And Yeah A Lot Of That's Backfilling - Tumblr Posts

Focusing on Angel, look at his first scene - he's completely ridiculous.

Buffy: Who are you? Angel: Lets just say that I'm a friend. Buffy: Yeah, well maybe I don't want a friend. Angel: *smirks* I didn't say I was yours.

Angel, buddy. We know you don't have any friends. He's just saying whatever he thinks will make him sound cool.

And the next episode, Buffy actually asks him if he has any friends, and the facade just crumples. The whole 'smirking trickster mentor' schtick falls away, and we see... Angel. An awkward, brooding weirdo who doesn't know how to be a person.

And as much as his arc was not planned, and as much as people complain about Boreanez's acting ability, this completely makes sense for Angel as a character. He's been eating rats and barely talking to anyone for a century, and this is his first attempt at interacting with someone in a long time, and he really wants her to like him. So he tries to be a cool, mysterious stranger - pulling on his experiences as Angelus, with a little bit of Whistler mixed in - but it feels awkward and off, and when it inevitably falls apart, he's just... a weird, awkward, brooding fuy. (Who's also kind of creepy around the teenage girl he has a crush on.)

And by 'Angel', he's... well, Angel. A bit more awkward and weird than he will be later, but the characterisation is basically there. (And we see a our first glimpse of Angelus when he's trying to commit suicide by slayer.)

So yeah, Angel is different in his first appearance. But I've genuinely been surprised in this rewatch with how consistent early Angel is with who his is and what we learn about him later.

For all the Early Installment Weirdness in Season 1 of Buffy, the opening two-parter does a surprisingly good job establishing these who these characters are and what their arcs will be for the entire rest of the series.

Take Buffy’s ‘Seize the moment, because tomorrow you might be dead’ - it’s framed in an almost light-hearted way, but she is already, in the first episode, intensely aware of her own death. As much as she tries to deny her slayerhood, she knows she’s probably going to die young; she can’t picture a future for herself, and her just trying to enjoy the moment is covering for issues she’ll be dealing with for the rest of the series.

The first thing Willow does to help Buffy is hack the city council to access the plans for the city. Well, technically, what she does is reveal that she’d already hacked them, just for funsies. It’s slightly incongruous with Willow’s apparent innocence… but that completely fits her later arc. She sees herself as essentially innocent and harmless, so it’s fine when she does things that might seem bad if someone else did it, especially if it’s something that might make her feel cool and/or powerful.

Cordelia also shows her intelligence in Computer class (though the bad Deliver/Delete joke at the end of the scene undercuts it, I’m inclined to write that off as just a bad joke). She’s complaining about the task they’ve been assigned, but she’s complaining like someone who does know what she’s talking about, in comparison to Harmony who genuinely doesn’t get it; and there’s a strong sense that she’s trying to downplay her academic smarts to fit in. It’s surprising depth this early in the series, considering how Season 1 generally treats her.

And then Angel is a ridiculous dork with no idea how to be a person, desperately trying to look cool - an illusion that breaks under the slightest pressure. This displays not just his personality, but also foreshadows all of Buffy’s romantic interests for the rest of the series.