BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER S2 EP 12-14 ( RANTS!!, CONFUSION, ENJOYMENT SMH THIS BATCH OF EPISODES WAS ROUGH FOR ME)
Added 2025-11-30 09:49:14 +0000 UTC
Comments
I'm a bit late to this as i've been dealing with life stuff, but I think I agree with the replies I've seen that say not to continue if you're truly not into it. I will say, I hate Angel, he's literally my least favorite character simply because the show never fully addresses how the good "ensouled" Angel was still incredibly disgusting for pursuing a 15 year old in the first place. This show is SO much more than Bangel but that relationship is pivotal for Buffy. Generally, I put myself in her shoes. She's a teenager. She does not see the toxicity in their relationship, and only through this complete switch in Angel is she able to grasp how awful it is. Even after seeing him do all this, she still loves him too much to kill him because she is a child that loves without any safeguards for herself. Its formative. But its not a positive endorsement for their relationship, lol. You can shit on their relationship, gag when they kiss, and still enjoy the rest of the show, imo. But of course, if you find yourself not enjoying watching these, don't force it.
nataly
2025-12-08 22:14:18 +0000 UTCThis is the best comment in the history of comments wow! Just to add on, Angel might just have been a pedo before he was turned. Darla had the appearance of a teenage girl, sired him, and was his lil boo then, Drusila was 16 when he STARTED torturing her... and he started stalking Buffy (16) before she even moved to Sunnydale.
Gabi Bryant
2025-12-05 02:59:32 +0000 UTCI find it fascinating that women watch Buffy and the relate to the "reality" of the situations they can empathize with, men watch and are repulsed and horrified by the toxicity (which is kinda the point). Idk if it speaks to the fragility of men when it comes to the existential horror of it all or the capacity of women to understand that this is the world we exist in on the regular. Who knows. That being said, life is too short to watch 5 more seasons of something you don't fuck with.
Aquielle
2025-12-04 16:12:31 +0000 UTCBuffy could kill Angel any time she wants -- the power dynamic is completely different than in any real life situation. Plus, she has the ancient soul of the slayer -- she isn't a normal 17 year old. Those things matter. Plus, it's obvious nobody in this show is really a minor... the high school setting is more of a concept for story purposes. Honestly, I always saw the characters as college students because that's what age they are (or older...Cordelia and Xander are pushing 30!)
ArcAngel
2025-12-03 09:20:15 +0000 UTCStop watching it dude. It’s just a TV show. Yes it gets better but do the ends justify the means? Do I enjoy watching my guy squirm just so I can see his reaction to episodes I know he’s gonna flip for? Sorry gang but that feels selfish. I respect you either way brother Taco
cupcake
2025-12-03 02:43:58 +0000 UTCI think bottom line is that the show is never really trying to get you to accept or like the Buffy and Angel relationship. There’s a difference between showing a relationship that is intentionally meant to make the audience enjoy it and one that is constantly being mocked or questioned which I think the show is good about doing. We’re also supposed to be seeing it from buffy’s pov but every time the show starts to delve into the romance of them, it swings back to driving the point home that they’re not good for each other, for many reasons. I understand not liking it but you’re also not really supposed to agree with it, that’s the point. Many others have already commented about this much more eloquently but yeah… this show is way more than the relationship with Angel but Angelus is also so much fun to watch? I hope you can continue watching.
Lisa
2025-12-02 13:36:06 +0000 UTCIts interesting to see you get so upset over the buffy and angel relationship, im 35 now and watched this show from the age of 9, its always been my favourite show. I dont know if its because im from Scotland and the legal age here is 16 and when I was growing it it was the norm for girls to be with older guys so I just never really noticed the issue between buffy and Angels age and I cant say iv ever really seen any other reactor be too bothered by it either so its interesting to see your reaction. Hope you continue but understand if you dont.
Shauni
2025-12-01 21:11:06 +0000 UTCYa gotta have a little Faith Last comment, I’m obsessive, I’m sorry— but it’s kinda hilarious how the fandom are used to sometimes having to beg a reactor to hold back from quitting after S1 in the comment sections, because they just can’t get past the campy overload or the low budget/mid season replacement quality of it all. And we think as a fandom of all the things we can’t yet say to explain how it’s a huge mistake to quit at one point thinking the rest of the series will be as so. Many themes, plots and characters in BTVS come and go in phases and sometimes they stay gone. It’s like leaving the party right before the DJ gets there and the drinks go half price and someone walks in with a briefcase full of money with your name on it.
