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Post by William the Bloody on Aug 18, 2003 2:55:14 GMT -5
Written by David Greenwalt Directed by Scott Brazil Air date: 4/14/97
A moment of passion turns to terror as Buffy discovers Angel's true identity and learns about the Gypsy curse that has haunted him for almost 100 years.
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Post by beccaelizabeth on Jul 9, 2004 4:19:23 GMT -5
Watcher's guide says-
It takes an hour and a half to apply Angel's vamp face to David. One of his favourite parts of being a vampire is the weird yellow contact lenses.
Giles trains Buffy in both quarterstaffs and crossbow. She uses the latter on Darla (piercing her in the stomach rather than the heart) and tries and fails to use it on Angel (the impression being that her shot went wild on purpose).
Angel's duster is from Hugo Boss and cost $1,000
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Aug 3, 2004 17:14:31 GMT -5
Rank Hubris: Reviewing “Angel”
In any episodic story, there are chapters that can be missed, and chapters which are essential for the understanding of the work as a whole. “Angel”, episode seven of the first season of “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” is critical to the understanding of the next six and a half seasons of Buffy, and to all five seasons of Angel, the series. Essential themes of plot and character are introduced or expanded upon; motifs of scene and action which identify the Buffyverse are emphasized. Most importantly, “Angel” draws a bright line between “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and the general run of teenage monster comedies.
The teaser is standard fare. The Three are identified as the Monster of The Week, there’s a fight in the alley, and Buffy is imperiled. The pickup after the first commercial break sees Buffy rescued, Angel wounded, and the chase to Buffy’s house. At the door, Buffy says “Come on!” to Angel, which apparently amounts to sufficient invitation, and it is at that point that revelations begin: Angel’s tattoo, his first meeting with Joyce, his true nature .
The front door to 1630 Revello is a strong motif in the series; more than any other physical feature, it symbolizes Buffy’s house. In this episode it appears in three important scenes: Angel and Buffy close it on The Three, and Angel states the rule of invitation; Joyce comes in and meets Angel for the first time; and Joyce invites Darla in. The front door at the Summer’s house becomes the line between safety and danger time and again. It is not always successful at shutting danger out; often it is the way danger enters their lives- Darla, in this episode, but, in the long run, Angel. Angel who, instead of disappearing into the darkness as he always has in the past, stays the night in Buffy’s room.
A theme introduced at the same time as the door motif is Joyce’s cluelessness. She goes up to bed with Angel still in the house, and she doesn’t notice as two sets of boot heels thunder up the stairs. She is beautiful, friendly, hospitable, and as thick as two boards about her daughter’s life. She, not Buffy, is the classic helpless blonde in the alley.
There is an interval of “normalcy” when Buffy is at school, gossiping with Willow and Xander about Angel’s stay in her bedroom, discussing her fight with The Three, rolling her eyes at Giles’s training rules (and mastering a new fighting technique while she fights a trained opponent, a motif we see throughout the series, as is her exaggerated eyeroll at the mention of quarterstaffs), intercut with scenes of The Three as they are judged by The Master and executed by Darla, and we are lulled into this believing this just another normal episode.
The misdirection continues when Buffy returns home and babbles nervously about her diary as Angel’s presence becomes more exciting. And then we have The Kiss. It is set up like just another first kiss between romantic leads in any popular entertainment, just another first act climax, made something other when suddenly Angel is revealed in his true face. Buffy screams, an actual and convincing scream of terror and not a surprised squeak, an indignant shriek, or an angry screech. Buffy is terrified by the discovery that her big crush is actually the Big Bad, and she is, for once, forgetful of her powers as Slayer.
The dialogue in the scenes in the Summer’s house, from the time Joyce comes in until Angel, vamped out, jumps out of the window, is the foundation of the Buffy/Angel romantic arc and gives a precis of Angel’s character: he fights because “somebody has to”, his family is dead, killed by vampires, a long time ago, and “It’s a vengence gig” although what role vengeance plays is not clear until he lays out the story of the gypsy curse in his soliloquy at The Bronze. He is an honorable man, doesn’t take advantage of the young girl in her bedroom, doesn’t read her diary, tries to resist kissing her.
Angel vamping out when he kisses Buffy the first time has been considered a continuity error, but it’s pretty easy to explain or at least excuse it in terms of vampire canon. First, the drive to feed from live prey is the primary motivator of the demon; both Darla and Giles say as much and as they rarely agree on any detail of vampire psychology, it seems to establish the point. Second, vampires are scent predators, and he has been in her bedroom all day; teenage girl’s bedrooms are reservoirs of human scents, blood among them. Finally, moments when Angel’s control snaps suddenly and disastrously are an ongoing theme of his character and one of the tragic flaws which give shape and direction to Angel, the series.
