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shadowkatBefore I started writing this post, I googled the words "I Will Always Remember You" and found the following links to songs, each is a romantic tune that is somewhat wistful about someone who is long gone.
http://www.lyricszoo.com/sarah-mclachlan/i-will-remember-you/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_zpVly8vVU
http://www.metrolyrics.com/ill-remember-you-lyrics-atlantic-starr.html
Do you remember your first love? A few, very few, people marry their first loves. My brother married his, and my mother married hers. But most of us -- don't or if we do, it ends in divorce, because once the wild passion ends there is little else. In the case of my parents and my brother - it was not "wild passion" so much as friendship that built into something more over time. They did not hop into bed or do wild makeout sessions at the start, they had discussions well into the night. It was in short not the stuff of novels - which seldom end well and often focus on those wild romances. Why do the wild and intense romances not last? The writers of Buffy and Angel examine those reasons in detail.
I Will Always Remember You ("Remember You") - the eighth episode of Angel the Series is not an episode that can be watched by itself. It needs to be seen in context of both series. And it is an ironic and somewhat dark episode in retrospect, not to mention deeply tragic. It comments on the choices we make for good or ill. Complex episode when seen in context.
In the episode that occurs immediately before it, Bachelor Party, season 1, Angel, the character Francis Allan Doyle is reunited with his first love and first wife, Harry. A lovely woman who has returned to town to request a divorce. Apparently they are still married. They had been high-school sweet-hearts. Married at the age of twenty. Then, his demon aspect made an appearance, he buried his woes at the bottom of a bottle, and she stopped fighting and merely took off for better climes. Yet, neither could quite let go, at least enough to get a divorce. She has reappeared with a new beau, and is asking his blessing. Doyle tells the tale of their break up one way, and Harry, another. In Doyle's version - Harry left him when his demon aspect appeared, she couldn't handle that horrible side of him and they broke up. In Harry's version - Doyle could not handle the demon aspect, she could and tried to get him to accept it - but he pushed her away and sank into alcholism.
The episode is the seventh episode of Angel the Series - it takes place before the Buffy episode Pangs, and provides the explanation for why Angel makes an appearance in Pangs. During Pangs, Buffy senses someone and it makes her sad and lonely. She's not sure but it feels like Angel. As she tells Angel in Remember You - I can sense you, I know when you are around, I feel it inside, and it hurts me. Angel based on a vision of Doyle's travels to Sunnydale to protect Buffy from a vengeance demon. His presence makes little sense if you don't watch Bachelor Party or Remember You.
Bachelor Party is also one of several episodes that explain from Angel's point of view why he is not with Buffy, and how he is dealing with it. Doyle is Angel's sidekick - his aid, and motivator. He is also to a degree Angel's mirror, reflecting all of Angel's insecurities and foibles. Like Angel he desperately wants to connect to a girl, like Angel he has an ex-love who he is still hung up on, like Angel he is attempting to connect to someone new who does not trust him, and like Angel part of his problem is he doesn't tell people the truth about himself, he hides that portion that scares him, retreats from it, and is denial about its existence -as a result he is a man at war with himself and never whole. Doyle doesn't trust himself, and as a result is unable to keep the trust of others. He gets it for a bit, but they often get hurt or disappointed as a result. And often falls into bad habits such as alcoholism. Harry now newly engaged enlists Doyle to provide his blessing to her new beau, who turns out to be a demon himself or half-demon. Unfortunately her fiance's family insists that her fiancee eat the brains of her first husband before getting married - that way he can use the love she had for her ex, as opposed to letting continue to exist between them like an obnoxious ghost. Harry refuses to destroy her ex and leaves her fiancee. Doyle and HArry part ways once again. At the end of the episode - Doyle has a flash about Buffy in danger and off Angel goes to save her - and we end up with I Will Always Remember You.
Prior to that - two things occur - with Cordy. At the beginning of Bachelor Party - Cordy tells Angel how she is reluctant to get together with Doyle because of his similarities to Xander Harris. The last thing she needs is another fixer-upper. And she fears the same result.
Later, she tells Angel that they need to stop living in the past, to move on. To not dwell on what might have beens and past loves.
