Wither Cordelia?
Jul. 8th, 2006 08:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWhen I bore everyone praise the fourth season of Angel as my favourite and as the best written one overall (if you take the entire season, from start to finish, not just parts), I often hear the objection "yes/maybe, but I am a Cordelia fan, and what they did to her...". Now, this never fails to puzzle me, because I was a Cordelia fan, and to me, the damage was always done in season 3; 4, again, to me, was if anything a salvage operation because the Jasmine retcon explained Cordelia's s3 behaviour in a way I could stomach, and turned it into the part of a Greek tragedy. However, thinking the matter through, it occured to me that the problem of the writing for Cordelia actually might predate both seasons.
From s1 of BtVS to the end of s1 of AtS, Cordelia was developed consistently, and on an ongoing basis. Of course, she was a main character on AtS and one of a larger ensemble on BTVS, but the groundworks were laid on Buffy. By the time Cordy moved to Los Angeles, she had already gone from the high school movie cliché in the BTVS pilot (bitchy high school queen) to three dimensional character one laughed and cried with, not at, had essentially performed the truthteller function in the ensemble (i.e. the character who says out loud what some of the others might think but wouldn't - later, Anya and Spike at different points would get the job on BTVS, and Jayne who is in many ways the early Cordelia gets it on Firefly) and had shown courage and endurance a plenty. But she still had joined Buffy & Co. because she wanted to stay alive and not end as vamp fodder, not because she saw fighting the good fight as something worth doing by itself.
The first season of AtS, with Cordelia as one of the three regular characters with that much more focus, took this up and presented a strong character arc for her; it also confronted her with her past thoughtless cruelties and showcased how her bluntness and sharp tongue were an asset if used to cut to the, no pun intended, chase instead of humiliating others. Cordelia went from the girl who joined Angel in the pilot mostly because again, she wasn't stupid and it was safer, and she had no friends in Los Angeles, to someone who, by the end of To Shanshu in L.A., had come to see the whole rescuing people business as her mission, not just an adjunct of Angel's or a way to make cash. The arc from material girl to heroine (with ongoing fondness for shoes) was complete.
And therein, I think, was the problem for the writers.
Season 2 saw Cordelia take a back seat for about two thirds, because the Darla arc was the core of it. She was still witty, strong, and after Angel had fired everyone, bonded even more with Wesley and Gunn... but. Look at the others. Angel during season 2 of course had the Darla arc, that was his main storyline. Wesley went from Faithful Servant!Wesley to Leader!Wesley. Gunn went from the guy who occasionally helped but didn't really know these people very well to becoming part of a new family, with Wesley and Cordelia and ended up choosing this new community over the old one. (And, alas, was doomed to repeat this storyline a couple of times during the next seasons, but that's another story.) Cordelia, basically, got Pylea, during the last third of the season. In which she was given the possibility to get rid of the visions and become what she had once been nicknamed, a princess, but chose the mission. Which is fine, except, well, hadn't she already done that during the last season finale? And really, what kind of alternative was a dimension that looked like a bizarro Ren Faire?
One more observation about Cordelia in s2. Leaving Pylea aside, she is showcased in two episodes; the early First Impressions, which is before the Darla arc kicks in and which is really about reintroducing Gunn and his background to the viewers, and Disharmony, just after the Darla arc has ended. Disharmony is a good Cordelia episode; it presents her with someone who is in some ways a shadow self, or an old self, much like Cordelia herself had been for early Buffy, it paints some pointed parallels, on a comedic level, to what has been happenening with Angel and Darla through the season, and thus helps Cordelia, who, true to form (ask Xander Harris) has been the one team member not so willing to forgive Angel after his return to the fold, to accept her old friend back.
And then we get the last scene.
Which is basically a punchline scene. Wesley lectures Angel that he still can't expect Cordy to come around that quickly, that he'll have work to do, Cordy comes in, realizes Angel has bought her a set of new clothes, bounces and has her arms around him in a heartbeat. On one level, it's funny, and it works because one of the things we love about Cordelia is that heroine or not, she still is the material girl as well (she is just not only that). On another, in retrospect and looking at developments from this point onwards, heralds several things:
1) Cordelia does not call Angel on his crap anymore (or if she does, as when a pregnant Darla shows up, it will be presented as for the wrong reasons and/or funny because of the inappropriateness of the reaction, not as blunt insight spelling out the truth)
2) Angel privileges Cordelia over the rest of his friends
3) The tight bond Cordelia formed with Wesley and Gunn during their months alone is not shown as important to her as her relationship with Angel; it might as well not have happened (any scene between Cordelia and Wesley post-Disharmony could as well have happened pre-Reunion without this making a difference).
