I was talking this over with a really good friend tonight, who had written a fanfic version of ATF S6 on the ATPO board with a bunch of other fans. He'd read the first five issues and said his difficulty with Lynch's ATF was that it did not have any restraints on it. A problem he saw with the comics. That is was too busy and had too much going on. To be fair, I told him, Lynch had wanted to hang back a bit, but Whedon told him to cut loose, anything goes. I'm not sure that was sage advice, because I think Lynch unlike Whedon needs more of a central focus.
I agree with you analysis of Wesley by the way. And I think it is important to the thematic arc of the series that Wes is the one Angel can't save. Wes is the sacrificial lamb. The reason is that the two friends who were with Angel from the beginning, who came with him from Sunnydale - who kept him on the straight and narrow so to speak and became his version of Giles and Willow and Xander - are destroyed. He turns them into monsters and they die. Which if you think about it is exactly what Angelus did. As Angel tells Spike in Damage - "I couldn't look away from the evil, it fascinated me, I was the most interested in it. I enjoyed turning people into monsters. It was what I worked hard at." (paraphrased, no time to find the exact words.)
The tragedy at the heart of the Angel story and how it differs from Buffy's is - Angel destroys those who join him. They become his sacrificial lambs.
Doyle - dies, sacrifices himself for Angel. (Also from interviews, if Glenn Quinn, the actor who played Doyle, had still been available and had not died tragically - they would have brought Doyle back as a big bad.)
Cordelia - was supposed to be the big bad in S4, but the actress got pregnant, so they made her possessed instead, with her child as the big bad. She was evil because of the child. The opposite of Darla, who was good because of her child. And it is Cordy, the surrogate mother, Angel's love and companion, the girl he saves, who twists Connor up inside and corrupts him - when he's still on the fence. Fighting a redeemed Darla for his soul.
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I agree with you analysis of Wesley by the way. And I think it is important to the thematic arc of the series that Wes is the one Angel can't save. Wes is the sacrificial lamb. The reason is that the two friends who were with Angel from the beginning, who came with him from Sunnydale - who kept him on the straight and narrow so to speak and became his version of Giles and Willow and Xander - are destroyed. He turns them into monsters and they die. Which if you think about it is exactly what Angelus did. As Angel tells Spike in Damage - "I couldn't look away from the evil, it fascinated me, I was the most interested in it. I enjoyed turning people into monsters. It was what I worked hard at." (paraphrased, no time to find the exact words.)
The tragedy at the heart of the Angel story and how it differs from Buffy's is - Angel destroys those who join him. They become his sacrificial lambs.
Doyle - dies, sacrifices himself for Angel. (Also from interviews, if Glenn Quinn, the actor who played Doyle, had still been available and had not died tragically - they would have brought Doyle back as a big bad.)
Cordelia - was supposed to be the big bad in S4, but the actress got pregnant, so they made her possessed instead, with her child as the big bad. She was evil because of the child. The opposite of Darla, who was good because of her child.
And it is Cordy, the surrogate mother, Angel's love and companion, the girl he saves, who twists Connor up inside and corrupts him - when he's still on the fence. Fighting a redeemed Darla for his soul.
TBC