Angel in love with Cordy or with buffy?
POSTED BY: hawaiiansgirl
UPDATED: Tuesday, February 8, 2005 13:55
VIEWED: 19241
PAGE 4 of 5
Quote:
Originally posted by Sara:
The last scene b/w Cordelia and Angel in the 100th episode showed how the relationship should have been handled - there was more maturity and emotion to last in that one scene, than there was in most of s5.
I totally agree with that. When Cordy came back she seemed more Cordy like than she had in a long time. I think she nailed that episode. Made me actually wish she wasn't gone.
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I never really believed in A/C, when it first happened I admit I spent the whole time going eww this is icky and wrong.
The whole thing annoyed me hugely because shallow bitch Cordelia was one of my favourite characters... and well. she just wasn't very good at being nice. It was always forced and...
Anyway, point of this, after it all goes back and you find out Cordelia was half demon it seems more and more to me that the entire set up was designed to tell you that something wasn't right... that C/A didn't quite make sense...
I mean Cordy cutting off her hair and making it lighter... that would never have happened, she obsessed about her hair... it was a big case of acting like Buffy much.
So in some ways it was quite clever of Joss to handle it the way he did, the network were pressuring him to have a love interest for Angel with the ban on mentioning Buffy and so he created a fake love interest... one that could look like it was a love interest until he slam on the brakes and turn it upside down.
So that he could have a love interest and then destroy it without anyone really being upset.
Okay, I realise that there are C/Aers... and maybe I just don't post at boards that they frequent, there never seemed to be a whole lot of them, just quite a few B/Sers who found it quite convenient to also pair C/A to resolve any underlying B/A tension.
Don't flame me for saying that - it's the impression I've got, I'm not saying it's necessarily correct.
As for angel and sex I thought it was fairly obvious that it wasn't just sex, I seem to recall Giles tells Buffy that real true happiness was incredibly rare, shortly after Angel loses his soul.
I don't think Joss would ever say that the only route to true happiness is sex! After all that would mean logically that Spike's actions in Seeing Red where okay... when obviously they're not, and he said that he wrote that scene to make it clear B/S was not about love.
Yeah - don't flame me about that either - he said it not me.
But B/S is not the topic.
My point really is that C/A was a bit of non-event. Seems to me it was added to keep the networks happy but it was so horribly forced and wrong I among many was extremely glad when it was over.
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The Cordy as half-demon thing was such a missed opportunity. They should have given her visible demon attributes, scales or something, just enough to be disfiguring. Now that would be an interesting problem for Cordy to face...
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Oh, I totally agree about B/S shippers who conveniently think it is great to pair C and A together. They've got their own agendas. I don't take them seriously. AT.ALL.
I actually didn't think C/A was forced. It was built up quite naturally in early s3 - I thought it was quite feasible that both of them would be drawn closer together. I thought we ended up watching a very mature, adult relationship evolve- something that may be lost on a lot of viewers.
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Hah!
I suppose really that would be Cordy's absolute hell to be scally or something - actually that was one of the big give aways that she wasn't a higher power - that there didn't seem to be anything bad about her half-demonness. If there had been I'd've been more convinced.
Okay so, C/A might be more 'adult' but only if you define the difference between adult and childhood relationships as a distinct lack of real passion.
I mean that's the difference isn't it? Buffy and Angel were all over each other and Cordelia and Angel weren't.
But I don't think that necessarily means the C/A relationship is anymore adult than the B/A one. *shrugs* or even the A/D one.
The introduction of the C/A romantic story line smacked a bit too much of network pressure for 'a love interest' for my taste.
Fall for it if you will... but the whole escapade was just weird.
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The Buffy/Spike thing bothers me for exactly the same reason (among others...).
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Look, I am a latecomer to the Buffyverse, but that tends to make one more of a fanatic.
The very best thing about Buffy/Angel was the writing. Joss and company not only spun a more complex and ever-expanding universe, but they allowed their characters to grow and evolve, while taking into account the realities of churning out 44 minutes of television on a tight budget every eight days (or whatever).
Also, in contrast to the "I'd really like to see a series based around ..." comments I've seen, the real genius of the Joss is his ability to construct ensemble casts. Each character seems likable and believable on their own, but each represents an aspect of character that is only whole in the presence of others. ("Primeval (2)" , the killing-Adam episode from BTVS Season 4, lays that out pretty explicitly.) In the Angel Season 1 commentary, it seems that the writers realized they needed more ensemble to make Angel work. The Firefly crew shows that aspect even more explicitly -- the cast is military unit/family/in a submarine/at war with no one to depend on but each other.
