"Birthday" Cordy

VisionGuy

VisionGuy

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I have a question. Does anyone think that seeing how in the alternate reality Cordy didn't have the visions or fight evil, that she should have been a little more bitchy or snotty like she was in Buffy? I mean it was the visions and fighting alongside Angel that helped her grow wasn't it? I was just thinking about it and wanted some imput.
 
All depends on what else happened differently in the time leading up to that point in her false life. It's quite possible that something else could have happened to her that made her a better person instead of the visions.

Perhaps in this reality she went to LA to become an actress, same as before, but in this timeline some tv exec gave her a break when she was at her most desperate and that was enough to make her get over her spoiled brat nature.

You also have to take into consideration that the Cordy we saw in the alternate reality was still our Cordy in mind and was still the sum total of all the experiences she had gone through in the true reality, rather than anything she should have remembered in the false one. It wasn't as if she now recalled anything any differently.
 
The reality was what could of been and Cordy was given a choice to choose either....so her being bitchy....well let's say there might have been a hint of what she was like by the reactions of the Hotel employee:
She was shown another path as well as how her personality would of fared along side it...in other words she would not of been the person she is had she not met Angel.She would of still been this shallow person .At the time of that ep, she chose the path she is already on with Angel.So she could keep the visions and continue in her path to help Angel, and still grow as a person.
 
I personally think that perhaps the fact that Cordy was struggling to get a break as an actress, may have helped with humbling her! It's hard to carry on with the bitchiness and snottyness when you are living in a dingy flat with very little to eat! I agree with The Watcher, that she may have been given a break by a producer or exec, but living how she was at the beginning of Season 1 may have made her re-assess her attitude. Also her parents lost their money in Buffy so this might have been a factor!

I know the Visions were what changed her in Angel, but there may have been other reasons in the alternate reality that changed her.
 
According to Skip, it was all through meeting the Agent Oliver something.
He was the one that helped 'Cordy' at the time of her first arriving in LA....we know when she meets her access to the Showbiz world, but we don't know when she gets the work...itshighly plausible in this day of celebrity, that Cordelia Chase...Sitcom Star was still Queen C...
 
I don't think that it necessarily were the visions that stopped her from being bitchy as she was on Buffy. Even in Buffy season 3, I thought she had grown into at least a slightly better character than what she was at the start of the show.

But I think one of the things that might have started to change her character was her dealing with the fact that she's lost everything (money etc) and is now struggling in LA to make herself an actor. She does eventually become one and one that's quite well known and popular, as shown from the alternate reality, but I think that she might have grown some as a character as a result of her circumstances of being much less than she was.

I mean, when she first started in Angel, even before the visions and before she got into really helping people, she seemed more humbling than she had ever been before. She was still stuck on herself and kind made fun of people but it didn't have the harshness that it once had on Buffy. I think between even the end of Buffy and the beginning of Angel, Cordelia had begun to change as a character.
 
The Choices Made...

Buffy S7 discussion included-

After seeing the discussion going on regarding Season 7 of Buffy I had to post this thought somewhere.

In "Birthday" Cordelia is shown the choice of giving up her visions and succeeding in an alternate reality, or retaining her visions, being able to help Angel but giving up part of her humanity, becoming part demon. She chooses the latter.

In BtVS "Get It Done" Buffy is offered enormous power by the Shadow Men to fight The First Evil, but she must become less human to do so. She declines.

It all works out for Buffy in the end, it doesn't work out for Cordelia, but who made the more noble choice?

Not that this question has a real answer, I'm being rhetorical here! 😉
 
After seeing the discussion going on regarding Season 7 of Buffy I had to post this thought somewhere.

In "Birthday" Cordelia is shown the choice of giving up her visions and succeeding in an alternate reality, or retaining her visions, being able to help Angel but giving up part of her humanity, becoming part demon. She chooses the latter.

In BtVS "Get It Done" Buffy is offered enormous power by the Shadow Men to fight The First Evil, but she must become less human to do so. She declines.

It all works out for Buffy in the end, it doesn't work out for Cordelia, but who made the more noble choice?

Not that this question has a real answer, I'm being rhetorical here!
Click to expand...