This echoes Buffy's journey in Season 4, where she is desperately trying to get past Angel, sleeping with Parker (whose post-coitial behavior grossly resembles Angelus in every way but the nasty vampire violence and obsession), drinking too much, and finally just shutting down for a bit. Her mother in Fear Itself - tells Buffy that it took time after Hank, Buffy's father left them, to make new friends and start a new life. And yes she dates from time to time, but it's been difficult and certainly not helped by the last guy being a homicidial robot. But you can't let fear rule you, she tells Buffy. You have to go on.
In light of moving on - two characters are added - Kate for Angel, and Riley for Buffy. Kate, blond, beautiful, and a cop - trusts no one, especially men, they leave her and have hurt her - and has serious Daddy issues. She is in some respects an adult version of Buffy without the slayer powers. Buffy - remember was told to go into police work. Kate is a policewoman - a homicide detective. And like Buffy can handle herself. She does not need Angel to rescue her and when she first meets Angel, much like Buffy did in S1, she fights him and in this instance arrests him - only to have him leap away, then leap back to attempt to save her - when she ends up saving him. Unlike the adolescent Buffy, Kate doesn't trust Angel easily. Kate is also emotionally shut down. Kate is in many respects Buffy as an adult. If you wanted to know what an adult Buffy/Angel relationship would look like - you sort of get it with Kate and Angel or a semi-exploration from Angel's pov.
Meanwhile on the Buffy Series - enter Riley, who is a human version of Angel, or Angel without the vampire issues. He's super-strong, older, a tutor/teacher's assistant,
and has a secret life as demon hunter. When Buffy first introduced Angel to her mother - she said he was a college student tutoring her in history - Riley is an actual Teaching Assistant.
Both Kate and Riley are stand-ins for Buffy and Angel in the shows.
If you watch Remember You carefully - you'll note similarities between this episode and Out of Sight/Out of Mind when Riley discovers he is no longer strong enough to be Buffy's champion, as well as Fool for Love, and finally Into the Woods - when Riley chooses the mission over Buffy, just as Angel did. Same deal with Kate and Angel - if you watch episodes in S2 carefully, when Kate, like Riley, finally exits the stage. Kate and Angel break up, because he puts her in danger, because he threatens her father, and because he keeps things from her including the fact that he is a vampire. All the same problems Angel had with Buffy from S1-S2.
This is how an adult/non-cursed B/A would work out from both points of view.
Finally we have Cordelia and Spike - two characters who via their own past relationships comment on the "pure lust/can't keep my hands off you" aspects of the Buffy/Angel romance. They also act as sarcastic greek choruses - snarkily stating how the B/A relationship is silly in the extreme. Cordy tells Doyle that every time they get together they talk, fight, smooch, fight, and then whine incessantly or brood for days about it. Spike tells Buffy that she has the worst tast in men, and snarks that Angel didn't want a second go. Their commentary is basically - look in our relationships it was all about the sex, in yours it still is all about the sex - the sex you can't have and are obsessing over. Except the sex, hate to tell you this - doesn't make it better. Look at us, we're alone, it imploded, and we had tons of sex. Move on. Cordy dumped Xander because he strayed - went towards Willow. Xander was crushed by it, but does move on to Anya. Cordy tells Angel how she had to move on as well. Spike was dumped by Drusilla, he returns enraged, and hurt by her leavetaking. He's almost pathetic. As Buffy points out.
But like Cordy is a reflection of Angel, Spike is also a reflection of Buffy - at this point in time. In Lover's Walk - his mantra to Joyce about how he and Dru were meant to be together forever, were destined, an eternal love - is not dissimilar to Buffy's mantra's regarding Angel. Or for that matter Angel's regarding Buffy. Note when Spike and Buffy meet in Harsh Light of Day - Buffy is with Parker and Spike with Harmony - both point out to the other, clearly this is a rebound, and you aren't fooling anyone but yourself and possibly them about it. "Did you lose a beat? Did Dru dump you again?" and "I like him, he looks vulnerable. What happened did you bruise the boy? Didn't want a second round? Wait, where have I heard that before? Angel!".