Alysha
2025-12-01 10:40:54 +0000 UTCSo, here's the thing, and I didn't want to speak about until we reached this point. So, when you did Reptile Boy, you were concerned about how that was going to play out and that you didn't have trust in the show to portray these high school girls sating college guys in the appropriate light of portraying this guy's as the predators as they are because of how they've portrayed Buffy and Angel's relationship dynamic, which is absolutely fair, but I wanted to just be like, "Just be patient. The show will show the dangerous toxic results of ". Now, something you do have to keep in mind is that BtVS(or Buffyverse in general) uses the supernatural world as metaphors to the real world. We saw that with Reptile Boy with the whole creepy, fraternity boys manipulating, drugging, and taking advantage of high school girls for their own sinister plans. The predator praying mantis, the predator internet demon catfishing. Probably the most popular and famous metaphor in the series is "High school is hell", as their high school is literally sitting on the of the mouth of Hell(The Hellmouth). Now here, we're getting a different type of metaphor, but it is still with the theme of the inappropriateness of this older guy dating this teenage, high school girl, which was something that was very common and kinda overlooked(back in the late 90s/00s, the inappropriate adult/teen relationship portrayed on tv often involved a teacher, which isn't the case here, but it had a different air to it due to the position of authority of those relationships), and a teenage girl dating an older guy wasn't out of the norm at the time. I mean, look back at a lot of these big, popular, famous, Hollywood male celebrities that dated teenagers, even famous celeb teenagers in the 90s/00s that no one blinked an eye and lowkey still don't talk about(Paul Walker, Steven Tyler, Jerry Seinfield, Johnny Depp, one of them Good Charlotte Twins, etc). Hell, Taylor Swift was 22 when she dated a 17 year old(he was turning 18, but still), picking that boy up from school and such because she was out here thinking she was gonna slide her way into the Kennedy family and get that Kennedy clout. And of course you got grown mfs in the 30s+ deliberately dating barely legal teenagers like Leo DiCaprio, John Mayer(Taylor Swift was 19 while he was in his 30s), and far too many to name. I believe that the show deliberately keeps emphasizing the age difference on purpose. And the casually of characters like Buffy mentioning it all if the time joking about it, because dating older guys as was the norm. Like the college guys casually pulling up to talk to Cordelia directly at the front of the school in fro t of everyone. And now she's suffering the consequences of doing so that many suffer through... Now, here with Angel, the metaphor is here about the reality of a teenager girl dating an older guy usually ends up. The go-to line of justification of these types of relationships was saying that "she's mature for her age", which was usually what the older guy would be feeding to the high school girl, basically piggy backing off of the whole "girls mature faster than boys", which is just a societal manipulation to place more responsibility on girls to be "caregivers", and put themselves to serve other people but that's a whole different conversation. So with these older guys telling these teenagebgirls that, they're putting it in the girl's head that she's different, she's special, when the reality is he would be saying this to whatever teenage girl he's trying to get, and they falsely believe the affection and attention they're getting is love, not realizing they she being played like a fiddle. And a lot people try to justify these relationships even today because this was their parents/grandparents relationships, and "they wete so in love", that they don't the reality to shatter the image of love they gotten from itbecause it'll cause them reflect on the true inappropriateness and toxicity of their relationship relationship, and very likely shatter their perception of what love is and probably about the truth of their own literal existence and that's a realuty most aren't ready for, because who tf wants their sense of reality, when the saw it in a positive light, "tainted", right? We are also in a world today with a lot more self awareness and awareness of the reality of what these relationships are and how they affect people both short and long term Anyways, so here we have this teenage girl in a romantic relationship with this older guy, and it all seems to be going so well, all in love. That is until she finally sleeps with him. And that right is it. "My nice [older] boyfriend suddenly turned evil after I've slept with him". And this an ecpetience that girls/women experience in heneral. Not just teen girls, where the guy ghey wrre seeing dating and you get where relationships become more blantantly abusive(I say blantantly because the abuse is usually done far more subtle) after reaching a certain milestone and they finally letting their mask fall(which is why it's such a smack in the face and honestly straight up gaskighting when men who shame women who ended up with horrible men by telling them to "choose better" because it outright ignores the truth about how a lot of these guys literally will fake their whole personality to get her, and a lot of the switch up in relationship don't start until after a woman gets pregnant/has a baby, and/or they get married because now he's made sure to tie himself to her, making it harder for her to leave, after mentally manipulating her for who knows how long since the beginning, and essentially it's blaming women for the horrible actions of the men that