Angel/Headscratchers

Headscratchers for Angel. Spoilers abound.

Heel face BLAM!

 * In the series finale, why did  Even if he isn't trustworthy, we know his main goal has been for some time to take down the Senior Partners, which makes him on the right side and a useful ally. They kept Illyria on after all. Not to mention the ethics of killing an ensouled, remorseful human being.
 * Lindsey's had opportunities to Heel Face Turn already. It never really took. There's no reason to believe he wouldn't just backslide again once Wolfram and Hart offered him something new and shiny, like when he got his promotion back in the first season finale. And if ANYONE would know whether Lindsey would backslide, it's Lorne.  Should be noted that Angel undoubtedly ordered it, given   and Angel and Lindsey have never trusted each other in the slightest.

What happens with Jasmine in L.A. Stays in L.A.

 * About the Jasmine thing, it's too bad that there isn't an army of Potential Slayers, two actual Slayers, the most powerful witch ever, a mad scientist, and the only other vampire with a soul just a drive away, or this would have been too easy. Oh, wait. Why the hell didn't they think of that?
 * If they'd escaped Los Angeles to form a resistance movement like Angel suggested, Sunnydale probably would have been the first stop on their way. They just didn't get that far in the plan. Besides, without Cordelia or Conner's blood available, keeping said Slayers, witches, mad scientists and vampire with a soul from getting turned into Jasmine's brand new anti-Angel squad would've been a trick in itself.
 * Also this was happening in the middle of Season 7 of Buffy and the Scoobies had a lot on their plate at the time.
 * And if they'd been anywhere near a TV, they were already Jasmine's slaves anyway. Not to mention, the one thing you do not throw at a wide-area mind controller is an army, for obvious reasons.
 * It's also worth noting that by the time Jasmine rises to power in L.A., Sunnydale has been abandoned and isolated from the rest of the world, which explains why they weren't affected.

Doyle's no slouch either!

 * Okay, this is a pretty minor one, but still. Why does everyone keep saying how Angel is so attractive and Doyle isn't? I gather that this could be Cordelia's easily justifiable opinion, but do they have to keep banging on about it with dozens of characters complimenting Angel and no-one noticing Doyle? Is it really that much of a difference?
 * I never heard anyone going off about Doyle being ugly... and Wesley and Gunn aren't complimented all the time either, but they're both really good-looking. And lots of people notice Doyle... but if you think about it- he was only in about 1/10 of the entire series. (He's my favorite character in all of Whedonverse though!)
 * Yeah, I just think that there were certain things about Doyle that Cordelia didn't find attractive about him (he was short and poor, after all), but I don't believe that she ever actively said that he was ugly, or anything.
 * Chicks dig the brooding loner bit. Doyle isn't a brooding loner, he's a dorky scumbag with a shady past.
 * Hollywood Homely?

Angel's singing cell phone

 * A good one pointed out by my girlfriend, in the episode were Groo first comes to L.A. and Cordelia sends he and Angel to get a potion for her Angel gets a phone call and Groo makes the comment, "Um Angel your coat is singing." The problem is that Groo is from Pylea same as Lorne, who considered the dimension hell because it had no music or singing...
 * Maybe music and singing were introduced under the rule of Groo
 * Possible but that would have meant Cordy or possibly Lorne would have taken the time t teach Groo all about music while they were all in Pylea... a more likely scenario would have been that they had to explain music to him off camera when he heard some AFTER arriving in L.A. but before that particular scene.
 * The joke as I saw it was that he was still unfamiliar enough with music/singing to tell them apart. That's why he referred to a musical ringtone as "singing." It's like when infants are first learning animal names and call anything with fur a cat.

Jasmine - Good, evil, none of the above?

 * Was Jasmine good or evil?
 * Yes.
 * No.
 * That's for the ethicists in the audience to decide, because Angel and company sure as hell couldn't. I think it was meant to be up in the air.
 * Dialogue such as "Oh yeah, and you eat people!" "The price was too high!" is 'up in the air'? Angel's final confrontation with Jasmine made it pretty plain what he considered her to be. He did offer her a final chance at redemption, yes, but when you are asking someone to change their ways and be good, that kinda hints that you think their current ways are not good.
 * Yes, but then Wolfram and Hart shows up to give them a big kudos for "ending world peace" and they wind up wondering if they did the right thing after all.
 * Consider the end result of Wolfram & Hart's actions here: to put the heroes (most especially Angel) into a tailspin of self-doubt at the exact same time W&H is handing them a vastly increased opportunity to be tempted and corrupted. Now ask yourself whether Wolfram & Hart is known to be willing to lie in order to achieve a goal. Now consider that the slickest known way of lying is to tell only half the truth and then keep your mouth shut. And after adding up all this, then ask yourself why they told Angel what they did.
 * Peace has a price, unfortunately (and it's not a Buck O Five). To have no more human failing because there was no more human free will? Wolfram and Hart is just exploiting moral greyness to rub salt in the heroes' wounds.
 * To wander around the rest of Joss's canon, Jasmine was the Alliance Utopia solution - in Angel, things went the 'Browncoat' way.
 * Exactly. Think about Serenity and Dollhouse and how the Free Will & Pain & Sin vs. Blissful Saintly Slavery situations are portrayed there. Jasmine's arc is a little more ambiguous, but IMO it still comes down on the side of free will, especially since everybody was horrified and tried to bring Jasmine down once they snapped out of it.
 * I personally think she was good, but unfortunately needed a healthy dose of Human Resources to power herself up.
 * Then again look at the first world she tried to make a utopia. Mantis spider demon world is kind of craptastic. Even if it was great when she was its living god, she got bored and abandoned it, leaving her followers to an eternity of anarchy and obsessive need to regain her love. What's the assurance she won't do the same with Earth?
 * How do you know the world we saw isn't what the mantis people think of as utopia? Maybe she left because she had done all she could for them.
 * She left tha Mantis Spider Demon world because she made mistakes - it was her first run-through, and by her own admission it wasn't a success.
 * Maybe she'd simply ate all the people there - although we "only" see her eating a roomful of people onscreen, maybe she needs to eat 1% of her worshippers/day. Compound interest is a bitch!
 * I think she was so enamored of her Utopia Justifies the Means, that she took away a vital part of a person's humanity in the exchange. So, good intentions, but misguided means.
 * You can say that of any Knight Templar - Classic Chaotic Good, willing to sacrifice people and liberties for the good of the masses. The first thing a knight templar does is take away free will.
 * No, that's Lawful Good. Chaotic Good people tend to be libertarians. Someone hasn't been playing enough Dungeons and Dragons.
 * A lawful good character would be all for the taking of free will but would never use a something requiring Human Sacrifice, killing innocents is a big no no. I figured chaotic works because they like to destroy old systems to replace them with their own "better one". Not that it matters - she is still a Knight Templar.
 * No, a Chaotic would want to destroy old systems and then replace them with nothing, so people are free to follow the dictates of their own consciences.
 * That said, Jasmine wasn't particularly lawful, either. She was more neutral on the Law/Chaos axis. As to whether she was supposed to be good or evil...well, the characters thought she was evil, but the characters aren't Gods. Not all series attempt to use the actions of their characters as "this is what is right, anyone who disagrees is wrong".
 * IMHO she would qualify as "Lawful Evil". Lawful, in that she believes in imposing order in the form of universal happiness but at the cost of free will and individual liberty. Everybody was free to worship her and obey her every whim.
 * I don't think that any definition of "good" or "evil" can apply to Jasmine. We can't apply human values to something that is that far away from being human.
 * Yes, we can.
 * I always assumed that she was Pure Good with capital letters, but pure unadulterated Good is so alien and inhuman that it is indistinguishable from pure evil from the point of view of a human, and can be just as destructive to humanity, which thrives on having both options available.
 * "Lawful Neutral" with her as The Law. She didn't move on from Bug World until it was as ordered as it was ever going to be. Them she moved on, to continue to spread order throughout the multiverse. A better question would be what aligniment the Senior Partners actually are.
 * The closest "canonical" thing the Buffyverse has to Pure Good -- i.e. the beings that everyone knows and acknowledges as being the source of Pure Good -- are the Powers That Be. Jasmine is a Power That Was, because THEY KICKED HER OUT. Does that remind you of any trope?
 * Word of God confirms that Jasmine was a PTB. She took over Cordelia while she was in the Higher Plane and so she willingly came down rather than be kicked out as you suggest.
 * And while we're on the subject: an impossible birth brings forth a heavenly being into the world who, after taking apostles to her side, embarks on a journey to save humanity from itself, but is betrayed by those close to her, humiliated, and ultimately murdered. You tell me; DOES this story sound familiar to you?
 * The Powers That Be aren't truly that close to being a force of uncontroversial pure good. Fans and characters both tend to have their doubts about them. I think they're not morally unambiguous enough that that proves anything.
 * The way Jasmine continues to lie more and more to manipulate Connor to go after Angel, and the cruel and mocking way she talks to the heroes when they're on the run ("Ha ha ha! I can seeeeee you!") seems to pretty strongly imply the whole Oprah thing is pretty much just a front to make humans line up to be eaten (to say nothing of all that stuff she did before arriving on Earth). Add to that her total narcissism ("Well...a temple would be nice") and it becomes pretty obvious she doesn't really have Man's best interests at heart. As Gunn puts it: "It's To Serve Man! It's To Serve Man all over again!"
 * Perhaps the best test of Jasmine's true "alignment" is what she does when her powers are done. In the same situation Faith was put in- i.e. having just fallen pretty massively and being offered redemption and a chance to make things right- Jasmine blows a gasket and tries to kill Angel. Even if she wanted to bring about World Peace, she clearly wasn't that fussed about it unless it was strictly on her terms.
 * Although Jasmine seems narcissistic, cruel toward her enemies and prone to getting bored with her world-improvement projects, she did make a good point about free will when she said "and look where that's gotten you so far". So long as people have the freedom to be sadistic jerks, the ones who choose to be jerks are always going to keep ruining it for everyone else.
 * Jasmine is a perfect example of a Draco in Leather Pants. She bloody eats people and removes their free will in the name of the Greater Good, but people still keep defending her. Seriously, what the hell.
 * Jasmine was both good AND evil. Her character was purposely given enough evidence for either side of this debate just so this debate could come to pass. Sure she manipulated people. But the powers that be do that through visions sent to people all over the world. Sure she had to kill a few people a day to keep her powers going. But those few people a day would save millions. Sure she snapped when her powers were taken. But she almost had peace across the world and that will never happen now. So to put this as plainly as possible: If you think she was good, you're right. If you think she was evil, you're right. Her caracter was meant to be subjective.
 * Given that Jasmine's plan centered around, well, Jasmine, I have no problem judging that stopping it was better than allowing it to succeed.
 * World Peace through mind control and mass murder is still World Peace. Imagine a world where everyone is kind to each other. There is no crime. There are no wars, and there never will be again. There is no discrimination, no hate, and no violence. All humans live together in harmony with each other, in total happiness for the rest of eternity. In short: the Christian Heaven, absolute peace and bliss forever. That's what makes it ambiguous.
 * But there still would be crime - she was eating people! A few at a time, and quite frequently... It wouldn't be a World Peace situation, as there would still be killing.
 * Aside from the issue of the virtues of free will (which are easy to proclaim when you live in a warm spacious broadband connected home and don't have to worry about some bullshit warlord coming and brutalising your family just because), my whole problem with that arc was that the characters, Angel specifically, spent four seasons bitching about how the Powers That Be never do anything to help them. When one finally does, they bitch even more because she doesn't do it quite how they would like. If I were Jasmine I would have pounded a hole in his ungrateful ass too.
 * Angel is trying to stop people from being victimized by creatures more dangerous than them. Jasmine proceeds to do that on a global scale.
 * Morality is subjective. But let's not go all fake philosophic ambiguity here and pretend that an entity that tries to enslave the world in a cult and stops at NOTHING to achieve this is anything but evil by common social convention. You can point out various religions as evidence for the contrary, but even these ancient institutions are under a great deal of pressure to de-emphasize their totalitarian claims and play nice with each other. Because even most brainwashed members of religion A nowadays feel it comes across as a little evil to say cultists of religion B must convert or die.
 * Let's not forget that when the spell is broken- people don't suddenly hate Jasmine. They MISS what they have lost. They miss it enough that they want to kill themselves at first. The closest OTHER thing to that in the Whedonverse is Buffy going to heaven and being brought back to earth. Skip points out that Jasmine (Cordy) and Buffy were both in paradise and the conversation implies without stating that it's the same paradise. So Jasmine really MAY have been making people feel truly "heavenly" bliss.
 * People have been known to feel the same way when they're forced to stop taking heroin, too. If Jasmine had been force-feeding people a physical drug to induce compliance and such feelings of "heavenly bliss", rather than employing a supernatural effect to do so, would this argument still be going on?
 * Was it wrong to drop the bomb on Hiroshima? Maybe... did good come from the evil act? Yes. Good & Evil are things WE want.
 * Another thing nobody has mentioned: Jasmine turning earth into an Eden like paradise is her PLAN B. She did everything in her power while still in Cordy to make the world an EVIL PARADISE (rain of fire, blotting out the sun). She says Westley is right about it being "birth pains" but the disappointment when Angelus kills the demon and brings back the sun is obvious.
 * That's probably just because she wanted to set up her own Big Damn Heroes appearance, having the Sun restored and everything becoming Paradise the moment she appears in the flesh in order to really cement her role as a messiah. If it weren't for her mind-control powers, her rebirth happening seperately from the Sun's return would have struck everyone as pretty anticlimactic. It also kept Team Angel guessing about what's going on and too busy running damage control to pose a threat (once they had some breathing room to figure it out, they came within a few seconds of stopping her).
 * One thing that I think deserves being mentioned; Remember when Lorne read Cordy and ended up with a huge mind rape of apolyptic end of the world imagery? Death, destruction, terror, etc. etc. That was all Jasmine, and its likely that it wasn't simply the stuff with the Beast that he was picking up. Jasmine may have appeared to be all sweetness and light, doing it all to save the world, for the greater good, but Lorne definitly got some major nastiness from her early on. Its possible, even likely, that her future plans for humanity and the world, once she established global control, wouldn't have been as pleasant as she made them out to be. For all we know, she may have ruled over us for a while and then decided to eat all of humanity in one go. This troper also finds it a bit suspicious that she was so keen to have Angelus on her side. What would a benevolent Goddess of peace want with one of the most evil vampires in history?
 * She also might have done the same thing she did to the insect people: gotten bored after a while and then left us in despair. Though she said that the insect species were just a test run, and implied that her commitment to the humans was real, who's to say, given her clear emotional instability, that she even knows herself enough to know if she would do the same thing to us?
 * Which also brings up another question: if the insect priest knows Jasmine's name, he shouldn't still be under Jasmine's spell. If not, why has he not told the rest of his people the name so that they won't be under her spell either. (The actions of the minion sent to Earth indicates that most of them are.) Also, how did the insects get her name in the first place?
 * The insect priest knowing her name rather effective proves that he is not under her spell at all, and legitimately sees Jasmine as being something better for their world. Which does not necessarily mean that she is; remember, Connor was never under her spell either, and he's hardly a reasonable judge of what's good for everyone. But it is interesting.

