20th Anniversary Viewing of Angel Season 2

When it first aired, I didn't quite get the point of the episode. For some reason, the paranoia aspect just went over my head. On repeat viewings though, I keep finding something new to love about Are You Now or Have You Ever Been. It's a great episode that apart from giving us our first post-soul flashback of Angel since Becoming pt 1, also brings Wesley, Gunn, Cordy, and Fred together as a team for the first time. The character dynamics are great right from the start.

One thing that even in the first time viewing it really struck me was just the cold horror of watching Angel tell the Thesulac Demon, "Take them all." It is one of David Boreanaz's most chilling line deliveries in the entire series. Angelus may have been evil, but Angel could be cold, and I don't always know which is scarier. This was a surprising revelation to know that even ensouled, Angel wasn't always a hero. And much like Judgement, it serves as a teaser of the coldness we'd see from Angel throughout the middle of the season. "Take them all" is essentially a precursor to Angel locking the Wolfram and Hart lawyers in with Darla and Dru. Cold, practical, and final.



Another way this episode ties in to the later-season episodes (that I'd never realized until you pointed out Angel forgiving someone) is that after his epiphany, Angel must now learn to forgive himself for what he's done. Probably the first time it's ever occurred to him that it's ok to forgive yourself for your own mistakes as long as you own up to them and try to make amends.

It's almost as if this one episode is a microcosm of Angel's journey throughout season 2: His attempts to help failing, letting his coldness directly lead to many deaths, self-imposed isolation, and then finally forgiveness and coming together as a team.

Damn, this really is a great episode.

Man, what else can I add to this episode. Once the Angel/Darla picks up, season 2 reaches incredible highs with the characters and stories.



Gunn is almost the Riley of the series. Sometimes the writers forget just how much potential the character has. He displays some great moments and lines just like that. And it goes back to what's great about the show: character. To Wes, this was a calling. To Cordy, a business. But Gunn got into this for survival. It makes sense he'd see things differently. Angel always seemed to want to be the guy doing all the fighting. Whereas Gunn made sure that everyone in his crew had training and took turns being look out. I'd say as a leader, Gunn did a better job of making sure his crew was better prepared to handle the evil in LA. When Angel fires his team, they're all lost and unsure of what to do and bicker among themselves. When Gunn left his crew, they kept going without him. Though they do stray come season 3. But for now, they seemed better prepared to handle life without their former leader. Him standing up to the cops was also pretty cool. And it was great that he was the one who realized that Angel couldn't have broken in without an invitation.



Same here. Whatever her feelings are about Angel, she's right. The bodies will continue to pile up. I like that she's there to keep Angel in check with that. This is actually Kate at my favorite. It keeps the show far more interesting if Angel has to contend not only with Wolfram and Hart and all the evil in LA, but also the good guys.

The final scene with Angel and Darla in the water tank is one of the show's best. It delivers everything. High drama and stakes, no pun intended. I compare it to Angel and Holtz's final scene in Tomorrow in that it's a verbal battle. There was no big fight to end the episode. In this case, it's just two former lovers trying to rip into each other and cut deep. Darla telling Angel her boy is still in there. Angel mocking her for her jealousy towards Buffy. It comes off more as a bad break up.

The Drusilla scenes are a great parallel to the Darla scenes from Season 1. Re-introduce the character through flashbacks, and then when the audience least expects it, have them show up in the present for a huge shock. From this point on through Epiphany, this is season 2 at its best.

They both work very well here, don’t get me wrong, but I think the swamie storyline was strong enough for it’s own episode, and I wanted to explore it more and see Angel in “therapy” 

I would've liked that. Though I think the fact that Angel doesn't get his therapy is definitely what keeps him spiraling down. 

they needed to keep Angel away, but the conspirator competitor guy even saw “Angel” and wasn’t concerned until the imposter called him. If the bartender was the leak, wouldn’t the rival guy know about Angel leaving? Wouldn’t he have orchestrated it?

I think it just comes down to the fact that when Wes showed up pretending to be Angel, the conspirator just assumed that his plan to lure him away didn't work. 

And now we come to my favorite episode of Angel Season 2 (And easily top 5 favorite Angel episodes of all time).

To start off with, I love Darla's line about being soulmates for two reasons. 1) It's a great callback to "Dear Boy" where Angel told her pretty soon her soul would start to feel the weight of everything she's done. And 2) I love the inversion of what a soul means here. For Buffy, being soulmates with Angel is a joy. A sign of true love. For Darla, being his soulmate is a curse. A constant reminder of all the evil they've done together. She's hurting, and she knows Angel was right. It's maddening to her.

