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Guise Will Be Guise
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.")
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.")
But...
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...
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.