I Will Remember You (AKA, Angel eats a lot)
It's not actually AKA that at all, of course, but since the Angel raiding the fridge scene is one of my favourites in the episode, I just decided to call it that. And Angel does eat an awful lot (you know, for someone who usually only drinks blood).
Evidence
More evidence.
Yet more evidence.
In fact, it's a toss up what makes him happier about suddenly finding himself human - Buffy, or food.
I guess it's Buffy really.
Okay, in a slightly more sensible mode, this episode is the last Buffy/Angel high romance episode in either show. It spawned a yearly ficathon that still takes place to this day (which reminds me, I'm supposed to write something for it by mid-October and I have no idea what, aargh!). It's also, IMO after years and years of thinking about all this stuff, rather irritating.
Not because of the romance.
It's nice to see Buffy looking so happy, if only for a short while.
It's not even irritating because the romance is couched in such familiar terms.
Hero and heroine are separated by cruel circumstances.
Something changes and they are united at last.
They live happily ever after.
Except that they don't, because the hero has a destiny, and he has to be true to it.
So he turns his back on his only chance of happiness,
because the fight against evil is more important.
Actually, I don't know if these terms are that familiar, but anyway, I get it. I do. Angel has to reject his humanity and the chance of happiness with Buffy. He even has to do it in a way that takes the decision entirely out of Buffy's hands. He's the hero of the show. If he doesn't do it...well, there's no show, is there? Angel would be back to being the mission's boyfriend, the mission's true love (to paraphrase Graham's sneery comment to Riley from BtVS season 5) with his story an adjunct of Buffy's (you know, like the stories of nearly all female love interests in all TV shows ever are just adjuncts of the hero's?) and this is AtS, not BtVS, so that can't happen.
So why do the episode at all, you may well ask?
Well, AtS was at this point a new show. Doing a crossover with the show it sprang from is a sensible thing to do to try and boost ratings, especially when the crossover offers the prospect of more Buffy/Angel, the parent show's big (and very popular) romance.
So that's one reason. The other, IMO, was to bang home in the nicest way possible (by ladling on the romance with a very large spoon first) that Buffy and Angel's relationship is doomed with a capital 'D', and they won't be getting back together any time soon. They have their own stories that no longer involve each other, and for the sake of those stories they have to move on and so do the audience.
Well, that's my take on it anyway.
So, if the romance and the whole Angel making-all-the-decisions-because-he's-the-hero thing aren't what makes me find the episode irritating, what does, you may (or may not) be asking yourselves?
Well, for a start, I find histrionic Buffy...
...a bit cringe-inducing. I know she got like this about Angel in Amends too, but at least there she was trying to slap some sense into him (as it were). Here, she's all floppy and hopeless and it's just not like her to give in so easily (consequences of it being Angel's show, I know, but it's jarring, okay?)
Can the real Buffy please come back now?
That's better.
The other thing that's really irritating is the Oracles, and all this Angel the vampire of destiny stuff.
Okay, the Oracles are quite fun and cool looking.
Also, it wasn't them that started the whole Angel as an agent of Powers That Be thing. That was Whistler way back in BtVS season 2, followed by Doyle and his visions at the beginning of AtS.
But the Oracles don't half rub it home. And as someone who feels that dancing to the PTBs' tune all the time has been very bad for Angel and exacerbated certain aspects of his character that he ought to try and keep in check more (grandstanding, thinking he knows what's best for everyone), they irritate me, okay?
I realise this is a bit of a personal thing. ;)
Finally, I really don't get how Angel throwing away his humanity for Buffy's sake makes Buffy any safer. She's the Slayer. Monsters are always going to be after her.
So anything else worth mentioning?
Well, Cordelia is quite mean to Buffy in the scene where she lets slip that (human) Angel has gone hunting the Mohra demon without her. I know she's only hammering home the message of the episode (you can't have Buffy/Angel and save the world), but she just comes across as spiteful.
Best lines:
Cordy: (Picks up her purse) Come on."
Doyle: "Where are we going?"
Cordy: "Oh, they'll be into this for a while. We still have time for a cappuccino and probably the director's cut of 'Titanic'."
Buffy: (re the Mohra demon)"Friend of yours?"