Jasmine's grandpa gets no respect

 * Cordelia and Connor (and anyone who came in contact with their or Jasmine's blood) were immune to Jasmine's control because of the whole blood connection. By this logic, shouldn't Angel have been immune to Jasmine's control because he's her grandfather?
 * They came into contact with actual red blood from her body--not the metaphorical blood of inheritance.
 * Then why couldn't Angel blow Jasmine to pieces with a single punch like Connor?
 * Did he ever try to? I think the main thing was that Connor caught her by surprise.

Her soul's gone, take my word for it

 * When Fred is taken over by Illyria, the doctor who gives Gunn supernatural legal abilities tells Gunn that her soul was destroyed in the process and he believes him without questioning it; despite this being the first time such a thing has ever happened, the doctor's lack of first-hand knowledge and the incredibly high rate of lying done by the villains on this show.
 * The doctor was an Illyria cultist who helped set up Fred's possession in the first place, so erase 'lack of first-hand knowledge'. Illyria was a Great Old One, in its prime a vast and horrific threat to all reality, so it could plausibly be believed capable of anything. Add in that Gunn was suffering a massive emotional shock at the time and isn't a trained demonologist anyway, and its entirely plausible he'd believe it.
 * Now as to Wesley believing it later -- this is Wesley Wyndham-Price we're talking about here. If, after all his obsessive research into Illyria, he still believed it possible for her to have done such a thing, then we can reasonably presume it actually is.
 * If After the Fall is to be considered canon,
 * Confirmed in After the fall #23\ Spike after the fall \ Only Human archs in season six. Fred soul is gone. Nothing is left, Illyria is using the only thing left of her. Her memories to cope with her new existence and feeling.
 * It's also plausible that Fred's soul was simply absorbed and merged with Illyria. The original plan, had the show had a sixth season, was to have both Fred and Illyria, so perhaps Fred's still in there somewhere? (Of course, then you have to wonder why they'd introduce a new character so late in the game when they weren't even sure that they'd have a new season. But given the mess the show became, not to be expected. The show handlers seemed to have no idea what they were doing at that point.)
 * That's because of Illyria's time-bending powers.
 * Word of God says that the original intent was for Illyria and Fred to have a battle of souls over the body but the idea was killed when the show was cancelled. Apparently they're not going to do it in the comics either.

No stake-proof vests?

 * Even if we assume that most Whedonverse vampires are somehow retarded, how come Angel never wears a stab vest? Or that his friends, who happily kit him out with mobile phones that he can't figure out, never track one down for him?
 * Angel wouldn't do this in case he turns into Angelus. He always wants to be sure that his friends can kill him if they need to, and it's not like he can predict when he might switch again.
 * Vampires have less use for body armor than people do--any wound that would kill a vampire would kill a human, but not vice versa, and their reflexes are better, so they don't want to be confined.
 * Considering how many vamps get stabbed in the heart in this show, I'd say they have more use for body armor, not less. Seriously, with the number of vampire slayers running around (and I'm counting every member of Gunn's old anti-vamp street gang as vampire slayers) you'd think SOME of them would try to get ahold of some stab vests.
 * Look at who is doing the stabbing though. It's usually Angel, Buffy, Faith, Riley, Spike, etc. Someone with superhuman strength and reflexes. The others that do the stabbing do so by complete accident/luck (Xander in the second part of the pilot) until they've been a regular for at least a season or three (Cordelia in the Season 3 finale of Buffy) and therefore a veteran of fighting vampires/demons by that point. Therefore, it's safe to assume vampires not in a city with an active and known Slayer wouldn't bother with something like that. The ones that do either have plot armor (Spike as Big Bad/Comic Relief) or are not exactly the brightest in the first place.
 * Wood seems to go through vampires like a knife through butter. Remember when Lockely killed a vampire behind Angel by driving a broken plank through Angel's torso and into the vampire's chest?
 * Instead of stab vests, why don't any of the vamps just surgically implant a metal plate over their heart, or something? Wood does not go through steel. And how come Angel can kick down a door (and bring the doorframe with it,) but he can't break duct tape? Graaah.
 * The duct tape was probably just for laughs because Angel's 200 years old and duct tape would be fairly new to him.
 * It's a different form of exertion. Kicking down a door with your full potential for movement is one thing, straining against being tied up is quite another.
 * Also, have you ever tried to break duct tape? Remember, we're not talking about Angel tearing it here, we're talking about him being tied up in loops of it and straining hard enough to stretch it to the breaking point.
 * Mythbusters did a segment on duct tape. Using only 99 strips of duct tape, they suspended a car off the ground for over a minute. It's also worth noting that when the duct tape finally tore, it was the fabric part of the duct tape that failed, not the adhesive. The duct tape was holding a car up for quite awhile, and that was with the weight of the car and gravity pushing down. It's pretty hard to exert any significant amount of force when you're tied up. Angel not being able to break the duct tape is perfectly realistic.

Vampire driver's ed

 * Where, exactly, did Angel and Spike learn to drive? How do they avoid being pulled over by every traffic cop in the state when they drive around with a blacked out windscreen? How the hell do they manage to get a driving license and insurance? Or anything else that requires dealing with government and/or ID ... like renting a building for example?
 * I don't recall either of them having license or insurance so they just drive without those. As to the blacked out windows, cops don't actually pull people over for that as often as you might think. As for the building, I think it was rented by the humans in Angel's name. It's a mystery how Angel learned to drive but maybe it happened offscreen in season 1 of Buffy?
 * Around Sunnydale, you don't -want- to pull over anything weird.
 * I'm highly amused at the idea that Spike would bother with car insurance.
 * The explanation for Spike doesn't seem too hard, he was active and sociopathic across the twentieth century, and driving very much suits his style. Probably he saw more and more people driving along the roads, thought it looked fun, stole the car from some hapless victim he'd eaten, and practiced until he was decent. It's not like he'd care if his early trial and error ran over a lot of people, as long as he didn't get decapitated or set on fire in any accident he could recover fairly easily. Angel is a little harder to answer, but flashbacks eventually showed he was living a relatively conventional and civilized, if solitary, life up until the 70s. It wasn't until he feasted on the cooling corpse of a gunshot victim that he transitioned over to living in alleys eating rats. Plenty of time for him to get adult driving lessons, albeit lacking valid documentation would make main channels a bit tricky. Alternatively, Whistler taught him. I could actually picture him giving that as a start of his new life from the Powers. 'Now Angel, the most important thing is you'll need to learn to drive a convertible. For your duties as a champion.' Or Angel could have even learned post Buffy S3 before he really settled in LA. He is smarter than he looks. Even if he never mastered computers or cell phones.
 * Except, of course, for the very first episode of the series, where he seems to be a master of computer based research.
 * For the original office, Doyle may have been able to front for Angel. But with the hotel, there's a whole subplot with Gavin Park plotting to ruin Angel because of his lack of compliance with building codes, credit history, insurance, identification, and so on, and Lilah arranges for Angel to get a complete set of all the paperwork he needs just to screw Gavin.
 * A driver's license program didn't exist until 1910 in Prussia, and the first recorded instance of one was simply a letter authorizing Karl Benz to drive his noisy automobile on the streets in 1888. The Model T was invented in 1908. That's plenty of time for someone to learn how to drive. And cars became less complex over time.
 * Driving isn't exactly complicated. You can learn to drive almost competently just from arcade video games. Frankly it's more impressive that he can type.
 * And while driving schools aren't open at night, you can get driving lessons from, oh, anyone else who knows how to drive. Even soulless vampires know people. Like human-appearing demons, or evil humans, or just some guy who doesn't mind being paid a few hundred bucks to give someone a driving lesson at night. (And then the vampire doesn't pay at the end of the night and eats him. But that's vampires for you.)

Anybody know a good demon shaman?

 * Why didn't Angel go to the demon shaman (that Spike went to to get his soul back) and get the bad part of his curse removed, so that he wouldn't be in danger of losing his soul?
 * Self-flagellation.
 * Also, simple caution. Magic is very seldom reliable, and (especially when you have Wolfram & Hart for an enemy) you can never be sure if they've got to some strange demon shaman or not. So even though we know that the demon shaman's magic is reliable and trustworthy, Angel doesn't, and so he has to consider the possibility that the ritual will either backfire or be deliberately sabotaged. Remember that Spike was already soulless when he sought the shaman's aid... his worst-case scenario is that he'd simply get killed, and Spike was willing to risk his life to obtain the prize. Angel, on the other hand, has his worst-case here being not simple death, but the return of Angelus. Without significantly more assurances to the bona fides of the demon shaman than we saw on-screen (assuming Angel even knows this guy exists at all), the risk-vs-reward calculation here says "Stay the hell away, and try to avoid excessively happy moments."
 * Which brings up another question: Wouldn't the fear of Angelus returning and the knowledge of what happened the last time he did prevent any happiness from being "perfect" anyway?
 * I thought this myself. When he had "perfect happiness" with Buffy he didn't know about this part of the curse. Now that he's afraid of turning into Angelus that should be enough to make him at least a little unhappy whenever he feels good. But I also thought this was why he didn't change into Angelus when he had "perfect happiness" with Darla or Nina.
 * No, that was because Darla was, as he actually said, "perfect despair," whereas, while he liked Nina, he didn't love her. Sex wasn't perfect happiness, sex with Buffy was. The problem with the idea that it wouldn't be perfect because he'd worry about Angelus is that if he worked that out he wouldn't worry. So it would be perfect.
 * The happiness clause is at best unreliable and Angel is stupid. As much as he loved Buffy he had a moment of perfect happiness after they lost a fight that resulted in the resurection of an unkillable (or so they thought) demon who could kill humans by mere proximity? And at the end of season three he was rushing off to lose his soul on a moonlit beach?
 * As much as Angel's been around, there's also the simpler explanation that he didn't know about him.
 * This Troper agrees with the above simple explanation. Angel knew that Spike had a soul; he did not know how. He probably just assumed that Willow conjured up another gypsy curse so Buffy wouldn't feel bad about being romantically involved with him, or something. Which, in and of itself, offers a whole new flavor to Spike and Angel's interaction if Angel doesn't realize Spike isn't under said curse; all that jealousy and resentment over Buffy? "Well, HE can bone Buffy without losing his soul. That means he doesn't really love her."
 * According to Jenny Calendar's uncle the Gypsy, Angel was not cursed with a soul, instead He was cursed to SUFFER. The suffering took the form of a soul, yes, and then when he found perfect happiness that was taken away. Compare Spike in Season 7 of Buffy to Angelus in Season 2. Spike says as a vampire, he never hated himself, until he had a soul. Angelus is driven MORE mad and truly HATES the Angel part of him, and the memories of the Good things Angel has done, thus Angelus suffers. Willow restored Angels soul, not re-curse him. The Gypsy Curse never left Angel/Angelus. The initial answer is correct: Self-flaggelation. Angel believes he must Atone for his misdeeds as Angelus. He would never remove the curse himself.

