My boyfriend and I are currently watching *X-Files, BtVS & Angel *in chronological order. So please ignore the X-Files info. But here’s how it lies.
Years X-Files Buffy Angel
1993-94 1
1994-95 2
1995-96 3
1996-97 4 1
1997-98 5 2
1998-99 6 3
1999-00 7 4 1
2000-01 8 5 2
2001-02 9 6 3
2002-03 7 4
2003-04 5
Short answer: S4 of Buffy = S1 of Angel.
Thanks! Will do.
(Can’t wait to come back later and read all these spoilers. Including Ender’s. I’m dying to know what he said.)
I honestly don’t believe I am. If anything, I’d argue that all these spoilered tangents which aren’t the least bit helpful to the OP or her request are the threadshitters (though I do acknowledge Fenris’s comment that going back after finishing season 7 to read this all can be entertaining). But even if one doesn’t agree with that assessment, I’m at a loss to understand how wanting to get back to that core discussion makes me the bad guy.
I’ve got a theory that vampires deliberately seek out the stupid, cowardly, and easily manipulated to turn into other vampires. After all, when a vamp turns someone, they aren’t looking for a friend, or companion, or ersatz family member. They’re looking for a minion - someone they can boss around and intimidate, and who’s not likely to try to stab them in the back. Or, at least, won’t be very successful at it. Older vampires, like the Master and Kakistos, don’t have to worry about this, because they’re old enough and powerful enough to handle just about anyone. But the average vamp is a chump, because he was made by another chump to be even chumpier.
I’ll unspoil it for you ( to some degree). I basically said that we should get back to answering your question rather than have a discussion hid entirely in spoilers partly because it’s only a matter of time before someone unspoils something and ruins it for you.
Then I put a few MAJOR spoilers in the link that I wouldn’t click until you’re through the ENTIRE series.
So anyway, back to your OP. I have watched all 7 years of Buffy and I watched them in syndication one right after the other so I never really got much of a chance from week to week or year to year to reflect on the changes. I think that may not have been the optimal way of doing it but, honestly, what other choice did I have at that point?
I like season 2. But Season 3 is, IMHO, the best season of Buffy out there. It’s not about “special” or “one-off” episodes. I really think it’s where they finally start to get the characters to gel and really develop a cohesive story arc through the entire season with a great and satisfying ending.
Oh, and, as you ask in the OP, in Season 3 they do make a reference to this year’s Sunnydale class as having the lowest mortality rate on record. So at least it’s acknowledged, even if conveniently forgotten from week to week.
My sentiments exactly. S7 was much, much better on DVD than the original run.
olives, on a scale of 1 to 10 I’d rate the seasons as:
S1: 3 (almost unwatchably bad, with few exceptions)
S2: 6 (started getting good toward the end)
S3: 9 (my favorite during its first run)
S4: 8 (gets better after repeated viewings)
S5: 9 (probably the best season. certainly the best villian)
S6: 8 (dark and depressing, right up my alley)
S7: 6 (drags a bit in places, but parts of it are excellent)
I should mention that I haven’t seen S7 since its first run, but I will soon now that Logo is running episodes. I’ve seen Angel on USA so many times I can only watch it in small doses, but Buffy has been off FX for several years so it’s nice to see it again. Currently up to early S6, though I didn’t realize they were on and so just started a few weeks back with the beginning of S4.
wintertime has an ace in the hole piece of evidence that has yet to be mentioned by anyone:[spoiler]Harmony. IIRC, she was not a descendant of the Master, or Angel or Spike or anyone. As I recall she was bitten by some background schmoe vampire during graduation.
She never gets a chip or a soul, and yet she goes on to a long history of not being evil. She tries to be evil, but she just isn’t. Again with no chip or soul, she seems perfectly fine with the S5 Angel restrictions about no human blood. Or even much earlier, hanging out with Cordelia as a friend instead of seeing her as a happy meal.[/spoiler]
Also, I forgot who said it and where, but regarding Spike’s role:He did not serve Cordelia’s role, that was Anya. Spike took over Angel’s role.
Ellis
Harmony consistently makes the wrong choices. She even betrayed Angel to Hamilton at the end of S5–sure that was part of Angel’s plan, but only because he knew she was evil, not because she was in on it. She was a member of a vampire pyramid scheme that required you to imprison two people to every one they killed. The thing about Harmony is that she was dumb and evil and shallow when she was alive, and she was dumb and evil and shallow when she was dead.
[spoiler] Harmony was the exact opposite of what you described. She tries to be good, but she just isn’t, not the other way around.
