What was the point of Andrew?

I never really saw the point in Andrew either. I found him annoying, which I think was the purpose of Andrew in a way. I just don't like annoying on a TV show. I thought he was almost a combination of Xander and Anya. The geekiness and almost awkwardness of Xander and the comic element of Anya. Season 7 was just one of those seasons that went a little bit overboard with characters.

I would have preferred that Clem or Jonathon had been given the screen time. Despite the fact that I'm not a fan of the character of Faith I would have preferred some screen time for her.
 
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Icarium said:
Andrew does have an excuse - he is crazy. Mentally unstable. Deranged. Lunatic. Stark raving mad, except without the stark raving part.
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But that is my point. Instead of a scenario where the character is "corrupted by power," (ie Willow), which is such a common theme in the fantasy genre, you have a regular guy whose actions are not attributable to magic/the extra-human circumstances to which he was exposed. Whether it is mental illness, post traumatic stress, exposure, etc, he is unstable and that is the reason for his actions. I obviously agree with you. My point is that because that is what happens every day in the real world, Andrew is a character who serves to remind us that evil is something that exists in all shapes and forms and that sometimes human beings without some sort of "higher level" excuse are often the worst proponents of it. And can be worse than the demons and vampires and witches who are essentially compelled to act that way and can't control themselves.

(Side note: whether or not mentally unstable humans can control themselves is of course a major argument in which I can't participate as I don't study the subject and have limited knowledge of psychiatry. I don't even know what the existing theories are regarding this but I imagine it's something that's often debated. I just think that for the purposes of this show there is an underlying theme of "humans can control themselves therefore there is no excuse when they act in evil ways," so when it comes to evaluating Andrew's role in the series I assume that he is a reminder of this particular belief.)

And this is why his "redemption" was never going to work even if it weren't treated like a joke and is also the reason why his painfully unfunny jokes are even more irritating.
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I think that if you believe that humans who have committed atrocious acts can be redeemed then this is not necessarily true. Personally I'll admit that I'm on the fence about this but I do very much entertain the notion that it's possible. Or at least I'd like to believe it. So I accept and (sort of) appreciate that they attempted to show it here, albeit not very effectively--it was more of a "tell" than a "show."
 
I think that if you believe that humans who have committed atrocious acts can be redeemed then this is not necessarily true.
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Doesn't matter what one believes in. The point is that since the writers never bothered to actually address the elephant in the room - Andrew being mentally unstable, and in fact used his condition as a source of jokes all the time, there is no way they could have written a convincing story for him, redemption or no redemption. As you yourself said they "tell" us that he, let's say, got better. It's not earned, nor does it make much sense. Not to mention that in the comics
he seems to have just as big of a difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality as he did in S6, so he is basically back to square one

Andrew is a character who serves to remind us that evil is something that exists in all shapes and forms and that sometimes human beings without some sort of "higher level" excuse are often the worst proponents of it.
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That description fits Warren much better than Andrew, though. If there was a point to Andrew other than jokes, it should be something like the "banality of evil". He isn't among the worst criminals, what's creepy about him is that he often didn't even realise he was doing any harm. Of course, this is totally undermined by the show often playing it as a joke...
 
I'm probably wrong, but maybe it was to even out the appearances of the nerds.
S.5: Jonathan: 13, Warren: 2, Andrew: 0.
S.6: Jonathan: 24, Warren: 11, Andrew: 11.
S.7: Jonathan: 28, Andrew: 26, Warren: 16.
Since Jonathan had already been in more than a season's worth of episodes, maybe they wanted Andrew to have an equal amount of screentime.
 
Yeah he did seem sorta pointless. I mean he was certainly fun to have around and provided some great comic relief but overall it would have still worked without him. But I guess you've got the bad ones from the trio and then youve got Andrew who really was just in the trio as a geek rather than actually going through with most of the evil stuff.
Okay my wording wasn't great there but I think you know what I mean 😛
 
Season 7 was pretty dark so for me Andrew actually made it better. He was the funny one. He's not my favorite character but I think that he was needed to make the season less depressing. I don't know. Many people don't like him. I got used to him, but he could never be a part of the gang.
 
Eh... Andrew didn't really have an important role, besides being the funny and smart guy who sometimes make idiotic choices of words (which relates back to the funny part). He was just... there, you know?

