Angel is already being syndicated on TNT.
Lindsay may or may not even be a bad guy. We do know he has a major grudge against W&H and the Senior Partners. Maybe he is trying to stop the senior partner’s plans for Angel and the gang with Eve’s help.
What if what she said was true- maybe she isn’t the bad guy there. Besides- this may be just the “little bad” reveal. I think the Senior Partners are going to be the big bad.
But that’s me guessing.
I just watched the episode last night. I had stayed away from this thread and anything else that might spoil it for me and I was truly, shocked when it was Lindsey at the end.
I LOVED Lindsey’s character from Day One and I am thrilled he is back.
I can’t wait to see what they do with him and I hope it isn’t anything cheesy and beneath such a fine character.
Plus, he was shirtless in the episode…you just can’t go wrong there.
The Gaspode:
I don’t think the WB gets any money from syndication. The show is produced and owned by Fox. The WB makes its money off the ads sold for the show when it’s first-run, but Fox makes the money off syndication and DVD sales.
But the show has been renewed for a sixth season, despite the heavy drop-off in viewers from Smallville. The two shows aren’t a good match, IMHO.
Maybe, but it’s a far better match than anything they’ve had it paired with since Buffy moved to UPN. “7th Heaven” was a terrible lead-in, and ironically put one of the television virtuecrats most loved shows on before one of their most detested. “Charmed” was not really a good lead-in either- the audience for “Charmed” was mostly women, and it was and is a fading show. “Smallville” is probably the best lead-in they have, and probably the best that the WB can manage right now. Part of the reason why “Angel” was renewed for Season 5, in my opinion, was that the WB really didn’t have anything else promising in development and needed to fill the timeslot hole.
Our local FOX affiliate has “Angel” too. I’m wondering how the syndication deal works, since it seems different from how “Buffy” was done.
Perhaps Lindsey is one of the Senior Partners now?
I’m not sure if this is the answer to your queston, depending on what time frame we’re looking at.
In BtVS, a microchip that prevented Spike from harming anyone was implanted in his head. The result was that he could no longer do the vamp thing, and each time he tried to harm someone, he would instead harm himself. He certainly wasn’t a genuinely good guy by any stretch, but his falling in love with Buffy, combined with his vampiric impotence, seemed to render him neither good nor evil. Eventually, in an attempt to win Buffy’s love, he fought for his soul–but even that was motivated by his own self-interests. Soul or no soul, Spike is pretty self-absorbed.
He is, but he did things no vamp could ever do, at least as vamps were first established early on the Joss mythos. Spike did a lot of noble things, without a soul, even when it wasn’t just for Buffy. No vamp would bring flowers to someone’s dead mother just because they cared. Even falling in love with Buffy in the first place isn’t all that normal. While the chip could explain it all, it’s the glimpses into his early history that really raise the question.
Harmony is, interestingly, something of the same anomaly, though not as often. Neither her not spike are as unrelentingly bloodthirsty as all other vamps are, lusting only to hurt and destroy.
Maybe in the first ep, when he went after Spike? Or in the necromancer ep?
Gotta say, I think Lindsey is in league with the SP because of the presence of Eve. Of course, Eve is lying through her teeth (and who didn’t see that coming?) but the fact is that she is able to walk into the building every day, go into all the labs and offices and most confidential places except for the White Room, and nobody–none of the assassins or demons or random violence touches her, which means the Partners are allowing her to be there to mess with Angel. We did find that she does seem to be fully human, with no special powers, but again who knows?
Is Lindsey evil? Well, he’s sleeping with Eve. Either he is evil or has absolutely no taste. I’m sorry, but Sarah Thompson is probably THE worst actress I’ve ever seen in a show of this type. All her scenes fall flat, all of her exposition drifts away in a cloud of ennui for me. Anybody else yell in anger at Fred for stopping Crazy!Gunn putting her out of her misery?
Those things still don’t make him a “genuinely good guy.” A great many evil things have been done in the names of sentiment and romantic love.
Spike is definately unusual, but not an anomaly. ALL of the vampires descended from The Master seem to exhibit some “extra” characteristics: Darla, Drusilla, Angel, Spike. Of course, this could just be that ME wants the central characters to interesting, but you could also make a case that the Order of Aurelius created a different kind of vampire.