You left out the part where she betrays both Cordelia and Angel. When she meets Cordy she tries to become friends with her because she’s lonely. But Harmony couldn’t control her blood lust for Cordy which leads Cordy to mistake Harm for a lesbian. Cordy later tries to kill Harm but couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Harmony betrays Angel in the series finale. Angel claimed that he knew she was going to betray him because she lacked a soul.
Harm working for Angel wasn’t that unusual. A lot of vampires worked for Wolfram & Hart. They were an evil corporation and continued to be evil even once Angel took over. And as for Harmony not drinking human blood - and resorting to otter blood - she didn’t have a choice. She really needed a job.
[/spoiler]
I think he did both. The first first, (that role being, “You’re all stupid and you’re going to die,”) but because of not being able to go out in the sun with the Scoobies much, it got awkward to write him in (this according to interviews and DVD commentary by Joss). Then they moved him into the second role because the character/actor was too awesome not to use in some capacity.
Ellis:
I disagree about Harmony not being evil. At no point did she ever display any sign of empathy or compunction about killing and eating people. She did have a strong aversion to being poor or getting killed herself, though, and towards that end, she was willing to forgo eating people in order to remain employed at Wolfram and Hart and on Angel’s good side. And even then, she had to submit to regular testing to make sure she hadn’t eaten anyone recently. That’s not “being good,” that’s just self-interest and self-preservation. Effectively, it’s no different than the chip in Spike’s head.
Or, uh… what the three posts above me just said.
That’s missing the point, though…[spoiler]The previous arguments had to appeal to a behavior modification chip or a soul as evidence that a vampire couldn’t just choose to be good. Only extreme outside influence could make it happen.
You guys are rightfully saying that Harmony only chose to be good out of rational self-interest. Which is exactly the point. That she was able to choose not to drink human blood out of pure rational self-interest is exactly what wintertime touched on by the idea that some vampires could choose to be good. Harmony did just that when she went to work for Angel. That’s why the unquestioning slaughter-on-sight policy could be viewed skeptically.
I’m thinking of examples like her slap-fight with Xander in the woods in season 4 when she was burning Spike’s stuff after he staked her. Just the two of them, she was emotionally hurting, and she doesn’t even like Xander. Yet the most she could muster was hair pulling. After which both she and Xander cried uncle and went their separate ways.
The whole genocide agenda is predicated on the idea that a vampire retains the human memories but is transformed into an evil monster. Harmony was pretty much exactly the same as vampire as she was as a human. Meaning it would be wrong to kill her on sight.
As a cross-series example, Harmony could probably live a nice, peaceful life drinking True Blood after coming out of the coffin.
As a vampire, did Harmony ever kill anything?[/spoiler]
No, you are.It’s not that complicated. Harmony was just bad at being evil. But she tried at every opportunity. She was comic relief, so she even sucked at sucking.
[spoiler] You’re suggesting that the reason she didn’t kill Xander is that she chose to let him live? Well, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on Harmony then, because I don’t see that as an example of self-control, but rather as an example of how generally incompetent Harmony is.
I don’t know if she killed anybody, but she sold out Angel’s whole group, including her best friend Cordelia, in Disharmony.
[/spoiler]
If I had known this would turn seriously, I’d have rewatched BtVS and AtS instead of relying on old memories. 
About the freedom of choice:
The chip didn’t change Spike, it (just) gave him the time and opportunity to do so. By restricting his choices it opened up new ones – but it was Spike, not the chip who still had to choose what to do: A couple of times, he found ways to still do evil, while, at other times, he did what might be called “good”. Despite the chip, (ethically) valid choices could still be made.
The gang provided the social background and Buffy the emotional connection to have a reason and the desire to ponder new ways and try them out. But while reason and desire are as crucial as opportunity for change, they are not change itself. Change is a choice made and the will to stick to and work for it against opposition, from the outside as well as from within.
Without the soul of William, the demon had started to do exactly that.
I’d have preferred a story line that would have explored the opportunities and crises of the demon’s choices. But the writers went the other way and now we have, admittedly, far more reason to believe that a vampire needs a soul to change thoroughly. But we have met one, who took the first steps without one.
In Spike’s case, winning his soul back was the result of change, not its precondition.
That’s totally different from Angel’s situation. Without a soul to keep it in check, Angelus is pure evil and we have never seen any reason to believe, afaik, that he has any feelings or desires but destructive ones.
I think, it’s reasonable to say that Angelus with a chip would still have done evil and wouldn’t have changed towards redemption at all.
But what about the other vampires? Is Angelus more the norm or Spike or are the other ones just as different from each other than all the human and demonic beings we meet?