In summation: s2 ended with Cordelia having been mostly at a standstill, in comparison to the other characters; when she did get some belated development, she essentially repeated a decision she already made. The one new thing was the hint of change between her and Angel.
You know, it's very hard not to imagine a story conference between s2 and s3 going "hm, what on earth shall we do with Cordelia...? I know! let's make her and Angel fall in love!"
As s3 turned out to be David Greenwalt's last season as executive producer, I'm tempted to ascribe that one to him, but regardless who had the actual idea, Joss was the overall boss, and thus it's his responsibility that the execution sucked. No offense to C/A'shippers. It never was my pairing of choice, but I've seen it pulled off in fanfic written pre- s3 in a believable and moving way. For starters, said fanfic did not feel the need to change Cordelia in a saint and uberwoman to accomplish the trick.
There are flickers of Cordelia being tactless and no-nonsense in s3, there are scenes like her conversation with Lilah in Billy or her and Wesley parodying Angel and Buffy for Fred's and Gunn's benefit. By, and large, though, we get it hammered into us that Cordelia is nothing less than the most wonderful woman on earth and the only one suitable for Angel. Fred, Lorne, in the end even Groo and Cordelia's mirror image, for Joss' sake, tell her (or Angel) how they are so absolutely perfect for each other and really, really, loved each other, not as friends but as lovers. It's not enough that Cordelia learns how to fight, no, she has to become part-demon, too, and develop special powers. Evil life-sucking creatures flee when she glows; in a scene that is the only one I can't stand in what is otherwise one of my favourite episodes, Benediction, and which is really only bearable if keeing the s4 Jasmine revelation in mind, she "detoxes" Connor. (Because, you know, Connor's issues aren't something emotional, they're like mild radiation, they just need a cure.)
And then there's the scene which put me off Cordelia for a long, long time. To wit, Fred asking Cordelia to intercede between Wesley and Angel, as she's their oldest friend, and ends her plea with "imagine how Wesley must feel right now?" Cordelia replies: "I don't care how he feels right now, the only feelings I care about are Angel's."
Cordelia pissed off to the max at Wesley for the kidnapping stunt, no matter his motives, I could have understood. Cordelia showing up at Wesley's doorstep to tell him in no uncertain terms that much, absolutely. But Cordelia plain ignoring Wesley - that was just too much. It also is my final piece of evidence of Cordelia in s3 showing the signs of being written like really bad fanfic, in which the OTP is only concerned for each other and all other relationships fade in the background and are ignored not just by the OTP but by the writers as well.
(Which, btw, is not true for Angel in s3. It's not my favourite season for him writing-wise, either, but we're not supposed to see him as ideal or approve of many of his actions, which helps to no end, plus his scenes with Darla and later teenage Connor are fab.)
So, when David Greenwalt left AtS, he ended his run with Cordelia ascended to divinity after a season in which she had been written more and more like a really bad fanfic version of herself, or, in even blunter words, a canon Sue. At which point Joss moved over Steven DeKnight from BTVS, where the later had just penned some of the darkest episodes of the show, to AtS. And of course one of the writers/producers who had been absolutely crucial in shaping AtS from the start, Tim Minear, had never left. Again, it's easy to imagine storyline conferences between seasons with the question "what on earth do we do with Cordelia now?". Other than letting her descend again, because obviously, you can't have a regular who isn't really there. It must have been obvious that the St.Cordy/Angel thing had not exactly worked, but both the sanctification and the not-quite-romance had happened. They couldn't be ignored.
They could, however, be retconned as being motivated by a Power who had hijacked Cordelia for her own purposes and was influencing her more and more.
This actually worked with the innate distrust all of Joss Whedon's created universes display against authorities and higher powers. It provided a villain for the season, and it gave an explanation for Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy, once they knew they had to deal with it as well.
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wisdomeagle has written a great post on Cordelia in s4 - and I agree with her that here was actually a Cordelia there; the Jasmine takeover happened gradually in 4, which, as always imo, made it far better writing than the sanctification in s3 - so I would like to point all readers there for a detailed take on Cordy and her presentation in that season. However, much as I am enamoured with the fourth season and all its aspects, I must return to what is the theory at the core of my ramblings. Because being taken over by a higher Power and losing the struggle against her does not qualify as character development, either. Nor does s5's You're Welcome, the last Cordelia episode, which gives her a proper exit. It's a love letter to the character and the actress, but I can never be quite as charmed by it as most other people seem to be. I'm extremely grateful that in this episode, the writers finally remembered she cared about people other than Angel. It was lovely to see her "kicking it old school" with Wesley (and having the wish to do so for her last few hours on Earth, just as much as she wants to help Angel), and to tell him how sorry she is about Lilah).
