The Assassination Of Cordelia Chase

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PurplePoof

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http://www.jennycrusie.com/essays/cordeliachase.php

Has anyone ever read this article? I think it's a great summary of why she's such a great character, why she's so damn underrated, and also offers great points on how badly they screwed her over towards the end of AtS...I particularly enjoy the bit where they discuss her infamous "because it costs more" line from Welcome To The Hellmouth...I'm glad someone else appreciated the brilliance of that...
 
Hmm, there are things in that I agree and disagree with.

Link essay regards Doyle said:
but also because she truly did love him
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I think this is a bit presumptuous.
Could Cordelia have loved Doyle, very probably, did she at the time of his death? No.

She definitely mourned him but she also mourned the what could have been. Doyle had potential and Cordelia saw that.
With his death there may have been a momentary belief in herself that she loved him BUT to me thats the erratic emotions one feels when someone we care about dies.


I agreed, however, with pretty much everything else up to and post the season 4 rant.

I have no issue with Cordelia being Cordelia up to the revelation to the viewer that she is the Beast Master.
This person goes on about the Gotcha moments and to be fair, if you are dissecting Cordelias growth, the WTF moments with her are your little asides to 'somethings up with Cordelia'.

I do have issues with season 4 BUT up to the point of Jasmines birth they are few and far between.

Even my issues aren't big because I love season 4 - I just wish Cordelia could have played a bit more of a role in the Jasmine part of the arc - just one dream/vision of Cordelia to Angel sayng something would have been nice.

It also lead to one of my absolute favourite episodes of the show - You're Welcome.
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I will add though that it was an interesting read and for the most part I agreed.
 
Edmund Blackadder said:
She definitely mourned him but she also mourned the what could have been. Doyle had potential and Cordelia saw that.
With his death there may have been a momentary belief in herself that she loved him BUT to me thats the erratic emotions one feels when someone we care about dies.
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HA, this is what I always say to people regarding Buffy telling Spike she loved him in Chosen...but do they listen? NO.

I agree with you on that count...I don't believe Cordelia ever was given a chance to fall in love with Doyle. She may have cared deeply for him, but she certainly didn't love him. Just like he didn't "love" her...he was intensely attracted to her, that's it.
 
E
Edmund Blackadder
[No message]
Yeah, I've read that before, I pretty much agree with it.
 
caitaintdead
caitaintdead
Just wanted to choose this moment to point out how much I love your banner! (Although I think I may have already!)
Thanks for posting that link, really enjoyed reading it, and agreed with what was said, and can share a lot of her disappointment with the writers.

Most interesting point for me was how the essayist highlighted the difference between "I can't believe the character did that!" and "I don't believe the character would do that".

Arguably the writers didn't assassinate Cordy's character, as the person we saw in season 4 wasn't actually Cordy. They wasted her character though - missing, possessed, coma, dead. That was the best they could come up with for one of the biggest characters in the Buffyverse? Really?!

I'd argue that some of the writers storyline decisions - possession, Jasmine, Connor/Cordelia - actually assassinated the show. For me, season 4 was the beginning of the end for Angel.

There were some great moments in that season, but the main arcs - Connor, possessed Cordy, Jasmine - were all just embarrassingly awful. It's as if the writers lost their collective minds.
 
I quickly read this article and absolutely hated it. Of all the characters in both Buffy and Angel, Cordilia Chase was the character that lost the most.

She lost her innocence early on when she discovered the world was a big bad place full of bad things.

She lost her standing in the school by dating Xander.

She lost Xander.

She lost her money.

She lost her hopes when she got to L.A.

She lost a potential love when Doyle passed away.

She lost her freedom when she got the visions.

Then she lost her health because of the visions.

Loss, Loss, Loss and then she lost her life.

I am not a big fan of the scene where Cordy ascends to become a higher being but was it out of character at that point? I don't think so. All the loss had definitely taken it's toll. Remember the years of hiding the effects of the visions from Angel and crew.

The writer of this article then goes on to criticize the semi-dominatrix wardrobe of some ot the nastier female characters - Dark Willow, Illiryia etc. Like who bloody cares? They are evil or Demons. (and therein may lie her real beef with the buffyverse - maybe she looks like hell in spandex - hence the rant)

Opinions are like cowboy hats at a rodeo, everybody's got one. For my taste this writer can keep hers. The basis for this arguement is that a writer cannot create a character and then have that character's actions betray their own nature. Well, it's TV so a certain suspension of belief is inevitable. In the real world people do crazy, out of character things with a lot less provocation than Cordelia had.

Long live CC.