Well, I agree that no other vampire makes Spike’s choices. But other ones are at least able to set aside their bloodlust for a variety of reasons – how far this might go, is never explored. But should have been, imo.
On Angel, we met more complexity among demons, demon-human hybrids, strange humans and just humans. That many of them possessed the freedom of choice, didn’t turn Angel’s fight morally ambiguous; it just meant that he rather fought them because of what they chose to do not because of what they were. I like this approach more.
An aside:
I’ve never quite understood the logic of the curse. What if Liam had been an evil or totally amoral guy with no qualms at all to wreak havoc in the world? Returning him into a body juiced up by a demon would not have been a punishment at all, because now he would have had much more opportunity to do as he pleases. And if he had been simply weak-minded, the demon might have found ways to corrupt him given time and do evil still.
The curse only works properly with a soul that is strong enough to withstand corruption and “moral” enough to feel guilt. Seems to me like this punishment could have easily backfired tremendously. Or … do I miss something?
I find the idea hard to swallow, that a human soul is “good” per se, at least on AtS where we meet far too many amoral or evil or morally layered humans to be content with such a simple explanation.
I love Buffy, but it would definitely take some getting used to if you are expecting Firefly or Dollhouse, which while they definitely had some funny moments were both more dramatic and more importantly, more ‘realistic’ for lack of a better word.
Buffy and Angel definitely have their drama, but they also play fast and loose with the fantasy bits. And Buffy especially, started out trying to make the fantasy horror of the week always be a too literal metaphor for teenage issues (the dickish in crowd that laughs at you are hyenas, the girl who isn’t popular ends up invisible, the guy you love turns into a monster after you sleep with him, etc…).
Buffy is great, but it’s brilliance is a little more cartoonish, and does not crescendo every single episode.
So, I just saw ‘‘Innocence.’’
Holy crap, I must be oversensitive or something but I did not take it well.
As tiresome as I find Buffy’s constant bitching about being both a Slayer and a Teenager, my immediate reaction was ‘‘Noooooo! It’s not fair! That’s too much for a young girl to deal with!’’ I thought they did a great job capturing the raw pain of the experience for her, in a way that any former teenage girl could probably relate, but Jesus, that hurt. It still hurts. I’m kinda pissed. And when her Mom asked how it felt to be seventeen, she just said, ‘‘older.’’ GAH!
On the other hand, the show made me feel empathy for Buffy’s character and it’s the most powerful episode I’ve seen so far. Very well done.
Just depressing as all hell.
Powerful, painful, depressing, hilarious, over-the-top, cheesy - all of the above and more!
wintertime, you’re so intent on refusing to budge an inch on your misinterpretation that you’re moving the goalposts instead. You begin by saying [spoiler]
–essentially arguing for what amounts to a plot hole, or at least a serious inconsistency in that it contradicts everything the themes of the show stood for, to, in your latest post, above, arguing for little more than the *obvious *fact that there are individuals among vampires just as there are individuals among humans.
Yes, the vampires were written with just as much individuality as the humans were. But to argue that this amounts to a level of free will that renders each vampire ultimately responsible for his own choices is a HUGE leap, especially since there is absolutely zero evidence for it, and mountains of evidence against it.
What you’re doing is taking the messy truths of human/vampire individuality and extrapolating it, based only on your own stretchy interpretation, beyond where your conclusions have any remaining relation to where you started.
Your wildly extrapolated, entirely personal and subjective, re-interpretation requires, even for contemplation, a complete dismissal of a couple of items. First, you must completely ignore the kind of vampire Spike was before the chip was implanted. Second, you must completely overlook the fact that nowhere, in the entire series, was there ever an example of any vampire who *chose *to do the “right thing” in the absence of a curse or a chip. Spike is the only vampire who ever changed in that regard at all, and he did so only after years of reconditioning brought about by the chip, during which time he fell in love with Buffy. That this love had the effect, in essence, of cursing him with a soul, is not a plot hole. It’s not evidence to be used against all the other vampires who did undergo the same experience. It’s nothing more than a grand, epic statement about the power of love.
Buy that or not, that’s your choice. But pulling the goalposts further and further back until whatever evidence anchored them in the first place is stretched to the breaking point proves absolutely nothing, except that you overstated your initial interpretation and can’t find a way to back down from it without losing face.[/spoiler]
–and now, halfway through rewatching “Innocence,” as inspired to do so by this thread, seeing the kind of vampire Angel immediately becomes when he’s desouled (psychectomy?)–even after, what, decades? of living with a soul–there’s simply no question in my mind, wintertime, that your interpretation is highly personal and subjective and, from my own subjective view, totally wrong. (Not spoilered because the OP has seen this episode.)