wronged them instead of holding HIM accountable for his own actions but that's how the patriarchal society works). Now, the show does heavily romanticize Buffy and Angel relationship, which is problematic, but the series, in a sense, is from Buffy's perspective, and also a perspective of the times where again, a teenage was less frowned upon because like I said, some of these parents accumulated in the same damn way, where the older guy is his early-mid, even late 20s dating high school girls. Sometimes they end up with a kid and actually stick around, but many treat that staying together means the relationship wasn't inappropriate or that the relationship isn't toxic because they stuck together. The vibe of the series petty much matches Buffy's personality and who she is as a person because it's mainly her story we're following, even if we know more than what she's knows. So the perspective of the story is mainly her... Now, what I'm also am going to do now is to try and explain the whole soul/vampire demon thing, and the whole what makes Angel "Angel" and what makes Angelus "Angelus" because you've been asking and I keep telling myself that I was going to explain, but never did, and now that we're here at this poiny in the series, it seems like the best time, if any lol. Also, what I'm explaining is based on what we've heard on the show thus far, which is mainly based on what Angel, the only vampire we've known to have a soul, has explained, mainly in 1x07 "Angel", so there's no me spoiling anything(I'm very adamant about not spoiling people). So, Angel said that when you become a vampire, the [vampire] demon basically takes over your body, but it doesn't get your soul. When you die, your human soul leaves, so vampires just walk around soulless. Now the way Angel describes a soul, my interpretation is that it's basically your human conscience. In society, we have our ideas of what a human without a conscience would be like. Often times, it's how we describe someone we as a collective as a cold, "monster". We say they have no conscience. From white collar crimes to we call them "soulless". So, basically, take the conscience out of the dead human and shove a vampire demon in place of it. There's no guilt, no remorse for the things done to others. Everything that is done is the vampire demon, and that's all I'll say in regards to that at the moment. Now with THAT said, as we learned here with the judge, just because you're soulless, doesn't mean you're "humanity" is gone. Your ability to care, even if it's probably through selfish meanings. They can bore affection and jealousy, but they're caring nature is due to their own personal feelings about each. They treat everyone else around like shit because they don't care about them... Now, Angelus was/is different. In fact, saying that he's built different, as the kids would say would, compared to other vamps would be a great to describe him. When he was out there ripping and running around in those European streets during the 1700s-1800s, he was known as possibly THE most evil vampire of them all. Why? Well, like the Judge said, there's no humanity in him. Meaning, he does not give a single, flying fuck. The Master himself, when he was talking about Angelus in 1x07 to Darla, who wanted to bring him back to the darkside by killing Buffy said, "He was the most vicious creature I ever met. I miss him". The Master said this about him. And we heard Angel himself tell Buffy what he did to Drusilla. He was obsessed with purity and "innocence", and wanted to break her. So, he mentally tormented her for who knows how long, "I killed everyone she loved, visited every mental torture on her that I could devise". She fled to a covenant to become a nun, and on the day she was to take her holy vows, he slaughter the whole covenant in front of her, and that was ghe thing that finally made her mentally break. The result of the Drusilla we see today, her insanity the vicious, vampiric nature, her darkness, all of the work Angelus put into her into creating that is basically referred as Angelus' greatest work of art. Drusilla is Angelus' masterpiece. What does that mean? It means Angelus gets off on hurting people, and mentally seem to be his favorite route to take which is what we see with him doing it to Buffy. Already we see him getting inside her head. Him verbally gut punching Buffy with that post-sex conversation was an absolute blast for him. Like he even told the judge to lay low for the night, so he could go out of his way to go do that to her, went to target and murder her friends for Buffy to find(which he failed), came back happy as hell, and he barely laid a finger on her in that scene after she hugged him until he gave her that assualting kiss and slammed her before he left. He even had her blaming herself for his reaction during the scene in his apartment and continued to blame herself even after finding out he turned evil(especially knowing that she was the one tbat triggered it). He's writing notes to her in his victim's blood. Even in the end during the fight, he's verbally trying to get in her head, and he knew Buffy couldn't kill him... Now, taking it back 100 years from the shows present, Angelus fed and killed a girl from a Romani(gypsy) clan, who are the ancestors of the Romani clan(which Jenny and her family is part of). The clan found out, got their vengeance on him by punishing Angelus. Not by killing him. But by shoving his human soul back into his body. His human conscience. Now, that vicious, sadistic monster of a vampire suddenly feels a [human] conscience about every single thing that he'd done. That's why he's always brooding all of the time looking sad and depressed. He is. He's constantly swimming