Willow ,'Storyteller'
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.
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.
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.
'Cept for the time he saved that puppy.
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.
Mmmm, loving the spicy brains on display here, I must say.
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.
Mmmm, loving the spicy brains on display here, I must say.
What Frank said. This has been/will keep being really fun.
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!"
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.
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!"
It's already available to ship through Amazon UK. (I've had mine for about 2 months already.)