Even though he can be a tad annoying at times, I don't mind him. It was actually season seven when he redeemed himself, in my opinion. He got out of his "evil" ways, joined the good forces and even managed to stand up to Warren. Like what people said, Andrew is like a symbol showing that not all evil characters stay evil. I guess you can relate Faith with that as well (might even be a stronger image than Andrew really, seeing as though Andrew was more of a wannabe evil master).

I like him! And especially with Anya, like hospital scene in End of Days. Wheelchair fight!
(oh and I would give credit to Andrew for finding all those supplies in the hospital. I guess that's one significant and creditable action)
 
Man, so much hate for Andrew! I have to weigh in on the other side though. I really liked Andrew. I suppose there wasn't a massive "point" for having him there. I mean, he's not powerful, he doesn't have magic powers and he's not "the funny guy" because that's covered with other characters (although I seem to be one of the few who thought Andrew was absolutely hilarious).

I think one of the main reasons for having him there was to provide a bit more character depth to the cast. Beyond Xander (and I suppose Giles, although he's barely in the first half of S7) and Spike, there aren't exactly a wealth of leading male characters. Especially after the Potentials join the show and Faith returns, the main cast is almost entirely female. Adding Andrew (and Principal Wood, another character I really liked) provided a bit more balance. Plus, he's funny, and he becomes a springboard for other characters to be funny by joking at him. Pretty much the entire cast has some great lines at Andrew's expense in S7.

But when you think about it, what's the on-screen purpose of Anya that season? She's not nearly as funny, she kills a boat load of frat boys and is then instantly forgiven. She doesn't re-unite with Xander beyond one or two nights. She has no power. Her only real purpose is to join up with Kennedy in "Empty Places" to attack Buffy (a speech from her which always drove me nuts. She contributed nothing). I mean, I always thought Andrew had more of a purpose in that season than Anya did.
 
I though Andrew was hilarious - when he was given good material. "In Conversations with Dead Things" he played off Johnathan and Warren. The 'Star Wars" references in particular were priceless.

But the rest of the season he wasn't written half as well. Which is merely symptomatic of Season 7's abysmal quality after CWDP.

Or perhaps he was written deliberately bad so that Dawn would no longer be the most annoying character on the show.
 
On top of Comic Relief. I think there was something unique about the way season seven had an oddball group of people trying to save the world instead of the core-strong group of friends
 
I liked Andrew, I didnt find him annoying at all. The scene's he had with Anya were hillarious and I dont even really like Anya. Following on from what [MENTION=11975]Always Bangel[/MENTION] said about Anya being an unneeded character, which I agree with, maybe Andrew was brought in so that Anya could have some screen time. Season 7 was really about going back to the beginning and looking at the core Scoobies, making Anya, even though she had been in the show since season 3, a bit of a lost character. Andrew and Anya had some very funny moments together.
 
Personally, Andrew was a substantial part of why I enjoyed Season 7 so much. I thought his delivery/lines were hilarious.
 
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It would've been awesome to keep Jonathan too, But he wasn't the funny one, I think he was funny when he was with Andrew but on his own he wasn't that funny. He had a plot behind his character, From the beginning he was trying to fit in and be popular and it wasn't until just before he died that he realized that he didn't need to fit in, it didn't matter about whether everyone else was thinking or caring about him because he cared about them. Andrew may not've had such a big plot but he did learn about redemption and forgiveness. He was a comic relief but he was a good one. And to all the people saying Tom wasn't a good actor or he was only on it cause he was friends with Joss I have this to say: Toms a great actor in my mind and played the part great and it doesn't matter why Andrew stayed. It was 10 years ago if you can't learn to deal with it then write fanfic.
 
Andrew was a complete waste of time, there was no need for another comic relief charcter.

There already was a great number of characters who better fit that role, for example- Xander, who could do the whole comic relief thing in, you know, an actually funny and believable manner.

Andrews ''jokes'' weren't funny as pop culture ''joke'' references is pretty much all he did, the moment he started talking you knew it was going to be one of those lame ducks.

Other characters who weren't shoehorned into the show out of leftfield did the comic relief thing subtly and therefore did it a million times better.

Jonathan was somewhat a series regular and from the earliest years was always to be found in the background. If the shows creators desperately needed a new character he was the obvious one to go for, rather than the superficial, neurotic whiny Andrew.

Dawn Season 5 = Andrew


If only those monks in season 5 could come back and cleanse BtVS of Andrew, that would be perfect!
They could even explain it with something like- without Andrew the First wouldn't have come forth and the chain of events that lead into Season 7 would never have happened. Win-win for everyone right!

Someone should seriously start a movement to erase him from history.
 
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