When we hit I Will Always Remember You and Something Blue - Buffy and Angel have been struggling for quite some time to move on. Angel is constantly reminded of the reasons why he has to. In the episode In the Dark - he assists a woman with an abusive and obsessive boyfriend that she loves to death and can't quite divorce herself from. The woman is yet another blond. She keeps letting the guy back into her life. Angel tells her that hard as it may seem, she has to cut him off. That in time, he will find his own way. The guy is an alcoholic, an addict, and as Angel explains the boyfriend is only bringing her down, he will take you both down together. You can only survive if you are apart. Another important bit from In the Dark - is what Angel wants, what he is desperate for - and it is in a way the same thing his alter-ego Angelus wanted. Not Buffy. And not love. But to be forgiven and accepted as special by a higher power. As much as he rails against it, that it is what he wants. It is why he woke up Acathla - and it is behind his whole speil about being worthy and being something greater. And it is ultimately why he does what he does in both I Will Always Remember You and all the episodes that follow. It is what the shanshue prophecy represents - which is not a romantic reunion with Buffy, but rather forgiveness from a supreme being - redemption. Buffy could forgive him a million times over, but Angel will remain cursed and turn her down each time - as is demonstrated by the episodes In the Dark - where Buffy gives him the gem of amarah so he can live forever and be able to walk in the sunlight (Angel destroys it) and in I Will Always Remember You.
In I Will Always Remember You - Angel is given the gift of humanity. He's no longer a vampire.
No longer addicted to blood (which Doyle equates to an addiction in City of, stating Angel will crave it more and more, especially after having Buffy's). He is free. Free to love Buffy, to have a normal life.
Except, at the first sign of trouble - he refuses to wake up Buffy, who has more strength than he does, and goes off to fight the monster by himself. A monster he barely defeated as a vampire. The monster would have killed him if it weren't for Buffy, who shows up and helps him defeat it. They do it together. But Angel doesn't see that. All he sees is that he put her life at risk, that he can't help, that his help isn't worthy. That he has to be super-strong to be effective. What he ignores is that without him - she couldn't have killed the demon - he knew that it was the jewel that needed to be destroyed. But Angel ignores that.
Instead he goes back to the oracles and pleads with them to change things. He arrogantly turns back time, erasing what occurred, and changing things to such an extent that his interaction with Buffy lasts no more than an hour if that. She doesn't get the chance to save him or help him as he had helped her in Sunnydale during the episode Pangs, nor does she get the chance to tell him how she feels. He remembers it, but he never provides her with the chance to say it. As in Pangs - Angel makes all the decisions. And as Cordelia tells him - if my ex showed up and saw me, helped me from the sidelines, but never told me he was there and never spoke to me and never let me see him - I'd be furious. Buffy is upset. But Angel denies her the choice again. He doesn't trust her enough to include her in his decisions, much as Doyle did not trust Harry enough to include her in his. Both hide things. And without that trust, the relationship no matter how passionate, implodes. Or as Buffy tells Spike years later in Seeing Red - without trust, the wild passion burns itself out until there's nothing left but wistful regret.
I Will Always Remember You also to a degree discusses Angel's fatal flaw. His desire for approval, to leave a legacy behind = pride. Pride before the fall. It's Angel's pride that does him in, again and again. Angel has a lot in common with another fallen Angel of Christian myth - Lucifier - the child of light and darkness, who fell from heaven due to the sin of pride, and now forever yearns for God's forgiveness, yet can never quite achieve it.
A parable of sorts. Angel in his pride became the worste vampire he could, and turned as many people as he could find into nasty versions of himself - unable to look away, then cursed with a soul - he attempts to become the chosen vampire, the one of legend, the one prophesized and is manipulated by those prophecies. He gives up whatever chance he may have had at love for the chance to be the pawn of the powers that be. Their puppet. Being told that he is not a lesser being, and is noble by these gods - is more important to Angel than anything Buffy says.
This theme is echoed, ironically so, by Cordelia in S3 and later in S4 Angel - where Cordy gives up the chance to be with Angel, in order to be a higher being. To be a god. To be blessed. Then once she ascends, she believes it is her place to interfer. Her pride and vanity dooms her.
In Room with A VU - Cordy tells Angel that she feels she is being punished for what she did in high school - that this happening to her for being the nasty person that she was. Angel similarily feels punished. Cursed. But both are merely the victims of their own choices. God doesn't choose for them, they do. And their choices like all our choices are to a degree dictacted to us by who we are, our DNA, our parents, circumstance, and those who surround us.
