Should Buffy and Angel have helped each other out more?

[Robb Stark]

Or at least referenced one another, and their respective teams, more? I know that they're on separate shows, I get that, but just from the perspective of good storytelling, it always kind of bugged me that when things got really bad on both shows, they never even considered going to each other for help.

I mean, in S5, when Buffy is on the run from Glory, in a freaking R.V. and with no where in the world to go (I think she even says to Spike: "Just drive"), is there any logical reason why she wouldn't have gone to L.A. and Angel? I mean, he has a whole crew there. I know he was in Pylea, but Buffy didn't know that. I suppose in S6 she didn't have time to get him up to Sunnydale when Willow was going nuts, and they did address it in S7.

It goes the other way too. I mean, When Connor is born in S3 and Team Angel barricades themselves in the Hyperion for two days or so to protect him from about a million bad guys, why wouldn't they have called Buffy? Or in S4, when the sun goes out and The Beast, who already worked Angel once, is on the rampage, shouldn't he have made the call to Sunnydale? I mean, when Angelus returns they go through the trouble of breaking Faith out of freaking prison, but they don't just call Buffy? I've done the L.A.-Santa Barbara drive, it's like two hours, max!

I'm not saying they had to interact every arc, but it would have made a bit more sense to have them at least address it. Willow calling a magic contact to find out that Angel is in another dimension. One line, problem solved.

 

[dexeded]

References are always fun. I'd love more crossovers, helping out or not. Of course, there was that network problem later on...

 

[BuffyElevated]

I would have loved a couple more references on BtVS.... It seemed to me a lot of the time that after Angel got his own show, the writers wanted the fans to kinda forget about Angel to some extent, as far as BtVS went. I think they referenced Buffy enough over on "Angel", though. He mentioned Buffy a lot over there.

 

[Gum Gnome33]

It's very hard to say. I mean, at what point do we, the viewers, ignore the logistical problems surrounding a particular story line, (ie different networks, different shows), and start demanding that our beloved characters start acting the way we believe they would were those roadblocks not in the way?

And in any particular storyline or lack thereof, how can we distinguish a logistical from a genuine character decision on behalf of the writers? When Buffy doesn't turn to Angel and when Angel doesn't offer his undying concern for her, do we ignore it because we know about the potential practical roadblocks in creating such a scene, or do we just assume that, hey, Buffy and Angel aren't really a prominent part of each other's lives any more? Heck, even the decision for Angel to leave Sunnydale is all based on an agreement with the WB involving creating more profit for the network and the team. Yet we point to that, as non-Bangels for example, and say "if he really loved her he'd have stayed. Or come back all of the time."

And you're totally right; they could have solved a lot of this, (or at least attempted to), by implicating or referencing certain off-screen conversations among characters, but where they don't, I take that as an artistic decision instead of trying to analyze what they were thinking behind the scenes.

When we love a show--really truly love it--these things become huge issues. Look at the classic example of ASH needing time off turning into an outcry of fans claiming that Giles is now out of character for leaving Buffy.

All I can offer here is that personally, I choose to ignore the outside factors and logistical truths and concentrate on the story line. I take what I see on the faces of the characters and what I hear in the script, and that's it. I believe that at a certain point, if you let every bit of outside knowledge affect your perception of a character or a storyline, you'll never know what to believe and the entire experience will be diminished for you.

Where is the line between a crazy impulse or idea that a writer has and what a character actually becomes? I don't think it's crazy to decide that it's the final product itself, ie what we actually see. It's too difficult to break down which actions were the result of logistics and which were genuine character decisions. So yeah, if they don't rely on each other the way they used to-- in my opinion-- it just means, sadly, that they don't rely on each other the way they used to. Regardless of inside information I have about what was and wasn't possible to film, I have to ignore the behind-the-scenes details and focus on what the characters are doing/saying or the show starts to lose its meaning for me.