This was actually one of my favorite choices of the season. He was the joke for so long, he stopped seeming like a threat and basically all it took was for Sage to remind him he was for him to turn brutal.
Angel was the central character of his show, but Cordelia and Wesley served as his connection to human beings and acted as the strongest links to his own humanity. When the show started Cordelia and Wesley were the closest thing he had to family. The relationships were interesting here, because Angel was like a father figure/ mentor to Wesley and became like a brother. With Cordelia, Angel was a reliable, supportive, and dependable friend and she was the same for him and both wound up falling in love with each other because of the bond and the connection they had. This trio was awesome and the fact that both died before Angel became human again was so tragic.
Honestly, my main aversion to reading the comics is knowing they won’t be there. They’re such an integral part of the Buffyverse and even just Angel’s character. (They’re also two of my favorite characters) I don’t really want to see it without them.
Such a killer edit. I love how well you synced up elements of the song with visuals from Buffy and Angel. Plus this vid did a super good job highlighting the camp horror elements of the shows. Most vids understandably focus on character and relationship moments, which is great, but this felt like a refreshing change of pace.
Yeah, that Joss got rid of both Cordelia and Lilah , my favorite characters, in season 4 was a deal breaker for me. Even then, before knowing anything else, I was like "This guy likes debasing and killing off strong women". I don't care how good season 5 is, will never watch it unless I can do it for free. The one episode that included Tara in the main title credits on Buffy is the one he killed her on. Prick in 4k.
TW for discussions of assault THIS IS A FIVE PARAGRAPH ESSAY. I’m not kidding. I remember when I made this video, debating with myself whether or not it was appropriate to put such a fun song with these characters. I tried to use as little of Warren as I could, and I made the video anyway. I think the issue with the Trio is that while Warren is clearly positioned as the leader and the others the followers, there are moments when this goes too far. Jonathan has been shown to be deeply lonely with a terrible opinion of himself and immense fear that everyone around him shares this opinion (via Earshot). It’s understandable that he is willing to forgo his better judgment in order to attain the companionship and feeling of belonging he desperately wants. Andrew, we are told almost nothing about, but what we know from the recurring “Tucker’s brother” joke is that he has made no impact on anyone at all. Additionally, while never stated or even treated with any kind of severity, he is clearly a closeted gay boy, which on its own would increase the desire to belong, but he also has feelings for Warren (which it is implied Warren exploits, and the First exploits as well to get Andrew to do its bidding), driving him to also seek specifically Warren’s attention and approval. I think these were really interesting characters and dynamics that were completely left to be worked out by the audience and not developed at all, so I’ve seen it said often that some people don’t understand why Jonathan would go from awarding Buffy the class protector umbrella to being her nemesis, but Buffy never wanted to be Jonathan’s FRIEND. So it makes sense to me, but the show itself never TOLD me why. The Trio is also comedic relief for the majority of season six, an approach I actually love because season six is so dark. So rather than the villains, it was real life causing the darkness. But this also took away from allowing the audience to perceive the Trio with any seriousness. I think the Number One Problem is the monstrosity that is Dead Things. Before that episode, Jonathan and Andrew going along with everything makes sense due to their desperation for friendship and purpose. Even after that episode, their behaviors make sense (Andrew killing Jonathan is debatable). It’s really just that episode where they go from being accomplices to being perpetrators as they #1 kidnap a girl, #2 brainwash her, #3 celebrate doing so, #4 encourage Warren using her as a sex toy, and #5 at the very least CLAIM to want to do so themselves. I’m not even going to attempt to talk about the horror of this plot, but I think this is a great example of when the writers take things too far and force the characters to do things that are out of character for the sake of the plot and/or a message they are trying to promote. Considering everything else they tackled in season six, this feels like a really bad attempt at a metaphor for date rape, but like…a REALLY BAD attempt. So in these instances, as a viewer, it is 100% understandable to decide “Wow fuck that character. What a piece of shit.” But personally, I blame the writer when this type of thing happens. Because if you remove this episode, Jonathan’s and Andrew’s arcs make sense. Like MAYBE you could consider this episode the reason Jonathan changes his mind about Warren and tips