I wonder if it has something to do with him being sired by Drucilla. She was psychic before she was vamped, and the Powers That Be have always had a thing about working through psychics. Maybe when Angel killed her, he screwed up some plan they had, but were later able to influence Spike in some way when she turned him. Made him less evil, somehow. Or maybe some vampires are simply less evil than others. How many vamps do you think lived in Sunnydale who were smart enough to keep their heads down and not eat people, because of the Slayer? Hard to tell, because we’d never have any reason to see them on the show. Per force, we only see the stupidest/most bloodthirsty vamps, because those are the only ones who would want to tangle with Buffy.
Yeah, me. Her dearth of acting skills coupled with her Tweety-bird face and little girl voice make her a foul blot on the Angel landscape. Eve can’t die fast enough.
But here’s what I don’t get: Sure, Spike willingly did the Demon Trials, but I thought his original intention was to get rid of the chip so he could kill Buffy. His exact wording to the Demon In Charge of the Trials was, “I want Buffy to get what’s coming to her!” That doesn’t sound like love, to me, not from his point of view, seeing as how he’d just tried to rape her. Now, and also last season on BtVS, Spike keeps saying how he put himself through the suffering to get his soul back. Seems to me that the intent of his suffering should be mystically significant in relation to Shanshu.
Also, Lindsay’s tattoos reminded me of similar tattoos we’ve seen on W&H Shamen. (It may have even been in the episode where Lindsay got that hand reattached – I remember the tattooes Shamen in connection to an operation.) Could it be that soon after he left W&H sent him to Ye Olde Shamen University and that’s how he was able to whip up the Box O’ Corporeality?
And why is almost EVERYONE in love or (going that way) with Fred? And do scientists really wear strappy, open-toed high heels in the lab?
If you’ll indulge me in a moment of fantasy…
The necromancer from ep 1 comes back from the dead. He snatches Eve and into her body channels the spirit of Lilah, which causes Eve’s form to rend and shred painfully leaving Lilah, alive, behind.
Anyway…
I think the exact wording was “make me what I was, so Buffy will get what she deserves.” Worded ambiguously to make it seem like Spike was attempting to be de-chipped so he could kill Buffy, but considering that because Buffy “came back wrong” Spike could have killed her anyway, it’s clear that crafty scripting or no, Spike was horrified by his action in attempting to rape Buffy and fought to get his sould back so he could be a vampire with a soul so that she could have someone she could love like she deserved. No comment on whether the intent of the suffering has any bearing on the Shanshu prophecy.
At the time of the Demon trials, I believe it was Joss who explicitly stated that Spike was going to get his soul back, not the chip removed. Spike told Buffy that after he got back, eventually.
By getting his soul back, he could give Buffy what she wanted, a truly good person, not the souless vamp that he was. It was misdirection by Joss that Spike never said that he was looking for his soul.
James Marsters was actually told early on that Spike wanted the chip out- he wasn’t told about the soul thing until they started shooting “Grave”. So they even misdrected the actor.
I’ve always wondered about Spike. Even when he was evil, he seemed to have a sense of honor. And he truly loved Dru, even after he dumped her. In “Crush”, it was apparent that he still had feelings for her, even though by then he was besottedly and obsessivey in love with Buffy. Even evil, he would do anything for someone he loved. (he would even to that)
I really don’t see Spike as being self-centered or self-absorbed. I think he puts up a front of “I don’t give a damn” to cover up the fact that he is incredibly emotionally vulnerable. And this season, he’s really playing it up because, soul or no so, he really, really hates Angel.
I"m actually more than a little disturbed by the way Spike is being written this season. He was annoying as a ghost, and in “Destiny” they seemed to be trying to imply that he was still evil in spite of having a soul, sacrificing his life to save the world notwithstanding.
I think the writers might be trying to go for misdirection again, in trying to suggest to the viewers that Spike might be turning evil. He really isn’t crazy about Angel working for W&H, sees it as a sign that Angel has gone over to the Dark Side of the Force. I see the edge of the Spike/Angel rivalry starting to come off. It will always be there, but after beating each other to bloody pulps over a Cup of Perpetual Torment that they think was a fake, I think they’ll learn to work and play nice toghether like grownups.
Actually, in Jossverse, they pretty much do. It wasn’t sentiment that made him bring flowers for Buffy’s mom, it was actual appreciation of her being decent to him and a fine lady. In Jossverse, that’s something that vampires just cannot do. It doesn’t make him a hero, but he definately screws up the whole distinction between vampire and souled creature. I mean, in the show, if someone gets vamped, who they are is just plain gone: only demon remains, and there is no point in trying to talk with them or help them. The person is dead, the leftover body is an evil mockery of the person.
Spike, however, makes it seem possible that vamps CAN be reformed, and even be fairly similar to the person they were.