But as much as I enjoy the Cordy lovefest, I don't think the premise works out. So supposedly TPTB owed her (for the visions, for Jasmine) and granted her this last favour... to reinspire Angel. The effect of Cordelia's intervention was that Angel remained at W&H instead of calling it quits and, as we discover later, finds out about the Black Thorn Circle, so he can take it out. Okay, fine. I can see that working within the mythology of the show and the war between TPTB and the Senior Partners. But the way this inspiring works seems to be mainly via winning a slashy duel with Lindsey, and given Lindsey never was much of a threat to Angel (a foil, yes, but the most devastating blow Lindsey ever landed against Angel was bringing in Dru to sire Darla, and that plan seems to have been something Holland Manners had come up with), I don't quite see why this convinces Angel again he's fighting the good fight at W&H's. I suppose you could say that Cordelia's presence, her affection and honesty inspires him, but given she never says anything about W&H being a good idea (rather the contrary), I still don't see how this connects to staying at W&H. I suppose we really have to use the vision transfer and the awareness of the Black Circle as an explanation, and this news arrives so much later I can't tie it emotionally with the episode. And of course, it never fails to jar me that Cordelia can just cheerfully ask Angel where Connor is. I can fanwank it - she's already dead, ghosts deal with trauma in a different way, or maybe that question is part of her attempt to bring Angel back to himself - but it still makes me blink each time, because what happened between Connor and Cordelia, and the results for both of them, was just too much for her to blithely ask about him as if he had never been anything but that baby from s3 to her.
But then again: it ties with the rest of the writing problem. No, it's not that they hated the character. It's that they loved Cordelia... and then had no idea what to do with her once she had spoken her last lines in To Shanshu in LA. Hold her on standstill, make her go saintly, make her into Angel's love interest, make her into the instrument of Jasmine - all try outs. But they never quite came together.
This, more than anything else, is the tragedy of Cordelia.
Postscript: Just for the record, I don't see this as gender-related. You can make similar points about Gunn post-s2 and until s5, when he finally gets a new, juicy and logical character line. Or even about Xander post s3. But the various attempts for Xander and for Gunn jell in retrospect in a way the ones for Cordelia don't.
From s1 of BtVS to the end of s1 of AtS, Cordelia was developed consistently, and on an ongoing basis. Of course, she was a main character on AtS and one of a larger ensemble on BTVS, but the groundworks were laid on Buffy. By the time Cordy moved to Los Angeles, she had already gone from the high school movie cliché in the BTVS pilot (bitchy high school queen) to three dimensional character one laughed and cried with, not at, had essentially performed the truthteller function in the ensemble (i.e. the character who says out loud what some of the others might think but wouldn't - later, Anya and Spike at different points would get the job on BTVS, and Jayne who is in many ways the early Cordelia gets it on Firefly) and had shown courage and endurance a plenty. But she still had joined Buffy & Co. because she wanted to stay alive and not end as vamp fodder, not because she saw fighting the good fight as something worth doing by itself.
The first season of AtS, with Cordelia as one of the three regular characters with that much more focus, took this up and presented a strong character arc for her; it also confronted her with her past thoughtless cruelties and showcased how her bluntness and sharp tongue were an asset if used to cut to the, no pun intended, chase instead of humiliating others. Cordelia went from the girl who joined Angel in the pilot mostly because again, she wasn't stupid and it was safer, and she had no friends in Los Angeles, to someone who, by the end of To Shanshu in L.A., had come to see the whole rescuing people business as her mission, not just an adjunct of Angel's or a way to make cash. The arc from material girl to heroine (with ongoing fondness for shoes) was complete.
And therein, I think, was the problem for the writers.
