Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Eeyup. That's how I heard it too.

Which is a shame. More Wolfram & Hart adventures and more development for Illyria would have been great.

The season five finale had to rush to try and wrap everything up, and the seams show. For a show so thematically centered around the principle of redemption, salvation, and the saving of souls, Angel's finale is so abrupt that it actually breaks theme.

• Angel: We're here to figure out if we can take something so sinister as Wolfram & Hart and maybe used it to do some good.
• Wolfarm & Hart: LOLNO
• Angel: Well, we tried. Here's the names of the heretofore unmentioned secret society that governs everything. Let's go stab bad guys until they die.

The bitter irony of the season five finale is that it's basically the exact same goddamn plan that Angel had at his lowest point in season two. The one that so emotionally devastated him that he tried to lose his soul in Darla, before having his epiphany and realizing this was the wrong way to do things.

1. Stab Wolfram & Hart over and over.
2. Feel good about yourself.
3. Die flipping them off.

edited 26th Aug '17 2:51:09 PM by TobiasDrake

Wesley wasn't originally going to die, but after the show was cancelled Joss give the actor the option whether or not to kill him, and the actor thought it would be more dramatic and emotional if Wesley got killed. So when it came time to do the Angel After the Fall comic they bought Wesley back as a ghost bound to his Wolfram & Hart contract.

On Carpenter being fired, I do know there are some contracts that state an actress can't get pregnant during the course of a show or movie. Before anyone cries sexism, it's all part of rules in place regarding the health and safety of their actors. Some contracts include various sporting activities or even just going out on a boat. Actresses getting pregnant has lead to some of the biggest production hurdles, and this was no exception. It sounds like Carpenter was asking for time off and coupled with all the problems of season four they decided to just drop her instead. The cast had already grown to the point that it's not like they were dropping one of the Power Trio in the first two seasons.

I think it was David Fury who said that Whedon asking for an early renewal resulted in cancellation. For TV writers the end of a season is a big question mark, they aren't paid as well as the actors and are worried about having a job next month, and Whedon's actions was a misguided effort to alleviate his staff, and thought they had a guaranteed sixth season anyway.

Well, Whedon won the last staredown he had with the network-I do not know if he ever confirmed, but rumors abounded that Whedon was literally packing up his office and lining up calls to others networks the last time he was at loggerheads, over the kiss in The Body. I guess he miscalculated quite a bit.

edited 26th Aug '17 5:08:29 PM by ViperMagnum357

"For a show so thematically centered around the principle of redemption, salvation, and the saving of souls, Angel's finale is so abrupt that it actually breaks theme. "

Never forgive Angel for killing Lindsey.

I think that Angel did the right thing in killing Lindsay. He was never going to change. Plus Lorne read him and told him that he wasn't part of the solution.

That was a quick "We just got cancelled!" wrap-up and it shows. I can't help but wonder what Lindsay's arc would have been if the series had been renewed.

I wasn't a big fan of the way Lindsay returned earlier in the season, but I actually like that as a capper to his arc. Every time he ever did the right thing, it was for selfish reasons— imagining that the little bit of good he did made up for the terrible things he was knowingly a part of, or that his rough life gave him an excuse, or that just being willing to walk away made him deserving of forgiveness. There's always good in Lindsay throughout the show, but the problem is that he doesn't take most of the chances he gets to be good, while he does seize on opportunities that are nakedly evil to serve his own ambition.

He sees himself as the hero of his own story, and there's an inherent risk to seeing yourself as the hero in your own life, using that to justify your actions. I think Lindsay rationalizes most of his sins as something he can put to rights later, once he's gotten what he thinks he deserves, and I think that's a common way of thinking for a lot of people in similar positions. Lindsay's never been as special as he thinks he is. If Wolfram & Hart is all about the banality of evil, Lindsay was always the shining example of that, and there's something fitting about just how banal his exit from the show turns out to be, both times simply disappearing back into the anonymity into which he was born. He always thought Angel was his nemesis, his greatest rival, but Angel didn't really think about Lindsay much at all— and the one person who ever really knew Lindsay, who saw into his soul, Lorne, all he saw was how little there really was in there.

