Back at a lunch I had with Marti, Joss, and David where we came up with the idea that Darla was going to be human, the moment I mentioned that idea, Joss immediately came up with the scene. He said, “Later in the season, Drusilla will walk in and revamp her in front of Angel.” We knew that was going to happen. What I find amazing is that some of the fans didn’t care for the Darla arc and complained that it was Darla all year and was boring. I disagree, and in fact in almost every episode she appeared, something new happened. There was the big reveal, “Oh, she’s human”; then there was the big reveal, “Oh, she’s dying”; and then, of course, Drusilla walked in and she was a vampire again. So Darla—not a static character for us in season two.
And with Angel going dark, the card you don’t always want to play, that you want to save, is him going evil or losing his soul or becoming Angelus, so we were looking for a way to give him a dark night of the soul while he still had his soul. It’s often referred to as the beige Angel arc: he’s not exactly dark, he is not angelic, he is not evil. We felt like we wanted to explore sort of existential despair, because that is always fun, and it just made for more interesting stories. I mean, it is certainly my favorite thing on the show. And it’s actually better than him being Angelus, because he is making a moral choice, so that when he locks lawyers in a wine cellar with vampires, you completely understand it. This was before the war on terror and before waterboarding and that sort of thing, but it kind of falls into that category where it’s sort of, like, why should I have a responsibility to not lock up these people in there with the things they have brought on themselves?
DAVID GREENWALT
We always had that darkness in us. We terrified the WB, and they were right at that juncture. But that’s what’s interesting about that character: he’s got a soul, but he has this other side and he is such an old soul, if you will, and such a tormented guy. The more evil he was, the more fun for us and for the audience. It just made him deeper and deeper, really. Then you’d do these flashbacks and you’d understand all the different things that had happened to him and how he came to be how he was. Just a lot to draw on. The metaphor for Buffy will always be the strongest, which is adolescence. There isn’t much of a metaphor for your twenties; it’s actually a bunch of wasted time until you decide what you’re doing. But because this guy was so old and had been through so much, you could do a deeper, darker arc to the stories with him. You could go anywhere.
TIM MINEAR
It’s not something we hesitated over. Not even a little. He doesn’t kill those people, though he certainly is complicit and aids what happens to them by not only shutting the doors but locking them in. What’s cool about Angel is that we can do that. Sometimes there are two different things at work in terms of whether or not he should take certain steps. Your character might do a certain thing, but the actor playing him may want to protect that image. David didn’t do that to us. He happens to be the kind of actor who’s game for anything. He allowed himself to look goofy, he allowed himself to be beaten, he allowed himself to do dark and heroic things, and I think for David it was more interesting to go to those places.
DAVID GREENWALT
One could say that in that arc we went just south of Angelus, but it was scarier in some ways because he still had a soul during all of this. My answer to how dangerous it was for the image of the character is that I hope it was pretty dangerous, because that makes interesting drama. I would further comment that what is interesting about Angel is that he contains the good and evil that you and I have inside of us, except that he is a very extreme version of it. He’s sort of a naturally dramatic form of it. It was necessary for him to go dark, first of all from a structural level of we didn’t want to repeat ourselves where we’re a formula show of Cordelia has a vision, we solve a crime; Cordelia has a vision, we solve a crime. I was getting bored with that formula when Joss said, “What if he locks lawyers in a room with the vampire girls, and afterward he goes home and his people are, like, “We’re all that’s standing between you and darkness,” and he says, “You’re right. You’re all fired.”
The way he went dark was when you watch the show unfold, you discover that he knew that he had to go to a place where he had to kill Darla and Drusilla, although he in fact set them on fire. Killing is bad, but burning them is pretty dark, too. He knew he had to go to a dark place. It’s like those tunnel fighters in Vietnam—what they would have to do to their mind and soul to go into a tunnel that’s probably filled with mines and people with knives and having to try and kill people. So Angel was, in fact, trying to protect his people; at the same time, he was doing something that was very harsh to them.