Angel's memory isn't what it used to be
"Giles:The books tell the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human, mixed their blood. He was a human form possessed, infected by the demon's soul. He bit another, and another, and so they walk the Earth, feeding. Killing some, mixing their blood with others to make more of their kind. Waiting for the animals to die out, and the Old Ones to return. Giles: You listen to me! Jesse is dead! You have to remember that when you see him, you're not looking at your friend. You're looking at the thing that killed him. Buffy: Well, I've got a news flash for you, brain trust. That's not how it works. You die, and a demon sets up shop in your old house, and it walks, and it talks, and it remembers your life, but it's not you."
 * So the team of Angel investigations needs to remove the soul from Angel to get information about the Beast in Season 4 because all references and memories of the Beast were magically erased. Angelus would retain these memories because he did not technically exist at the time the spell was cast. So far, so good. But later, after he escapes and learns that there is a Slayer in town, Angelus calls the Summers residence in Sunnydale, and recognizes Dawn's voice over the telephone. Dawn...the artifact turned human, who was inserted into memory and record of existence during a time at which Angelus did not technically exist. How does he have knowledge of her?
 * Angelus and Angel ARE the same person. According to Joss Whedon, "soul" represents the feelings, conscience, the guilt, etc. It is NOT a different entity. Angelus IS Angel without guilt and human feelings. Angel even says the BTVS S3 that is the human inside him that needs to kill, not the demon. The "demon" is not a different character. The demon allows the vampire acquires the vampires characteristics and unleashes the person's dark side, but is not a different entity itself. If the demon was a different entity, Angel's quest for redemption wouldn't make sense. Scooby and Angel's (and, sometimes, even Angel himself) gang refers to Angelus as a different character because it is easier for them to deal with Angel's atrocities in his past if they do that (plus, this is a result of some bad writing at Angel's Season 4). If you pay attention, when Angel is with Spike by Season 5, he talks with him about his past as Angelus in first person. There is no "Angelus a different person" thing. It was Angel who did that, and Spike knows. There is no need for word play with Spike and Angel knows this.
 * I don't know what you're citing, but the series have made it pretty clear that the vampire is not the original person, it's a demonic imitation of them...


 * Because the show doesn't treat it like that. Angel feels guilt for the crimes of Angelus and Spike feels guilty for the sins of well Spike. If it's not you then you should feel all the guilt of owning a car that was used to run down children. It was your car but you weren't driving. Both men however are attoning for their crimes and believe it will never be enough.
 * No, it's just Angel and Spike who don't treat it like that. The only people who blame them for their pre-soul crimes are themselves (and Holtz, for what that's worth). Everyone else draws a clear dividing line between the soulless vampire and souled character and says it's not their fault. As for what they feel personally, it's powerful and real, but it's not necessarily true. Abuse victims often feel extreme guilt for what happened to them, even though it's clearly not their fault. Just because Angel and Spike feel guilty for the memories they've been saddled with doesn't mean they're actually guilty of anything, and that's how most characters in the shows (and, by extension, the shows themselves) treat it.
 * Presumably, Angelus knows what Angel knows, but Angel doesn't know what Angelus knows.
 * Angel and Angelus seem to receive all the memories of the previously active persona within seconds of taking control. Or, at least, that's how Angel described how it worked. Angelus described to Faith that he watches what Angel does, experiences what Angel does, but is trapped inside and cannot take over, and is tortured by having to watch everything Angel does. Angelus' explanation seems to be the more plausible one, whereas Angel's seems to be a cop-out.
 * Then again, the demon, Angelus, is in the body at all times, whereas the soul, Angel, is only in the body during the times in which Angel is active. But if you think about it that way, it just looks ridiculous.
 * The soul isn't Angel. The soul is the Angel's conscience, his ability to love. Angel is the person, and so is Angelus. They are the same person. Angelus is Angel's dark side, his dark desires, his darkness in general (we all have a dark side). The demon allows the person's comes to fruition.
 * Here's how I see it: Angel isn't the soul OR the demon. Angel is the person. He is made up of one part Angelus and one part Liam, both of which exist in some form within his subconscious, but neither of which are individual entities unto themselves. They're just parts of who he is. Think of it this way: Angelus is his id and Liam is his superego. Angel can feel guilty for Angelus's crimes because even though Liam wasn't there for them, Angel was - AS Angelus. Additionally, Angelus talks about being trapped inside Angel because he is, in a sense. Without Liam's soul, Angel reverts to being PURE Angelus, unrestrained id incarnate; with the soul, Angel gets the control his superego provides, and becomes a better person for it. Angelus isn't consciously trapped inside Angel's body, raging against his choices; he's an integrated part of the complete whole.
 * The real reason Angelus wasn't affected is not because he wasn't there. He was there, albeit dormant in Angel. He was unaffected so that Jasmine, who must have set up the Beast-amnesia, would have a reason to unleash him as a distraction.
 * If the two series don't always take place at the same time (and we can assume they don't since only about a month passes in season 4 of angel and a at least 4 pass in Buffy's 7th season) then we can just assume that dawn was inserted into the world during the events of "Eternity" (That's a very late season one episode where angel is drugged and becomes Angelus briefly. And if you're going to point out that the episode right after picked up the plot of a season 4 episode of Buffy, it isn't said how long after said episode "Five by Five" takes place and there's no reason to assume it doesn't take place just after season 4 of Buffy or early in Buffy's 5th season.
 * Yes, there is. Eternity occurs before Five By Five/Sanctuary (E: 1x17, FbF: 1x18, S: 1x19), and then Angel goes to Sunnydale in The Yoko Factor, which obviously happens before Dawn shows up. Also, he wasn't really Angelus there - he just thought he was.
 * I always just figured Angel (and therefore Angelus) would have visited Sunnydale after Buffy died and then actually met Dawn. If not then I'm sure Angel wanted a very detailed description of the events surrounding Buffy's death from Willow which would have included explaining Dawn and the memory spell. So when Angelus picked up the phone he just put two and two together.
 * I just see it like this: The monks inserted memories into anyone who would've known Dawn. Angelus would've obviously known at least of her existence during season 2, so the monks put in memories of her into Angelus, whether dormant, demon, different or the same as Angel, the monks would've taken care to put them in either way.
 * The major problem seemed to me to be that Angel suffered because he remembered all of Angelus's crimes. The whole point of the curse rested on Angel remembering Angelus. And then he can't remember something he knew as Angelus. I realize that the explanation given above gets around that hole, but I never got that point from the actual show, and I've watched the whole thing several times.
 * That's only because Jasmine and the Beast planned it that way. They cast a spell that would erase the Beast from the historical record (including Angel's memories) but not affect Angelus precisely because they wanted to Batman Gambit Team Angel into removing Angel's soul. However hard it was to work out a spell that could do that, that was really its only purpose. The monks, having no such ulterior motive, simply cast a more thorough spell that rewrote everything equally.

Angel's sleuthing skills

 * How did Angel lose his private detective abillities? You don't lose smarts. Unless Lorne screws up...
 * When did Angel have detective abilities?
 * Angel's always been able to find rare books and stuff on demand. He has contacts, despite spending most of his ensouled years moping about in a sewer.
 * Having contacts is not the same thing as having detective abilities. 90% of the time he (and the rest of the team) failed at basic reasoning skills.
 * But he had a good memory and was able to pick up on small clues.

L.A. needs patrolling, get to work!

 * I am also bugged by the very small amount of simple, basic patrolling they do.
 * What would be the point? The LA Greater Metropolitan Area covers five counties. Foot patrol works in Sunnydale because the town is that small. In the LA basin, you could split the entire 1st Marine Division into squad-sized units and still not be able to cover half the territory.
 * SUNNYDALE IS NOT SMALL!!!!!!!!! Did you see Chosen? That crater was huge!
 * I think that was more for visual effect. The pilot and other episodes empasize the fact that Sunnydale is rather small.
 * Although apparently it had space for several parks, a lake, a dock, a university, a military base, a train station, a bus station, an airport, a zoo, a museum, 12 cemetaries, and 43 churches!!
 * Sunnydale had a population of 38,500 as of the second season. (Check the sign Spike crashes the DeSoto into.)
 * Can't be the actual population, just the resident one. That number barely covers the number of STUDENTS in a UC campus, let alone staff and faculty, and the population base that would cover the demographics of Sunnydale High.
 * That's not entirely true. Several of the U Cs had enrollments of 10k-15k students ten years ago. That would put it at around the size of (school and town) of Santa Cruz, CA.
 * Also protecting all of L.A. wan't their job. They just helped people they got visions about.

Being human, who needs it?

 * So in season 1, Angel becomes human for an episode, has a perfect day with Buffy, then realizes that he's essentially useless like this and undoes it. Why is it then, that Angel spends the rest of the series motivated by the idea of becoming human again as predicted in the Shanshu Prophecy? I don't think I'd mind so much if they at least explained a change of heart or something since this episode, but there's no mention of it ever again to my knowledge.
 * The Shanshu occurs after the end of the world. Presumably he thought he wouldn't need to be Badass after that.
 * Yep, Angel couldn't fully enjoy being human as he knew that the End Times were still coming and he was dodging his destiny for selfish reasons, whereas the Shanshu was a rewards from The Powers That Be, so he was OK with it.
 * Which came true, in that if he had stayed human he wouldn't have been able to top Jasmine, or that time stop thing in season 2 or jumped in to stop Caleb in season 7 of Buffy. Any of those might have ended the world and/or resulted in a dead Buffy.
 * Though considering how many "end of the worlds" there are in this universe, what's the point of even bothering? After whatever "end times" results in him turning human, wouldn't it be likely for another apocalypse to come about, which he would fail to prevent?
 * No, the Shanshu specifically states that it's THE end of the world. Not an area specific apocalypse like the one's that the series usually shows, but a giant universe ending Gambit Roulette of doom. It was destined to be the final one and Angel would help or hinder it for the reward.
 * Of course when you take that into account, it's obvious what the outcome will be. If Angel helps the apocalypse there would be nothing left and the lack of existence might hinder him getting his reward. If there is something left, then becoming human would be a punishment because he would be at the mercy of all the evil forces that conquered the universe. So the only logical outcome is that he has to stop the apocalypse to get the reward.
 * That's assuming that it's a reward. The Shanshu never states that Angel is rewarded by becoming human; simply that he plays a pivotal role and then he becomes human. It may well be a punishment; stripping Angel of his vampiric abilities and rendering him a powerless human being, at the mercy of whomever he fought against. After the Fall tinkered with something like this, and This Troper once wrote a fanfic to the same effect; wherein Angel plays the villain in the Shanshu, and is defeated by restoring his humanity, rendering him powerless. As the series has shown countless times, prophecies are deceitful creatures that tell you one thing and then give it to you, but never in the way you expect.

Just how old are Cordelia's memories?

