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So many different places to call home.
I've threatened, and since had requested, that I write up my notes and thoughts on how I'd redo Angel the Series season 5. I already largely outlined them in an email a while back, which simplifies the process considerably. That, and borrowing the good ideas GingerKI sent back in her response to that email, I figure tonight might as well be the night for it.
I wouldn't redo all five seasons of the show, because I'd rather not rewrite the whole thing from scratch. I'd rather focus on theoretical alterations of certain parts of season 5 for greater narrative coherence. While this does keep some of Whedon's ass-butt decisions, I've been in enough fandoms for enough time to learn how to focus my energy.
All right, that's not entirely true. In this version that lives in my head, there'd be a few lines, and possibly a couple of scenes, about Fred moving into Cordelia's apartment in season 4.
Then: Spike comes out of the amulet whole, intact, and corporeal at the end of episode 1. Because they didn't do anything worthwhile with it, getting rid of the concept of a vampire ghost smooths things out considerably. Spike spends a good chunk of episode 2 rallying on about making a grand romantic entrance back into Buffy's life, but then something happens, the sort of thing which compels him to be a white hat that has nothing to do with Buffy and all of the work he has to do to grow into his soul, and he realizes that he's got more to do that has nothing to do with her. The final scene of the episode has him showing up in Angel's office: "You're still here," Angel says. "Today, anyway," Spike replies.
"Destiny" is moved to the third episode of the season, where W&H try to pit the two known heroic souled vampires against each other in a bid to simplify possible destines and prophecies. It doesn't work. Spike growing into his soul - the soul he earned, not the soul he was cursed with - would make for a solid ongoing plot thread through the season, in conversation with, and contrast and counterbalance to, Angel's own journey.
The fourth episode has Xander come to collect Spike at the behest of Buffy, all remaining Slayers and Watchers, and the Scooby Gang, which covers the full cold open. Buffy sent Xander specifically because she knows they can't tempt him with anything. Additionally, framing Xander through the eyes of AtS would show what surviving growing up on the Hellmouth and several years of constant apocalypses would do to an ordinary person, which would honestly be pretty fun to see.
Lilah Morgan: "Mr. Harris -"
Xander: "No, no, please, Mr. Harris was my father." [Lilah smiles. Xander smiles back, sharply.] "You can call me 'sir.'" [Lilah stops smiling.]
Because after the Hellmouth, the ordinary human evil of W&H is small potatoes to Xander. He'd comment that as evil as they are, they want the world to stick around to be evil in, and that's almost relaxing to have to deal with.
"You guys, seriously, small potatoes, you don't even want to end the world! It's nice, really. Nobody wanting to eat the sun, nobody wanting to make literal Hell out here, just keep on being evil. I can respect that. I don't support it and would rather see all of you give this up and go join a commune up in Petaluma, but I can respect it."
I assume the rest of episode 4 is either filler, as was the case with the Mexican wrestler episode, or it's where we get the werewolf girlfriend.
"Damage" is next - the one with Dana, the mentally ill Slayer. Spike's sent to Los Angeles to collect her, along with Andrew and a few other Slayers, and gets his hands cut off for his troubles. They're reattached, and the next episode has him stationed at W&H by Buffy to openly spy on the place. Angel is fine with this. "It means she still cares." "That you're head honcho of Evil Inc." "Yeah, but if she didn't care, she wouldn't send you to spy on me." "I'm spying on W&H." "She still cares." "No she doesn't." And so on and so forth, etc cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Because the two of them are best when the show remembers they're family.
Spike doesn't have the weird sub-plot with the Doyle faker, though Lindsay still tries to play the part. It doesn't work, and he's caught almost immediately, which shifts the power dynamics around enough to give Spike a good amount of stuff to do.
Spike's also given freedom to go wherever he wants, and hang out all over the place, and Angel sometimes helps him edit his weekly reports to Buffy in case he missed anything. Everyone knows why Spike is there. This is played for both comedy and drama, because he and Angel grow closer as they keep talking to each other over the course of the season. So we still get moments like "wee little puppet man" and Spike freeing Angel from the parasite that trapped him in those hallucinations because he doesn't care about Angel's privacy. Those kinds of delicious relationship moment which show them as being genuinely close in a way that can't easily be translated to human terms, but the viewing audience easily understands.