DAVID FURY
For Buffy you understood what it was about. It was initially about high school is hell and surviving that. But then when we started doing Angel, the question was what is the show really about? It’s about trying to remain a good man in an evil world. So the struggle of Angel to remain good is very much part of the show. It’s very much a struggle we all have to some extent. We always take the shortcut, or maybe do underhanded things, but we try to be moral creatures. We try to do the right thing. That’s kind of what Angel’s struggle is. There’s a little bit of an angel and devil on his shoulder, and pushing him toward the devil is definitely a cool thing to do.
DAVID GREENWALT
Look, the darker the better, if it’s justified. If there’s some kind of emotion involved. The thing we had to keep in mind is [that] nobody is a villain. Nobody is evil. Nobody thinks, “I’m evil; I’m bad.” They think, “Oooh, this is a great day,” or whatever they think. A hero who is all good and who only does good things is A, boring; and B, I don’t believe it. I don’t know if there would be a C or not. The C would be when I was a kid, my favorite shows were things Maverick and Rockford. These sort of heroes were, like, “I don’t want to get hurt, I don’t want to fight. I’d like to get a lot of money for what I’m doing.” I could identify with that. Somebody who is just square-jawed, never does anything bad, is always good—is bullshit. So, you know, the darker the better. And the truth is, some things you cannot bring a character back from.
DAVID FURY
They were trying to do a very different show than Buffy at that time. It was trying to separate itself and be the much more adult version, the dark version. They were pushing that envelope. Remember, that first episode I wrote for season one got thrown out because it was way too dark. The network was scared of it. So we backed off and said, “We’ll start here and make it a little bit darker as we go.” I could have done that episode, “Corrupt,” in the second season, but it wasn’t going to fly as the second episode, because they weren’t ready to go that dark. But the darkness kept sneaking in more and more, and eventually it snuck in so much that we had to pull back on it.
TIM MINEAR
Then, when all of that was over, we didn’t just hit the reset button. It took him a while to regain the trust of his crew, but he had to learn something. And then they got to go and learn something about themselves in his absence, and when he came back he said, “I don’t want to run the team; I want to work for you guys.” It altered the dynamic, even though he still sort of ran things. The show is not called Wesley.
You know, we were ahead of the curve on a lot of things. What I mean is, we did things like Angel locks lawyers in a wine cellar with vampires, turns his back on them, and lets people get killed. Or when he fires his crew, or when he takes a particularly dark turn. That was absolutely thrilling at the time. It was so exciting to do that stuff, and even to the fans just how shocking and great that was. You have to remember, this is before FX. This is before The Shield. The Sopranos was around, I think, but that was really the beginning. This is before serialized storytelling was happening on cable. Because we were on the WB, we could get away with things like Angel’s existential crisis, and throwing Darla around the room, and having hate sex with her, because he’s in a moment of existential despair.
That stuff was
not happening on television. At least not that I recall. In a way, the WB was a forerunner of the kind of storytelling that you now see with Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. Obviously, The Shield was the real beginning of that, but, you know, Shawn Ryan came out of our shop. Shawn Ryan was on Angel, and working with me on that show before he went off and made the pilot for The Shield. I’m not saying Angel influenced that script or anything. I’m just saying that we were doing it before anybody else. I don’t want to make it sound like we were reinventing the wheel, because there was NYPD Blue, and there were other adult network shows where main characters had dark nights of the soul. I’m just saying that what we were doing on the WB was, I think, really a forerunner to the things that now live on FX and Showtime and HBO and places like that.
Moving from strength to strength in season two, the dark Angel arc came to a close with “Reprise” and “Epiphany” and his discovering the truth about Wolfram and Hart’s home office—that the Home Office is Earth—and that the evil in the souls of humans fuels them. In total despair, Angel finds Darla and gives himself up to her sexually, a moment set up in such a way as to duplicate the moment that cost him his soul on Buffy in “Innocence.”