Buffy off about the orbs in Seeing Red, but that could have happened in so many other ways. So I still choose to like Jonathan and Andrew as characters without condoning their behavior in Dead Things because they are pieces of fiction and I don’t consider Dead Things a genuine part of who they are. This probably doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, which is fine. We all consume media in our own ways. But I think it’s important to remember that behind every fictional human is a real human, and sometimes it’s the real human who fucks up, and it’s the real human who needs to be held accountable. This can also happen in shows with a large team of writers who don’t all necessarily have the same intentions with the characters (too many cooks in the kitchen, as they say), though I don’t know that this is the case with this specific show/episode. But I think it’s the consumer’s choice whether or not to consider these moments part of the character. Because you can say, “A real human wrote everything they do. You don’t get to pick and choose which actions happen and which ones don’t. They made the character, not you. How do you know what’s in character? Blah blah blah” But there are stand-out moments sometimes (such as Dead Things) when a character’s actions blatantly go against everything else the writers have provided us about them, but ALSO the writers’ intentions with the character arc. So if they want me to sympathize with Jonathan and Andrew, this episode contradicts that intent. If they want me to like Andrew in season seven, this makes that impossible. If they want me to find Jonathan’s season three to season six transformation believable, this disallows that. No, I can’t know the characters better than the writers, but writers do have a responsibility to keep characters consistent, otherwise the show would be utter nonsense. If Buffy was preaching to Faith about the slayer’s responsibilities one episode and a raging murderer the next, I wouldn’t respect the show at all. Slip ups like this happen, one episode every so often going in a really bizarre, out-of-character or out-of-lore direction, but that’s when I choose to perceive the overall character intent over the specific actions within these episodes. Dead Things exists in a bubble outside the Buffyverse world to me. It’s a dead thing to me (...sorry). Welp, I’m gonna stop myself. If you read that, you’re a champ. Anyone who writes an essay back, I will 100% read and respond. Unless you’re just insulting me.
(Oh shit this got so long, sorry!) I agree with pretty much everything you said, and I think you have great insight into Jonathan and Andrew's characters, but I do think you're not taking the time period it was made in into account when you talk about how the actions taken in Dead Things would be received at time of release. I love BtVS deeply, but it is a show that has been aging poorly, and will only continue to do so (not even taking into account the revelations that Whedon is a monster). It still has a lot to offer (and will always be important to me personally), but every rewatch I discover more icky moments that didn't stand out to me when I first saw it as a teenager. Media in the 80s and 90s was full to brimming with depictions of what by our modern standards would be harassment or assault, but was normalized at the time and often simply played for laughs. There are countless depictions across genres of men "peeking" as women change where we're supposed to understand the impulse and be on his side: he's the good guy, he's not gonna hurt her, why shouldn't he peek? 80s teen movies are super sexually charged, and if we're following a male perspective, women are supposed to ultimately be the prize the "heroes" receive. In The Breakfast Club when Bender looks up Claire's skirt and is implied to grope her, that's not supposed to turn us off of him, we're still supposed to like the character and celebrate when he gets the girl in the end. In The Sandlot, a children's movie(!!), we're supposed to laugh when a kid "drowns" in order to get mouth-to-mouth from a hot lifeguard, and despite being banished from the pool, he's still seen as victorious after he uses the CPR to kiss her without her consent-- the whole scene is played as comedy. Most relevant of all is probably Weird Science, where two 80s nerds decide to go all Dr. Frankenstein and create their dream woman from scratch. The whole purpose of her existence and consciousness is to fulfill their desires, and while the movie doesn't lapse into porn (because that would be a terrible plot), she was clearly designed with their sexual desires in mind. While neither of them end up with her, the nerds still get the girls the originally liked in the end. Dead Things comes into the world with that cultural context behind it (as does the Buffybot). The episode itself is challenging those normalized concepts by first playing into them and then emphasizing a new perspective. The moment that Katrina says "rape" is a powerful moment to make people rethink the culture they've become accustomed to, and you see the genuine shock in Jonathan and Andrew, who've never considered it that way. In their heads, they're