Guise Will Be Guise

[butterfly]

In retrospect, this episode showcases something that Angel does better than Buffy: allowing the characters to change.

This episode starts off the beginning of Wesley's transformation. After assuming Angel's place, he later takes over as leader, and ends up taking his own parallel journey to Angel. And this is where it's most obviously set up.

This is Wesley's The Zeppo, only, on Buffy, Xander never got to have the kind of development that Wesley got after this. He got his Xander episode, then they went and turned him into comic relief. The same thing that they did to Anya after Selfless, I suppose.

Plus:
"You were in Virginia?"
"That's beside the point."

And I'm running across so much foreshadowing. In Untouched Angel says that his name is just a name. Wesley will also say, "It's just a name." after Angel leaves them.

The Darla/Angel relationship is so much deliciousness.

And I'm thinking of taking a closer look at the baby!plot in Judgement to see how it relates to Connor. ("To me, she's just my daughter.")

Comments

[imation23.livejournal.com]

And it's not just the characters - it's the show itself. And that's something I really respect about the show's writers and producers. I've put my thoughts about that here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imation23/973.html), ages ago. I think that's one of the reasons why AtS is still going strong in its 4th season, while BtVS started to become stale at around that time.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Yeah, wow, I totally agree with that.

They've always gone back to normal on Buffy. In Angel, every time that you figure out what normal is, they change it.

ah, but Xander isn't Wesley, Willow is...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

...and one can trace Darth Rosenberg origins all the way back to season 3 at the latest.

Also, Xander, while not becoming the leader or going darkside, did grow up. Which some fans thought made him boring, but I liked it.

Buffy herself changed a lot (and I'm one of the minority who happens to think later Buffy is more interesting than early Buffy).

So did Spike. So did Jonathan. So did Andrew. Actually, this is one of the reasons why I loved Andrew in season 7: he showcased ME's ability to take a stock character and make him come alive with a mixture of good writing and good acting perfectly.

Re: ah, but Xander isn't Wesley, Willow is...

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

I agree that he became like Willow in terms of importance, but Willow was never pure comic relief like Wesley and Xander were at times. Wesley got to stop being comic relief after his big ep, whereas Xander actually became more pure comic relief after his. God, I will never forget him being zapped, everyone ignoring it, and us apparently supposed to find it amusing.

And with Willow... they backed away. In Season Six, they did make it appear like it wasn't about her real issue: power. They fixed that a bit in Seven, but she was in a holding pattern almost all of the season.

Buffy, I'll definitely agree with as having changed. They've taken risks with her. I love how they developed Buffy. But they seemed to put Xander, Willow, Giles, and Anya (at the least) all on hold. They all should have been changing too and they could have shown that without focusing on it.

Buffy is a big fan of Big Moments. Which can be an enjoyable thing. But sometimes they forget that getting to the moments and seeing what results from them can be just as interesting.

Andrew got his Big Moments, but there were points when he seemed just as he had before he'd had his epiphany ("Faith is a killer. Never forget that." was too easy for me).

Spike works with the Big Moments because he's mostly a show anyway (Giles had him pegged right in Restless).

But...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Everyone got to be comic relief at one point or the other: they played Buffy's post-Riley moping for comic relief in "Triangle", for example, and Spike's chip-bleeding in "The Killer in Me".

This being said: Xander had a bad year of it in season 4, but they played him as quiet strength from "The Replacement" till season 6 which was when relationship with Anya started to become jittery. And he certainly wasn't comic relief in 7.

I see season 7 Willow as definitely changed through her experience. The old Willow never would have been able to empathize with Anya the way she did, or just accept Faith.

Andrew and his Faith intro: no, Old Andrew would have presented Faith as having taken pointers from him.

And speaking of Faith: I recall there were a lot of complaints BEFORE the episodes were broadcast on how Faith's presentation on BTVS would be negating her growth on AtS, and this turned out to be ridiculously false. Not only was it the new, more mature Faith who turned up in Sunnydale but she and Buffy could finally come to peace with another. And let's not forget Faith's (redemptionist) character development didn't start on AtS - it started on BtVS, with "Who Are You?"

Re: But...

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's the feel of the show that doesn't change. Some of the characters have, but... I'm not sure how to explain it.

It feels like they found a formula, decided that it worked, and operated on the belief that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". People like Spike, give them more Spike. People liked Cordy's snark, bring in Anya to be tactless.

Which is a valid way of doing things. I adore Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But I... admire Angel for constantly redefining normal (which is what I praised our girl for in Chosen). Everything on Angel feels more grey, whereas on Buffy, even with the grey characters, it feels more black and white.

They shake things up. Buffy kills off incidental characters. No matter how much I adored Tara, she was mostly just "Willow's girlfriend", just like Jenny's impact was mostly "Giles' girlfriend" and Joyce's was "Buffy's mom". Angel killed off one of three cast members nine episodes in (side note: which made me swear off the show for the rest of the season). They blew up their set after the first year. They change the cast every year. It's in a constant state of flux. Cordelia goes evil and she doesn't come back. Angel has a son and it really changes everything.

I don't always like what they do, but I like that they do it. The consequences feel so real and brutal.

It felt like Buffy was trying to do that in Season four. Then the college setting just bled away. The show started to feel claustraphobic and it didn't feel like it was happening on purpose.