Out of everyone in the world, they're the ones best qualified to call each other out on their bullshit and when they're indulging their inner blowhard. (Spike leans towards the bullshit, Angel towards being a blowhard. "I know for a fact you spent that decade moping in disco halls." "It was only thirty minutes, and there was just the one werewolf.")
"Hell Bound" - the only Angel episode aired with a warning for graphic violence - still happens. It's because of Fred. At some point, someone - possibly Xander, when he collects Spike, or possibly Andrew, when he drops by - comments how few ghosts there are around W&H. How little spirit energy. Magic energy, yes, but the spirits are weak, and few and far between. Unrelated to that, Fred invents some sort of machine to help Phantom Dennis manifest, because they've become friends since she moved into the apartment. It's one of those "gone horribly right" situations, because instead of Spike fighting Pavayne, it's Dennis. He makes Pavayne corporeal at the sacrifice of being able to return to life. He does get a moment of Fred seeing his face, and them being able to smile at each other, before he's whisked off back to the apartment - if he doesn't finally move on from being a ghost and goes into the rest of the afterlife.
The back end of the season plays out much as it already did. There'd be a few more lines, here and there, giving reasons and justifications and explanations for why Buffy isn't contacted for whatever reason, and why they're not asking the Slayers for help for one disaster or another. Maybe "they won't get here in time," maybe "they have their own apocalypse," maybe "I have to do this alone and if I come out of it, I'll go see her because I'm Angel and that's what I do."
"The Girl in Question" has its plots swapped, so more time is spent on Fred/Illyria and Wesley, and less on Spike and Angel in madcap hijinks in Italy. Also, no Immortal, no casual racism, no Andrew with a bunch of women, no Buffy decoy/fakeout, no explosion destroying Spike's coat. Because this is how I'd do it, and I don't much like any of that.
I've read reports Whedon wanted season 6 to be a sort of Mad Max post-apocalyptic scenario, with car chases and big action sequences. I have no plans for season 6, not even theoretical ones. Mostly, I'm fine with Angel being asked how they survived the final battle, and Spike answering, "Heroically!" or "We almost didn't" and not elaborating past that. Because the audience can fill in that part themselves.
I wouldn't redo all five seasons of the show, because I'd rather not rewrite the whole thing from scratch. I'd rather focus on theoretical alterations of certain parts of season 5 for greater narrative coherence. While this does keep some of Whedon's ass-butt decisions, I've been in enough fandoms for enough time to learn how to focus my energy.
All right, that's not entirely true. In this version that lives in my head, there'd be a few lines, and possibly a couple of scenes, about Fred moving into Cordelia's apartment in season 4.
Then: Spike comes out of the amulet whole, intact, and corporeal at the end of episode 1. Because they didn't do anything worthwhile with it, getting rid of the concept of a vampire ghost smooths things out considerably. Spike spends a good chunk of episode 2 rallying on about making a grand romantic entrance back into Buffy's life, but then something happens, the sort of thing which compels him to be a white hat that has nothing to do with Buffy and all of the work he has to do to grow into his soul, and he realizes that he's got more to do that has nothing to do with her. The final scene of the episode has him showing up in Angel's office: "You're still here," Angel says. "Today, anyway," Spike replies.
"Destiny" is moved to the third episode of the season, where W&H try to pit the two known heroic souled vampires against each other in a bid to simplify possible destines and prophecies. It doesn't work. Spike growing into his soul - the soul he earned, not the soul he was cursed with - would make for a solid ongoing plot thread through the season, in conversation with, and contrast and counterbalance to, Angel's own journey.
The fourth episode has Xander come to collect Spike at the behest of Buffy, all remaining Slayers and Watchers, and the Scooby Gang, which covers the full cold open. Buffy sent Xander specifically because she knows they can't tempt him with anything. Additionally, framing Xander through the eyes of AtS would show what surviving growing up on the Hellmouth and several years of constant apocalypses would do to an ordinary person, which would honestly be pretty fun to see.
Lilah Morgan: "Mr. Harris -"
Xander: "No, no, please, Mr. Harris was my father." [Lilah smiles. Xander smiles back, sharply.] "You can call me 'sir.'" [Lilah stops smiling.]