Angel like Cordy is given the choice - he can choose love over being the superhero. They both choose the superhero. Angel finds himself in Buffy's shoes - when Cordelia does it - hence the irony of Cordy's choice. Over on Buffy, Buffy chooses to die for Dawn (love of her sister) for the world, to not sacrifice another lover or loved one in the Gift. Spike two years later, makes a similar choice - he chooses to die for Buffy, for the world, and not to lose another loved one in his stead. In Angel - they sacrifice love for their own life and superhero/champion status, and in Buffy - they sacrifice themselves for love - an echo, of Graduation Day Part I & II and likewise, an echo of Becoming Part I & II - where Angelus first sacrifices love for the ability to be the champion of evil, and then as Angel sacrifices love for the ability to survive another day. (Buffy is put in similar positions and it almost destroys her.)
I Will Always Remember You...ah, it goes without saying that these words also apply to Angel's feelings for Cordelia who over time, becomes his best friend and confidiant, and Buffy's feelings for Spike who over time had become much the same. But here, now, the words are ironically and somewhat sentimentally applied to the Buffy/Angel and all those first love relationships out there that either ended in divorce or just well, ended. We wistfully remember them, but time does without our asking blur and embellish the memory until we are no longer certain what is real and what is fantasy. Much as this episode which once time is unwround becomes little more than a dream in Angel's head.
Time episodes are difficult to do well and this one in retrospect succeeds where most do not.
Instead of being merely a what-if episode or a reset - or as I originally viewed it, a tease, it is actually a commentary on the human condition and on Angel himself. That humans all strive in some way for love but not just from a significant other, but from a higher being or parent. We all want to feel noble, important, chosen. We all want our lives to mean something.
More than just...the day to day routine of husband and wife or spouse to spouse. We all want to leave something of ourselves behind. To be heroes. Angel the Series is about the desire to be chosen, to be heroes, when you aren't. The desire to be forgiven. To be accepted. To belong. It is what Angel craves more than anything else - and it is the one thing that try as she might, Buffy herself can never quite give him. If she could he would not become Angelus.
As he puts it - he can drown his sorrows in her, lose himself. But it doesn't heal him.
So he goes to the oracles and powers that be, who do give him what he wants, who tell what he wants to hear and he dances to their tune. The powers that be are the writers of course, and it is in their best interest for Angel to unwind time and to send Buffy back on her way.
For the story would not work if he didn't. But, Angel the character would have made no other choice if given the option. It is who he is. And, to a degree he is not alone in that. How many of us, if we were asked, to choose between having the ability to save the world along with our loved ones or to be with them as lovers, equals, even if that meant them dying in our arms - possibly most likely tomorrow - would not pick the former? Which choice is noble?
Which is not? We can't be certain.
What we do know is the choices Angel makes, all without Buffy's input, are not by themselves the reason they aren't together. The reason is that he makes them without her input. He makes them for her. She is not given the choice. And as a result, he demonstrates that he does not trust her, so she in return can never really trust him. Trust is why their relationship falls apart. It's the reason it cannot stand. It's the last bit of dialogue in I'll Always Remember You - "don't I get a say in this?" Buffy askes - feeling betrayed and devastated. No, Angel responds, you don't. Leaving the viewer with a bittersweet taste in their mouths. Is it any wonder that the very next episode of Buffy is Something Blue? The episode title referrs to Willow who crafts a spell to will her pain and angst over OZ away - but it may as well be in regards to Buffy who feels much the same way - over Angel. And it is in this episode - that Buffy plans to wed a vampire, and realizes as she does it that she knows very little about him, doesn't even like him very much, but loves him...and is willing to destroy herself for him. The same lines could apply to her romance with Angel, including what she tells Riley - about how she's engaged to someone way older than he is. She is, in a way, her heart she's given - but as Something Blue tells us, there's no trust, she knows nothing about him, he has hidden himself from her...so it falls apart once the spell lifts, much as her love with Angel falls apart once he rewinds time. Something Blue is a comic take on the angst of lost love.
As well as a bit of a commentary on why wild passionate love cannot last.