 * In "Spin The Bottle", all the characters are reverted to their teenage personas - Fred believes that she is 17, and none of the others suggest they are different ages. However, Cordelia at 17 translates to Cordelia in Season Two of Buffy. She would have a) recognized Angel instantly, b) at least mentioned Buffy, if not actively tried to find her, and c) responded to the terms "Watcher" and "Slayer" which Wesley used. The Cordelia persona we see corresponds to Season One or even earlier, which puts her age at no more than 16. What gives?
 * Simplest explanation: it reverted them to different mental ages. The entire thing was a random magical backlash, after all, its got every excuse not to be Laser-Guided Amnesia.
 * Cordy says something about it being a "sophomore hazing prank" right after the memory wipe, indicating that she does in fact hail from pre-season 1 (as it would make her a very early sophomore, where Season 1 started halfway through the year).
 * Alternatively, it reduced each character's mental age by a set amount. Fred was older than Cordy, so...
 * Except Angel reverted to his teenage years, and he's centuries older than the rest of the characters.
 * Well, the only thing that's implied to an exact age is Fred saying "None of you look exactly 17." That doesn't necessarily mean they ALL thought they were 17 just that they all knew they must now be OLDER then 17. So if Cordelia's memory was set back to 16 or even 15 it's not all that suspicious that she wouldn't have said she was YOUNGER then 17 when Fred was obviously implying that she is now OLDER then at least 17.

And by "distract," I mean "kill him"!

 * In "Not Fade Away", Angel had Harmony keep Hamilton busy. Why not order her to kill him? She's perfectly capable of seduction. She could have gotten him into her bed, probably had sex, then ate him. OK, Hamilton could have fought back, but if he wasn't expecting it, at least in Angel's mind, it could have worked.
 * Harmony wasn't ordered to seduce Hamilton. In fact, he seduced her for the information. Harmony would've disobeyed the orders even if they had been given to her so what would have been the point?
 * Hamilton, the guy who Angel only recently found out could kick the crap out of Illyria in hand to hand combat? What exactly is Harmony supposed to kill him with, a tank? (Granted, that makes you wonder what the hell Angel thought he was doing taking him on with his bare hands and a knife, but even Angel admitted he was being overly optimistic on that one.)
 * Maybe the normal way that vampires kill humans: drink their blood. Ironically, that would've actually given Harmony strength on par with Hamilton's.
 * Question: did they even know Hamilton was human? I can't remember anyone saying anything that would indicate that Hamilton was human.
 * Angel also knew full well that Harmony was untrustworthy, and was going to betray him sooner or later. Counting on her to risk herself in fighting any type of opponent would be stupid, doubly so with one as dangerous as Hamilton. And I'd opinion that Harmony isn't capable of seduction with disguised malevolent intent because she has no capacity for convincingly lying. The Buffybot could probably tell she wasn't being sincere in a given lie even before she started stammering. As a final point, I don't believe Angel knew she was sleeping with Hamilton.
 * Moreover, Angel didn't even think he could take Hamilton. His original plan was just to keep Hamilton busy long enough for the other members of Team Angel to finish their assignments. Angel was going to play a little game called self sacrifice.

Vampires in the ER

 * In "Into The Dark", why did they think Angel needed to go to a hospital? He's a vampire, poking holes in him a bunch of times won't kill him.
 * Depending on how early in the series this was and the extent of the injuries, they simply could not have known how much damage a vampire can take before it becomes permanent and were being cautious.

Dirt-poor millionaires

 * Why do they always act like they are in such a dire financial position when they have ''millions' of dollars. Did the writers just forget they had given him all that money?
 * If you're refering to the cash from "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been", I kinda figured Angel gave it back. It was stolen, after all.
 * Actually, I was referring to all the money they got from David Nabbit in "War Zone" as well as the $50,000 they stole off those monsters in season 3.
 * Oh yeah, I forgot about that. OK then, Nabbit's check or the cashed money thereof was in the office when it blew up at the end of season 1 and I don't think they actually did moan about lack of cash for a while after the $50,000.
 * It was mentioned a couple of times that Angel was so worried about money for Connor's college tuition that he put all that away and called it a college fund. Gunn even mentioned they wouldn't have to "dip into" it.

Hey, who invited the vampire?

 * I have a theory about how Angel got into Kate's house uninvited when she tried to kill herself. Considering that Buffy was counted as 'dead' for the purposes of the slayer line when her heart had stopped, yet was easily revived by CPR, the definition of 'dead' for a vampire being able to come in someone's house might be the same. Kate's heart could very well have been stopped at that point.
 * When I rewatched that episode recently something came to mind. Kate called Angel telling him off, obviously for attention. In other words it was a figurative call for help, and may be interpreted as an invitation to enter her house for the purpose of saving her. An invitation doesn't necessarily have to be "come in and know me better man!" does it?
 * Kate's words in the end of the episode seem to support it, but it's frequently lampshaded that vampires in Whedonverse need "invitations" with very specific words. And Kate knows that and says "... I never invited you in." Kinda bugs me.
 * They enjoyed playing with the rule and giving it new dimensions; in "Untouched", Angel had to wait until one of Bethany's attackers was pulled from life support before he could enter.
 * When Holtz's daughter stepped aside to let in Angelus and Darla she implicitly invited them it. But he had to ask "Is that an invitation?" and get "Yes." before they could enter. Given that, it seems likely that an explicit invitation is required; something that could be interpreted as a cry for help probably wouldn't qualify.
 * But Angel and Darla never actually tried to enter. There's no way to know if they could have or not, they were probably making absolutely sure they could before they tried as to not tip her off. Besides, a general invitation not aimed at the vampire counts (such as a flyer inviting everyone to a party), so why not a veiled invitation actually meant for him?
 * I think it's because an invitation has to be verbal, and gestures don't count.
 * If an invitation needs to be verbal flyers wouldn't count either (and vamps got into a party on Buffy once because of flyers). And mute people would be unable to invite them in. I think the person just needs to make a conscious decision that they want that vampire to enter and it counts. I also think most vampires are ignorant of this fact and assume you need a verbal invitation.
 * It's possible that the invitation needs to be a definite, explicit invitation. There's BtVS season 4 episode where Angel asks if he can come into Buffy's dorm room, and she tells him "I guess". He says that's not enough, and doesn't come in until she directly says he can. Hence a written invitation works, responding "yes" to the question "Can I come in?" works, but a gesture that can be interpreted as allowing entrance doesn't. And no, it is incredibly unlikely that a "call for help" that isn't stated explicitly and makes no mention of him coming in anywhere would negate the threshold. Otherwise just shouting "Help" would count as a general invitation to anyone nearby.
 * I think that was Angel not wanting to intrude against the wishes of the love of his un-life particularly when she wasn't exactly thrilled with him at the moment. Spike didn't need an invitation to get in the room and unsuccessfully attempt to bite Willow when he escaped from the Initiative.
 * He did, actually. He knocked at the door, and Willow responded, "Come in." Then Spike entered the room and attacked Willow. Willow really should have known better before blindly inviting someone into her dorm room.
 * Don't forget Vampires got into Sunnydale High because the entrance sign said "Enter if you seek knowledge." Or something like that.
 * I always figured that was just Angelus being a wiseass, since a school is a public building anyway.
 * In an early season of Angel a bookshop owner threatens to start sleeping on a cot in the back of his store to keep vampires from coming in. Maybe Giles and the others occasionally sleeping over at the school while they're in the midst of research (or some janitor who occasionally catches catnaps on a cot in the boiler room) is enough to classify it as a residence that vampires need an invitation to enter, and Angelus is the one who noticed that there's a convenient one right outside the school itself.
 * Keep in mind, though, that most vampires really can't set out to test exactly what constitutes an invitation; you'd need some cooperative mortals (to establish and invite past the anti-vampire threshold) who are also able (and willing) to muck with the magic necessary to rescind the invitation and really try to find the boundaries. And a vampire who guesses wrong about what counts and what doesn't who bounces off the threshold has pretty much given the game away.
 * For that matter, IIRC, we don't hear the entire phone conversation, who knows what she might have said on the phone. Or for that matter, we could simply interpret it as it was intended; the powers that be interfering.
 * I think her pointing out that she didn't invite him in but that he was able to enter anyway was the point. That essentially, God or the Powers That Be or whoever it is that imposes these rules on vampires in the first place wanted Angel to save Kate, so they let him break the rule. Sort of the metaphysical version of cops forgiving you for violating the speed limit because you were rushing your injured mother to the hospital.

No, he told me to kill him, honest!
"Gunn: No matter what else, I think I proved that you can trust me when I could have killed you and I didn't. Angel: No. You'll prove that I can trust you when day comes that you have to kill me, and you do."
 * When Angel is getting his soul removed, he tells Connor that if Angelus breaks out it'll be his job to kill him. In private. That just seems guaranteed to alienate his son from the rest of the group when he inevitably gets out. I mean if he actually wanted them to kill him if he escaped shouldn't he have impressed that on the rest of them instead of just talking about how dangerous Angelus is? He knows from last time this happened how reluctant people are to kill him in that state. I mean, they would still have shouted Connor down, but it might have come across a bit less like "Oh, and Angel's psycho son wants him dead again. Ignore him, he's crazy. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by making him distrust us?"
 * 'If I go Angelus again, you'll have to kill me' was the standard operating procedure of Angel Investigations since at least season 3. Connor's the only person who needed to be told, everybody else already knew. Wesley may have chosen to consciously disregard this policy (presumably due to guilt over what he'd inadvertently done to Angel & Connor last season), but it was policy.
 * I'm pretty sure that for something to be "standard operating procedure" the possibility of maybe adhering to it has to be at least brought up. Like the Prime Directive on Star Trek. Do they follow it? Hell no. But they do note what action it would dictate, while there's no evidence for Angel's team that killing him was even considered. So maybe they could have used a reminder given that they were embarking on a course of action with a staggeringly high probability of requiring that policy.
 * It was brought up. Here's one instance from the end of Season 3 Episode, "That Old Gang Of Mine"


 * Brought up when it was relevant.

Conner's quar-toth accent?

 * Holtz was the one who taught Connor to speak English, and Quar-toth was so remote that surely there were no demons there who spoke a human language (unless they learned it from Holtz himself). So with no other models for how to speak English, why doesn't Connor have an accent like Holtz's? Why does he have a perfect American accent?
 * Because no one wanted to listen to a season-long repeat of Angel's ghastly Irish accent. Probably they were worried about too much Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping.
 * So get an English actor to play Connor. They exist, you know.
 * NONSENSE!
 * As a rationalization, perhaps Holtz's elaborate Gambit Roulette to make Conner and Angel bond before framing Angel and alienating them forever included planning to make Conner have the same general accent. That way he'd sound like Angel rather than have Angel hear his voice and remember Holtz every moment. So he carefully grilled Conner to have him talk without an English accent, amidst his other borderline abusive parenting.
 * On the other hand, Holtz didn't actually have an English accent, nor is it realistic that he would have, since people in 18th century Britain didn't have anything we'd recognize as an English accent anyway. So.. well yeah. Also pretty sure Holtz's plan was initially to just have Connor kill Angel, but when they started bonding he came up with a new plan.

Fear my Star of David, vampire!

 * In a Lovecraftian Horror-type universe in which even the Powers That Be are more like Magnificent Bastards than a straight-up force for obvious good, why do Christianity and its symbols affect demons/vampires? Why don't other religions work? For example, how come Willow always wore a cross instead of a Star of David if it wasn't because Christianity is the "true religion" of the Buffyverse?
 * The cross works against vampires because the Church has been a major player in anti-vampire efforts.
 * To elaborate, Word of God has it that the cross doesn't work because it's Christian -- Christianity adopted the cross as its primary symbol because it works against vampires (and yes, there's the crucifixion, but they could just as easily wear little fish symbols, or a miniature crown of thorns, or whatever).
 * To elaborate, the cross as a religious/mystical symbol predates Christianity. It represents the sun. One can see rather easily how a vampire might be averse to a mystical symbol embodying sunlight. And, to this troper's knowledge, in the Buffyverse, only vampires demonstrate any averse reaction to the cross, because of their racial vulnerability to the sun. Other demons just kind of shrug it off.
 * That explains the cross pretty well. But that raises the question of how Holy Water has the power to hurt vampires.
 * Because it's blessed with a crucifix.
 * The Ethros demon did recoil from a crucifix and was affected by a Catholic exorcism. But then that whole thing was an Exorcist reference.
 * Pre-Christianity the cross was a symbol for both fire and the sun. It would be that symbol and not the religious one that has the effect and it wouldn't transfer to other faiths symbols.
 * As another point, a Star of David is not a religious symbol. It's a racial - or, perhaps, a cultural - symbol. the appropriate holy symbol for a person practicing the religion of Judaism would be a Torah.
 * As a side note, it's been implied - though never [to this troper's knowledge] out-right stated - that other Holy Symbol's DO work... it's just that the only "Non-Christian" around is Willow, who happens to start Jewish and end up Wiccan. The history, in-universe, of the Cross would apply to any other Holy Symbol associated with the Sun [i.e. a Symbol of Ra, for Helios and/or Apollo, etc]. The Cross is just the most well-known and most common, as well as being the easiest to mock up. And is known to work - if you were fighting a vampire, would YOU risk using a Holy Symbol that wasn't PROVEN to work? Kind of chancy... But this troper would dearly love to see SOMEONE use a different Holy Symbol.
 * This was actually inverted in an issue of the comic book "Crimson". Someone tries to hold a vampire off with a cross... only for it not to work because the vampire was Jewish. (Who then proceeds to take the cross away from the guy and kill him with it.)

