We killed a homeless man on this bench. Me and Dru. Those were good times. You know, he begged for mercy, and you know, that only made her bite harder.

Spike ,'Sleeper'


Buffy and Angel 1: BUFFYNANGLE4EVA!!!!!1!

Is it better the second time around? Or the third? Or tenth? This is the place to come when you have a burning desire to talk about an old episode that was just re-run.


Trudy Booth - May 09, 2005 6:43:29 pm PDT #603 of 10458
Greece's financial crisis threatens to take down all of Western civilization - a civilization they themselves founded. A rather tragic irony - which is something they also invented. - Jon Stewart

I'm going with Buffy too. He chose the things he did with her, for one. He embraced her fighting-for-good ways by his own free will. Darla turned him into something, Buffy helped him turn himself into something better. Also, in a world with vampires, Darla is pretty hum-drum. Finds a hunk, makes him her evil boy toy, runs rampant... Buffy was the one girl in all the world.

Besides, show not called "Darla the Vampire Changer."


SailAweigh - May 09, 2005 6:49:25 pm PDT #604 of 10458
Nana korobi, ya oki. (Fall down seven times, stand up eight.) ~Yuzuru Hanyu/Japanese proverb

Buffy helped him turn himself into something better.

Doyle and TPTB could get some of the credit here. I don't think Angel honestly tried to do good until he left Sunnydale. In Sunnydale, he just followed Buffy's lead because he was in love with her, not out of any desire to do good for good's sake. Once he got to LA it took him a while, but he eventually got the point.


Matt the Bruins fan - May 09, 2005 7:12:50 pm PDT #605 of 10458
"I remember when they eventually introduced that drug kingpin who murdered people and smuggled drugs inside snakes and I was like 'Finally. A normal person.'” —RahvinDragand

It struck me that he was kinda sorta working toward the greater good even before he fell for Buffy (or at least before they retconned the love at first sight thing while stalking her 15 year-old self in LA), but he didn't have much of an impulse to do the job himself until he returned from Hell. He intitially seemed content to skulk around and occasionally use his knowledge of vampires and the occult to point others in the right direction. But almost all examples of him getting his hands dirty were in defense of people he knew, rather than on the behalf of innocent bystanders.


Daisy Jane - May 09, 2005 7:46:38 pm PDT #606 of 10458
"This bar smells like kerosene and stripper tears."

'Cept for the time he saved that puppy.


Alibelle - May 09, 2005 8:11:24 pm PDT #607 of 10458
Apart from sports, "my secret favorite thing on earth is ketchup. I will put ketchup on anything. But it has to be Heinz." - my husband, Michael Vartan

I heart Heather! Now I'm giggling all over again, remembering that scene.

Of course, the argument could be made that in saving the puppy, he was saving himself. Since he's just a big fluffy puppy with bad teeth, etc.


Frankenbuddha - May 10, 2005 2:48:59 am PDT #608 of 10458
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"

Mmmm, loving the spicy brains on display here, I must say.


Vortex - May 10, 2005 5:17:43 am PDT #609 of 10458
"Cry havoc and let slip the boobs of war!" -- Miracleman

For those mentioning that Angel killed Darla to save Buffy: do you think that if Buffy was holding a stake over Darla's chest, Angel would have let it happen? It's genuine question, not a "nyah," because I'm genuinely not sure. I feel like if he didn't have time to think (insert cheap shot here) he'd have automatically stepped in there, too.

he may have stopped Buffy, but he wouldn't have killed her. But, then, one could argue that the only to stop Darla was to kill her. Interesting question. Let us ruminate.


Lee - May 10, 2005 6:13:15 am PDT #610 of 10458
The feeling you get when your brain finally lets your heart get in its pants.

Mmmm, loving the spicy brains on display here, I must say.

What Frank said. This has been/will keep being really fun.


sumi - May 10, 2005 6:40:36 am PDT #611 of 10458
Art Crawl!!!

Amazon just alerted me to order the Angel soundtrack album, "Live Fast, Die Never".

It has the Christian Kane song! And Lorne singing "It's not easy being green!"


-t - May 10, 2005 6:40:38 am PDT #612 of 10458
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

I think that Angel's quest for atonement was also, partially, a quest for wholeness

I love this idea.

Something Plei (I think, I could be conflating) said sparked the thought that what AtS was really all about was Angel finding his own self-determination. To that end, he had to break free of trying to please Darla, or live up to Buffy, or follow the directives of the PTB and find his own way.

And I can almost tie that into the current discussion. He hadn't really broken free of Darla until, well, I'm not sure. Maybe libkitty is right and sleeping with her without going evil was the turning point. Maybe convincing her that she could live as a human even if she was dying (before Drusilla vamped her) gave him power over his internal Darla, as it were. In any case, when he got his soul back, it was Darla who left him, and he was both rudderless and without hope of winning her back. And when he left Buffy (any of the times he left Buffy, for that matter) it was for her sake. He had that abstracted idealized internal Buffy at least until the Girl in Question.