the underdogs, the nerds, the heroes of all those movies they grew up watching. When they've seen similar moments in media, it's been comedic, it's all in fun! The fact that that loss of autonomy causes harm has never occurred to them, and you can see it in their faces and their weak protests. Up to now they've been boys playing games, acting out fantasies about power, wealth, status-- that's why they've been robbing banks and plotting to "take over Sunnydale" (a very nebulous goal), this is just another extension of that. The signs of power are money and women, so that's what they'd go out and get, after all, don't they deserve their own Revenge of the Nerds? They're smart, good guys and they should be rewarded for that! Now, notably, Warren does not blink when Katrina throws the R word out there. That's because he doesn't live in the same fantasy as the other two, he knows what he's doing and he's doing it on purpose. He is a violent misogynist who thinks that women should have to answer to him because he's smarter, he's better, and women are all stuck up bitches who can't see his genius. The only reason he uses technology instead of brute force, is because he's better at the former than the latter. Warren is motivated by hate, spite, cruelty, and his innate sense of superiority over everyone else (including Jonathan and Andrew). That's why he decides to target Buffy while Jonathan and Andrew are more hesitant to at first, because deep down he knows that she is stronger than him and he fears and hates the possibility that a woman (ANY woman) could best him. Jonathan is motivated by the desire to be noticed, to be somebody. Being ignored and overlooked hurts, and because of that he'll dabble in revenge, but it didn't create in him the same poisonous well of hate that lives in Warren. That's why Superstar isn't a revenge fantasy, it's a power fantasy-- he just wants to finally be noticed, and appreciated, to have access to all the parts of status he feels he's been denied. That's how he views the cerebral dampener at first, a way to access that which he's been denied. Andrew's chief desire seems to be to hang out, any pent up anger from his past would probably just come from his status as "nerd," but it's less specific than the other two. His idolization of Warren makes him easy to manipulate, and given that he's played mostly as a Kinsey 6 homo, his comments about Katrina being hot are likely just a way to fit in and perform masculinity. Jonathan's comments on her appearance come off as a bit nervous and juvenile, like he can't quite believe this is happening. Jonathan thinks he's playing the role of the nerd heroes he's seen in movies, and Andrew is doing the same but he's also (likely) acting his desire on top of that. And then the dampening wears off, and Katrina confronts them, and their entire worldview is turned on its head. And it's difficult to immediately accept the idea that you're an attacker when you've always thought you were the victim, so when Warren yells at them to stop her, they do what they usually do: they comply. They're shaken, and they haven't had enough time to confront this new reality, which is something they'd need to do before they could stand up to Warren. Their compliance is not admirable, it's an awful moment of weakness that ends in a death, but it does make sense. As the episode continues, Andrew does what he does best and represses as much as he can. He goes back to the game, goes back to Warren, revels in this new power fantasy. They're getting away with something! If they're that smart, they must be right! He's not ready to confront reality, and he doesn't until season 7 after Jonathan's death. Jonathan, on the other hand, has had the wool pulled from over his eyes. As he processes, and the new worldview sets in, his walls go up. You can see the distrust he has of Warren now, he's still not brave enough to stand up to him but he's warier, more on edge, more alert. His allegiance has shifted, his self image has been shattered, and that's WHY he goes to Buffy at the end of the season, why he's more prepared to betray, why he thinks about facing consequences. I think he also sees Andrew's idolatry in the aftermath, and part of the reason he sticks around may be to protect one friend from the other. The insidiousness of the Trio and its comedy are inseparable to my reading of them, because they're both a product of a misogynistic culture, and a challenge to its normalized beliefs. They come from a comedic tradition of nerdy underdogs, and show that those aren't the harmless goofs that they've always been portrayed as. I think Dead Things is hard to watch now, as a member of a culture with a greater understanding of consent, and I don't think that anyone should have to subject themselves to it when they rewatch the show. However, apart from the in-universe fact that it represents a notable shift in the dynamic of the Trio, I also think that it was a very sharp critique that was necessary at its moment of release, and that Jonathan and Andrew's responses within it make sense given the cultural context of both their characters and the audience watching BtVS as it initially aired.