Angel: "Never saw it before."
Buffy: "It was rude. We should go kill it."
Angel: "I'm free."
Evidence
More evidence.
Yet more evidence.
In fact, it's a toss up what makes him happier about suddenly finding himself human - Buffy, or food.
I guess it's Buffy really.
Okay, in a slightly more sensible mode, this episode is the last Buffy/Angel high romance episode in either show. It spawned a yearly ficathon that still takes place to this day (which reminds me, I'm supposed to write something for it by mid-October and I have no idea what, aargh!). It's also, IMO after years and years of thinking about all this stuff, rather irritating.
Not because of the romance.
It's nice to see Buffy looking so happy, if only for a short while.
It's not even irritating because the romance is couched in such familiar terms.
Hero and heroine are separated by cruel circumstances.
Something changes and they are united at last.
They live happily ever after.
Except that they don't, because the hero has a destiny, and he has to be true to it.
So he turns his back on his only chance of happiness,
because the fight against evil is more important.
Actually, I don't know if these terms are that familiar, but anyway, I get it. I do. Angel has to reject his humanity and the chance of happiness with Buffy. He even has to do it in a way that takes the decision entirely out of Buffy's hands. He's the hero of the show. If he doesn't do it...well, there's no show, is there? Angel would be back to being the mission's boyfriend, the mission's true love (to paraphrase Graham's sneery comment to Riley from BtVS season 5) with his story an adjunct of Buffy's (you know, like the stories of nearly all female love interests in all TV shows ever are just adjuncts of the hero's?) and this is AtS, not BtVS, so that can't happen.
So why do the episode at all, you may well ask?
Well, AtS was at this point a new show. Doing a crossover with the show it sprang from is a sensible thing to do to try and boost ratings, especially when the crossover offers the prospect of more Buffy/Angel, the parent show's big (and very popular) romance.
So that's one reason. The other, IMO, was to bang home in the nicest way possible (by ladling on the romance with a very large spoon first) that Buffy and Angel's relationship is doomed with a capital 'D', and they won't be getting back together any time soon. They have their own stories that no longer involve each other, and for the sake of those stories they have to move on and so do the audience.
Well, that's my take on it anyway.
So, if the romance and the whole Angel making-all-the-decisions-because-he's-the-hero thing aren't what makes me find the episode irritating, what does, you may (or may not) be asking yourselves?
Well, for a start, I find histrionic Buffy...
...a bit cringe-inducing. I know she got like this about Angel in Amends too, but at least there she was trying to slap some sense into him (as it were). Here, she's all floppy and hopeless and it's just not like her to give in so easily (consequences of it being Angel's show, I know, but it's jarring, okay?)
Can the real Buffy please come back now?
That's better.
The other thing that's really irritating is the Oracles, and all this Angel the vampire of destiny stuff.
Okay, the Oracles are quite fun and cool looking.
Also, it wasn't them that started the whole Angel as an agent of Powers That Be thing. That was Whistler way back in BtVS season 2, followed by Doyle and his visions at the beginning of AtS.
But the Oracles don't half rub it home. And as someone who feels that dancing to the PTBs' tune all the time has been very bad for Angel and exacerbated certain aspects of his character that he ought to try and keep in check more (grandstanding, thinking he knows what's best for everyone), they irritate me, okay?
I realise this is a bit of a personal thing. ;)
Finally, I really don't get how Angel throwing away his humanity for Buffy's sake makes Buffy any safer. She's the Slayer. Monsters are always going to be after her.
So anything else worth mentioning?
Well, Cordelia is quite mean to Buffy in the scene where she lets slip that (human) Angel has gone hunting the Mohra demon without her. I know she's only hammering home the message of the episode (you can't have Buffy/Angel and save the world), but she just comes across as spiteful.
Best lines:
Cordy: (Picks up her purse) Come on."
Doyle: "Where are we going?"
Cordy: "Oh, they'll be into this for a while. We still have time for a cappuccino and probably the director's cut of 'Titanic'."
Buffy: (re the Mohra demon)"Friend of yours?"
Angel: "Never saw it before."
Buffy: "It was rude. We should go kill it."
Angel: "I'm free."