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Old 08-07-2005, 06:19 AM   #16
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B/A always made me want to turn away from the TV. Or hurl all over the place. The bare-bones idea of B/A wasn't necessarily a bad one, it was the execution of that idea that was so repellant. Like so many others have mentioned, it was overly melodramatic, clichéd, and incredibly tiresome. And don't even get me started on the God-awful dialogue that relationship produced ("I'm just trying to keep from dying!").

I didn't even start to like Angel's character until he got away from Buffy and got his own show. Both Buffy and Angel seemed to regress into these blubbering, impotent caricatures when they were together. Honestly all they ever really did was whine about how crappy their situation was, romantically speaking. Whine and cry, whine and cry. And all the while, the painfully stupid and unbelievable dialogue just keeps polluting the airwaves.

So yeah. I never liked B/A.

C/A won me over largely by just being enjoyable to watch. That and the fact that Angel and Cordelia actually knew each other as people and friends. Oh, and the chemistry. My God, the chemistry. And there you have it.

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Old 08-07-2005, 08:21 AM   #17
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After reading all the posts I must say that I do enjoy B/A as a first puppy love relationship no matter how hokey or fake b/c let's face it almost every high school relationship seems that it will be the 'be all to end all' but after reviewing my Angel DVDs season 1-3 only I just realized why I loved Angel and Cordy's romance/relationship which I would have to say is more tragic than B/A because they were truly in love and not in lust and were unable to declare their unspoken love for each other. BTW I yet to veiw season 5 of ATS or season 4-7 of BTVS which I'm saving up money to buy... I hear Spike and Buffy tough are a better fit then B/A. Gotta run will finish my hopefully coherent rambling later
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Old 08-07-2005, 09:08 AM   #18
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Another thing is that B/A was more or less forced upon us, whereas with C/A they just let it develop gradually. Where they screwed up with C/A was in the latter half of season three when they tried to make it more like B/A by inserting agony and angst. That's just the ME mentality. Joss once said happy couples are boring.
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Old 08-07-2005, 10:10 AM   #19
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My difficulty with any Angel romance is that DB doesn't appeal to me at all. I don't find him physically attractive, so I keep questioning "If I don't want him, why would Buffy?" Or Cordy, for that matter. Or Nina, or...never mind.

But I do think the C/A relationship was more plausible than any of the others. As someone else mentioned earlier, I don't believe in soulmates- so something like B/A, which is set up as a total soulmate deal, seemed very fake and adolescent to me.
But C/A seemed to develop gradually, out of life experiences shared; so it was much more believable. JMO.
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Old 08-07-2005, 10:59 AM   #20
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I don't think I was what you'd call a hard core B/Aer. But I was pretty into B/A at the time, and didn't want Angel to leave Buffy at the end of season three. And the reason I didn't mind hints of Angel/Kate was because it was pretty obvious to me he was only attracted to her because she was an older version of Buffy.

I looked forward to all of the crossovers between the two shows that first season of ANGEL. And I was surprised that I didn't really love any of them. Even IWRY left me kinda cold. But I figured it was just because they didn't do it right. It didn't occur to me that maybe I was growing out of the pairing and that, after seeing Angel on his own (and starting to grow a personality) he didn't really fit with my idea of B/A anymore. On subconscious level, I could see that Angel seemed to take several giant steps back whenever he dealt with Buffy, and I guess that didn't appeal to me.

When BtVS was syndicated on FX, I was looking forward to reliving all of those great B/A moments. But, watching them again, it just wasn't the same. Oh, I still enjoyed them, but the thrill was gone, I guess, and B/A just didn't have the same hold over me.

Mostly, I still like B/A for the nostalgia factor. I remember how much I loved this scene or that scene, and it gives me a warm fuzzy. And I can understand why people would like the pairing. After all, I liked it once upon a time too.
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Old 08-07-2005, 11:14 AM   #21
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Angel and Buffy WERE lovers, but they were NOT friends
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Old 08-07-2005, 11:44 AM   #22
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The only dilemMa B/A posed for me was that the horribly eye-roll inducing dialogue and DB's atrocious early acting sucked away valuable screen time from Cordy, Giles, Xander, Oz and Willow.
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Old 08-07-2005, 01:04 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dannyblue
I don't think I was what you'd call a hard core B/Aer. But I was pretty into B/A at the time, and didn't want Angel to leave Buffy at the end of season three. And the reason I didn't mind hints of Angel/Kate was because it was pretty obvious to me he was only attracted to her because she was an older version of Buffy.

I looked forward to all of the crossovers between the two shows that first season of ANGEL. And I was surprised that I didn't really love any of them. Even IWRY left me kinda cold. But I figured it was just because they didn't do it right. It didn't occur to me that maybe I was growing out of the pairing and that, after seeing Angel on his own (and starting to grow a personality) he didn't really fit with my idea of B/A anymore. On subconscious level, I could see that Angel seemed to take several giant steps back whenever he dealt with Buffy, and I guess that didn't appeal to me.

When BtVS was syndicated on FX, I was looking forward to reliving all of those great B/A moments. But, watching them again, it just wasn't the same. Oh, I still enjoyed them, but the thrill was gone, I guess, and B/A just didn't have the same hold over me.