Shockingly, it has the opposite effect in that it makes him rediscover himself and his purpose. He leaves her, saying that if he sees her again he’ll kill her. Later, he’s confronted by Lindsey—enraged by jealousy over Angel and Darla—who runs him over with his truck and attacks with a sledge hammer, though in the end Angel gets the upper hand, smashing Lindsey’s false one to pieces.
TIM MINEAR
I remember when we were talking about it, that this would be the episode where he had an epiphany. I said to Joss, “Look, he slept with Buffy and lost his soul. What if he sleeps with Darla and metaphorically gets his soul back?” Like at one point he has a moment of perfect happiness, so he loses his soul. But here it is an echo of that—we shoot it the same way; we make it seem like that is where we’re going—but really he has a moment of perfect despair and he realizes what he must do. Everyone sort of understood that I was riffing on that. And the truth is, it wouldn’t make any sense for him to have a moment of perfect happiness with Darla. That was another thing that I was trying to point out, because everyone kept thinking, if he has sex, he is going to lose his soul. The truth is, that was never the point. I mean, if he had the perfect chocolate soda, would that turn him evil?
CHRISTIAN KANE
That whole sequence in “Epiphany” was a huge moment for me. To see the guitar in the closet and not be able to play it; it’s dusty. Then I put my hand on to go to work. It was an unbelievable moment for me. The night before we shot it, David Boreanaz and I had hung out and we were very hungover the day we shot the scene. We were both really hurting that day.
TIM MINEAR
That fight was probably the most violent thing we’d done. David Greenwalt wanted me to tone it down a little bit. He left it up to me, but he said, “I feel like this is too violent.” I felt it wasn’t, and he was, like, “OK.” It’s so funny that we didn’t get a note from the network about that. The note I did get was about the end of “Reprise,” when Angel drops the ring and says, “Do you want this?” and Darla grabs for it.
We filmed an extra slap which had to be cut. It’s all about context, because he’s about to take her and it does start to look a little bit like rape. The funny thing is, they didn’t give me a note on this throwing her through the doors. He throws her through the doors, and she lands on her hands and elbows on a pile of broken glass. They didn’t give me a note on that, but the little face slap they insisted on cutting. Then with the Lindsey-Angel thing, I didn’t get a note at all, and that was incredibly violent.
Christian Kane was doing all his own stuff in that scene. He was really into it. The fun thing is that Christian for a year and a half complained about the shirts and ties. Hates them, doesn’t want to wear them. And I had to be very explicit and say, “He’s got his tie on in this scene; it’s very important because later he’s going to pull off his tie and it’s going to mean something. Therefore he needs to have his tie on.”
CHRISTIAN KANE
Look, man, in a world of superheroes I was a lawyer. Everyone had a sword and I had a pen. I didn’t know that that pen was going to be that mighty, but it was no fun for me. Then they cut my hand off, and I’m sitting here in a suit and tie—while everybody else is dressed in leather, flying around the set—without a hand. I was miserable. I remember directors coming in and they would be, like, “So, Drusilla’s here and Julie Benz’s character, Darla, is here . . . Oh, Lindsey’s here. Let’s have them punch Lindsey.” I’m, like, “No!” He’s, like, “They’ve got to punch somebody when they walk in, so you’ll just be the guy.” “No, man, stop having girls hit me!” And remember, I’m right-handed and they cut off my right hand, so I couldn’t even eat lunch. My hand was in a plastic surgical glove. Then there was a brace put on; then there was another surgical glove taped on that, and then it was painted. That was twelve hours a day. I used to have to ride home with my hand out the window, because it smelled so bad. One time I was sitting next to Tim Minear at lunchtime and I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m writing the next episode,” and I looked over at him and said, “Fucking kill me.” He didn’t.