Even if Lindsay had stuck around for another season or more of betrayal and Token Evil, I still might have have gone with that as an ending for him.

edited 29th Aug '17 10:12:34 PM by Unsung

The big thing I didn't like about Lindsay's death was the bit about, "You're not a part of the solution, Lindsay. You never were." Not because of the Heel–Face Door-Slam, but because of the way it buys into the central rush-job premise of the finale. There isn't a solution to be part of.

That's been a core theme of the series for most of its existence. Evil can never be defeated, can never be vanquished, can never be solved. Transgressions can't be absolved, but they can be atoned. Acts of kindness and mercy do not balance a grand cosmic scale between good and evil, but they make people's lives better and that's more important.

The idea that Lindsay needs to die because he's "not part of the solution" seems counter to this theme. A better reason would be because he's a self-righteous tool utterly convinced that his occasional quest for redemption justifies behaving like a bag of dicks and causing further harm.

What I did like about Lindsay's death was the way it broke Lorne. Lorne never wanted to be one of Angel's crew. He only wound up with them because his nightclub was blown up in an assassination attempt on Angel. Even before he pulls the gun, Lorne's disillusionment is palpable. My favorite bit is this exchange right before Lorne shoots Lindsay.

• Lindsay: You really done with them?
• Lorne: It isn't my kind of work anymore. It's unsavory.

edited 29th Aug '17 7:18:16 AM by TobiasDrake

Well, the solution is only ever short-term, and Lindsay's only ever about short-term gains for himself. He's not part of the solution because he actively undoes whatever small amount of temporary good that others are trying to do. That's my read on that line, and what I think they were going for.

I do get where you're coming from about how the whole Circle of the Black Thorn seems like it's trying to create a sense of closure where there was previously none, because the endlessness of the battle was the point unto itself. But I actually think they played that pretty well in the finale, where it turns out that even going after all the Biggest Bads they can think of, even *winning* and killing them— that victory is fleeting, because Wolfram & Hart can simply warp in their endless armies from across countless worlds, and Wesley and Gunn die, and Fred's already gone, and there's no happy ending in sight...but under the circumstances, isn't the greatest victory of all simply to keep fighting?

I was disappointed at the time the show aired, but as time went on, I came to really like that ending. I know Joss said that his intent was to end on a note of no, they're going to win, somehow, but I think I prefer the idea of them going down swinging, carrying on no matter how impossible the odds might be.

...Liked what I read of After the Fall. Gotta find an anthology of that somewhere sometime.

edited 29th Aug '17 10:06:54 PM by Unsung

That alley fight was totally a Bolivian Army Ending. If Joss wanted them winning that to be believable, he should have roped the Slayers into it.

• Angel: Hey, I'm about to fight all of the bad guys. Like. All of them. Every bad guy. I'm fighting them. Can you lend us a few dozen Slayers?
• Xander: I don't know, man. Buffy doesn't really trust you now that you're playing for Team Evil.
• Spike: I can vouch for this.
• Xander: How would that help? And aren't you supposed to be dead?
• Spike: Because Buffy trusts me and always has for some reason for basically as long as we've been trying to murder each other.
• Xander: Oh, without question. Unreasonably so. ...okay, that checks out. I'll see about sending the army down.

edited 29th Aug '17 8:41:18 AM by TobiasDrake

They released After the Fall in a two volume soft cover set, which I think is rather nice. You should be able to find some online without too much trouble.

So I was thinking about the rule that Slayers are forbidden from killing humans. This has always struck me as problematic given it means that people like Warren can commit crimes of a supernatural nature and get off scot free. But then I wondered if maybe the Watchers Council had a more... let's say personal reason for wanting such a rule made. Like say, if you drug a slayer, strip her of her powers and sick a particularly sadistic vampire on her then maybe you wouldn't want to be withing a 100 feet of her when she gets her powers back.