Time for bed. This took way too long. And I think I went off on a few tangents. This is what happens with unproofed stream of consciousness/spontaneous essay writing.
http://www.lyricszoo.com/sarah-mclachlan/i-will-remember-you/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_zpVly8vVU
http://www.metrolyrics.com/ill-remember-you-lyrics-atlantic-starr.html
Do you remember your first love? A few, very few, people marry their first loves. My brother married his, and my mother married hers. But most of us -- don't or if we do, it ends in divorce, because once the wild passion ends there is little else. In the case of my parents and my brother - it was not "wild passion" so much as friendship that built into something more over time. They did not hop into bed or do wild makeout sessions at the start, they had discussions well into the night. It was in short not the stuff of novels - which seldom end well and often focus on those wild romances. Why do the wild and intense romances not last? The writers of Buffy and Angel examine those reasons in detail.
I Will Always Remember You ("Remember You") - the eighth episode of Angel the Series is not an episode that can be watched by itself. It needs to be seen in context of both series. And it is an ironic and somewhat dark episode in retrospect, not to mention deeply tragic. It comments on the choices we make for good or ill. Complex episode when seen in context.
In the episode that occurs immediately before it, Bachelor Party, season 1, Angel, the character Francis Allan Doyle is reunited with his first love and first wife, Harry. A lovely woman who has returned to town to request a divorce. Apparently they are still married. They had been high-school sweet-hearts. Married at the age of twenty. Then, his demon aspect made an appearance, he buried his woes at the bottom of a bottle, and she stopped fighting and merely took off for better climes. Yet, neither could quite let go, at least enough to get a divorce. She has reappeared with a new beau, and is asking his blessing. Doyle tells the tale of their break up one way, and Harry, another. In Doyle's version - Harry left him when his demon aspect appeared, she couldn't handle that horrible side of him and they broke up. In Harry's version - Doyle could not handle the demon aspect, she could and tried to get him to accept it - but he pushed her away and sank into alcholism.
The episode is the seventh episode of Angel the Series - it takes place before the Buffy episode Pangs, and provides the explanation for why Angel makes an appearance in Pangs. During Pangs, Buffy senses someone and it makes her sad and lonely. She's not sure but it feels like Angel. As she tells Angel in Remember You - I can sense you, I know when you are around, I feel it inside, and it hurts me. Angel based on a vision of Doyle's travels to Sunnydale to protect Buffy from a vengeance demon. His presence makes little sense if you don't watch Bachelor Party or Remember You.
Bachelor Party is also one of several episodes that explain from Angel's point of view why he is not with Buffy, and how he is dealing with it. Doyle is Angel's sidekick - his aid, and motivator. He is also to a degree Angel's mirror, reflecting all of Angel's insecurities and foibles. Like Angel he desperately wants to connect to a girl, like Angel he has an ex-love who he is still hung up on, like Angel he is attempting to connect to someone new who does not trust him, and like Angel part of his problem is he doesn't tell people the truth about himself, he hides that portion that scares him, retreats from it, and is denial about its existence -as a result he is a man at war with himself and never whole. Doyle doesn't trust himself, and as a result is unable to keep the trust of others. He gets it for a bit, but they often get hurt or disappointed as a result. And often falls into bad habits such as alcoholism. Harry now newly engaged enlists Doyle to provide his blessing to her new beau, who turns out to be a demon himself or half-demon. Unfortunately her fiance's family insists that her fiancee eat the brains of her first husband before getting married - that way he can use the love she had for her ex, as opposed to letting continue to exist between them like an obnoxious ghost. Harry refuses to destroy her ex and leaves her fiancee. Doyle and HArry part ways once again. At the end of the episode - Doyle has a flash about Buffy in danger and off Angel goes to save her - and we end up with I Will Always Remember You.
Prior to that - two things occur - with Cordy. At the beginning of Bachelor Party - Cordy tells Angel how she is reluctant to get together with Doyle because of his similarities to Xander Harris. The last thing she needs is another fixer-upper. And she fears the same result.
Later, she tells Angel that they need to stop living in the past, to move on. To not dwell on what might have beens and past loves.