His character is further delineated when he talks to Darla in his apartment, where his relationship with her is sketched and the ways in which he tries to divorce himself from the vampire norm are listed: he lives above ground, doesn’t hunt, tries to help ‘her’. When Darla and Angel confront one another over Joyce’s body in the kitchen at the Summer’s house, we see even more emphatically than during the kiss how fine the line between suppressing and expressing the demon, and how hard it is for Angel to stay on the side of suppression. The kitchen scene foreshadows in blocking and content the time Angel watches helplessly, uninvited, when Spike plays at draining Joyce in season three’s “Lover’s Walk”, and when he closes the door on two vampires and a room full of lawyers, five years later and much water under the bridge.
In first and second act scenes, Angel jumps headfirst out a window, is thrown through another, holds a bitten body without draining it, and pins Darla to a wall- action motifs which define Angel as a physical being, and recur at critical moments throughout both shows. Being thrown through windows is so much an Angel “thing” that it is parodied during AtS s5, notably “The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinqo”.
The kind of vampire Angel was before his soul is also delineated in this episode; although Giles says he was just like any other, an animal, The Master recognizes him as “the most vicious of all” and Darla describes him as her equal in ruling in The Master’s court. Angel himself, in the soliloquy in The Bronze says he “offered ugly death...with a song in my heart”. Angel is not just the souled version of an average vampire, he is a self-described monster leashed in by a soul and, according to Darla, love for his enemy.
Julia, part 2 to follow
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Aug 3, 2004 17:15:14 GMT -5
The interaction between Buffy, Giles, Willow and Xander after Angel is revealed as a vampire illustrates the Council of Watcher’s dogma on the nature of vampires, which is at odds with how the vampires we see actually behave. Giles says “...a vampire isn't a person at all. It may have the movements, the, the memories, even the personality of the person that it took over, but i-it's still a demon at the core, there is no halfway.” He defines Angel as “like all of them. Uh, a vicious, violent animal.” We are shown something entirely different: vampires with a code of honor, with “personal interests” like Darla’s in Angel, who differ in the energy they put into being evil; we have already been shown their ability to make very long term plans, in “Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest”.
Buffy’s reaction to Giles’s edict on the nature of vampires is “Why?” and that word is the thin end of the wedge which will, eventually, divide her and her circle from the influence of the Council of Watchers.
Xander, on the other hand, repeats and emphasizes Giles’s position on Buffy’s duty to dust Angel. This may just be sexual jealousy but the last scene of “The Pack” where Xander essentially declares fealty to Giles for protecting his memory of the hyena possession suggests a different source of his vehemence, as does his need to believe that he did not kill his “friend, but what killed (his) friend” when he’s responsible for Jesse’s death in “The Harvest”. Hatred of vampires informs Xander’s character throughout the run of the series.
Willow’s babbling attempt to make things good, to believe Angel a “good vampire”, to live vicariously through her friend’s experiences, and the underlying self contempt which shows in her comments about herself form the thematic basis for the changes she undergoes and the mistakes she makes in later seasons.
The Council of Watcher’s definition of vampiric nature is, at its core, an oxymoron: vampires are not human, but demon, but they are demonic PERSONS, individuals of differing abilities, tastes, and motivations. It is this oxymoron which is at the core of the vampiric story arc which runs through the Buffyverse: not only the big four, Darla, Angel, Drusilla and Spike, or even that group with the addition of Harmony, but also Sunday from “The Freshman”, and Holden from “Conversations with Dead People”, Angel’s by-blows Penn, James, Elizabeth, and Lawson, the vampiric tycoon Russell Winters in “City of...” and the vampire gang which Gunn’s crew fights throughout the early seasons of Angel, the series, are hard to defeat because they are not animals but, at their core, persons who survive on their wits and ability to cooperate or dominate. They do so in a markedly human way, and at the end of the day pure demons, whether Illyria or The Scourge, lump vampires with humans and not with demons. “Angel” draws a bright line under this contradiction.
The most important lines in the episode are said during Angel’s soliloquy in The Bronze:
When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it doesn't get your soul. That's gone! No conscience, no remorse... It's an easy way to live. You have no idea what it's like to have done the things I've done... and to care.
Taken with the statement, in the first bedroom scene, that “Somebody has to do it”, these lines define the central motivation for Souled Angel’s character. “Welcome to the Hellmouth” established his physical presence- tall, dark, handsome and mysterious, with a look consciously evocative of James Dean and early Marlon Brando, he appears suddenly and then disappears into the shadows- but until this episode we know almost nothing of his personality.
