Yeah, Angelus’s appetite for destruction was already pretty big. Buffy just made him more crazy, and he probably figured that he’d rule over hell or something. Plus he’s just genuinely evil. He probably couldn’t see a downside to his plan.
Yeah, I just wish he said clearly what his plan post world destruction was. I can see him thinking he would “rule” over hell or something, but I don’t remember him ever saying anything like that.
I’m interested to see olive’s opinion of Angel season 4. Based on her viewing rate, she should be around 3/4 through it.
Unless she got so fed up with Buffy S7 that she quit the whole Buffyverse in disgust. (I kid, I kid… 
)
Me too. I have a few more things to say, but am waiting due to spoilers.
Not quite.
Just finished Apocalypse, Nowish, which is only episode 7. We’ve had a lot going on, and, sadly, will be going on vacation for the rest of August which will also slow our watch-rate.
So far I find Season 4 about as compelling as Season 3.
The way Gunn killed that professor so Fred didn’t have to was pretty interesting, as is the ramifications for their relationship. I don’t find Gunn a spectacularly interesting character, but that dynamic does add some dimension to him. That relationship’s going up in flames though.
I am honestly surprised how far they’ve taken this thing between Lilah and Wesley. It’s clear she’s developed feelings for him which is not something I ever would have predicted even when they first slept together.
The way Connor’s character is portrayed is beginning to irritate me though. They make it a point to show his sociopathically blank and evil little face on camera before he interacts with everyone, as if trying to imply that he cares for no-one and is just manipulating everyone, but then we’re supposed to believe he’s feeling all alone and vulnerable. It just seems like the writers don’t even know what he is. I don’t really like him that much. Maybe it’s his smug little face.
I’m guessing Cordy sleeping with Connor pissed a lot of viewers off. It was sort of weird, but I wasn’t terribly surprised due to how they set it up in the beginning. I also think people are entitled to do crazy things when the end of the world is coming. The boy is not very attractive though, physically or as a person, so I’m not really sure what she was thinking. Especially knowing how Angel would feel. It was just an incredibly stupid decision no matter which way you look at it.
When the screen flashed on Angel’s tortured face, though, I turned to my husband and said, ‘‘Well! At least we don’t have to worry about him losing his soul anytime soon!’’
So we’ve left off at the Apocalypse (I kept expecting ‘‘from beneath you it devours,’’ heh) and now I have to watch four episodes of Buffy before we get back to Angel.
As far as Buffy Season 7, also just finished episode 7 there, Conversations With Dead People.
I actually like Season 7 more than I thought I would. CWDP was a pretty good episode. I can see what people mean when they say it ‘‘drags,’’ but the pace is okay for me. I’ve enjoyed the Monster Du Jour episodes, episodes like Him are very old-school and make me feel like I’m watching Season 1 again, but a more richly developed Season 1.
OTOH, I have no idea what the hell is going on with Spike. He’s siring people? WTF? I feel they’ve handled his character development pretty badly since he got his soul back. I wish they would just get his ass over to Angel already.
Season 7 is pretty good up through Conversations With Dead People. I commented earlier in this thread that I thought season 7 was much better than I originally remembered, but when I said that I was only up to about where you are. As I kept watching I started to remember what my original complaints were.
I loved Apocalypse, Nowish. It was a Thanksgiving cliffhanger, and what really pissed me off is they changed the day of the week the show aired from Monday to Wednesday when it returned in January. Plus I had no idea when it was coming back, so by the time I realized it had moved to Wednesdays I’d already missed a couple episodes. I was pissed! Remember that this was back in the day when if you missed an episode of network television, your only recourse was to wait until it showed up in rerun. I ended up having to wait for the syndicated run on TBS to see the episodes I missed, years later. So pissed!
I didn’t really see a contradiction there. He had a seriously messed up upbringing. I don’t find it hard to believe that he feels alone and vulnerable and deals with that by trying to shut out all feeling and manipulate others.
Bingo. That’s the event that squicked a lot of people out in Angel Season 4 that was aluded to upthread, which you were worried might be graphic torture.
Personally, I saw it as a bit odd, but no more so than a lot of bad decisions in the Buffyverse. My wife actually found it sweet and watched that scene over and over.
To each their own, I suppose. GonzoGal practically swooned over him whenever he was onscreen. Perhaps a bit disturbing, but it gave me free license to do my own swooning over Willow and Fred. (I like geeky girls, what can I say?)
I’m not spoiling much to say that she will get a chance to explain her reasons later. You may or may not like the answer.
As a bit of trivia, the part with “Cassie’s ghost” was supposed to have been Tara, but Amber Benson was open to reprising the role of real Tara, but didn’t want to come back as a bad guy impersonating Tara.