@@livandlaf I think the time the show was released impacts a lot of the events, and as you said, I'm able to forgive some things I normally wouldn't because of this. These are instances I can look at and say, "The character is a good person regardless of this action, which was not at the time understood to be bad." An example of this is during Angel when Wesley kisses Fred without her consent. Wesley is my favorite character in the Buffyverse, but this is an action that is wrong and would currently be acknowledged as such. However, at the time, media was filled with people kissing other people without consent. These moments are usually portrayed as hot, empowering moments in which the guy nuts up and goes for the girl. This actually still happens in some media and even more in books, but is something that audiences are now able to look at and go "yikes" or at the very least "hmm." The way the show approaches rape and consent is inconsistent. Dead Things shows a situation which reflects date rape drugs and Seeing Red shows more of a date rape situation in which a familiar person takes the situation/refusal out of hand under the impression that if he just tries harder, she’ll come around. The actions taken in Seeing Red are extremely blatant, disturbing, upsetting, and are heavily criticized by the show, enough so that the perpetrator is so horrified by his actions, he literally becomes a new person (although the soul lore is another thing that’s pretty inconsistent, but if Angel/Angelus taught us anything, it’s that the soul completely changes who you are). Angel raped Buffy, but no one ever talks about that. It’s statutory rape, and he looks like a teenager, so it doesn’t look wrong and the show doesn’t make it feel wrong. This is another moment that is a consequence of its time. I’m not going to completely shift my opinion of Angel as a character because of the way the show chose to execute this, especially considering how powerful the season 2 storyline is in general. I hear you about Dead Things intending to be a critique, and it does serve as a wake up call for Jonathan, at least. But the show had the perfect opportunity to demonstrate growth here, not just in regards to his perception of Warren, giving him the guts to act against him, but against these issues of how media treats women and teen girls. In Entropy, the camera in the Magic Box shows the Trio Spike and Anya “coupling.” We never witness them actually watch the full scene play out, so we can believe they turned it off and didn’t watch. But this is that thing with the nerdy underdogs being peeing Toms. Had this happened before Dead Things, it would have made more sense, and none of them actually appears aroused by the footage, so maybe that’s okay too, because they aren’t getting off on it. But we don’t know what happens next, and all Jonathan says is “Oh my God.” This would have been the PERFECT opportunity for him to, if not protest them watching, at least show discomfort at this moment being shared. But he doesn’t. So maybe this is also a product of its time, and watching wasn’t considered too much of an issue yet because it isn’t rape, and the show was only prepared to criticize rape. In Seeing Red, they go to the Bronze and the only thing Jonathan has to say about Warren flirting with someone is annoyance at Warren’s priorities. Another missed opportunity for Jonathan to express to Andrew concern at what Warren might do. Seeing Red sparks a complete transformation and redemption arc for Spike. Andrew’s redemption arc stems from killing Jonathan. The show placed two rape attempts only episodes apart and only used one of them to really further character growth. The other one says, “Hey, this is bad!” and moves on. There are certain moments of consent issues within the show I am able to forgive because of the time, but others that just feel like negligence to me. They chose to include Dead Things, and though it might be a critique, they weren't really able to commit to how it impacted the characters beyond trust issues within the Trio.
Some magnificent person upscaled all the episodes and uploaded them. I can't remember exactly where I found it, but it started with a google search for "Angel 1999 1080p upscale." I hope you find it!