in all of the guilt all of the time, suffering know . "You don't know what it's like to do the things that I've done, and care". Which means that Romani was doing the punishment was supposed to do. And the thing he feels guilty about the most: Angelus' Masterpiece. That's why in "Lie To Me", Angel didn't even try to fight Drusilla. He just wanted her to take Spike and leave. But just like Angelus knew Buffy too well to know she couldn't home, Drusilla knew Angel enough to know that he couldn't hurt her, "Not anymore"(which very likely also gas a double meaning). He even looked down away from her after she said it, because he knew she was right. He probably mental flogs himself in punishment everytime he sees or even thinks about her because of what he did to her, so hurting her now, despite her being a very dangerous monster, he just can't bring himself to do it, and they both know it. And he staked his own Sire, Darla(to save Buffy). So, Angelus is still technically there inside of Angel, as the demon doesn't exactly go away. I think of it as an extreme version of having evil thoughts and then feels immediately guilty about it because of his conscience. Possibly a representation of "Catholic Guilt", which since he gave Buffy a claddagh ring for her birthday, it's safe to he's Irish, which means he was very likely raised Roman Catholic. I always describe Angel as "Angelus + Human Soul = Angel". His human conscience basically keeps Angelus on a leash, or locked in a case, through guilt. Now, the leash/cage is gone, the conscience is gone. The guilt is gone. The humanity is gone. The suffering of the suffering that was bestowed upon others is gone. Guilt free from all of that darkness within him that he gleefully dishes out onto others. And the reason being is because the whole purpose of the soul was for him to feel eternal torment for the things he'd done. That's why Jenny was there to make sure he'd stayed that way, kinda hard to if there's a girl out here making his unbeating heart flutter. And for a moment all of that guilt as he laid peacefully and content next to Buffy after sharing auch intimacy. And because of that, the curse was "broken". If he's meant to at any moment of peace, bliss, true happiness, then it defeats the whole purpose of him getting cursed with his soul in the first place. It wasn't about getting a soul to make him a better "person". "Angel is meant to suffer. Not live as human". That's why Jenny's uncle kept pounding that in her head that's about vengeance. And why he showed up because they sense Angel was suffering the way he was supposed to. Now Jenny nor Angel knew about the stimpulation part of the curse about what would, otherwise Angel would have probably avoid Buffy as much as he could, and Jenny would have tried to break that up sooner to avoid all of this. He didn't give a damn about Angel making amends for his horrors, the world possibly coming to an end, and/or even saving Jenny's life. They're all about the get back. Considering what he did to them and what he'd done to others, it seems absolutely fair. Angel is literally Angelus' punishment. His human conscience, which was already bad enough for Angelus to suffer through, but on top of that. Buffy made him "fall in love". She made him "feel like a human being", so now he's targetting her specifically. She was giving the human experience(through true love), something both the Romani ^ Angelus were NOTokay with, hut for different reasons. Not only that, but Angelus wants to destroy the thing that Angel cares about, which is Buffy... Also, sucking the cigarette smoke is such a smooth, "cool" villain thing to do lol... I hope I explained it well enough. And please stop apologizing for your feelings. I came here for the authentic reactions. It's absolutely okay for you not want to ship Buffy/Angel. I don't think anyone, at least fans with sense, even the ones who ARE Bangel fans, would be offended about you not supporting it lol. The point of it is living through Buffy's experience. The show is basically a giant metaphor of growing up, starting with the high school, teenage which is the experience of many, especially teenage girls in this instance of falling in love with an older guy and he shatters her love and trust, but to an extreme, supernatural, metaphorical version of it. I believe what show often tried to do was open the door to having these conversations, like the demon robot pretending to be something his not so he can make people fall in love with him, so he can manipulate to abuse them and that love. So, keep having them. And I understand how it can be struggling with how much, ESPECIALLY in these last few episode, but it's been accumulating the way it has to become what we've have now reached this part of the story. I truly do hope you decide to continue. I really do enjoy your honest reactions and commentary. Believe me, you're not the first to not
Ash Lee Can
2025-12-01 05:18:48 +0000 UTCDepiction is not endorsement. It’s OK to hate Angel. He deserves to be hated, especially in this last episode. That said, if you’re not having fun watching, it’s OK to stop. The show doesn’t have a clear stance on the Angel age gap thing - it’s depicted as romantic one moment and then used as evidence of his villainy later. It does the same thing with other toxic shit later. I can mostly justify it because it’s shown through Buffy’s eyes and her perception changes. The show does have a main writer with major issues that sometimes seem to bleed through, however. I don’t think it’s fair to ask you to ignore that.
Valaree
2025-12-01 04:02:02 +0000 UTCFam lol
Raymond Walker
2025-12-01 03:44:13 +0000 UTCYou looked so exhausted after episode 12. 😭
Valaree
2025-12-01 02:41:51 +0000 UTC