So back to love. Far be it from me to suggest that people who post to Fantasy/SciFi websites are lacking in sexual experience, but many others have observed that sex does not necessarily equate to "perfect happiness." [As Spike observed, sex might be a Relationship, if you do it enough times.] The original Buffy concept was "little blond cheerleader kicking demon a_s -- ha, ha -- and dating a tall, dark vampire." To Joss's credit (once he got past the botched movie and the first half-season), his story arc for the second season included the (near-universal, I am told) female experience of "I gave him everything I had, and he dumped me," to the point at the end of the second season when her real lover was restored , but she had to sacrifice him to save the world. (One critic wrote that the episode had 'real emotional heft'.) [It also sent Angel to 100 years in a Hell dimension -- that might cool one's ardor.]
So, after an awkward BTVS Season 3 spent avoiding "perfect happiness", Angel bugged off to LA, Cordelia unknowingly in tow.
The "Angel" series was more "noir" and adult than BTVS from the beginning. The writers were also challenged early by the death of one of the principal actors. That made the growth of the Cordelia character one of the defining arcs of the series. In addition, keep in mind that sexual tensions/relationships drove many of the plot elements throughout the series. (Cordelia/Wesley from the Buffy days, Cordelia/Gru, Gunn/Fred, Wesley/Leila, Wesley/Fred, Spike/Harmony, Angel/Eve [no perfect happiness there!], Wesley/Fred, to name but a few.)
The strange metamorphisis of Cordelia seems to have more to do with the actress Charisma Carpenter wanting to start a family than anything under Joss's complete control. I assume he wrote it in as best he could.
On a personal note, the last episode to feature Cordelia (You're Welcome, S5), was the last episode of Buffy or Angel that I saw new for the first time. I was bowled over by how funny, sympathetic, empathetic, intelligent, and wonderful she was. Anyone interested in how good a hypothetical Season 6 (or the rest of S5) could have been should take a look at this episode a few times.
In the end, Angel and Cordelia is the relationship that Should Have Been. Cordelia had grown and evolved into a being that Angel could have loved without apocalyptic "perfect love." Like everyone else.
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I suppose I don't understand why - having truly experienced perfect love - Angel would be able to settle for anything else.
Buffy couldn't - that was half of the issue with Riley wasn't it?
I don't see why Angel *would* and I don't see why he should need to, why it's necessary, I mean yeah, he's not a eunuch I'm not going to be heartily upset if he sleeps with someone else, but I can't wrap my head around why he would have a relationship knowing it's not love... isn't that a paradox in itself?
B/S afterall was founded on the same principals and I think most would agree it was not a relationship but a coping mechanism - it's certainly not true that every relationship starts with love, but the romatic in me insists that there must be the hope of love... or it's not a relatioship but sleeping together a lot.
Don't you think, in it's own way that that demeans Cordelia even more?
Or Joss - if all the nation has to gain from having an adult relationship is orgasms than the whole thing strikes me as very un-Joss like.
Equally I don't know that the 100th eppie should be taken as a standpoint for C/A the whole affair was more of a thankyou to Charisma than anything else and in that way they did it well, but it would have been even more mature and well handled in my opinion if she'd come out of her coma and told Angel not to be stupid for thinking he loved her.
I can't convince myself that Angel does love her - 'loving' Cordelia was convenient and he was so damned and determined to believe himself to did, whether he really believed or not. Somebody was there for him, in a way only really Buffy had been before so he equated the help with love - not the person with love. - The argument can't be flipped the other way, Angel loved Buffy before she even trusted him.
Equally BtVS as a show was not founded on the principal of Angel and Buffy being in love. They weren't meant to be - David was only meant to be a semi-regular in the first series and that was originally the end of Angel's character, he was kept on because the fans loved the dynamic between him and Sarah so much - and all of his backstory, Spike and Ats all exist because of that single fact.
I liked having Cordelia in Angel - she was a great character and I love the dynamic of all of the rest of it too... but I don't think that for a show to be adult there has to be a love element. If you'll excuse me for saying so that's actually a very childish attitude to what is adult and what is not - isn't it the first thing a kid does in trying to prove that they're all grown up running out a finding a girl/guy? IMO it spoke highly of Ats as a show - that they didn't play on the romantic storylines nearly as much as BtVS did. And that IMO was what truly made it more adult, the last few seasons of Ats really dragged that down.
Equally if you've ever read the shooting script for the second episode of Angel Ats was originally going to be a lot darker and more adult than it truly was, if you've read it you'll know that there was certainly a lot of network pressure to change the direction of the show. Which is why I'm so sure the network demanded a love interest.
Didn't exactly the same thing happen with Firefly? When Joss wouldn't bend as much as they wanted over the show they ditched it.
With Ats he bended to keep it on air. *shrugs*
C/A was one of those moments when you could see the u-turn.
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Here's a link to Corrupt, the original version of Angel episode 2, for those who are interested:
http://www.geocities.com/invisiblegreen/corrupt/corrupt.html
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