That is fabulous. Excellent find.

marmoset | March 12, 01:55 CET

Interesting that Mere and Fury regret their contributions in turning Cordelia all saintly and goody-goody. I agree with them that this was a mistake. A big, big mistake.

phlebotinin | March 12, 02:00 CET

On the other hand, if Cordelia hadn't ever changed -- think: her in the early Buffy seasons -- it would've been lame. That's not to say I'm (necessarily) defending the particular way the writers moved the character forward, but they had to do _something_ with her.

Makes me think of some Joss interview where he was talking about pet peeves, one of which was characters who don't change, like Scully in The X-Files. After a while, her skepticism just seem stupid. It's, like, hello, Scully -- it's a fricken monster! Just admit it! In the early seasons of Buffy, Cordy was kind of like that: they'd put her in serious, life-threatening situations, then she'd turn up in the next episode the same vacuous, stuck-up bitch.

delavagus | March 12, 02:11 CET

Not entirely, Delavagus. She didn't change much in the early buffy seasons, but it was still there. Season one Cordy, before being confronted with all those life and death situations would not have helped clean up after the Judge. She regressed a bit after Xander's little indiscresion, but even in "City of..." she wasn't quite the stuck up bitca she had been.

RootBoy42 | March 12, 02:18 CET

I think Cordy's character went through a tremendous amount of change during BtVS's first three seasons...And Cordy's character in AtS season two was quite diffeent and much more evolved than any of Jossverse character I can think of at that time...We could use an "Angel/Season-Two Cordy" right about now!

Simpleba | March 12, 02:29 CET

I'm all about character development and change, too, devalagus. It was just that there was something....strange....about the way Cordy's character so swiftly and radically morphed towards the end of season three. Something about it didn't ring true. Of course, there were factors in her ascendance to Higher Powerdom that weren't, in fact, true. Like Skip's stated role as her "guide," the ascendance itself, etc. Nevertheless, it just rang weird.

That interview where Joss ragged on the static quality of the X-files characters made me cackle and chortle. I remember him saying this in his NPR interview from 2000. Fabulous. Couldn't agree more.

phlebotinin | March 12, 02:36 CET

I would sleep with Angel and Spike together, then I would have to kill myself at the end. It would be too much.

Bwahahaha! Ahh, Julie Benz...a woman after my own heart!

All the answers are great fun. Thanks!

punkinpuss | March 12, 03:11 CET

Jonathan Woodward would want his Tracey character to sleep with Jayne! Awesome. It's almost like coming out of the closet. ;-)

chickenbird | March 12, 03:55 CET

Cordy didn't really change until she hooked up with Xander.

I remember watching the beginning of Season 2 and thinking how silly it was that she would be thrust into serious danger every episode then pop up again in the next episode to make fun of Willow and Buffy as though they hadn't just saved her life the week before. Cordy underwent change, sure, but very slowly and even then, not altogether convincingly. Consider, for example, her behavior in The Wish specifically, and everything Buffy Season 3 post-Lovers Walk in general. After all she'd been through, to essentially walk out on the group and even conclude that Buffy never should have come to Sunnydale... The writers were obviously setting her up to go to Angel, but within the context of Buffy, something about her behavior in those episodes always rang hollow.

As for her Angel Season 3 transformation, well... as I said, I'm not necessarily defending the direction the writers took her in. But they did have to do something, and I found her change to be gradual and logical. The Cordy of Angel Season 1 was great: still prickly and bitchy, but humbled by poverty. Then the marathon-vision-from-hell in "To Shanshu" changes her. She becomes steadily more serious over Seasons 2 and most of 3. Then, yeah, something's weird toward the end of 3, but I still think her behavior followed logically from her experiences. The "Higher Being" thing always rang hollow, so much so that the writers used it: of course she didn't deserve to be a higher being; it was all a big plan to bring Jasmine into existence. And as far-fetched as that whole thing is, it's more believable than Cordy actually deserving to become a Higher Being at the very same time that Willow has become Ultimate Evil. It just never seemed right.

So yeah, I don't think we disagree on any deep level. The writers definitely could have done better by her character. I'm just sayin', her development wasn't completely out of nowhere.

delavagus | March 12, 04:20 CET

I don't think anything that happened during The Wish warranted any change in Cordelia. After all, she doesn't remember the bizarro world or, ya know, dying. So that whole episode had no effect... on anyone, really. I think Anya may have been the only one to remember what happened.

I took Cordy's character from the early seasons to be more stubborn and not even open to the idea of change. So for me, it seems right that she would still remain mostly like herself. I've loved what they've done with her character and how they've found ways to make her grow past that stubborness and become a more defined person... up until the 'Higher Being', and mostly when she came back from that. It was still an interesting story and better than anything else on TV, it's just that things seemed off.

Greyflowers | March 12, 09:20 CET