And then, after the End of the World...

 * How exactly does the Shanshu Prophecy turn Angel human after the end of the world? It's the end of the world. Becoming human is a little difficult - hell, shouldn't everyone have died out with the world?
 * I see you are unfamiliar with the use of the phrase "End of the world" in the fantasy genre. (Also, becoming human was his reward for stopping the end of the world).
 * The Shanshu never said Angel would stop the end of the world. His role in the Shanshu was heretofore unknown to the protagonists, and they just all assumed it means he'll be the hero.  Additionally, keep in mind that the Shanshu never said he'd become human either; that's just Wesley's interpretation of the word "shanshu", which represents the cycle of life and death. Prophecies are tricky, deceitful creatures. Never take them at face value.
 * Close but not quite. It is most definitely not set in stone that Angel will be a villain in the Apocalypse, merely that that is what the Senior Partners have foreseen and would prefer to have come to pass. Visions of the future do not necessarily come true; they can be changed, as evidenced by every single vision that Doyle and Cordelia have throughout the series. The point of visions is that they give you a preview of what can happen in the future, allowing the viewer to take action to change or ensure the outcome.
 * Visions, yes. But I can't think of a single prophecy in either Buffy or Angel that has ever not come to pass.
 * The father shall kill the son? Unless you're gonna go WAY out on that limb and claim that when Connor's memories were erased that counted as killing him or Angel killed him and had Wolfram & Hart ressurect Connor with new memories.
 * "The father shall kill the son" was never a real prophecy. That was merely a failed attempt by Sahajin to rewrite the real prophecy, "The son of the vampire with a soul shall kill Sahajin". Sahajin is a time travelling demon who has painstakenly rewritten all texts quoting, mentioning, or vaguely alluding to this prophecy throughout history, but literally the only thing he's accomplished is that there is no transcribed record of the real prophecy in the current world. The prophecy itself still stands, and his fake version was never a prophecy. This also explains why Angel never actually kills Connor, but Connor does successfully kill Sahajan.
 * But that's the whole point. If that prophecy is fake, then who's to say there aren't other fake prophecies? Because Destiny Says So becomes a lot shakier once some of its messages turn out to be false.
 * Angel did "kill" Conner though, at least symbolically. In "Home" Angel takes a knife and slashes Conner's throat right before the spell takes effect and rewrites history. Word of God on the DVD commentary even states that this was done as an allusion to the "The Father Will Kill The Son" prophecy.
 * But the show flatout said that it wasn't a real prophecy. So even if Angel did kill Conner, it's just a coincidence, unless traveling back in time and vandalizing a prophecy to make it say something different can warp the future into even making the fake prophecy come true.
 * The point is both prophesies did come true. One can clearly see Angel slit Connor's throat before the Senior Partners warped reality, and because of his efforts to change the future, Sahajan changed the prophesy and forced his own death to occur at the hands of Connor, leading to both prophesies, the fake one and the real one, to come true. It was probably all set up by Jasmine anyways
 * A LOT of prophecies in both Buffy and Angel ultimately wind up being self-fulfilling. Connor, for example, probably would never have had any reason to kill Sahjahn had Sahjahn not put himself in Connor's life trying to kill him first. The prophecy way back when that the Master would kill Buffy when he rose would never have come about if Buffy hadn't gone to face him in response to the prophecy, because he could not rise without her blood. Prophecies tend to will themselves into existence by the simple act of existing; "The Father will kill the Son" is no different in this regard, with Wesley's theft of the child ultimately causing the prophecty to come true for no other reason than because it exists.

Magic vampire blood pressure

 * In the episode with the doctor who can take his body parts off, he shoots Angel with a paralytic dart. Angel has no circulatory system. How does that work??
 * The same way Gwen Raiden can hit Angel with enough electricity to fry a human being like a bacon strip and just annoy him, but a cattle prod will knock Spike unconscious. Sloppy damn writing.
 * Of course vampires have a circulatory system. They bleed all the time. They just don't die from lack of blood. Or being unable to breathe.
 * Yeah, well, that cheeses me off too.
 * I'm sorry, how does one have blood moving through their veins when their heart isn't beating? Vampires have a circulatory system in that they have veins and arteries with blood in them, but the blood isn't moving. It's like how if you cut a dead body, they bleed a lot less than if you cut a living person in the same place. They are, however, still bleeding. Digressing, without blood circulating through his body, there is absolutely no way that a tranquilizer dart would work on Angel, or any other vampire.
 * The heart doesn't do all the work pumping blood around the body, obviously it isn't enough to keep you alive without one; but muscle expansion and contraction also help to push blood through your veins. Particularly when the blood is back en-route to your heart. Perhaps this is enough to give vampires a small amount blood flow. And there's also the obvious level of showmanship that goes in; bleeding is always unrealisticly excessive in television and movies, for dramatic effect.
 * They also get drunk, and in one episode Spike incapacitated Drusilla by a choke hold. They can also get erections, which indicates blood flow. It's reasonable to assume this happens by some mystical means. A Wizard Did It.
 * They also speak without having breath. Basically vampires' bodies act like humans' bodies save in certain ways that are essentially just to mark them as not being truly alive. That includes having blood flow through their veins despite their hearts not beating. And if that bothers you, well, sorry that it isn't an accurate depiction of how real life corpses animated by demons who drink blood work.

Some demons with visions are more equal than others?

 * OK so the visions are too powerful for humans to handle and thus Cordelia had to become part-demon to handle them. Makes sense, they were obviously quite painful. Except Doyle was also part-demon, and they were clearly just as painful for him, he reacted in the same way Cordelia did originally to them. And while it's possible to be painful yet still not deadly, this is rather inconsistent with how Cordelia could handle them with no issues post-transformation.
 * Unless they imbued her with demonic powers that could make her resist the pain caused by the visions. As sort of a 'thankyou' for being so noble.
 * Everything that happened to Cordelia pre-Jasmine had been to manipulate her into position to become the bringer of Jasmine into this world - as explained thoroughly in the shows. It is therefore very likely that the pain was sent on purpose as an arm-twist to get her to become part demon, which would then allow her to handle carrying Jasmine as her baby once she had been promoted to one of TPTB, and then sent back down. Therefore, why would Doyle have felt any pain? His destiny was only to give the visions to Cordelia. And why would the pain continue past its intended use?
 * Not all demons are created equal. Doyle was descended from some pissant nobody demon while Cordy was imbued with the essence of a demon powerful enough to serve as the mother of one of the Powers That Be.
 * Doyle not accepting his demon lineage may also have affected how he handled the visions. Seeing his ex-wife then Cordy accepting a date might have set him on the path of pain-free visions; however, he didn't have time to grow like that and only passed on "imperfect" visions to Cordy.
 * I think it's due to changing casting resulting in a retcon. Originally Doyle was supposed to be a permanent caste-member and all the vision-related plot-points were intended for him. In the original concept, Doyle is gradually dying because he's just half-demon and he needs to be full demon to survive the visions. Doyle's actor gets fired so presto-chango-retcon-magic Doyle would have always been fine as just half-demon, and now it's Cody being completely human that is causing the visions to be gradually fatal.

What happened to the Groo?

 * What the heck ever happened to Groo? I mean, it's established that he abdicated a throne and made what's honestly a fairly tricky transdimensional hop to show up, so it's not like he can really just casually go "Oh, THAT'S the way it is," and go home. Plus, his whole deal is being cartoonishly noble and heroic, so you would think, even if he was just maintaining a healthy distance, he'd keep in the loop enough to show up for, at a bare minimum, a few things in the second half of season 4.
 * Maybe he found his own apocalypse somewhere.
 * Word of God is Groo is now a free-agent good guy in a somewhat normal Los Angeles.
 * Word of God also states that Groo was meant to come back in series four for a couple of episodes, but for unknown reasons it fell through.
 * Reading "After The Fall" helps here: Short version, he's doing fine, thank you for asking.

And why doesn't anyone care about what happened to the Groo?

 * I have a better question. Why does no one in the show ask what happened to Groo? In the season 4 premiere, everyone is fretting over finding the missing Angel and Cordy, but nobody is concerned at all that Groo vanished. I mean, it's not like Cordy told anyone he'd left before she became a higher being.
 * Lorne got the impression that Groo was leaving in the previous episode. Presumably he told them Groo left.
 * This question gets asked a lot about a lot of different characters and a lot of different series, and the answer is always the same: Because you don't have the characters sit around discussing what another character is doing unless it's actually relevant to the plot in some fashion, or a brief explanation of why the character isn't in that particular movie or episode (if it's decided such is warranted). Having the characters yammer about what a character who's effectively no longer in the series is doing when it contributes nothing more than a bit of catering to the fans is bad writing. Basically, any time someone wants to ask a question about this, they should consider that bit from The Simpsons where Homer is suggesting how to make Poochy more popular, and replace "Poochy" with the other character's name. "And when he's not around, the other characters should be talking about him all the time. 'Where's the Groo? What do you think the Groo is doing?'"

Single PTB seeks bad vampire

 * So why did Jasmine need Angelus?
 * No one knows.
 * To keep Angel Investigations busy dealing with him so they'd be less likely to notice the details of her scheming, all the while making them think he was integral to her plans in some other way as a form of misdirection was what I gathered from it.
 * To keep Angel out of the way. Angelus was much less of a threat to her.

Hey Willow, you got a spare soul we can borrow?
"Harmony: Hi, I suck at being evil. Can I switch sides and join your team? Angel: Sure, we'll get Willow to ensoul you to make sure you don't screw it up. No! I'll never allow it... okay, Cordy wants you in, so I'll let you betray us to prove how impossible it is."
 * So Darla comes back human, Angel hopes that he can save her and turn her into a better person, then Drusilla turns up and turns her into a vampire, so Angel goes headfirst into darkness and angstiness, thinking that all hope is lost. Why didn't he just call Willow up and ask her to stick a soul in Darla?
 * Because magic demands sacrifice. Something quite horrible would have happened, even if the spell worked.
 * Nothing horrible happened when Willow re-souled Angel in "Becoming" or "Orpheus".
 * That spell set Willow on the path to becoming a witch, leading to the absurd "magic addiction" storyline in season 6 of Buffy. There's your sacrifice.
 * Alternatively, remember that Willow wasn't "sticking a soul" in Angel, nor was she casting a new spell requiring a new sacrifice. She was reactivating the gypsy curse, and the sacrifice for it had already been made by the gypsy's murdered family.
 * Best guess: Darla's even older than Angel. He may have done things that are more horrible, but she's done more horrible things. Angel took a century to even begin to get over what he'd done before he was ensouled--it's entirely possible he considers it a Fate Worse Than Death. (Not that anyone on the show ever seems to think of ensouling any vampire but Angel.)
 * If that's the case, that's quite poorly thought out by Angel and crew. Clearly the resurrected, human Darla remembers everything of her vampire days. The mere fact that she recognizes Angel and talks about their history should prove that, since she only met Angel when she was a vampire for a couple hundred years or so. She also knows more siring vampires than one who had been around for 20 years (granted, that vamp at the bar was clearly a couple splinters short of a stake, but still), and she's clearly unimpressed when he mentions his age. Giving her a soul would just put her back to where she was when W&H brought her back, except without the pesky "dying of syphilis" part. Angel should really have just built a cage (like they had for him a few seasons later) and contacted Willow. By this point (concurrent with season 5 of Buffy), Willow is advanced enough to do the restoration spell without suffering excessive harm (plus she would have had a talented which like Tara to help out). With a soul, Darla would have been an incredible asset. Vampires are like scotch...they strengthen with age. So as strong as Angel is, Darla could have mopped the floor with him. Remember, she only died because she never even considered the possibility that Angel would kill her, and he snuck up and impaled her from behind (which sounds dirtier than it is). So worth the trouble of a phone call and a 45 minute drive from Sunnydale? Absolutely. At this point, Team Angel and the Scoobies are in contact and on good terms. (And also, it's pretty early in the season, so Glory wasn't an imminent threat yet.)


