.
*** Have you actually seen that episode? He didn't literally die in Season 2. He got ''physically pushed through a portal to Hell'', because that was the only way to close it again after Angelus opened it up. The only thing Buffy actually did to him, apart from shoving him through the portal, was stab him in the gut with a sword. They've played that exact same injury for laughs in ''Angel''.
** They do and they don't. We know that there is an essence animating the vampire. It's not a human soul, but it is a living thing. We commonly refer to it as the demon that inhabits the vampire. Now, taken in isolation, Angel and Spike are complicated creatures, being that they possess both a human soul and an animating demon, and that their minds are more or less a composite of the two. Liam and Angelus, William and Spike. It's entirely possible that when, say, Angel dusts, Liam would go to Heaven while Angelus would go to Hell (assuming Angel didn't do anything to taint Liam's destination, of course), but Angel isn't Liam. Angel is Hellbound because Angelus is, even if he's also Heavenbound because of Liam, and because of Liam's human conscience, Angel can feel remorseful for the fact that he IS going to Hell. Now, as to the actual examples, Angel was kicked through a portal directly into Hell, so there is that. For Spike, Parvayne was ''feeding'' people into Hell to prevent himself from being taken; Spike's final destination would have had nothing to do with it if Parvayne succeeded in doing more or less exactly what Buffy did to Angel, but for different reasons.
*** Or, if you hold to the school of thought that Hell cares about who you are, rather than what you've done, the fact that Spike/Angel hate themselves for what they've done means that they're good people who don't belong there.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hey, where did my heart go?]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS03E04CarpeNoctem Carpe Noctem]]", when Angel's body is taken over by an old man, it takes him the better part of a day to realize that he's a vampire. Did he really not notice that his heart wasn't beating, and that he didn't have to breathe? The same bit of FridgeLogic takes place in Spin the Bottle. Liam didn't notice any of those things either?
** Maybe it's just me, but I don't generally notice that my heart is beating unless I'm specifically paying attention to this fact. Same with breathing. Presumably, having other things on their minds, Liam and Marcus simply didn't notice.
** It is never explicitly stated that vampires CAN'T breathe, only that they don't have to. It is possible that both Marcus and "Liam" were breathing despite it not providing any actual benefit. This troper related it to Angel saying he could eat but received no sustenance from it.
*** Angel couldn't breathe even when Buffy's life depended on it. That's why Xander had to be the one to bring her back to life the first time.
*** He may go through the motions of breathing without actually drawing air. Unless you breathe in really, really hard, deliberately, do you actually notice air passing your nostrils or lips?
** Not to mention the fact that Spike and Angel can often be very clearly shown to be breathing heavily after a big fight (or all through season 6 of BTVS as they do the whole after sex scene with Spuffy). Which likewise contrasts with the Season 1 finale of BTVS, where Angel says he can't perform CPR because he 'has no breath'. Also conflicting with the number of times vampires are strangled or have their heads submersed in water actually causes them to choke/suffocate. The matter is all around not very consistent across the Buffyverse.
*** I hate to pull from ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'', 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.
** I think I would notice a lack of body temperature first.
*** A total lack of body temperature, sure. But vampires aren't cold, they're room temperature. Room temperature in LA in the summer is high enough that not noticing it is not so unrealistic.
** Oh, come on. How often are YOU really aware of your heart beating or your breathing unless you're actually focusing on those things? The only time I pay attention to my heart beat, really, is when it's racing or I'm actually checking my pulse for some reason. How many times a day do you honestly bother to check your pulse? And breathing is simply second nature to people, nobody really realizes they're doing it or thinks about doing it they just do! Unless I'm perhaps sick and can't breathe all that well or if I'm holding my breath and such I don't pay much attention to whether or not I'm actually breathing because, guess what, I'm alive, chances are I am! I don't see them not noticing as anything of a big deal. I doubt most people really would notice.
*** Maybe focusing on details like heartbeat or body temperature or breathing are ducking the real issue. It's pretty clear that the way vampires experience the world is significantly different from the way living humans do; enhanced senses (notably smell). I do find the idea that you could be a vampire and not realize it to be pretty hard to swallow.
*** Realizing there's something wrong with your body and realizing that you are a vampire are two completely separate things, though. It's a far jump from "I'm experiencing the world in a new and different way" to "My enhanced sense of smell tells me I'm a vampire." It's like waking up with extremely dry, itchy skin, and going, "I must be a mummy."
*** But he does 'not' think "I'm experiencing the world in a new and different way"; he has no clue that he's anything other than human until he involuntarily vamps out. That's the salient point.
** We're talking about an OLD MAN who takes over lots of bodies, with different abilities and sense levels. What he's going to compare any new ability/sensation to is HIMSELF - and his inability to do those things. I can actually relate, in a large way. If I were to wake up in a vampire body, I'd spend ''hours'' reveling in the fact that I ''don't hurt''. An old person - even one used to taking over young bodies off and on - would be in the same boat, overjoyed that he can walk normally, his brain is as sharp as it used to be, all the pain is gone... being old means a LOT of pain and suffering, even in the most healthy, as bodies are constantly breaking down. Add in the above logic about breathing being automatic, the fact that no one ''believes'' in vampires, and the fact that there ''are'' perfectly "normal" people with, for example, extremely advanced sense, and it's not surprising. In fact, it would probably be ''more'' surprising if the guy had noticed it instantly.
