Angel Season One: A Question
For some reason I can never remember the details of AtS. I've watched it through twice, but am very vague about what happens. Now Angel is back in the Buffyverse, and AtS is on Netflix, and so I'm rewatching.
Season one basically shows Angel in a good light. The end of Sanctuary is my all-time favorite Angel moment. He really is a wise and ( Read more... )
But hasn't he consciously made the choice by never going back? That part of his life is over, he knows it. He knew it the moment he grabbed the baby and jumped out the window. There was never a going back. She can't be a part of his life anymore. There's conscious choice there. He doesn't need to go back yet again when there's nothing to prove, nothing to learn, nothing to gain; he doesn't need to test himself any further. It's done. Personally, I think that the first time he went to her in China he knew it wasn't going to work; his life had changed and though he tried very hard to keep his brand of normalcy he couldn't. You either roll with it or you don't, and Angel not only didn't when presented with the opportunity; he never tried to be "Angelus: Scourge of Europe" ever again. If he had kept trying to do harm purposefully after that, then I could believe that not killing the baby was a fluke and not really a conscious effort for change. Perhaps, change can also mean peaceful acceptance of fate. Buffy never really thought she had a choice in her "career path;" she just rolled with it. Sure, she could have stopped at any time in theory, but could she have? She just accepted that's how her life was going to be, and that's the way it was. One day normal girl, next day Slayer and Killer of All Things Humans Are Frightened of. And that's probably how it is for most people; things happen, and people react, no choice needed just a reaction. It's the prolonged effort for doing good that needs the choice perhaps not the event that precipitated it. Perhaps Angel thought that Lindsey needed to make a conscious effort for change because of where his life was going or maybe he thought it was what Lindsey needed to hear?
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Basically, Angel's had a LOT Of help going from Angelus to the place he's at when he's lecturing Lindsey. He got cursed. He got exiled by Darla (unlike W&H which totally had open arms for Lindsey when he wanted to come back). He got picked up by Whistler. He got inspired by Buffy. Long about there he does make a decision to fight for good rather than do nothing (which still isn't the big decision to quit evil). He gets Doyle to tell him the PtBs are with him. He gets a prophecy. He's got friends. And he STILL can't keep from reverting back to evil next season. Lindsey gets a few words of tough love about Angel and not a crumb more and we in the audience are supposed to admire Angel for his valiant choice to be good and despise Lindsey for his despicable weakness in reverting back to W&H -- and I think it's kind of BS given how dicey Angel is despite the tons and tons and tons of help he's gotten. And my question basically is whether the writers know just how much BS it is or if they buy that Angel is the Big Hero and Lindsey is the weak-willed human who can't overcome his evil.
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That works both ways, though.
He got cursed.
He had no soul. Lindsey did. That automatically puts Lindsey at an advantage. Lindsey chose to sell his soul to W&H, whereas, as stated in Damage, Liam was once a victim too.
He got exiled by Darla (unlike W&H which totally had open arms for Lindsey when he wanted to come back).
Darla welcomed Angel back too. Maybe not in the very beginning when he was a traumatised mess, but she embraced him when he returned to her in China. She never exiled him, Angel ran from her.
He got picked up by Whistler. He got inspired by Buffy.
Years later. As useless as Angel might have been for those 90+ years at least he wasn't working for W&H. I mean, sure, he wasn't being productive in the fight against evil but it's still better to be a loner who keeps to yourself than a lawyer who gets all kinds of criminals off the hook, or even organises young women like Cordy to be takeaway meals for vamps.
And he STILL can't keep from reverting back to evil next season.
Yes but, unlike Angel, Lindsey didn't have two hundred lawyers working 24/7 to drive him crazy. Nor did he have a mass murderer sitting on top of him every night mentally torturing him. Lindsey was the guy working on that “special project” and trying to get Angel to turn dark. Nobody was working overtime to seduce Lindsey. And yet, he still comes back to do more evil again in AtS S5 and his motives for doing so, according to him, are that he couldn't stand by and let W&H hand Angel keys to the kingdom after "everything he had worked for."
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Angel really hasn't faced a crisis decision turning point like the one Lindey gets. Yes, he's made decisions along the way. But the rest of his story is only possible if Angel hasn't really dug deep in himself to make The Decision either. He's seduceable because there's part of him that hasn't decided. Faith post-jail, OTOH, probably isn't very seduceable. It's the difference between having reached a decisive turning point and not having done so. I'm thinking (hoping) that season 9 will be about an Angel who finally *has* made that decision -- including the sort of self-knowledge it would take to understand why he was so susceptible to the temptations Twilight threw at him.
Anyway, I don't mean to say that Lindsey is some good guy or anything. We don't get the story of what Lindsey would have done with meaningful support or encouragement. But we have no reason to think it'd have made a difference.
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1. He's adorkable. Him singing Mandy is about the best thing ever. And he thinks it's pretty!
2. What he does for Faith. I especially like him visiting her in jail at the end of Judgment. He didn't just help her in the moment in Sanctuary and then forget about her when she hit her resolution. He's there for her during the hard slog. He's 100% earned her loyalty and I am glad they're setting up to do something with that.
3. He's not the champion he thinks he is. But that keeps him from seeing what's really remarkable. He's got no real connection to ordinary human life. He's not going to age, which means all his friends are going to die some day and he's going to keep going. It's no wonder he doesn't have his bearings. But amazing that he wants to be a part of things anyway, even though it can only end in despair for him. I love Spike, but he doesn't have the same problem. Spike is more adaptive. Angel's not which makes it harder for him, and therefore more admirable.
4. He inspires people.
5. He's smart. He's a leader. Now that he's hit rock bottom, I think there's a great chance he could put that to really good use without the downside he's had with that so far.
I love Spike bestest cause he's my guy. But when Angel gets his act together he's going to be awesome. He's got so much going for him. Angel is the lead of a show, and Spike really never can be. That captures something important about both of them.
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Because Angel is not omnipotent and cannot read if Lindsey is sincere or not, perhaps he's not so much telling Lindsey that the choice he made was not "THE CHOICE" but rather telling Lindsey that it's not about waking up one day and being "good," but rather continuing to walk down that path. Perhaps what Angel is saying is that you never stop making choices, and maybe he wants Lindsey to see that he's on the right path but Angel can't really tell him what to do-
You can't believe how bad you let things get. That's not change. You have to make a decision to change. That's something you do by yourself.
I don't think that Angel is necessary denying that Lindsey has made the decision to change. He's made the decision, but that's not change. He's made a step in the right direction, and now he's gotta keep walking and for most of that journey it's up to Lindsey. Angel was pretty directionless for a long time; he knew he didn't want to be evil anymore, but what to do with that choice? Maybe Angel is trying to get Lindsey started in the way he wished he would have done in hindsight? There's a lot of different interpretations there.
As to the rest, I defer to Vamp_Mogs who is far more eloquent than I.
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