 * Well, it's possible that for Harmony the spell wouldn't be too effective. She doesn't have the history of centuries of evil. Sure she's killed some people, but human Harmony didn't have the strongest conscience ever. She would probably brood for a while, maybe a few months or a couple years, sure. But to assume the soul would be constantly plaguing her thoughts and causing her suffering seems a stretch. All she needs is to be happy and she's back to the (evil) way she was. On the other hand, it could be argued that Harmony isn't a deep enough person to experience "a moment of true, perfect happiness."
 * Maybe the spell that ensouled Angel was only for Angel. It was a rediscovered gypsy curse meant to punish the monster that killed their beloved family member. The spell might not work on another vampire without some serious reconfiguring that no one is willing to mess with because they really don't know anything about the magics that created it in the first place and don't know what the consequences might be for messing around with it.
 * Except that this is concurrent with season 5 of Buffy. Between Willow's power and Tara's understanding of magic, they could definitely figure it out.
 * It wouldn't, as discussed above. The gypsy curse wasn't designed to put a soul into Angelus, it was designed to make Angelus suffer, and the most effective way to do so was to restore his soul. Putting the same curse on Harmony, for example, would've probably made her ugly or bald or something. Putting it on Spike might've made him fall in love with a Slayer...hey...
 * However this is just commonly accepted fanon. There is no reason to think that the spell said "suffer" instead of insert soul. Based on the fact that gypsies in this universe serve vengence not justice it seems unlikely that they had a spell that simply causes suffering in the most effective way possible and they forgot how to cast it. More likely it was actually a spell to put souls back in, perhaps a cure for one of their own that didn't turn out so well. They still had it on hand when Angel did his thing though and it was a very cruel option as they already knew.
 * ...just read a translation of the curse. "What is lost, return" and all that. It's an ensouling spell, not a suffering spell.
 * It's not fanon when it's directly stated in canon. "The curse. Angel is meant to suffer, not to live as human. One moment of true happiness, of contentment, one moment where the soul that we restored no longer plagues his thoughts, and that soul is taken from him." Enyos's own words make it pretty unambiguous that the purpose of the curse is to inflict suffering upon Angel. See also: the definition of the word "curse": "A solemn utterance to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something."
 * That doesn't mean curses can't be designed to inflict a specific harm or punishment.
 * Additionally, don't forget that Jenny Calendar needed an Orb of Thessala (spelling?)to be a receptacle for the soul on its way into Angel(us). She has a little exchange with the shop-keeper that makes it pretty clear that the spell that Jenny is translating and planning to use is strictly a spell for souls. And as mentioned above, the wording of the spell is even less ambiguous.
 * Regarding why they never ensoul any other vampire but Angel (with the exception of Spike, who ensouled himself), remember that the ensouling curse is a horrible, brutal thing. The act of providing a soul to a vampire does not benefit either the vampire or the soul in any conceivable way. The vampire obtains the conscience and moral compass that it had in life, which it now has to apply to everything it's done since its siring. If, in life, the person was someone with a strong moral compass, this is a horrible and traumatic form of torture. If they weren't, and are just going to wind up killing more people, then the act of ensouling them probably wouldn't be such a great alternative to the stake anyway. Meanwhile, the human soul you've placed in them gets the heavy load of, "So, hey, here is everything your body's been doing while you were gone," taking them along for the traumatic emotional torture ride. The ensouling curse is probably the most absolutely terrible thing that could be done to a vampire, and the only reasons to perform it on a vampire are purely selfish. Ensouling Angel can be excused because the original ensouling curse was not done by our protagonists; it's not a fresh ensouling, but restoring the Angel they've grown to know and love. Any new ensouling doesn't have this; it would simply be an act of cruelty.

New-fangled cell phones, who needs 'em?

 * Angel seems remarkably blaise about not knowing cell phones, considering how essential they are to saving lives.
 * What do you expect, he's over two-hundred years old. Take your grandfather huffing and puffing over these new-fangled gadgets and times that by ten.
 * But old humans have diminishing mental capacity, memory loss, etc. How do you explain that sort of brain failure in a vampire? He learned to drive and use landline telephones, after all. That seems like a bigger leap in technology than landlines to cellular.
 * We are not told how long it took him to make the leap to cars or landline phones. Angel may well not have been an "early adopter".
 * There's a little bit of inevitable memory loss as you get older, but senility isn't inevitable or even the norm and some mental processes actually keep growing throughout one's lifetime (like social skills and empathy, according to some recent research). Most elderly people aren't huffing and puffing over new stuff because they can't learn it, but because they don't want to learn it; they're already comfortable with what they have and don't think it'd be worth the effort. The same thing applies to Angel, especially since his definition of normal has included barn stables and tavern wenches (and he's said as much).

Hands off the gem of amarra

 * So, the Gem of Amarra supposedly makes a vampire invincible. How about just CUTTING HIS HAND OFF? There's a whole problem solved with just a knife and a swing. Or a tranquilizer dart from afar and just, y'know, taking the ring off the vampire's finger. "Invincible" might be one of the biggest overstatements ever.
 * The entire schtick of the ring was that the vampire was immune to all of the few things that could kill a vampire while they were wearing it, not that they were immune to damage or anything close to invincibility. If I remember correctly only Spike referred to it as invincibility, and he has repeatedly demonstrated he isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
 * Invincibility does not equate to "always wins every fight". The vampire is completely invulnerable to anything that would inflict Critical Existence Failure while wearing the ring. That there are ways to get around this does not diminish the fact that as long as the vampire continues to wear the ring, he cannot die.

Anybody else remember what we did last year?

 * Okay, so at the end of Season 4 and for most of Season 5, everyone in the main cast except for Angel (and Cordelia) have no memory of Connor. What memories go in that place, then? Who impregnated Cordy with Jasmine? Why did Wesley leave the group and start a relationship with Lilah? They definitely remember Lilah and Wesley being together, but if they don't remember his alienation from the group during that time, what do they remember instead? Did they just forget most of the conflict that happened in Season 3 and 4? I'm frustrated that the show never explains what memories filled the gaps left by the old ones.
 * In Season 5, Wesley is MUCH less broody than he was in the latter half of 3 and all of 4. This troper just assumed that nobody actually remembered Wesley kidnapping Connor, since, for them, there was no Connor to kidnap, and thus, Wesley didn't leave the group. Come to think of it, I can't think of a time when Wesley's relationship with Lilah is refered to after the Season 4 finale.
 * Thats not true, the relationship comes up at least once in season 5. Cordelia apologizes to Wesley for killing Lilah, and it seems like he is still broken up about it.
 * Memory isn't as strong as people like to believe it is. Entire events have happened to you that you just don't remember because they aren't important, or they didn't leave a lasting enough impression. You can remember DOING something without remembering WHY you did it, and if you try hard enough to remember, your brain can even go so far as to INVENT a reason that never happened. Memory is an extremely fuzzy and blurry thing that changes with the wind. It's very likely that removing everyone's memory of Conner changes NOTHING about the events people remember occuring, just whitewashes Conner out of them. So Wesley betrayed the group and shacked up with Lilah, that's memorable, but the reason for WHY he did it isn't. And before you start thinking that they would notice they're missing memories, memory just doesn't work that way. The only time, for example, that the absence of Conner in the betrayal memory would come up is if someone asked Wesley, "So, hey, why DID you betray us anyway?" and even then, his spotty memory would fill the holes with whatever it needed to, perhaps, "I was upset over the fact that Fred decided she wanted to be with Gunn instead of me." Memory is terribly unreliable as a source of factual information.
 * Wouldn't it work much like Dawn's entry into Buffy? All they did was alter their memories so that they were the exact same person, just with memories of Dawn in there. It would act on the same principle, with the difference that they would be simply removing Connor from most people's memories.
 * Or the time that Jonathan cast the Superstar spell. Everything still happened, but everyone remembered Jonathan as being the big hero instead of Buffy.

Donkey Kong for the Xbox?

 * I know it's stupid and a tiny thing in comparison to the others listed here. But still. Season 5 Ep 12. Spike is playing a video game on what is CLEARLY an Xbox. What game is he playing? Donkey Kong. Need I say more?
 * Is there any chance there was some sort of collection thing that made that possible? If not, maybe it was a magical Xbox. Still, it seems like Halo would be more up Spike's alley.
 * Donkey Kong is owned by Nintendo, who doesn't make games for the Xbox. That said, the wide realm of hacking and bootlegging makes it possible for a particularly focused individual to make an illegal Donkey Kong game for the Xbox. It'd be a hassle, though.
 * If you know what you're doing (or how to look it up) you can emulate the arcade version of Donkey Kong on the XBOX
 * If you know what you're doing (which my guy does) you can emulate virtually any game prior to the XBOX for the XBOX. As a non-specific example, my guy's XBOX plays every NES, SNES, N64 AND arcade game that he had available at the time for uploading. Which was, of course, a ton of games... INCLUDING but not limited to Donkey Kong Country (all three), Donkey Kong 64 AND the original Donkey Kong where you played as Mari.. err... 'Jumpman', I believe it was.
 * Perhaps making an illegal copy of DK for the Xbox was part of WR&H's Petty Evil For Its Own Sake department.
 * Note this is the episode right after Andrew made a guest appearance. If anybody knew how to rig an Xbox, it'd be him, and he'd be happy to do it too. Especially to help out Spike, whom he obviously has a crush on.
 * While I would easily believe that Spike would be completely fine with piracy, I can't really imagine him caring enough to go to all the effort (nor being tech savy enough) of setting up the Donkey Kong emulation. Nor is it particularly feasible that he would care enough to ask Andrew to set it up. Unless Andrew crashed at Spike's and set the game up for himself or something.
 * Andrew is in love with Spike. He probably rigged the Xbox up as a gift.

Pucker up, Angel
"Doyle: "Maybe I'm a little attracted.""
 * In the episode "Hero" Doyle transfers his visions to Cordelia by kissing her. Then in the episode "Birthday" Cordelia enters an alternate reality when she never met up with Angel in L.A. At the end of the story, she saves Angel from the torment he is getting from obtaining the visions, by kissing him (thus transfering the visions from Angel to her). So in that alternate reality, where Angel got the visions after Doyle died... how did Angel get the visions?
 * Answer:

Wolfram & Hart, now hiring

 * The Beast killed everyone at Wolfram & Hart near the end of season 4. So where did they get all their staff from at the beginning of season 5? It's not like they could've easily hired that many replacements with the whole Jasmine arc in the middle.
 * In the Season 4 finale, it is made very clear that Angel and crew is only getting control of the LA branch of the firm. And in the Pylea story, as well as from Illyria herself, we find out that the firm actually has roots in many alternate dimensions, presumably ones where humans live, like the shrimp one, or the Superstar one. One can only guess that when the Senior Partners decided to give the firm to Angel and crew, they took a few employees from each branch, and left them there until they could slowly replace their dead employees and send the current ones back to their home offices or dimensions.
 * There are no humans in the shrimp one. Only shrimp.
 * This troper is more Bugged by how The Beast managed to kill everyone. It isn't exactly fast, it only possesses melee attacks so it can only kill two people at any one time, the building is quite large, and unless Wolfram & Hart locks their employees inside at the first sign of danger (which would be terminally stupid but perfectly in character) then there is no way no-one aside from Lilah escaped. Hell, the corpses are practically lying on top of each other. Did they all run at The Beast and attempt to clog its weapons with their wreakage?
 * The whole building DID shut down and lock the employees in. That was why Lilah had to escape using that secret passage, and not out the front door, and why Angel and co. had to get in the same way.

