“I’ll never forget”:The Tie that Binds Buffy

and Angel HUM 3085: Television and Popular Culture

Spring 2014Dr. Perdigao

March 26, 2014

The Star-Crossed Lovers• Themes of death and desire in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

• “The perpetuation of death and desire and the deferral of its fulfillment, inherent in the love-and-death (Liebestod) motif, are what keep Buffy hooked on Angel and the viewers hooked on Buffy” (Krimmer and Raval 153).

• “While the presence of death in life gives rise to their yearning for a passionate and perfect union, actually achieving this union would represent stasis, foreclosing any further development and thus equaling death” (Krimmer and Raval 159).

Elisabeth Krimmer and Shilpa Raval. “‘Digging the Undead’: Death and Desire in Buffy.” Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 153-164.

“When you kiss me, I want to die”• Consummation of their relationship: Angel loses soul,

becomes Angelus, terrorizes Buffy and her friends

• Angelus tries to open the door to the other dimension and Buffy must stop him by killing him (The “Big Bad” of Season Two)

• Computer disk and curse is found, reinstated, Angel regains his soul (“Becoming, Part I” and “Becoming, Part II”)

• Buffy goes to kill Angelus but he becomes Angel again, looks at her, and says “Buffy?”

• She kisses him and puts a sword through him

• He is sent to the other dimension

Some History• Buffy moves to LA over the summer to deal with her loss, returns

to Sunnydale at the beginning of Season Three

• Angel is resurrected in Season Three, but he cannot remain in Sunnydale; Angel is saved by feeding on Buffy in the season finale; Angel leaves for LA (“Graduation Day, Part II”)

• Buffy Season Three ends and Season Four coincides with the first season of Angel

• Angel pilot, “City of . . .,” Angel’s story (5:17)

• Cross-over with “Pangs” in BtVS Season Four and “I Will Remember You” in Season One of Angel (“Pangs” as “Set-Uppy”)

• A series of crossovers and near sightings: In episode one of Angel, “City of . . .,” Angel sees a blonde who looks like she could be Buffy; Angel crosses over at the conclusion of the BtVS series to help her defeat the preacher Caleb (played by none other than Nathan Fillion) (“End of Days”); toward the end of the Angel series, Angel and Spike chase Buffy around Italy (“to stop The Immortal and save Buffy”)—but she is only a vague figure (Angel, Season Five, “The Girl in Question”)

Continuity and Breaks• Crossover episodes show connections between the series

• Yet these crossovers show how, in order for Angel to survive, those relations must be rewritten

• Lavery’s sense of chronos vs. kairos in BtVS: chronological time vs. opportunity, chance

• Closurey and partial closurey

• “I Will Remember You” as closurey (at the level of actions) and tear-jerkery

• Viewers’ expectations—resolution or sustainment of desire to continue with the plot

Measuring Time• Begins with winding clock

• Watch offered to Oracles

• Clock tower in “Hush”

• The X-Files watch

Starting Over• Blood has “regenerative powers”—for Angel, for narrative

• Only way to be made mortal is if Powers That Be stepped in—must consult the Oracles

• “I like time. There is so little and so much of it.”

• Will live and die as a mortal man

• Returns to Oracles: gains knowledge that Buffy will die in the “End of Days”

• Sacrifices his humanity for her life, and sacrifices their relationship

• “It is not our place to grant life and death.”

• Asks for his life back

• Manipulate temporal fold: will swallow an entire day

• Chronos: kairos

Knowing and Unknowing• Angel: “What will keep us from doing the same thing?”

• Oracle: “You alone will carry the memory of this day. Can you carry that burden?”

• Viewers’ relationship to series—dramatic irony in relation to Buffy

• Angel to Buffy: “If I stay mortal, one of us will end up dead.”

Restructuring• Threat of the end of narrative, of desire

• “End of Days”

• With Angel, severance of Buffy/Angel tie with erasure of memory

• But desire still exists—how to sustain the plot over five seasons of Angel, seven for Buffy, evading the death of plot with consummation, that climax and resolution; sustaining desire, resisting closure

• Ending of “I Will Remember You” cuts back to the beginning, bookended with shots of the clock

Playing with Language and Meaning• Buffy/Angel theme replayed, revised in the episode

• Buffy: “How am I supposed to go on with my life, knowing what we had?”

• Angel: “You won’t. No one will know but me.”

• Buffy: “It’s not enough time.”

• Buffy: “I’ll never forget. I’ll never forget. I’ll never . . .”

• After the clock strikes, white flash

• Buffy: “Given enough time, we should be able to . . .”

• Angel: “Forget.”

• Buffy: “So, I’m gonna go—start forgetting.”

The Sense of an Ending• “Not Fade Away” (41:00)

• Sunnydale’s sign falling into the abyss with “Chosen” at the end of Season Seven; black screen in “Not Fade Away” to end the series in Season Five

• “If the last moments of the show take place in darkness and rain, this is not just noir gesturing – it is because Angel has always inhabited the moral borderland of great cities. If an entirely hostile reading of his final decision is possible, it is because Angel has always been morally ambiguous. And if the last episode of the television show, which is in the end all about him, is titled in a reference to one of the most amoral of rock bands, it is because part of the point of the show has always been to teach us sympathy for the devil.” (Kaveney 37)