There was also the vampire brothel that Riley went to, that precipitated his break up with Buffy.
I remember being doubly shocked by that episode. The last scene of the teaser made it clear that Riley was being serviced by a prostitute but not what sort, so I thought, “Holy Zeus, they can’t be showing a blowjob on network TV at 7 o’clock, can they?” And then when they moved the shot in to make is clear that he was getting a different sort of suck job, I thought, “Wow, that’s actually worse in some ways.”
That was a Rileybot. The real Riley is still MIA, since not even a stroke could cause that kind of insane personality change that quickly.
I disagree. I saw that latent darkness in him pretty early, certainly by the time Maggie Walsh tried to serve up Buffy as a demon snacklet.
Actually, it seemed losing your soul with happiness is considered a feature… not a bug. As I said before: the spell is supposed to make Angel/Angelus/Liam suffer by giving him a soul that has to deal with the memories of everything he’d done. The moment this suffering isn’t the prevailing feeling anymore (by reaching perfect happiness), the reinstated soul has lost its purpose and the spell is designed for having it disappear again. The last thing the gypsies wanted is to have Angel living happily for a few centuries. As noted, they didn’t seem to care that this means we have another demon running around.
Yeah, Riley had fallen into the abyss by that point. He had fought dragons too long and had become one himself.
polar bear - It seems to me that the Gypsy Elders were just as short-sighted and just as big assholes as the original Watchers Council. “We got what we wanted. Sucks to be the people we screwed over in the process, but whadda ya gonna do?”
Yep. As a character on the show said, the curse was about vengeance, not justice. If it were about justice they’d simply have killed Angelus, which they surely had the power to arrange. If they can put a soul into him from a distance, they can paralyze him long enough for someone to set him on fire at leisure.
Indeed, Janna’s uncle was pretty clear about this, “This is not justice that we serve. It is Vengeance.”
The people watching him always gave me the feeling that if Angel ever reverted to Angelus, they were supposed to stake him. They didn’t count on how evil Angelus was though, so that plan never came to.
Yeah, the only reason the ninja’s (or whatever he was supposed to be) magic worked is because he saved the world, his son forgave him, and he had sex with Cordy.
I can’t even imagine what it would take to make him flip a third time.
Incase anyone wants to read the story (shorter version):
It was that one guy who had a hunting party with him and then, by accident, saw the “lovely” goddess in her natural form then turned him into a deer that would be hunted by his own party.
LALALALALALALA ICAN’THEARYOU LALALALALALALALA
So…who do you think built the Rileybot?
Torture with hope of relief is worse than torture alone.
Or… the happiness bit could be part of the deal for getting the soul back.
Gypsy: Yo, Hades.
Hades: Sup.
Gypsy: You have this guy Liam’s soul, can we get that sent back up?
Hades: No way, dude.
Gypsy: Come on, man. He’s like second circle, tops.
Hades: He is in the process of feeling bad.
Gypsy: Not like you couldn’t use the space, bro. How about if we make him feel totes guilty the whole time he’s here?
Hades: He’ll get over it eventually. They get over all kinds of stuff on the outside.
Gypsy: As soon as he stops “feeling bad” we’ll send him straight back. Promise.
Hades: Fine, whatever.
That’s not quite right. It was more like:
Angel: Well, actually… [Buffy Death Glare] That’s a good point.
No, you’re not. When I was Riley’s age, I was also a very tall, kinda goofy, grad student who went to work for a highly secret government agency [where they Never Say Anything], so I liked his character just fine. Wrong for Buffy, though - as Spike accurately stated, she “Likes a little monster in her man”.
Hope this isn’t too much of a spoiler, but there was an episode of Angel when Angel and Angelus actually spoke. It was in a magical dream state shared by Angel/Angelus and Faith trying to bring back Angel’s soul. Angelus and Faith are witnessing Angel’s mid-70s nadir
He feeds on a dying man instead of trying to save him, tailspins and ends up living off rats and living in alleys
Angelus talks about how horrible it was to have to live through all this. Being stuck inside Angel was torture to him. But the Angel speaks to them as well, showing that they are clearly two different entities. Angelus is not just Liam/Angel minus conscious.
Basically, it’s a plot device that Joss special-ordered from the Maguffin Plot Device and Storm-Door Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan. He needed to throw a monkey-wrench into Buffy and Angel’s relationship, make the ham-handed allegory of the “once a girl gives it up, the guy treats her like shit” paradigm, and torture all the little fangirls who shipped B&A from episode 1 on. The fact that it makes absolutely NO sense is immaterial. :smack:
Pointless anecdote : an ex-GF of mine used to be into most every kind of kooky half-assed mysticism and was a serial philanderer (thus, the rapidly ex- part). She likened the “predatory” aspect of her personality to Diana, because looking for a guy to date was a like a hunt to her.
Well, it’s one less demon running around, right? Before the curse, you have sadistic psychopath, and then the curse happens and you get angsty whiner worried he’ll lose control and turn back into sadistic psychopath. So, for the duration of the curse, you’re decreasing the total amount of evil in the world (but increasing the total amount of brooding.) Worst case scenario, Angel gets his moment of true happiness and turns evil again, but he was evil before, so we’re no worse off now than when the spell was cast.
That exchange was one of my favorite throw-away scenes of the entire series. I was bummed that they cut it for syndication.
It was also a halfway decent foreshadowing.
I always thought Angelus was kind of lame. He doesn’t seem to be especially evil and is almost entirely ineffective, in comparison to the legends. He claims to hate Buffy and her friends, and yet lets countless opportunities to kill them (normally individually) go. He often runs at even a hint of trouble, whether it’s Buffy or just an ally with a cross and a weapon he’d deal with in seconds if showing off or in Angel mode.
I really like this fanwank. I’ve been trying to make sense of the curse for some time, and have never come up with anything that convincing.