Hey Pavayne, put on this necklace

 * When they rescued Lindsey from the suburban hell dimension, Gunn puts on the necklace and volunteers to stay, explaining that if someone leaves someone must stay and a void is impossible. He obviously knew this beforehand, probably from his brain zap. So then why not just bring with the guy from "Hell Bound" earlier in the season who at that point was still stuck in the Wolfram and Hart basement? Drug him, drag him in, get Lindsey out and put the necklace on him. Easy fix.
 * They didn't know to expect that. This does not, however, explain why they didn't bring Pavayne on a return trip and trade him for Gunn. "Hey, scary executioner guy, look that way for a sec while we swap out your prisoners." The guy clearly doesn't care WHO he tortures, just as long as he can get his bloody groove on.
 * Plus as Angel said, Gunn knew about the Clause. Gunn wasn't only there to get Lindsay he was there to get punished for what he did. Gunn's a physical sort of bloke, when you do something terrible you don't brood about it. Grow stubble, get drunk and have sex with hot evil lawyers. You own up to it and pay, and getting your heart torn out and not making the same mistake twice when another offer is made is a very good start.
 * Gunn's whole reason for going with them to save Lindsey was to intentionally take his place to punish himself for his part in Fred's death. He knew that someone else needed to put the necklace on and he went there with an agenda to do it himself. He didn't give a damn about Lindsey or saving him, and he certainly wouldn't have cared enough to replace the guy without his own hidden agenda.

Five years ago, who can remember back that far?

 * In the Grand Finale, Angel mentions not remembering what it was like to be human. Because he never turned into a human for a day in season 1, just a few years earlier... Oh wait, this is ridiculous.
 * Yeah, for one day, five years previously. How well can you remember the details of one specific day five years ago? Alternatively, what Angel was asking Harmony was whether she remembered living like a human, leading a normal life, which he didn't get a chance to do during that one day five years previously, and hadn't done for centuries.
 * Depends on the day. If it were the one day I could feel what it was like to have a beating heart, feel the warmth of sunlight on my skin, and to taste food, then I'm fairly sure I'd have a pretty vivid memory of it. And those are the sensations Angel was asking Harmony about; "What was it like, being human?" going on to say it's been too long for him to remember. Not the actions, the sensations. Also, its a plot point that gets used sparingly, but Angel has a near perfect memory, able to recall codes he saw being put into the WR&H elevators only once, a year or so earlier, to get to the white room, among other cases.
 * This is what bugs me about Harmony's reply to the question. He's not asking what it physically feels like to be human, but what it feels like to care about others- to emotionally be human, which he's forgotten.
 * Yeah, because Harmony's totally deep enough to answer that kind of question.
 * Hobson's choice; Harmony is the only vampire Angel is on remotely friendly terms with that was still human recently enough that she might actually remember it. Spike's a century and a half past being able to do that... and Angel would rather gargle holy water than ask Spike to talk about this touchy-feely kind of stuff anyway.
 * I personally have a WMG that Angels memory of that day (The day that didn't exist, anymore) is faltering because of the reality rewrites since and the Oracles not being there anymore. Reality has been overwritten in Superstar, the introduction of Dawn, and the negation of Connor, which was probably the most major, since it recured some major rewrite.

Home Sweet Wolfram & Hart

 * In the episode where they infiltrate Wolfram & Hart with Lindsey's help, it's shown that W&H has "vampire detectors." Wouldn't it be easier to just pay someone to live in the building?
 * Considering their clientele, they don't necessarily want to keep vampires OFF the premises. They just want to know when they're present.
 * Besides, given the mortality rate of employment at Wolfram and Hart, the unsavory clientele they keep already, and the fact that only the person who lives there would be able to perform an Invitation, erecting a Home barrier around the building would ultimately wind up hampering and potentially prohibiting vampire business. Having to have the same guy greet every vampire that wants to come in the door could potentially get overwhelming, depending on the volume of their vampire business. Additionally, once an Invitation was performed, that vampire would then have free, unchecked reign of the building; the vampire detectors, on the other hand, do not stop working just because the vampire's been here before. And then if anything happens to the Live-In Guy, all vampires everywhere can roam free in the building until they get a new one. The Home barrier just isn't reliable enough.

Angel fails the stock market

 * Angel is smart enough and careful enough to have lived without getting staked for over 200 years... but not smart enough to use the knowledge he's gained to make himself a fortune and be able to more to fight "evil" vampires?
 * He's socially stunted. Angel doesn't really understand human civilization and he's very bad at interacting with others. Blame 200 years of repressing every human quality he has ever possessed because he believed humanity to be an inherent weakness.
 * Also, he's shown on multiple occasions to have plenty of money, like buying a hotel despite never getting paid by his clients. Sure, he's not absurdly rich, but that's harder than it sounds.
 * He did get paid by his clients. He didn't initially, but after enough needling by Cordelia, he finally consented to her writing up invoices. Not a lot of fuss is made of it, but Angel Investigations did become a For-Profit agency, if only for people who could afford to pay (customer-by-customer basis). People like billionaire David Nabbit, who not only paid a significant amount of money to Angel Investigations after his case was finished, but also came back to organize all the finances and teach Angel how to manipulate the system in order to get the hotel at an affordable rate.
 * Explained in vampire crime novels: Blood Books "Oh, sure, I could have bought IBM for pennies back in nineteen-oh-something, but who knew? I'm a vampire, not clairvoyant."

Have you seen my PTB's?

 * Please correct this troper if she's wrong... if both Doyle's and Cordy's visions were orchestrated by Jasmine in order to make way for her Utopia... where were the other PTB during the show? Is anything we see EVER of their doing, or is it all Jasmine? The Oracles are dead; Lorne didn't really see it coming. But then the Powers are back in "You're Welcome" to give her one last "we're sorry for what happened to you." Are we supposed to have a retroactive understanding and linking of Jasmine to the the events of the early seasons?
 * Jasmine orchestrated the events, but that's not to say the other PTBs weren't involved at that point. It's just that they were Jasmine's Unwitting Pawns, manipulated into going along with her plans without realizing what she really had in mind.
 * It's never really answered if there were any PTBs that took an interest in Angel other than Jasmine one way or the other. However, it is important to remember that the one post-Jasmine vision that Cordelia gives Angel... came from Cordelia. Who is a PTB now. So, still inconclusive.
 * Yeah, the PTB are just another flavor of evil. Is that a mystery to anybody, even after Cordelia's S5 visit caused Angel to create the apocalypse in "Not Fade Away"?
 * They never said the vision came from Cordelia, anymore than they've ever come from her or Doyle. They're just the radios picking up the PTBs broadcasts, and Cordelia passed the role onto Angel (for that one vision, at least). The vision itself amounted to a hit list against Wolfram & Hart's terrestrial leaders: it seems to me that the Powers simply abandoned Jasmine's rescue-of-the-week strategy (which was really just buying time for her own schemes to come through) and instead got down to business. Besides, given Angel's role in the Shanshu prophecy, how could they not be interested in shaping his destiny and winning him to their side? It seems far more likely that Jasmine manipulated their existing plans for Angel to serve her own ends than that they've had no awareness at all of what she's been doing in their name for the past decade.
 * Because they don't have to. Just because the prophecy is ambiguous on what role Angel plays doesn't mean the role itself is. If the prophecy is as infallible as we've been led to believe, then Angel will play the role he's meant to play. If it's not, then it becomes meaningless. Just because the person who got the prophecy and wrote it down to parchment couldn't make out what side Angel's fighting on doesn't mean he actually could fight for either side. If the role he is foretold to play turns out to be for the Good side, then he will play that role regardless of, because of, or in spite of actions taken by the PTB. Likewise, if the role he is foretold to play turns out to be the Evil side, then nothing they do will change that. Think of it like Cordelia's visions: she may not be able to see who a demon is attacking in the streets, but that doesn't make that person Schrodinger's Victim, capable of being anyone in the world; it's still going to be the one person that was shown to her.
 * Well, in Shiny Happy People, Jasmine herself tells the gang how she arranged her parentage and specifies that it all truly began to take shape after Angel went to the trials to earn Darla a new chance to live, and says she did it trough Lorne, who sent Angel to said trials. This tropper got the impression that it was then that Jasmine focused her actions on Angel. She mentions that thanks to those trials, Angel did earned a new life, only it was Connor's; given that vampires cannot get pregnant and Darla's whole pregnancy mystery went unexplained at the time, it's fair to assume that much of Jasmine's story is true, even if in the episode of the trials, the host said nothing could be done since Darla had already gotten her second chance at life. It could be that only that episode needs to be reinterpreted, and even then, all that is needed is to assume Angel winning the trials and Darla's situation created a loophole that allowed Jasmine or some associate of hers to introduce the possibility for a vampire pregnancy.
 * I always took it as the majority of the visions before Cordelia's Ascension were true visions, with a few thrown in to help Jasmine's plans. Or maybe Jasmine's role has a PTB was to send the visions. Although, we still have to remember that a good majority of the Jasmine arc was changed due to Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy, and was made to look like that was the plan the entire show.
 * It's not just the visions that need explaining; PTB meddling in Angel's life dates back as far as being approached by Whistler, back before Buffy was even called as a Slayer. There's also the question of who brought Angel back from the Hell Dimension, and who blanketed Sunnydale in a snowstorm to keep him from dusting himself. Someone very clearly has had a plan for Angel since before he ever even heard the name Wolfram and Hart, and we know it's not Wolfram and Hart because they weren't even sure who he was when he first arrived in L.A., referring to him as simply "a new player in town". That leaves the options of "Jasmine has been playing Angel since before he ever met Buffy" and "Multiple PT Bs have all played their hands around Angel, none of which we have ever confirmed the existence of except for Jasmine". Occam's Razor suggests it was always Jasmine.

Pain-free visions (Mystical pregnancies not covered)

 * Also, Cordy became half-demon to deal with the visions, but then she still ended up not being strong enough to avoid the Convenient Coma until she woke up (but not really) for a day in Season 5. So her being a demon pretty much failed her when she really needed it.
 * Well, she became half-demon to deal with the visions. Nowhere in the half-demon package was it suggested that she'd be able to deal with being the host body of a PTB.

Spike the Friendly Flying Ghost?

 * Ghost Spike. If you watch Season five you'll notice that the only answer that makes any sense is that ghost Spike can fly and doesn't know it. He passes through objects like walls and doors but he can lean on walls and sit on desks. We know he's not actually sitting or leaning on anything because it requires intense concentration for him to so much as write words on glass or pick up a mug. And that comes and goes so he can't be sitting. Also he can ride in cars, if he's not flying at the same speed and direction as the car then once the car starts to move Spike should still be exactly where he was.
 * Metaphysics.

Side effects may include losing your soul

 * So in Eternity, Angel gets drugged and turns into Angelus, and then turns back when the drug wears off. But isn't it perfect happiness that causes Angel to lose his soul, thus releasing Angelus? Shouldn't they have had to go re-ensoul Angel at the end of the episode?
 * He didn't really lose his soul, it was more like a hypnotic suggestion. The drug made him think he'd experienced perfect happiness, and then his drug-addled brain ran with the assumption that that meant he was Angelus again and should be acting accordingly. Once it wore off, the confusion did too.
 * If his soul was really taken from him, it wouldn't have self-restored. The drug probably just lowered his inhibitions, that's what they do in humans. And it's mentioned frequently in the show, that Angelus is always there and the soul has to work extra hard to keep him in check.
 * Also, why weren't drugs a perfect solution when they needed to reach Angelus later on, rather than forcing evil monks to remove his soul and then also relying on dark magic to restore the soul? Why not slip him a couple of tabs of something?
 * Because as said, that wouldn't have been Angelus. It would have just been Angel under the influence and imagining that he's turned into Angelus. Since they were looking for a memory that only the real Angelus had, it wouldn't have helped.

Careful with that axe, Angel

 * When Lindsey goes to burn the scroll, Angel throws an axe and chops off Lindsey's hand, which flies across the room and leaves the scroll unharmed. How could Angel be so sure the hand wouldn't just fall in the fire and burn up with the scroll? Is it just a matter of physics?
 * Yes. The axe was larger/heavier than the hand it chopped off. Transfer of force would cause the hand to move in the same direction as the axe.