Season 2 saw Cordelia take a back seat for about two thirds, because the Darla arc was the core of it. She was still witty, strong, and after Angel had fired everyone, bonded even more with Wesley and Gunn... but. Look at the others. Angel during season 2 of course had the Darla arc, that was his main storyline. Wesley went from Faithful Servant!Wesley to Leader!Wesley. Gunn went from the guy who occasionally helped but didn't really know these people very well to becoming part of a new family, with Wesley and Cordelia and ended up choosing this new community over the old one. (And, alas, was doomed to repeat this storyline a couple of times during the next seasons, but that's another story.) Cordelia, basically, got Pylea, during the last third of the season. In which she was given the possibility to get rid of the visions and become what she had once been nicknamed, a princess, but chose the mission. Which is fine, except, well, hadn't she already done that during the last season finale? And really, what kind of alternative was a dimension that looked like a bizarro Ren Faire?
One more observation about Cordelia in s2. Leaving Pylea aside, she is showcased in two episodes; the early First Impressions, which is before the Darla arc kicks in and which is really about reintroducing Gunn and his background to the viewers, and Disharmony, just after the Darla arc has ended. Disharmony is a good Cordelia episode; it presents her with someone who is in some ways a shadow self, or an old self, much like Cordelia herself had been for early Buffy, it paints some pointed parallels, on a comedic level, to what has been happenening with Angel and Darla through the season, and thus helps Cordelia, who, true to form (ask Xander Harris) has been the one team member not so willing to forgive Angel after his return to the fold, to accept her old friend back.
And then we get the last scene.
Which is basically a punchline scene. Wesley lectures Angel that he still can't expect Cordy to come around that quickly, that he'll have work to do, Cordy comes in, realizes Angel has bought her a set of new clothes, bounces and has her arms around him in a heartbeat. On one level, it's funny, and it works because one of the things we love about Cordelia is that heroine or not, she still is the material girl as well (she is just not only that). On another, in retrospect and looking at developments from this point onwards, heralds several things:
1) Cordelia does not call Angel on his crap anymore (or if she does, as when a pregnant Darla shows up, it will be presented as for the wrong reasons and/or funny because of the inappropriateness of the reaction, not as blunt insight spelling out the truth)
2) Angel privileges Cordelia over the rest of his friends
3) The tight bond Cordelia formed with Wesley and Gunn during their months alone is not shown as important to her as her relationship with Angel; it might as well not have happened (any scene between Cordelia and Wesley post-Disharmony could as well have happened pre-Reunion without this making a difference).
In summation: s2 ended with Cordelia having been mostly at a standstill, in comparison to the other characters; when she did get some belated development, she essentially repeated a decision she already made. The one new thing was the hint of change between her and Angel.
You know, it's very hard not to imagine a story conference between s2 and s3 going "hm, what on earth shall we do with Cordelia...? I know! let's make her and Angel fall in love!"
As s3 turned out to be David Greenwalt's last season as executive producer, I'm tempted to ascribe that one to him, but regardless who had the actual idea, Joss was the overall boss, and thus it's his responsibility that the execution sucked. No offense to C/A'shippers. It never was my pairing of choice, but I've seen it pulled off in fanfic written pre- s3 in a believable and moving way. For starters, said fanfic did not feel the need to change Cordelia in a saint and uberwoman to accomplish the trick.
There are flickers of Cordelia being tactless and no-nonsense in s3, there are scenes like her conversation with Lilah in Billy or her and Wesley parodying Angel and Buffy for Fred's and Gunn's benefit. By, and large, though, we get it hammered into us that Cordelia is nothing less than the most wonderful woman on earth and the only one suitable for Angel. Fred, Lorne, in the end even Groo and Cordelia's mirror image, for Joss' sake, tell her (or Angel) how they are so absolutely perfect for each other and really, really, loved each other, not as friends but as lovers. It's not enough that Cordelia learns how to fight, no, she has to become part-demon, too, and develop special powers. Evil life-sucking creatures flee when she glows; in a scene that is the only one I can't stand in what is otherwise one of my favourite episodes, Benediction, and which is really only bearable if keeing the s4 Jasmine revelation in mind, she "detoxes" Connor. (Because, you know, Connor's issues aren't something emotional, they're like mild radiation, they just need a cure.)
And then there's the scene which put me off Cordelia for a long, long time. To wit, Fred asking Cordelia to intercede between Wesley and Angel, as she's their oldest friend, and ends her plea with "imagine how Wesley must feel right now?" Cordelia replies: "I don't care how he feels right now, the only feelings I care about are Angel's."
Cordelia pissed off to the max at Wesley for the kidnapping stunt, no matter his motives, I could have understood. Cordelia showing up at Wesley's doorstep to tell him in no uncertain terms that much, absolutely. But Cordelia plain ignoring Wesley - that was just too much. It also is my final piece of evidence of Cordelia in s3 showing the signs of being written like really bad fanfic, in which the OTP is only concerned for each other and all other relationships fade in the background and are ignored not just by the OTP but by the writers as well.
