Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Ah.

Have you seen her episodes of Angel yet?

I've only seen episode 1 of Angel, I haven't watched any more yet. Why? Does she become less irritating?

Well...

She keeps the attitude, but she tones it down. A LOT. And she becomes a hell of a lot less reckless.

Plus, she... Well, I won't spoil it for you. She's still recognizable as Faith, but she end up becoming a better person, and seeking atonement like Angel is, by owning up to her mistakes and going to prison for them.

Angel and Faith... That's my favourite relationship, then and there.

That said, her appearances are infrequent. Maybe only half a dozen in all, so she doesn't end up getting in the way too much if you really dislike her.

In other news, Sean Austin's episode is pants. Terrible 80's pants that are stripey shade of lime, pukey green.

4, 5 episodes in Angel. Infrequently throughout S3 of Buffy, 2 eps of S4, throughout the latter third of S7.

You're talking about the one where Angelus plays with the whole AI team and manipulates them so beautifully it's awesome, while Boreanaz gains finally my respect as an actor?

Yeah, I hated it too...

edited 11th Jan '11 3:27:13 PM by juancarlos11

I remember it more for half a dozen characters suddenly picking up the idiot ball. I guess I've always had trouble taking that monster-in-a-cage-who-spouts-lies trope seriously. And the episode is so slow.

(Not that I need a fast paced episode to enjoy myself, but I remember this one being particularly snore worthy.)

You're right, though, Boreanaz is quite good in that one.

He managed to make "The Teddy Bear's Picnic" creepy (I think that's what he was singing).

I also love the one beforehand, where they bring out all the cliches, like the magical sword that can defeat the Beast before showing it was all just a dream designed to give Angel one perfect day.

edited 11th Jan '11 6:02:47 PM by alliterator

I loved that episode too, especially because it sets up one hell of a line to Angelus (at least it made me laugh...)

@Nick: At first I called them idiots, and then I realized this is the first time all of them dealt with Angelus. It's not the perfect excuse for everything, but it justifies some of the stupidity.

Cordy's the only one of them who'd dealt with Angelus before, and she was appropriately cautious about him.

The others, it's understandable, because words alone cannot prepare you for what what Angelus is going to do to you. You can listen to everyone who knows what to expect and hear all the preparation, read the stories on what he does to people, you can have all the secondhand knowledge in the world. But it doesn't matter. You've never dealt with him. You only think you know what to expect; you've never actually had to sit there and listen to him talk, and feel all your own emotions and all your very real feelings get twisted around by an observant, highly-perceptive manipulator who knows how to murder you with nothing more than the truth at his disposal.

edited 12th Jan '11 11:26:12 AM by TobiasDrake

But Cordy was Jasmine, and seeing what happened later, I would say that she hasn't dealt with the monster so much as she knows who he is.

As for the second pargraph, it still doesn't justify some of the opening the team gave him like letting Fred (FRED!) feed him.

edited 12th Jan '11 11:27:45 AM by juancarlos11

Eh, it's never quite clear how much of Cordy is Cordy and how much of Cordy is Jasmine. The way she behaves is definitely not Cordy, but her personality is very Cordy, and the amnesia spell reduces her to classic Cordelia Chase, rather than putting her in Eldritch Abomination mindset. It's hard to say if she's Jasmine completely controlling Cordelia, or simply Cordelia possessed/influenced by Jasmine.

If it became necessary to make a really difficult shot to the heart and kill Angelus with a crossbow, who would you rather have take the shot? Gunn/Wesley or Fred? It's not like she's especially well trained in combat.

edited 12th Jan '11 11:30:19 AM by TobiasDrake

So, why not send Gunn and Wesley to the basement, have Gunn (who's clearly the most physically capable of the group) feed him and have Wesley point the crossbow?

It's a honest question by the way. As for Cordy I thought it was that Jasmine was able to act like Cordy due to either studying her when they were both PTB or you know observing them all the time, although you have a point on the whole "the show doesn't make it quite clear".

edited 12th Jan '11 11:38:42 AM by juancarlos11

I'm not sure. I'd need to watch the episode again to get a feel for where everyone is at the time, both physically and psychologically.

They might just have underestimated Angelus, physically. To be fair, he's kind of a pushover.

edited 12th Jan '11 11:40:50 AM by TobiasDrake

I wouldn't call Angelus a pushover. His fights with both Faith and Buffy were pretty close calls for both of them.

He actually beat Faith; she threw the fight to drug him into unconsciousness with spiked blood.