*** Exactly, he takes over bodies a lot. The fact that he's old is irrelevant; he should know exactly what it feels like to be in a human body, and it what it feels like to not be in one. Also, considering his experience with the mystic arts, there's every reason to believe he that he knows of vampires (even if he's no expert on them, hence his need to study up).
*** The episode clearly establishes that he didn’t know what vampires were and he didn’t believe in the existence of vampires. Also there’s no reason to suppose he was well educated in magic other than the one and only spell he is shown to know. As mentioned before, even if he notice something weird with his body, his first guess (or any normal person for that matter) would not be; I must be a vampire!
*** Well, his age might be relevant if the brain is starting to go. Marcus' behavior seems irrational and short-sighted even before the bit with Angel starts -- its entirely possible that he's already starting to get a little senile.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why don't you shoot her already?]]
* Why doesn't Angel simply kill Lilah around the end of season 3? It's not like he has qualms about killing clearly evil people or like Wolfram & Hart would care enough to kill him. Sure, they'd probably just replace her: but offing her and thereby sending a message to her successor would have saved him a lot of grief. Especially egregious since Lilah did some very twisted things to Angel and all the people he cares about including his son, not to mention how much she flaunts those deeds at every opportunity and goes out of her way to make it clear that she is evil. He chopped of Lindsey's hand for less even though he helped Angel when his conscience got the better of him and ultimately left W&H.
** The only humans Angel kills are in the heat of battle and not often then. If he can avoid killing humans he will. WhatMeasureIsANonHuman sure, but that is how he operates. Lilah is smart enough to never actually fight, well, anyone, but least of all Angel.
*** If that is the case then Angels reasoning has a pretty healthy dose of GoodIsDumb, which is jarring since he was mostly pretty good at avoiding that.
** In series 5, Lindsay realises that Angel is the type to tolerate "the devil he knows". Although Angel had a hidden agenda on that occasion, it's been pointed out many times that Angel is a very bad liar compared to Angelus. He tends to do best when he lies with the truth (something Angelus is a master at). The chances are that Angel let Lilah live because he was confident he could handle her and he generally knew what sort of thing to expect from her. Killing her would simply replace her with another lawyer and possibly one that was worse. It may not be so much GoodIsDumb as CombatPragmatist - stick with the devil you know you can beat rather than making room for one you might not be able to.
** He spent the middle part of Season 2 doing essentially what you're suggesting. For the first part of the season, Wolfram and Hart was screwing with his head using Darla and flaunting it. Then they re-vamped her and he'd had enough and went on the offensive against Wolfram and Hart and decided to send a message when he showed up at Holland's wine-tasting, where a terrified Lilah begged him for her life. He responded by walking away and locking the door behind him, leaving her and her colleagues with a pair of vampires and she survived only because Dru and Darla thought her little rivalry with Lindsay served their agenda. His team all gave him a giant WhatTheHellHero, he fired them, and before it was all over, he learned that all of that was meaningless, killing a W&H lawyer doesn't get rid of them for good, and that sure, Lilah and the other individual W&H lawyers and the Senior Partners were evil but the firm really consisted of the evil in the world. And oh, yeah, he tried to lose his soul by sleeping with Darla. After that, Angel pretty understandably doesn't really go on the offensive against Wolfram and Hart - it takes him to a dark place, and ultimately it doesn't matter. And it even fits into the Senior Partners' plans for him - Lilah and Lindsay were flat-out told to their faces that they're being told to screw with Angel's head but can't kill him because of his place in the prophecy and the Senior Partners would consider it a great victory if Angel went dark for real and killed them both. He'll fight them when he runs into them in the course of what he normally does, he'll try and stop the terrible things they do, and he'll go after them to help people he cares about, but that's about it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Magic Windows from the 80s?]]
* Small thing (very minor gripe): when Lorne's having his W&H halloween party Angel makes the windows to his office obscure. Spike calls them "magic windows"-- does this really need to be magic (and yes I get that Spike is just being a sarcastic jerk): LCD glass that does that has existed since the 1980s.
** I'm a bit confused by what you're saying here. Is there a reason why the fact that this can be done without magic changes the fact that W&H does it ''with'' magic?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Song Prophecy]]
* Something I noticed after watching Season 4. Remember way back when Lindsey sings "Pretty as a Picture"? Yeah well, look at a couple of lines: "The sky's gonna open, people gonna pray and crawl; gonna rain down fire, gonna burn us all. The sky's gonna open; people gonna pray and sing, but I can't feel a thing." Think about it. The first line relates to the rain of fire caused by the beast. Everyone was crying and praying. The second line relates to Jasmine, when everyone praying and singing her praises. And the last part "I can't feel a thing" I believe relates to Connor. He never feels the same adoration as everyone else. Nice {{foreshadowing}}.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Super duper blind people]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS01E21BlindDate Blind Date]]", Angel tangos with a blind assassin. He assumes she's a demon, within reason given that she wins a fight with him and throws him 20 feet. But turns out, she's just a normal human being, except that she's blind which gives her... super powers. Why? Her blind-o-vision seems to just allow her to see movement (and nothing else... ), but what the hell makes her so powerful? Even if her abilities do give her some sort of precognitive ability... how did she outmuscle Angel?