Uncle Rory
PS. and just for the record, I love the girls in Buffy because they are NORMAL girls, not model types, not hot bodies like that show about the witches. Again, I think the writer may have issues, Cordilia was the only hottie on Buffy / Angel and she gripes about the character developement? I ain't buyin it.
 
Cordy the only hottie on Buffy?

Sarah, Eliza, Jenny, Allyson, Emma, etc..
 
Uncle Rory said:
I quickly read this article and absolutely hated it. Of all the characters in both Buffy and Angel, Cordilia Chase was the character that lost the most.

She lost her innocence early on when she discovered the world was a big bad place full of bad things.

She lost her standing in the school by dating Xander.

She lost Xander.

She lost her money.

She lost her hopes when she got to L.A.

She lost a potential love when Doyle passed away.

She lost her freedom when she got the visions.

Then she lost her health because of the visions.

Loss, Loss, Loss and then she lost her life.

I am not a big fan of the scene where Cordy ascends to become a higher being but was it out of character at that point? I don't think so. All the loss had definitely taken it's toll. Remember the years of hiding the effects of the visions from Angel and crew.

The writer of this article then goes on to criticize the semi-dominatrix wardrobe of some ot the nastier female characters - Dark Willow, Illiryia etc. Like who bloody cares? They are evil or Demons. (and therein may lie her real beef with the buffyverse - maybe she looks like hell in spandex - hence the rant)

Opinions are like cowboy hats at a rodeo, everybody's got one. For my taste this writer can keep hers. The basis for this arguement is that a writer cannot create a character and then have that character's actions betray their own nature. Well, it's TV so a certain suspension of belief is inevitable. In the real world people do crazy, out of character things with a lot less provocation than Cordelia had.

Long live CC.

Uncle Rory
PS. and just for the record, I love the girls in Buffy because they are NORMAL girls, not model types, not hot bodies like that show about the witches. Again, I think the writer may have issues, Cordilia was the only hottie on Buffy / Angel and she gripes about the character developement? I ain't buyin it.
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I agree with you that you have more leniency with character than the article claims but I do think with a character as well known and loved as Cordelia there needs to be more time spent on looking at the change and the reasons for it- so it did feel messy and lazy. Of course it turns out it wasn't her anyway- but that was still months of thinking Angel was now a rubbish show and I agree with the writer that after the reveal it left me with a bad taste in my brain.

I think Anya is model hot? Also Buffy if she were a bit taller. Dawn in season 7 is too (as hot as Fred anyway). I don't think Cordelia was gorgeous in Angel, Charisma's face aged quite a lot between Buffy seasons 2 and 3.
 
Ok, maybe I could have put that a little more elegantly. What I meant was that Hottie or not, that was never the point of Buffy. The women are women FIRST, some may be one person's or another's idea of hot but SOME OTHER PROGRAMS in the same genre EXPLOIT the hotness factor. In other words I, as a somewhat mature male can watch this show. Can't say the same about Charmed, Ghost Whisperer, etc. They are about as subtle as Baywatch in what they are really selling.

Uncle Rory
 
Uncle Rory, I'm not sure I understand your point. What does Cordelia's "losing" everything have to do with anything?

I don't think that this "loss" contributed to her decision to ascend as a higher being. In fact, I agree that it was poor writing because I didn't believe for a second that the Cordelia we knew would just up and take off when she had just discovered she was in love with Angel...and it was just NOT in her nature to just oblige someone (human or not) without asking hardly any questions.

As far as the semi-dominatrix wardrobe, I don't think that was a criticism so much as an amusing observation. It was true that any "bad" female character was dressed like a crazy gothic skank...and I think she makes a valid point.

The basis for this arguement is that a writer cannot create a character and then have that character's actions betray their own nature. Well, it's TV so a certain suspension of belief is inevitable. In the real world people do crazy, out of character things with a lot less provocation than Cordelia had.
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I don't think that suspension of disbelief should need to be applied to a character that's been in a constant state of development for 7 years...it's just wrong. To take a character that we were as familiar with as Cordelia and have her do something out of character...you can't just write that off as suspension of disbelief...if this is true, why bother developing a character at all?
 
Have you ever lost anything dear to you? Have you ever lost EVERYTHING dear to you? Seems like probably not. After the type of loss Cordy went through I would expect it to cloud EVERY decision FOREVER. Let's remember, this is television. Just because a viewer doesn't make the intuitive leaps that the writer intended doesn't mean that the writer wasn't true to his character. I see everything Cordy did as logical, but of course I also take into consideration the life I imagine she had behind the scenes and I fill in the blanks in co-operation with the writer - not trying to make the character what I want her to be.
 