Eve and the idiot ball

 * I don't understand Eve. If she really loved Lindsey, a plain ol' mortal human, as much as she said ("The only thing I care about is trapped in a hell dimension") you'd think she'd be a little more open to signing away her immortality after Angel brought him back, as opposed to having to watch him grow old and die while she presumably is going to look and feel like she's twenty years old for eternity. And what if the events of Underneath never happened: Angel never came to see her and the senior partners never found her? Was she planning to hide alone in the invisibility apartment until the end of time? Is that even physically possible? It seems like all of the smarts and manipulation tactics she possessed during the first half of the season disappeared as soon as Lindsey was taken away which, if I really thought that was the writers' intention, I could turn into an issue of feminism (she needs a Man to do the thinking for her; all her character traits are dictated by her boyfriend), but I don't honestly think that was the angle they were going for.
 * Eve was never that good at getting things done, just at pissing people off, so nothing much changed. As for the feminism part: Yes, she's not a super strong and cunning woman who goes around dwarfing all men around her every chance she gets- but a weak relatively spineless character. So what's misogynist about that? The implication that women are not infallibly superior?
 * It's entirely possible, likely even that Lindsey was the brains of the duo and she really was just pretty. Since Buffy and Angel share a universe I outright reject that having a weak woman is an issue worthy of an issue of feminism. Even if Eve is nothing but a silly girl who needs her man to explain to her how to breath properly she still doesn't balance out the slayers, Anya, Cordelia, Lilah, Glory, Willow etc etc. She also doesn't balance out Xander, young Wesley, Johnathan, Andrew and (debatably) David Nabbet as far as worthless males go. That said I suspect there is a difference between being under the radar of Wolfram & Hart and being clearly targeted for retribution.
 * The existence of a woman who needs her man, especially as a third or fourth tier villain, doesn't undermine the other feminist messages in the Buffyverse.
 * It's interesting to note that the capacity to follow in love is seen as a humanizing factor for certain villains like Lilah; in Eve's case, it has the opposite effect, making her seem far more pathetic.
 * Also, its possible that Lindsey's end goal involved immortality in some fashion; if so, that means they'd get to live together forever.
 * Much is mysterious about Eve. She was created by the Senior Partners. Why would the capacity for love even be part of her makeup? Further, you would think her creators would keep close tabs on her. How on earth did she even manage to meet Lindsay beneath their notice in the first place?

Hey Fred, have you seen Illyria around?

 * In The Girl In Question when Ilyria  is giving Fred's parents a tour of Wolfram And Hart, how did they not encounter anybody  ?
 * Well everyone knew that Fred had turned into Illyria cause, you know, she looks exactly like a blue Fred. If the ancient superdemon wants to pretend to be its human host, are you going to blow its cover?
 * Besides, between the moody and amoral Humanoid Abomination and the brooding alcoholic prone to shooting people for asking him the wrong questions, I think most of the office staff had learned to give the two of them a wide berth.

Where do bad vampires go when they die?
"Pavayne: Won himself a soul. No more dirty things. Thinks himself special. Thinks it matters. Hell still waits. ...beginning to understand, aren't you? The soul that blesses you damns you to suffer forever."
 * Question; what part of the person goes to whatever afterlife there is after they die? Their soul, right? Then...why are Angel and Spike going to hell for everything they did as vampires, again? They didn't have souls then, their souls had already (presumably) passed on. All of Angelus' crimes were committed by a demon animating a husk of meat into walking around and killing people for his personal amusement. There's nothing there to, for lack of a better word, judge after said meat has been dusted. Does the soul get retroactively blamed for everything the body did while it was gone after being put back in?
 * If you believe Pavayne, that's exactly it - the soul's tainted by the vampire's crimes:


 * Then again, the portal in "Hellbound" might have been opening just for Pavayne, and he was playing on Spike's soul-embued guilt to try to break his will. Angel and Spike might not be going to Hell at all, and they just assume they are because they remember their crimes and feel like they deserve it.
 * Except that when Angel died in Season 2, he went to Hell.
 * Have you actually seen that episode? He didn't literally die in Season 2. He got physically pushed through a portal to Hell, because that was the only way to close it again after Angelus opened it up. The only thing Buffy actually did to him, apart from shoving him through the portal, was stab him in the gut with a sword. They've played that exact same injury for laughs in Angel.
 * They do and they don't. We know that there is an essence animating the vampire. It's not a human soul, but it is a living thing. We commonly refer to it as the demon that inhabits the vampire. Now, taken in isolation, Angel and Spike are complicated creatures, being that they possess both a human soul and an animating demon, and that their minds are more or less a composite of the two. Liam and Angelus, William and Spike. It's entirely possible that when, say, Angel dusts, Liam would go to Heaven while Angelus would go to Hell (assuming Angel didn't do anything to taint Liam's destination, of course), but Angel isn't Liam. Angel is Hellbound because Angelus is, even if he's also Heavenbound because of Liam, and because of Liam's human conscience, Angel can feel remorseful for the fact that he IS going to Hell. Now, as to the actual examples, Angel was kicked through a portal directly into Hell, so there is that. For Spike, Parvayne was feeding people into Hell to prevent himself from being taken; Spike's final destination would have had nothing to do with it if Parvayne succeeded in doing more or less exactly what Buffy did to Angel, but for different reasons.

Hey, where did my heart go?

 * In the episode Carpe Noctem, when Angel's body is taken over by an old man, it takes him the better part of a day to realize that he's a vampire. Did he really not notice that his heart wasn't beating, and that he didn't have to breathe? The same bit of Fridge Logic takes place in Spin the Bottle. Liam didn't notice any of those things either?
 * Maybe it's just me, but I don't generally notice that my heart is beating unless I'm specifically paying attention to this fact. Same with breathing. Presumably, having other things on their minds, Liam and Marcus simply didn't notice.
 * It is never explicitly stated that vampires CAN'T breathe, only that they don't have to. It is possible that both Marcus and "Liam" were breathing despite it not providing any actual benefit. This troper related it to Angel saying he could eat but received no sustenance from it.
 * Not to mention the fact that Spike and Angel can often be very clearly shown to be breathing heavily after a big fight (or all through season 6 of BTVS as they do the whole after sex scene with Spuffy). Which likewise contrasts with the Season 1 finale of BTVS, where Angel says he can't perform CPR because he 'has no breath'. Also conflicting with the number of times vampires are strangled or have their heads submersed in water actually causes them to choke/suffocate. The matter is all around not very consistent across the Buffyverse.
 * I think I would notice a lack of body temperature first.
 * A total lack of body temperature, sure. But vampires aren't cold, they're room temperature. Room temperature in LA in the summer is high enough that not noticing it is not so unrealistic.
 * Oh, come on. How often are YOU really aware of your heart beating or your breathing unless you're actually focusing on those things? The only time I pay attention to my heart beat, really, is when it's racing or I'm actually checking my pulse for some reason. How many times a day do you honestly bother to check your pulse? And breathing is simply second nature to people, nobody really realizes they're doing it or thinks about doing it they just do! Unless I'm perhaps sick and can't breathe all that well or if I'm holding my breath and such I don't pay much attention to whether or not I'm actually breathing because, guess what, I'm alive, chances are I am! I don't see them not noticing as anything of a big deal. I doubt most people really would notice.
 * Maybe focusing on details like heartbeat or body temperature or breathing are ducking the real issue. It's pretty clear that the way vampires experience the world is significantly different from the way living humans do; enhanced senses (notably smell). I do find the idea that you could be a vampire and not realize it to be pretty hard to swallow.
 * Realizing there's something wrong with your body and realizing that you are a vampire are two completely separate things, though. It's a far jump from "I'm experiencing the world in a new and different way" to "My enhanced sense of smell tells me I'm a vampire." It's like waking up with extremely dry, itchy skin, and going, "I must be a mummy."
 * But he does 'not' think "I'm experiencing the world in a new and different way"; he has no clue that he's anything other than human until he involuntarily vamps out. That's the salient point.
 * We're talking about an OLD MAN who takes over lots of bodies, with different abilities and sense levels. What he's going to compare any new ability/sensation to is HIMSELF - and his inability to do those things. I can actually relate, in a large way. If I were to wake up in a vampire body, I'd spend hours reveling in the fact that I don't hurt. An old person - even one used to taking over young bodies off and on - would be in the same boat, overjoyed that he can walk normally, his brain is as sharp as it used to be, all the pain is gone... being old means a LOT of pain and suffering, even in the most healthy, as bodies are constantly breaking down. Add in the above logic about breathing being automatic, the fact that no one believes in vampires, and the fact that there are perfectly "normal" people with, for example, extremely advanced sense, and it's not surprising. In fact, it would probably be more surprising if the guy had noticed it instantly.
 * Exactly, he takes over bodies a lot. The fact that he's old is irrelevant; he should know exactly what it feels like to be in a human body, and it what it feels like to not be in one. Also, considering his experience with the mystic arts, there's every reason to believe he that he knows of vampires (even he's no expert on them, hence his need to study up).

Why don't you shoot her already?

 * Why doesn't Angel simply kill Lilah around the end of season 3? It's not like he has qualms about killing clearly evil people or like Wolfram & Hart would care enough to kill him. Sure, they'd probably just replace her: but offing her and thereby sending a message to her successor would have saved him a lot of grief. Especially egregious since Lilah did some very twisted things to Angel and all the people he cares about including his son, not to mention how much she flaunts those deeds at every opportunity and goes out of her way to make it clear that she is evil. He chopped of Lindseys hand for less even tough he helped Angel when his conscience got the better of him and ultimately left W&H.
 * The only humans Angel kills are in the heat of battle and not often then. If he can avoid killing humans he will. What Measure Is a Non-Human? sure, but that is how he operates. Lilah is smart enough to never actually fight, well, anyone, but least of all Angel.
 * If that is the case then Angels reasoning has a pretty healthy dose of Good Is Dumb, which is jarring since he was mostly pretty good at avoiding that.
 * In series 5, Lindsay realises that Angel is the type to tolerate "the devil he knows". Although Angel had a hidden agenda on that occasion, it's been pointed out many times that Angel is a very bad liar compared to Angelus. He tends to do best when he lies with the truth (something Angelus is a master at). The chances are that Angel let Lilah live because he was confident he could handle her and he generally knew what sort of thing to expect from her. Killing her would simply replace her with another lawyer and possibly one that was worse. It may not be so much Good Is Dumb as Combat Pragmatist - stick with the devil you know you can beat rather than making room for one you might not be able to.
 * He spent the middle part of Season 2 doing essentially what you're suggesting. For the first part of the season, Wolfram and Hart was screwing with his head using Darla and flaunting it. Then they re-vamped her and he'd had enough and went on the offensive against Wolfram and Hart and decided to send a message when he showed up at Holland's wine-tasting, where a terrified Lilah begged him for her life. He responded by walking away and locking the door behind him, leaving her and her colleagues with a pair of vampires and she survived only because Dru and Darla thought her little rivalry with Lindsay served their agenda. His team all gave him a giant What the Hell, Hero?, he fired them, and before it was all over, he learned that all of that was meaningless, killing a W&H lawyer doesn't get rid of them for good, and that sure, Lilah and the other individual W&H lawyers and the Senior Partners were evil but the firm really consisted of the evil in the world. And oh, yeah, he tried to lose his soul by sleeping with Darla. After that, Angel pretty understandably doesn't really go on the offensive against Wolfram and Hart - it takes him to a dark place, and ultimately it doesn't matter. And it even fits into the Senior Partners' plans for him - Lilah and Lindsay were flat-out told to their faces that they're being told to screw with Angel's head but can't kill him because of his place in the prophecy and the Senior Partners would consider it a great victory if Angel went dark fot real and killed them both. He'll fight them when he runs into them in the course of what he normally does, he'll try and stop the terrible things they do, and he'll go after them to help people he cares about, but that's about it.

Magic Windows from the 80s?
Small thing (very minor gripe): when Lorne's having his W&H halloween party Angel makes the windows to his office obscure. Spike calls them "magic windows"-- does this really need to be magic (and yes I get that Spike is just being a sarcastic jerk): LCD glass that does that has existed since the 1980s.
 * I'm a bit confused by what you're saying here. Is there a reason why the fact that this can be done without magic change the fact that W&H does it with magic?
 * 1) They are explicitly magic windows, as they're explained on introduction to be "necro-tempered glass", rendering sunlight that comes through them harmless to vampires. 2) Spike sees lots of magic, he might know it when he sees it as opposed to technology, 3) Spike might not know about LCD glass, a lot of people don't, and thus assumes (correctly in this case) that they're magic since he knows magic is real, or 4) it's Spike, he's being glib.