** She wasn't just blind, she was trained by an OldMaster somewhere.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Killing Fred with bad math]]
* So, the reasoning for not performing the ritual that would have saved Fred is that thousands, if not millions, of people would have died as Illyria's essence made its way back to the hole. However, don't the potential consequences of letting an Great Old One loose make that body count look like a drop in the bucket? After all, the Great Old Ones were the most powerful demons to have ever lived! As horrible as it is, killing that many to prevent one from being unleashed is a fair price to pay for saving the world. Remember: they had no way of knowing that Illyria would end up having a damper put on her powers, so they were full willing to kill Fred to save a few thousand/million who were likely to die horribly anyway when Illyria was unleashed on the world.
** There are several good reasons for this. The first being what seems to be the right answer. Angel and Spike both agreed that Fred wouldn't want to be saved like that and they both assumed there would be another way. I can easily understand between the two of them being a bit cocky about stopping ancient evils and saving the entire world. In addition the Old Ones were (at least according to what they knew prior to Illyria setting them straight or offering an alternate theory) driven from earth millions of years ago by one Slayer and the Shadowmen and presumably some other magic users. Willow is confirmed as more powerful than them, we have thousands of slayers and at least two occasions (The Judge and Mayor Wilkens) have clearly demonstrated that modern weaponry is in fact quite effective against demons that were previously thought to be all but unstoppable. They both seemed to think they could take Illyria.
** Plans for Season 6 would involve Willow finding a way to separate Fred and Illyria's souls, so we can assume this was build-up for that.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Jasmine's desire for world peace falls flat...]]
* When one considers what she did to that race of insectoid demons Angel visited as a "rehearsal" before making her plans towards Earth. Even after leaving them, the demons still remained blindingly loyal to her, calling themselves "The Ones Who Love Truly" and even willing to kill all of humanity so she would notice them again. Yet Jasmine just blows them off, even considering them a mistake she would not intent to repeat. While it is true the demons are vicious cannibals, it's never shown whether they were like this before Jasmine "evolved" them, or became that way after Jasmine left. Considering how breaking Jasmine's mind control led to the humans rioting and causing chaos, it's likely that when she broke her mind control over the demons in the other realm by departing, they regressed into insane zealots. However, while the anarchy on Earth seemed to occur in only a few days, whatever happened to the demons in the other realm must have taken longer possibly due to their extreme dependency on Jasmine resulting from her long-term mind manipulation. This means that Jasmine's vision of world peace will only last as long as she maintains hold over her subjects, but if that hold breaks it will lead to madness and chaos worse that it was before she arrived, making it all a self-fulfilling prophecy. Off course, even with that information offered, there's still the fact that Jasmine essentially abandoned her former faithful subjects to fend for themselves after leaving for earth. Yeah, Jasmine tries to justify it by calling them a mistake but she never explains why it had to involve her leaving rather than try to fix the mess up, especially with her level of power. Perhaps the demon's absolute devotion wasn't enough to suit her idea of perfection? If that's true, what prevents her from doing the same to Earth's inhabitants?
** I was under the impression that she never did break her spell over the insects, that they were still under it. (Except perhaps for the beast that knew her name.) And that was why they were still devoted to her, and her absence was what made them insane. The rest of your point stands though. I have a [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WMG/Angel WMG]] about this where I say that the answer to those questions is that Jasmine is more imperfect and immature, and worse at creating utopias, than we thought, and she *always* leaves after doing her magic after a while. Or perhaps after she eats too many of them.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Kill it with fire?]]
* How do Drusilla and Darla survive being set on fire in "[[Recap/AngelS02E11Redefinition Redefinition]]", when every other instance of a vampire being set aflame in ''[=BtVS=]'' and ''Angel'' results in complete, almost instant immolation? (Yes, I'm aware that the [[NominalImportance Nominally Important]] Spike and Angel are resistant to sunlight because of a HandWave in the ExpandedUniverse, but this one was especially strange given how effective fire usually is against Buffyverse vamps.)
* The stronger the vampire the harder they are to kill. Darla and Drusilla are fairly powerful and were only on fire a few seconds before dousing themselves in water.
** Maybe they just got lucky in getting to that fire hydrant and putting it out. Drusilla does say "it hurts" so the fire seems to have come close to killing them.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Wesley vs Vail, really what was Angel thinking?]]
* "Okay, you can do a little basic magic, clearly you're the guy to send when I'm looking to take down one of the most powerful sorcerers who ever lived." Clearly, since they had no one who could match Vail magically, the only logical move would've been to overpower him physically. Meaning Illyria is the best bet; as cool as the car bomb style scene was, her abilities were wasted taking down Izzerial and his three human pals; an ''actual'' car bomb (or Wesley's guns) would've done the job just as easily. Or maybe recruit Connor for the job, seeing as Sahjahn was somebody Vail considered a credible threat and Connor killed him easily. The whole thing was just a big IdiotBall so that they could have one of the heroes die.
** Remember, these were all intended to be suicide missions to begin with. The Senior Partners are going to hunt down and obliterate everyone involved with taking out the Black Thorn even if they live through their missions -- that's what the scene at the end is all about. If you already don't care whether Wesley lives out the night anyway (and neither Angel nor Wesley himself did) then picking Wesley for the job ''is'' logical, because he's the only one Vail will actually let into his house without raising an alarm. Or: Wesley's plan was never to match power with power, it was "Sneak attack, bitch!"