The interaction between David Greenwalt’s lines and David Boreanaz embodiment of the role result in a character who is a tightly wound bundle of conflicts, ready to burst into unexpected and often self defeating action at any moment. Darla points out the wrongness of his attraction to the Slayer, but the cross branded on his chest by their second kiss says it even more succinctly: he cannot touch what she is without burning.
Angel stakes Darla, an act which looks, in retrospect, knowing exactly what they were to each other “for several generations” and what will eventually come of the act, much more significant than it did when the episode first aired. Almost every line, every act, every gesture of this episode is subject to connection to later events, from Xander and Cordelia snarking on the dance floor of The Bronze, through Giles and Joyce “meeting cute” to Buffy laying down her weapon when confronting Angel (a sequence which finds near perfect reflection in “Sleeper”, BtVs s7, when she casts her stake aside instead of dusting Spike).
A review is supposed to evaluate its subject in terms of its success as a discrete artistic item, but when viewing “Angel”, all that comes after obscures that goal. It’s to be admired for the moments of emotional truth, between Buffy and Angel, Buffy and Giles, and especially Buffy and Darla, and for the compact way it sets the stage for further plot developments. But is it a good episode as a single piece of television drama? If I ever knew, writing this review has taken that knowledge from me.
Julia, a list of Motifs and Themes follows.
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Aug 3, 2004 17:16:05 GMT -5
Motifs
As used here, the term “motif” means a single piece of business, prop, set, or use of language which forms part of the environment of the Buffyverse. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list.
The Three make their first appearance to the flick of a customized Zippo lighter.
Ange refers to vampires as dogs.
Angel is seen through the staircase of the Bronze.
The door at 1630 Revello Drive.
Angel has his wounds tended after battle.
Angel is thrown through a window.
The living room window at 1630 Revello is smashed.
“True Face”
Angel pins Darla against a wall.
Buffy’s thousand yard stare when Joyce is injured.
“I can walk like a man but I’m not one”
Two gun shooting
Themes
As used here, theme means compex idea or pattern of behavior which provides structure to the development of stories in the Buffyverse.
Angel and Buffy take care of each other in battle.
Angel prefers to face Joyce rather than participating in Buffy’s attempt to hide.
Joyce is clueless: she doesn’t hear two sets of booted feet coming up the stairs, she senses nothing wrong with Darla, she accepts Giles concern at face value.
Buffy masters a new figthing technique by fighting someone who is trained.
The Council of Watchers has a definition of vampiric nature which is at odds with how the vampires we see behave.
Buffy “lives very much in the now”
Angel’s solution for difficult interpersonal situations: “I’ve got to walk away from this.”
“Those of us who walk at night share a bond”
Angel fights because “somebody has to”
“to do what I have done, and to care”
“Slayer kill vampire”
“Why was he good to me?”
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Post by Lola m on Aug 4, 2004 20:32:37 GMT -5
Rank Hubris: Reviewing “Angel”<snipped for space> The front door to 1630 Revello is a strong motif in the series; more than any other physical feature, it symbolizes Buffy’s house. Very insightful, Julia. How often we have key scenes in front of or involving that door. Joyce learning about her daughter's slayerness, for example. Or the door as barrier, or not, to the danger outside. And she is the one given all the classic scary movie cliches, too. The noise at the back door when she is all alone, no one there when she looks but a face at the window when she turns away, the slow frightened walk through the house with the scary music, etc. I also found it interesting that Buffy is the one who supplied the "role" of noble guy avenging his murdered family. She's the one saying "was it vampires?" and "a vengence thing". She is creating a romantic / dramatic backstory for him before she even learns the less romantic, but decidedly more dramatic, reality. Ooooh! Nice comparison and cross-referencing there, Julia! I also found a nice "sympathetic" vibe to the scene at the end where the Master is so upset over the death of Darla, "she was my favorite for 400 years" and the Annoying Annointed One says "she was weak". Seemed to mirror the other times we will have the demonic hatred of, or prejudice about, the overtly emotional or human sides of this special "family" of vamps. The Judge talking about Dru and Spike, for example. ;D Good one. What a lovely turn of phrase, Julia. I really enjoy the way you have crafted this analysis. I must be off to bed, but will be returning tomorrow to read and comment more. One last note. Giles is so . . . complacent, when he makes these statements. Spouting the Watcher's party line. And over the years we'll see all their wisdom about vampires turned on it's head. I wonder, tho, how much he believed himself and how much he just wanted to believe or at least have Buffy believe. Lola
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Aug 4, 2004 21:26:49 GMT -5
Very insightful, Julia. How often we have key scenes in front of or involving that door. Joyce learning about her daughter's slayerness, for example. Or the door as barrier, or not, to the danger outside. Much of the early development of Spuffy takes place on one side or another of the door, too. I'd wanted to deal with how this episode works as a horror story, but like about three pages of outline, it got to be more than I could put into a single review. You're precisely right about this; the build-up to Darla's invitation and attack on Joyce is a jem of classic horror pacing and visual imagery. Great observation: everything she says is correct, but precisely wrong. Angel's soliloquy in The Bronze fills in the missing proper nouns: the vampire was Angel (although I think Darla helped with the friends and the friends' children) and the vengence at work is against Angel himself. >snip< The Master's interactions with Darla, with The Three, and with The Annoying One are worth a long essay of their own. >snip< Giles of Season 1 is not a Giles who could have been Ripper, is he? Julia, thanks for the interaction!
