Angel
Buffy Episode Review
In which Buffy learns that Angel is a vampire when Darla turns out to be his ex-girlfriend. Raise your hands. Who saw that coming?
What Did I Think?
This episode is an example of how even the most cliched stories can be put to good use. (We've got two going full strength here.) All that's is missing is the scene where it is implied that Buffy is being unreasonable for suspecting Darla is up to no good. The only thing remotely resembling a twist is that Darla isn't a new quantity; the audience met her in the pilot and is familiar with her character.
As far as providing back-story goes, this episode starts mining what turns out to be a mother-lode: Angel's curse provides the meat of most of the second season, big chunks of the third, plus his very own spin-off. Credit sharp writing and good acting for making what is essentially the oldest story in the book work like a charm.
And contrived as it is, it is totally worth it to see Angel go flying through that window.
It isn't that I'm anti-Angel, or insensitive to the big dramatic romance of his relationship with Buffy. (I tear up during soft drink commercials). It's just that if I've seen this before, my attention tends to wander sometimes. I love seeing the actions of an episode cause the characters to grow and change rather than just propelling them through one hoop after another.
For example, Buffy is having the effect of broadening Giles' mind and perceptions. In WTTH, he told Xander point blank that his friend Jesse died when he was turned into a vampire. ("You're not looking at your friend, you're looking at the thing that killed him.") Here, when Ms. Summers mentions Darla, Giles makes the connection that Darla may have been the one to attack Buffy's mother and that Angel may be innocent.
Just a few eps ago, he was incapable of considering that possibility that vampires are anything by evil, but now Giles entertains that idea that Angel may have been set up by Darla and he goes to tell Buffy about it, knowing full well that this information will affect her resolve to kill Angel. This represents a huge paradigm shift for Giles from "All vamps must die-mode." Certainly, Willow's arguments about how Angel has never hurt Buffy influenced him, but we also see a growing faith in Buffy's instincts.
Buffy, on the other hand, has her trust in Angel badly shaken by the revelation that he is a vampire, but there is more here than that. Her faith in herself is also tested. Throughout the previous six episodes, we see her instincts as the Slayer getting stronger and stronger. From, her realization that Amy is trapped in her mother's body to her determination that something is very wrong with Xander, she's become more and more confident. Here, she makes the decision (based, granted, partly on lust) that Angel is one of the good-guys and brings him home. From then on, any action he took that betrayed her trust would have caused her grief.
Darla's actions escalate matters. When Buffy just thinks that she will not be able to have a romance with Angel, she is sad and disappointed; when she thinks he has been able to hurt someone she loves because of her decision to trust him, Buffy is homicidal. It's guilt and anger at herself, more than at Angel that motivates her. As she tells Giles, "I invited him into my home." It's a statement she repeats to Angel when they face each other at the Bronze. What really saves him from her cross-bolt is not her desire to hear him redeem himself, but rather the hope that something he says will justify her own unquestioning faith in him, and in herself.
The whole sad ending is less successful, however. We all know Buffy and Angel will get together eventually, so their big goodbye at the Bronze is only moderately affecting. On the other hand, this is first time I've seen a fumigation motif used to represent a Hero's romance, so points for effort.