*** The problem with that is that they weren't so much planning to die in their mission as not ''caring'' whether they died. They ''did'' however care if they ''succeeded'' in wiping out the Circle. It was made clear that anything short of a clean sweep would've made the whole plan a failure, and Wesley had no chance of taking out Vail by himself. And if Illyria had been sent after him, raising an alarm wouldn't have mattered, as we saw there was nothing he could actually do about her.
*** There's no indication Team Angel knew that Vail's apparent physical weakness was a subterfuge, or that he could shrug off multiple close-range magic fireballs from Wesley without much difficulty, even when he didn't see them coming. There was no particular reason to believe a sneak attack wouldn't work.
** You're making a lot of assumptions about how easy it was to kill Izzerial and the others. Illyria was the biggest gun they had, and it's safe to say Angel pointed her at what he thought was the biggest challenge (admittedly, he underestimated his own fight). Wesley is the closest thing they had to a match for Vail so they had to make due.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:You cannot contain me]]
* The gang seemed to think the Hyperion basement cell was strong enough to hold Angelus. Yet Gunn was clearly able to break himself and the rest of the AI team out of it, simply by consistently kicking the lock for an extended period of time. Angelus is much stronger and smarter than Gunn, did they not think Angelus could have done the same? If Angelus wanted out of that cage, he would have gotten out earlier. Did he remain in there on purpose, to make them think they had an advantage, or because it was easier to taunt them continuously? Maybe it all all plays right into how he manipulates them psychologically.
** What puzzles me is that when Angel has his soul extracted in that cage, he is tied down to a table. The next episode, the table is gone, and Angelus is sitting on the floor. Who went in the cage to untie Angelus and remove the table? Or did Angelus just break out of it himself?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Shanshu Flanshu]]
* How come chaos only starts to happen when Angel and Spike are both in the picture, as two vampires with a soul, because of some apparent issue with the Shanshu Prophecy only fortelling one ensouled vampire. Darla was technically, at one point, sired as a vampire again, and then was inflicted with a soul. Alongside Angel, that makes two ensouled vampires. I mean yes, granted, it wasn't HER soul, it belonged to her unborn baby Connor, that she was sharing. But it wasn't like Connor was using it. And also, Angel clearly doesn't seem to have Liam's old personality, and the comics reveal that the soul Spike regained actually belonged to someone else, so why doesn't Darla affect the Shanshu prophecy?
** Spike had had a soul for nearly an entire year as well. It seems like it was heavily implied that the Shanshu either wasn't acting up at all or it was acting up specifically because Lindsey had cast some kind of spell that interacted with it. It only acts up for a short period of time and then is never mentioned again in the show. It seemed like it was just a trick to get Spike or Angel to kill the other because those two as BashBrothers isn't a great thing if you're want them dead.
** It's said specifically in "[[Recap/AngelS05E08Destinty Destiny]]" that the Shanshu Prophecy was acting up because there were two ensouled vampire *champions* in the world - key word being *champion.* Spike sealing the Hellmouth in the Buffy series finale (Chosen) is what - as Eve said - gave Spike the Champion "cred." Doing that is what made Spike qualify for the title of Champion - but he "died" and was a ghost, so everything was fine until he got coperial. Darla didn't have - and has never had - any champion "cred;" even when she was sharing a soul with Connor. Hence why the universe didn't go out of whack. (This is, of course, assuming, the whole "two souled vampire champions tearing apart the universe" thing was even real to begin with and not just a ploy of Lindsey and Eve).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Singing Puppets]]
* Why didn't Lorne pick up on anything fishy when talking to Framkin? Regardless of whether it's Polo actually singing or Polo making Framkin sing, either way there should have been plenty of psychic info heading Lorne's way as soon as the tune started. "Courage and pluck, courage and pluck..."
** It's possible it's a unique ability related to these demons. During the broadcast, when they sang they could use mind control on selected members of the audience while applying a perception filter to others. So their singing wasn't just normal singing. This may have meant they could block Lorne's perception/abilities while they were singing.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Jasmine VS. Cordy]]
* This always confused me: I know that Cordelia was manipulated by Jasmine, but the question is, how much of what happened in Season 4 was her own personality and actions versus Jasmine using her as a bodysuit. There are some instances up until Cordy becomes pregnant where, manipulated by Jasmine or not, it's very clearly her personality, memories, and mannerisms, albeit with dubious actions. She reacts in a way that only Cordelia could, whereas her personality becomes notably more Jasmine-like when she nears birthing.
* its possible that the point Cordu came back was it. But then it was pointed out in-universe that the trouble with the Beast didn't start until after the gang got her memory back to her.
* I always assumed that Jasmine didn't take full control until Cordelia became pregnant. While she was already possessed upon her return, Cordy still had control for the most part. Fred if I recall also pinpoints the gang returning Cordelia's memory as the moment they "woke it up", so I assumed that is when Cordelia started being manipulated by the possession - to the point of sleeping with Connor, and then once that happened Jasmine was in control, and only got stronger as the pregnancy progressed.
