From: madlove@arkham.dc   
      
   A good talk about how the women were treated, usually poorly, by the   
   writers.   
      
   October 5, 2019 marks twenty years since the first episode of Joss   
   Whedon's Angel, a spin-off from his acclaimed Buffy the Vampire Slayer   
   in which David Boreanaz played the eponymous vampire cursed with a human   
   soul.   
      
   Buffy and Angel were both formative for millennials like me, who came of   
   age on their quippy, ass-kicking version of girl power. For a long time,   
   Whedon himself was lauded as a feminist ally and icon.   
      
   But after two decades, Angel's feminist legacy doesn't hold up to a   
   re-watch.   
      
   Though the spin-off featured several nuanced, compelling female   
   characters, too many of them met the same predictable end, sacrificed   
   for male characters' emotional arcs.   
      
   Darla was Angel's partner in the century-long killing spree that came   
   before his reformation; she was also his vampiric sire, the woman who   
   literally turned him into a monster. Their relationship is the axis of   
   the show's second season.   
      
   Darla, brought back to life as human and then reborn as a vampire,   
   attempts to pull Angel back into evil. He tries to save her, then to   
   destroy her; somewhere in there they have sex.   
      
   Darla becomes pregnant, which is supposed to be impossible for vampires.   
   Just as improbably, she finds herself feeling love for her future child,   
   which she credits to the influence of its human soul growing inside her.   
      
   Finally, afraid she won't be able to love the baby once it's born, Darla   
   stakes herself in labor, dissolving to ashes and leaving her infant son,   
   Connor, lying on the pavement.   
      
   Julie Benz said in 2013 that she found the exit of her character   
   profound, a final selfless deed by someone whose character had primarily   
   been defined by self-preservation. Unfortunately, Darla was only the   
   first of three Angel characters to die in childbirth. With each of the   
   next two, her death looked less like a tragic sacrifice and more like   
   the beginning of a disheartening pattern.   
      
   The last of the three was Fred Burkle (Amy Acker), whose body was   
   hijacked and used as an incubator to bring the ancient god Illyria back   
   to life. Fred doesn't literally give birth to Illyria, but the parallel   
   is obvious. A foreign life form is placed inside her body by a man with   
   whom she was briefly romantically involved. And when Illyria comes forth   
   into the world, Fred is obliterated.   
      
   It's a crushing, painful, ugly death. It's not the resolution of a   
   character arc or even particularly relevant to the season's main plot line.   
      
   Mostly, it gives the primary male characters an extra helping of grief,   
   rage, and guilt to carry into the season's final battle. And yet, as   
   unjust and infuriating as Fred's death was, it wasn't as upsetting as   
   the death I skipped over, the second and by far the most offensive of   
   the show's three maternal mortalities.   
      
   I'm still trying to find the words for what happened to Cordelia Chase.   
      
   Cordy's growth over three seasons of Buffy and three seasons of Angel is   
   one of the most engaging character arcs on either show and in the whole   
   of the Whedonverse.   
      
   She begins as a reluctant ally against evil, bemoaning the stains left   
   on her clothes when she's held hostage by vampires, and develops into a   
   daring, capable fighter. What tethers Cordy to the fight on Angel are   
   the visions of people in trouble.   
      
   They plague her. They're overwhelming and physically painful, and at   
   first she tries to get rid of them, to return to normal. But as she   
   realizes how important helping the helpless is to her, she becomes   
   willing to make sacrifices in order to keep her visions. By the end of   
   Angel's third season, Cordelia proves herself worthy of ascending to a   
   higher plane, becoming more than human.   
      
   And then Charisma Carpenter got pregnant.   
      
   Carpenter and writer/showrunner Whedon have been vague about the details   
   of their working relationship while making Season 4 of Angel, but fan   
   speculation suggests that the plot had to be rewritten quickly to   
   accommodate Carpenter's pregnancy.   
      
   "Thrown together on the fly" is perhaps the nicest thing anyone could   
   say about that season; it's a mess, culminating in the whole of the plot   
   since the birth of Connor being wiped from most of the characters' memories.   
      
   Read the rest of this story at   
      
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)