There's a lot of great stuff all throughout this episode just as in "Fool for Love." Action, comedy, tragedy, and of course, flashbacks.



I just see it as foreshadowing to what will become Angel's biggest failure since the death of Tina in "City of."

I also love how protective Cordy is of Angel. She has been defending him all season, against Gunn, against Kate, and now against Darla. No wonder she was so hurt when he fired them all. Lindsey being snarky to Holland was some more great characterization for him, and it shows just how much of an impact Darla is having on everyone, not just Angel. Did Wolfram and Hart really think they could bring back one of the most cunning, manipulative vampires in history and think everything would run according to plan for them?

Just as with "Fool for Love," this episode belongs to the title character. Julie Benz is absolutely enchanting here. Just like with James Marsters, she proves more than capable of carrying pretty much an entire episode full of lore and myth while still fitting in with an entire cast of amazing actors. Not one moment is wasted here with Darla. We learned so much about who she was before we ever saw her on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is Darla's story as seen through the eyes of those around her. The cast and crew fit over 400 years of history into one episode and did it in a way that, to borrow a phrase from ag25, mirrors something we'd already seen. Darla and Angel's relationship is a darker reflection of Buffy and Angel's. Both start off with a whirlwind of emotion, and just as things are going well, both end because of the gypsy's curse. And neither relationship was ever the same afterwards.

Mark Metcalf's cameos were a wonderful surprise. I remember a big smile coming over my face when I realized it was The Master who was the "priest" that came to Darla. It was great seeing Buffy's first big bad come on over to Angel. It really hammers home just what a complex history all these characters had.

A complex history I had no idea would literally take center stage across two episodes from different points of view. Obviously, the Boxer Rebellion scene is the big one, but the gang running into Spike in the alley was the first sign that this episode was going to be much more than just a traditional flashback episode. Watching it only from Spike's point of view, it's a pretty strong moment for William. He's hurt, but he's angry enough to be blunt and curt with the people he ran into: "Watch where you're going!" It's him really standing up for himself. But from Darla's point of view, he was just some "drooling idiot" bumbling around, mouthing off to a trio who could easily rip him apart if the desire crossed their minds. He's just a loser to her.

Yet in the Boxer Rebellion flashbacks, things have again been flipped on their head. Spike has cemented himself as the Big Bad of the group by intentionally hunting down and killing a slayer.



Absolutely. That one line conveys everything that Darla is feeling towards Angelus. HE should've been the one to kill a slayer. HE should've been the one leading the massacre in China. Instead, we see that the scenes from Fool For Love where Angelus seems to be jealous of and annoyed with Spike were him just hiding his disgust and fear that the carnage was just getting started. In Darla's eyes, now Angelus is the loser. The man she had chosen to be her eternal companion--the one she left The Master for--was now just poor sap trying to save missionaries. From her.

The ending was a real gut punch, not just for Angel, but for me. My heart sunk when Darla exposes her neck to Angel, indicating she's reached rock bottom in her desperation. She would rather feel the ecstasy of evil than deal with the pain in her soul (something even Angel was occasionally reminisced about). And in the end, Angel fails to save the girl. A call back to City of, and a prelude to what will happen in The Trial. A chilling end to an epic night.

What more can I say about Fool for Love and Darla? This is without a doubt my favorite night of television when Buffy and Angel were originally airing. As I mentioned earlier, I knew we were in for some flashbacks, but I never foresaw that the flashbacks would intersect at several times. Though we'd had crossovers on the show with Oz, Spike, Faith, Buffy, and Angel hopping from one show to another, we hadn't had any flashback crossovers. That was wild to me. That these characters would be going through important, life changing events around one another, yet oblivious to what was happening to the other is a great metaphor to what goes on in our own lives. We don't always know what's going on even with our own friends and loved ones just because of what we're going through. And while the tone of their endings are both heartbreaking, it is different reasons. Spike's story ends with hope: He can feel some type of sympathy, if not empathy. He can put aside his own pain for someone else. But Darla's episode ends with despair. She can not bear the pain of her own past. She'd rather flee from the one person who can empathize with her and guide than deal with her pain. Add in to the fact you've pointed out both Darla and Buffy explore who they are as it relates to the vampires in their lives (something I'd never caught on), and it really made this night feel amazingly epic in its storytelling. This is why I love these two shows above all others.