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Post by Rachael on Aug 4, 2004 21:47:11 GMT -5
Okay, then. A few observations of my own, that maybe didn't make it into the review, first: Buffy is fairly clueless about Angel, even where she ought to be picking up signs. Example? He fights too well to be a human. And also, when she kisses him the first time - or, for that matter, while she's doctoring him up - she doesn't notice that he's room temperature? Okay, maybe it's California in April that's the issue, but really. And also, she can sort of sense him, and this episode puts the lie, maybe, to my earlier observation that Buffy can't sense vampires. She seems to sense the Three, and also, she senses Angel even when she can't see him. She might have had the data to put two and two together, had she not been blinded by schoolgirl crushy feelings. Didn't there used to be a mirror on Buffy's closet door? Convenient that it's gone, if so. Angel is sooo young, for being so old. He knows kissing Buffy is wrong, and he shouldn't, and all the why nots that she doesn't know. The adult behavior in that situation, when dealing with a smitten sixteen-year-old, would be to NOT tell her you were having kissy feelings. But instead, Angel tells her he can't be around her 'cause he wants to kiss her. Which is the ideal way to get her to never leave him alone. The drug analogy is here, already, and explicit. Angel has human blood in his fridge - not pig's, as later, but stolen human blood. Later, Darla says, "Just say yes," a direct parallel with the Nancy Reagan "Just say no" campaign. Human blood is a drug, and Angel has to resist taking it from living humans - and DB does such a wonderful job of making it look hard to stop himself. In these early eps, Angel's duality is nonexistent. It's " I offered ugly death," yadda yadda yadda. Always "I", not "Angelus". So, he knew it was him. And yet, later, he's decided to act like he and Angelus are separate entities. When does the switch happen? Giles has a wonderful sense of fairness and justice. He runs out immediately to tell Buffy she's out to kill the wrong vampire. This can't just be because he's worried about her not knowing about Darla - for all Giles knows, the Darla information could wait until she got back. But she's gonna kill Angel, and he can't let her, because Angel didn't do it. There are extenuating circumstances, like it's better she doesn't fight Angel if she can avoid it, 'cause he could kill her, but the impression I got was that Giles felt that staking Angel for the wrong reasons wasn't ethical. No matter that he's a vampire. . .it may be that Giles' own sense of what a vampire is was already changing. Finally, a very trivial observation: Buffy sleeps in her bra. I've noticed it more than once, and not just when Angel's in her room. Bra, under jammies. Weird.
