We giggle, because we love

[thebratqueen]

So I was talking about how The Gift has some of the worst continuity that BtVS has possibly ever seen and it got me and others talking about moments in Buffy and Angel that are so bad or dumb that at this point you can't help but look back on them with an indulgent smile

Comments

[lm]

So...Angel stumbled around eating rats for a century or so (can't remember what year he got cursed)...and even when he was a Big Bad he just ran around getting drunk and killing people...yet he knows, like, everything that could possibly be known about vampires--and, when it's convenient, demons.

But then the idea of him just stumbling around eating rats gets retconned entirely in Angel, and suddenly he was doing all kinds of stuff, like fighting in wars and staying in swanky hotels and rescuing people and stuff. And it's never explained (at least, if it is I don't remember) how he got to the rat-snacking stinky homeless stage he was in when he got sent off to help Buffy in "Becoming."

[mpoetess]

I think there's meant to be some implication that the bit that Faith saw with Angelus in the 70's flashback, where he drank from the diner cashier who'd been shot, may have been what drove him back into rat-eating territory again, FWIW. There's no denying it is a retcon -- anything introduce in a flashback is, by definition -- but it doesn't necessarily contradict previous continuity - just makes it a bit more murky in terms of what happened when.

[lm]

I totally don't remember that, but then again there are a lot of eps I haven't seen since they originally aired. Do you remember which episode it was?

[mpoetess]

It was in Orpheus, A:ts Season 4, when Faith is wandering around in Angel/Angelus' head while Willow tries to re-ensoul him, and we get to see 70's disco Angel. He has a crappy hairstyle, to say the least, but is clearly not in rat-eating territory yet; his clothes are clean. Then there's a shooting, while Angelus and Faith are sitting in a booth 'witnessing' it, and while Angel in theory couldn't have helped the guy who got shot, instead of walking away he comes back after a couple seconds of indecision (which Angelus implies might have saved the guy's life if he'd used them helpfully) and drinks from the corpse, though he's fairly ashamed of doing so. Then the next scene of the mind-tour is an alley where Angel's dressed pretty much as he was in the Becoming flashback.

So it's not stated categorically that one event led to the other and there were no crimefighting days in between them, but there's some heavy implication.

[lm]

Ooooh. I guess I do vaguely remember that episode. I was probably watching it with some other people in the room distracting me, though, and didn't make the proper connections there.

[mikelesq]

Actually, it was pretty explicit:

Angelus (to Faith): When isn't it? Twenty years after that stupid donut shop, and his fingers never smelled of anything but rat! "I'm so sorry. I give up. I'm gonna live in a sewer!"

Of course, that creates it's own little problem from the Angel episode from BtVS Season 1 about getting his soul back after the gypsy curse:

Angel (to Buffy):I haven't fed on a living human being
since that day.

Except for the coffee shop guy, who'd only been dead a few seconds and might have still had a pulse. Oh, and Lawson from the submarine. And those criminals in the Boxer Rebellion. And so on.