Birthday actually loses all credence a year later, if everyone remembers correctly.
That 'alternate reality' has no strength as an argument for what Cordelia could have been, simply because Skip is in league with Jasmine, thus needs Cordelia to accept the Demon Powers......

We are now left with no idea what would have happened if Cordelia had not recieved the visions......because that reality is more then likely ficticious....
 
Yeah i agree with that DDM The reality was aruse to get Cordy to have Demon in her and i never bought that girl's story that Skip showed her, the visions were deliberatly being made painfull fro her to recieve the offer.(We learn later on the Skip lied to her.)
 
I do accept the possibility that nothing we saw in Birthday was necessarily true. We know that Skip was working for Jasmine even then and so it's likely that the whole reality could have been a total fabrication rather than a true alternate universe. We'll probably never know that for certain.

I don't think that the pain and damage to her brain was anything to do with Jasmine though. The visions were not meant for a normal human to receive and even caused a halfbreed like Doyle tremendous pain. I think that Jasmine simply used the very real danger that Cordy was in from the visions to her own advantage.
 
I didn't even think about Birthday not being real because Skip was working with Jasmine. Wow! I feel like I missed to boat completely.

I just didn't understand why the address was written on the wall in the hotel room. If she was in the "alternative world" then how could she have wrote the street address there? I guess it not being real and the Skip/Jasmine thing explains everything
 
Actually the address on the wall would support the theory that the reality was not real.

If all of that was going on inside Cordy's mind as a kind of fantasy then maybe the address on the wall was her subconsciously trying to push herself back into the life of a champion. Makes sense.
 
VisionGuy
VisionGuy
I knew we could we could count on you for an answer :D
The Watcher said:
Actually the address on the wall would support the theory that the reality was not real.

If all of that was going on inside Cordy's mind as a kind of fantasy then maybe the address on the wall was her subconsciously trying to push herself back into the life of a champion. Makes sense.
Click to expand...

Yes that does make sense. BUT then there is the fact that IF this was all an illusion created by the Jasmine/Skip alliance, then isnt it also possible that they purposefully left just enough residual information both in her subconcious and in the reality to allow her to get the visions back and choose the Demon essence for herself...thus allowing S/J's plan to progress
 
Dia DeLa Muerte said:
Yes that does make sense. BUT then there is the fact that IF this was all an illusion created by the Jasmine/Skip alliance, then isnt it also possible that they purposefully left just enough residual information both in her subconcious and in the reality to allow her to get the visions back and choose the Demon essence for herself...thus allowing S/J's plan to progress
Click to expand...

Yeah, no reason that that couldn't work too. Both Cordy and Jasmine had their own reasons for wanting her back among the living and so either one could have put that address on the wall in the fantasy.
 
VisionGuy said:
I have a question. Does anyone think that seeing how in the alternate reality Cordy didn't have the visions or fight evil, that she should have been a little more bitchy or snotty like she was in Buffy? I mean it was the visions and fighting alongside Angel that helped her grow wasn't it? I was just thinking about it and wanted some imput.
Click to expand...

I guess it would make sense that she would still be bitchy but I'm sure she still had to struggling to become a famous actress so maybe she matured during that time before getting a hit TV show.

I never really got why Angel went crazy do to the vision. Any thoughts?
 
I think that Angel went crazy because he was alone while getting the visions. There was no one there to comfort him right after he got those splitting migranes with pictures. Maybe it took Wesley a little longer to get to LA because it was because of Cordelia that the three of them came together. Without Cordelia there, it may have taken him longer to make his way into the group.
 
Hey im knew to the boards and im just gonna jump right in on this one..

I think Angel went crazy because first of all, we saw how upset he was when he lost Doyle, Cordy was the one that really helped him through that and secondly he went crazy simply because Cordy wasn't in his life.. Cordy was Angels one real link to humanity, she brought him normalicy and kept him in the human world... their friendship, is what kept Angel sane.. i think Joss even commented about it in the commentaries that Angel went crazy because he didnt have Cordy..
 
I think he went crazy because Skip and Jasmine programmed this vision to go that way to sway her to accept the Half demon.....
The more i think about the events of this episode, and subsequient revelations, it just seems more and more likely Birthday vision is pure fabrication.....
 
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