Human who utilize supernatural means seem to be exempt. The Slayer's not supposed to engage in activities that fall under the prerogative of mundane law enforcement. Unless she's a cop, I guess, but Slayers aren't really supposed to live past 18 by the Council's standards. Layers of control and all.

So, like, killing Ted would have been a grave misstep had he not been a robot despite the fact that he's a serial killer, because non-robot Ted can be managed by the police just fine. But killing the Bringers, the First Evil's arcane minions? Not one person ever raised a stink about that.

What about Warren? He'd been using supernatural means to terrorize people all season and killing him was treated as Willow's moral event horizon.

The only real stink raised is because of the way Willow kills him-while Buffy makes a big deal out of not killing humans, she wanted Warren arrested because he used a gun rather than something mystical, and could thus be prosecuted by mortal authorities. If he had killed Tara with magic, Buffy might well have killed him herself, as her aversion to killing humans waned in the last 2 seasons-and largely disappeared in the comics. She flat out says the only reason she saved Andrew and Jonathan was because killing them would have been Willow's Moral Event Horizon, as bad as her killing of Warren was.

Yeah, the point of protecting Warren and, after that failed, Andrew and Jonathan from Willow was never about their deaths necessarily being bad. It was always about what being allowed to indulge in blood frenzy and butcher her enemies would do to Willow's psyche. If there was any reason to believe that letting her kill them would actually bring her peace, Buffy probably would have thrown them to the wolves without a second's hesitation, but that's not how revenge works.

Vengeance does not make the hurt go away. The loss is still there, and as long as Willow was refusing to face the heartache and instead using murder as a coping mechanism, she was never going to heal and was also going to kill a lot of people. We already see the unsatisfactory nature of vengeance when she does kill Warren and it's not good enough;

Andrew and Jonathan are kinda sorta responsible for Tara's death if you turn your head and squint a bit, in the sense that they collaborated with Warren on projects before that, so she's going to kill them now. And when that's not good enough, she's going to need another target. Killing Warren never had anything to do with justice for Tara; it was always about satisfying an emotional need that cannot be satisfied.

Rage is an addiction, and Willow at this point was elbow-deep in it.

edited 24th Oct '17 2:25:32 PM by TobiasDrake

Just a point of clarification, the Bringers appear to be humanoid demons, not people. The First asks Caleb if Bringers sweat, and he replies that they pant, like dogs.

They seem to start out as humans, but it's unclear if they stay that way after the First is done with them.

At any rate, the "Slayers don't kill people" rule has always been about the sort of kill-on-sight slaying they do with vampires and the like. Buffy's killed human beings in self-defense since the first season.

On the not killing humans thing, I believe this was more a Buffy thing. She did kill that zoo expert in The Pack, and does want to kill humans who have shown they are really bad (Some Assembly Required, Ted, Gingerbread, Graduation, The Yoko Factor) but has shown that she is not judge jury and executioner. Others seem to not have the moral hang up she does about it.

Point of order, Ted was an accident. He hit her, she hit him back, and he fell down some stairs.

Tobias is right. That was what happened in the episode.

I've just finished Season 3 and I'm sorry, but despite all the filler episodes and wonky moments, Season 2 just for me is a better season of TV. Much more epic and wild where as Season 3 didn't really have that dramatic filled story to it.

Looking forward to diving into Angel again. Hugely underrated series.

Season 3 was the one with the Mayor? My goodness, if he didn't freshen up the show then nothing will.

I think Season 3 pays off more because it leads to Faith showing up in Angel. I wish I had finished watching Angel before it got removed from Netflix.

edited 19th Mar '18 6:24:18 AM by Soble

Joss' handling of both Darla and Cordelia's stories were a case of trying to be too much of an artist rather than too little. He basically upended the whole of the show to write about them getting pregnant and it clearly warped the narrative. It was one of those situations where it really should have been "put her behind some desks" over this.

It's also a expected health issue any producer should be aware of with cast trying to start a family that still many executives seem blindsided by when ti happens.