* If we go by Giles initial explanation, the demons inside vampires build their personalities based of the memories of the person they used to be. We can assume that, as a higher being, Jasmine was able to do the same thing with Cordy, adopting her mannerisms and personality to help maintain her cover. As she was getting closer to her birth she began to relax this mask, as she didn't feel the need for it anymore.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:We fight for your rights even if you're a demon (vampires don't apply)]]
* Ok, so the show presents the idea that not all demons are evil. Demons can be interpreted as basically aliens from other planets (called "AnotherDimension" but basically other planets) like Lorne, or well native species to Earth of sentient non-human animal forms and/or descendants of aliens from other worlds. Fine. Yet their treatment of vampires is exactly the same. We are constantly remembered that Angel is the vampire with soul in almost every single episode until it became tiring, yeah but unless I'm wrong the official position is that any demon has a soul. So Lorne for example has no soul, nor any of the other friendly demons we see, some of them even protected by the gang from human aggressors. I have no problem with the idea that there are good demons (even when IMO the show took it to some ridiculous extremes) but, why the double standard with vampires?
* Most good demons are that way because they have souls and choose to defy whatever destructive instincts they possess. Lorne definitely possesses a soul. In fact the lack of soul is an identifying for one demonic species so its more of an exception than a rule for demons. But possessing a soul does not guarantee goodness. Vampires lack any sort of moral compass and tend to express themselves in destructive ways regardless of whether they want to or not. At best, they can only become the equivalent of high functioning sociopaths in modern society.
** The problem is that the Buffyverse is very random about how all of this works and even what the nature of a soul is to begin with. We're given no reason at all to believe that most demons don't have souls, even vampires have an animating demon inside them that for most intents and purposes could be counted as a soul. Pylea is almost fully inhabited by "good" demons. At the very least the majority of Lorne's family don't seem to be particularly evil when compared to any random group of humans with some deep seated racism/speciism whatever. We don't know that they have souls one way or another. When it comes to vampires its a double standard because they are stock bad guys. You're not supposed to think about them but nearly every vampire with a name has shown they are capable of "good" behavior especially if you ignore eating people.
** Ignoring eating people is hard though. Good behaviour doesn't make a vampire good. Vampires can demonstrate good behaviour when it's in their interest but will then stop when it stops being so. However, the rule seems to be the souls are necessary to be good. There was one episode ("I've Got You Under My Skin") when a demon inhabited a young boy who was revealed to be evil and he explained that inside he found nothing including "no soul". While a soul doesn't necessarily make you good, it does appear to make you evil if you don't have one (Remember that, even after turning "good", Spike did try to rape Buffy and intentionally sought out a soul to become a better person/vampire). Notably, everything noble about Angel instantly disappeared as soon as he lost his soul (and we never saw what would have happened if Spike had been without a chip or the motivation of wanting Buffy and soulless). I also think it's worth mentioning that when Jasmine arrived she was able to use her powers on humans. She was also able to use them on Lorne no problem. She'd previously been able to use them on insect-demons. Yet she never seemed to consider using her powers against vampires or any of the more malevolent demons (instead trying to wipe them out) so it's possible that a soul was necessary for her powers to work (given it worked by amplifying the peace and love sides of a person).
** Also, it should be noted that Giles described Vampires, "the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, mixed their blood. He was a human form possessed ... infected ... by the demon's soul." Vampires have a human body but have the essence of an Old One in place of their human soul. Other demons, by contrast, are hybrids of pure-demon and human. They have a mixture of human and demon traits. For some, the demon traits can be dominant. For others, like Lorne, the human traits (at least in personality) can be dominant. Vampires aren't hybrids in the same way and so their personality is pure demon (albeit influenced by the memories of the person they were before being turned).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:What's the catch Wolfram & Hart?]]
* Why would someone wants to work for Wolfram & Hart? Evil corporation that wants to destroy the world with you and your family in it; check. It will kill you horrible if you make a mistake; check. It sends you to a horrible hellish dimension to be torture every night if you deflect; check. You keep working for them even after dead; check. Who can say no to that offer?
** Now, seriously, what's the gain? I can understand if the people working there are all millionaires with incredible wealth or that all you wish come true. But Lilah for example lives in a pretty modest apartment, have to answer to her superiors, working probably as hard as every junior associate in any law firm and we see her working for hours until very late in the night. So what’s the catch?
* Good dental plan?
* They likely don't actually know what they are getting into at the very beginning. That's not the sort of thing that your people could know initially and yet the public remains wholly in the dark. The rest of those things are somewhat circumstantial. They do want to bring on the apocalypse but they are never described as suicidal. So being on their team probably means going to paradise. Whether or not the Senior Partners have any intention of making good on that is another story. We don't know if S5 of Angel was "standard" business for Wolfram & Hart or not, if it was and Knox wasn't lying they've stopped more plagues than they started. As much as Buffy gets credit Wolfram and Hart actually saved the world from the First. No matter how lucky or strong Buffy and her Slayer Army were sooner or later through sheer exhaustion the the Uber Vamps would have won. Spike and the bauble are what saved the world. Who knows how many other times they may have similarly positioned things to prevent the end of the world. Again Knox states they are very specific about the world ending on their terms. We know so little about the afterlife that working for W&H after death may or may not be a blessing. Lilah at the very least doesn't appear to be be tortured in the one time we see her.