This echoes Buffy's journey in Season 4, where she is desperately trying to get past Angel, sleeping with Parker (whose post-coitial behavior grossly resembles Angelus in every way but the nasty vampire violence and obsession), drinking too much, and finally just shutting down for a bit. Her mother in Fear Itself - tells Buffy that it took time after Hank, Buffy's father left them, to make new friends and start a new life. And yes she dates from time to time, but it's been difficult and certainly not helped by the last guy being a homicidial robot. But you can't let fear rule you, she tells Buffy. You have to go on.
In light of moving on - two characters are added - Kate for Angel, and Riley for Buffy. Kate, blond, beautiful, and a cop - trusts no one, especially men, they leave her and have hurt her - and has serious Daddy issues. She is in some respects an adult version of Buffy without the slayer powers. Buffy - remember was told to go into police work. Kate is a policewoman - a homicide detective. And like Buffy can handle herself. She does not need Angel to rescue her and when she first meets Angel, much like Buffy did in S1, she fights him and in this instance arrests him - only to have him leap away, then leap back to attempt to save her - when she ends up saving him. Unlike the adolescent Buffy, Kate doesn't trust Angel easily. Kate is also emotionally shut down. Kate is in many respects Buffy as an adult. If you wanted to know what an adult Buffy/Angel relationship would look like - you sort of get it with Kate and Angel or a semi-exploration from Angel's pov.
Meanwhile on the Buffy Series - enter Riley, who is a human version of Angel, or Angel without the vampire issues. He's super-strong, older, a tutor/teacher's assistant,
and has a secret life as demon hunter. When Buffy first introduced Angel to her mother - she said he was a college student tutoring her in history - Riley is an actual Teaching Assistant.
Both Kate and Riley are stand-ins for Buffy and Angel in the shows.
If you watch Remember You carefully - you'll note similarities between this episode and Out of Sight/Out of Mind when Riley discovers he is no longer strong enough to be Buffy's champion, as well as Fool for Love, and finally Into the Woods - when Riley chooses the mission over Buffy, just as Angel did. Same deal with Kate and Angel - if you watch episodes in S2 carefully, when Kate, like Riley, finally exits the stage. Kate and Angel break up, because he puts her in danger, because he threatens her father, and because he keeps things from her including the fact that he is a vampire. All the same problems Angel had with Buffy from S1-S2.
This is how an adult/non-cursed B/A would work out from both points of view.
Finally we have Cordelia and Spike - two characters who via their own past relationships comment on the "pure lust/can't keep my hands off you" aspects of the Buffy/Angel romance. They also act as sarcastic greek choruses - snarkily stating how the B/A relationship is silly in the extreme. Cordy tells Doyle that every time they get together they talk, fight, smooch, fight, and then whine incessantly or brood for days about it. Spike tells Buffy that she has the worst tast in men, and snarks that Angel didn't want a second go. Their commentary is basically - look in our relationships it was all about the sex, in yours it still is all about the sex - the sex you can't have and are obsessing over. Except the sex, hate to tell you this - doesn't make it better. Look at us, we're alone, it imploded, and we had tons of sex. Move on. Cordy dumped Xander because he strayed - went towards Willow. Xander was crushed by it, but does move on to Anya. Cordy tells Angel how she had to move on as well. Spike was dumped by Drusilla, he returns enraged, and hurt by her leavetaking. He's almost pathetic. As Buffy points out.
But like Cordy is a reflection of Angel, Spike is also a reflection of Buffy - at this point in time. In Lover's Walk - his mantra to Joyce about how he and Dru were meant to be together forever, were destined, an eternal love - is not dissimilar to Buffy's mantra's regarding Angel. Or for that matter Angel's regarding Buffy. Note when Spike and Buffy meet in Harsh Light of Day - Buffy is with Parker and Spike with Harmony - both point out to the other, clearly this is a rebound, and you aren't fooling anyone but yourself and possibly them about it. "Did you lose a beat? Did Dru dump you again?" and "I like him, he looks vulnerable. What happened did you bruise the boy? Didn't want a second round? Wait, where have I heard that before? Angel!".
