Angel Season One: A Question

[2maggie2]

For some reason I can never remember the details of AtS.  I've watched it through twice, but am very vague about what happens.  Now Angel is back in the Buffyverse, and AtS is on Netflix, and so I'm rewatching.

Season one basically shows Angel in a good light.   The end of Sanctuary is my all-time favorite Angel moment.  He really is a wise and

Comments

[ladypeyton]

I think Angel made the decision to change when he had the soul and finally decided to start acting instead of living in alleys eating rats and watching Buffy from a distance.

I didn't like the Bangel relationship. I found Angel to be a bit of a controlling bastard who made decisions for Buffy instead of being a partner to her, but the fact remains that, same as Spike, Buffy made Angel want to be a better man.

[2maggie2]

It's kind of a funny heroic moment, though, don't you think? Guy looks at a girl with a lollipop and makes this big decision. That might be what the writers mean. But it's also quite ironic because it's not a decision that 'took'. Angel can only be good when the soul is attached and even then, not always.

[eowyn_315]

I had never thought about that scene before, so this is all flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants analysis.

I can see it three ways:

1. They meant it straight, and the decision they're referring to is Angel's decision to get out of the alley, clean himself up, and help Buffy. Whistler and the PTB obviously had a hand in guiding him to that decision, but ultimately Angel has to be the one to say, "I want to help her. I want to become someone."

2. They meant it subversively. Angel's claiming to have made a decision, but actually he falls in the category of people who never did. He became good by accident and/or destiny and conveniently skipped over the part where he was forced to make a choice, because the choice was made for him.

3. Angel is conscious of the irony. Notice he never states outright that he made that decision, just implies it by saying that's what Lindsey has to do. I could see the argument that, in his mind, he's including himself in the category of people who never made the decision. And he recognizes that about himself

[2maggie2]

Probably (1) is what they meant -- but it's unintentionally subversive even there, cause what motivated Angel to get into action was also the instrument of his first instance of losing his soul and running straight back to pure evilness.

I like your idea (3). I think part of what's going on with Angel and Lindsey is that deep down, Angel knows that he's no better than Lindsey. Worse, even.

[quinara]

I don't think Angel would count his getting his soul as the point where he actively changed; the whole story of Darla in S2 is that Angel originally tried to get back in with Darla (and Dru and Spike) when he first got his soul - however, he can't quite be evil properly, so when Darla (at the end of the ep) presents him with a baby he had better kill if he wants to stay with her, Angel actively chooses the baby and runs away. Most of his flashbacks are about him making choices one way or another - like his decision to leave everyone to the paranoia demon in the fifties (in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been) and his decision to help Buffy out (which Whistler presents to him much like Angel presents the choice to Wesley) - so I think that line definitely fits in with the ethos of the show.

[quinara]

Whoops, sorry about the formatting fail - also, I clearly mean Lindsey, not Wesley at the end there... (I have Wesley on the brain at the moment.)

[angearia]

This resonates strongly with Lindsey since Lindsey balks at W&H over the death of children in Dead End, doesn't he? And though Lindsey goes back to W&H after Blind Date, he ultimately does quit W&H in Season 2. Yet he gets pulled back in by Season 5 and to me, it struck me more about railing at Angel rather than really wanting to be evil and eat babies

[quinara]

Lindsey's death bothers me so much. Especially because he seems to be the mirror Angel uses and it's unfair to Lindsey because I don't think Lindsey is the greatest mass murderer standing in the room.

I tend to think of Lindsey's death being more about Lorne than about Lindsey - or at least about both of them. I mean, the end of S5 (as much as it hacks me off, but that's for another time) is essentially the necessary consequence of Angel's love of choice-making - you end up with this dichotomy where people are either with Angel or against him: Drogyn is a wild card, so he can be sacrificed; Lindsey is a dangerous wild card, so he needs to be killed. Lorne has always attempted to be neutral, but (since this is the 'final fight') Angel forces him to swear his allegiance to Angel's side of 'good' - so Lindsey is pretty much Lorne's version of Angel's missionary baby, in the sense that it's an ultimatum to prove his commitment. Kind of ironically.

[stormwreath]

I definitely think that Angel's choice to help the Slayer was him making "a decision to change", in that sense. He was cursed with a soul by outsiders, but all he did with it was mope around for a hundred years feeling sorry for himself. Whistler didn't actually do anything for/to Angel either, except show him he had a choice. (Much like Angel later did for Faith.)

Angel could have gone right back to that alley. He could have told Whister that every previous time he tried to rejoin society - as shown in 'Are You Now...' and 'Orpheus' - it had ended in disaster, so he wouldn't risk it again. But he didn't. Maybe because he fell in love with Buffy (or what she symbolised), or maybe because Whistler was offering him a cause to fight for that Angel believed he could actually follow this time, he made the choice to put down his self-pity and start helping someone else instead

[2maggie2]

The trouble with that analogy is that Angel wasn't actively being evil then. Lindsey is actively evil. Lindsey isn't there to ask how to be a champion. He's there to ask how to get away from W&H.

[rebcake]

Yeah, he hands out all kinds of double-edged advice to Lindsey in these two eps, my favorite being, "Don't believe everything you're foretold." If only he could see his own failings as clearly as he sees other peoples...

I'm very unsympathetic to Angel's pain, and his bad choices, and his patriarchy. However, I could sort of see an interpretation in which every time he does anything, it's a conscious choice to deny his nature. That might explain why he gets is wrong so often.

[2maggie2]

At a minimum he certainly implies to Lindsey that it's a Decision that gets made -- and in Angel's case, apparently, it's never quite a Decision because he keeps choosing to do something else.