** Lilah explicitly states that she knew what she was getting into when she signed up (simultaneously implying she was suffering somehow), but why would anyone want to work for most evil organizations? VillianousDarkMatter works for people as well as things. The script called for a massive evil law firm that follows every StupidEvil rule, yet is staffed by mostly normal people (not millionaires), so W&H has a never ending supply of employees who boast about how evil and selfish they are, but apparently are totally loyal to their superiors, work for next to nothing, and actively work to end the world.
** At least in Lilah's case, her mother had health problems. Working at Wolfram and Hart allowed her to have "the best room at the clinic". It's possible that (especially early in her career when she was starting out) working in a normal safer non-evil law firm she couldn't afford to get her mother the care that she needed. The exact benefits of working at Wolfram and Hart aren't known, of course. You can't really judge what someone's salary is by their apartment because some people might just be prudent spenders. More likely though, I think the benefits of working at Wolfram and Hart were simply reserved for people at the highest end (Angel clearly had things very nicely when he was the CEO of one branch). If you get far enough up the chain of command you can make a lot of money, get a lot of power and maybe even get a chance to extend your life or buy out your contract. For ambitious people, they'd be willing to join up and to work miserable long hours and risk getting stuck working after death for a chance at some amazing opportunities if they get to the top.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Angel's outburst in Sanctuary]]
* What was it about Angel's retort to Buffy that was so, in her words, "incredibly hurtful" that he felt the need to travel to Sunnydale and apologize for it. Nothing about what he says is particularly insulting, and given Buffy's behavior throughout the episode and her taunting Angel about her new relationship with Riley, it seemed rather justified.
** Angel might be centuries old but when it comes to Buffy he's a lovestruck teen. The fact that she was upset meant that he needed to apologize. It's generous to say that Buffy and Angel were equally at fault during that altercation anyway. Not to go all schoolyard but she started it.
** To see things from Buffy's POV; Faith violated her, attacked her mother, and tried to frame Buffy for her (Faith's) crimes, and Angel flat out dismissed Buffy's very real right to be upset with her after all of this all because (as far as Buffy can see) Faith shed a few crocodile tears and said she felt bad. Yeah, Faith was genuinely remorseful, but at that point, Buffy had no real reason to buy that, and Angel, in his desire to help Faith completely dismissed the very real hurt Faith had caused Buffy. When Angel said what went down with Faith had nothing to do with Buffy, he was wrong for that (in my opinion), because Buffy was one of Faith's victims. Was it cool for Buffy to shove her new life back in Angel's face like that? Eh, it wasn't nice, but it's not like she has any memories of "I Will Remember You"--and whose fault is that? Also, who broke up with who in the first place? Why does Angel get to snap at her for moving on when that's why he broke up with her and left town without a word for in the first place.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Jasmine's Face]]
* Why exactly do people see Jasmine as a maggot infested decaying mess? I can understand the idea that Jasmine would have the ability to create an illusory appearance and that she would choose the appearance of a beautiful woman. That makes perfect sense. I can also understand the idea that if that illusion is broken she won't look like that anymore. However, why exactly would a former Power-That-Be have a true face that looked like a decaying mess full of maggots? When she eats people she seemed to look different again. I realise this hasn't been addressed canonically (at least to the best of my knowledge) but are there any theories? Is it just the ultimate extension of Beauty Equals Goodness and rather than seeing her true face, people are seeing into her soul? Was this a curse by the other Powers to make people less likely to trust her? Or was Jasmine maybe a maggot infested demon who got elevated to a Power-That-Be (like Cordelia did) and that's just what she looked like? Or did Jasmine make her mortal body using elements of the demon parts that Cordelia and Connor had and maggot face was just a side effect?
** I interpreted it as some kind of glitch on the illusionary spell's part: Most people see perfect beauty that they have to worship, but a select few see the exact opposite in pure ugliness and filth that they have to destroy, otherwise, no matter how gross a facc looks, trying to kill its owner on sight is hardly an appropriate response. The maggot infested decaying mess we see is probably just an approximation to get the point across to the audience.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Spin the Bottle]]
* When exactly are Lorne's scenes in "[[Recap/AngelS04E06SpinTheBottle Spin the Bottle]]" set? He's obviously aware of everything that happened with Cordelia so it must be after "[[Recap/AngelS04E17InsideOut Inside Out]]". It doesn't seem like he would have had time to pop out and tell the story during the course of the episode though and he was under her spell until the end of "[[Recap/AngelS04E19TheMagicBullet The Magic Bullet]]". They then spent the next couple of episodes on the run or fighting against Jasmine which then led straight into "[[Recap/AngelS04E22Home Home]]", where Lorne was made to forget about Connor which meant he couldn't have told the story since it involved Connor. So when did Lorne have time to tell the story? Or was telling the story only in his imagination (while they were on the run, him imagining being back home)?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Angel and Spike as victims]]
* At the end of "[[Recap/AngelS05E11Damage Damage]]", Spike says that he and Angel were victims once. I've seen people argue against this, saying both he and Angel knew what they were getting into when they became vampires. But how would they know? We've seen both their sirings and I don't see how either of them would have any idea they were about to become undead. The general populace didn't know vampires existed. Darla merely talks about traveling and seeing the world, there's some euphemisms but none which a human ignorant of the supernatural would pick up on. Darla only vamps out when she's about to bite and he may not have even seen her face. By the time he sucks her blood, she's guiding him - he's been drained a bit and is weak. As for Spike, Drusilla also never said anything about being a vampire. Earlier at the party, guests are talking about the recent killings in the city and clearly don't know it's monsters, so he probably didn't know about them either. Unlike Angel, he actually got a good look at her GameFace but still wouldn't have known what it meant. It just seems to me neither could have known they were about to be bitten or would become vampires.