When we hit I Will Always Remember You and Something Blue - Buffy and Angel have been struggling for quite some time to move on. Angel is constantly reminded of the reasons why he has to. In the episode In the Dark - he assists a woman with an abusive and obsessive boyfriend that she loves to death and can't quite divorce herself from. The woman is yet another blond. She keeps letting the guy back into her life. Angel tells her that hard as it may seem, she has to cut him off. That in time, he will find his own way. The guy is an alcoholic, an addict, and as Angel explains the boyfriend is only bringing her down, he will take you both down together. You can only survive if you are apart. Another important bit from In the Dark - is what Angel wants, what he is desperate for - and it is in a way the same thing his alter-ego Angelus wanted. Not Buffy. And not love. But to be forgiven and accepted as special by a higher power. As much as he rails against it, that it is what he wants. It is why he woke up Acathla - and it is behind his whole speil about being worthy and being something greater. And it is ultimately why he does what he does in both I Will Always Remember You and all the episodes that follow. It is what the shanshue prophecy represents - which is not a romantic reunion with Buffy, but rather forgiveness from a supreme being - redemption. Buffy could forgive him a million times over, but Angel will remain cursed and turn her down each time - as is demonstrated by the episodes In the Dark - where Buffy gives him the gem of amarah so he can live forever and be able to walk in the sunlight (Angel destroys it) and in I Will Always Remember You.
In I Will Always Remember You - Angel is given the gift of humanity. He's no longer a vampire.
No longer addicted to blood (which Doyle equates to an addiction in City of, stating Angel will crave it more and more, especially after having Buffy's). He is free. Free to love Buffy, to have a normal life.
Except, at the first sign of trouble - he refuses to wake up Buffy, who has more strength than he does, and goes off to fight the monster by himself. A monster he barely defeated as a vampire. The monster would have killed him if it weren't for Buffy, who shows up and helps him defeat it. They do it together. But Angel doesn't see that. All he sees is that he put her life at risk, that he can't help, that his help isn't worthy. That he has to be super-strong to be effective. What he ignores is that without him - she couldn't have killed the demon - he knew that it was the jewel that needed to be destroyed. But Angel ignores that.
Instead he goes back to the oracles and pleads with them to change things. He arrogantly turns back time, erasing what occurred, and changing things to such an extent that his interaction with Buffy lasts no more than an hour if that. She doesn't get the chance to save him or help him as he had helped her in Sunnydale during the episode Pangs, nor does she get the chance to tell him how she feels. He remembers it, but he never provides her with the chance to say it. As in Pangs - Angel makes all the decisions. And as Cordelia tells him - if my ex showed up and saw me, helped me from the sidelines, but never told me he was there and never spoke to me and never let me see him - I'd be furious. Buffy is upset. But Angel denies her the choice again. He doesn't trust her enough to include her in his decisions, much as Doyle did not trust Harry enough to include her in his. Both hide things. And without that trust, the relationship no matter how passionate, implodes. Or as Buffy tells Spike years later in Seeing Red - without trust, the wild passion burns itself out until there's nothing left but wistful regret.
I Will Always Remember You also to a degree discusses Angel's fatal flaw. His desire for approval, to leave a legacy behind = pride. Pride before the fall. It's Angel's pride that does him in, again and again. Angel has a lot in common with another fallen Angel of Christian myth - Lucifier - the child of light and darkness, who fell from heaven due to the sin of pride, and now forever yearns for God's forgiveness, yet can never quite achieve it.
A parable of sorts. Angel in his pride became the worste vampire he could, and turned as many people as he could find into nasty versions of himself - unable to look away, then cursed with a soul - he attempts to become the chosen vampire, the one of legend, the one prophesized and is manipulated by those prophecies. He gives up whatever chance he may have had at love for the chance to be the pawn of the powers that be. Their puppet. Being told that he is not a lesser being, and is noble by these gods - is more important to Angel than anything Buffy says.
This theme is echoed, ironically so, by Cordelia in S3 and later in S4 Angel - where Cordy gives up the chance to be with Angel, in order to be a higher being. To be a god. To be blessed. Then once she ascends, she believes it is her place to interfer. Her pride and vanity dooms her.
In Room with A VU - Cordy tells Angel that she feels she is being punished for what she did in high school - that this happening to her for being the nasty person that she was. Angel similarily feels punished. Cursed. But both are merely the victims of their own choices. God doesn't choose for them, they do. And their choices like all our choices are to a degree dictacted to us by who we are, our DNA, our parents, circumstance, and those who surround us.