I felt that way as well, especially with the return of Sunnydale High as a fixture in the show.
Sit tight, things will make some more sense soon. IMHO, all of his weirdness is worth it for the closing scene of “Beneath You.” (“They put the spark in me. And now all it does is burn…” “Why does a man do what he mustn’t? For her. To be hers. To be the kind of man who would nev— To be a kind of man. And she shall look on him with forgiveness… and everybody will forgive and love.”) Powerful stuff there. That’s the scene that I watched over and over entirely too many times.
What did you think of Selfless? That’s the episode that ticked me off this season more than any other. I was bummed that they returned to the “World” of OMWF and did it so poorly. Anya’s song just doesn’t compare with any of the originals. If they were going to go back to that well, they should’ve knocked it out of the park. 
Ever watch Mad Men?
gonzoron, I actually liked Selfless quite a bit. I thought it was great character development for Anya (and showed her in the past taking care of bunnies! The mystery!)
Ender, no, haven’t seen Mad Men. I’ve been meaning to, eventually. After Buffy/Angel and Dexter and Lie to Me and The X-Files (which I’ve yet to see)…
Yeah, actually the other parts of the episode weren’t bad, it’s just the song that ticked me off and tainted the rest for me…
That, and the fact that she started out human, making all the “I don’t get your human behavior” shtick make even less sense.
The reason I ask is that Connor (Vincent Kartheiser) plays Pete on Mad Men and it took me forever to make that connection. But his “smug little face” is absolutely perfect for the role.
Huh. Multi-quote messed up - olives mentioned that Cordy sleeping with kid-whatever-his-name-was was what pissed people off.
Not SO much the sleeping-with in isolation, as how that was followed up in future episodes.
And she normally wouldn’t - as Giles commented after Buffy’s death, Watchers fully expect to watch their Slayers die. My guess is that this tends to happen sooner rather than later. The show made it very clear that while Slayers are stronger than vampires, they aren’t so much stronger as to be invulnerable, or anywhere near - if a vampire gets a solid grip, or the Slayer is a bit too slow, or develops a bit of a deathwish, it’s all over.
People who die violently in their late teens or early twenties don’t generally need to worry about medical bills or mortgages.
To be fair, she was a human back in the 800s. She wouldn’t understand human behavior in the 21st century.
And my own personal fanwank is that she loses the grasp of human nature shown in “The Wish” because it was solely created by her powers and not a real memory she could hang onto.
Selfless was definately a favorite of mine from S7.
But Anya gets the book numbers, not the run-away pop hits. (Let it go, Anya…)
Well, she was Aud even in her first run as a human. Yes, that was her name, but it was also a play on her strange & offputting manner. I’m sure some might chime in to place her on the Asperger’s/Autism spectrum.
As a Vengeance Demon for centuries, she observed humanity but compassion was not part of her makeup. Then d’Hoffryn changed her back to human, as punishment. Do you think he transformed her into a normal, well adjusted, socialized young woman of the 20th century? We’ve seen his cruel & twisted sense of humor.
Not related to S7/S4, but a probably stupid question just popped into my mind: It sounds to me that Glory had an accent that is slightly different from generic American. I’ve also heard some other people speaking like that, usually young women. I don’t mean the infamous uptalk intonation that makes every sentence sounds like a question (which Glory didn’t seem to do a lot), but it sounds like she pronounced some vowels a little differently. Is that considered part of the “valley girl” accent? (Which I thought is characterized by the liberal use of uptalk and words such as “like” and “totally”) Or is there a different name for that speech pattern?
No, I wouldn’t really call it a “valley girl” accent. I’m not sure what it is, but I do know what you’re talking about.
And that makes some sort of sense, yes. If you’re going to make Anyanka a former human, she’d have to be an unusual one, but I still feel it cheapens the character a bit. we already had characters who were human, then became monsters, then became “human” again. (I’m talking Angel and Spike here, though “ensouled vampire” isn’t exactly human.) That path has been explored. the interesting thing about pre-Selfless Anya is that she never was human, and now has to learn how to be one.
As a human who was a demon for a few hundred years, her story is redundant with Angel and Spike (and yet somehow doesn’t mesh with their stories… do we ever see any guilt from Anya for what Anyanka did? I don’t recall. Certainly nothing like Angel and Spike with their re-souling meltdowns.). As a demon forced into human form, she was unique.
spoiler for Angel Season 5:
until Illyria…
And I still don’t buy her complete non-understanding of humans if she once was one, even a weird one hundreds of years ago. Odd as Aud may have been, she must’ve understood death better than the Anya of “The Body,” no?