Some shows have season finales where a great evil is battled and good wins, or at least where some plot threads get resolved. Not Angel.
... that whole thing where it nearly got cancelled a lot kind of makes some sense when I think about it...
So, basically, everything falls apart, Connor is weirdly twisty, and Cordelia is kind of stupid once again.
I don't see how Connor thinks it makes sense for Angelus to kill his father, leave him lying there dead, and then act like the letter explains all. It's one twist too many. But growing up in a hell dimension with a delusional father being one's only data source probably doesn't suit one for the subtleties of life.
Groo is sweet. And right. And leaves.
That's not the part where Cordy is stupid. Who wouldn't do that? Nice guy likes her, win! Doesn't work out. Happens to many people.
The stupid part is where she gets a vision and then sets out to make it happen. Right down to the outfit.
There's a book I read once where every night the hero dreams of an apocalyptic future, or one of the key events that makes it happen, and every day he fights to stop it. Cordelia's visions are like that, she sees something and then she gets people to try and stop it. But in the book the bad guys get subtle and twisty and try and persuade the guy that just this once he's dreaming of what
should happen. And that's the trick the demon pulls off on Cordelia. She has this moment, and she sees this vision, and because it fits in with what she really wants she decides that just this once it's an answer and a thing to work towards. But it's like every other vision, it's a warning, and something that she should have steered away from. If she'd used her power to go in and see the whole thing she'd have seen... well, more misleading demon-guide talk. But she was just distracted by the apparent answer to her heart dilemma. Because clearly the powers that be would send a vision to tell her who to date.
When the visions stopped being painful she started to get confused about them. You think she'd have reacted teh same way if that vision came with a killer migraine? No, because serious aversion going on. But now they don't hurt, she can be all smiles and make it happen.
Demons are tricksy.
And Cordelia did something real stupid.
She accepted teh version of the world that said that she is the center of everything, with a little spice of self sacrifice to make it palatable.
And this time it means abandoning her friends.
Wrong call.
Would that be so obvious if I didn't know about the next season?
Well it's the same choice Buffy had - sure she had floaty happy heaven and the conviction it would all be alright and her friends were safe, but it was a lie. She still had work to do.
Cordy is choosing heaven.
On several levels, not a good call.
I like the last shot. Cordy ascending, Angel descending, but they both end up the same - vanished into the dark.
It's just a really odd end for a season.