Mostly, I still like B/A for the nostalgia factor. I remember how much I loved this scene or that scene, and it gives me a warm fuzzy. And I can understand why people would like the pairing. After all, I liked it once upon a time too.
I didn't mind the pairing on Buffy either after the first season. It was melodramatic and Platypus is right - DB couldn't act at all in those days at all, which made some of the scenes a bit excruciating to sit through. But he was very pretty which sort of made up for that (alright, I'm shallow). And when he went to Angel I was sad, even if I thought it was good as I didn't see where they could really go with the B/A relationship.

I think I got tired of B/A on Angel; it was obvious they could do nothing more and having Angel sit around and brood over his lost love was not terribly interesting. And then I found the whole Cordelia/Angel relationship interesting and moved on.
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Old 08-07-2005, 04:17 PM   #24
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B/A has never been my cup of tea. I didn't see it when I started watching BtVS regularly which was during Season 3, and I didn't see it when I got around to watching Season 1-2.

I get why it worked though, it was high school, it was first love and all the bizarre problems that come with it -- using the fact they are vampire and slayer to showcase it all as a metaphor for the pain of losing your first love.

To me it was just too melodramatic, and plus, especially on rewatching they never really had any conversation that revolve around 'THEM' as a couple/or non-couple. Buffy never accepted he was a vampire (I don't care how many times they showed her kissing him in vamp face --which was just once -- every other action out of her negated that). They didn't even know each other, they just had a few things in common when they met: Neither had known love, both were faced with a life they never asked for and both of them have bloodlust in their veins (vampire, slayer, respectively). It was all they ever had, and I think all they ever would have.

C/A I admit it snuck up on me because I never considered it until I saw a commercial for Deep Down (don't I have sucky timing) but when I saw them kissing in that commercial. I found myself wondering, thinking about it, remembering what I saw in the first season of AtS before I stopped watching (I was mad about Glenn). And I found myself realizing that it worked, they worked, it made sense. And on screen seeing the natural progression, they way they did know each other, they way they fought and hurt when the other hurt blah blah -- I fell hook line and sinker. Even if the show then went on to ruin it by making it all melodramatic and about losing love before even have it in the harshest way possible.

But A/C before ME screwed it was beautiful and that's the A/C in my imagination :-).
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Old 08-07-2005, 05:20 PM   #25
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I did not like B/A very well, because for me it made the characters cardboard cutouts instead of human characters. B/A emphasized their roles (slayer, vampire) rather than their personalities. The Cordy and Wes "re-enactment" of the Buffy and Angel re-union was probably spot on (and damn funny).

C/A when they were just being friends (and before Buffy-ized Cordy) worked because it brought out the goofy dorkus in Angel and the nice funny gal in Cordy.
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Old 08-07-2005, 05:51 PM   #26
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One of the main flaws of B/A was at the time ME's writers didn't have as good a grasp of the characters and David obviously wasn't very skilled yet at acting. It got better later on, especially in their crossover scenes.
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Old 08-07-2005, 06:04 PM   #27
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Quote:
Originally Posted by silveragent
I did not like B/A very well, because for me it made the characters cardboard cutouts instead of human characters. B/A emphasized their roles (slayer, vampire) rather than their personalities. The Cordy and Wes "re-enactment" of the Buffy and Angel re-union was probably spot on (and damn funny).
God yes: that scene gets my vote for funniest moment ever on Angel. Or Buffy. And I think it got most of the problems with the relationship - it was really too madly melodramatic to continue for long.
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Old 08-07-2005, 06:06 PM   #28
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I liked the *idea* of B/A. Giles put it well in Buffy S1 when he said it was kind of poetic that a vampire be in love with a slayer etc etc. I wasn't invested though since I watched ATS first and BTVS only to get Angel's backstory.

I see B/A as Angel being Buffy's first teenage love, and Buffy being Angel's first, desperate and flawed foray back into interacting with humans.

Even before I became a C/A'er, I'd would have taken the C/A/W dynamic anytime over the big, tragic romance that B/A ended up being. After finally clicking fully to C/A, I've never looked back.
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Old 08-07-2005, 06:09 PM   #29
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Quote:
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It got better later on, especially in their crossover scenes.
Oh, definitely. I thought the first crossover was a shining moment of melodrama, what with the ice cream licking and then Angel once again (for 17th time) making a decision on behalf of both of them. And then that second crossover? With Buffy reverting to form and hitting him because she was mad and the only way for her to express anger in that relationship was through violence? That was classic B/A, getting "better" and "better". And it was great that Angel finally found a pair of balls and told her off, but of course the third crossover on BTVS had him apologizing for her acting like a bitch, and I agree - B/A had never been better.

You know, I'm sure I should have used some sort of font there, but I couldn't decide which one.
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Old 08-07-2005, 06:39 PM   #30
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I never watched much of BTVS. And the few times I did catch B/A I was just plain bored or not interested at all.

C/A is my very first ship. I fell in love with them for so many reasons. They had so much more that B/A never did. And we got to see a new side to both Angel and Cordy in ATS. They still make me smile.
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