Angel like Cordy is given the choice - he can choose love over being the superhero. They both choose the superhero. Angel finds himself in Buffy's shoes - when Cordelia does it - hence the irony of Cordy's choice. Over on Buffy, Buffy chooses to die for Dawn (love of her sister) for the world, to not sacrifice another lover or loved one in the Gift. Spike two years later, makes a similar choice - he chooses to die for Buffy, for the world, and not to lose another loved one in his stead. In Angel - they sacrifice love for their own life and superhero/champion status, and in Buffy - they sacrifice themselves for love - an echo, of Graduation Day Part I & II and likewise, an echo of Becoming Part I & II - where Angelus first sacrifices love for the ability to be the champion of evil, and then as Angel sacrifices love for the ability to survive another day. (Buffy is put in similar positions and it almost destroys her.)
I Will Always Remember You...ah, it goes without saying that these words also apply to Angel's feelings for Cordelia who over time, becomes his best friend and confidiant, and Buffy's feelings for Spike who over time had become much the same. But here, now, the words are ironically and somewhat sentimentally applied to the Buffy/Angel and all those first love relationships out there that either ended in divorce or just well, ended. We wistfully remember them, but time does without our asking blur and embellish the memory until we are no longer certain what is real and what is fantasy. Much as this episode which once time is unwround becomes little more than a dream in Angel's head.
Time episodes are difficult to do well and this one in retrospect succeeds where most do not.
Instead of being merely a what-if episode or a reset - or as I originally viewed it, a tease, it is actually a commentary on the human condition and on Angel himself. That humans all strive in some way for love but not just from a significant other, but from a higher being or parent. We all want to feel noble, important, chosen. We all want our lives to mean something.
More than just...the day to day routine of husband and wife or spouse to spouse. We all want to leave something of ourselves behind. To be heroes. Angel the Series is about the desire to be chosen, to be heroes, when you aren't. The desire to be forgiven. To be accepted. To belong. It is what Angel craves more than anything else - and it is the one thing that try as she might, Buffy herself can never quite give him. If she could he would not become Angelus.
As he puts it - he can drown his sorrows in her, lose himself. But it doesn't heal him.
So he goes to the oracles and powers that be, who do give him what he wants, who tell what he wants to hear and he dances to their tune. The powers that be are the writers of course, and it is in their best interest for Angel to unwind time and to send Buffy back on her way.
For the story would not work if he didn't. But, Angel the character would have made no other choice if given the option. It is who he is. And, to a degree he is not alone in that. How many of us, if we were asked, to choose between having the ability to save the world along with our loved ones or to be with them as lovers, equals, even if that meant them dying in our arms - possibly most likely tomorrow - would not pick the former? Which choice is noble?
Which is not? We can't be certain.
What we do know is the choices Angel makes, all without Buffy's input, are not by themselves the reason they aren't together. The reason is that he makes them without her input. He makes them for her. She is not given the choice. And as a result, he demonstrates that he does not trust her, so she in return can never really trust him. Trust is why their relationship falls apart. It's the reason it cannot stand. It's the last bit of dialogue in I'll Always Remember You - "don't I get a say in this?" Buffy askes - feeling betrayed and devastated. No, Angel responds, you don't. Leaving the viewer with a bittersweet taste in their mouths. Is it any wonder that the very next episode of Buffy is Something Blue? The episode title referrs to Willow who crafts a spell to will her pain and angst over OZ away - but it may as well be in regards to Buffy who feels much the same way - over Angel. And it is in this episode - that Buffy plans to wed a vampire, and realizes as she does it that she knows very little about him, doesn't even like him very much, but loves him...and is willing to destroy herself for him. The same lines could apply to her romance with Angel, including what she tells Riley - about how she's engaged to someone way older than he is. She is, in a way, her heart she's given - but as Something Blue tells us, there's no trust, she knows nothing about him, he has hidden himself from her...so it falls apart once the spell lifts, much as her love with Angel falls apart once he rewinds time. Something Blue is a comic take on the angst of lost love.
As well as a bit of a commentary on why wild passionate love cannot last.
Time for bed. This took way too long. And I think I went off on a few tangents. This is what happens with unproofed stream of consciousness/spontaneous essay writing.