(Which, btw, is not true for Angel in s3. It's not my favourite season for him writing-wise, either, but we're not supposed to see him as ideal or approve of many of his actions, which helps to no end, plus his scenes with Darla and later teenage Connor are fab.)
So, when David Greenwalt left AtS, he ended his run with Cordelia ascended to divinity after a season in which she had been written more and more like a really bad fanfic version of herself, or, in even blunter words, a canon Sue. At which point Joss moved over Steven DeKnight from BTVS, where the later had just penned some of the darkest episodes of the show, to AtS. And of course one of the writers/producers who had been absolutely crucial in shaping AtS from the start, Tim Minear, had never left. Again, it's easy to imagine storyline conferences between seasons with the question "what on earth do we do with Cordelia now?". Other than letting her descend again, because obviously, you can't have a regular who isn't really there. It must have been obvious that the St.Cordy/Angel thing had not exactly worked, but both the sanctification and the not-quite-romance had happened. They couldn't be ignored.
They could, however, be retconned as being motivated by a Power who had hijacked Cordelia for her own purposes and was influencing her more and more.
This actually worked with the innate distrust all of Joss Whedon's created universes display against authorities and higher powers. It provided a villain for the season, and it gave an explanation for Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy, once they knew they had to deal with it as well.
wisdomeagle has written a great post on Cordelia in s4 - and I agree with her that here was actually a Cordelia there; the Jasmine takeover happened gradually in 4, which, as always imo, made it far better writing than the sanctification in s3 - so I would like to point all readers there for a detailed take on Cordy and her presentation in that season. However, much as I am enamoured with the fourth season and all its aspects, I must return to what is the theory at the core of my ramblings. Because being taken over by a higher Power and losing the struggle against her does not qualify as character development, either. Nor does s5's You're Welcome, the last Cordelia episode, which gives her a proper exit. It's a love letter to the character and the actress, but I can never be quite as charmed by it as most other people seem to be. I'm extremely grateful that in this episode, the writers finally remembered she cared about people other than Angel. It was lovely to see her "kicking it old school" with Wesley (and having the wish to do so for her last few hours on Earth, just as much as she wants to help Angel), and to tell him how sorry she is about Lilah). But as much as I enjoy the Cordy lovefest, I don't think the premise works out. So supposedly TPTB owed her (for the visions, for Jasmine) and granted her this last favour... to reinspire Angel. The effect of Cordelia's intervention was that Angel remained at W&H instead of calling it quits and, as we discover later, finds out about the Black Thorn Circle, so he can take it out. Okay, fine. I can see that working within the mythology of the show and the war between TPTB and the Senior Partners. But the way this inspiring works seems to be mainly via winning a slashy duel with Lindsey, and given Lindsey never was much of a threat to Angel (a foil, yes, but the most devastating blow Lindsey ever landed against Angel was bringing in Dru to sire Darla, and that plan seems to have been something Holland Manners had come up with), I don't quite see why this convinces Angel again he's fighting the good fight at W&H's. I suppose you could say that Cordelia's presence, her affection and honesty inspires him, but given she never says anything about W&H being a good idea (rather the contrary), I still don't see how this connects to staying at W&H. I suppose we really have to use the vision transfer and the awareness of the Black Circle as an explanation, and this news arrives so much later I can't tie it emotionally with the episode. And of course, it never fails to jar me that Cordelia can just cheerfully ask Angel where Connor is. I can fanwank it - she's already dead, ghosts deal with trauma in a different way, or maybe that question is part of her attempt to bring Angel back to himself - but it still makes me blink each time, because what happened between Connor and Cordelia, and the results for both of them, was just too much for her to blithely ask about him as if he had never been anything but that baby from s3 to her.
But then again: it ties with the rest of the writing problem. No, it's not that they hated the character. It's that they loved Cordelia... and then had no idea what to do with her once she had spoken her last lines in To Shanshu in LA. Hold her on standstill, make her go saintly, make her into Angel's love interest, make her into the instrument of Jasmine - all try outs. But they never quite came together.
This, more than anything else, is the tragedy of Cordelia.
Postscript: Just for the record, I don't see this as gender-related. You can make similar points about Gunn post-s2 and until s5, when he finally gets a new, juicy and logical character line. Or even about Xander post s3. But the various attempts for Xander and for Gunn jell in retrospect in a way the ones for Cordelia don't.
