Sins Of The Father

[Kana]

Ok so it’s no secret that fathers are poorly portrayed in the verse, but I wanted to explore how that affects some of the characters.

Angel and his father

This is how I see their relationship. Liam was for the most part a relatively normal boy who had a particularly strict father. Now matter what he did, he always found fault in him. So frustrated Liam became a drunken rebel, in other words, a failure because that’s what he thought his father wanted. His father’s hypocrisy also makes him want to rebel simply out of spite.

He always wanted more for himself but perhaps thought it was a laughable dream. He really believed he could never accomplish anything.

So when he became Angelus, he finally made something of himself. He became the worst vampire ever recorded. Interestingly because of his father’s religious background, Angelus finds pleasure mocking God, although he also is a purist of sorts, an evil purist.

As Angel, there is always that sense of self-loathing and nihilism that he attempts to fight against. Is there a part of him that still thinks he’s going to hell, like his father said. He did believe that he should be suffering for his sins when talking to Giles in Amends.

The problem is, I do believe his father was trying to be a good parent, but he did it by disapproval, autocracy and threatening him with hell. Maybe that was standard parenting at the time, but it didn’t work on Liam.

Roger and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce

Now contrary to Angel’s dad , I don’t think Roger was trying to be a good father, I think he was jealous of him. As any pop psychologist will tell you fathers can be jealous of their kids or even the children’s relationship with the mother.

Roger never grew out of this and it got worse as Wesley grew up. I believe Wes was quite accurate with what he said in Lineage. He tried to run him into the ground as a child and tried to make sure he would never be as good as he was as a watcher, by undermining his confidence.

However, he did believe in fighting the good fight and I think this trait was passed onto Wesley along with his ruthlessness. He is also the source of his insecurity and was one of the reasons he was such a bumbling Watcher.

On Btvs and Ats, he was trying so hard to be the perfect employee, he ended up looking ridiculous. When he actually gained more confidence and left his fathers sphere of influence. However as soon as he’s back on the scene (or so it seems) he becomes bumbling, insecure Wes again.

So these are favourite examples but deliberately left out other key relationships so you guys can discuss. What about Xander and his dad? Where was Willow’s father? How did Hank turn from recently divorced but present father, into dead beat dad in a matter of a couple of seasons?

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Sorry, I dont have an in-depth answer but wanted to give this a bump. I think alot of the fringe fathers, ie Willow's, Buffy's were simply written off. I dont think they served as a plot device (save for one episode with Buffy)

I think going a bit further, as much as strong female characters, and his whole "feminist" persona are key to Joss, the same could be said with dead-beat, or lacking fathers.

 

[Bungle Jerry]

Cordy's dad is an interesting one because her character is so moulded by him, but he's completely absent as a character. We know that 'Daddy's' money made her into the spoilt high-school snob she was, and it was the sudden disappearance of this money that forced her to grow up quick, primarily in LA with Angel. Now her dad didn't directly change Cordy's character, but his negligence caused her to change.

Fred's dad is pretty much the only admirable father in the whole Buffyverse. And in "Fredless" they play that up by making him seem evil to start with. Add in your discussion of Wesley and Angel's parents and consider that Gunn didn't seem to have a father present. He and Alonna looked out for each other from a young age (in an orphanage? Or do I misremember that?) and he ultimately is more than a little paternalistic to his 'crew'. Consider the Daddy-relationships of all five of those characters and it's fascinating how Wesley's 'betrayal' of Angel with Connor and the subsequent reactions play out.

 

[VisionGirl]

I love the father issues that were brought up in Under My Skin. We originally think that it is Seth Anderson, the father, who is evil. But it turns out that it's the son, and the father is just trying to protect his family. Like Angel, unable to save Doyle, the father is ultimately unable to save his son, although Angel tells him that he has indeed protected his family (his wife & daughter).

I'm often puzzled by Liam's relationship with his father. We know that he's overcritical and hypocritical. And yet, you get glimpses that he does love his son. In the flashback in The Prodigal he says "I was never in your way, boy".

About The Prodigal, Tim Minear says:

But I think that’s part of our show; that these things exist side-by-side in Los Angeles and no one notices. So part of the point of that story for me was that people see what they want to see; everyone saw what they wanted to see in that episode. Angel saw his father as a prick, but he really wasn’t. His father saw Angel as a loser, which he didn’t need to be, and Kate saw her father as distant, when Kate’s father was doing everything because he loved his daughter. Of course on a larger scale, demons are running rampant through Los Angeles, and Angel says, ‘You’ve probably seen this kind of thing before, you just didn’t have a name for it.’ She didn’t realize it, but it was true.
http://www.timminear.net/archives/angel/000042.html

 

[Kana]

Sorry, I dont have an in-depth answer but wanted to give this a bump. I think alot of the fringe fathers, ie Willow's, Buffy's were simply written off. I dont think they served as a plot device (save for one episode with Buffy)

I think going a bit further, as much as strong female characters, and his whole "feminist" persona are key to Joss, the same could be said with dead-beat, or lacking fathers.

I think that's an interesting point. I personally think it could have been written better. Although maybe the point was the family is what you make it.

I love the father issues that were brought up in Under My Skin. We originally think that it is Seth Anderson, the father, who is evil. But it turns out that it's the son, and the father is just trying to protect his family. Like Angel, unable to save Doyle, the father is ultimately unable to save his son, although Angel tells him that he has indeed protected his family (his wife & daughter).

Both parents, like many of the parents in the Verse, are in the land of not dealing. Many fans think that Joyce intervening in Buffy's relationship with Angel was a desperate attempt for for her daughter to have a normal life even though it wasn't going to happen. This said Seth was a sympathetic dad, and it was an interesting twist.

I'm often puzzled by Liam's relationship with his father. We know that he's overcritical and hypocritical. And yet, you get glimpses that he does love his son. In the flashback in The Prodigal he says "I was never in your way, boy".

I was going to quote this but ultimately forgot. This is true of both Liam and Connor. While both of them had extentuating circumstances (Connor more so), they were not victims of circumstance and yes I do think Liam's father in his own way was trying to be a good parent.