Well, naturally we all interpret characters and their progressions in certain ways. It's not about making a character out to be what we "want"...but rather what we see based on what we're presented and how we relate it to our own experiences. I'm sorry, but I don't buy your argument that "loss" drove Cordelia to not think twice about leaving the earthly world behind. That's just not the character I'd been so attached to for 7 years.
 
Cordelia was assassinated because Joss Whedon was mad at Charisma Carpenter for not planning her family life around him and his show.

And I'm only kind of kidding about that.

The character's mistreatment during season 4, and Charisma's not being asked to rejoin the cast for season 5 is a very sore spot for me.

Don't get me wrong, I think the 4th season of Angel was great even when Jasmine came along. But I wish that the writers would have let us in on Cordy being possessed earlier in the season. I mean obviously they were planning on her being possessed for a while by sending her to a higher plane at the end of year 3.

Just grrrr.....
 
Thanks for posting this essay, I enjoyed reading it.

Chase Summers said:
The character's mistreatment during season 4, and Charisma's not being asked to rejoin the cast for season 5 is a very sore spot for me.
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For me as well. I was so angry that they had destroyed a character that I loved so much. One of the things that got me so hooked on Angel was watching Cordelia expand into something more than just the teen-queen that she was in Buffy, and not to mention me rooting for her ever-growing relationship with Angel (which I found odd because the only person I like to see Buffy with is Angel, but I'm alright with Angel and Cordy).

I suppose season 4 had to be modified to deal with Charisma's real life pregnancy, but what angered me most about it, was probably that they didn't bring her back for season 5. The whole coma thing was alright for the end of S4, but there was no reason to have her that way through S5 and then she's barely even mentioned like if she was just some nobody who had only been with them for one episode. I thought the whole thing was very disrespectful, not only to the character, but to the viewers as well.
 
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Fusions2
Thats what I think, a waste of a character like that, Cordy should have at least gone out in style if they wanted to end the character.
Faiths Angel said:
Thanks for posting this essay, I enjoyed reading it.



For me as well. I was so angry that they had destroyed a character that I loved so much. One of the things that got me so hooked on Angel was watching Cordelia expand into something more than just the teen-queen that she was in Buffy, and not to mention me rooting for her ever-growing relationship with Angel (which I found odd because the only person I like to see Buffy with is Angel, but I'm alright with Angel and Cordy).

I suppose season 4 had to be modified to deal with Charisma's real life pregnancy, but what angered me most about it, was probably that they didn't bring her back for season 5. The whole coma thing was alright for the end of S4, but there was no reason to have her that way through S5 and then she's barely even mentioned like if she was just some nobody who had only been with them for one episode. I thought the whole thing was very disrespectful, not only to the character, but to the viewers as well.
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Absolutely, but unfortunately any series creator thinks they are the GOD of the series, and their will rules supreme. At that stage they lose sight of the audience, and their own predjuices infect the show. That is why must shows end up canned, as alienating the viewers (or execs in joss's case shows) is not a good idea.

DG was fabulous in that regard, as though not the creator, he was a dedicated fan who moved the show in an fanlogical way.

oooh, is fanlogical a new word?
 
I have the opposite views of some of you when regarding Cordy's Ascension while maybe a great leap lets not forget throughout Season 3 Cordy preached about their jobs to the powers. And the chance to join them do more good I think she thought selflessly first and everything else came second and exactly how she did when she became half demon except she put the greater good in Angel's place.

And in Cordy-esque fashion after realizing what she'd gotten herself into and not being able to do any real good. Cordy was ready to go I agree with the article because we should have gotten more Cordy instead of her getting amnesia you see we the fans didn't get our Cordy back first and foremost before Jasmine took over.

And then she was put into a coma I still think her pregnancy could have been handled differently Cordy is too important of a character to sleep with someone who she was like a mother to even if she was posessed she wouldn't do it she wouldn't allow it to be done.


But the worst offense they did was their decision to excluded(sans You're Welcome) from season 5. Angel the series as a whole is about redemption, and starting over so then they should have ceased the opportunity to go through that journey of amends and redemption with Cordy. They should have jumped at the chance to give a character whose been basically dragged through the mud in the last season a clean slate to be the Cordelia Chase again we all knew and loved.
 
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Imberan
[No message]
Although I don't know exactly what was going on behind the scenes, I think what Joss did to Cordelia's character, especially having her sleep with Connor was the worst mistake (even worse than Kennedy) that he has ever made to any of his shows. There are a million ways they could have fit Charisma's pregnancy into the storyline that didn't involve her sleeping with her god son. I am not a huge Cangel fan but further development of their relationship would have been much better than what happened with Cordy's character in Season 4. I also missed her a great deal in Season 5 and love Your Welcome.
 
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