He managed to nearly overpower Buffy once, when she was emotionally devastated by her entire life falling apart. When she found her clarity, she completely overwhelmed him. He also got beaten to shit by Giles, oneshotted by Buffy's foot to his crotch, and intimidated into backing down from a confrontation by Xander Harris. Angelus is an exceptional manipulator, but when it comes to straight up brawling, he tends to get his ass kicked and be forced to flee more often than not.

edited 12th Jan '11 12:00:19 PM by TobiasDrake

Well, yeah...but Giles had a BAT

I thought that Angelus backing down against Xander was much more about strategy than fighting Xander. Let's face it, he had to kill around how many people to get to Buffy?

Sound strategy would have been thinking that through before going there and, if it seemed insurmountable, going "This isn't a good idea" and not going.

Backing down at that moment was realizing, "Oh shit, I can't win this," and turning tail. Xander confronted him with "You cannot win this fight," Angelus conceded he couldn't, and walked away.

He's very good at knowing when he's beat and not fighting what he can't win. He's not so good at winning fights.

edited 12th Jan '11 12:11:00 PM by TobiasDrake

Yeah, he didn't think things through. The sad thing about Season 2 is that Whedon didn't know how to handle Angelus properly. In all his appereances during Buffy, how many times was he a real threat to the Scooby Gang?

He was never a real threat to anyone who wasn't isolated from help either in Buffy or Angel. Psychologically, he could be very damaging, but all his actual successes were ambushes against defenseless opponents, such as when he killed Jenny Calendar by confronting her alone and apart from the group in the school, or when he escaped his cage in Angel and led the fighting members of the crew away from the hotel, so that he could double back and attack the non-coms. Or when he slew the Beast with a sneak attack Critical Existence Failure from behind.

Hell, even in his brief drug-induced resurgance in Angel's season one, he was overpowered by Cordelia and Wesley. He's just never been a great fighter.

edited 12th Jan '11 12:27:26 PM by TobiasDrake

Like I said, the guy should've been more than that. The guy has super-strenght and one hell of a mind.

Also, amusing: the cage he was kept in?

That's the same cage that Gunn escaped from by kicking the door until it came off later. Gunn, who has no super-strength, was able to break the door off.

I can only imagine Angelus just assumed it was too sturdy and never thought to try it. Man, that thing wouldn't have held Spike, headstrong, brash, solving all his problems through violence Spike, for more than a few minutes.

edited 12th Jan '11 12:55:24 PM by TobiasDrake

Yeah, that bugged me too, until I realized that maybe he enjoyed being there. That or he just likes doing things the hard way.

Speaking of fighting skill, it just me how much Spike's abilities are played up. He's even on the Memetic Badass page for god's sake.

He's a good fighter, but the two Slayers he killed were mostly because of blind luck and he's lost every fight with Buffy they ever had. What's up?

PS: This is by memory, so feel free to correct me if any of my facts are wrong.

Spike has had, to my recollection, three real, all-out "trying to kill each other" brawls with Buffy.

The first was his introduction in School Hard, which ended in Joyce nailing Spike from behind with an axe and Buffy escaping. IIRC, Buffy gave as good as she got in that fight, but was ultimately at the disadvantage before Joyce intervened.

The second was during Drusilla's revival, in which Buffy struck a very substantial victory over Spike, but was joined in this by a second Slayer in a very chaotic fight.

The third was the Gem of Amara episode of the fourth season. Spike had the advantage of being unkillable, but only put it to use a couple times; being able to ambush her in the sun, and taking a stake to the heart. If it hadn't been for the Gem, he would have Critical Existence Failured right then and there.

But in terms of straight-up combat ability, he completely dominated that fight. Go back and watch it again if you don't believe me; Spike spends most of the fight landing hits, throwing Buffy around, and parrying her attempts to fight back. While the gem made him unkillable, the complete and utter demolishing of Buffy's style was purely Spike's own skills. She manages to get her wind back at the mention of Angel, and get the ring off Spike. Spike definitely screwed up pissing her off, but that can be attributed to the gem making him cocky.

Aside from those, most of their encounters consisted of Spike realizing he was at a disadvantage and backing off quickly. After that, he got Chipped. By the time he was able to hurt Buffy again, he was in love with her and didn't want to. They never had a full-blown "try to kill each other" fight again.

Though he did traipse over to Angel's fifth season and win a much more evenly-balanced fight with Angel in season five episode Destiny. He tends to be the butt of a lot of jokes, but the writers never forgot that he still is, as Buffy herself noted in season seven, "the strongest fighter we have". When push comes to shove, he performs.

edited 12th Jan '11 9:02:02 PM by TobiasDrake