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Aug 4, 2004 23:30:54 GMT -5
Okay, then. A few observations of my own, that maybe didn't make it into the review, first: Buffy is fairly clueless about Angel, even where she ought to be picking up signs. Example? He fights too well to be a human. And also, when she kisses him the first time - or, for that matter, while she's doctoring him up - she doesn't notice that he's room temperature? Okay, maybe it's California in April that's the issue, but really. And also, she can sort of sense him, and this episode puts the lie, maybe, to my earlier observation that Buffy can't sense vampires. She seems to sense the Three, and also, she senses Angel even when she can't see him. She might have had the data to put two and two together, had she not been blinded by schoolgirl crushy feelings. All true- and probably one of those times that logic doesn't stop ME from telling the story they want to tell: if Buffy was even normally observant of stuff that's obviously different about Angel, there wouldn't be a story to tell:-/ Good catch- missed that completely. Thus proving once again, as a couple of days of discussion back sometime early this year explored, that Angel is a doofus. Buffy shoots an antismoking poster when she arms herself to go after Angel; antismoking and anti drug posters are another motif, and I actually have that in my notes and missed it when I was compiling the list of motifs. I think the first hint is in"School Hard" but it doesn't get developed until after "Innocence". Huh... so maybe there is a hint that Giles has a less rigid adherence to Watcher dogma than it seems? Ripper is there in his moral relativism? Buffy's "Why?" echoes Giles' earlier doubts? Finally, a very trivial observation: Buffy sleeps in her bra. I've noticed it more than once, and not just when Angel's in her room. Bra, under jammies. Weird. [/quote] Weird, no doubt. Uncomfortable, too. Julia, thinking a bit more freely now
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Post by Lola m on Aug 5, 2004 20:12:35 GMT -5
<snip> Buffy’s reaction to Giles’s edict on the nature of vampires is “Why?” and that word is the thin end of the wedge which will, eventually, divide her and her circle from the influence of the Council of Watchers. Wow. Very true. It is Buffy's instinctive urge to question and it willl always rankle those who require a rigid and docile attitude. Makes the Watchers hate her and Maggie and her army boys too. It is almost painful for me to watch early Willow sometimes. Her first instinct and reaction to anything is always to assume she has done something wrong. Frankly, it's painful to see this same underlying vibe with Xander too. He's just better at hiding it. But you really understand why they've been best friends forever. Got no clever thoughts to stick in here, just eetah! Very, very thoughtful review of an important season one ep, Julia. Thank you! Lola
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Post by Kate (K8) on Aug 6, 2004 10:27:27 GMT -5
<snip> Buffy “lives very much in the now” <snip> When watching the Replacement today I noticed how the above changes. Not only is she reading a history book and is engrossed in it, but throughout season five she wants to know about the Slayer history and is still kinda living in the past in relation to her romantic life (Not present in the now with Riley but affected by her time with Angel).
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Post by Nan-S'cubie Mascot on Aug 6, 2004 11:57:02 GMT -5
The interaction between David Greenwalt’s lines and David Boreanaz embodiment of the role result in a character who is a tightly wound bundle of conflicts, ready to burst into unexpected and often self defeating action at any moment. Darla points out the wrongness of his attraction to the Slayer, but the cross branded on his chest by their second kiss says it even more succinctly: he cannot touch what she is without burning. A fine observation, finely expressed. This line alone is worth the price of admission. And your retrospective uncertainty about whether the episode is "good," given what it is, does, and sets up, is a problem I often have. Enjoyment or lack of same gets lost in all the meaning, whether intended or expressed. It's like trying to discern whether a member of your family is pretty/handsome--those terms really have no meaning when describing someone you're that close to. They simply ARE. And internalizing an episode to the extent you've done has much the same effect--removing your perspective. Wonderful stuff, Julia--not just this chosen line but *all* of it. Thanks!
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Aug 6, 2004 12:31:01 GMT -5
When watching the Replacement today I noticed how the above changes. Not only is she reading a history book and is engrossed in it, but throughout season five she wants to know about the Slayer history and is still kinda living in the past in relation to her romantic life (Not present in the now with Riley but affected by her time with Angel). It's pretty apparent though, that "living in the now" is Buffy's strength; it's when she gets hung up on the past that she's weakest. I think, anyway. Suddenly that sounds pretty facile. Julia, will need to think about that more carefully
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Aug 6, 2004 12:36:06 GMT -5
A fine observation, finely expressed. This line alone is worth the price of admission. And your retrospective uncertainty about whether the episode is "good," given what it is, does, and sets up, is a problem I often have. Enjoyment or lack of same gets lost in all the meaning, whether intended or expressed. It's like trying to discern whether a member of your family is pretty/handsome--those terms really have no meaning when describing someone you're that close to. They simply ARE. And internalizing an episode to the extent you've done has much the same effect--removing your perspective. Wonderful stuff, Julia--not just this chosen line but *all* of it. Thanks! Praise from Caesar is great praise indeed. Thanks, Nan. Julia, still feeling that reviewing this episode properly is beyond mere mortal powers
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Post by Kate (K8) on Aug 6, 2004 14:27:33 GMT -5
It's pretty apparent though, that "living in the now" is Buffy's strength; it's when she gets hung up on the past that she's weakest. I think, anyway. Suddenly that sounds pretty facile. Julia, will need to think about that more carefully Certainly the past is a hinderance in the progress of Buffy's romantic life and living in the now is good for getting through immediate difficulties. Also, as Buffy tells Willow, it is important to live life to the full coz tommorrow you may be dead especially if your a slayer. However living in the now too much may, sometimes, lead to short-termist attitudes like when Joyce accuses Buffy of just reacting to each new danger and Buffy thinks they mean what she is going to do immediately when the Scoobies are wanting to know what she plans to do with her life. Were you thinking of any particular times when living in the now was important? Enjoyed reading your earlier posts by the way.
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