TIM MINEAR
Wherever you put Angel and Lindsey together it’s interesting, and the idea of them working together, which happened in “Dead End,” certainly sparked everybody’s imagination. The idea that Angel had had this epiphany and was more easygoing would infuriate Lindsey all the more, which just made it so much fun. They really have a great chemistry. Actually, Lindsey is a perfect fit for the show, because here’s this morally ambiguous guy who is seeking his own kind of redemption. So he fits right into the universe.
Although she wouldn’t recur until season five, “Disharmony” saw Mercedes McNab reprising her Buffy role of Cordelia’s old friend, Harmony, who shows up in L.A. Harmony’s behavior leads Cordelia to think, humorously, that she’s a lesbian, but then Cordelia discovers that Harmony is actually a vampire. She tries to redeem Harmony, but that proves impossible as Harmony nearly betrays the group to a vampire cult.
MERCEDES MCNAB
(actress, Harmony Kendall)
Being called for Angel was very shocking for me. By that time I had moved to New York. My run with Buffy was over, but then I got the call when I was in New York and they asked me to come back for Angel. That was completely out of the blue.
TIM MINEAR
That was one of the few episodes where we did get to do the “metaphor” on Angel, which is “my old high school friend shows up in town and we’ve both changed.” And she happens to have changed into a vampire. I thought Charisma was hysterical in that episode. But more importantly, it put Cordelia in a situation where she ends up doing the same thing Angel did with Darla, because she needs to forgive him and this kind of puts them on the same moral level to some extent.
MERCEDES MCNAB
I think Harmony was always trying to find her way. She would try to be whatever person she thought she was at the time. Inherently, she is selfish and evil. And out for number one, which always supersedes all else.
JOSS WHEDON
(executive producer / cocreator, Angel)
As well as things were going in season two, we had our guest stars drop out after episode eighteen—Julie Benz and Christian Kane. We couldn’t get them and here we were with four more episodes, and the two people who had sort of driven the entire season were gone. So we sort of looked at each other and scratched our heads.
TIM MINEAR
We had assumed we would be continuing the Darla story, that either Angel would have to kill her by the end of the season or there would be some ultimate confrontation. But because Julie wasn’t available, we couldn’t do that.
JOSS WHEDON
As much of a problem [as] not having those actors was, after “Epiphany” what we wanted to do with the last four ep
isodes was have an unbelievably grand adventure where we sort of comment on where we’ve come as characters.
DAVID GREENWALT
We were, like, “What the fuck are we going to do for the last four episodes?” Joss just thought and thought, and he basically spat out the idea for these last four episodes. You just didn’t see Pylea coming. It was a really fun twist and an interesting way to go, and having to be rescued from that world where Cordelia had the experience of being a goddess.
JOSS WHEDON
I said, “Can we just go to Oz? Can we just be ridiculous? Are we allowed to do that?” And everyone seemed to like that, so we decided to go and make a really strange comedy—a real fantasy comedy. Those are the Pylea episodes, which I think are among the funniest things we ever did on Buffy or Angel.
If you substituted the simians from Planet of the Apes with demons, you’d have a sense of Pylea, an alternative dimension where humans are viewed as animals and the more demonically inclined reign supreme. It also happens to be the home world of Lorne, which he was desperate to escape from—the reasons for that quickly becoming obvious.
This world, which can probably best be described as medieval, is one that Cordelia accidentally goes to, resulting in the rest of Team Angel having to follow and rescue her. Once there, it’s a pretty topsy-turvy ride; for a time, it seems that Cordelia doesn’t need rescuing. In Pylea they meet Winifred “Fred” Burkle, also from Earth, who has been there for five years and is definitely in need of rescue. While there, Angel can walk around in the sun and see his own reflection, the downside being when he “vamps” out he becomes a demon that threatens to eclipse his humanity permanently.
Also added into the mix during the Pylea arc is actor Mark Lutz, who portrayed a warrior from that realm, the Groosalugg, ultimately nickamed “Groo” by Cordelia. Half demon, he’s a character who would return in season three when Groo came to our world.
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