** Liam was repeatedly warned by his father about supernatural evil, though you could hardly fault him for taking those warnings more as metaphors or general cautions and not something to look out for every time you're with someone at night. As The First pointed out also, Liam wasn't the most honest or charitable person to begin with, and this was proven when Angel had all his post-Liam memories wiped and was willing to lie and kill to protect himself despite knowing he's now the monster. It's also been argued to hell and back whether a vampire is the same consciousness as before, and the general consensus is yes, so even if Angel and Spike has their consciences impaired, they can't be fully absolved of their thousands of atrocities.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Killing his sister over marshmallows]]
* The big twist in "[[Recap/AngelS01E14IveGotYouUnderMySkin I've Got You Under My Skin]]" is that while there was a demon in the kid, the kid himself was so much worse that it's the demon who was trapped, not the kid. And basically one of the kid's first acts after the Fang-Gang lets him be is to try to kill his sister and family over her getting more marshmallows. Yes, I get that it's to establish he's TheSociopath but goddamn, has he really gotten to the age of 12 without ever being slighted that badly?
** I wondered about that too, and it appears they didn't think that plot-point through. You could say he did do evil things before and was simply never caught, but he clearly didn't have much regard for collateral damage or incriminating evidence when he tried to kill his sister. Maybe after his parents figured out about the demon, he hoped they'd blame it for his sister's death even after he'd been exorcised, and maybe the whole marshmallows thing was just to clue us into how something was wrong, and he wanted to kill her simply for being annoying as his sister. Not exactly justifiable, but it's unlikely anyone else could have slighted him to the point that his sister did, especially with all the moving his family did.
** The parents probably took a lot of precautions because of the way he had acted previously. They did lock him in his room. And they locked their daughter's room too for good measure. Once the demon was expelled, they thought they were safe. So this was probably the first chance he got to kill his sister.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Cordelia's parents]]
* This troper is kind of concerned about Cordelia's parents, and their seeming lack of involvement in their daughter's life. Even though it seems like they will be tied with the legal matters from ''Buffy'' for a while, they seem to have little concern with Cordelia's well being nevertheless. To wit, when Cordelia AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence in season 3 (leading into season 4), there are no mentions of whether or not they had contacted her in the last couple of months. If they were normal parents, they probably would've noticed when either Fred, or Gunn, or Wesley were trying to make up excuses for Cordelia's lack of contact with them a little too often. So, what's with this? Are they just that dense that they will believe that their daughter is too busy to talk to them? Or was something else in the works?
* Blame The Powers That Be.
* Cordy does seem to be estranged from them somewhat by the time Season 3 ends due to her dad's tax problems. Since we never meet her parents or get any idea what her relationship with them was like, perhaps she severed all ties with them when she moved to LA. Maybe they were the stereotypical aloof rich parents who ignored or neglected her and she never saw fit to let them into her new life.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Can't get Illyria out]]
* The reason given for why Illyria couldn't be removed from Fred was that Illyria would end up in every person between Fred and the deeper well. That's reasonable and I understand that Fred wouldn't want them to do that. However, given it would take at least the amount of time required to move the sarcophagus from Los Angeles to the deeper well, couldn't they move Fred from Los Angeles to the deeper well at the same time? Fred hadn't been taken over yet, she could have been moved to the deeper well herself (there was no indication that Illyria could choose to change hosts voluntarily because she knew Fred was being moved). Then when the sarcophagus was moved in to the deeper well, there would be no people in between Fred and the sarcophagus. Couldn't Illyria just have been safely drawn out?
** Note, this assumes they thought they had time to bring the sarcophagus (and by extension Fred) to the deep well before Illyria had time to emerge. If they were working on the belief they didn't have that much time, then Fred would have been killed before they could have gotten the sarcophagus to the deeper well anyway (though possibly they assumed Illyria could take Fred over and they could then get her back by drawing Illyria out). Either way, unless they definitely knew they didn't have enough time (and even if they did know but were willing to risk Fred becoming Illyria mid-transport) they could have tried.
** Quite simply, they didn't think of it because they were too thrown by the notion that their first plan to save Fred was not going to work. They both love and adore her, and the idea that she can't be saved the way they were hoping is heart breaking. Perhaps later they did realise that and kick themselves for it, but in such a situation they can be excused for not thinking of every possible option.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:And in a Month From Now, You'll Have One]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS05E03Unleashed Unleashed]]" a big deal is made about a group of fantastical gourmets who pay exhorbitant amounts of money to dine on the supernatural, capturing [[GirlOfTheWeek Nina]] who was recently turned into a werewolf. While Angel and co. save her, she ends up biting the mole who betrayed her over to the organization to begin with, turning him into a werewolf as well, and Angel lets the group take the traitor as an olive branch since he has no interest in helping the guy. But this raises an interesting point: werewolf is treated as a rare delicacy, but... is it really? As the episode and many others proved, turning a werewolf is as simple as having a werewolf bite someone. You'd think, rather than eating the werewolf now, it would be a good idea to keep him chained up and abduct random homeless people, using the werewolf to turn them like a farm. This group certainly has no qualms about abduction and clearly have the resources to support such a venture, it seems a little short-sighted to eat a werewolf who could potentially make you a whole stable of werewolves to feed on at future gatherings.