Because after the Hellmouth, the ordinary human evil of W&H is small potatoes to Xander. He'd comment that as evil as they are, they want the world to stick around to be evil in, and that's almost relaxing to have to deal with.
"You guys, seriously, small potatoes, you don't even want to end the world! It's nice, really. Nobody wanting to eat the sun, nobody wanting to make literal Hell out here, just keep on being evil. I can respect that. I don't support it and would rather see all of you give this up and go join a commune up in Petaluma, but I can respect it."
I assume the rest of episode 4 is either filler, as was the case with the Mexican wrestler episode, or it's where we get the werewolf girlfriend.
"Damage" is next - the one with Dana, the mentally ill Slayer. Spike's sent to Los Angeles to collect her, along with Andrew and a few other Slayers, and gets his hands cut off for his troubles. They're reattached, and the next episode has him stationed at W&H by Buffy to openly spy on the place. Angel is fine with this. "It means she still cares." "That you're head honcho of Evil Inc." "Yeah, but if she didn't care, she wouldn't send you to spy on me." "I'm spying on W&H." "She still cares." "No she doesn't." And so on and so forth, etc cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Because the two of them are best when the show remembers they're family.
Spike doesn't have the weird sub-plot with the Doyle faker, though Lindsay still tries to play the part. It doesn't work, and he's caught almost immediately, which shifts the power dynamics around enough to give Spike a good amount of stuff to do.
Spike's also given freedom to go wherever he wants, and hang out all over the place, and Angel sometimes helps him edit his weekly reports to Buffy in case he missed anything. Everyone knows why Spike is there. This is played for both comedy and drama, because he and Angel grow closer as they keep talking to each other over the course of the season. So we still get moments like "wee little puppet man" and Spike freeing Angel from the parasite that trapped him in those hallucinations because he doesn't care about Angel's privacy. Those kinds of delicious relationship moment which show them as being genuinely close in a way that can't easily be translated to human terms, but the viewing audience easily understands.
Out of everyone in the world, they're the ones best qualified to call each other out on their bullshit and when they're indulging their inner blowhard. (Spike leans towards the bullshit, Angel towards being a blowhard. "I know for a fact you spent that decade moping in disco halls." "It was only thirty minutes, and there was just the one werewolf.")
"Hell Bound" - the only Angel episode aired with a warning for graphic violence - still happens. It's because of Fred. At some point, someone - possibly Xander, when he collects Spike, or possibly Andrew, when he drops by - comments how few ghosts there are around W&H. How little spirit energy. Magic energy, yes, but the spirits are weak, and few and far between. Unrelated to that, Fred invents some sort of machine to help Phantom Dennis manifest, because they've become friends since she moved into the apartment. It's one of those "gone horribly right" situations, because instead of Spike fighting Pavayne, it's Dennis. He makes Pavayne corporeal at the sacrifice of being able to return to life. He does get a moment of Fred seeing his face, and them being able to smile at each other, before he's whisked off back to the apartment - if he doesn't finally move on from being a ghost and goes into the rest of the afterlife.
The back end of the season plays out much as it already did. There'd be a few more lines, here and there, giving reasons and justifications and explanations for why Buffy isn't contacted for whatever reason, and why they're not asking the Slayers for help for one disaster or another. Maybe "they won't get here in time," maybe "they have their own apocalypse," maybe "I have to do this alone and if I come out of it, I'll go see her because I'm Angel and that's what I do."
"The Girl in Question" has its plots swapped, so more time is spent on Fred/Illyria and Wesley, and less on Spike and Angel in madcap hijinks in Italy. Also, no Immortal, no casual racism, no Andrew with a bunch of women, no Buffy decoy/fakeout, no explosion destroying Spike's coat. Because this is how I'd do it, and I don't much like any of that.
I've read reports Whedon wanted season 6 to be a sort of Mad Max post-apocalyptic scenario, with car chases and big action sequences. I have no plans for season 6, not even theoretical ones. Mostly, I'm fine with Angel being asked how they survived the final battle, and Spike answering, "Heroically!" or "We almost didn't" and not elaborating past that. Because the audience can fill in that part themselves.