Andrew - the person many of us can relate to the most?

[GrrArghx]

I don't agree at all about Andrew 'following the crowd'. I think he followed Warren because in his eyes, Warren was his only friend. Even when he turned his back on Andrew, Andrew still followed him relentlessly and still listened to him even after he died and appeared as The First.

It's argued that Andrew was in love with Warren, probably mostly having to do with his offhanded comment in Seeing Red: "How could he do this to me? He promised we'd be together, but ... he was just using me. He never really loved... ...hanging out with us."

He was practically crying that Warren had abandoned him and even after that, he still believed that Warren would come back for him.

I think the reason he stuck by Buffy & co is because he had nowhere else to go, and he had killed the only real friend he'd ever had. Not because they were the 'cool crowd'.

He showed remorse for killing Jonathon in S7 more than once, but his feelings (whatever those may be) for Warren completely clouded his judgment. He just wanted to be accepted by him. That doesn't excuse it at all, but saying he didn't care or anything like that isn't right, because he did.

 

[Taake]

How does that make him relatable? The vast majority of people would not help murderers and rapists just to fit in or murder their friends just because someone told them to. Andrew's utter amorality makes him a sorry excuse of human being, IMO, not relatable. There is no excuse whatsoever for him not being in jail and for me the idea that Buffy and Giles would trust him for a microsecond is well, insane. Yet they do, apparently for no reason other than the writers loving the actor. Too bad they never bothered to give him an actual character to play...

Well I do believe, if I remember correctly, it being mentioned in a commentary that the writers loved Andrew because he was based on a lot of them and their own geeky qualities.

As for the first statement here I would say that Andrew isn't completely amoral.
He's a good person who has gone down the wrong path. He was kind of weak-minded and followed a stronger leader, it has happened to plenty of people who under the influence of said person are curbed enough to do bad things.

But Andrew wasn't inherently bad. Therefor he like any other character - Faith, Angel, Spike just to name a few - was given the chance to redeem himself and his actions

 

[This Year's Girl]

Well I do believe, if I remember correctly, it being mentioned in a commentary that the writers loved Andrew because he was based on a lot of them and their own geeky qualities.

Really? That's so funny! Do you remember in which episode they said it in the commentary? I would love to hear more about how they thought about Andrew!

 

[sylvanscribe]

Really? That's so funny! Do you remember in which episode they said it in the commentary? I would love to hear more about how they thought about Andrew!

I think it was Season 7's "Conversations with Dead People" where the writers on the audio commentary (Drew Goddard, I believe) said the Geeks were stand ins for the writers.