** Well, considering they explicitly say that in order to actually eat werewolf (as opposed to eat a human who happens to be a werewolf) the werewolf needs to be kept ''alive'' during the eating, I highly doubt they'd want to take their chances. As demonstrated by the way the feast turns out in the episode, all you'd need is one thing to go wrong and you're looking at becoming the snack rather than being the one eating it. Also, they probably wouldn't ''want'' to be eating werewolf in the first place if they didn't think they would be among the very few to do it. People will eat all sorts of things they think are rare just to be able to say they've done it, to be part of an exclusive club. It's very likely that, were there to be werewolf farms that provide a steady source of meat, the idea would very very quickly lose its appeal because every month there'd be more and more people having some. And then you get into the whole issue that you simply can't just keep snatching people off the street to keep your cupboards stocked and not think someone at some point will notice and start asking questions...
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The First Evil's assassins ''suck'']]
* Okay, the Turok Han, Bringers, they might be able to kill a Muslim Potential Slayer, a German redhead Potential Slayer who was clearly meant to be [[Series/{{Alias}} Sydney Bristow]]. Who does it use to try and kill Faith, the One True Slayer? Patrice, from the Order of Teraka. The fat cop that failed miserably to assassinate Buffy, and failed miserably as a inmate. If The First is all that powerful it could not have...maybe, gotten Dru to do the deed, having offed Kendra? Recruited some super vampires, shown the mistakes the ones who nearly killed a Slayer made and set them loose? An actual professional hitman or assassin? Faith clearly showed to wipe the floor with Patrice, The First Evil could not have taken the One True Slayer just a little more seriously?
** That was the same actress as Patrice, but it was a different character named Debbie.
** Well for all we know it was the First's first attempt to get at Faith. Having an inmate (maybe someone Faith had previously interacted with enough to not suspect anything) do it with a knife is not a bad first attempt. But after that Faith was kinda ''occupied'' (getting herself almost killed about two times, once by the beast, once by Orpheus O.D.) and the First didn't really need to intervene. And then she was on her way to Sunnydale, where all that surrounded her was potentials, Scoobies and manifestations of the First. Thing is, the First probably never thought this was going to be the one shot it was going to get, so it did not come out guns blazing...
** Then possibly it realised that Buffy was building an army of Potentials and training them for combat, so killing Faith would accomplish very little and risk the next Slayer being among Buffy's army. So after the first attempt failed, the First focused on eliminating Buffy's army and waiting until Faith was one of the last ones left before dispatching her.
** The problem with using anyone else is that they'd have to break into the prison. Giving a Bringer's knife to an inmate was simpler.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Trapped in the submarine]]
* In "[[Recap/AngelS05E13WhyWeFight Why We Fight]]", Angel and fellow vampires are trapped at the bottom of the ocean in a submarine. Angel uses the cover story to keep Spike from eating the sailors that they need them to get back to the top. But they're vampires. They sank them down to the depths with weights, why couldn't they swim back up under their own steam? They don't need to breathe and the pressure wouldn't kill them and they have super-strength.
* Sure, they didn't absolutely need to keep the humans alive, but it was still a perfectly reasonable choice. Angel said specifically, "We don't kill the humans 'til we reach land." It wasn't just about getting the submarine to the top of the ocean. They were in the ocean. Even if they'd gotten to the surface, they'd still have had a long swim ahead of them. If they killed the humans, they still had to find a way off the submarine, to float to the surface (at which point they'd be cold and wet) and to swim all the way back to land. If they kept the humans alive, they could just stay on board the submarine in comfort and style until they reached land (and then they could kill them). It seems quite reasonable that the other vampires would accept Angel's reasoning for not killing them.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Inconsistent effects of Jasmine's Blood]]
* ''Magic Bullet'' presents two separate ways Jasmine's Blood frees people from her control. Wesley, Gunn and Lorne were all freed from Jasmine's control as soon as Cordelia's blood was infused into them, and they expected Connor to react the same when they did it to him. However both Fred and Angel were still under Jasmine's control after being 'infected', ''until'' they directly looked upon her face. So what's the deal? Is this a plot hole or was Cordy's blood somehow more potent?
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Weird bits in Birthday]]
* In ''Birthday'' first why was the writing for 171 Oak Street still in the hotel room in the different timeline? Second why did Cordy say that the issue in her vision at the start of the episode taken care of at the end of the episode when by all accounts it wasn't? Yeah, the demon she saw was killed by Wesley but only the Wesley of the alternate timeline.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Angel Moving To LA]]
* It is stated repeatedly by various Wolfram & Hart personnel that they are constantly keeping tabs on Angel because he plays a key role in the upcoming apocalypse. Except that Angel moved to LA from Sunnydale by his own choice. How convenient for W&H that he chose to move right into their neighborhood!
[[/folder]]
----